TalkAndhra » Technology News

Smart Phone Raises Share Value In Record Time

shyamala — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 12:54:32 +0000

Don’t take it as “A baby that drinks a tiger’s milk became a tiger one day!” Incidentally it was a baby tiger!

It’s the time of cell phone apps. But it is not an app that made a share value of company swell in the market.

IPhone 5S was launched and soon after it the sales have gone up from 20th September and within a week’s time it boosted the share value of Apple- its creator! Sales were so high that within a week the company was short of stocks. The sale of IPhone 5S reached 9 million in three days.

The IPhone was losing its smart phone market gradually when Samsung picked up. But with the market response of 5S Apple Companly not only recovered the market of smart phones but also gained in the share market by a rise of 2.4% to reach $487.96 yesterday.

Apple iPhone sales rewrite critics words

shyamala — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 14:11:16 +0000

Apple made an announcement on Monday that it sold a record nine million iPhones in the three days subsequent to launching two new versions of the smartphone. Furthermore, Apple chief executive Tim Cook in a statement expressed that this is their best iPhone yet which crossed beyond nine million new iPhones sold making it a new record for first weekend sales.

The figures from Apple appeared to challenge the power of prophecy from its critics that the company is losing momentum in the smartphone market and in innovation.

Google launches Sound Search for Android users

talkandhra — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 12:15:48 +0000

Google launched a new Sound Search widget for all Android devices that allows users to identify a song playing and purchase it from Google Play. Services like Shazam and SoundHound also serve a similar purpose, but Google bragged its solution syncs across all devices to make purchasing easier from another device. Additionally, users running Android 4.2 can add the widget directly to their lockscreen to catch the song easier. Do you find yourself constantly scouring Google Play for music?

This widget actually leaked back in August under the name Google Ears, and Android 4.2 users will recognize the widget, because it is one of the few options for the lockscreen widgets in the newest version of Android. However, the new widget that has been released into the Play Store is available for any Android device running 4.0 or higher, so that at least covers close to a third of the Android ecosystem at this point.

Possibly the best feature of the Sound Search widget is that, much like many other Google apps, it syncs across your device. So, you can tag a song on your phone while you’re out and about, then purchase that song on your tablet when you get home.

Impact of Smart Phones On Social Skills

talkandhra — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 11:59:12 +0000

The advent of smartphones, new-age devices and mobile internet has opened up a plethora of exciting opportunities for people across the globe. It has bridged the gap between countries, cultures and people. At the same time, the growing impulse to stay connected 24*7 is posing some serious challenges for the young users.

The Connected World Technology Report unveiled by Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) says that around 70 percent of the GenY respondents in India compulsively check their smartphones for updates. Of these, 42 percent say that they would feel anxious if they couldn’t check their smartphones while 71 percent wish they didn’t feel so compelled, but would like to stay connected.

The study was based on a survey conducted by InsightExpress, of 1800 college students and young professionals aged between 18 and 30 years across 18 countries, including India. It reveals that nine out of 10 respondents globally will get dressed, brush their teeth and want to check their smartphones as part of the morning ritual for getting ready for school or work. In India, 96 percent of those who have smartphones will check for updates as part of the morning routines.

More worrisome disclosure is the fact that the increasing usage of smartphones may impact the family lives of professionals in the long run. Statistics like 84 percent of Indian respondents using their smartphones in bed, 15 percent admitting to SMSing while driving and over 55 percent admitting that they connect through social media and e-mails during meals with family, reflect a dangerous trend of people getting more and more obsessed with their smartphones.

A headset that gives a 360-degree field of vision.

talkandhra — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 12:42:28 +0000

Eyes in the back of your head! French scientists claim to have developed a headset that gives you a 360-degree field of vision.The headset captures images from every direction around the user, then transforms them into something the human vision system can comprehend.he system called FlyVIZ was designed by Jerome Ardouin and colleagues at the Grande Ecole d’Ingenieurs Paris-Laval in France, the New Scientist reported.

The headset is at prototype stage: at 1.6 kilogrammes, it’s a bit heavy to walk around with, and remains connected to a laptop for image-processing while it runs.It uses a video camera, mounted atop a helmet, along with specially shaped mirrors to capture the environment on all sides of the user, then displays it in real time on a modified 3D Viewer headset.

The system takes about 15 minutes to get used to, its creators claim in a paper they presented at the Virtual Reality Software and Technology conference in Toronto, Canada.Once acclimatised, the user is able to move around and interact fluidly with their environment.

In a series of trials, users grabbed sticks that would have been outside their normal field of view, dodged balls thrown from behind them, and even drove a car.Despite the strange new perspective on the world, the device does not cause any nausea, motion sickness or visual fatigue, the team claimed.

Even though FlyVIZ acquires and displays images in 2D, users still had serviceable depth perception, which the researchers attribute to wearers intuitively tracking object motion and parallax in the image to compensate for a lack of normal binocular vision.

