MediaTek has unveiled MT8135 quad-core chipset for tablets

MediaTek has now introduced a new SoC (system on chip), MT8135 for tablets that features a quad-core solution.

According to MediaTek, its latest quad-core chip for tablets incorporates two high-performance ARM Cortex-A15 and two ARM Cortex-A7 processors and a PowerVR Series6 GPU. The processor is complimented by an optimized ARM big.LITTLE processing system which allows heterogeneous multi-processing including heavy web-downloading, heavy graphics gaming, high-quality video viewing and multitasking, as per the company.

"ARM big.LITTLE technology reduces processor energy consumption by up to 70 percent on common workloads, which is critical in the drive towards all-day battery life for mobile platforms." We are pleased to see MediaTek's MT8135 seizing on the opportunity offered by the big.LITTLE architecture to enable new services on a heterogeneous processing platform," said Noel Hurley, vice president, Strategy and Marketing, Processor Division, ARM.

MediaTek claims that it has applied bi............more details at NDTV GADGETS

Sony Xperia Z Ultra smartphone with 6.4-inch full-HD screen launched for Rs. 46,990

  

Sony has launched its biggest-ever smartphone, the Xperia Z Ultra, at a price point of Rs. 46,990. The phone will be available starting August 2, in Black, White and Purple colours.

The Sony Xperia Z Ultra sports a sleek look with a thickness of 6.5mm, and weighs 212 grams. It features a 6.4-inch full-HD display with a resolution of 1080x1920 pixels. It is the first smartphone display that integrates Sony's Triluminos technology, which the company introduced at CES with its Bravia televisions. Sony claims that through the technology the display reproduces a greater range of rich, natural colours to deliver true, natural shades. The technology also includes X-Reality for mob.... more details at NDTV GADGETS

Saudi website editor sentenced to seven years in prison, lashes

The editor of a Saudi Arabian social website has been sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes for founding an Internet forum that violates Islamic values and propagates liberal thought, Saudi media reported on Tuesday.

Activist Raif Badawi, image source: carbonated.tv

 

Raif Badawi, who started the "Free Saudi Liberals" website to discuss the role of religion in Saudi Arabia, has been held since June 2012 on charges of cyber crime and disobeying his father - a crime in the conservative kingdom and top U.S. ally.

Al-Watan newspaper said the judge had also ordered the closure of the website.

France was concerned by the sentence and remained committed to "freedom of opin .........Read full story at REUTERS India

TCS completes acquisition of French company Alti SA

 

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), on Wednesday, announced that it completed the acquisition of French IT services company Alti.

A statement from TCS said it completed the acquisition during an official ceremony under the patronage of Arnaud Montebourg, Minister for Economic Regeneration for the French Republic.

The deal, valued at 75 million euro (around Rs.530 crore) was an all-cash transaction and the announcement was made in early April 2013. 

Alti is a privately-held company with revenues of 126 million euro in 2012 and is regarded as one of the top five system integrators of SAP solutions in France. Its customers include several top French corporations in the ................... read full news at The Hindu

Google gets deeper into hardware with new tablet, TV gadget

Google Inc(GOOG.O) on Wednesday showcased a new-generation, slimmer Nexus 7 tablet that the Internet search company hopes will expand its presence in consumer hardware, and ensure that its online services remain front-and-center on mobile devices.

The latest Nexus 7, featuring a Qualcomm Inc(QCOM.O) Snapdragon processor and a higher display resolution, on July 30 will be priced at $229 for a basic version with 16 gigabytes of storage. The original year-old tablet started at $199 for an 8 gigabyte version.

Sundar Pichai, head of Android and Chrome software, said on the sidelines of an event to launch the tablet that the Internet company would make a profit off the new product. The first-generation Nexus 7, which marked its initial foray into mobile electronics, was financially a break-even product for the company, analysts have said.

"The new Nexus 7 is designed so that it's profitable for all the people involved. Retailers, us, everyone included .........read full story at Reuters India

Motorola debuts three Verizon-exclusive droid phones

 

The phones, the Droid Mini, Droid Ultra and Droid Maxx will go on sale for $99, $199 and $299 for customers who sign a two year contract and will be available in Verizon stores August 20, according to Verizon Wireless.

