Whoops! BlackBerry rep shows off secret phone

Someone forgot to tell a BlackBerry rep in Mexico that the company's newest L-Series phone is supposed to be a secret.

 The rep demoed the phone to Mexican site Hola Telcel, which posted a video online. During the clip (below), the rep shows off features of the new BlackBerry 10 operating system like the ability to virtually "rewind" a photo taken with the device to settle on an expression you most prefer.

 The video isn't the first leak about the device, with photos and video showing up last month.

 RIM is counting on the new devices to help it better compete against Apple and the Android handset vendors, particularly Samsung.

 The company hasn't provided many specifics about the device thus far, but the L-Series is expected to hit stores early next year.

Saturday, October 13, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More

Apple's iPad mini unveiling reportedly set for Oct. 23

The drumroll in advance of the so-called iPad mini is getting deafening.

 John Paczkowski -- who is rarely wrong about these things -- reported Friday that "people familiar with Apple's plans" tell him that the company will introduce a new, smaller version of the 9.8-inch iPad on Oct. 23 -- nearly a week later than we had predicted.

 According to Paczkowski, the unveiling will occur at an invitation-only event, probably at the Apple's (AAPL) Town Hall auditorium in Cupertino. Beyond that, he says, details are slim: "Sources say the iPad's diminutive sibling will feature a 7.85-inch liquid-crystal display and a Lightning connector.

 It will also probably be thinner. And that's about it." Meanwhile, Topeka's Brian White, who is wrapping up a tour of Apple's Asian component suppliers, reported Friday that he has held what he believes to be a prototype of the iPad mini.

 He writes: We uncovered over twenty suppliers that showed us accessories for the iPad Mini (some already have the accessories boxed, labeled and ready for order) and we actually had the opportunity to play with a pilot iPad Mini used by one of the vendors.

 This 7.85-inch iPad Mini fit our hands like a glove and we were easily able to tuck the device in our sport coat, offering consumers a more mobile iPad experience for certain use cases.

 Last week, we highlighted the improved aesthetics of the new device and we believe consumers will like this improved feel to the back casing.

 Also, the fatigue factor is less of an issue given the lighter weight and smaller size.

Saturday, October 13, 2012 | 1 comments | Read More

Mobile use 'topping six billion'

There are almost as many mobile phone subscriptions in the world as people, a United Nations telecom agency has said.

 A report by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) said there were about six billion subscriptions at the end of 2011.

 There are nearly seven billion people on Earth.

 Almost one billion subscriptions were in China, the study found. The report, called Measuring the Information Society 2012, looked at 155 countries, assessing their access to and use of information and communication technology (ICT).

 The head of the agency's data division, Susan Teltscher, said: "We count Sim cards, not the number of devices or people, so if one person has two Sim cards in one device, it counts as two subscriptions; and we count monthly subscriptions as well."

 Sim cards used in a tablet or to access the internet on a laptop computer had not been taken into account, she added.

 The Geneva-based agency also said almost two billion people - about one-third of the world's population - had been internet users by the end of 2011.

 In developed countries, 70% of the population was online, compared with 24% in developing regions, it said.

 There were almost twice as many mobile broadband subscriptions globally as fixed broadband ones, said the agency.

 The director of ITU's Telecommunication Development Bureau, Brahima Sanou, said: "The surge in numbers of mobile-broadband subscriptions in developing countries has brought the internet to a multitude of new users.

 "But despite the downward trend, prices remain relatively high in many low-income countries.

 "For mobile broadband to replicate the mobile-cellular miracle and bring more people from developing countries online, 3G network coverage has to be extended and prices have to go down even further."

 On 14 October, leading names in the ICT industry will gather at ITU Telecom World 2012 - a global networking and knowledge-sharing event in Dubai.

 Some 300 global leaders are expected to attend the conference, including heads of state, ministers, regulators, academics, and representatives of such companies as Cisco, Kaspersky Lab, Huawei, Verizon, Qualcomm, Ericsson.

Saturday, October 13, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More

Toyota to recall 8,700 units of Corolla and Camry due to faulty power window switches

Car-maker Toyota has decided to recall 8,700 units of its Corolla and Camry models in India so as to rectify faulty power window switches.

Reportedly, the Japanese automaker will recall Corolla Altis manufactured between July 30 to December 31 in 2008 and Camry's models manufactured from September 1, 2006 to July 31, 2008. The recall is a part of a global exercise and will start from next month.

 

The firm is reportedly going to recall around 2.47 million vehicles in the US, 1.40 million vehicles in China and 1.39 million vehicles in Europe. Moreover, Toyota will also recall 650,000 vehicles in Australia and Asia and around 490,000 vehicles in the near and Middle East.

