Latest News - Page 3010

Nokia and Microsoft have pushed out an over-the-air (OTA) update to AT&T Lumia 920s and 820s. The new update is a pretty important OTA update, with the companies saying that it will help Bluetooth reliability and connectivity, bolster Nokia Messaging, improve start-up performance, and update battery management.

Currently, you'll have to be on AT&T or Canadian's Rogers to get the update, though Nokia insists that they are "working with our operator partners in all regions to ensure the highest quality experience in every market." They add that they are "working closely with Microsoft...to deliver these updates to other markets in early February 2013."

So, if you have a Lumia 920 or 820 on another carrier, you have another 2 months, or so, to wait until you get these same improvements. Of course, you're highly encouraged to download the OTA update if you can as the fixes and updates are pretty significant.

I don't quite see what Tim Cook has done for the world to win the award "Person of the Year", but TIME have unveiled their shortlist of people up for the award. Apple CEO Tim Cook is on the list, and so is Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer.

The Person of the Year award is given to "a person, couple, group, idea, place, or machine" that has "for better or worse done the most to influence the events of the year". At the end, TIME's editorial team decide the winner. Also making the list, are Malala Yousafzai, who was the young Pakistani activist who suffered a head wound after being shot by the Taliban, second-term US president Barack Obama, Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as the three scientists behind the discovery of the Higgs Boson.

Why can't we see something different on the list? Maybe the whole 2012 Doomsday phenomenon, after all that is an "idea" of what could happen and has captured the world over the last few months as we get closer to December 21. I just think that someone who falls into a position like Cook, and has thousands of engineers, marketers and hundreds of departments under him doing most of the actual work, shouldn't win an award with a title of "Person of the Year".

PayPal has just been updated and includes a nice new feature: landscape support. Now you can turn your phone sideways and enjoy landscape PayPal, if that's something you'd like to see. There's also the ability to set a payment preference for specific stores.

This ability can come in handy if you'd like to use a particular card at one store, and another for something more simple like a coffee shop of McDonald's. The change log also states that PayPal have improved the performance of check scanning, as well as the usual bug fixes.

The app sports improved security and a few UI fixes, and you can get the app right here from the Google Play Store.

Nokia aren't doing huge things in the market these days, and while they've launched their latest Lumia devices, they aren't touching the sales of the iPhone or Galaxy devices. This latest rumor is sparking some interest, where the talk is that the company have entered into an agreement with ODM Compal, Microsoft and Qualcomm for a 10-inch tablet.

This 10-inch slate would run Windows RT and would be exposed to the world at Mobile World Congress in February next year. The above image shows off a mockup that Nokia Lumia Tabs showed off in 2011, and there have been reports from DigiTimes that Nokia wanted to release a 10-inch tablet this year, but had to push these plans into 2013 because of Microsoft's Surface RT slate.

With Qualcomm being involved, we should expect the Snapdragon S4 Pro to be the SoC of choice in the Nokia 10-inch tablet, which should give it some powerhouse performance. If Nokia can make it look great, perform well, and most of all - price it very, very competitively, Nokia could be back in the game in no time. If Nokia were to release it at, let's say, $399, it would be a huge contendor to the iPad and Nexus 10.

Ultrabooks have been here for a while, but they can be thinner, right? Well, NEC have added another member to their Lavie notebook family with a new premium system that is said to be the thinnest of its kind. At its slimmest point, NEC's new 15.6-inch Lavie X Ultrabook is only 0.5 inches thick, which is quite amazing.

In order to get it down to this super-thin design, NEC required ultra-thin internal components that measured less than 3.5mm thick, as well as a specially engineered keyboard that took 1mm off the design. There is, however, two fans that measure 5mm in thickness in the Lavie X. It doesn't weigh too much, either, at just 3.5lbs (1.59kg) - compared to the 13.3-inch Lavie Z which is 1.92lb (0.87kg).

At 1.59kg, you're receiving the 15.6-inch 1080p IPS screen, 1.9GHz Intel Core i7-3517U processor, 4GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, two USB 3.0 ports, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 + HS, HDMI-out, an SD card reader and 2-megapixel webcam. NEC's Lavie X offers up to seven hours of run time and its battery can be rapidly recharged to about 80% of its total in just a single hour.

That's right, folks. I was on a recent shopping trip to Target (you know, the up-scale Walmart?) and aimlessly walked through the toy department when my eye spotted the new game arrivals. Let me tell you, I'm a bit of a sucker for board games and the like, so I was really tempted to buy these. Something tells me, however, they are better on my phone.

