Chinese institute develops 100MP camera IOE3-Kanban

A Chinese institute claimed to have successfully developed a 100 megapixel camera which could produce high-resolution imaging in the fields of aerial mapping, disaster monitoring and intelligent transportation systems. 

The IOE3-Kanban camera was developed by the Institute of Optics and Electronics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences making it China's highest pixel camera, CAS said in a statement. 

The camera is capable of producing images with 10,240 x 10,240 pixels, the statement said. 

Moreover, it is small and light, with its widest part measuring only 19.3 cm, state-run Xinhua quoted the statement as saying, adding that it can be used at temperatures rangingminus 20 degrees centigrade to 55 degrees centigrade. 

Its high sensitivity and high dynamic range (HDR) features mean it will be useful in high-resolution imaging in the fields of aerial mapping, city planning, disaster monitoring and intelligent transportation systems, the statement said. 

Intelligent transportation system is aimed to provide innovative services relating to different modes of transport and traffic management, enabling various users to be better informed and make safer, more coordinated, and 'smarter' use of transport networks. 

The camera is equipped with advanced optical systems, camera control systems and high-capacity data recording systems, and it has proven successful in a recent trial use as a part of a national aerial remote-sensing system, it said. 

The institute also developed an 81-megapixel camera during the 10th Five Year Plan period (2001-2005), and the latest achievement took the researchers two years to develop. 

A megapixel is one million pixels, and is a term used not only for the number of pixels in an image, but also to express the number of image sensor elements of digital cameras or the number of display elements of digital displays.

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First Apple computer auctioned for $387,000

The first Apple computer hand-built and signed by the company co-founder Steve Wozniak has sold for more than $3,87,000 in an online auction. 

The Apple I, one of roughly 200 made by the fledgling Apple Computer Company in 1976, was bought by an unknown buyer at Christie's auction house. 

The computer was designed and built by the American inventor, Wozniak, in Palo Alto, California. 

Steve Jobs came up with the idea of selling it and the pair went on to found Apple - one the world's most valuable technology company, The Times reported. 

The original device comprised a single motherboard mounted on a wooden base, but was without a keyboard, a transformer or a display. 

Though the device never took off, it was the precursor to Apple's breakthrough product - the Apple II, a machine that looks far moretoday's desktop PCs and considered one of the most revolutionary computers ever created. 

The Apple 1 sold a the auction is believed to be among the first 25 produced. It was inscribed with the serial number 01-0025 in black ink and was hand-built by Wozniak. 

Wozniak signed the computer work "Woz", the nickname that his friends and fans continue to call him. The date code on its processor is 1576, suggesting the chip was manufactured in the 15th week of 1976. 

An Apple I was sold at an auction in Cologne, Germany last month, for $6,71,400, breakingprevious records for sales of a personal computer.

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Nokia to bet on 41MP Lumia to beat Apple, Samsung

Nokia is expected to unveil a new smartphone with a 41MP camera on Thursday, banking on advanced optics to make up for meagre marketing resources and limited phone apps. 

Analysts, however, are skeptical that a new camera for the flagship Lumia smartphone will be enough for the Finnish company to regain market sharerivals Samsung and Apple. 

Several said that Nokia needs to market the handsets more aggressively - a tough challenge in the face of its dwindling cash reserves after years of poor sales and the decision this month to buy Siemens' stake in their equipment joint venture. 

"What I'm expecting to see is a powerful device that will differentiate itcompetitors' high-end handsets. But whether this will be enough to compete with Samsung and Apple? I doubt it," said Francisco Jeronimo, of research firm IDC. 

"They need to raise the level of awareness. They may have the best camera, the best maps, but if consumers don't really know what they can do, that's not enough." 

Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop, hired in 2010 to revive the former leader in mobile phones, has bet the company's future in smartphones on Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. 

While simpler feature phones still account for the majority of Nokia's handset sales, smartphones are viewed as crucial for its survival because of their higher margins and the increasing demand for internet access and consumers' growing tendency to switch to cheaper models made by Asian manufacturers. 

While existing Lumias have won positive reviewscritics and technology blogs, they have struggled against Samsung's handsets, which use Google's Android operating system, and Apple's iPhones, which run on iOS. 

IDC estimates that Android and iOS accounted for 92.3% ofsmartphone shipments in the first quarter of this year. 

Windows Phone, meanwhile, accounted for 3.2%, with a shortage of apps proving a major handicap. It has only 1,60,000 apps in store, while rivals offer about five times as many because developers prefer to make them for the higher-volume operating systems. 

The new phone to be unveiled on Thursday is expected to be the most advanced of the Lumia range. Nokia already has a 41MP camera on its 808 PureView phone, but that model runs on the Symbian platform, which is being phased out. 

Nokia has not given details, but a source confirmed that the camera technology would be its main selling point and the company's own website promises "41 million reasons" to tune into the event in New York. 

