Tech Readers

New Skype for Windows Offers Full HD Video Calls and Facebook Integration

Mikey Mell — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:48:11 +0000

The new version of Skype has been released for Windows. The new Skype for Windows version 5.8 is launched with a host of new features, such as full HD video-calling, group screen sharing and Facebook Integration.

The users having HD webcam will benefit from the full HD video calls feature the most, such as Logitech C920 that is capable of encoding video itself, eventually enhancing the video quality on older systems.

While the video calling for Facebook feature will also become handy for users not having Skype. Whenever a Facebook user wants to start video call with his/her buddy, just select the person and hit ‘video call’.

Group screen sharing feature is only available with Skype Premium that enables users to share their screen or an app window with other members of a conference call. Users need to click ‘+’ sign during the call and choose ‘share my screen’.

Some of the other notable features are: a push to talk hotkey, the ability to hide offline Facebook contacts and Bing Toolbar integration.

The latest version also addresses different bugs, particularly the one that disallowed users to add a phone number to a group belonged to a Facebook contact.

Skype for Windows 5.8

Sony’s Anticipates $2.9 Billion Annual Loss

Mikey Mell — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:19:17 +0000

The Japanese electronics giant, Sony continued to incur losses as it announced on Thursday that the company is anticipating a loss of $2.9 billion for fiscal 2011, which is doubled the figures estimated earlier.

While announcing its fiscal 2011 third quarter results (Company’s fiscal year runs April to April), the Japanese electronics giant accused the floods in Thailand, adverse foreign exchange rates and a failed venture with Samsung for its misfortunes.

For Sony, third quarter revenues also decline by 17.4%. Compared to the results of 2010, Sony experienced the worst nine months of business ended on December 31, 2011. The details are as follows: televisions (down 28.4% in sales), home audio and video (-14.8%) and digital imaging (-24.7%). Its PlayStation 3 sales also saw a decline in growth due to the company’s initiative to cut price back in August from $300 to $250 for entry-level 160GB version.

In the third quarter earnings call, Sony didn’t provide any details about its PlayStation 3. The company had a big blow last April when hackers took down the online PlayStation Network, compromising credit cards of over 77 million users.

In order to regain its lost image, the company has announced some management reshuffle on Wednesday. The Japanese electronics giant has replaced its CEO and President. Kazuo Hirai, former executive deputy president and head of the company’s Customer Products & Services Group, will replace Howard Stringer. He has been with Sony since 1984 and served at different positions at different times in Sony Computer Entertainment. He is also credited for company’s success with PlayStation platform in the United States.

Kazuo Hirai while addressing a news conference in Japan said that regardless of drooping sales, televisions will remain a vital product for Sony’s business to move forward. He said, “Televisions are important as an output device. He added “withdrawing or shrinking would cut a link for customers to experience” Sony’s content, reports Bloomberg.

Samsung Partnership with Corning for Stronger OLED Displays

Mikey Mell — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 06:57:10 +0000

Samsung in an attempt to make its OLED displays even stronger has signed a joint venture with Gorilla Glass maker Corning to produce a new range of specialty glass substrates for its new organic light emitting diode (OLED) equipped gadgets.

The Korean-based new venture will combine Samsung’s OLED display expertise with Corning’s strengthened Lotus glass technology to offer stronger and sturdier displays not only for Samsung’s mobile devices but also for the massive Korean market.

The South Korean electronics giant has already introduced a host of OLED television at CES 2012 in Las Vegas. The company is assumed to be one of the leading display makers in mobile devices – all credit goes to its Super AMOLED displays and related different versions.

As for Corning’s new Lotus glass substrate, this has been planned to redeem at “higher processing temperatures and improved dimensional stability needed to produce the new high performance displays.”

With its new joint venture with Corning, the South Korean electronics giant will be able to initiate its new display technology into more mobile devices, making certain that Corning’s reinforced substrates guard displays from major damage.

