BlackBerry 10 Will soon be released

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BlackBerry maker Research in Motion's stock rallied sharply Friday a day after reporting a narrower-than-expected loss, as analysts debated whether the smartphone maker is poised for a rebound.

RIM, whose shares hit multiyear lows earlier this year, climbed 5.05 percent to end at $7.50, after paring some early gains. Still, the stock remains a far cry from 2008 highs above $140.

The Canadian firm said Thursday it lost $235 million in the past quarter, its third consecutive loss, although not as bad as analysts had forecast.

Despite the jump in RIM's share price, many analysts remained skeptical on the prospects for RIM, which has delayed until next year its new BlackBerry 10 platform, which aims to compete against the Apple iPhone and devices using Google's Android system.

"RIM has received positive feedback from carriers; however, we believe this new launch will need to be an absolute home run for RIM to stay in the game," said Brian White at Topeka Capital Markets.

Daniel Ernst at Hudson Square Research said the modest rise in the number of RIM subscribers was positive. "We continue to believe it's too late for BB10, and that a strategic sale is a better long-term option than independence," he added.

Ehud Gelblum at Morgan Stanley said RIM "appears to be driving (subscribers) by selling devices below cost," and added that this "shrinks the pool of potential BB10 'upgraders.'"

Thorsten Heins, president and chief executive of the Ontario-based firm, said Thursday that the BlackBerry 10 platform "is on track to launch in the first calendar quarter of 2013."

Heins told CNBC television on Friday that "there are many more steps to come until we launch BlackBerry 10, and then I think that the market will be very excited by what BB 10 has to show and what it will deliver to its customers."

He added that the new phones would offer "a fantastic keyboard experience" with the traditional physical keyboard and that another model would have a full touchscreen.

BlackBerry 10 had been set to launch in late 2012, but RIM announced a delay earlier this year that prompted grim predictions for the company.

RIM said revenues in the fiscal second quarter rose two percent from the prior quarter to $2.9 billion, a figure some 31 percent lower than a year earlier.

RIM said it shipped 7.4 million BlackBerry smartphones in the period and 130,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.

The company's global subscriber base rose to 80 million and the company's cash position edged up to $2.3 billion.

© 2012 AFP

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Facebook's Zuckerberg will meet Russian PM

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The founder of the social network Facebook Mark Zuckerberg is to visit Russia next week and hold talks on innovation with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the government said on Friday.

Zuckerberg will be visiting Russia at a time when Internet and social network use is exploding in the country, even though Facebook lags well behind top Russian-language social network VKontakte and other homegrown rivals in user figures.

"The meeting will take place on Monday," Medvedev's spokeswoman Natalya Timakova was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

"They will discuss cooperation in IT-technology and start-ups in Skolkovo," the technology hub outside Moscow that has been championed by Medvedev as a Russian equivalent of Silicon Valley.

Regularly brandishing an iPad at government meetings and publishing comments on Twitter, former president Medvedev likes to promote himself as the main proponent of a drive to give Russia a more innovation-based economy.

Critics have regularly ridiculed his often banal utterances on Twitter and noted that the Russian economy is no closer to weaning itself off a dangerous dependence on hydrocarbon exports.

Nevertheless, Medvedev has almost 1.5 million followers on Twitter and also keeps accounts on Facebook and VKontakte as well as a Live Journal blog.

According to the Vedomosti daily, Zuckerberg will also be attending the Facebook World Hack in Moscow, an event when programmers get together to suggest ideas for the social network's development.

Although it is believed to be his first visit to Russia, Zuckerberg's company already has close links to the Russian Internet sector.

Russian technology investment firm DST Global, whose main shareholder is oligarch Alisher Usmanov, has a stake of at least five percent in Facebook although some observers estimate that the holding is even higher.

The anti-Kremlin demonstrations that rocked Russia since December have largely been coordinated through social networks and analysts say that the increase in Internet use poses a significant challenge for the domination of President Vladimir Putin.

© 2012 AFP

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Motivationals strenght

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"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark." - Michelangelo

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Space debris delays Japan's satellite experiment

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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said Thursday it has decided to postpone an experiment to release satellites from the International Space Station (ISS) due to approaching space debris.
The experiment planned for the early hours of Friday is scheduled to launch five small satellites provided by the Fukuoka Institute of Technology and Tohoku University.
The looming space debris may require the ISS to change its orbit, according to the national aerospace agency.
The task will be undertaken by astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, 43, who is staying at the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module, the country 's first manned experiment facility, in the ISS. Retweet this story

Facebook deletes Fake Likes

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Facebook has begun deleting fake page "likes", independent data suggests.

