Apple may offer buyback schemes for iPads

 Apple will sell its two new tablet models — iPad Air and iPad mini with retina display — in India for Rs 35,900 and Rs 28,900, respectively, starting December 7, the company's distributor Ingram Micro said.

A senior executive with an Apple trade partner in India said the US major has plans to run promotional activities around the new iPad models in India, including buyback schemes on old iPads and tablets, cash-back offer and EMI schemes, following the success of a similar strategy adopted for the iPhone in the country, the world's fastest growing market for smartphones.

As part of its moves to gain market share, Apple could announce a "price cut on the older iPad mini model in the sub-Rs 20,000 segment to drive volume," retail chain PlanetM chief eecutive Sanjay Karwa said.

Another senior executive who also works at an Apple trade partner said the strategy is to expand distribution of iPads from just a handful of the Apple stores and large multi-brand retailers to the entire universe of cellphone retail stores where iPhones are sold. "In fact, Apple, with its distributors, is closely working with all the cellphone retailers to set up separate iPad corners wherever possible and is also appointing shop-floor promotional staff," he said.

The launch of the new models comes within a month of their global launch as the Cupertino-based company moves to shore up market share significantly in the fast growing Indian tablet space where it has not been able to make much headway so far. With this, Apple will have a portfolio of five models in the tablet segment. Apple has historically maintained its premium positioning even for iPads. It has been selling iPads from Rs 21,900 onwards; Samsung Galaxy Tabs are available upwards of Rs 12,000.

As per latest data (April-June 2013) from market tracker CMR India, Samsung leads the Indian tablet market by shipping with 21.2% share, followed by Datawind with 12.5% (excludes shipment of Aakash tablets) and Micromax at 9.7%. Trade estimates suggest Apple has some 6-7% share of the tablet market in India, though this could not be independently verified.

Read More

Facebook delivers more news in News Feed

 

Facebook is boosting its efforts to put more news in its News Feed. That is, real news from the news media, rather than status updates from friends. 

The world's biggest social network, cognizant of its growing importance for discovering news, said in a blog post on Monday that it is revising the way it delivers information to its billion-plus users. 

"People use Facebook to share and connect, including staying current on the latest news, whether it's about their favorite celebrity or what's happening in the world," said the blog post from Facebook engineering manager Varun Kacholia and software engineer Minwen Ji. 

"We've noticed that people enjoy seeing articles on Facebook, and so we're now paying closer attention to what makes for high quality content, and how often articles are clicked on from News Feed on mobile. What this means is that you may start to notice links to articles a little more often (particularly on mobile)." 

The blog noted that "our surveys show that on average people prefer links to high quality articles about current events, their favorite sports team or shared interests, to the latest meme." 

And Facebook will tweak the way its displays articles in user News Feeds: "This means that high quality articles you or others read may show up a bit more prominently in your News Feed, and meme photos may show up a bit less prominently," the engineers wrote. 

They added that Facebook will also "show people additional articles similar to ones they had just read." 

"Soon, after you click on a link to an article, you may see up to three related articles directly below the News Feed post to help you discover more content you may find interesting," they said. 

But to avoid diminishing the updates from friends, Facebook will revise its "bumping," which means that after a user reads an article it may not show up again in the News Feed unless there are new comments from friends. 

A study earlier this year showed Facebook is becoming a key source of news for users of the huge social network, even if people discover articles mostly by happenstance. 

The study by the Pew Research Center, in collaboration with the Knight Foundation, found 64 per cent of US adults use Facebook, and nearly half of those get some news from the service. That amounts to 30 per cent of the overall US population who are "Facebook news consumers," Pew said. 

Facebook reported in October that referral traffic from the social network to media sites has increased by over 170 per cent over the past year.

Read More

New algorithm locates you even in untagged photos

 

A new algorithm can change and simplify the way you find photos among the billions of snaps on social media sites such as Facebook and Flickr. 

The search tool developed by Parham Aarabi from the University of Toronto and his former student Ron Appel, uses tag locations to quantify relationships between individuals, even those not tagged in any given photo. 

Imagine you and your mother are pictured together, building a sandcastle at the beach. You're both tagged in the photo quite close together, researchers said. 