Considering the developing interest in mobile display market, LG and Samsung both are already producing panels for Apple’s Retina displays. The latest partnership between Samsung and Corning will allow the South Korean electronics giant to offer rich and vivid displays that are strong enough to resist significant damages.

Apple Announces OS X 10.7.3 Update for Lion

Mikey Mell — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 06:06:01 +0000

According to Macrumors, the Cupertino-based tech giant has released an updated version to its operating system for Mac computers, dubbed OS X Lion 10.7.3. The updated version is launched with support for many new languages and also addresses many bugs. The latest version also includes Safari 5.1.3, an updated version of the Apple’s web browser.

Following is given a description of improvements and additions made in OX X LION v 10.7.3:

Add Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian language support

Address issues when using smart cards to log into OS X

Address compatibility issues with Microsoft Windows file sharing

Address an issue printing Microsoft Word documents that use markup

Address a graphics performance issue after sleep on some earlier iMacs that use ATI graphics

Resolve a Wi-Fi connection issue when waking from sleep

Address an issue that may prevent Safari from opening before joining a wireless network

Fix a potential issue authenticating to an SMB DFS share

Include RAW image compatibility for additional digital camerasDirectory Services

Improve binding to read-only Active Directory Domain Controllers

Improve binding and login speed for Active Directory users in a domain whose name ends in “.local”

Improve reliability of Dynamic DNS (DDNS) updates by Active Directory clients

Allow login with an Active Directory username that contains a space

Improve compatibility with Active Directory schemas that have been extended with the “apple-user-homeDirectory” and “apple-user-homeurl” attributes

Fix home directory Dock item for Active Directory users with mobile accounts

Allow NIS users with MD5-hashed passwords to log in

The update can be taken direct from running Software Update on your Mac, or you can download it manually from here. However, the users who are keen to know more about the update, they can read the full release note here.

Apple has not just updated its standard version of its OS X Lion OS, but it has also updated its OS X Server edition as well as Server Admin Tools to 10.7.3. The Cupertino-based tech has also announced an update to its Remote Desktop Client to 3.5.2.

However, all these updates vary in depth, depending on the improvements and additions they received. For instance, the Lion Server edition gets the most, such as fixes pushed for regular Lion.

As for OS X Lion Update 10.7.3 (Server), it receives some general bug fixes that improve the stability, compatibility, migration and security of your server and enhancements of the various services and apps. A full list of enhancements can be seen here. Similarly, Remote Desktop Client update addresses couple of fixes.

As far as Snow Leopard, Apple has released a security update for them as well, including couple of fixes released with OS X Lion 10.7.3. Click the links for regular version and server edition.

Facebook Files for $5 Billion IPO

Mikey Mell — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:59:06 +0000

Facebook has finally filed for a long awaited $5 billion initial public offering (IPO) of stock in the US with the SEC. According to Facebook, it will trade with the stock symbol of ‘FB’.

It was predicted earlier that the social networking giant will file initial paperwork for its IPO, looking to raise $5 billion in its public offering bid. The lead bookrunner role is taken by Morgan Stanley, while Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Merill Lynch, Barclays Capital and JP Morgan ended up with six another initial bookrunners.

Facebook’s public offering has been on slate for mid-May due to its new Timeline feature. The company has now entered into a mandated quiet period. It means that the company won’t launch any new product or feature during this period. It is therefore Timeline is the last new product introduced by Facebook.

If we look at the major figures claimed in the filing by Facebook, it has over 845 million active monthly users. In revenue, the company managed to generate $3.71 billion with $1 billion in profit last year – doubled from what it had in 2010. Currently, Facebook has $3.9 billion in cash on hand.

Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of the social network, owns 28.4% of the company, earning $483,000 as salary. He also got a bonus of $220,000 last year. Interestingly, the social network also praises Zynga for providing 12% of revenue in 2011.

