Microsoft unveils Surface 2, Surface Pro 2 tablets

Microsoft unveiled two new versions of its Surface tablet, aiming to ramp up its efforts in mobile computing after a failed launch a year ago. 

The Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 have "significant updates, including improvements to processing power and battery life," Microsoft said in a statement as it unveiled the devices at a New York event. 

The changes represent "the revamp we need," said Microsoft vice president Panos Panay as he showed the new tablets to news media. 

The launch is Microsoft's second stab at the growing tablet market after the Surface released last year failed to make a dent in a market dominated by Apple's iPad and various devices using the Google Android operating system. 

Panos said the new device includes Microsoft's revamped Windows 8.1 system, the popular Outlook program and a whopping 100,000 applications, up from the 10,000 in the previous version. 

The Surface 2 will start at $449 and the Surface Pro 2 at $899 for US customers. It will be sold initially in 22 markets, with pre-orders starting Tuesday.

Read More

First weekend iPhone sales set new record, top 9m

Apple has announced it sold a record-breaking nine million new iPhone 5S andiPhone 5C models, just three days after the launch of the new iPhones on September 20. 

In addition, more than 200 million iOS devices are now running the completely redesigned iOS 7, making it the fastest software upgrade in history, according to the company. Both iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C are available in the US, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore and the UK. 

"This is our best iPhone launch yet -―more than nine million new iPhones sold ―- a new record for first weekend sales," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "The demand for the new iPhones has been incredible, and while we've sold out of our initial supply of iPhone 5S, stores continue to receive new iPhone shipments regularly. We appreciate everyone's patience and are working hard to build enough new iPhones for everyone." 

With sales figures crossing 9 million units, Apple has beaten the expectations of analysts. KGI Securities analyst Ming-chi Kuo estimated sales of 6-8 million new iPhones, while Piper Jeffrey's Gene Munster expected 5-6 million in first weekend sales. 

iPhone 5S sports Apple-designed A7 64-bit chip, all-new 8MP camera and introduces Touch ID, which allows users to unlock their phones with just the touch of a finger. iPhone 5C features a 4-inch Retina display, A6 chip, and 8MP camera. Both iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C offer more LTE bands than any other smartphone in the world and include FaceTime HD cameras. 

Apple's new iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C run on iOS 7, which the company claims is its most significant iOS update since the original iPhone. The new features of iOS 7 include an all-new features like Control Centre, iTunes Radio and AirDrop, as well as improvements in notification centre, multitasking, Safari and Siri.

Read More

How cloud computing is changing enterprise tech

Over the next few years, what happens to the several trillion dollars businesses spend on technology will be decided by executives like Jeff Allen. 

As big business hitches its computer systems to the latest technology wave, Allen and others will have the tricky job of ensuring that old systems work with the many new systems finding their way into his company. 

"A lot of normal companies are struggling to stitch together lots of different software" from different technology providers, said Allen, a marketing vice president at Standard Register, a specialty publishing and communications company in Dayton, Ohio. Eventually, he said, he will have to choose from only three or four big suppliers. 

Eventually. But not right now. 

Corporate technology buyers are looking at a menu of new and old technologies and names both familiar and obscure. Old-guard companies like Microsoft, Oracle, Dell and Hewlett-Packard have been joined by new names like Salesforce.com, Workday and NetSuite. Google and Amazon.com have corporate-computing services. And yet another group of upstarts is nipping at that newer generation's heels, ready to provide easy-to-use apps like the ones consumers download to their smartphones. 

It is a confusing number of choices with big stakes: Who will you entrust with your most precious asset - data about you and your customers? 

"There is a changing of the guard," said Paul Daugherty, chief technology officer at the consulting firm Accenture. "Some of the new guys will get big, and some of them will get acquired. Customers are trying to structure things to take advantage of the changes, but it's hard." 

The biggest driver of this change is cloud computing, where the software is based somewhere else and retrieved over the Internet. With cloud computing, upfront costs are usually much less and new versions of software appear as easily as an update on a smartphone, so the product is never out of date. 

Moving a company to cloud-computing services is also typically faster than old corporate software installations, which can take years and require the services of expensive consultants. 