In the next photo, you and your father are eating watermelon. You're both tagged. Because of your close 'tagging' relationship with both your mother in the first picture and your father in the second, the algorithm can determine that a relationship exists between those two and quantify how strong it may be, they said. 

In a third photo, you fly a kite with both parents, but only your mother is tagged. Given the strength of your 'tagging' relationship with your parents, when you search for photos of your father the algorithm can return the untagged photo because of the very high likelihood he's pictured. 

"Two things are happening: we understand relationships, and we can search images better," said Aarabi. 

The nimble algorithm, called relational social image search, achieves high reliability without using computationally intensive object - or facial-recognition software. 

"If you want to search a trillion photos, normally that takes at least a trillion operations. It's based on the number of photos you have," said Aarabi. 

"Facebook has almost half a trillion photos, but a billion users - it's almost a 500 order of magnitude difference. Our algorithm is simply based on the number of tags, not on the number of photos, which makes it more efficient to search than standard approaches," said Aarabi. 

Work on this project began in 2005 in Aarabi's Mobile Applications Lab, Canada's first lab space for mobile application development. 

Currently the algorithm's interface is primarily for research, but Aarabi aims to see it incorporated on the back-end of large image databases or social networks. 

"I envision the interface would be exactly like you use Facebook search--for users, nothing would change. They would just get better results," said Aarabi. 

While testing the algorithm, Aarabi and Appel discovered an unforeseen application: a new way to generate maps. 

They tagged a few photographs of buildings around the university campus and ran them through the system with a bunch of untagged campus photos. 

"The result we got was of almost a pseudo-map of the campus from all these photos we had taken, which was very interesting," said Aarabi.

Read More

Samsung working on 20MP camera for phones: Report

 Samsung is set to up the ante in the megapixel war next year with its first smartphone with a 20MP camera. 

According to a report in South Korean newspaper ET News, Samsung is planning to launch the phone with a 20MP camera in the second half of 2014. The Galaxy Note 4 is a likely contender for this camera module as it has introduced a new Note phablet in the second half for the year since 2011. 

The Advanced Development Team of Samsung's Wireless Business Division is working on this camera module, says the report. The company is focussing on high megapixel count as it has been unable to procure sufficient parts to make cameras with optical image stabilization (OIS). The world's biggest smartphone maker had planned to introduce OIS with the Galaxy Note 3, but had to abandon the plan due to low supplies. 

On the other hand, rivals like LG and HTC already have products with OIS functionality. 

However, this will not be the first smartphone with such high megapixel count. Sony's Xperia Z1 has a 20.7MP camera, whereas Nokia's Lumia 1020 packs a 41MP sensor. 

Earlier reports have said that Samsung will use 16MP cameras in 2014 top-end models, namely the Galaxy S5. 

Technology website SamMobile has also reported that Samsung will unveil two smartphones at MWC 2014 in February - Galaxy Note 3 Lite and Galaxy Grand Lite. These will be stripped down versions of the two popular models and will hit the markets in February-March next year.

Read More

Apple enters social media by buying analytics firm Topsy Labs

 

Apple is not known for being social - rather, it is known for being buttoned up about everything it does. But on Monday, the company confirmed that it had bought Topsy Labs, a research company that could help Apple better understand what people are talking about on social media networks like Twitter. 

Topsy focuses on analyzing the half a billion messages sent over Twitter every day. The company has indexed every tweet ever sent and has made them searchable, much like Google does for the web. The company also helps clients analyze tweets for various business trends. 

While Apple has built some of its software to work with Twitter's service, it remained unclear why a hardware maker like Apple would be interested in Topsy. Apple was not giving any clues. 

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," said Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman. She did not disclose how much Apple paid for Topsy. 

Apple has made a fortune making hardware, but it has botched some online services in the past, like Ping, Apple's short-lived social network for finding music. 

Ross Rubin, an independent analyst for Reticle Research, 

said Apple could use Topsy's data analysis to better understand popular trends on social media and make smarter recommendations for things like finding apps, music and movies to buy, or perhaps finding content to watch with a future TV service. 

Rob Bailey, chief executive of DataSift, one of Topsy's competitors, said Topsy might have been appealing to Apple because of its expertise in searching and indexing the vast amounts of unstructured content that make up Twitter. He added that Apple could use the search technology to help power its Siri voice search capabilities. 

