SidraMansoor

Apple Inc. (NASDQ:AAPL) has been issued 35 patents by the U.S Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday, including patent No. 8,441,790, “electronic device housing as acoustic input device,”. According to Apple Insider, Patent no. 8,441,790 features a technology that enables device to detect and respond to a sound produced by user input, such as taps, scratches or any other noise resulting from an impact with the housing. Device sensors transmit signal to a microprocessor that corresponds with the interpretation of the input. Apple Inc. (AAPL) Patent Description From Patent description: “The interpretation maybe based on the type of input, nature of the input, the location of the contact on the housing, the amplitude of input, as well as other various other factors. For example, a scratch may be interpreted differently from a tap, and so forth. Additionally, a tap on the housing near an output or input device may actuate the device whereas a tap on another surface of the housing may be interpreted as a keystroke.” Multiple taps near a camera can turn the device on, whereas another tap can click a picture. Each stroke or tap is identified in accordance with a sound vocabulary employed in the device. In
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Free call and messaging service Viber has launched a new desktop client for Windows and Mac OS X allowing seamless integration between mobile and desktop users. With more than 200 million users on board, Viber plans to compete with Skype, announcing its desktop client that runs alongside mobile versions and use your mobile phone numbers to complete the setup process. “People spend a substantial amount of time on their smartphones,” Viber CEO Talmon Marco said in a statement. “However, a lot of that usage takes place at home or in the office, where they have laptops or desktops close by. With Viber Desktop you always get to use the most convenient device. You can seamlessly switch devices while messaging and even transfer calls between your mobile and desktop.” Built from ground up, the desktop version comes with some of the features that are already existent in Viber’s mobile version. In a market saturated with so many VoIP services, including Skype, Viber made a wise move to boost features like one-click seamless call transfer between its desktop and mobile version. Once activated, all phone contacts will automatically be sync from your mobile to your desktop version and the two versions will
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Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V)’s chief executive Stephen Elop at the company’s annual general meeting on Tuesday, said the company would remain focused on Microsoft’s Windows Phone software and there is no plan B. The company doesn’t plan to deviate from its focus of using Windows Phone to compete in the smartphone markets. “We make adjustments as we go. It’s very clear to us that in today’s war of ecosystems, we’ve made a very clear decision to focus on Windows Phone with our Lumia product line,” Elop said. ”And it is with that, that we will compete with competitors like Samsung and Android.” According to Reuters, Nokia’s first quarter results marked an incremental rise in the Lumia sales, while a continued decline was observed in its Symbian-powered feature phones. A declining trend has also been observed for the aggregate demand of Nokia’s Symbian powered phones, which have been company’s primary bread and butter for many years. Shareholders and investors, at the company’s annual general meeting have shown a slight disappointment over company’s lack of progress. “Please switch to another road.” said one shareholder to Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V)’s chief executive in the meeting. Another shareholder believes that the Finish mobile company and
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Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has launched its Android Appstore in China, beating Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) into the lucrative market. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), which opened its Kindle e-book store in China in December, launched its Android app store over the weekend for China users to download both free and paid apps, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) China spokesman Billy Huang said on Monday. Unlike Google Play, where malware is weeded out rather than being blocked, Amazon’s app store checks each title for safety before it offers them for download. This checking system blocks malware at the onset and stops it from getting through. There are many other locally-based services that offer paid apps to China. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), however, promises “quality and safety testing” on its paid apps before they get downloaded. With this launch, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) becomes the first Western technology company to offer a platform for paid Android apps in China and Huang.  Additionally, it has paved ways for Amazon to capitalize on the expanding mobile economy in China. The launch in China forms part of Amazon’s plan to launch its Appstore into nearly 200 countries over the next few months. Currently, the Appstore is available in the United States, the UK, Germany, France, Italy,
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Google Glass developer Mike DiGiovanni has created an app that allows a Glass owner to click a photo with a simple wink, the verge reported. Google Glass Winking App Dubbed Winky, the app bypasses the side-mounted touch control panel on the Google Glass to snap a picture. It has been designed to skip the voice command to take a picture. A simple raise of eyebrow or wink is enough to fire up the app and the Glass will instantly take photos of whatever comes in its line of sight. “Winking really changes things. You might not think it’s hard to say ‘Ok, Glass Take a Picture’ or even just tap a button. But it’s a context switch that takes you out of the moment, even if just for a second,” DiGiovanni said in a Google+ post. “Winking lets you lifelog with little to no effort. I’ve taken more pictures today than I have the past 5 days thanks to this. Sure, they are mostly silly, but my timeline has now truly become a timeline of where I’ve been.” Winky is not a Google-approved app and only people who know how to run an APK file on their phones will be able
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Twenty years ago today, on April 30 1993, the European science agency CERN officially made Berners-Lee’s WWW software public domain, giving the public access to the world wide web. These simple technologies — the humble URL,  HTTP, and HTML — were developed by Tim Berners-Lee at Cerner Corporation (NASDAQ:CERN) in the early ’90s. The idea of a Web was first proposed in 1989 and the working version was out in 1990. “There is no sector of society that has not been transformed by the invention, in a physics laboratory, of the Web,” Rolf Heuer, CERN director general, said in a statement. “From research to business and education, the web has been reshaping the way we communicate, work, innovate and live. The Web is a powerful example of the way that basic research benefits humankind.” Believing that software development would always stay ahead of any company trying to monopolize the Web as a commercial product, Berners-Lee and Cerner Corporation (NASDAQ:CERN) decided to release the code for the Web. The decision to give the public access to the World Wide Web didn’t come easy. “I was accosted in the corridors…. I listened carefully to people’s concerns. I also sweated anxiously behind my calm exterior…. On April