No silver bullet

While tech industry analysts say it is crucial for Nokia to boost marketing and promotions through its carrier partners, the company is likely to keep a wary eye on its marketing expenses. 

Nokia said last week that its net cash position at the end of the second quarter was between 3.7 billion euros and 4.2 billion euros ($4.7 billion to $5.4 billion), indicating that cash burn may have been as high as 800 million euros in the quarter. 

It also said that net cash would have been 2 billion euros to 2.5 billion euros had its deal to buy Siemens's 50% stake in Nokia Siemens Network closed in the quarter. 

Standard & Poor's downgraded Nokia by one notch on Friday to B+BB-, forecasting that net cash could fall as low as 1.3 billion euros at the end of the year. 

One portfolio manager for one of Nokia's top 10 institutional investors, who declined to be identified, said he is not in favour of Nokia boosting marketing spending too much and is happy with a slowly-but-surely approach. 

Alandsbanken analyst Lars Soderfjell, too, said Nokia should aim for modest marketing - enough to improve sales and buy more time for a turnaround without accelerating cash burn. 

"This is one of the most-anticipated models and it's important that they continue to renew their product portfolio... but I look at this as a very gradual turnaround. I don't see there being a silver bullet model," he said. 

"The most important thing, really, is to continue to gain market sharetheir current low level in smartphones, to achieve profitability. If it can gain a couple of percentage points in market share, then it can gradually recover." 

IDC's Jeronimo suggested that Microsoft should be doing more heavy lifting to market Windows Phone handsets. Without Nokia's commitment to Windows, Microsoft would have no leading handset partner - a reason the software giant is seen as the most probable buyer if Nokia were to sell its handset business. 

"I think Microsoft has relied a lot on Nokia to promote Windows Phone. That's not enough," he said. "It will be hard for Nokia to do the entire investment."

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Flipkart raises $200m, biggest in Indian e-commerce

Online retailer Flipkart has raised $200 million (about Rs 1,200 crore)its existing investors, the single largest round of investment in the Indian e-commerce space. The investment values the company at $1.5 billion, sources familiar with the development said.

The investors are Naspers, the South African internet major that recently bought out bus ticketing startup redBus, private equity firms Accel Partners and Tiger Global, and San Francisco-based family office Iconiq Capital. The total investment in the company, over five rounds of funding, is now over $380 million.

SachinBansal, co-founder and CEO of Flipkart, said the investment was a big validation of the Flipkart model and the Indian e-commerce growth story. "There have been skeptics on Flipkart and Indian e-commerce. Today's development should put to rest these arguments," he said.

The amount Flipkart has received and its valuation is one more indication of the interest that Indian technology startups are receiving globally. Japan's telecom and intenet company SoftBank invested $200 million in Bangalore-based ad network Inmobi in 2011. Last month, Naspers bought redBus for an estimated $120 million. A consortium led by General Atlantic invested $108 million in analytics services firm Mu Sigma in 2011.

Bansal said the annualized run rate of the total value of transactions on Flipkart was over $500 million, and the company was on target to hit $1 billion by 2015. Asked about profitability, he said the company was not profitable only because of the massive investments it was still making. "We can be profitable if we stop investing. But we want to be market leaders in a number of categories, and the market is almost doubling every year, so it's a strategic decision to invest. Binny (BinnyBansal, the other co-founder) and I are thinking very, very long term," he said.

He said the fresh money would be used for investments in technology, improving the supply chain, and developing talent. "One day last month we shipped 1.3 lakh items. That's 1.5 items a second, or, if you look only at daytime, about 4-5 items a second. In a few years, this will become several million shipments a day. The only way to handle that kind of volume is through automation, and that will require a lot of investment," he said.

The company, which started by selling books online, now is into numerous categories including electronics, apparel, watches, cameras, footwear, beauty & personal care, baby care and a host of others. It has 96 lakh registered users, up2.5 lakh two and a half years ago.

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TI names Bobby Mitra as worldwide director

After 12 years as MD of Texas Instruments India, Bobby Mitra is moving as worldwide director for the semiconductor company's industrial systems business, and will relocate to the US. Mitra will also be chairman of TI India. 

 

He is being succeeded in his India MD role by Santhosh Kumar, who joined TI in 1995 and started the performance audio team in India. The Calicut University and BITS Pilani alumnus was most recently responsible for leading TI's C6000 video and advanced driver assistance systems product teams based in the US. He has also held several R&D leadership roles in TI India and is a TI senior member technical staff. 

Mitra joined TI in 1986, becoming one of the first employees of the company that is credited with having brought global attention to Bangalore's technology capabilities by establishing an R&D centre here in 1985. He has led several activities in TI India and in Dallas, and was appointed MD of TI India in 2001 and was named president and MD in 2009. He is a past chairman of the India Electronics & Semiconductor Association. 

In his new role, Mitra is responsible for managing engineering, and marketing and applications for TI's industrial systems, with responsibility for creating and marketing system solutions designed to grow the company's position in the diverse industrial market.