A Topsy spokesman did not return a call seeking comment. 

Perhaps one clue to Apple's interest lies in an experiment Topsy did involving one of Apple's flagship products, the iPhone 4S. In a September interview, Topsy executives described a project for a hedge fund in which they tracked sentiments on Twitter about the October 2012 introduction of the Apple phone. 

The phone underwhelmed professional critics, sending Apple's stock down. But Topsy found that Twitter users were more positive, suggesting that the phone would sell well. Sure enough, Apple reported strong sales figures later, sending the stock up.

Read More

Datawind partners Happiest Minds for apps store

 

Datawind, makers of Aakash tablets, today said it has partnered with IT firm Happiest Minds Technologies to develop applications and solutions for its UbiSlate range of tablets. 

Under the partnership, Happiest Minds will develop Datawind's App Store, which will be designed to create a connected customer experience for the first time Android users, Datawind said in a statement. 

The App Store will be available on all Datawind devices, it added. 

"The UbiSlate platform now evolves to the next level with our partnership with Happiest Minds. Through this partnership, we will be able to create a complete mobility experience by offering access to cost effective cloud applications and solutions to our customers," Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli said. 

Through this partnership, both the companies will look to create affordable mobility solutions for education and healthcare sectors, he added. 

"With our IP led approach, domain knowledge of education and healthcare sectors and singular focus on disruptive technologies, we look forward to creating world class applications for Datawind customers," Happiest Minds Product Engineering Services CEO Joseph Ananthraju said.

Read More

Tumblr brings hipster twist to year-end lists

Tumblr is where the Internet's cool kids hang out. That's why Yahoo paid $1.1 billion to buy the blogging site in one of this year's most buzzed-about deals. 

Now, Tumblr is flaunting its hipster credentials with a first-ever breakdown of the year's hottest trends, topics and celebrities. 

The retrospective starts Tuesday at http://YearinReview.tumblr.com with an exploration of 20 categories ranging from the most popular musical groups to the most interesting architecture of 2013. Boasting a plethora of images, the review will continue through December with daily posts that will culminate on New Year's Eve with the best fireworks displays featured on Tumblr during the year. 

Similar end-of-the-year lists are annual rites at Yahoo, Google and other websites equipped with search engines that sort through billions of requests for information to determine which topics piqued people's interests. 

Tumblr's musings figure to stand out because they are drawn from a younger audience that differs from the more conventional crowds that flock to general-purpose search engines. 

More than half of Tumblr's 170 million users are under 35 years old, a demographic that has helped turn the service into a free-wheeling forum filled with provocative imagery, snarky humor and occasionally ribald commentary. 

"The people on Tumblr never cease to amaze me with their creativity and their wit and the amount of fun they are having online," said Danielle Strle, Tumblr's director of product for content and community. "There are certain things they are crazy about that I am sure that a more general Internet audience is not super nuts about." 

Tumblr's eclectic tastes are evident in some of the categories featured in the service's year-end roundup. Entire sections will be devoted to photo bombing, fingernail art, unicorns, bacon, pretty colors, student loans and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. 

In contrast, the annual lists released by the mainstream search engines tend to be more prosaic and predictable recitations that pore through the most popular celebrities, movies, singers, TV shows, and news stories. 

Microsoft Corp.'s Bing search engine also reviewed the most popular social media services in its year-end list released Monday. (Tumblr ranked sixth behind Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.) 

Tumblr's look back delves into some of that well-worn territory, too, though its selections may send some people scurrying to a search engine to find out more. For instance, the most blogged-about actor on Tumblr during this year was Benedict Cumberbatch, an English performer who has primarily had supporting roles in U.S. films (he most recently played the villain Khan in "Star Trek Into Darkness.") 

Cumberbatch doesn't appear in a separate year-end roundup to be released Tuesday by Yahoo, but "Star Trek Into Darkness" tops Yahoo's rankings of the most-searched movies on its site. 

Other Tumblr items unlikely to show up in other year-end roundups include shots of brides throwing cats into the air instead of wedding bouquets and school notices explaining the reasons for students' detention. 

In a tip to Tumblr, Yahoo is highlighting three of the blogging site's categories in its own breakdown. 

