LG announces 8.3-inch G Pad tablet

 LG Electronics introduced its first tablet with a high-resolution screen, joining global rivals trying to take on Apple's dominance in the popular small-sized tablet market.

The new tablet, which is available for Wi-Fi only version, will be sold for 550,000 won ($510) from next week in South Korea and will be introduced in some 30 countries by the end of this year.

The G Pad 8.3 is the first tablet by the South Korean firm in nearly two years as it has struggled to regain lost ground in the mobile market due to a slow response to the industry's shift to smartphones.

The world's third-largest smartphone maker after Samsung Electronics and Apple hopes the new tablet with a sharper display will help it gain traction during the year-end holiday season as Android-based tablets continue to win market share from Apple's iPad.

The launch comes as Apple has been unable to widely roll out a new version of its iPad Mini with a high-resolution "retina" display this month, according to sources familiar with Apple's supply chain, leaving the gadget without the sharper screen found on rival tablets.

The G Pad 8.3 has 1,920x1,200 resolution at 273 pixel per inch (ppi), better than Apple's 7.9-inch iPad Mini, which has 1,024x768 resolution at 163 ppi. It will square off against such products as Amazon's faster and lighter versions of its Kindle tablet that were introduced late last month.

LG has also added a feature that allows users to check and send messages received by theirAndroid smartphone from the tablet, hoping such function will help it stand out in an increasingly crowded mobile market.

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Micromax’s rival to Samsung Galaxy S4 in works: Report

Samsung has been in the news for the past few weeks for the launch of its Galaxy Note 3, while Micromax has been relatively quiet. Its last top-end smartphone was Canvas Doodle 2, which was launched in July.

It is now rumoured that Micromax is gearing up to launch a new top-of-the-line smartphone in November, which is expected to be named Canvas Turbo. And the specifications of this device have leaked already, courtesy technology website DroidNext.

The report claims that the phone will have a full HD display (resolution of 1920x1080p). Similarresolution is already a standard feature in all top-end Android smartphones and phablets today, including Samsung Galaxy S4 and Note 3, HTC One, Sony Xperia Z1 and Z Ultra as well as LG G2 and G Pro etc. Entire current crop of Micromax phones has maximum screen resolution of 1280x720p only.

The upcoming Micromax Canvas Turbo is said to have a Mediatek MT6589T chipset, with a 1.5GHz quad-core processor and 357MHz GPU. This handset will come with Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) out of the box, but it is speculated that the manufacturer will release the Android 4.3 update soon after the launch.

This phone is also said to have a 13MP rear camera, 5MP front unit, 32GB internal storage and 64GB microSD card support. It is speculated to have 1GB RAM, while most top Android smartphones today have 2GB RAM. 

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How to type like an expert using keyboard

A German scientist has developed a software which assists users in identifying and learning keyboard shortcuts so they can become as fast as expert users.

BERLIN: A German scientist has developed a software which assists users in identifying and learning keyboard shortcuts so they can become as fast as expert users.

If somebody wants to shift text elements within a Word document from one position to another, he usually uses the mouse. This procedure is rather cumbersome for the user, since he first needs to click and highlight the text element before he can put it at the appropriate place.

The user could avoid such complications by using a few shortcut keys, so-called hotkeys, instead. However, users frequently do not know enough keyboard shortcuts to work with them efficiently, or are not aware of the available combinations.

Gilles Bailly, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and the Cluster of Excellence at Saarland University in Germany wants to increase the use of hotkeys among less-experienced users and help them maximise expert performance by using consistent shortcuts.

To accomplish this, Bailly developed a special interface mechanism in collaboration with other researchers from several universities. It enables hotkey browsing, supports physical rehearsal and assures rapid hotkey identification.

"To see the hotkeys, the user needs to press a certain key button," said Sylvain Malacria from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

He calls this special key the modifier. On an Apple keyboard, this function is taken by the command key; at a Windows computer, by the control key.

As soon as the user has pressed the modifier, the software overlaps the icons on the screen, as for example all the symbols in a toolbar for a Word document, with shortcuts for a few seconds.

Thus, the interface mechanisms shows small boxes in which every equivalent keyboard shortcut is displayed. In doing so, users who rarely use the computer are given the essential hints to apply the shortcuts until they know them by heart.