 

The recall comes on the back of news that the company reported a dip in September sales by 48.9%, YoY, in China. Toyota’s decision to recall its vehicles is the second biggest single recall since Ford Motors pulled back 7.9 million vehicles in 1996.

Thursday, October 11, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More

Toyota recalls 240,000 vehicles in Canada

 Toyota is announcing another massive recall.This one involves 7.43-million vehicles around the world—including nearly 240-thousand in Canada—for a faulty power-window switch.

The recall by the Japanese auto giant affects more than a dozen models produced from 2005 through 2010.

Toyota says the switch on the driver’s side didn’t have grease applied evenly during production, causing friction and sometimes smoke.

No crashes or injuries have been reported.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More

Japanese Car Named “Lowest Roadworthy Car in the World”

The Japanese have come up with a car which has been titled and certified by the Guiness World Records as the “Lowest Roadworthy Car in the World”. Christened the Mirai, the car was developed by a High School class in Japan.

Mirai is the handiwork of the students and teachers at the Okayama Sanyo High School in Asakuchi, Japan. The single-seater hugs the tarmac with the highest point on the car being as low as 45.2 cms which is 6 cms less than the Flatmobile, the previous record holder. 

The Flatmobile was a far outrageous concept by all standards. Being jet-powered and with a top speed of 100mph, the Batmobile replica crafted by Britain’s Perrywinkle Customs, will certainly leave the battery-powered Mirai behind in a trail of dust.

Still the effort taken by these chaps in Japan deserve to be applauded. The driving unit comes from a “Q-car”, produced by CQ motors while the switching console is borrowed from a motorbike.

 The chassis, body, suspension, steering system, lights, seat and all other parts were crafted in-house at the High School. The power for driving the motors is sourced from six main batteries.

Harada Kazunari, Principal at Okayama Sanyo High School, says, “It can be frightening to drive MIRAI on a big street, especially when the speed goes over 40km/h because the road is very close to the driver’s eye point. Also, you can feel afraid that you will be run over by other cars. So, we make it a rule, when we drive MIRAI on a busy street, to place a leading car to the front of MIRAI, and a guarding car in the rear.“ Interestingly enough, the Mirai lends the phrase “hitting an all-time low” with an all new meaning.

Tuesday, October 09, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More

Australia Unveils New $155 Million ASKAP Telescope

 Australia has unveiled a new $155 million telescope that could start to capture radio images as soon as today.The Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) is one of the world’s fastest telescopes and sits in Australia’s outback.

ASKAP has 36 antennas with a diameter of 40 feet each and forms part of the world’s biggest radio telescope projects.The telescope is located at the Murchison Radio-Astronomy Observatory, 196 miles northeast of Geraldton in the Western Australian desert.

Dr. John O’Sullivan, from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), told BBC that the telescope is a “very powerful instrument to start to get a look [at] the origins of galaxies… It is the beginning of a great new period, I think.”

The telescope’s remote location offers an area with very little interference from man-made radio signals.ASKAP will help scientists look for black holes in the universe, which are mysterious, hard to observe objects.

The new telescope is part of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) that is set to begin construction sometime in 2016.

SKA will become the world’s biggest radio telescope project based in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. This project will consist of thousands of radio-wave antennas that will all link together by high bandwidth optical fiber.

The antennas will work together as a single instrument with a collecting area approximating one square kilometer, or .38 square miles.CSIRO built the telescope. The organization announced back in August that a new supercomputer would be installed at iVEC’s Pawsey Centre in Perth, Western Australia to help support the data being carried out using ASKAP.

“I’m delighted that years of hard work, by so many people in so many organizations, has paid off,” the Australia–New Zealand SKA Project Director, Dr. Brian Boyle, who is also from CSIRO, said in a statement. “A dual SKA site will ensure that the expertise brought to the international project is truly capitalized on.

 Concentrating radio-wave antennas at the superbly radio quiet MRO will maximize our scientific return. We look forward to further details as they evolve.”

redOrbit

Saturday, October 06, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More

Facebook 'likes' add automatically without user-clicks

Facebook 'likes' are being added to webpages irrespective of whether users have clicked a like button or not, or even visited the social networking site, the company has acknowledged.

A US security researcher has found that simply sending a web address to a friend using Facebook's private messaging function adds two likes to the page.

Leaving a comment on a story within a Facebook page also adds to the tally, the 'BBC news' reported.

"We did recently find a bug with our social plug-ins where at times the count for the Share or Like goes up by two, and we are working on fix to solve the issue now," the site said.

Facebook explained that the figure represented how many times an item was shared - not how often users had clicked "like" on the page.

However, the number appears next to the word "like" and the site's distinctive thumbs up icon.

This means that users who may be sharing pages to highlight negative content - such as campaigners - are inadvertently making the page appear more popular.

The news comes a day after Facebook said it has surpassed the milestone of one billion monthly active users. 

Saturday, October 06, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More