Author: Shivaank Rana

Audi R8 Catches Fire During 2013 Parx Supercar Rally In India

Courtesy : Pardaphash

The Parx Supercar Rally at Mumbai is a ‘must-go’ for every supercar owner and fan in this region of the country. The Parx offers one of the biggest assemblage of supercars in the country and attending the show has always been a memorable experience for the participants.

This year, the supercar show has got even bigger with more ‘drool-maal’ and a lot more horsepower. However, an incident today has left everyone terrified and saddened. An Audi R8 supercar caught fire on the Bandra Worli Sea Link. The car that costs anything between Rs 1.36 Crore to Rs 1.75 Crore was burnt while the owner revved to let its engine heat enough to catch fire.

Courtesy : Pardaphash

The Audi R8 sportscar which was engulfed by flames, was not part of the 2013 Parx Supercar Rally. Lucky for the driver of R8, his life was saved by the prompt action from participants of the 2013 Parx Supercar Rally.

Michael Perschke, Head of Audi India and a part the rally asked media to be patient until his team judges the exact cause of the fire. The unlucky R8 is now in possession of Audi India and initial research suggests that the car had been modified by the owner.

Gautam Singhania, Founder and Chairman of the Supercar club of India, who too was a part of the Rally, addressed the media stating that the car did not belong to their club. He added that the Audi R8, in the picture here, raced at a very fast speed and overtake their cars who participated in the Rally. In doing so, the Audi R8 caught fire. Being an experienced supercar driver, Gautam was asked, what could be the reason behind the fire that engulfed Audi R8. To this he replied that the manufacturer will be able to give a better answer.

He later tweeted. “Today had a unique opportunity to save an unknown hapless driver out of an Audi R8 which caught fire on Sea Link, along with my SCC members.”

[Pardaphash]

January 27, 2013
Carphone Warehouse Internal Database Leak Shows BlackBerry Z10 Priced At INR 40,000!

As we await for the arrival of the rumoured BlackBerry Z10 at the end of January, not much has been shared about pricing. However according to a new leak, it will be £30 less than an unlocked iPhone 5. Engadget has received a photo, claiming to be a shot of Carphone Warehouse’s internal listings, showing a BlackBerry Z10 in white for the SIM-free price of £479.95 or roughly Rs 40,000.

We know what RIM’s flagship BlackBerry Z10 smartphone will look like, what it’s capable of and when it’ll be launched. Now we’ve got the first indication of how much it will cost.

RIM is set to officially unveil its BlackBerry 10 operating system and the first two devices that will first carry it on 30 January in several countries around the globe. One has to wonder whether RIM will have anything left to surprise us with when its global launch events kick off on Wednesday.

BlackBerry 10 and the BlackBerry Z10 have already been completely exposed by several leaks online. The touchscreen Z10 – with the BlackBerry X10 being the Qwerty keyboard-touting phone of the launch duo – has a 4.2-inch display. It’s not Full HD, being only 1280 x 768, but is powered by a dual-core 1.5GHz OMAP 4470 processor with 2GB of RAM.

So BlackBerry fans should prepare their wallets as this one won’t come cheap.

Via Engadget

January 27, 2013
Latest Chrome Beta Has Hidden Full Screen Mode

A curious Nexus 7 user (Smackel from Reddit) accidentally found out we can turn this hidden feature, Chrome running full screen on an Android device, on by pulling some strings and making a few tricks.

Full screen browsing is top of many an Android fans wish list for Google’s mobile version of the Chrome browser. On smartphone screens in particular, display space is important. It seems it might not be all that far away.

As we know, the latest beta build brought about support for WebGL in the mobile browser, and the first thing we need to do is go ahead and enable it. Type the magic line — “chrome://flags/ — into the address bar, and scroll down the list presented before you until you find WebGL. Tap on enable, then follow the prompt to restart the browser.

When Chrome has restarted, you want to head on over to the Chrome Experiment Boids and Buildings. Tap on the “launch experiment” button, then the “run” button when the main screen pops up. Then it’s simply a case of sitting back and watching. You don’t need to let it run right through, but it is pretty cool to watch this city get drawn out and constructed in front of you. At this point it’s also worth noting that it seems to run pretty well in the mobile browser.

When you come back out of the experiment though, you’ll notice the status bar at the top of the screen has vanished, and the address bar in Chrome has gone a little translucent. After a couple of seconds of doing nothing it just disappears completely. And there we have it, full screen browsing.