The social network is hoping to focus on mobile and it has some solid reason for this:

“We had more than 425 million MAUs who used Facebook mobile products in December 2011. We anticipate that the rate of growth in mobile users will continue to exceed the growth rate of our overall MAUs for the foreseeable future, in part due to our focus on developing mobile products to encourage mobile usage of Facebook.”

Facebook also explains that the company depends heavily on the interoperability of mobile operating systems with its app:

“We are dependent on the interoperability of Facebook with popular mobile operating systems that we do not control, such as Android and iOS, and any changes in such systems that degrade our products’ functionality or give preferential treatment to competitive products could adversely affect Facebook usage on mobile devices.”

Mozilla Releases Firefox 10 with 3D Support and Built-in Developer Tools

Mikey Mell — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:00:14 +0000

Mozilla has released a stable version of its web browser, Firefox 10. In the last ten months, this is the seventh major release by Mozilla. It all started with a release of Firefox in March last year, when Mozilla took on a swift release schedule identical to the cycle Google takes up with its Chrome browser.

Contrary to previous approach, when users got a new version every two to three years, the new schedule makes sure that users receive a new version of Firefox every six weeks. It is clearly a much rapid release cycle than the one employed before.

Mozilla adopts the same approach for Firefox 10 as it followed with recent releases – the emphasis is given to under-the-hood improvements and bug fixes than to focus on new features or improvements to the user interface.

Firefox 10 is released with many new front-facing features, such as improved add-on compatibility and built-in developer tools.

The latest version automatically marks add-ons compatible with the browser without add-on developers to code support by hand. The browser will also automatically check for add-on updates every 24 hours.

As far as developer tools are concerned, the browser now has a tightly-integrated set of HTML, CSS and DOM inspectors. With such support, web developers will now able to rapidly direct to any part of a live web-page and activate real-time previewing.

All those users who are familiar with Webkit’s Web Inspector in Safari and Chrome, they won’t have much problem with Firefox 10’s tool set. Although, it would not fill the place of add-ons, such as Firebug, fro advanced developers, it is of course a handy, lightweight, built-in alternative.

The video embedded below will give developers a clear idea about the new developer tools included in latest version of Firefox.

Mozilla’s decision to switch to a rapid update cycle was strongly opposed by some enterprise users, criticizing the company that frequent updates are unstable for organizations that require keeping strict rules for necessary software updates.

However, with current release, Mozilla is offering such users an access to “Firefox ESR” or “Firefox Extended Support Release.” The support and updates of 242 weeks will be given to the organizations that opt for Firefox ESR instead of following standard six week cycle. Mozilla said that security updates will be released on set schedule.

We have to wait and see whether Firefox 10 will help browser to get back its lost position from Chrome.

Google+ Exceeds 100 Million Users

Mikey Mell — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:16:15 +0000

Facebook is certainly the most popular social networking platform all over the world. The when tech world awaits the social network’s IPO filing, an analyst claims that the young competitor Google+ has hit 100 million users mark.

A Google+ wather, Paul Allen says that the young social platform will have 100.8 million users by the Wednesday. On January 19, the CEO of Google, Larry Page announced that its social network had over 90 million users.

Allen wrote in a blog post on Google+ that the network has grown over 10% within two weeks. Allen, the founder of Ancestory.com, along with his staff follows a very strange approach to reach to his estimates – he along with his staff run hundreds of queries on surnames they have been tracking since July and then infer the size of the social network. It seems that his approach works far better for him as most of his numbers are usually very close to the ones revealed by Google afterwards.

Interestingly, Allen has anticipated that the network will exceed 400 million users mark by the end of this year – half the number that Facebook currently has.

There can be several factors that boosts Google+’s growth recently. Google has recently opened its network for teens. Also, the search giant has introduced Google plus Your World, a program launched last month that incorporated Google+ into the company’s search result. Such additions and improvements might have resulted in raising traffic of the network.

