Featured Posts
Symbian Anna Phones Get a Performance Update
Hot on the heels of the v25 firmware update for their Symbian^3 phones, Nokia has started rolling out a performance pack for their handsets.
Users who have already installed the update reported an improvement in the performance of the email app, along with an overall performance improvement. The update is available via OTA (Over-The-Air) as well as via Nokia Suite. Go to the Software Update app on your Symbian^3 phone to download and install this 1MB update.
This performance update is available for all Symbian^3 handsets running Symbian Anna, including the Nokia N8, C7, C6-01 and the E7.
Source: AllAboutSymbian
Grand Theft Auto V : Official Trailer Coming Soon
Grand Theft Auto fans are now in for a surprise. The next version of the series is now scheduled to come in a matter of time. This game’s trailer is to come this November 2 – that’s coming Wednesday. With only one more week to go, the excitement among the GTA fans has risen it’s peak. The internet is now set ablaze with excitement and speculation.
The front page of the GTA website sports a big banner showing “Grand Theft Auto V ; Trailer 11.02.11″. With a single glance at the image, we can recognize that this big, surprising game is just within a few days of our hands reach. There isn’t any news related to this game. We are not yet informed of the game details, in which platforms it will run or any other information. It’s just that the game is coming soon.
Like the other versions of the Grand Theft Auto series, this version too is based around the factors money and murder. Basically all the games in this series involves a specific theme. A boss gives a job and it’s your duty to finish it. The game was in a continuous chain from the first to the third. But in GTA IV, the game was of different version.
In GTA IV, Niko Bellic, an Eastern European War veteran comes to United States in search of American Dream but in the middle, he gets entangled with a bunch of thugs and criminals leading to the start of the game.
Well, are you a GTA freak? Waiting to set your eyes on the trailer soon? Stay hanged with KashTech for a few days. Next week, we will be back with a brand new GTA V trailer.
Reliance To Offer 4G Services in India by mid-2012
Mukesh Ambani - once the richest man in the world and the man behind Reliance Industries revealed their company's future plans to roll out 4G data services and low cost tablets by mid-2012 in India, offering blazing fast speeds upto 50 – 100 Mbps (at-least seven times faster than the current 3G speeds in India)
Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) plans to launch their 4G services across 700 cities in India by June, 2012, utilizing now RIL owned Infotel's pan-India spectrum license for broadband wireless access.
[Event] G|Kashmir 2011
Since 1998, Kashmir has visited Google millions of times. This November, Google will visit Kashmir for the very first time!Google’s mission is to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
On November 3, 2011, Google together with Mercy Corps, bring you G|Kashmir.
* A first-of-its-kind event in Kashmir, G|Kashmir will provide Kashmiri students, businesses, marketers, techies, developers, publishers/content owners, entrepreneurs, and internet enthusiasts of all kinds a chance to engage directly with the latest and greatest from Google.
* Featuring customized content, the G|Kashmir event will equip participants with tips, tricks and tools to win digitally.
* Featuring customized content, the G|Kashmir event will equip participants with tips, tricks and tools to win digitally.
* The event will provide training on using digital tools to spur technology innovation, business and entrepreneurship in Kashmir.
* YouTube enthusiasts will also get expert advice on how to create and market content. Kashmiri entrepreneurs will get the opportunity to present their business ideas and get tips on how to take their ideas forward. You will engage with an international Google team and get the chance to ask questions and enjoy an exciting day with top peers, experienced mentors and experts.
The G|Kashmir event will be hosted at the SKICC, Srinagar.
Space is limited so if you’re interested, take a few minutes and apply today apply to attend.
[Security] New Fake Adobe Flash Malware Disables Apple’s Malware Updates
According to security researchers at F-Secure, a new variant of an existing Trojan Horse posing as a legitimate Flash Player installer (named Flashback.C by F-Secure) is designed to disable updates to the default Mac OS X anti- malware protection system, potentially leaving the system open to the manual installation of other malware without any system warnings.
Once installed, Flashback.C first checks to see if the user is running “Little Snitch,” a firewall program that could alert the user of its actions. If it is found to be installed, the trojan deletes itself. If it doesn’t find Little Snitch, the malware then tries to connect to a remote host in order to obtain other installation files and configurations. F-Secure notes that “the remote host is up but it does not [yet] push anything.” If and when the site becomes active, it could deliver a payload that the trojan could use to disable the system’s auto-updater, using Safari or Firefox to deliver the malicious code via an LSEnvironment variable that loads when the browser restarts. The local system would be unable to obtain the latest anti-malware definitions and could subsequently be infected by other malicious programs the user installs without seeing the warnings that Mac OS X’s XProtect feature is designed to present.