It is buggy, but it does work, and expands your web pages to take up the full display — on screen buttons not included. To get the address bar back takes just a swipe down from the top, although said swipe doesn’t bring the status bar back with it. Full screen mode seems to stay in place until you exit the app completely.

Via Android Central

January 27, 2013
Leaked : Blackberry Z10 Press Shots

Courtesy of @evleaks, we get to see a pair or high-quality press pics of the yet unannounced BlackBerry Z10, a device which some consider to be the company’s Hail Mary Pass as their financial situation has been on a steady decline for months. While these aren’t the first images we’ve seen of BlackBerry’s upcoming Z10 smartphone, they do appear to be the first official press images of the device which might be released as early as February 5th. The beleaguered RIM is pinning its hopes on its new BlackBerry 10 OS so it’s possible that the future of the company is riding on the success of the Z10.

The BlackBerry Z10, the very first one, has already leaked out countless times in images and video and judging by all we’ve seen so far we have no reason to doubt its veracity.

The BlackBerry Z10 is rumored to feature a 4.2 inch HD display with a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels, it will also come with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of built in storage, plus a 1,800 mAh battery.

RIM will officially launch Blackberry Z10 on the 30th of January along with two BlackBerry 10 devices, the BlackBerry Z10 and the BlackBerry X10, we should have full details on both handsets after the official announcement.

Overall, we definitely like the design. It’s nothing too special by any means, but it’s sleek and stealthy, and it definitely has that BlackBerry feel to it. Since BlackBerry 10 seems to be a competent platform, we can’t see a reason why the Z10 wouldn’t be a success for RIM, but we’ll ultimately have to wait and see later this month.

January 26, 2013
France Bans the Word ‘Hashtag’

#RIP the hashtag. It had a good run, August 2007 – January 2013. At least it’s still alive and respected in every other country apart from France.

It’s a dark day for the Gallic Internet, as the French Government drive to preserve their language by altering the settled will of the online community. The hashtag will no longer be used in official communications or papers.The replacement term will be mot-dièse.

The decision was made by a government office, the Commission Générale de Terminologie et de Néologie, which is tasked with inventing French-language equivalents to foreign-language terms found popping up in France.

While Twitter users in France won’t be penalized for referring to hashtags, all official French government legislation and correspondence will be required to refer to mot-dièses instead of hashtags. Back in 2003, the same commission mandated French citizens refer to email as courriel with some success. Compared to other Western governments, France actively takes an interventionist approach to Internet use within the country: Various protectionist Internet laws have been proposed, including taxing Internet companies for data mining. All this is in addition to paternalist policies surrounding the French language to stop cross-cultural fusion like le hamburger. Maybe they’re just nostalgic for the days of the Minitel?

[Forbes]

January 26, 2013
H.265 Video Format Approved, Ensures High-Quality Video At Half Bit-Rate

Back in August we reported that MPEG had released a new draft for a video codec, H.265, also informally known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) – now, the video format has been approved by the ITU. This approval could eventually see Ultra HD 4K video to future networks, as well as making streaming HD video on low bandwidth mobile networks.

The new video format is the successor to the H.264 codec, which nearly every video publisher has standardized after the release of the iPad and several other connected devices. It seems crazy now, but once upon a time, Apple’s adoption of H.264 and insistence on HTML5-based video players was controversial — especially since most video before the iPad was encoded in VP6 to play through Adobe’s proprietary Flash player.

The hope is that, through improved compression techniques, H.265 will enable publishers to stream 1080p video with about half as many bits as required today. That should make true streaming HD video available not just in broadband households, but on mobile and tablet devices, using networks that are a lot more bandwidth-constrained. Doing so could make online video more widely available in markets with poor connectivity or mostly mobile connections.

In places where there is decent broadband connectivity, H.265 could enable even higher-quality video. With 4K TVs finally becoming available, there’s an opportunity for even greater video resolution. The only problem is that networks aren’t built to support the load that streaming that video would require. With H.265, 4K streaming could be possible with as little as 20-30 Mbps of bandwidth. Still a lot by today’s standards, but not completely unheard of.

We should see software encoders by the end of the year, but hardware? Not in the short-term. Broadcom announced at CES that they had their new BCM7445 chip which was one of the first to support H.265. Devices with this chip won’t be seen until 2014 at least, as high-volume shipments aren’t expected to ramp up until then.