Now Yahoo Inc. wants 6-year-old Tumblr to start selling more ads. One of the categories in Tumblr's retrospective highlights the best ads that appeared on the service this year.

Read More

Facebook in talks with Bangalore startup Little Eye Labs for acquisition

Facebook is in early stage discussions to acquire Bangalore-based app monitoring solutions startup Little Eye Labs. If it happens, it could be the social networking giant's first ever acquisition in India. 

"We are in preliminary discussions. I cannot share anything beyond this," said Kumar Rangarajan, one of the co-founders of Little Eye Labs. Kumar, who calls himself the chief ion (founders call themselves ions, short for eye-ons ), founded the company along with four friends in 20 .. 

Read more at:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/26774597.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Read More

How to print from Google Nexus tablet

Third-party printing apps in the Google Play store offer a few ways to print from an Android tablet, but Google has its own solution as well: Google Cloud Print. It connects a home printer to the web, where webconnected devices like Android tablets and smartphones can see and use it. 

Although the technology works a bit more smoothly with printer models classified as "Cloud Ready," you can also use an older printer — as long as that printer is connected to your computer. You need a free Google account and the company's Chrome browser installed on the computer that is connected to the printer. You also need Google's Cloud Print app from the Play store on your tablet or smartphone to manage print jobs and printer options. 

A bit of setup is involved before you can start printing, including registering the printer with the Google Cloud Print service using the Chrome browser. You can find instructions, answers to common questions, a list of Cloud Ready printer models and troubleshooting guides at support. google.com/cloudprint. 

If you have updated your device to Android 4.4 (KitKat), a built-in printing function is included; the Talk Android site has a how-to video.

Read More

BlackBerry is not for everyone: CEO

BlackBerry's interim chief executive said reports of the death of the company "are greatly exaggerated."

Former Sybase CEO John Chen said in a letter to customers that BlackBerry is returning to its roots, refocusing on delivering devices and services to business users.

Chen was brought in as the interim chief executive and executive chair after talks to sell the company collapsed last month.

He said in the letter that the company is aware that "BlackBerry is not for everyone."

Blackberry quickly lost dominance as the leading smartphone maker after the 2007 launch of Apple's touchscreen iPhone and the 2008 introduction of Google-powered Android phones.

Chen notes that competitors are circling but that BlackBerry is "very much alive, thank you."

Chen said BlackBerry has substantial cash and said he'll refocus the company on four areas, including the handset business. Chen put more emphasis on BlackBerry's mobile device management business, which allows IT departments to manage different devices connected to their corporate networks. He also emphasized BlackBerry's popular BlackBerry Messenger application. And he mentioned embedded QNX software systems, which are used in-vehicle infotainment systems and industrial machines.

BGC analyst Colin Gillis said a letter meant to reassure customers is needed. The much-hyped BlackBerry 10 system, its latest phones, flopped. The company disclosed in September that it would book nearly a billion dollars in losses related to unsold phones and the company announced last month it was no longer for sale.

"They are being targeted pretty heavily. Their customers are up for grabs," Gillis said.

Focusing on business users is probably the only move Blackberry has left, Gillis said.

"It's a much smaller business. This is the niche player. You can build phones for those people in that niche. You can have a decent little business," Gillis said. "Enterprise customers who like keyboards. There's not really a good keyboard device out there. Some people like keyboards. I personally don't love typing on glass."

Gillis said he expects Chen to name himself CEO soon because he's not acting like an interim CEO. "He's signing all this stuff as CEO," Gillis said.

Shares of BlackBerry rose 4 cents to $6.37 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq.

The decline of the BlackBerry has come shockingly fast. The BlackBerry, pioneered in 1999, changed the culture by allowing on-the-go business people to access wireless email. Then came a new generation of competing smartphones, and suddenly the BlackBerry looked ancient. Apple first showed that phones can handle much more than email and phone calls with its iPhone. In the years since, BlackBerry been hammered by competition from the iPhone as well as Android-based rivals.

Read More

Google filters inappropriate words from Android 4.4

 Google has reportedly banned a list of more than 1,400 English words deemed inappropriate for the users of latest Android KitKat. 

The latest version of Android has a special directory of words, like intercourse, coitus, screwing, lovemaking, butt, geek, and medical terms like gonadatrophia, irrumination, thud, LSAT, pizzle, as well as related to reproductive health and undergarments like Tampax, lactation, preggers, panty, braless, uterus, STI, condom which do not appear in the autocomplete feature of the OS, Wired reports.