The latest Droid line-up marks the first phone range that Motorola has designed since it was bought by Google in 2012. It will be followed in little over a week by the August 1 unveiling of the Moto X, a hotly anticipated smartphone from Motorola.

Verizon Wireless and Motorola launched the first phones under the Droid brand for phones based on Google Android software in 2009, at a time when rival AT&T Inc(T.N) still had exclusive rights to sell the Apple Inc(AAPL.O) iPhone.

The Droid brand helped to resuscitate a struggling Motorola at the time as Verizon .............read full story at Reuters India

Huawei Technologies Co Ltd spying for China stated by former CIA boss Michael Hayden

 

Michael Hayden, also the former head of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), said in an interview with the paper that Huawei had "shared with the Chinese state intimate and extensive knowledge of the foreign telecommunications systems it is involved with".

 

"I think that goes without saying," he was quoted as saying.

The newspaper reported Hayden said intelligence agencies have hard evidence of spying activity by the world's No. 2 telecoms equipment maker. It did not detail that evidence.

Huawei, founded in 1987 by former People's Liberation Army officer Ren Zhengfei, has repeatedly denied being linked to the Chinese government or military or receiving financial support from either.

Hayden is a director of Motorola Solutions, which provides radios, smart tags, barcode scanners and safety products. Huawei and Motorola Solutions Inc (MSI.N) had previously been engaged in ...........Read full story at Reuters India

Microsoft received 400 requests from India for ID data

 

Indian law enforcement agencies last year sent Microsoft 418 requests for information on user accounts to assist investigation into criminal activities. 

Microsoft says it provided no content data to the Indian government. 

The inquiries involved nearly 600 different accounts or IDs, but the U.S. tech giant did not provide content data in response to India's request, according to Microsoft. 

However, it handed over non-content data 88.5 percent of the time, and 1 percent of the time rejected requests because they did not meet legal requirements, the company said. For another 10.5 percent of the time, Microsoft was unable to locate any information for the user account specified by the Indian government. 

The government made 53 requests on data related to Skype, which Microsoft acquired in 2011, and these.....Read full story at zdnet.com

Apple iPhone sales see sharp fall in India

 

     Smartphone maker Apple has seen a sharp fall in its India sales during the first three months of 2013, a trend that analysts say might persist as the California-based company looks to make deeper inroads into world's third-largest smartphone market.

Sales in India had soared soon after the November launch of iPhone 5, the latest iteration of Apple's smartphone. In an uncharacteristic move, Apple followed up with a sustained marketing campaign, advertising discounts schemes and monthly installment options for customers in India, where its phones are seen as too expensive.

"The October-December quarter was an exceptional one for iPhone, but that hasn't been the case since then," said Manasi Yadav, who tracks India's smartphone market for researcher IDC. According to IDC data, iPhone sales have been on a downward trend after the........Read full story at Times of India

Ban kids below 13 years, Delhi HC tells Facebook

 

The Delhi High Court Tuesday asked social networking site Facebook to upload a disclaimer on its home page that children below the age of 13 years cannot open an account on it.

A division bench of Acting Chief Justice B.D. Ahmed and Justice Vibhu Bakhru asked Facebook to not allow children under 13 years from opening an account.

Senior advocate Parag Tripathi appearing for Facebook assured the court that the site "will upload the disclaimer on its home page that children 13 years can not open.... read full story at Zee News

Y-Nots from India win Windows Azure Challenge at the Microsoft Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals

Y-Nots from India win Windows Azure Challenge at the Microsoft Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals Team is recognized in St. Petersburg, Russia, for app innovation.

 
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — July 11, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. today awarded Y-Nots the First Prize in the Windows Azure Challenge at the 11th annual Microsoft Imagine Cup . The team also won the Mail.Ru Group Connected Planet Award, taking home a combined cash prize of $ 20,000 with additional Boost awards. The Imagine Cup as the world's premier competition for student technologists brings developers and aspiring entrepreneurs together to create innovative projects and ultimately bring those ideas to market. The Competition featured three major categories — Innovation, Games and World Citizenship — as well as three product–specific Challenges — for Windows Azure, Windows Phone and Windows 8 — and eight special awards from Imagine Cup sponsors.