[Tech Crunch]

January 26, 2013
Sony Releases Jelly Bean Alpha ROM For Xperia T

Sony Mobile has just announced that they have rolled out the Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean alpha ROM for the Xperia T, and if you prefer to go by model numbers, then LT30p would fit the bill nicely. This is certainly in line with the corporate character of Sony Mobile, as their tradition had always been to introduce alpha and beta ROMs for upcoming firmware updates. Needless to say, you ought to take into consideration that pre-release firmware is only meant for folks who want to check out what is to come in the most recent update.

A few caveats apply here — radio functionality like Bluetooth, Wifi and mobile data is not included (likely for regulatory reasons), nor are Google apps. In addition, Sony says the UI has not yet been updated to reflect the final look and feel of the Xperia Jelly Bean firmware — i.e. what’s on the new Xperia Z. And crucially, if you unlock your Xperia T and apply this alpha ROM, you won’t be able to update to the official Jelly Bean firmware once it’s released. So this ROM really is one for advanced users and adventurous devs only.

The Xperia T is a great phone, and should find itself significantly better with a dash of Google Now and Project Butter, the main ingredients in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

Hopefully today’s release will accelerate the progress of Jelly Bean-based custom ROMs for the Xperia T. If nothing else, we’d expect this to be hacked into something with working radios and Google Apps in a relatively short space of time. If you possess both a Sony Xperia T and a strong sense of adventure, you can find full instructions over at the source link.

Source: Sony Developer World Blog , Android Central

January 26, 2013
Microsoft Q2 2013 Earnings Indicate $21.56b Revenue, $6.38b Profit

Microsoft says its fourth-quarter earnings slipped 4 percent, despite a lift from its latest version of Windows.

The Redmond, Washington-based software giant posted revenue of $21.46 billion and net income of $6.38 billion, with earnings per share of 77 cents. That’s largely in line with what Wall Street had been expecting, though a bit lower on the revenue side and higher on the earnings side — ahead of today’s financial report, the analyst consensus was that Microsoft would post earnings of 75 cents a share on $21.53 billion in revenue.

The results announced Thursday are the first to include Windows 8. The program is a dramatic overhaul of the Microsoft Corp operating system that powers most PCs. Windows 8 came out 26 October with slightly more than two months left in Microsoft’s fiscal second quarter.

When Windows 8 finally hit the market, Microsoft also unveiled its own tablet computer, Surface, as a showcase for the operating system. Microsoft didn’t disclose Thursday how many Surface devices were sold in the October-December period.

Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division, which is responsible for the Xbox and Surface, saw an 11% decline from last year, with only $3.77 billion of revenue. This comes after Microsoft announced that the Xbox 360 was the top-selling gaming console for two years straight. It looks like holiday sales weren’t as great as the company expected.

Microsoft’s Online Services division saw more growth, however, with $869 million in revenue, which is an 11% increase year-over-year. Thanks to the upcoming Office 365 suite and SkyDrive, Microsoft’s online services don’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon, especially with the deal that Microsoft made with the city of Chicago to bring Office 365 services to city employees.

January 25, 2013
Apple Launches ‘Get Stuff Done’ Promotion For Mac App Store

Apple on Thursday kicked off a three-week promotional campaign offering discounts on a number of productivity apps in the OS X App Store, with each week featuring a new section and a different batch of titles from which to choose.

New discounted Apps will be made available every week, under the categories of “Prioritize”, “Organize” and “Utilize”. This week, Apple is focusing on the first category, offering certain To-Do apps for way less than they would generally be sold for, some as much as 50% off. Many well-known apps are on offer, namely Things 2 (available for $24.99), Todo (for $6.99), Due ($4.99), The Hit List ($24.99), BreakTime ($2.99), TaskPaper ($11.99), 2Do ($14.99) and Clear ($6.99).

As reported by TUAW, if you are looking to snap up a good deal, you should hurry, since these offers are expiring on January 31^st. If you to-do lists are not your thing, worry not, since Apple will offer more discounted apps starting next week, first under the “Organise” category and “Utilize” the week after.

January 25, 2013
Samsung Posts Record Q4 Net Profit

Samsung announced its Q4 2012 financial results today and, as expected, they are impressive. Consolidated operating profit over the three-month period hit a new record of 8.84 trillion won (circa $8.3 billion), from revenue of 56.06 trillion won (approximately $52.4 billion). The firm saw its profit increase 10 percent on the previous quarter — that’s 89 percent year-on-year– while revenue was up 7 percent on Q3 2012 and 19 percent year-on-year).