According to Pagedata, many of the site's most "liked" pages suffered large drops in numbers on Wednesday.
The move follows the social network's admission that 8.7% of its users are not "real", many having been set up by spammers who use them to artificially make pages appear more popular.
The issue poses a problem for Facebook as it seeks to expand its targeted advertising service.
Facebook's shares have slumped from their initial public offering of $38 (£23) in May to $20.62 on Thursday.
In a blog post written in August, Facebook said: "A 'like' that doesn't come from someone truly interested in connecting with a page benefits no-one."
Technology news site The Verge, citing Pagedata's statistics, noted that some of the most popular pages on Facebook had suddenly shed significant numbers of users.
The page for Texas HoldEm Poker, one of the site's most popular, shed 96,317 "likes" on Wednesday - compared with net gains of about 20,000 each day for the previous month.
Other prominent pages also saw a drop in numbers, including those of pop singers Rihanna (-28,275), Eminem (-15,420) and Lady Gaga (-34,326).

Facebook would not confirm to the BBC that the purge was happening, but could not provide an alternative explanation for the drop in numbers.

Shedding fans Earlier this year, an investigation by BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones highlighted some shortcomings in Facebook's "like" system.
His fake company, Virtual Bagel, which used Facebook's targeted advertising programme, attracted more than 1,600 "likes" - despite having neither products nor interesting content.
Closer inspection revealed these had come from accounts in countries such as India, Egypt, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Marketing experts argued that had Virtual Bagel been a real company, using Facebook advertising to gain these likes would have been a waste of money.
At the time, Facebook told the BBC that there was no "significant" problem.
But later, a blog post announced an impending crack-down on illegitimate activity. Facebook reassured users that impact would be minimal.
"On average, less than 1% of 'likes' on any given page will be removed, providing they and their affiliates have been abiding by our terms," the company said.

"These newly improved automated efforts will remove those 'likes' gained by malware, compromised accounts, deceived users, or purchased bulk 'likes'.

"While we have always had dedicated protections against each of these threats on Facebook, these improved systems have been specifically configured to identify and take action against suspicious 'likes'."
The aim of the tweaks was to provide "more accurate measurement of fan count and demographics" to brands that use the service to advertise their products or services.
Promoting online engagement with brands is a key component of Facebook's business model, in which it uses key information - such as age, gender and location - to target certain advertisements at specific recipients.
However, this system is increasingly coming under threat from a black market of fake "likes", sold in bulk in order to falsely boost a brand's figures.
A simple search brings up a host of websites offering large numbers of Facebook fans or "likes" - as well as followers on Twitter and views on YouTube.
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Google's Boss hits out at mobile patent war

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Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt on Thursday criticised raging patent disputes in the global mobile industry, warning that they stifled innovation and reduced consumer choice.

"Google stands for innovation as opposed to patent wars... The last thing we want to see are innovation and particular products being stopped," he said at an event in Seoul to launch Google's new Nexus 7 tablet PC.

Global smartphone giants Samsung Electronics and Apple are currently locked in a long-running patent battle over design and technology in 10 nations including the United States and Japan.

Schmidt declined to comment on any specific case, but was due to meet Samsung's mobile chief JK Shin later on Thursday. The South Korean firm uses Google's Android platform on its smartphones and tablets.

Last month, a California jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple $1.05 billion in damages for illegally copying iPhone and iPad features for its Galaxy S smartphones.

Apple, which has filed patent infringement actions on earlier versions of the Galaxy S series, added the newest Galaxy S III to the list in a fresh complaint filed on September 1.

Schmidt pointed to estimates that there are some 200,000 mobile patents with "complicated" and "overlapping" technical specifications.

"I think one of the worst things that has happened in the last few years is the belief that somehow, because there are so many patents... that one vendor could stop the sale of another vendor's devices," Schmidt said.

This "literally prevents choice, prevents innovation. And I think that's a very bad outcome", he added.

Google's launch of the Nexus 7 tablet in South Korea is aimed at expanding its share of a lucrative market led by Apple's iPad with devices that use the Internet search firm's own software.