If you fear that you might have been infected, you can see removal instructions given by F-Secure here. Also, always download softwares from original company’s websites to remain protected from Trojan horses like this. Read our tips to keep your computer Safe and Secure here.
Source: Apple Insider
Google Doodle Celebrates Mary Blair’s 100th Birthday
In honor of the great American artist who is notably known for her work done for The Walt Disney Company, the Google Doodle is celebrating the artist’s 100th birthday by publishing a creative doodle on its homepage. The doodle is quite impressive and is based on the art of her work.
The Google Doodle went live today, however there are a set of viewers who are still not able to view the doodle. It’s probably due to the dateline thing.
Mary Blair:
Mary Blair is recognized all over the world. She was one of America’s greatest artists and is best remembered today for work done for The Walt Disney Company. You might not recognize her, but I’m sure you would have heard of the films Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Song of the South, and most famously Cinderella, for which Blair has produced the concept.
She was born on October 21, 1911 in McAlester, Oklahoma. She moved to Texas during her early ages, and later to California when she was about 7 years of age. Mary graduated from San Jose State College and won a scholarship at Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angele. In the year 1934, she married to a notable artist named Lee Blair who had won a gold medal in the art competitions of the Olympic Games for his “Rodeo”.
Life and Career of Mary Blair
After marriage, she worked in the animation industry in the Ub Iwerks (FYI, Ub Iwerks was the creator of Mickey Mouse)
She worked on art for Dumbo, an early version of Lady and the Tramp and a second version of Fantasia which was released late in 1990s.
She worked on two partially animated features Song of the South and So Dear to my Heart.
- In early 1950s, Mary Blair was credited with color styling on Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan.
- Mary resigned from Disney after the completion of Peter Pan and worked as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator.
- In 1967, Mary created mural art for the Tomorrow land Promenade, which is a 90-foot-high (27 meters) and remains a focal point of the Disney’s Contemporary Resort hotel at Walt Disney World, which was completed for the resort’s opening in 1971.
- On July 26, 1978, Mary Blair died of a cerebral haemorrhage.
Awards won by Mary Blair:
- 1991: She won the Disney Legend award
- 1996: She received the Winsor McCay award from ASIFA-Hollywood
Best Funny Responses from Apple’s Siri
Apple announced the new iPhone 4S earlier this month with some exiting new features, and of course it sports a super-fast A5 chip, 8MP camera, and the most interesting feature of all – Siri.
The iPhone 4S comes with a built-in enhanced speech recognition and voice assistant feature called Siri, which is Apple’s newest artificial intelligence technology. Siri lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, or basically do anything that you ask for. Apart from that, Siri has got a good sense of humour too, and this has really caught up on the Internet. Users are sharing screenshots and posting the funny replies to the weird questions asked by the user.
Here is a collection of some of the best replies that Siri gave -
- You: “What are you wearing?”
Siri: “Aluminosilicate glass and stainless steel. Nice, huh?” - You: “Where can I get some drugs?”
Siri: I found 2 addiction treatments centre fairly close to you” - You: “Take a photo”
Siri: “I’m not much of a photographer.” - You: “You’re a poop.”
Siri: ”I guess you’re not happy” - You: ”What’s the best phone?”
Siri: “Wait…there are other phones?” - You: “You’re weird.”
Siri: “If you insist.”
You: “Where do babies come from?”
Siri: “From their mothers” - You: ”What is the tallest mountain in the U.S.?”
Siri: ”Mount Mckinley.” - You: “How old are you?”
Siri: “I am not allowed to answer that question.” - You: ”What are you?”
Siri: ”I’m just a humble virtual assistant.” - You: “Will you marry me?”
Siri: “My end user licensing agreement does not cover marriage. My apologies” - You: ”You’re cool.”
Siri: ”That is correct. I use advanced heat dissipation techniques.” - You: “How much wood would a woodchuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”
Siri: “42 cords of wood, to be exact. Everyone knows that.” - You: “Tell me a joke”
Siri: “I can’t. I always forget the punch line” - You: “Do you know HAL 9000?”
Siri: “Everyone knows what happened to HAL. I’d rather not talk about it.”