Google has released its Maps app for the iPhone, in the wake of complaints about Apple’s software

talkandhra — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:57:46 +0000

Apple controversially replaced the search giant’s mapping service with its own when it released its latest handset, the iPhone 5.The move was widely criticised after numerous mistakes were found in Apple Maps’s search results.Google’s app introduces functions previously restricted to Android devices.One analyst said it would prove popular, but added that Nokia still posed a challenge.

The Finnish company recently launched its own free maps app for the iPhone.The firms are motivated in part by a desire to gather data automatically generated by handsets using their respective software, as well as users’ own feedback.This allows them to fine-tune their services and improve the accuracy of features such as traffic status updates.

Facebook Gives New Privacy Settings

talkandhra — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:56:57 +0000

Facebook has changed its privacy controls after conducting a vote on the matter that was doomed from the start to be irrelevant. Facebook claims the tweaks to its system will make it easier for users to access and understand their privacy settings, and that may be true. However, it also appears that users’ timelines will be more searchable, which may be a key reason underlying Facebook’s move.

Facebook privacy “kit” updates that will begin rolling out next week include shortcuts to controls; a simple-to-use log of what a user has been sharing, and tools for managing pictures “tagged” with their names.

“Our goal is making sure people understand the ways they can control their information,” Facebook chief privacy officer Erin Egan told AFP while providing an early look at the changes. “We want people to make the choices that are right for them.” Facebook last year introduced “in-context controls” that call attention to privacy settings at moments when members are taking actions such as posting comments or pictures.

The shortcuts were meant to build on the strategy of putting privacy controls in easy reach at relevant moments during activities at the social network, according to Egan. Tools from account settings and privacy controls pages were consolidated in one spot, where guides for helping use them are in plain language instead of technical jargon.

Examples included guidance provided for finding out “Who can see my stuff?” or “How can I keep people from bothering me?” Facebook will also require many applications synched to the social network to separately ask users for personal information from accounts or for permission to post anything back to a user’s timeline at the social network.

“We think this will make it simpler for people to decide when they want to use apps,” Egan said. Game apps for Facebook will not be changed to the new permissions setting. Facebook is “retiring” a feature that lets people look up users’ timelines by searching on their names. The Activity Log update was designed to make it easier for people to review what they have posted at Facebook and pictures that have been tagged with their names at the social network.

Activity Logs will give people the option to select batches of photos in which they are tagged and send messages asking the friends behind the images to take them down from the website. People can personalize messages to accompany “bulk removal” requests, or pick from a list of pre-written reasons including “They are embarrassing” and “They make me sad.”

Leaked BlackBerry images show iPhone influence

talkandhra — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:16:16 +0000

The images, published on Vietnamese technology news site Tinhte.vn, appear to show the handset codenamed BlackBerry London, which is due for release early next year. The handset will be the first to run BlackBerry 10, the next version of the BlackBerry operating system

From the pictures, the BlackBerry London looks to have a minimalist industrial design similar to that of Apple’s iPhone 5. The back is textured and it appears to have mini-HDMI and microUSB ports, as well as a microSD slot and removable battery.

The BlackBerry London is expected to be unveiled along with another BlackBerry model at a launch event on January 30, 2013. The new images are consistent with earlier leaked pictures showing both devices, which were originally scheduled for launch this year.

This isn’t the first time RIM has ditched the famous BlackBerry keyboard. The first touchscreen BlackBerry with no physical keyboard was the Storm, released in November 2008.

Apple and Google have joined forces in order to buy kodak’s patents

talkandhra — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 12:23:02 +0000

It seems that Apple and Google have joined forces in order to buy patents from the bankrupt Eastman Kodak. According to this report from Bloomberg, which quotes sources familiar with deal as saying the two companies could offer more than $500 million for these patents.

The report said the two parties “have partnered after leading two separate groups this summer to buy some of Kodak’s 1,100 imaging patents. The two groups had separately offered less than $500 million for Kodak’s portfolio. They now teamed up to offer more together”

Kodak, which filed for bankruptcy in January this year, has held an auction for its patent in August as well but it has not announced any winner. It is believed that nearly 1100 patents are up for grabs.

It was reported at the time of the auction that Apple, Google and Microsoft Corp made bids, but they were significantly below Kodak’s estimates for the patents’ value. Kodak said early in 2012 that an outside firm had estimated the value of the portfolio at $2.2 billion to $2.6 billion.Kodak’s patents are up for grabs. Getty Images

Google updates YouTube app for iPad and iPhone 5

talkandhra — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:55:21 +0000

Internet search giant Google has updated its YouTube app for Apple’s iPad and iPhone 5, according to a report.

As part of an update, the app is now universal and works on the three different screen sizes.

Other additions include support for video streaming over AirPlay, support for URLs within video descriptions, and what Google says are ‘videos that start faster and play more smoothly,’ CNET reports.

According to the report, the update comes just a few hours after Google put out a completely revamped version of its Gmail app for iOS. That app completely changes the look and feel of the software to better match Google’s desktop Web mail counterpart. It also added support for multiple accounts, the report added.