But there are risks with this shift. There are fears that the old tech suppliers don't understand the new way of doing things and may be unable to help their customers enjoy the benefits of new technology, while the new companies may not have staying power. And making sense of it all and controlling this upgrade process can be confounding. 

"We can do things a lot faster, because we aren't bound by big software upgrades every two years, with lots of consultants," said Douglas Menefee, who runs corporate technology at the Schumacher Group, a Lafayette, La., company that manages 3,000 emergency room physicians across the country. "There are lots of pain points, too, though - too many products from different providers." 

This shift to a new generation from the corporate technology suppliers that grew in the '90s has been years in the making, but it has accelerated in recent months as companies like Dell, Hewlett-Packard and even Microsoft have struggled. 

Just as consumers are moving away from buying music and movies toward monthly subscriptions, corporate tech buyers are moving away from owning the technology outright and are instead asking others to do it for them in return for a monthly or annual fee. 

Amazon and Google have built enormous global clouds to capitalize on this change, and they are angling to pick up the computing loads companies used to do on their own servers, at a fraction of the cost. The most lasting legacy of Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, who recently announced his retirement, might be the cloud service built under his watch called Azure, to better compete in this new environment. 

The worst hand right now seems to be held by hardware makers. More companies allow employees to bring in whatever smartphone, laptop or tablet they want, since they all connect to a cloud. "We have HP hardware, but it's not a strategic priority," said Allen, who uses a Samsungsmartphone and an Apple iPad. 

Nokia, which could not compete with Apple and Google in smartphones, sold its handset unit to Microsoft last month for $7.2 billion. On Friday, BlackBerry, another device company in trouble, announced that it would lay off 4,500 employees. 

It is unlikely that many of the big companies will go away soon, of course. They still have deep pockets that allow them to buy into the new wave of corporate computing. 

Oracle, for example, has spent $4.3 billion just on three cloud-software companies, and it has made other acquisitions and conducted internal research and development that probably add up to much more. 

"We're all going to have to learn new capabilities," said Mark V Hurd, a co-president at Oracle, which is the largest business software company. 

On Monday, Oracle will bring 60,000 customers to San Francisco to hear about its cloud strategy, which includes putting all of its apps in the cloud, allowing people to write new software on Oracle's cloud and adding social media features to its products. 

Hurd's plan is to bring customers over slowly, offering a bridge from the systems they know to the new world they must learn. "All the customers want to hear how you're going to save them money and time and how you're going to help them innovate," he said. 

Up to now, that innovation has largely been happening at smaller companies, and that has given them a beachhead they will not easily give up. 

Menefee's company, for example, used to work with products from Microsoft and Oracle, but it now relies on Salesforce, Workday and Amazon. "I went up to Microsoft, and I can see they've got religion now. They are a giant that has awoken," he said. "But now I've got loyalty to Salesforce and Amazon, so they'll have to exceed them." 

While the tech choices are daunting right now, some consolidation - or at least a more unified face - may be starting. Last week, Salesforce and Workday announced an alliance aimed at making their products operate better together, with customer data moving between their services. 

Workday has announced data-analysis services that make moves toward the kind of "big data" work Oracle does, while also consolidating information it can take from other companies' products. 

"Analytics is unifying," said Dan Beck, Workday's vice president for financials and analytics. "We're in the trenches with the customers in a way the incumbents just don't get." 

Amazon has introduced a "trusted adviser" program that inspects a company's use of Amazon Web Services, its cloud service, and suggests ways it can be better used. Google has expanded its corporate cloud strategy, enlisting more developers and selling new ways for companies analyze data. 

Big data is sold as a way to build efficiency and gain insights. But big data services are also a way to consolidate data for customers. If you control information, you are almost by default the trusted partner, or what is known in the business as "the single throat to choke" if something goes wrong. 

Allen says that the app exchanges, where companies can now buy software the way people buy games and videos from an app store, may also help retain customers. 

"Once you have a significant amount of data in someone's platform, you lock yourself in pretty quickly," he said. "They want you to use their apps, because they are looking for stickiness."

Read More

Unbreakable smartphones coming soon

Unbreakable rubber-like smartphones, rollable tablets and functional clothing have come closer to reality, thanks to new breakthrough research by scientists including one of Indian-origin. 