In addition to the efforts of Google, some recent steps from Facebook may have also encouraged some to give Google+ a try. One such step is the introduction of Timeline feature from Facebook that has annoyed a good number of users.

Microsoft Releases Kinect for Windows

Mikey Mell — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:38:24 +0000

As promised by Steve Ballmer in January, the Redmond-based software giant has announced Kinect for the Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) version 1.0.

Back in November last year, Beta 2 version was released by the company and the current version is launched with significant enhancements over the previous version, including support for up to four Kinect sensors on one system, enhanced skeletal tracking and speech recognition accuracy and several API updates, stability, audio fixes and runtime.

There is also present a Near Mode that lets users to see objects very close (40 cm) in front of the device by enabling the depth camera.

Microsoft has launched its Kinect for Windows in several countries, including United States, UK, Mexico, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Japan and New Zealand.

Currently, the Kinect for Windows is launched with a price tag of $249, but the Redmond-based software giant has promised a special academic pricing of $149 for qualified educational users at a later time.

Although, it seems that everything is working according to the plans for Microsoft, the only thing missing at this stage are the apps. Now we have to wait and see whether the Kinect for Windows will able to draw attentions of developers to develop some useful apps in the coming days.

Samsung Confirms Separate Launch Event for Galaxy S III

Mikey Mell — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:10:53 +0000

As expected, Samsung Galaxy S III is not going to launch at the forthcoming Mobile World Congress. Samsung has recently issued a statement claiming that the new device will be launched at a separate dedicated launch event.

The official statement that confirms Samsung intentions is released by Techradar saying:

“Samsung is looking forward to introducing and demonstrating exciting new mobile products at Mobile World Congress 2012.

The successor to the GALAXY S II smartphone will be unveiled at a separate Samsung-hosted event in the first half of the year, closer to commercial availability of the product.

Samsung stays committed to providing the best possible mobile experiences for customers around the world.”

It was just recently reported the South Korean electronics giant was ‘still reviewing’ the launch of the Galaxy S III. The Senior Vice President of Marketing, Younghee Lee while answering a question during the company’s fourth quarter earnings call, said that the company is ‘still reviewing’ when to launch the next model of its most successful Galaxy range. Lee was also asked whether the company has any intentions to delay a launch to coincide with the release of Apple’s next generation iPhone.

Sources close to the company said that although Samsung continues to enjoy the prosperity of its current smartphone range, it figured out to launch its flagship handset at a dedicated launch event would be more advantageous. The recent announcement fully conforms to company’s plans to launch its next smartphone at dedicated launch event.

Sources have also suggested that Samsung while enjoying healthy sales with its Galaxy S II all over the world, the company will never opt to cannibalize sales of a product that is already doing well in the market against strong competition. It is also obvious through the Samsung’s anti-Apple marketing campaign that the company is not afraid of promoting its current range of smartphone.

We can expect to have new Samsung tablet and smartphone devices in the upcoming Mobile World Congress at Barcelona, but Samsung’s next flagship smartphone device won’t be revealed until later in the year in some dedicated launch event.

Kazuo Hirai Becomes the New President and CEO of Sony

Mikey Mell — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:19:50 +0000

The Japanese electronics giant Sony is having a tough time for last four years. The company has encountered losses year over year despite its efforts. Finally, the company has taken a bold step and announced Kazuo Hirai, former President of Consumer Products & Services Group, as its new President and CEO. He will replace Howard Stringer.

Bloomberg received an email statement from the Japanese electronics giant according to which Howard Stringer will step down from his position on April 1. Stringer, however, will remain on the board as Chairman and will take that post after the June shareholder meeting.

Sony also said in statement that it will soon release more details about its ongoing management changes on Thursday.

Hirai was an important figure when it comes to the success of Sony with its PlayStation in the United States. He became President of Sony Computer Entertainment just two weeks after the PlayStation 3 launched.

