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Friday, November 2, 2012

Oprah Endorses Microsoft Surface Tablet: ‘It’s Like a Mercedes!’

8:21:00 AM valgeo

Microsoft’s Surface Tablet launched last week to mostly positive reviews, though it hasn’t yet attracted the kind of fervor that attended the iPad — and the company won’t yet say how well it’s selling.

But the Redmond giant can now bask in one potentially game-changing endorsement from Oprah Winfrey, who has declared the Surface one of her “Favorite Things” of 2012.

“It feels like a Mercedes-Benz to me, people!” gushes Oprah in the December issue of O, on newsstands Nov. 6. Her “Favorite Things 2012″ list was released online Thursday.

“The full-size keyboard built right into the cover makes work easy, the very smart kickstand makes watching a movie or Skyping a friend a delight, the less than a pound-and-a-half weight makes a great alternative to a laptop,” she adds.

“Now, that’s a wowser!”

The Surface is arguably the only mainstream gadget on the “Favorite Things” list, though Oprah does also tout a $1,800 Jetson electric bike and a $5,000 Bose TV.

Apple fans can take heart, however — the iPad made Oprah’s “Ultimate Favorite Things” list in 2010, the last year it was also featured on her longrunning daytime show.

“Words cannot describe what I feel for this magnificent device,” the talk show queen said at the time. “I really think it’s the best invention of the century so far.”

Compared to which, calling a tablet a Mercedes-Benz may qualify as damning it with faint praise.

Will Oprah’s endorsement help move the needle for Surface sales? Give us your take in the comments. 

Source : mashable

Amazon boosts power of rentable cloud compute and cuts prices

8:19:00 AM valgeo

If Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is to be forever followed around by his 'developers, developers, developers' chant, now feels like the right time for Amazon to be known for a call of 'iteration, iteration, iteration'.

On Thursday the company cut prices in its two main datacentre regions and released a new range of powerful 'Standard' rentable computers, according to a post on its blog. These two announcements follow Amazon's development rhythm over the past year or so, which has seen around 10 significant announcements for the service per month. 

The two Second Generation M3 instances have more memory and computing power than M1 rentable servers, but are restricted to using Amazon's Elastic Block Store (EBS) technology by default. EBS has come in for a good deal of criticism, with a former administrator of major social site Reddit describing it as being "a barrel of laughs in terms of performance and reliability."

"With up to 50 percent higher absolute CPU performance, these instances are optimised for applications such as media encoding, batch processing, caching, and web serving," the company wrote in its blog post. 

The M3 Extra Large Instance has 15GB of memory and 13 EC2 Compute Units (ECU) spread across four virtual cores, while the M3 Double Extra Large Instance has 30GB of memory and 26 ECU across eight virtual cores.

An ECU is roughly equivalent to the CPU capacity of a one to 1.2Ghz 2007 AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon processor, according to Amazon.

In addition, Amazon has cut the price of rentable compute instances by 18 percent in its main US East (Northern Virginia) datacentre hub, along with its US West (Oregon) hub. As the Virginia hub is Amazon's largest, it is also the one that has experienced the greatest amount of failures. 

Source : zdnet

 

iOS 6.0.1 update live, problems failed to fix?

12:29:00 AM Unknown




We’ve just installed the Apple iOS 6.0.1 update after the download going live within the last couple of hours, which had been on our iPhone 5 model used to review certain cases, apps, etc. The iOS 6.0.1 software update is also available for other devices such as the iPad touch 5G, although we haven’t noticed any major changes to Apple maps and expect reported problems to still be there at the time of writing.

If you are installing the iOS 6.0.1 update on iPhone 5 then you’ll notice an “updater for iPhone 5” needing a download first, which as seen in the image above is sized at 69.7MB. This updater will fix a bug that has prevented the new iPhone 5 from installing OTA, so we installed it and everything worked great after as expected.



After downloading the new iOS update enabler the application notices there’s some new software, and asks if you want to install the iOS 6.0.1 update. It is worth pointing out that you will need a certain amount of battery life, which might mean you need to plug your iPhone/iOS device into a power outlet.