Researchers from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) RMIT University have developed a new method to transfer electronics with versatile functionality, which are usually made on rigid silicon, onto a flexible surface. 

The ability of micro and nano-electronic devices to sense, insulate or generate energy is controlled by thin, transparent nanolayers of oxide materials, often much thinner than 1/100th of a human hair. 

These oxide materials are brittle and their high processing temperatures - often in excess of 300 degrees Celsius - have until now prevented their incorporation in flexible electronic devices. 

Lead author, Philipp Gutruf, said the new process could unleash the potential of fully functional flexible electronics, while providing a new way for the materials to mesh together. 

"We have discovered a micro-tectonic effect, where microscale plates of oxide materials slide over each other, like geological plates, to relievestress and retain electrical conductivity," he said. 

"The novel method we have developed overcomes the challenges of incorporating oxide materials in bendable electronic devices, paving the way for bendable consumer electronics and otherexciting applications," said Gutruf. 

Supervisor and co-leader of the research group, Dr Madhu Bhaskaran, said the new approach used two popular materials - transparent conductive indium tin oxide and rubber-like silicone which is also biocompatible. 

"The ability to combine any functional oxide with this biocompatible material creates the potential for biomedical devices to monitor or stimulate nerve cells and organs. This is in addition to the immediate potential for consumer electronics applications in flexible displays, solar cells, and energy harvesters," said Bhaskaran. 

The study was published in the journal Asia Materials.

Read More

A camera inspired by human, insect eyes

A new hybrid lens that combines features of insect and human eyes could lead to smartphone cameras that rival the photo quality of digital cameras, and to surgical imaging to see inside the human body like never before. 

The lens shows a wide view, but still offers a sense of human-like depth perception: as close objects come into focus, faraway objects look blurry. 

"Our eye can change focus. An insect eye is made of many small optical components that can't change focus but give a wide view. We can combine the two," said Yi Zhao, associate professor of biomedical engineering and ophthalmology at Ohio State University. "What we get is a wide-angle lens with depth of field." 

The prototype lens is made of a flexible transparent polymer filled with a gelatinous fluid similar to fluid inside the human eye. It's a composite of several separate dome-shaped fluid pockets, with small domes sitting atop one larger dome. 

Each dome is adjustable, so that as fluid is pumped into and out of the lens, different parts of it expand and contract to change the overall shape — and thus, the direction and focus — of the lens. This shape-changing strategy is somewhat similar to the way muscles in the human eye change the shape of the lens tissue in order to focus. 

It differs sharply from the way typical cameras and microscopes focus, which involves moving separate lenses along the line of sight. The shape-changing lens could potentially offer the same focusing capability as multiple moving lenses in a single stationary lens, which would make for smaller and lighter cameras and microscopes. Zhao is interested in using the lens in confocal microscopes, which create 3D images of tiny objects.

Read More

Now, social media app for pets

Your dog can now make its social media debut! 

A new social media app that lets pet owners share photos of their favourite pooches and cats, and befriend other animal lovers, has been developed. 

Petigram is a new mobile app that aims to create a fun and interactive social network for pets. 

Petigram allows users to share pictures of their pets, follow other users and make friends. 

Members can also connect with others that have similar tastes in pets, learn more about breeds and where to adopt animals, or simply appreciate the pictures and editing that some have put into their pet sharing pictures on the app, 'BusinessNewsDaily' reported. 

The Petigram model combines the social networking features of Facebook and Twitter, such as browsing through other profiles, posting messages on Petigram friends' walls and making comments on other photos. 

It also incorporates the photo-sharing and editing capabilities of Instagram (like creating frames and filters and adding in text to pictures).

Read More

Android 4.4 KitKat images surface online

Many smartphone users are eagerly awaiting the next version of Google's Android OS officially called KitKat. Since the company announced Android 4.4 KitKat, there have been speculations on the features and the UI that the new OS will bring in. Now 9to5Google has leaked images which it claims provide first look of the new OS.

As per 9to5Google, the alleged screenshots provided by a user show a revamped phone dialer and messaging apps on KitKat. The phone dialler appears to sport a lighter colour scheme in comparison to the dark one in Jelly Bean. There is also a new keyboard design and the status bar too seems to have lighter colour scheme for the icons, which seems to be varying depending on the application that is in use that time.