The seven-inch tablet, powered by the latest generation of Android software called "Jelly Bean", is being made for Google by Taiwan-based Asus and weighs about as much as a paperback book.

The device -- already launched in the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain and Japan -- is priced at 299,000 won ($268).

It will be available for pre-order in South Korea this week before hitting shelves in mid-October.

The number of mobile gadgets powered by Android has now reached 500 million globally, with 1.3 million new Android devices being activated each day, said Schmidt, who described South Korea as a "leading" market.

"In 2011, Korea had 30 percent smartphone penetration... Right now in 2012, 60 percent of Koreans have smartphones. This gives you the sense of how fast this is happening," he told reporters.

South Korea is being ranked second in the world in the number of apps downloaded at the Google Play app store, Google's Android team head Hugo Barra said, calling the growth "really phenomenal".

© 2012 AFP

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China aircraft carrier enters into service

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China's first aircraft carrier has entered into service, the Defence Ministry says.

The 300m (990ft) Liaoning - named after the province where it was refitted - is a refurbished Soviet ship purchased from Ukraine.
For now the carrier has no operational aircraft and will be used for training.
But China says the vessel, which has undergone extensive sea trials, will increase its capacity to defend state interests.

The delivery of the aircraft carrier comes at a time when Japan and other countries in the region have expressed concern at China's growing naval strength.

China and Japan are embroiled in a row over disputed islands in the East China Sea. Several South East Asian nations are also at odds with China over overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea.
It also comes weeks ahead of a party congress expected to see the transition of power to a new generation of Chinese leaders.
'Defend interests' The Liaoning was formally handed over to the navy at a ceremony attended by top Chinese leaders at Dalian Port, state-run Xinhua news agency said.
"Having the aircraft carrier enter the ranks will be of important significance in raising the overall fighting capacity of our nation's navy to a modern level," China's Defence Ministry said in a statement.
The vessel will "increase [China's] capacity to defend, develop its capacity to co-operate on the high seas in dealing with non-traditional security threats and will be effective in defending the interests of state sovereignty, security and development", it added.

The BBC's Damian Grammaticas took a look at the new carrier in June

The official commissioning of the country's first aircraft carrier signals China's status as a rising power, says the BBC's Damian Grammaticas in Beijing.
The country's Communist leaders are spending billions modernising their armed forces so they can project military power far beyond China's borders, our correspondent adds.
The Liaoning, formerly known as the Varyag, was constructed in the 1980s for the Soviet navy but was never completed.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Varyag sat in Ukraine's dockyards.
A Chinese company with links to China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) bought the ship just as Soviet warships were being cut for scrap.

The world's carriers

• US: 11 in service, with 3 under construction
• Russia: One, the Admiral Kuznetsov
• UK: One, HMS Illustrious which only carries helicopters - two under construction
• China: One, the Liaoning
• France: One, the Charles de Gaulle
• India: One, the Viraat, formerly known as HMS Hermes, but converting another, the Admiral Gorshkov, into the Vikramaditya. A third is under construction
• Italy: Two, the Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Cavour
• Spain: One, the Principe De Asturias

It said it wanted to turn the Varyag into a floating casino in Macau and in 2001 the ship was towed to China.

The Chinese military confirmed in June 2011 that it was being refitted to serve as the nation's first aircraft carrier.
Analysts say it will take years to outfit the carrier with aircraft and make it fully operational. But Chinese officials say that the Liaoning advances the country's military modernisation.
"The development of aircraft carriers is an important part of China's national defence modernisation, in particular its naval forces, and this aircraft carrier is an essential stepping stone toward its own more advanced aircraft carriers in the future," China's Rear Admiral Yang Yi wrote in state-run China Daily newspaper.
The carrier will be mostly used "for scientific research and training missions" so China could build "a more advanced aircraft carrier platform in the future", he added.

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Glass slivers that store data forever

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As Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones prove, good music lasts a long time; now Japanese hi-tech giant Hitachi says it can last even longer -- a few hundred million years at least.

The company on Monday unveiled a method of storing digital information on slivers of quartz glass that can endure extreme temperatures and hostile conditions without degrading, almost forever.

And for anyone who updated their LP collection onto CD, only to find they then needed to get it all on MP3, a technology that never needs to change might sound appealing.

"The volume of data being created every day is exploding, but in terms of keeping it for later generations, we haven't necessarily improved since the days we inscribed things on stones," Hitachi researcher Kazuyoshi Torii said.