We have included the iOS 6.0.1 update notes below that show the bug fixes and other changes, so take a look at the full list to see if any problem you have has now been fixed. The fixes include an issue solved that caused the camera flash to fail sometimes, the horizontal lines seen sometimes on the keyboard should be gone, and a few cellular network issues have also been resolved.



Do you still have problems after installing the iOS 6.0.1 update, or has your device experienced issues since installing this new software? See the full list of fixes above and share a comment below if you’re experiencing any problems. It is worth noting that the iPhone 5 jailbreak will be demanded even more now this update has landed, which is due to some people believing that certain hackers were waiting for the first iOS 6 update before a jailbreak would arrive.

Share this story below. 
Source: product-reviews.net

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Apple releases iOS 6.0.1, bringing fix for iPhone 5 OTA updates, keyboard glitches, WiFi performance and more

8:31:00 PM Unknown





Apple has released the  iOS 6.0.1 update for its portable devices. The update is rolling out now on Apple’s servers and over the air.

You should be able to get the update on your devices over the air, but if you have an iPhone 5, there is an intermediate update that enables the automatic upgrade. Once you download the app, tap on its icon on your home screen to run it and it will update your iPhone 5 device. Once that bug has been patched, you can run the standard software updater, which will grab the update over the air as normal.

Among the fixes are improvements for WiFi connectivity for iPhone 5 and iPod touch 5 when used on WPA2 encrypted networks. This is welcome, as I’ve seen poor performance on my 5 when used this way.

As we reported last month, the keyboard glitches seen on iPhone 5 devices were indeed a software problem. Those have been fixed in this update, as well as a bug that I heard reported by some where the flash would not go off.

A Passbook behavior that allowed you to flip a pass to view details even if it was launched from a locked iPhone has also been fixed. It’s necessary to be able to launch the pass from a locked phone, just for convenience, but it should never have given access to the details of the pass.

Here are the items contained in the update, which runs 69MB over the air and 983MB if you’re downloading direct:
  • Fixes a bug that prevents iPhone 5 from installing software updates wirelessly over the air
  • Fixes a bug where horizontal lines may be displayed across the keyboard
  • Fixes an issue that could cause camera flash to not go off
  • Improves reliability of iPhone 5 and iPod touch (5th generation) when connected to encrypted WPA2 Wi-Fi networks
  • Resolves an issue that prevents iPhone from using the cellular network in some instances
  • Consolidated the Use Cellular Data switch for iTunes Match
  • Fixes a Passcode Lock bug which sometimes allowed access to Passbook pass details from lock screen
  • Fixes a bug affecting Exchange meetings
 
Direct Download Links:

Source: thenextweb.com

Facebook Testing New Timeline Format With Single Column of Posts [REPORT]

4:11:00 PM valgeo

Be prepared for another change to your Facebook profile: Timeline could soon be getting a makeover.

The social networking giant is testing a new design for profile pages that places all posts in a single column on the left, while activity updates, friends, places, apps and other sections are on the right.

The current format, a two-column layout, includes posts on both sides, forcing users to look back and forth. When Timeline rolled out site-wide last December, many complained that it was confusing. One Facebook page, “I hate FB Timeline, and want to disable it ASAP,” was started shortly after its launch, and now has nearly 26,000 likes.

In its new incarnation, Timeline no longer has the vertical line that divides a profile in half. This change, ironically, makes it look less like a timeline, according to Inside Facebook, which revealed the updated design. Clickable dates that help users navigate through profiles, however, are still listed on the top right.

What’s more, modules on the right-hand side are now smaller than posts (they were the same size, before); so, Timeline has blank spots that would have previously been filled with posts.

Facebook is testing the new format with a “small percentage of users,” it told Inside Facebook. The company did not immediately respond to Mashable for a request for comment.

What do you think of these changes to Facebook Timeline? Tell us in the comments below.