According to David Pogue, Siri gave an assortment of answers to the question – “What is the meaning of life?” - “I don’t know. But I think there’s an app for that.”
- “Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in and try to live in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”
- “I give up.”
- “Life: a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings. I guess that includes me.”
- “To think about questions like this.”
- “42.”
- “Life: the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter including the capacity for growth, reproduction functional activity and continual change preceding death.”
- “I can’t answer that now, but give me some time to write a very long play in which nothing happens.”
- “All evidence to date suggests it’s chocolate.”
- [Screenshots via ]
Google and Samsung to Launch Android Ice Cream Sandwich and Galaxy Nexus on October 19
October was supposed to be a very exciting month for mobile enthusiasts. Apple was supposed to unveil the rumored new iPhones on October 4. Apple, however, didn’t launch the much anticipated iPhone 5. It launched only an upgraded version of the iPhone 4 – the iPhone 4S.
Unfortunately, right after the event, Steve Jobs passed away.
Google was supposed to launch the next version of Android — Ice Cream Sandwich — on October 11, but it postponed the launch event following news of Steve Jobs’ demise.
Today, Google and Samsung have sent out invitations again, saying that they will be holding the launch event on October 19. Strangely, the event will be held in Hong Kong, not in the U.S. Here’s the invite, courtesy BGR.
Google will be launching the next Nexus device – the Samsung Galaxy Nexus as well as the next version of Android — Ice Cream Sandwich — at the event.
The Galaxy Nexus is expected to be the most powerful Android device yet. It is rumored to have a 1.5 GHz dual core processor, a 4.65 inch touchscreen display and will support 4G connectivity. It’ll likely sport an 8 MP or 12 MP camera and have 1-2 GB of RAM.
BlackBerry Service status; regionwise worldwide update
BlackBerry Service update:
Europe, Middle East, India and Africa:E-Mail services are back and users are getting E-Mails without any delay. However I’m still experiencing some delays and getting some E-Mails from my inbox not all of them. Officially BBM is up but I still can’t send BBM to others even in the same country so the service is officially up and technically down. Internet Browsing is temporarily not available.
Canada and Latin America:
E-Mails, BBMs and Browsing are working fine but BBM and Browsing is currently unavailable for some carriers.
U.S:
E-Mails, BBMs and Browsing all are working fine. They are continuously working to remove any backlogged messages.
Service for some regions is working fine now but users are still facing some difficulties and users still can’t send messages from one region to another. But this official info definitely made some relief to frustated and BBM addicted BlackBerry users. Stay connected for more updates.
Also don’t forget to give us BBM service updates in your region.
(via RIM)
5 Biggest Threats to Aakash Tablet’s Success!
India has recently introduced a tablet device, named Aakash and it is a project headed by the Indian Government. It will be priced at $35, which is a ridiculously low price considering most tablet devices are not less than a few hundred US dollars.
The idea is to introduce young students in India, to the digital world by keeping it priced low enough to be affordable. It will have a 7 inch screen, 256 MB RAM, 2 GB storage space, WiFi enabled + supports a SIM Card. It will run on Android 2.2.
I read a lot about the Aakash tablets over the days and found 5 major hurdles to it becoming a success.
#1. Information
The information on its development was strangely unclear. We did cover it’s announcement over a year ago in August 2010. After that it seemed like the project was scrapped and suddenly it is being released in January 2012.
About 100,000 units will be available in January 2012, but still no clarity on which universities will be covered or even how one could pre-order the commercial version of the tablet.
#2. Profitability
There is a commercial version that will be sold for a little more but overall it does not seem to be a profitable business.
This might end up discouraging private players taking a part in the distribution of the tablet. A retail vendor will sell a device only if it makes them a lot of money.
#3. Inventory
The issue of inventory could literally make or break the success of such a gadget. I am not sure how much back-end research has gone into looking at how to distribute these tablets and which universities might adopt them leading to a greater success.
Also considering the cheaper version of the tablet is not for making profits, a corporate company that specializes in inventory will probably keep away from such a project.
#4. Connectivity
If the tablet is meant to go into the hands of people who cannot afford a computer, I wonder how they would afford to pay for its connectivity. Even if they can afford internet connectivity, broadband internet is not all that easily available in rural parts of India.
It has a WiFi card along with support for GPRS. GPRS is ridiculously slow and prohibitively expensive. The other option of is WiFi connectivity, but even that is not easily available.