The Japanese electronics giant has been incurring losses year-over-year in its entertainment business, such as its televisions and handheld console devices. With its recent acquisition of Sony Ericsson, the company is hoping to introduce its own Android devices throughout the year to contend with Apple and Samsung in the rapidly growing smartphone market.

YouTube Removes Older Inactive Accounts and Channels

Mikey Mell — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:40:24 +0000

One of the largest video sharing communities, YouTube, is now cleaning out the cobwebs, older inactive accounts and channels from its site, Digital Inspiration reports. This will certainly lower the subscriber counts, particularly if you have an older channel.

According to YouTube, the cleanup is carried out against the accounts which have been inactive or closed for a significant period of time and having been counted as active subscribers of channels. Moreover, new subscriptions will also be examined with great detail so as to avoid artificial boosting of subscriber counts on the video sharing network. YouTube said that removing these ‘zombie’ accounts won’t affect your subscriber base by much, but if the whole scenario is monitored closely, there will be noticed a slight decline.

About 4% or less dip will be noticed by those having an average aged channel, while those with older channels may have experienced a larger dip because greater number of legacy accounts following them. This is perhaps not an appreciable step taken by the YouTube, but to keep things intact it is inevitable for the video sharing site.

One can expect to see a sudden drop of subscribers over the next few days or weeks, considering the intentions of YouTube.

If you are keen to have a look at your subscriber stats, you can do so by visiting the YouTube Analytics page while being logged into your YouTube account.

YouTube issues a note to its existing subscribers saying:

While we are updating subscriber counts to remove such subscriptions from the totals, we will not stop delivering videos to these subscribers, even if they are artificially created accounts. This means that even if we mistakenly remove a subscriber from a subscription account as invalid, this will in no way affect your views.

Facebook Up to Celebrate its 8th Birthday on Heels of IPO Announcement

Mikey Mell — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:07:14 +0000

If you can recall, it’s been eight years since Facebook was first surfaced on the world of web. Back on February 04, 2004, it was initially launched as TheFacebook. It is going to turn eight on coming Saturday. Interestingly, the social networking giant is apparently celebrating its birthday week with the filing of an initial public offering, which could value the company at almost $100 billion.

The public offering will make the Facebook, the largest social networking site, four times the value of the search giant, Google at the time it went public in 2004 with a valuation of $23 billion.

Facebook has traveled a long way since it first launched in the dorm room of Mark Zuckerberg. Initially, the site was just restricted to the Harvard University undergrads. Later, it was opened up to some other schools and within a period of two years managed to collect 5 million users. As of today, the site has over 800 million active users all over the world. In other words, we can say it has 40% of all Internet users. The site is expected to hit 1 billion users mark by August. After Google, it is the most visited site all across the globe.

Since its very start, the social networking giant drew the attention of investors, but refused bids from several companies from NBC and the Washington Post Group to MySpace and Viacom. Back in 2008, several reports surfaced claiming that Mark Zuckerberg was in dialogue with Yahoo for Facebook’s potential sale. However, later he turned down the offer for $1.6 billion, saying that the bid was too low for his interests.

Now four years have passed and the company could be worth as much as 100 times that numbers.

Facebook still has long way to go. We cannot say at this time where will it be in the coming ten years or so. We have to wait and see whether it has the potential to stay on the top in future.

Apple Launches ‘Significant’ Final Cut Pro X Update

Mikey Mell — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 07:18:30 +0000

The Cupertino-based tech giant has recently launched a ‘significant update’ for its Final Cut Pro X Max video editing software. The updates version features a host of new editing tools as well as beta support for broadcasting monitoring for Thunderbolt devices and PCIe cards.

The latest update also offers multicam editing that “automatically syncs up to 64 angles of video and photos,” also advanced chroma keying for handling complicated adjustments right in application and improved XML for a richer interchange with third party applications and plug-ins.

There is also present a new collection of tools for editing multicam projects, assisting to automatically sync clips from your video cameras with audio waveforms, time and date, or timecodes. It will enable users to develop “a Multicam Clip with up to 64 angles of video, which can include mixed formats, frame sizes and frame rates.”