The messaging app too seems to have undergone a change with the icon on the main menu resembling a Google+ icon. The main app has seen its controls get shifted to the top right instead of the bottom setup that is there in the current Android version.

Tech junkies are speculating that there will be significant changes in the 4.4 version. However, the alleged screenshots don't show any functionality changes.

Android 4.4 Kitkat is expected to be released in October along with Nexus 5. Rumours also suggest that the updated version of Nexus 10 too would sport the new OS.

Read More

Facebook, Twitter addiction may cause memory loss: Study

Always online? Take a break! People who spend too much time browsing social media could be squandering their memories or losing important information, a new study has warned.

Contrary to common wisdom, an idle brain is in fact doing important work - and in the age of constant information overload, it's a good idea to go offline on a regular basis, according to a researcher from Stockholm's KTH Royal Institute of Technology. 

Erik Fransen, whose research focuses on short-term memory and ways to treat diseased neurons, said that a brain exposed to a typical session of social media browsing can easily become hobbled by information overload. 

The result is that less information gets filed away in your memory. 

The problem begins in a system of the brain commonly known as the working memory, or what most people know as short-term memory. That's the system of the brain that we need when we communicate, Fransen said. 

"Working memory enables us to filter out information and find what we need in the communication. It enables us to work online and store what we find online, but it's also a limited resource," he said. 

"At any given time, the working memory can carry up to three or four items. When we attempt to stuff more information in the working memory, our capacity for processing information begins to fail. 

"When you are on Facebook, you are making it harder to keep the things that are 'online' in your brain that you need. 

"In fact, when you try to process sensory information like speech or video, you are going to need partly the same system of working memory, so you are reducing your own working memory capacity. 

"And when you try to store many things in your working memory, you get less good at processing information," he said. 

You're also robbing the brain of time it needs to do some necessary housekeeping. The brain is designed for both activity and relaxation, Fransen said. 

"The brain is made to go into a less active state, which we might think is wasteful; but probably memory consolidation, and transferring information into memory takes place in this state. Theories of how memory works explain why these two different states are needed. 

"When we max out our active states with technology equipment, just because we can, we remove from the brain part of the processing, and it can't work," Fransen said.

Read More

Japan‘s gaming market: A world apart

The latest version of blockbuster videogame Grand Theft Auto may have stoked a worldwide buying frenzy, but the ultra-violent offering is likely to be a minnow in Japan's vast gaming market. 

Shoot-em-up offerings from abroad often struggle to gain traction in the multi-billon-dollar Japanese videogame sector where fantasy-style games reign supreme and sell in the millions -- though many in the West have not heard of them. 

They include the hugely popular Monster Hunter franchise, which has sold 23 million copies and counting since its debut a decade ago. 

"But most of them were sold in Japan even though we did make an English version," said a spokeswoman for game creator Capcom. 

Language translation problems and cultural differences were among the reasons cited for the struggles of foreign game operators in Japan, a rift that was apparent as gamers flocked to the Tokyo Game Show this week. 

Over 600 games titles were on offer at the four-day extravaganza that wraps up Sunday. 

Though Japan once dominated the worldwide market with the likes of Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog, the country appears to be looking increasingly inward. 

"The main trends of the videogame market in Japan are divided into two categories: major worldwide successes like Pokemon, Final Fantasy or Biohazard, and games that are specifically designed for core Japanese gamers," said the Asia Trend Map institute, pointing to the "overwhelming dominance of games made in Japan". 

A blockbuster offering based on the popular comic book "Shonen Jump" reflects a common theme in which many Japanese games are centred around a character well known in multiple media platforms, from so-called manga cartoons and movies to music and television series. 

Namco Bandai's AKB 1/149 Renai Sosenkyo, a popular dating simulation game, is the kind of title known to most at home but with little name familiarity abroad -- AKB48 is the name of a well-known girl band. 

"The title isn't suited to foreign markets," said Namco Bandai spokesman Toshiaki Honda. 

Even Japanese giant Sony is releasing its PlayStation 4 abroad before its hits store shelves in Japan -- a first -- with executives saying that titles expected to be hits at home won't be ready in time. 