"The possibility of losing information may actually have increased," he said, noting the life of digital media currently available -- CDs and hard drives -- is limited to a few decades or a century at most.

And the rapid development of technologies has resulted in frequent changes of data-reading hardware.

"As you must have experienced, there is the problem that you cannot retrieve information and data you managed to collect," said Torii, apparently referring to now-obsolete record players and cine films.

Hitachi's new technology stores data in binary form by creating dots inside a thin sheet of quartz glass, which can be read with an ordinary optical microscope.

Provided a computer with the know-how to understand that binary is available -- simple enough to programme, no matter how advanced computers become -- the data will always be readable, Torii said.

The prototype storage device is two centimetres (0.8 inches) square and just two millimetres (0.08 inches) thick and made from quartz glass, a highly stable and resilient material, used to make beakers and other instruments for laboratory use.

The chip, which is resistant to many chemicals and unaffected by radio waves, can be exposed directly to high temperature flames and heated to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 Fahrenheit) for at least two hours without being damaged.

It is also waterproof, meaning it could survive natural calamities, such as fires and tsunami.

"We believe data will survive unless this hard glass is broken," said senior researcher Takao Watanabe.

The material currently has four layers of dots, which can hold 40 megabytes per square inch, approximately the density on a music CD, researchers said, adding they believe adding more layers should not be a problem.

Hitachi have not decided when to put the chip to practical use but researchers said they could start with storage services for government agencies, museums and religious organisations.

© 2012 AFP

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Russia's Yandex in deal with Iphone

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Russia's ambitious search engine Yandex turned 15 on Sunday having staved off a challenge from Google and is now coveting the elusive prize of becoming the default map provider of Apple's iconic iPhones.

The world's fifth-largest Internet index and Russia's answers provider of choice has the country's most popular website with more than 25 million visits per day.

It has also set out its global ambitions with a 2011 New York listing -- the largest initial US placement of stock since Google went public in 2004 -- and plans to build on services that already range from e-mail to market reports.

"We are looking at growth wherever there is no competition. So everywhere outside the United States, China, Korea and Japan," company founder and chief executive Arkady Volozh said this summer.

"Europe, Latin America, Africa, the Arctic and Antarctic, the Moon, Mars -- we are potentially interested in all that," the 48-year-year old said, with a mischievous sense of humour that belies his serious grounding in computer science.

One of the era's myriad of Internet startups did the smart thing quickly by picking up contextual advertising in 1998 and then turning a profit just as the dot-com bubble was bursting its rivals were leaving the market in tears.

But things began looking ominous again by the time Google opened its first Moscow office in 2006. It had launched its service five years earlier to poor reviews and a seeming inability to tackle the many complexities of Russian.

Google began conjugating its Russian verbs and localising services before winning recognition from some of the local Internet crowd.

The US giant has since managed to slowly drag up its Russian share to a quarter of all searches -- a figure that still leaves Yandex unflinchingly holding on to at least 60 percent of all queries.

That leaves Volozh confident of continued success at home and a nagging feeling that much more could be done with a company based in one of the world's main meccas of computer science and applied mathematics training.

One of the most promising and prestigious moves would be a broad partnership with Apple and its legion of loyal and upgrade-ready fans.

"We try to talk to all the big players and Apple is definitely one of them," Volozh said elusively in one of his last major Russian-language interviews in July.

"We might have a few technologies that could pique their interest."

The big rumour on the market and among users is that Yandex will pop open when clients search the new map service of Apple's latest iPhone -- a piece of sleek equipment that ignores answers provided by its Google rival.

The reported tie-up works only in Russia and has not seen a formal agreement disclosed by either. Analysts said Apple has long preferred to keep its methods private and is urging Yandex not to talk about a possible deal.

But the Russian tech world is abuzz with anticipation.

"This is the first time that Apple has integrated the technology of a (private) Russian company," an excited market source told Gazeta.ru a few days before the new iPhone 5's release in New York.

Yandex's ability to build a better bond with the world's biggest IT darling may well depend on what it now does to move outside the Russian market and establish a presence in countries where Apple is expecting its best sales.

And that currently hinges on Turkey -- an economically booming Eurasian nation that Volozh has designated as the place where Yandex will try to localise service and compete with both local and world firms.

"Until we prove that this is a working model, we are not even going to think about the rest," Volozh said firmly.