That's right, I've compiled a list of my favorite mobile apps that have been turned into physical versions of the games. (I really hope you can detect the sarcasm!) These apps, some of which already existed in board game form, have been brought out of the digital age so that you can play them by candle light when the power goes out.

Number 5: Cut The Rope

Penguin, along with several other publishers, and Apple were accused of fixing prices on e-books. Penguin is the latest to join the group of publishers who have settled with the DOJ, leaving just Apple and Macmillan to fight the DOJ's allegations of price fixing. The lawsuit was originally filed last April and accuses Apple and five book publishers of conspiring to raise prices.

Penguin's statement regarding the settlement:

Instagram has caught a bit of flak over the past couple of days after releasing updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy documents. The reason? Inside the new documents there seemed to be a bit of text that indicated Instagram was planning on selling users' pictures without any sort of compensation.

Instagram has now apologized for the text that was "confusing" and says they are working on updating it to be more clear. They say the bottom line is that "it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear."

Instagram offers the following regarding ownership rights and privacy settings:

Mobile security firm Lookout has found a botnet as of December 3, which it is calling SpamSoldier. The threat was detected with the help of one of Lookout's carrier partners, though which has not been said. The botnet spreads through text messages and has not been detected on any major app store.

Two, of many, spam campaigns are shown below:

Apple has been refused the sales ban they were seeking on 26 of Samsung's devices. Judge Lucy Koh ruled that Apple did not prove that consumer demand for Samsung's products was directly related to the technology owned by Apple. In other words, people weren't buying Samsung's devices because of the rubber-band effect or other patents it is said to be infringing upon.

"Samsung may have cut into Apple's customer base somewhat, but there is no suggestion that Samsung will wipe out Apple's customer base, or force Apple out of the business of making smartphones," Koh said. "The present case involves lost sales -- not a lost ability to be a viable market participant."

A sales ban wouldn't have even hurt Samsung very much, since only three of the devices, out of the 26, are still being sold. A new trial, which contains updated devices, such as the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S III, is set to go in front of Judge Koh in a trial scheduled for 2014.

NVIDIA's next mobile processor the Tegra 4 (codenamed Wayne) has been leaked and it packs a punch powerful enough to possibly deliver a knock out punch to its Snapdragon rival.

Built on a 28nm process, the Tegra 4 will feature a 72 core graphics setup which will be able to support a resolution of 2,560 x 1600 with 1080p output at 120Hz.

Unfortunately the Tegra 4 will not see a gain in CPU cores, as it will be keeping the current 4+1 setup. A move to ARM's new Cortex-A15 is all but certain though. One major improvement is the move to USB 3.0 and will be NVIDIA's first mobile chip to do so. Rounding things out is dual channel DDR3L memory which will definitely speed things up. Expect release sometime in early 2013.

Just days before the world reportedly ends, leaked details of AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 8000M "Solar System" range of mobile GPUs have made their way onto the shores of the Internet.

The new mobile GPUs are set to launch for CES 2013, and will be based on the new Graphics CoreNext (GCN) micro-architecture. GCN supports DirectX 11.1, Enduro Technology and AMD ZeroCore power technology. Enduro is an NVIDIA Optimus-like tech which switches between discrete and integrated GPUs while the ZeroCore tech can completely power down GPUs when they're not needed.

Peering over the slides, we can see there is a new ASIC which covers three product lines - HD 8500M, HD 8600M and the HD 8700M. The sure-to-be-sweet silicon sports 384 GCN stream processors, a 128-bit memory interface that supports both GDDR5 and DDR3. The HD 8500M series sports GPU clock speeds of up to 650MHz, with the 8600M cranking it up to 775MHz. The 8700M series goes one better and sees clock speeds hitting 850MHz.

Google's Nexus 4 smartphone is one of the best smartphones on the market, and if you're lucky enough to get one, you treasure it. But, stock has been so up and down lately, and it looks like Google just can't get enough of them into consumers' hands.

Google UK and Ireland Managing Director Dan Cobley took to his Google+ page to explain what has been happening, where he blamed LG on their "scarce and erratic" supplies to Google, admitting that their communication had been flawed. Cobley took it a step further personally offering "an unreserved apology" to Nexus 4 buyers, calling the delays "unacceptable", and he has promised to work "through the nights and weekends" to resolve the issue.