The winners were announced at the Imagine Cup Awards Ceremony, held at the historic Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg and attended by more than 800 students, judges, awards Partners, Russian dignitaries and members of the media from around the world. The ceremony was the culmination of a four–day competition and celebration of bringing ideas to life through technology and teamwork.

Y—Nots competed among eighty-seven student teams from 71 countries in the Worldwide Finals. Microsoft has awarded cash and other prizes valued at more than $1 million throughout the yearlong Imagine Cup competition, including awards for the winning teams at the Worldwide Finals event this week.

"For the past 11 years, Imagine Cup has been a place of inspiration and innovation for students around the world," said Steve Guggenheimer, corporate vice president and chief evangelist at Microsoft. "The students participating in this competition demonstrate the very best in innovation from their home countries and together are creating new apps, innovations and services that will change the way the world works, interacts and learns. We are incredibly proud of the finalists who competed in Imagine Cup this year and stand in awe of the projects and technology they brought forth during this exciting week."

The Indian team won in the Windows Azure Challenge for their project Zoik...... read full story at microsoft.com

Tech firms target ads on pirate websites

Websites that profit from piracy are being targeted by an initiative that aims to cut off the cash they get from adverts.

The initiative could mean ads being withdrawn from sites pirating music and movies or selling fake goods.

Many such sites only survive because cash generated by ads helps them pay their high bandwidth bills.

Tech firms such as Google, Microsoft and.Yahoo that pipe adverts to sites have signed up to the initiative.

Before now, many rights holders have tried to deal with sites that infringe copyright with take-down notices that seek to get copyrighted
content removed from the web.

The new scheme gives them another avenue as they can now target adverts that run on webpages found to be offering counterfeit goods or pirated media. Under the .........read full story at BBC News

TCS beats Infosys to become India's most admired company

Global management consultancy, Hay Group, on 16 July released the findings of the second edition of India’s Most AdmiredCompanies (IMAC) research.

Business solutions major Tata Consultancy Services ( TCS) has topped the ranking for 2013, followed by Hindustan Unilever (
HUL), ITC , and Infosys. The study has been conducted in association with Fortune India.

The study, a Hay Group statement says, is based on a unique peer ranking methodology, which covered 493 companies across the economy’s 16 key sectors.

A total of 552 respondents participated to rank their peers across a scale of ten parameters – corporate governance, endurance, performance, quality, financial
soundness, innovativeness, leadership, talent management, social responsibility, and global business.

TCS tops the list this year, replacing last year’s winner
.......read full story at First Post

Chinese institute develops 100MP camera IOE3-Kanban

BEIJING: A Chinese institute claimed to have successfully developed a 100 megapixel camera which could produce
high-resolution imaging in the fields of aerial mapping, disaster monitoring and intelligent transportation systems.

The IOE3-Kanban camera was developed by the Institute of Optics and Electronics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences
making it China's highest pixel camera, CAS said in a statement.

The camera is capable of producing images with 10,240 x 10,240 pixels, the statement said.

Moreover, it is small and light, with its widest part measuring only 19.3 cm, state-run Xinhua quoted the statement as saying, adding that it can be used at temperatures
ranging from minus 20 degrees centigrade to 55 degrees centigrade.

Its high sensitivity and high dynamic range (HDR) features mean it will be useful in high-resolution imaging in the fields of....read full story at ABP

BlackBerry has not turned around its fortunes

OTTAWA: Thorsten Heins, the president and chief
executive of BlackBerry, recalled Friday that when he
announced a delay in the introduction of a new line
of phones a year ago, he was told his company was
"finished." Not so, he argued then, give us time to
get this thing right.
The phones, known as BlackBerry 10s, are now here.
But from the results the company announced Friday,
BlackBerry has not turned around its fortunes. Just
the opposite.
In the first full quarter of sales of the make-or-break
BlackBerry 10s, BlackBerry reported that....read more @Economic Times