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Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) executive chairman Eric Schmidt admits that talking to Google Glass is the “weirdest thing” to do, according to Reuters. In a talk at Harvard today, Schmitty literally called it “the weirdest thing. There are obviously places where Google Glasses are inappropriate,” he said, according to Reuters. Google Glass is the company’s interactive tech that places a small screen in the top right corner of your field of vision, enabling you to interact with peers, socialize, take directions or video chat by shouting out commands to the smart device. Referring to Google Glass-related privacy concerns, Schmidt says that people will have to “develop new etiquette to deal with such products that can record video surreptitiously and bring up information that only the wearer can see.” Users or non-users, everyone will have to adjust to the concept of technology being integrated into daily routines.  “It’s so new, we decided to be more cautious,” Schmidt said. “It’s always easier to open it up more in the future.” According to the chairman, apps offered to Glass users will be required to get Google’s approval beforehand. The company revealed the product earlier this year and recently started distributing the prototypes to software developers but
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Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V) is planning to hold a conference on May 14 to discuss where the company is headed with its next line of Windows phones. The invitation reads “The Lumia story continues,” and has gone out to media and journalists for an event in London where the Finnish company hints that they’ll, “See what’s next,” on the Lumia front. With rumors about Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V) EOS floating in the market, it’s more than possible that the Finnish phone maker will finally make its first Windows Phone PureView smartphone official.  Nokia EOS is rumored to be releasing a quad-core Windows Phone handset featuring that insane 41MP camera last seen on 808 Pureview. Last week during the company’s quarterly earnings call, Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V) CEO Stephen Elop hinted towards a number of rumored products in the pipeline which include the Lumia 928 headed for Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ), the Catwalk with its aluminum chassis and the EOS with its 41-megapixel PureView sensor. If Nokia has sent out the invite to international journalists, chances are that Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V) is up to revealing something high-end. It’s not totally unlikely that the Finnish mobile maker will finally announce its efforts in the tablet segment. The Finnish
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The new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone’s new feature “Show What I’m Listening To” shares with friends and family what you’re watching on the web, but it could tell them about the embarrassing videos you want no one to find out about including porn. The new in-built Z10 feature is designed to alert all your contacts about the videos you’re watching on the web, the Sun reported. “The ‘update your status’ feature is off by default, so users would need to choose to turn this on,” a spokesperson told Mashable. “Also, users are not sharing content to other users, they are only sharing the title of what is being played.” If you choose to enable this functionality, all the video, audio and flash content played from the browser can be shared with all your BBM contacts. A user, named Sosof on the Crackberry web forum, posted a screenshot that showed how another user viewed an adult site and his contacts were alerted about them. He said: “Be very careful! LOL.” As much as you want to fully utilize the great social features on your BlackBerry Z10, if you have any concerns about your BBM friends knowing where you watch videos on the mobile web, you can at
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Twitter Inc. plans to increase security on the site after an official account of Associated Press news service was hacked and tweeted a fake news that resulted into a brief stock-market decline, according to Bloomberg. On Tuesday, pro-Syrian hackers hijacked the AP Twitter account and posted a fake news alert claiming a pair of explosions at the White House and that the president had been injured. The tweet read: “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” According to a news report by Wired.com, Twitter is already in the process of testing its two-step authentication solution internally and will be looking to offer this to users shortly. The two-step authentication is aimed to make it harder for intruders to access any account on Twitter. As part of its security measure, a unique personal code will be sent to a user via text message, or generated on a device or software. “Two-factor authentication and other measures will help reduce hacks against individual accounts. But not group accounts,” Sean Sullivan, a security researcher with F-Secure, told SecurityWatch. Wired also reported that the micro blogging site had posted a job advertisement in February to create a team of engineers to speed up the
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Google chairman Eric Schmidt hinted that the expected launch of Google Glass will now be delayed until 2014, with the first batch of explorer edition glass headsets being shipped to developers this week. “The developers are beginning now and it would be fair to say there will be thousands in use by developers over the next few months,” Schmidt told the BBC. “Then, based on their feedback, we’ll make some product changes – so it’s probably a year-ish away.” Eric Schmidt said that some changes might be incorporated into the Explorer Edition before a final consumer release is pushed ahead in early 2014. Earlier, the search giant was expected to release Google Glass this holiday season, but it seems that the company has fallen behind its anticipated launch schedule. Schmidt, however, did not comment on Google’s pricing intentions for the consumer edition of Google Glass. Earlier, it was expected to be available between $600, or around £400. “In general, these kinds of body wearable devices will bring in a whole bunch of such concerns and the fact of the matter is, we’ll have to develop some new social etiquette. It’s obviously not appropriate to wear these glasses
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