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BlackBerry Z10 rollout was a disaster, investor says

Thorsten Heins, the president and chief executive of BlackBerry, acknowledged that the company's new line of phones, which he originally promoted as something that would revive its flagging brand, had a flawed release in the United States.

But Heins, speaking at the company's annual meeting, told investors BlackBerry just needed more time for a turnaround - and he again sought their patience.

Not everyone was biting. One shareholder, referring to one of the new phones, the BlackBerry Z10, told Heins: "My sense is that the rollout of the Z10 was a disaster."

"Were we perfect at the launch?" Heins responded. "Probably not. Was it a disaster? I don't think so."

After more than two years of development, the new phones and their new operating system were supposed to give BlackBerry smartphones capabilities similar to those of phones made by Apple and Samsung, the dominant forces in the market. But hopes have vanished that the new phones would swiftly increase market share in the United States - now just 0.9 percent, according to a surveyKantar Worldpanel ComTech.

Late last month, BlackBerry said that it had shipped just 2.7 million of the new models, about a million fewer than analysts expected. That disappointing news set BlackBerry's stock sharply downward and eliminated the possibility that the annual meeting would be a turnaround celebration.

When Heins introduced the company's new phones in New York this year, he spoke to an excited crowd, a situation that was repeated at a meeting this spring with enthusiastic developers. But Tuesday, when he faced a crowd of shareholders and questions about the weak sales of those phones, the reception was far more muted.

And maybe that is the best he could have hoped for. A few weeks ago, when the shipment numbers were released, the company also reported an $84 million loss in the latest quarter. BlackBerry shares still have not recovered - and a chorus of harsh questions about the direction of the business have not gone away.

Heins again warned investors to expect more losses during the current quarter, while the company increases its spending on marketing and other promotions for the new BlackBerry 10 line of phones. And although the company has spent the past two years saying the phones were the centerpiece to its future, Heins repeatedly said on Tuesday that "we are not a devices-only company," and he outlined his hopes for growth in its data services business.

He attributed the disappointing reception for BlackBerry 10 to the US market.

"It is really a challenge in the US," Heins said at the meeting, which was webcastthe University of Waterloo in Ontario. When another shareholder asked him why the company had been unable to win over US investors, particularly ones based in New York, he said: "I would absolutely admit that this is an uphill battle."

Richard Piasentin, the managing director of sales and marketing for the United States, left BlackBerry last month, Adam Emery, a spokesman for the company, said Tuesday.

Some of the problems with the release of the BlackBerry 10 seemed more related to the products than to advertising or lack of prominence in carriers' stores, which had been cited as problems.

Some buyers of the Q10, a model that includes BlackBerry's signature keyboard, have said they were disappointed to discover that it initially could not synchronize calendar and contact information with corporate systems that use Microsoft Outlook. Others discovered mail syncing issues that they had not had with previous BlackBerrys. And although BlackBerry continues to expand the apps offered for the phone, many important ones are missing, and assessments of their overall quality are mixed.

Among the disappointed was Mark R. McQueen, the president and chief executive of Wellington Financial in Toronto. While McQueen is a BlackBerry loyalist, his frustration with the Q10 became so great that he wrote two detailed posts enumerating its problems on his blog, which is widely followed in Canada's financial community. He wrote that the phone's shortcomings had prompted him to sell his BlackBerry shares at a loss.

"The sad reality is that BlackBerry management has failed to deliver on the incredibly modest expectations of someone who has held shares in the company, on and off, since the late 1990s," McQueen wrote.

Many technology reviewers praised several features of the new phones. Mike Gikas, the senior editor for electronics at Consumer Reports, said the new phones were "pretty good, but they don't have the pizazz of top-shelf performers. No one's dying for these phones."

He said that whenever he was asked for his thoughts about the new BlackBerrys, "the next question is: 'Do you think they're going to be around?' And that's a consideration for people on a two-year contract."

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Soon,charge your mobile with headphones

A pair of headphones that can harness solar power toge mobile devices when you are on the move has been designed in the UK. 

Andrew Anderson, a Glasgow-based designer, launched the OnBeat headphones on crowdfunding site Kickstarter and hopes to have them on sale by early next year. 

The headphone band is fitted with a flexible solar cell with age capacity of 0.55 watts. 

"The headphones have an integrated flexible solar cell that covers the full headband which capture solar energy whilst out and about," Anderson said on Kickstarter. 

"The energy is stored in two light-weight Lithium Ion batteries held within the two ear cups for a balanced weight and fit on the head. 

"For those rainy days we have also developed the headphones to be able to beged via USB directlyyour computer or mains socket," he said. 

Anderson hopes to raise 200,000 pounds to get the headphones into production. 

"We are still working on the design and prototype. We need to improve the headphones - people want to know about noise cancellation," he told the BBC. 

He admitted that his father Frank had come up with the idea. 

"It's really simple - you would think it had already been done. You can buy solargers for phones but the thing is it'syou're carrying two phones around," he said.

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