"Turkey is our testing range. And if it works, we will figure out what to do."

© 2012 AFP

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Facebook invitation turned into riot

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A party invitation which went viral on Facebook ended in rioting and injury after thousands of revellers descended on a small town in the Netherlands.

Haren had been braced for trouble all week after what should have been an invite to a small-scale celebration was passed on to 30,000 people.
The girl whose 16th birthday was being celebrated had not set her Facebook event to "private".
Riot police broke up crowds of revellers who flocked to the town.
The girl who issued the invitation fled her home in Haren, a town of just under 19,000 near the city of Groningen, on Friday.
'Like wildfire' The party had been cancelled and police had issued an appeal to would-be revellers not to come to Haren but at least 3,000 turned up anyway.
"She posted the invitation on Facebook and sent it to friends, who then sent it to other friends and soon it spread like wildfire across the internet," Groningen police spokeswoman Melanie Zwama told AFP news agency.
Hundreds of riot police were deployed to control the crowds, keeping them away from the street where the girl lives.

Some revellers wore Project X T-shirts

When trouble began, officers found themselves being pelted with bottles and stones, as well as flower pots even bicycles, the Dutch news agency ANP reports.
At least six people were hurt and 20 arrests were made as rioters vandalised and looted shops, setting a car on fire and damaging street signs and lamp-posts, according to Reuters news agency.
Some revellers accused the police of over-reacting.
Elsewhere, Dutch media were accused of giving the build-up to the party too much publicity.
Revellers could be seen wearing T-shirts marked "Project X Haren" after Project X - a film released earlier this year about a party which grows out of control.
Such T-shirts had been selling on the internet for 23 euros (£18; $30) apiece. Some featured a crude logo of a man on all fours drinking from a bottle, AFP notes.
A new Facebook page has since been created called "Project Clean-X Haren" to clear up after Friday night's disturbances. It had more than 17,000 "likes" as of Saturday morning. Retweet this story

Facebook suspends photo tag tool in Europe

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Facebook has suspended the facial-recognition tool that suggests when registered users could be tagged in photographs uploaded to its website.

The move follows a review of Facebook's efforts to implement changes recommended by the Data Protection Commissioner of Ireland last year.
Billy Hawkes, who did not request the tool's total removal, said he was encouraged by the decision to switch it off for users in Europe by 15 October.
It is already unavailable to new users.
Mr Hawkes said Facebook "is sending a clear signal of its wish to demonstrate its commitment to best practice in data protection compliance".
Richard Allan, Facebook director of policy for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said: "The EU has looked at the issue of securing consent for this kind of technology and issued new guidance.
"Our intention is to reinstate the tag-suggest feature, but consistent with new guidelines. The service will need a different form of notice and consent."
The facial-recognition tool was not part of the company's commercial activities and did not generate many user complaints, he added.
In December 2011 the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) gave Facebook six months to comply with its recommendations.
They included more transparency about how data is used and individuals are targeted by advertisers and more user control over privacy settings.
On Friday, Mr Allan said: "When you think of the very wide ranging investigation the DPC carried out into Facebook, they looked at every aspect of our service, and our overall scorecard is very good.
"In the vast majority of areas the DPC looked into, they found we are behaving in a way that's not just compliant but a reasonable model for good practice."
Also on Friday, the DPC said there were still some areas where more work was required, and it has asked for another update from Facebook in these areas in four weeks' time.
Deputy Commissioner Gary Davis told the BBC the DPC remained concerned about whether photos marked for deletion were actually being deleted within 40 days as required under Irish Data Protection law.
"We also want some clarity about inactive and deactivated accounts - we think Facebook should contact those users after a period of time and see whether they want to come back," he said.
Many people did return to the website after long periods away, Mr David said, but users with inactive accounts should be contacted within two years of their last log-in.
Mr Davis also said he would like Facebook to do more to educate existing users about its privacy policies.
"We would also like more information in relation to advertising - there is the potential for the use of terms that could be sensitive - such as ethnicity, trade union membership, political affiliation - to be used by advertisers to target others based on those words," he said.
But Mr Davis added: "The discussions and negotiations that have taken place, while often robust on both sides, were at all times constructive with a collective goal of compliance with data protection requirements." Retweet this story