Apple says:

The powerful Angle Editor allows you to dive into your Multicam Clip to make precise adjustments, and the Angle Viewer lets you play back multiple angles at the same time and seamlessly cut between them.

Final Cut Pro X builds upon its robust, one-step chroma key with the addition of advanced controls including color sampling, edge adjustment and light wrap. You can tackle complex keying challenges right in Final Cut Pro X, without having to export to a motion graphics application, and view your results instantly with realtime playback.

Although, the broadcast monitoring is released as a beta feature in Final Cut Pro X, it will still let users connect to waveform displays, vectorscopes and high-quality monitors so as to fulfill broadcast specifications.

The Final Cut Pro X, the famous video-editing tool was first launched back in June of last year on the Mac App Store with a price tag of $299.99/£179.99. The app showed a quick growth in the Mac App Store for the fact that users were so keen to have the app in just a few clicks.

But as soon as the new version of software was launched, the glory of the app was declined realiz9ing the fact that the new version of Final Cut Pro X wasn’t up to the mark, it didn’t support the older file-types, functions became complex and audio markers no longer worked as they were previously. It received a lot of furious reviews and negative rating in the Mac App Store.

Apple somehow managed to close the comments on the Mac App Store and started working on the reviews seriously. The company also issued refunds to users who had filed an official request using Apple’s Mac App Store Customer Service form.

Facebook’s Display Ads Share Reaches 28%

Mikey Mell — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:47:40 +0000

comScore revealed data on Monday claiming that the social networking giant’s share of US display and impressions rose to 27.9% during last year. It is a significant growth as the display ads growth for Facebook recorded to be 21% by the Reston, VA-based researcher, in 2010.

According to comScore, Yahoo is on the second spot with 11% of the market, while Microsoft, AOL and Google followed by less than 5% each. Since 2009, the social networking giant, Facebook, is placed on the top in the display and impressions category by comScore.

Facebook, which is assumed to file for a public offering somewhere this week, has managed to grab over 800 million users all over the world; hence brands have gotten on board with verve. It is worth noting here that the Menlo Park, CA-based digital giant has effectively courted Madison Avenue during the last two years in general.

Andrew Lipsman, a representative of comSocre while talking to ClickZ News says, “Any time a site becomes so influential to the full digital landscape, advertisers are forced to pay attention. There was a time when brands thought of Facebook as a place for kids and teenagers. That’s obviously not the case anymore.”

Foxconn Aims to Set Up Five Factories in Brazil

Mikey Mell — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:20:02 +0000

Foxconn is an important part of Apple as the Cupertino-based tech giant depends on Foxconn to large extent for producing its popular iPhones and iPads. The more swiftly the business prospers for Apple, the better Foxconn does.

Although, Foxconn has huge production facilities, but these facilities are not huge enough to keep up with Apple demand, so the company is planning to establish five more facilities in Brazil so as to keep up with the Apple demand.

AppleInsider reports that each facility will looking forward to employ about 1,000 employees.

It is important to note here that Foxconn facilities are not just limited to produce Apple hardware, as these facilities are also used to notebook production and other general electronics production.

It is yet not decided where these five facilities will be established. The company officials are intended to meet with Brazilian government officials in order to decide on the best locations for the facilities.

Foxconn’s intentions of building five more production facilities are a clear sign of how well the business is going for both Apple and Foxconn. We cannot also ignore the fact that putting up one such facility won’t be a cheap proposition and establishing one facility will cost Foxconn huge investment. Setting up five such facilities would definitely be a big step from the Foxconn.

Providing workers healthy incentives may likely help Foxconn to produce huge profits.

‘Life at Google’ Comes to Google+

Mikey Mell — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:56:04 +0000

Google has finally created an official ‘Life at Google’ account on its social network, Google+. The search giant has similar profiles on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook as well. The purpose of ‘Life at Google’ accounts is to share information with other users, such as what it is like working at Google, posting of job opportunities and content about the atmosphere and culture for which the search giant is popular.