There should hopefully be some shipments heading out before Christmas, and for the full statement from Cobley, read below:

With BlackBerry 10 being RIM's last ditch effort to compete with the too-powerful Apple and Google, leaked screenshots are now here to try and help would be customers to get excited.

The leaked shots show off the BlackBerry 10 L-Series, which has been revealed by some people on the Tinhte Vietnamese forums. The new pictures show off the updated UI from RIM, and show off the new "BlackBerry Hub" which is an all-in-one message center that sports a voice interface.

You'll see that the pull-down menu looks suspiciously close to Android 4.1/4.2 Jelly Bean, and the home screen just looks like a poor mans version of iOS and Android. Personally I'm not enjoying what I'm seeing and I already see RIM as a sinking ship - do you think this will turn them around? Do the leaked shots excite you at all?

Apple users were patiently waiting for the true maps application to come out, after Apple tripped over themselves releasing the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 with its lackluster navigation app.

Well, Google released Google Maps for iOS last week and it has since passed 10 million downloads. The news comes from Google's Senior Vice President of Commerce and Local, Jeff Huber.

It goes to show the power of Google Maps, and just how popular they are. Apple are going to have a very rough road ahead of them for bringing users back to their Maps app, even if it went through huge changes.

I'm sure most of you heard about that satellite that was launched into space by North Korea. Most of the developed world is upset at the country for this missile launch as many believe it was actually a test of a ballistic missile and not just to put a satellite in space. However, it looks like that satellite may now be broken.

"It's tumbling and we haven't picked up any transmissions," said Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks global rocket launchings and space activity. "Those two things are most consistent with the satellite being entirely inactive at this point."

The reason for failure isn't immediately clear, though it appears as though the onboard systems have failed. "It's clear that the rocket part of this mission worked very well for the North Koreans," Dr. McDowell said in an interview. "They ended up in the right orbit. But the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the satellite failed either during the ascent or shortly afterwards."

Instagram has updated it policies to reflect that it now shares your data with its parent company Facebook. This most likely has no affect on most users and Facebook already has all the data anyway.

The major change here is that the old policy stated that instagram shared your data with "Service providers" and third party advertisers, and now it shares that data with "Affiliates".

None of this should come as a surprise though as Facebook is after all a company that earns its paycheck by collecting user data. Users are still able to choose who their instagram photos are shared with, and they still can choose not to post the photos on Facebook.

Convinced that the world will end on December 21 2012? Well thanks to the folks running the Slooh Space Camera, you can watch it all unfold online!

The online Slooh Space Camera will broadcase a series of live cosmic shots all week starting today. The webcast which are free will aid in helping us keep track of any monster solar storms, impending asteroid strikes or other potential agents of the so-called "Mayan apocalypse" that doomsayers claim is set for Friday.

"By acting independently of any government agency, which assumedly would be disbelieved by the millions who are convinced a giant cover-up is in place, Slooh will observe the planets and the ecliptic plane for anything out of the ordinary," Said Astronomy Magazine columnist Bob Berman.

Sprint announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase the remaining 50% of Clearwire stock it does not own for $2.97 a share, which equates to a 2.2 billion dollar acquisition. This puts a total value of $10 billion dollars which includes a spectrum lease obligation of $5.5 billion.

Clearwire share holders have to be pretty happy this morning as the sprint acquisition nets them a 128% premium when compared to the day before the Sprint-SoftBank discussions were first confirmed on October 11, 2012.

The newly acquired spectrum will strengthen its position and greatly increase it's competitiveness in the US wireless market. Sprints Network Vision architecture will allow for better strategic alignment, and will no doubt result in improved performance for Sprint's customers.

WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, has revealed his plans to run for a Senate seat in the 2013 Australian federal election. The WikiLeaks founder says that his goal for a political party has quickly gained speed and that there is tonnes of support in his home country, Australia.

Assange will be looking for a Senate seat which will be under his own, new political party named the 'WikiLeaks Party'. Assange requires 500 Australian citizens at a minimum to sign up for the new WikiLeaks Party name for it to be officially recognized. Assange feels that his WikiLeaks Party would be great for an open government and is a requirement these days when they see is an illegal government operating, and spying on citizens.

Assange feels that its his goal to keep personal privacy, personal and says its at stake all around the world right now. I can tell you this much, Assange, I'll be voting for you next year as an Australian.