However, the filter for this directory can be disabled in the Google Keyboard settings, which makes all words both swipeable and available for autocomplete, the report added. 

According to the report, the bizarre dictionary has a zero tolerance policy on morphine, demerol and barbituric acid precursor malonylurea, while marijuana, methamphetamine and even bong are allowed in it. 

Islam-related words Sunni and Iftar are censored, but many others related to the Muslim faith and other religions are acceptable, the report added.

Read More

Microsoft working on single update for Windows, WP, Xbox

 Microsoft's new unified operating-system is reportedly codenamed "Threshold" which is said to include updates of all three OS platforms, Xbox One, Windows and Windows Phone. 

Microsoft executive vice president Terry Myerson recently mentioned the codename in an internal email, which refers to the wave of operating systems across Windows-based phones, devices and gaming consoles, ZDNet reports. 

Microsoft plans to support the same core set of "high value activities" across platforms, like documents, decision making, IT management. 

The company is also about to deliver an update to Windows 8.1, known as Windows 8.1 Update 1, in 2014.

Read More

Windows tablet sales to touch 39.3 million by 2017: IDC

The growth of smart devices like 2-in-1s and tablets is expected to fuel the volume for desktop vendors and the PC ecosystem in coming years with shipments of Windows-based tablets expected to touch 39.3 million units by 2017, research firm IDC said. 

Two-in-ones are devices that can function both as a tablet and a laptop. 

"Emergence of 2-in-1 devices, many of which will run Windows along with Windows-based tablets themselves, is expected to provide some new volume for the Windows platform as well as the PC vendors and other parts of the traditional PC ecosystem in coming years," IDC said in a statement. 

IDC said it finds that PC is still the primary computing device, its usage is nonetheless declining each year as more devices become available. 

"The Windows-based tablet market is expected to grow to 39.3 million units in 2017 from less than 7.5 million in 2013 and less than 1 million in 2011," IDC Worldwide Quarterly PC Trackers Vice President Loren Loverde said. 

However, he added that relative to the PC market size of roughly 300 million units by 2017, these Windows tablets would add just a couple per cent a year relative to PC growth. 

"Even so, these Windows devices are projected to account for 10 per cent of a combined PC and Windows Tablet market by 2016, making them an important growth segment for the PC ecosystem," Loverde said. 

The research firm forecasts that global PC shipments are expected to fall by 10.1% in 2013, slightly below the previous projection of 9.7 per cent and by far the most severe yearly contraction on record. 

The firm expects PC shipments in 2013 to touch 314.2 million units from 349.4 million last year. Shipments are projected at 305.1 million units by 2017.

Read More

Ransom-demanding Trojan virus on prowl in Indian cyberspace

 

Cyber security sleuths have warned Indian Internet users against a potent Trojan virus in the social media and email circuit which stealthily encrypts important documents of the user and then asks for a 'ransom' to unlock proprietary messages.

The audacity of the virus has been categorised as "severe" and cyber experts say such a malicious programme has been detected for the first time which asks for a ransom of an estimated Euro or USD 300 to unlock the genuine files of a user through "anonymous pre-paid cash vouchers".

Once activated in the user's email or in the operating system, the virus jeopardises the overall security of the user's classified information.

The number of incidents, perpetrated by the virus called 'cryptolocker', however, are low in India at present.

"An advisory has hence been issued to stop its prevalence and multiplying capability in Indian cyberspace," an expert cyber cop said.

The notorious malware has got as may as seven aliases to hide its original character in the cyberspace.

"It has been observed that the variants of malware family Win32/Trojan.Cryptolocker are spreading widely. Cryptolocker is spreading via malicious hyperlinks shared via spam emails, social media, malicious email attachments (fake FedEx and UPS tracking notices), drive-by-download or as a part of dropped file from other malwares.

"Cryptolocker encrypts files located within local drives, shared network drives, USB drives, external hard drives, network file shares and even some cloud storage drives using RSA public-key cryptography (2048-bit), with the private key stored only on the malware's control servers," country's premier cyber security agency-- Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-In) said in its latest advisory to Internet enabled computer users.

Read More