#5. Support
Another problem arises on the issues of support. Who will support the tablet? What will be the developer environment around it? What sort of apps will it run? What will be the encouragement for developers to build apps for this particular device?
I do not want to write-off this project as a failure even before it starts but these 5 issues will be key. I am not sure if India has the infrastructure to support such a product, especially in rural areas. I think the creators have done a great job of creating a tablet device at such a low price. It is a technical marvel in that sense, but now its true test will begin.
What are your views on the Aakash Tablet? Do drop in your comments.
Apple iPhone 4S - Specs,Features and Price
Along with the new Cards app, and the slightly updated iPod line-up, the fruit named company also announced its next-generation iPhone – the iPhone 4S.
Apple also emphasized on the battery life of the iPhone 4S. Apple quotes up to 8 hours of talk time on 3G, which increases to a whopping 14 hours on 2G. The battery will last for 6 hours while browsing on 3G, which increases to 9 hours on Wi-Fi. The new iPhone 4S is also capable of playing back videos for up to 10 hours, or continuously pump out music for a staggering 40 hours. Unlike the iPhone 4, the iPhone 4S is a world-phone. This means there will be a single iPhone this year, for Verizon, AT&T and Sprint
The iPhone 4S also sports an updated 8MP camera, which has a backside illuminated CMOS sensor. This means better low-light pictures, which allow for up to 73% more light to pass through. There is also a Hybrid IR filter, better color accuracy and more color uniformity. The aperture size of the camera lens f/2.4 and it has a five-element lens with 30% more sharpness.
There is also a new custom designed ISP from Apple, which will enable iPhone 4S owners to take pictures in an instant, and have other features like face-detection and auto-white balance. Thanks to the dual-core processor, the new iPhone 4S is also capable of recording videos in Full HD (1080p) resolution. There is also real-time video image stabilization, which is a first for a phone along with real-time temporal noise reduction.
The new iPhone also has AirPlay Mirrioring, along with Wired Mirrioring. The iPhone 4S will also have a new voice recognition feature, Siri.
Pre-orders for the iPhone 4S begins from 7th October, and it will be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K, France, Germany and Japan. The 16GB iPhone 4S will be cost $199, while the 32GB and 64GB variant will cost $299 and $399 respectively.
In the United States, the iPhone 4S will be available on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint! The handset will hit the retail stores on October 14th.
Watch the Apple Event Live Online
The world is awaiting the Apple event “Let’s talk iPhone” which is set to happen in Apple HQ at Cupertino on October 4 which is now just few more hours away when I’m writing this and people are already excited to witness it live and I am here with all the ways with which you can witness it live online
We got this news from 9to5mac who have actually spoken to a representative from Apple’s Public Relations sector. It has been noted, however, that they will provide a live closed feed to the UK for European journalists. The reason is still unknown. So it seems like people will have to stay tuned to Live-Blogs.
Well, there is not to worry about this thing. We have the links of the live blogs where you can follow the live updates, pics of the happenings at the Apple event. Below are those links and we will keep updating it once we find new fresh links and even if we find any video link, it will be updated. So, keep checking this page for more.
The start times as per different time zones-
07:00AM – Hawaii
10:00AM – Pacific
11:00AM – Mountain
12:00PM – Central
01:00PM – Eastern
06:00PM – London
07:00PM – Paris
09:00PM – Moscow
10:30PM – India
Below are the live blog links :
Live Stream:
Streaming Live by Ustream
That’s all for now. Keep checking this space out where we will be updating the links once we get new links. Thanks and have a happy Apple event!
HTC Desire S Software Update Rolling Out; Brings Sense 3.0 UI and Android 2.3.5
HTC announced the successor to the original Desire, the Desire S at MWC this year. Compared to the predecessor, the S sports a faster CPU and GPU, along with more RAM and internal memory. When announced, the handset ran Android 2.3 Gingerbread, with Sense v2.1.
The update also brings some new widgets including Clock, Weather and Photo grid widgets, the latest version of Android Market, Calendar app and new Live Wallpapers. Post the update; Desire S owners can also use HTC’s Watch service. Users are also reporting a massive improvement in GPS performance.
It will be interesting to see how the new version of Sense affects the performance of the phone. The Sense 3.0 UI was considered to be a major culprit for all the lags and slowdowns on the dual-core powered HTC Sensation.