Source : mashable

Samsung Officially Announces the Galaxy Premier

1:57:00 PM Unknown


Samsung's Galaxy Premier has been a bit of a poorly-kept secret over the last few weeks. Between leaked specs and leaked photos, the device has been all-but-confirmed for a while now. Today, Samsung put us out of our misery and officially unveiled the device.

Previous rumors we had heard regarding specs were apparently true. Samsung today confirmed the 4.65-inch screen with 1280 x 720 pixels, a dual-core CPU (OMAP 4470) running at 1.5GHz, PowerVR SGX544 GPU, 1GB of RAM, up to 16GB of storage, WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, an 8MP rear-facing camera, a 1.9MP front-facing camera, and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

The device was officially announced by Samsung Ukraine and is apparently aimed at Eastern European markets. As of right now, Samsung hasn't said anything about a North American launch or any other territories. Still, we'll keep you posted.

Source: tomshardware.com

IE9 passes 20% market share, Firefox falls below 20%, Chrome loses users second month in a row

1:52:00 PM Unknown




October 2012 was quite a month in browser land. Microsoft shipped IE10 with Windows 8 last week. Google lost share for the second month in a row. Mozilla had to pull Firefox 16 due to a security hole, but recovered rather quickly. After all that, the latest market share numbers from Net Applications show that IE was the only big winner last month.

Between September and October, Internet Explorer gained an impressive 0.50 percentage points. Firefox meanwhile lost 0.09 percentage points, Chrome fell a sizeable 0.31 percentage points (more than in September), and Safari lost 0.05 percentage points. Even Opera managed to gain 0.01 percentage points.

At 54.13 percent, Internet Explorer seems to be growing once again, ensuring it won’t lose half the market share pie anytime soon. Windows 8 is out, and since Windows 7 won’t be getting IE10 anytime soon, it’s all up to the new operating system to keep things moving forward.

IE9, the latest and greatest from Microsoft until last Friday, captured 20.11 percent of the market last month (up by 0.66 percent percentage points), passing the one-in-five mark for the first time. IE8 lost a sizeable 0.41 percentage points, but it’s still the world’s most popular browser. IE7 fell 0.19 percentage points and IE6 fell 0.37 percentage points (losing everything it somehow managed to gain the previous month). Everyone can’t wait for it to fall below the 5 percent mark, but that won’t happen for a few more months; even Microsoft wants it to die; but China isn’t letting that happen.

At 19.99 percent, Firefox has once again lost its title for owning one-fifth of the market. Firefox 16 only captured 5.84 percent, but that’s simply because it hasn’t had a full month of availability yet. Firefox 15, which is at 7.82 percent, lost 3.09 percentage points, Firefox 14 dropped 2.13 percentage points, and Firefox 13 dipped 0.16 percentage points. Firefox is doing quite well in pushing new versions to its users, but it’s still nothing when compared to Google’s Chrome.

At 18.55 percent, Chrome is still just behind Firefox. I said previously that September’s 0.27 percentage point drop was likely just a blip, but clearly I was wrong. Right now, it’s not looking as likely as before that Chrome will pass Firefox, though I’m still confident it will happen sooner rather than later.

Chrome 22 captured an astounding 15.02 percent of the market, up 13.25 percentage points. Chrome 21 meanwhile fell 13.63 percentage points, Chrome 20 dropped 0.11 percentage points, and Chrome 19 dipped 0.03 percentage points. The majority are now on the latest version, and yet Chrome 23 is just around the corner.

I said previously that I expected IE9 to pass IE8, for Chrome to pass Firefox, and for IE10 to start a steady growth, all before the end of the year. The first one is going to be close, the second one is looking shaky, and there’s nothing yet to indicate one way or the other for the last one.

Net Applications uses data captured from 160 million unique visitors each month. The service monitors some 40,000 Web sites for its clients.