Mobile has always been a key market for Samsung, but the release is terribly vague when it comes to breaking down exactly how the company did with regard to units sold. Even so, revenue from Samsung’s Mobile Communications division grew 4 percent from the prior quarter, and Samsung specifically calls out the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II as key performers — the inclusion of the latter isn’t much of a shock considering it sold around 5 million units in its first two months on the market, and is reportedly nearing 10 million units sold globally. Taking a step back, Samsung’s IT and Mobile Communications unit as a whole reported 5.44 trillion won ($5.09 billion), slightly down from Q3 but more than double the 2.56 trillion won ($2.39 billion) Samsung recorded in the year-ago quarter.

[quote]Robert Yi, senior vice president and head of Investor Relations, said: “Despite uncertainties in Europe and concerns over the US fiscal cliff creating a difficult business environment, we did our best this quarter to achieve strong earnings based on a strategic focus on differentiated and high value-added products as well as our technological competitiveness.”[/quote]

However, despite the firm’s impressive Q4 profits, Yi remains cautious with regards to Samsung’s position in the market over the coming 12 months.

The company has suggested that the significant number of new products coming to market and the inevitable price competition to follow will make 2013 a challenging year.

January 25, 2013
Lenovo Interested In Buying RIM’s Hardware Division

RIM is about to release its latest BlackBerry 10 platform by next week. But even with this new development, the Canadian company is not off the hook when it comes to its market predicament. BlackBerry is a platform on the decline, and apart from BB10, RIM is thinking of ways to revitalize its business. Among the possibilities is licensing is operating system or even selling off its hardware division.

Lenovo is reportedly mulling over a purchase of RIM’s traditionally-unprofitable hardware division as it determines how best to move into the international smartphone and tablet market.

Lenovo is the world’s number two PC manufacturer, and although sales have been strong over the last few quarters, rocketing past Dell in market share, desktop and laptop sales are slowing in the wake of smartphones and tablet proliferation. Lenovo rose to be the number two smartphone maker in China in 2012, but it has a lot of work to do if it ever wants to be an international player.

Analysts speculate that even if BlackBerry 10 proves a success for the company — which, if early indications are a bellwether, it likely will — RIM may choose to sell its hardware business anyway, focusing on its network and software assets. A partnership with a company like Lenovo or even Samsung, which was also rumoured to be interested in acquiring RIM at one point, could push the Waterloo-based outfit back into the black.

On related news, RIM’s shares rose with the reports of Lenovo’s interest. The Toronto Stock Exchange-listed shares rose 3%. Still analysts say RIM is likely to wait until it launches BlackBerry 10 before seriously considering partnerships or asset sales.

[Mobile Syrup]

January 25, 2013
Sony Fined $395K For 2011 PlayStation Network Hack, Plans Appeal

Sony Computer Entertainment has been fined a record £250,000 by the data protection watchdog after the personal details of millions of gamers – including passwords and credit card numbers – were leaked online.

The Information Commissioner’s Office on Thursday said the security breach was “one of the most serious” it has handled under the Data Protection Act. The £250,000 fine is the maximum penalty awarded by the ICO against a private company.

The privacy blunder happened in April 2011, when computer hackers targeted the Sony PlayStation Network. It compromised the personal information of millions of customers, including names, addresses, e-mail addresses, dates of birth and account passwords. Customers’ payment card details were also at risk, the ICO said.

“An ICO investigation found that the attack could have been prevented if the software had been up to date, while technical developments also meant passwords were not secure,” it added.

Sony, however, has released a statement saying that it plans to appeal the fine.

“Sony Computer Entertainment Europe strongly disagrees with the ICO’s ruling and is planning an appeal,” it said. “SCEE notes, however, that the ICO recognises Sony was the victim of “a focused and determined criminal attack,” that “there is no evidence that encrypted payment card details were accessed,” and that “personal data is unlikely to have been used for fraudulent purposes” following the attack on the PlayStation Network.”

Sony executives, including President and CEO of Sony Corporation Kazuo Hirai, made a public apology for the PSN hack in May 2011

January 24, 2013
End Of The Road! Nokia 808 Pureview Was Last Symbian Phone

Nokia has confirmed in its Q4 financial results that the 808 Pureview smartphone will be the last Symbian device it will ever produce.

This morning Nokia reported operating profits for the first time in six quarters of €439m on revenues of €8.04bn and chimed that its strategy to turn its fortunes around is working.

An essential part of that turnaround strategy has been an alliance with Microsoft to produce smartphones based on the Windows Phone operating system.

That strategy is paying dividends with over 4m Lumia devices shipped during the busy Christmas sales season. The casualty of this strategy, however, is Nokia’s longstanding use of the Symbian operating system.