China manned moon landing, no date yet

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A senior scientist working on China's lunar orbiter project said Wednesday that China has not yet created a timetable for its manned moon landing program.
"Putting a man on the moon involves a very complicated systematic program with many technical challenges to solve, including those related to conducting space walks, docking, staying on the moon and returning," Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist for the lunar orbiter project, said at a conference of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World held in north China's city of Tianjin.
"China won't carry out a manned moon landing until it masters all of these crucial technologies," said Ouyang, who is also an academician with the Chinese Academy of Science.
Ouyang said China's lunar probe projects currently consist of unmanned moon exploration, a manned moon landing and the building of a moon base.
"China is currently in the first stage," Ouyang said, adding that the first stage involves the orbit, landing and return of lunar spacecraft.
China launched its Chang'e-1 orbiter in 2007 and Chang'e-2 in 2010. The first probe retrieved a great deal of scientific data and a complete map of the moon, while the second created a full high-resolution map of the moon and a high-definition image of Sinus Iridium, a lunar landmark.
China is scheduled to send its third probe, the Chang'e-3, to the moon in 2013 and retrieve it in 2017 after sampling the moon's surface, Ouyang said.
The completion of the three steps will pave the way for a manned lunar mission in the future, he said. Retweet this story

Australians where the first to get hands on new iPhone 5

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Gadget lovers in Australia were the first to get the new iphone 5 for more news click here Retweet this story

Supercomputer breakthrough for Australian team

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An Australian-led research team said Thursday they had made a technological breakthrough in the race for a quantum supercomputer that could revolutionise data encryption and medicine.

Engineers from Sydney's University of New South Wales said they had created the first working quantum bit or qubit -- the fundamental unit of a quantum supercomputer -- with the findings published in the latest edition of Nature.

Lead researcher Andrew Dzurak said the team used a microwave field to gain unprecedented control over en electron bound to a single phosphorous atom that was implanted in a silicon transistor device.

They were able to both write and read information using the electron's spin, or magnetic orientation, which Dzurak said was a "key advance towards realising a silicon quantum computer based on single atoms".

"This is a remarkable scientific achievement, governing nature at its most fundamental level, and has profound implications for quantum computing," Dzurak said.

Quantum computing, the next generation in information technology, harnesses the power of atoms and molecules to perform calculations and store data, with the potential to be millions of times more powerful than the most advanced modern computers.

Dzurak's research partner Andrea Morello said quantum computers, which could run one million parallel computations at once compared with a desktop PC's single-computation capacity, could do things that were currently impossible.

"These include data-intensive problems, such as cracking modern encryption codes, searching databases, and modelling biological molecules and drugs," he said.

Morello said the study was significant because it was the first time silicon had been used -- a well understood and easily accessed material.

"Our technology is fundamentally the same as is already being used in countless everyday electronic devices, and that's a trillion-dollar industry," he said.

The next step is to combine qubit pairs into a "logic gate", which would be the basic processing unit of a quantum computer, a fully functioning model of which is likely still to be five to 10 years off.

The research is being funded by the Australian government, the US Army, the New South Wales state government, the University of New South Wales and the University of Melbourne. Retweet this story

Will China Surpass the US in Space navigation system satellites

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China successfully launched another two satellites into space for its indigenous global navigation and positioning network at 3:10 a.m. Beijing time on Wednesday.
They were the 14th and 15th satellites for the Beidou, or Compass, system. The satellites, launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province, were boosted by a Long March-3B carrier rocket.
Since it started to provide services on a trial basis on Dec. 27, 2011, the Beidou system has been stable and its services have been increased and improved, said a spokesman for the China Satellite Navigation Office.
The system has been used in transportation, weather forecasting, marine fisheries, forestry, telecommunications, hydrological monitoring and mapping, according to the spokesman.
China started to build up its own satellite navigation system to break its dependence on the U.S. Global Positioning System in 2000.
Between October 2000 and May 2003, the country set up a regional satellite navigation system after launching three Beidou geostationary satellites.
Beidou-1 can not meet growing demand, so China decided to set up a more functional Beidou-2 regional and global navigation system, Qi Faren, former chief designer for Shenzhou spaceships, said in an interview in 2011.
From April 2007 to April this year, China launched another 13 orbiters to form its Beidou-2 system, which will eventually consist of 35 satellites.
Three Beidou satellites were sent into space early this year. The 11th satellite was boosted by a Long March-3C carrier rocket on Feb. 25, while the 12th and 13th were sent by a Long March-3B carrier on April 30.
The network will provide satellite navigation, time and short message services for Asia-Pacific regions within 2012 and global services by 2020. Retweet this story