All those keen to work at the company, the Life at Google accounts are must-follows for them. Being the social network of Google, its account on Google+ will truly be a focus of Google’s social media recruitment strategy. The search giant has promised too much in a tweet regarding its new Google+ page.

Compared to 27,817 likes on Facebook and 133,750 followers on Twitter, the page is in 2,800 circles within six hours after its launch.

When compared to Apple and Amazon, which prefer to work under much secretive manners, Google’s ‘Life at Google’ accounts is completely opposite to many other tech titans. Historically, Google has always been open about its corporate ‘culture’, which is obvious from the postings on the accounts.

Life at Google on Google+

Apple Becomes the World No. 1 PC Vendor

Mikey Mell — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:22:21 +0000

Canalys reports that the Cupertino-based tech giant has succeeded in reserving 17% of the total PC market because of its record sales of Macs and iPads in the fourth quarter of 2011. During the quarter, Apple sold almost 5 million Macs and 15 million iPads all over the world. These numbers has brought Apple to top position as personal computer vendor.

The major reason behind the success of Apple is the fact that no other vendor shipped tablets in such a huge volume during that quarter. Tim Coulling of Canalys said, “Currently, HP is pursuing a Windows strategy for its pad portfolio, producing enterprise-focused products, such as the recently launched Slate 2, until the launch of Windows 8.”

During the last quarter, some 120 million PCs shipped all over the world, showing 16% growth over the last year when tablets were included in the race as well. If we omit the tablet sales, particularly the iPad, along with few other tablets that had any impact on the market, the market showed a decline of 0.4%. This clearly shows the importance of iPad sales in pushing Apple’s growth. Tablets have also been a major factor in the growth of overall PC market.

Another aspect of this can be seen as the tablets are necessarily replacing a good share of the market for PCs. The difference between the PC market growth overall and the growth of the tablet market will continue to grow as more and more customers begin to think that tablets are more than enough to perform their task than to have a personal computer.

Coulling also indicates that the responsibility now lies on Microsoft to offer a less resource incentive and intuitive experience for tablet users. The other top vendors in the list including Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo failed to do well in the last quarter. Among the four, Dell, HP and Acer saw a decline in share, while Lenovo managed to show slight growth. Compared to other manufacturers, Lenovo is happy to see some growth because of its Android tablets, though its tablets are not as sought-after as iPad is.

In the fourth quarter of 2011, tablets made up for 22% of the overall PC shipments. Kindle Fire and Nook had a decent share in the PC market growth as well.

Amazon Sold 6 Million Kindle Fires over the Holidays [Analyst]

Mikey Mell — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 07:33:12 +0000

When it comes to measure the success of Amazon Kindle Fire, a financial analyst describes it as a very big one.

Stifel Niclaus analyst Jordan Rohan just increased his estimate of how many Kindle Fire Amazon sold over the Holiday season. He believes that the numbers fall between 5 million and 6 million. Rohan, in his Sunday note to investors, calls the Kindle Fire a “true tablet market contender.”

If the expected numbers happen to be true, this would extremely be impressive for the Fire as it was launched on November 14, 2011. This means that Amazon hit these huge numbers within half a quarter, or six weeks. Still the 6 million sales are just a fraction of iPad sales with 15.4 million over the same period, which is more than double the number of iPads sold in the first quarter.

The only official words we have regarding the sales of Kindle Fire from Amazon are that the company sold ‘well over’ 1 million Kindle products for each week in December. Moreover, the Amazon claims that the Kindle Fire was the No. 1 best-selling product on the site as well as the most gifted and wished for product. More details will be available as soon as Amazon declares its quarterly earnings.