[quote]In its fourth quarter and full year 2012 Interim Report (spotted by the eagle eyes at TechCrunch), Nokia states: “During our transition to Windows Phone through 2012, we continued to ship devices based on Symbian. The Nokia 808 PureView, a device which showcases our imaging capabilities and which came to market in mid 2012, was the last Symbian device from Nokia.”[/quote]

The news, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone really, means the transition to Windows Phone is complete from a hardware perspective, although we suspect Nokia still has plenty of Symbian handsets still on shelves around the world for those that want a piece of history.

Symbian OS on Nokia devices has played a key part in the smartphone game over the past ten years, but its significance was severely reduced once the touchscreen revolution started. Some of the most notable phones to come out of Nokia were powered by Symbian – beginning with the 9210 Communicator. The Nokia E61 started a messenger phone hype that peaked with the E71, making Symbian OS the only viable competitor to the then-strong BlackBerry portfolio of messengers.

The 808 PureView, Nokia’s last Symbian device, picked up the Best New Mobile Handset Award at the Mobile World Congress in 2012. The device created quite a stir at the time because it came with a 41-megapixel camera lens from Carl Zeiss as well as NFC capabilities.

Nokia is rumoured, and almost expected, to include PureView technology in a new Windows Phone 8 smartphone out later this year.

We will keep you posted.

January 24, 2013
Temple Run 2 For Android Available Now! Get Downloading!

The highly-acclaimed Temple Run for Android has just its deserved sequel. Keith Sheperd, co-founder of Imangi Studios, creators of the game, has just announced Temple Run 2 has been published on Google Play Store.

The sequel to the popular endless runner game promises “beautiful new graphics, gorgeous new environments and new obstacles”. And as well as running, sliding and jumping, you can now also swing on a rope and ride in a mine cart.

Initially launched on iOS, Temple Run 2 shot to the top of the free-app chart last week within eight hours of its release. Within 24 hours it had clocked up an astonishing six million downloads and on Monday, just four days after it first landed in the iOS app store, maker Imangi Studios announced it had been downloaded over 20 million times. Expect the Android version to follow suit.

Thanks to in-app purchases, Temple Run 2 has also landed in third spot in the iOS top-grossing-apps chart.

[quote]”The response from fans has been overwhelming. We are thrilled players want more of the Temple Run universe, and we hope to grow and expand the game over the coming months,” says Keith Shepherd, co-founder of Imangi.[/quote]

In June last year, Imangi Studios had teamed up with Disney for a special edition of the game and brought Temple Run Brave for iOS and Android, with the the locale and character based on the Disney – Pixar movie, Brave. You are in control of Merida, the main protagonist – helping her run, slide, jump and turn and shoot your way across the wilds of Scotland.

January 24, 2013
Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 Pictures Leaked

On Monday, Samsung’s vice-president announced that the Galaxy Note 8.0 would be formally announced at this year’s Mobile World Congress at the end of February. Excitement has clearly gone around the company, enough for an alleged picture of the new device, as well as its hardware specifications, to leak online via a Twitter account of Spanish language classifieds website which has not hesitated to spread the word and win its fair share of publicity.

This new size of tablet joins the plethora of other Samsung tablets, but comes in with a different design. Taking shape from the Galaxy S III and Note II, the Note 8.0 looks to be incredibly thin and has curved corners. According to the Italian site dday.it they state that “We are holding the picture of what seems to be the new Samsung tablet, do not know whether a prototype or the final version (but it seems to be).”

As for the specs, the Note 8.0 has an 8-inch display with a resolution of 1280 x 800, a 1.6Ghz quad-core processor, 5MP camera on the back with a 1.3MP fron-facing camera, 16GB or 32GB versions (3G, Wi-Fi), runs Android OS 4.2 Jelly Bean, 4600 mAh battery, 330 grams and overall dimensions are expected to be 211.3 x 136.3 x 7.95mm. Finally, the S-Pen is located at the bottom right of the Note 8.0. No word on when the 8.0 will be available or potential price points, but this will be showcased at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

According to rumours, Samsung will launch two versions of the tablet, depending on the connectivity suite. While model number GT-N5100 will have cellular data as well as Wi-Fi, the version named GT-N5110 will be a Wi-Fi-only unit. Other connectivity options in the device will be Bluetooth 4.0 and microUSB 2.0. The tablet is said to weigh 330gm and run on a 4,600mAh battery.

Source: dday.it

January 24, 2013