Eiji Araki, senior official of mobile social game maker Gree, added: "We've learned that characters and visuals favoured in the United States are different from those in Japan." 

For some, the unique character of Japan's gaming market encapsulates the country's so-called Galapagos Syndrome in which firms concentrate almost solely on the domestic market. 

The take up in Japan on Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy smartphones trailed huge sales abroad as many mobile carriers focused on homegrown flip-phone offerings. 

While iPhone is now selling well in Japan, a ride on the Tokyo subway underscores another unique aspect of the nation's gaming market -- a love of handheld gaming devices. 

Commuters on the city's vast transportation network are frequently seen thumbing away on portable devices to pass the time while, at home, consoles outpace the rising popularity abroad of playing games on personal computers 

For one official at Japan's Computer Entertainment Rating Organisation, the love of fantasy and role-playing games in low-crime Japan stands in stark contrast to Grand Theft Auto's brutal depictions of urban violence. 

"Japanese consumers prefer family-use games to those with violent, anti-social or extreme expressions of sexuality," she said. 

A report by Internet firm GMO Cloud characterises the difference as "self-escapism versus self-expression". 

True or not, Grand Theft Auto is undoubtedly violent, especially when compared to Nintendo's award-winning "Animal Crossing: New Leaf" in which players take on the role of a mayor running a rural community. 

By contrast, past versions of Grand Theft Auto have included simulated sex with prostitutes and drunken driving, along with profanity-packed dialogue. Carjacking, gambling and killing are the staples of a game in which players take on the role of a psychopathic killer in fictional Los Angeles. 

When Grand Theft Auto IV was released five years ago it blew away videogame and Hollywood records by taking an unprecedented $500 million in the week after its release, and it shows few signs of slowing with the game's fifth incarnation released days ago. 

Despite its foreign pedigree, Hisakazu Hirabayashi, of Tokyo-based consultancy firm InteractKK, said he still expects the newest Grand Theft Auto to have relative success among Japanese consumers, at least "for a Western game".

Read More

Social networking site Worldfloat launches search engine

Indian social networking site Worldfloat has introduced a search engine that will help users access real-time news, information and images while networking. 

Worldfloat.com founder Pushkar Mahatta said the new feature would help the company widen its user base. He said the new feature on India's homegrown social networking site would work like the search engines of global players like Google and Yahoo. 

"The new search engine is one of its kind in India. No other site has the facility of social networking as well as search engine which sources news from all over the world on a real-time basis by automatic algorithms," Mahatta said. 

Worldfloat.com, which was launched in June 2012, claims to have nearly 30 million users in 62 countries across the world. A substantial number of them are in India. 

Mahatta said with the introduction of new features, Worldfloat has become unique in many ways as even the global players like Facebook don't have search engine facilities. 

"Right now social networking and search engine are separate media. We want Worldfloat to be a bridge between social networking and searching the world," Mahatta told IANS. 

Worldfloat would soon introduce "sharing" feature in the search engine by which users will be able to share news and information with other users and connect with people of common interest, Mahatta said. 

"People interested in technology can meet with the other people interested in technology; similarly doctors can meet doctors, architects can meet architects from various cities of the world," he said. 

Mahatta said the company's long-term plan is to create not just a search engine but a "social search engine" which will help connect people from all over the world with common interest. 

"While Facebook is stuck with its graph search within its friend circle, Worldfloat is taking a far wider approach to connect people from all over the world with common interest," he said. 

Along with the news search, Worldfloat has also developed image search facilities. 

"It works like Google images, but it has several additional features like it sources photographs of news from all over the world in sequence of time," he said.

Read More

Apple voted ‘coolest brand‘ in UK

Apple has been chosen as the coolest brand in Britain, indicating a comeback of luxury brands replacing everyday products.

The 12th CoolBrands list, chosen by members of the public and a 'council of influencers' has repeatedly crowned Apple as the leader from more than 10, 000 brands.

CoolBrands said that this year's swing to luxury brands represented a 'correlation with the reviving British economy'.

Chairman of the CoolBrands Council, Stephen Cheliotis said that Apple remained No. 1 this year but it's debatable how long it can hold this position in the face of an increasingly competitive set of rivals, the Independent reports.