The programme supports them by proposing the hotkeys very quickly; they need only press the modifier key. To use the shortcuts more generally, the user frequently has to repeat the same finger moves. In this way, the user keeps remembering the key combinations.

"If the user is in the middle of a workflow, he does not need to remove his hands from the keyboard and reach for the mouse. He is able to enter his commands into the computer directly," said Bailly. 

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Apple buys personal assistant app Cue

Apple has purchased Cue, a personal assistant app that had mysteriously shut down service.

 WASHINGTON: Apple has purchased Cue, a personal assistant app that had mysteriously shut down service.

Sources revealed that Apple purchased the app for between $35 million and $45 million.

According to Mashable, Apple confirmed the deal, but not the price.

Cue, formerly known as Greplin, makes it easy to surface social media activity from your LinkedIn accounts, contacts, Gmail, calendars and Dropbox account, the report said.

The company changed its name to Cue last year and became a personal assistant for iOS along the lines of Google Now for Android, it added.

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Google most popular site globally: Report

Google is the clear winner when it comes to popularity and usage across the world as revealed by an interesting map made by Oxford Internet Institute researchers.

SYDENY: Google is the clear winner when it comes to popularity and usage across the world as revealed by an interesting map made by Oxford Internet Institute researchers.

The map is made by Mark Graham and Stefano De Stabbata, and shows that the search engine giant rules in Australia, the US, and most of Europe and South East Asia, followed close by China's Baidu search engine.

According to news.com.au, the researchers said that the map shows that it is the very beginning of the Age of Internet Empires, and the territories carved out now will have important implications in the future.

The map, which is weighted by internet population, shows that social media giant Facebook is the most visited in North Africa, Mexico, much of South America and parts of the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Yahoo is shown dominating Japan followed by Russia's Yandex, which is most visited website in the country.

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Silicon Valley techies go stylish

The Silicon Valley has had a men's fashion problem dating back to its founders.


SAN JOSE: The Silicon Valley has had a men's fashion problem dating back to its founders.

From their inception, tech companies went out of their way to be different - and that meant no more business suits. Thus brilliant innovations took place in the dumpiest of outfits as leather sandals, elastic-waist jeans and old T-shirts became ubiquitous.

But that's changing as a younger generation of engineers and designers have arrived seeking clothes that coordinate.

"There's definitely a shift happening here, and the age of the Silicon Valley culture has something to do with it," said image professional Joseph Rosenfeld.

"As a generation," he said, young professionals "tend to care more about style than engineers of the past."

The market has responded to this new attitude among the region's rising nerds, geeks and hackers with new online men's stores, personal style consultants and an array of high-end shops at Northern California's biggest mall. They're catering to the emerging members of a creative industry who, nonetheless, are seeking something of a uniform.

"They'll typically wear designer denim and a great button-up shirt by day, and throw on a sport coat at night to go to a cigar or wine bar," said Westfield Valley Fair mall general manager Matt Ehrie. "Silicon Valley's dressy attire would be casual Friday in most other parts of the country."

Josh Meyer, 30, a products manager at a leading high-tech firm, recognizes the generation gap. He said higher-level managers who have been in the industry for decades often wear baggy khakis and faded baseball shirts "like they're going to a barbeque," while millennials such as himself like to wear button-up dress shirts "high-quality denim jeans with a roll at the bottom, nice shoes or possibly boots."

"I can pick out techies just walking down the street by these outfits," he said.

The focus on men's fashion has emerged in a sector where 3 of 4 workers are males. And it's come late by comparison as women in technology have long faced style challenges.

Many have worked to strike a casual, professional and creative balance, even as blogs and news stories regularly focus on the image of female high-tech executives - from the extraordinarily stylish Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, featured in last month's Vogue, to Facebook's uber-chic chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.

Meanwhile, when men are similarly featured attention often shifts to casual attire - from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's famous hoodie to former Apple CEO Steve Jobs' black turtleneck.

"As much as we want to think there isn't a boys club, the Silicon Valley still feels very much run by men and there's a difference in expectations," says San Mateo-based image consultant Marina Sarmiento Feehan. "Women who rise to the top tend to be judged more, both by men and other women, and in order to succeed they do have to dress better."