Image credit: Hugo Humber
Source: thenextweb.com

Galaxy Nexus Android 4.2 features available early

8:56:00 AM Unknown



Android 4.2 will not make its official debut until November 13 when it lands inside the impressive looking Nexus 4, but as we’ve seen with previous versions of Android, features of the new update have already found their way to current handsets with Galaxy Nexus users first in line.

If you are in possession of a Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.1.1, you’ll be pleased to hear that you can now download the camera APK from Android 4.2 and enjoy all of the new camera features, including the new gallery and fancy PhotoSphere abilities.

For those that are not aware what PhotoSphere entails yet, allow us to give you a brief reminder. You can now take 360 degree photos in a Panoramic like setting, and then instantly share it off to various spaces, including Google Maps if you want to take your image global.


It’s just one of the impressive new features packed inside Android 4.2 Jelly Bean (not Key Lime Pie yet) and you can enjoy it for free if you have a rooted Galaxy Nexus handset. As always, there is a lot of tinkering to be done beforehand and it involves a bit of flashing – meaning that you’ll probably want to back up your data first before attempting.

If you are interested in trying this out, you will find a full set of instructions and all of the relevant download links over at the XDA developer forums. Alternatively, if you don’t have a Galaxy Nexus but also want a taste of Android 4.2 early, you may be interested in downloading the Android 4.2 keyboard with Gesture typing instead – details on this can be found courtesy of Android Police here.

So Android 4.2 is not even out yet, but already two major new features of Google’s new software have slipped out for early preview. Have you already had a play at the Android 4.2 camera or keyboard features? If so, let us know your impressions of both and whether you would recommend the update or not.

Share this story below.
Source: product-reviews.net

ShadowMe App Lets You Pretend to Be Someone Else on Twitter

8:18:00 AM valgeo

Ever wonder how your friends keep posted on the coolest viral videos and articles? Ever wonder how your favorite reporters and pundits stay in the know?

Well, now — as the saying goes — there’s an app for just that.

It’s called ShadowMe [App Store link], and is now available for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users, but only if you’ve already upgraded to iOS 6.

And what does ShadowMe do, you ask? Essentially, it lets you lurk Twitter as if you’re someone else. You’re able to see exactly what another user sees in his or her Twitter feed, receiving updates and news from all their favorite follows. It works equally well for a big-name celebrity — pro athletes who seem to only follow teammates and scantily clad women, for example — or simply a close friend.

“While ShadowMe is especially useful for people who need an introduction or education on Twitter, the app also enhances the Twitter experience for even the most active users by enabling them to shadow avid Twitter users, depending on interests or events,” Keith Savitz, co-founder of the app’s parent company, Tendy Apps, said in a press release. “Twitter newbies get quality content, not overwhelming quantity, and all users get the engaging, informative, entertaining social TV/second screen experience.”

While we haven’t yet gotten a chance to test out ShadowMe and can’t vouch for its functionality or ease of use, the idea does strike us as a very, very cool. It has the potential to be a powerful tool for content discovery, as well as insight into how your favorite follows use Twitter.

Is ShadowMe cool or creepy?

Source : mashable

Google Nexus 4 - Why I'm saying goodbye to Verizon

8:14:00 AM valgeo

Not long ago, I decried the dearth of great Android phones that weren't the size of an A5 notepad. All of the so-called superphones were so big that they were a pain to use one-handed or as, well, a phone. The iPhone 5 is a great size, but there are lots of reasons I want to stick with Android (the most significant of which is that I simply don't like the look and feel of iOS). And, more to the point of this story, I've been somewhat limited in my Android choices by Verizon, which has been (and remains) the only reliable carrier in my area.

It's no secret that I think Verizon service stinks (aside from my ability to get a few bars of 3G in my neck of the woods). The company is slow to help with issues, expensive in terms of both broadband/land line and cellular, and my unlimited data plan that was originally supposed to be grandfathered forever is coming to an end. Now it's apparent that Google's latest flagship Nexus phone, the Nexus 4, will not work on Verizon's LTE or CDMA networks.