The top 10 luxury brands chosen by CoolBrands is as follows:

1. Apple 2. YouTube 3. Aston Martin 4. Twitter 5. Google 6. BBC iPlayer 7. Glastonbury 8. Virgin Atlantic 9. Bang & Olufsen 10. Liberty

Read More

BlackBerry sales fall by over 50% in India

BlackBerry sales in India have more than halved so far this year, with consumers largely shying away from the Canadian firm's new handsets running on the BB10 platform, mirroring the rapid decline in the worldwide fortunes of the once-dominant smartphone maker. 

As per estimates by the country's two largest cellphone retailers, The Mobile Store and UniverCell Telecom - the two together account for more than half of total smartphone sales through modern retail stores - sales of BlackBerry devices have declined by more than 50% year-on-year so far this year mainly due to the poor sale of BB10 devices such as the Z10, Q10 and Q5. 

"The BB10 devices have not gained traction the way BlackBerry had anticipated they would in India," Himanshu Chakrawarti, chief executive at the country's largest smartphone retailer, The Mobile Store, says. "BlackBerry sales are losing ground rapidly to Android devices from Samsung and Sony, and Apple's iPhone," he adds. 

According to market tracker IDC India, BlackBerry's share in the Indian smartphone market dropped to 2% in the April-June quarter from 7% a year earlier, while overall smartphone sales are growing over 50% annually. Latest data available from home-grown market tracker CMR shows BlackBerry's market share slipped to 0.7% in July, down from 7.1% a year earlier. 

IDC India senior market analyst Manasi Yadav says BlackBerry's pricing strategy in a market like India is not very clear, while Tarun Pathak, analyst (telecom practice) at CMR, says BlackBerry's strategy of launching just three BB10 devices has not paid off since competitors have multiple models at various price points. 

Retailers have started reducing BlackBerry inventory in their stores. Satish Babu, founder and MD at UniverCell Telecom, says his firm has trimmed down the inventory position of BlackBerry devices in his stores due to poor sales. 

Some retailers say BlackBerry has also started to reduce the number of in-store sales executives and promoters across the country with several of the franchisee-led exclusive stores also downing shutters. 

An ex-BlackBerry India executive, who was well versed with the company's plans till a few months back, said India was one of the few markets where the brand was still growing in the last two years - a period when it was losing stand globally. "But now, it looks like an uphill task to revive in India, which can potentially impact the company's valuation," he said, requesting anonymity. 

Late last week, BlackBerry said it would post an operating loss of $950-995 million for the June to August period, due mainly to huge unsold inventory of BB10 devices, particularly the Z10, and its revenue would slump about 45% to $1.6 billion from a year earlier. It also announced plans to cut 4,500 jobs worldwide and said it's exploring strategic alternatives, including a sale. 

A senior telecom industry executive, who was closely associated with BlackBerry's Indian arm till recently, says its India headcount may drop from 55-60 at present to roughly 40 in the near future under the global job cut plans. The company's direct India headcount was about 70 six months ago. Key divisions likely to see further job losses could be sales, marketing and after-sales services, the executive adds. 

Globally, BlackBerry sales have been battered with Windows phone that powers Nokia smartphones inching ahead as the third largest smartphone operating system in January-June this year, even as Google's Android and Apple's iOS lead by a wide margin as the top two players. 

"BlackBerry OS share will decline markedly...due to tepid BlackBerry 10 reception and emboldened competition that are expected to whittle away share in its remaining regional bastions of strength, such as Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East," IDC said recently in its global mobile phone tracker. 

The Canadian firm, in an emailed response to a query from ET, appeared to deny a Wall Street Journal report that said BlackBerry would stop selling to consumers. The company said it will refocus on enterprise and the prosumer market, which is a cross-over of enterprise, professional and consumer users. It, however, declined to comment on other ET queries. 

Meanwhile, retailers say while BlackBerry is losing ground, Nokia - which, too, has lost its stranglehold in the Indian market - hasn't seen much of a dip in sales since the announcement of Microsoft buying its devices business nearly three weeks ago as customers appeared not to be bothered about the change in ownership, and bought the cheaper feature phones. 

Read More