With the growing popularity of Kindle Fire, one can easily assume that the tablet market is splitting up into two halves, with the top end held by the iPad, while the remaining half is filled up to large extent by Fire, considering its low price. With its current price tag of $199, it is $300 cheaper than the Apple’s most popular tablet device, the iPad. It is thought that Amazon is offering its product at cost or even at loss so as to draw more and more customers to its services, including Amazon Prime and Cloud Drive.

Google, Yahoo Unites to Deal with Phishing

Mikey Mell — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 06:57:47 +0000

Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft have united to fight against sources of phishing, the emails that try to deceive users into giving up their personal information.

The companies in collaboration with the financial services providers, Including Bank of America and Fidelity Investments has formed DMARC.org, also called Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance, a technical specification that will offer consistent authentication results across Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and AOL.

The group blames the increase of phishing on the growth of social media along with certain of other aspects, on its website.

“With the rise of the social Internet and the ubiquity of e-commerce, spammers and phishers have a tremendous financial incentive to compromise user accounts, enabling theft of passwords, bank accounts, credit cards, and more,” reads an explanation on the group’s site. “Email is easy to spoof and criminals have found spoofing to be a proven way to exploit user trust of well-known brands. Simply inserting the logo of a well known brand into an email gives it instant legitimacy with many users.”

SPF and DKIM are the two preexisting authentication screening mechanisms introduced by DMARC. These methods are considered in compliance with industry standard. To implement them through Gmail and other email services, senders need to authenticate their emails. The consequence of this is that the email receivers will be sure about the email. For instance, an email from IRS.gov will ensure users that it is actually from Internal Revenue Service. In addition to this, if anyone trying to use the domain for phishing emails, IRS will be notified.

A McAfee consultant and identify theft expert, Robert Siciliano said that most of the phishing emails have already been intercepted and thrown in users’ spam folders.

He says, “What they’re trying to accomplish now is to eliminate them from your spam folder, noting that some users still click on such emails even when they’re labeled as spam. The fact is, there’s a sucker born every minute. A non-sophisticated user will be a target until all phishing emails are eliminated.”

He further adds that he is pretty hopeful that DMARC will be able to achieve this if “Its coordinated efforts like this that could actually solve this problem.”

All the same, Siciliano also warns here that clicking on a URL inside an email will still not be a good idea, even if DMARC is successful in their task. He means that whenever you received an email, to say, from Bank of America, use the main site to find your link. He also says, “The bad guys are like ants. They’re very consistent and find their way through.”

Samsung Galaxy S Advance Features Dual-Core and a 4-inch Screen

Mikey Mell — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 06:01:30 +0000

Samsung is planning to launch to launch its new smartphone handset in Philippines, named the Galaxy S Advance GT-i9070.

Reportedly, the handset will be Samsung’s mid-range smartphone with a curved, 4-inch, and 800 × 480 pixel display. The device has a dual-core processor and a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash.

Currently, the device is running Android 2.3.6 (codenamed: Gingerbread). Samsung hopes to reveal its new handset at forthcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month. We also hope that the device will be upgradable to Google’s latest mobile operating system Android 4.0 (codenamed: Ice Cream Sandwich or ICS).

Also, there was a recent leak at the company’s website that forced us to believe that the South Korean electronics giant will also reveal another new flagship device, the Galaxy S III, in the same event. However, company has not yet disclosed any details about this mysterious handset device.

The Galaxy S Advance has been officially confirmed by the company. The company said that the device will feature a storage memory up to 16GB. The device will also have a support for HSPA and features 768MB of RAM.

The most unfortunate thing about this device is perhaps it is running Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Though, there are high chances of possible upgrade to Android 4.0. The device will be launched in Russia next month. Later, the global rollout will continue to Europe, China, Africa, Middle East, Southeast and Southwest Asia, and Latin America. No plans to launch Galaxy S Advance in United States. Samsung has not said anything about its price yet.

If you want to have a look at the Samsung’s new smartphone, the Galaxy S Advance, you can visit hardwarezone.com.ph.

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