Self-Driving Cars in Spain

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A convoy of self-driving cars has taken to a public motorway in Spain in normal traffic, a world first, according to Swedish car maker Volvo.
A professional driver took the lead of the convoy in a truck, and was followed by four self-driven Volvo vehicles: a second truck and three cars, Volvo said in a statement.
Vehicles in the road train were equipped with safety systems including cameras, radar and laser sensors, enabling them to monitor the lead vehicle and other vehicles on the road, Volvo said.
"By adding in wireless communication, the vehicles in the platoon mimic the lead vehicle using Ricardo autonomous control - accelerating, braking and turning in exactly the same way as the leader," it said.
The cars successfully drove for 200 kilometers (124 miles) on May 22 along a motorway outside Spain's northeastern city of Barcelona, a Volvo spokesman said.
Volvo Car Corporation's project manager, Linda Wahlstrom, was filmed driving one of the cars in the convoy as the system instructed her to lift her feet from the pedals and then remove her hands from the wheel.
As the car sped along the highway at 85 kph (53 mph), she leafed through a magazine.

"It is quite funny to see the passing vehicles. They are quite surprised seeing me not driving the car but reading a magazine," Wahlstrom said.
"We've learned a whole lot during this period. People think that autonomous driving is science fiction, but the fact is that the technology is already here," she added in a statement.
"From the purely conceptual viewpoint, it works fine and the road train will be around in one form or another in the future."
It was the first-ever test drive of a self-driving road train among other road users, Volvo said, describing the trial as "highly successful".
"The project aims to deliver improved comfort for drivers, who can now spend their time doing other things while driving. They can work on their laptops, read a book or sit back and enjoy a relaxed lunch," Volvo said.
"Naturally the project also aims to improve traffic safety, reduce environmental impact and, thanks to smooth speed control, cut the risk of traffic tailbacks."
The close distance between the cars also creates a slipstream that allows the vehicles to use less fuel, it says, with savings of up 20 percent possible depending on spacing and geometry.
The Safe Road Trains for the Environment (SARTRE) project is a partly European Commission-funded joint venture led by British engineering and technology developer Ricardo UK.
Other firms collaborating in the venture are Volvo, Idiada and Tecnalia Research & Innovation of Spain, Institut für Kraftfahrzeuge Aachen of Germany and SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden. Retweet this story

LG launches new smartphone called OptimusG

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check out the new LG iphone called, Optimus G, for more about it click here
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China: Alibaba vs Google operating system for smarthphones

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Alibaba has blamed Google for blocking the launch of a smartphone powered by the Chinese firm's operating system.

Journalists had been invited to an event to see a new handset from Taiwan's Acer running on Alibaba's Aliyun software.
However, on arrival the writers were told the launch had been cancelled.
Alibaba later issued a statement accusing Google - which makes the rival Android system - of threatening Acer it would cancel its own links to the firm.
"Our partner received notification from Google that if the new product with Aliyun went ahead, Google would terminate Android product cooperation and related technical authorisation with Acer," Alibaba's Cloud Computing unit said in a statement.
A spokeswoman from Acer was unable to verify the cause for the cancellation but provided a statement.
"Regarding the abrupt cancellation of yesterday's press conference with Alibaba in China, Acer expresses deep regret and sincerely apologises for the inconvenience caused to our media friends," it said.
"Acer will continue working with its strategic partners in China to create improved product and service offerings, and looks forward to sharing the results of our win-win developments in the near future."
'China's Android' Google's alleged threat would have carried weight.

Alibaba says Aliyun was installed on more than one million phones within 10 months

Acer's UK website lists 14 smartphones and three tablets using Google's Android system.
The manufacturer also makes one handset that runs on Windows Phone 7 and has said that it has plans to launch a Windows Phone 8 device in 2013.
Like Android, the Aliyun system is based on the Linux kernel.
It was launched in July last year as part of a strategy to ensure users would continue to shop via the firm's e-commerce system in light of the fact many users were spending more time on their mobile devices than PCs.
Within a year Alibaba said that more than one million handsets featuring the system had been sold, and earlier this week the firm's chief strategy officer Zeng Ming was quoted as saying "we want to become China's Android" by the Soho IT news site.
One technology analyst said he did not find the news surprising.
"I have been waiting for Google to do something like this," Chris Green, principal technology analyst at Davies Murphy Group, told the BBC.
"Effectively Acer was going to use a phone developed for Android and then drop another system on to it.
"Although for the most part Google has been standoffish and open source about the use of Android, it has taken steps within the last year to take back more control of the platform.
"It was only a matter of time before it took action to prevent the launch of handsets that offered rival capabilities." Retweet this story