With the nation's highest concentration of high-tech workers, accounting for almost a third of the jobs in the region, demographics show a younger, more affluent population than national averages. Newcomers tend to have the desire and the money to dress well, but they don't always have the time, so the men's fashion industry has responded by streamlining the process.

Erik Schnakenberg, founder and CEO of a new online men's store, Buck Mason, said his company focuses on "guys who want to look great, who are aware of style, and who are not going to spend their days in Bloomingdale's trying to find the newest piece. Tech guys are at the top of that list."

Buck Mason client Peter Dering is a firsthand example. When Dering launched his online startup Peek Design, which innovates and builds camera accessories, he worked marathon hours and had no time to shop. Still, he had both a personal and professional interest in looking sharp as he was raising $1.5 million and trying to hire top talent.

"You've got a lot of folks who think that their style doesn't matter because they sit behind a desk all day, but the fact of the matter is that it does make a difference," said Dering, noting that people who want to be taken seriously should dress appropriately.

Buck Mason sells American-made clothes in packages of matching neutral outfits, enough to dress a software engineer for a week with no fashion faux pas, and targets it's advertising online. The Silicon Valley is the company's top region for sales, Schnakenberg said.

Also working to accommodate techies, one of the country's best-performing malls, Westfield Valley Fair, has opened high-end men's stores this year, including Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, Burberry and Louis Vuitton. The shops are grouped together with a separate outside entrance so shoppers don't have to fight past teens clogging the food court. And until now, such stores were mostly an hour away in San Francisco.

The change in the Silicon Valley men's fashion culture has made things interesting for image professionals such as Rosenfeld. For 13 years he was mostly a loner advising area professionals, but in recent months competitors have popped up, including ties + tees, a pair of Silicon Valley personal image consultants whose pitch includes, "The 90s called. They want their drab khakis back."

Still, Rosenfeld welcomes the new focus on fashion. "Birkenstocks with white socks was hideous back then, and it hasn't gotten any better," he said. "It's time to up the ante."

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Most Britons not enthusiastic about using internet

According to the latest survey of British internet use and attitudes, conducted by OII, more than half of those who go online do it without enthusiasm.


LONDON: More than half of British internet users go online without enthusiasm, a new Oxford study has found.

The number of people in Britain who are using the internet has risen, reaching 78 per cent of the population aged 14 years and over as compared with 59 per cent in 2003.

Yet according to the latest survey of British internet use and attitudes, conducted by the University's Oxford Internet Institute (OII), more than half of those who go online do it without enthusiasm.

Nearly one in six (14 per cent) users felt the internet was taking over their lives and invading their privacy. An additional one-third (37 per cent) of users had no strong feelings either for or against the internet and were described as 'moderate' in their view.

Some 17 per cent said it made them more efficient; 12 per cent said they were happy going online; and 19 per cent had mixed views, feeling efficient and happier but also frustrated, according to the report.

The report, published by the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), is based on face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of 2,000 internet users in Britain.

One noteworthy trend highlighted in the report is a levelling off in the popularity of social networking sites, with nearly two-thirds (61 per cent) of internet users surveyed saying they used them - an increase of only one percentage point from 2011 after explosive growth between 2007 and 2011.

While most users of social network sites are under 35, there has been a substantial rise in the proportion of users aged 45-54 years old using such sites - from 10 per cent in 2007 to 51 per cent in 2013, researchers said.

People who are retired are much less likely to use them than employed people or students. Privacy has been a frequent concern on these sites, with 90 per cent of student users saying they checked their settings, contrary to the commonly expressed view that young people no longer care about privacy.

The digital divide in Britain continues to narrow, suggests the report, with the number of people who have never gone online falling from 23 per cent in 2011 to 18 per cent in 2013.

Trends in household use parallel individual use, with 81 per cent of households in Britain now online as compared with 74 per cent in 2011.

The rise in the number of individuals having access to the internet is due to households acquiring it for the first time, rather than more people going online in households that already have access, the research suggests.

However, television sets remain the focal point of households in Britain. Virtually all households have a TV set in 2013 whereas one-quarter (24 per cent) of them still do not have a computer.

The survey suggests that internet use increased modestly across all age groups. The gender divide is now almost non-existent as compared with 2003 when 64 per cent of men and 55 per cent of women said they used the internet. 

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