Not that the Nexus 4 is my ideal phone. It needs to trim about 3/4 of an inch off of its screen size to get there and true 4G/LTE is mighty nice when you can access it. However, most Americans are used to buying in to carrier-sold phones because it's the only way to affordably purchase high-end mobile devices. Buying the latest and greatest phones unlocked is just painful (I know, everyone else on the planet does it that way, but $6-700 for a phone is tough to swallow for a cheap Yankee). The Nexus 4, though, is being sold unlocked for as low as $299 for the 8GB version. I was planning to spend $250-$300 on my next carrier-subsidized phone. Verizon is looking less and less attractive by the second.

And the reasons to dump Verizon and figure out a way to go with the Nexus 4 just keep rolling in. It looks likely that T-Mobile will enable its WiFi Calling technology and AT&T is improving its coverage all the time, making my Verizon lock-in less of an issue. Quad-core phones remain few and far between, but if I've learned anything from my Motorola Droid Razr, it's that I can chew through as much processing power as a phone can throw at me. I want the sort of performance from my phone that I get on my Nexus 7, so I want four cores, gosh darnit.

I also spend far too much time on my phone to goof around with mediocre screens. The Nexus 4 has resolution and pixel density that can go toe-to-toe with the iPhone 5. My phone is also my primary camera and video camera, both for cute things my kids do and shooting quick shots and clips for work and the Nexus 4 has some pretty incredible camera technology that makes the iPhone's panoramic shots look like child's play.

I'm sick to the teeth of getting OTA Android updates from Verizon that are at least a generation behind. Verizon can't seem to get updates pushed down in a timely manner to its flagship Droid devices and I have no faith, expectation, or hints that this is going to change. Yet Android is improving in terms of UI in leaps and bounds with each version. I don't want some Motorola-skinned, Verizon-bloated, outdated version of Android. I want pure Android. The Nexus 7 excels in large part because it is just Android - regularly updated by Google and unencumbered by bloatware and carrier/OEM nonsense. Which means I need to make a Nexus phone work for me.

The final reason that I'll be snagging a Nexus 4, Verizon and its far-reaching network be damned, is ironically Windows 8. I've been so impressed with Windows 8 Pro and the initial crop of Windows 8 tablets that I'll gladly make my next portable computer a large tablet running Windows 8. Not a Surface, mind you. Windows RT has not impressed me for a variety of reasons. But squeeze a real PC into a 10.1", 16:9 tablet form factor, give me a replaceable battery and slick I/O options, and toss in a Wacom stylus for fine art work and notetaking? Count me in.

Suddenly, a larger phone makes a bit more sense since I certainly won't be carrying around my primary computer (a large tablet), a 7" tablet, and a phone that I wished was a lot smaller than said 7" tablet. A phone that's big enough to be a GPS in my car, highly readable in a hand, and just "tablety" enough to make me not miss the Nexus 7 too much (and to be really useful when my Windows tablet isn't within reach) seems like a fine idea. My 10-year old really wants my Nexus 7 anyway. I actually think that within a year, a whole lot of people will have a large Windows tablet or convertible/hybrid as their primary portable PC. I'd still love to see a 4" Nexus phone with all the bells and whistles, but for $300, I can live with this.

The lack of true 4G/LTE was a big disappointment at first blush, but HSPA+ with MIMO WiFi is nothing to sneeze at. It also allows me to access very reasonable data plans, use the phone internationally, and avoid the ridiculous battery drain of LTE. In fact, until LTE technology matures a bit more, HSPA+ remains a solid option, still giving me much faster data access than Verizon's 3G and keeping battery life almost reasonable.

Am I rationalizing here to justify getting the latest and greatest Android phone? A little bit, yes, but my Droid Razr is a huge disappointment in terms of performance, battery life, and availability of updates. If it takes a bit of rationalizing to jump out of Verizon's plans, get a relatively inexpensive unlocked smartphone, and have access to better-than-Verizon 3G, all without compromising battery life, I think I can live with that. Buh-bye, Verizon, hello unlocked, up-to-date, unbloated, superfast, superphones.

Source : zdnet