iphone 5 runs out of order

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Want to skip the lines next Friday and order your iPhone 5 online? You’re out of luck, unless you don’t mind waiting a bit.
Demand for the device is so strong that Apple sold out of its initial inventory in an hour and pushed back its shipping date for such pre-orders. Apple’s website began taking orders for the product at midnight PST on Friday. An hour later, though, the shipping times for the device were delayed from the original Sept. 21 to two weeks, or Sept. 28, according to Dow Jones. As of Friday morning EST, Apple was still promising the two-week wait for shipping. The site also gives users the option of picking up the device at a retail store on Sept. 21.
The company’s first major update to the device in two years has apparently sparked a great deal of consumer interest. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg this week estimated that Apple would sell 58 million units of the device before year’s end.
One thing’s for sure: The online lag is likely to prompt the now-requisite queues in front of Apple Stores when they open the morning of Sept. 21. Retweet this story

Iphone 5 has been released: Apple

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Apple on Wednesday announced the latest version of the iPhone.

The iPhone 5 looks similar to previous models but has a larger screen and is lighter and thinner than the iPhone 4S. The company says the larger screen will make it easier to check and send e-mails and to view Web pages with the phone in your hand.

The phone also comes with a new, faster processor called the Apple A6; and it connects to mobile carriers with a 4G LTE connection, making for speedier Internet browsing.

"It just screams," said Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller, in introducing the device.

Apple's redesigned iPod touch, iPod nano

The iPhone 5 starts at $200 with a two-year mobile contract and will be available on September 21 in the United States. Pre-orders for the device begin on Friday.

The iPhone 5 is 18% thinner and 20% lighter than the current version, the iPhone 4S. It has a 4-inch screen, measured diagonally, compared to a 3.5-inch screen on previous versions of the phone. It is the same width as the iPhone 4S, but is taller than that phone; and the iPhone 5 is made entirely of glass and aluminum.

Those features are likely to be popular with consumers. Another, however, may cause some backlash. The new iPhone comes with a different-sized charging cord, meaning speakers and radios designed to work with the old iPhone cord won't function seamlessly with the new iPhone. The company did create an adapter, however, so that the old devices aren't useless.

Apple calls this new cord "lightning," and says it is 80% smaller than the previous iPhone cord.

During a press conference in San Francisco, Apple also announced an update to its mobile operating system, iOS 6, which accommodates the larger iPhone 5 screen.

The new operating system adds another row of icons to the phone's home screen; includes a new, 3-D version of digital maps; and has a feature called Passbook, which lets people pull up airline tickets or payment apps from the locked home screen.

Apple also unveiled a new line of iPods, including an iPod nano with a 2.5-inch touchscreen. That device, which starts at $150, is able to pause live radio. And Apple updated its headphones, now called Earpods, to have better audio quality and a new look.

For many tech fans, the fall Apple press event is the highlight of a season filled with gadget announcements and releases. Last week, Amazon unveiled its latest Kindle Fire tablets, and Nokia and Motorola announced new smartphones. HTC has an announcement scheduled for later in the month.

The companies are rushing to get their products our in time for the holiday season, where they will battle it out for consumer dollars in an increasingly crowded mobile-device market.

This is Apple's sixth iPhone model. Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone six years ago on a stage just one block away in the Moscone Center.

Since then the iPhone has taken off, selling around 244 million units around the world. According to research firm IDC, the iPhone and it's iOS operating system makes up 16.9% of the worldwide smartphone market, coming in behind all phones running the Android operating system, which accounts for 68.1% of the world's smartphones.

The winning streak has carried over to Apple's stock price, which hit an all time high of $683.29 a share last Friday.

Some people weren't impressed with the new device, however.

"Apple doesn't innovate anymore," one commenter wrote on CNN's live blog from the event. "They got where they are today by taking bold risks, but they are afraid to change anything that would affect their No. 1 product. Who could blame them?"

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Japanese robots scored highest grade into top university

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Japanese researchers are working on a robot they hope will be smart enough to ace entrance exams at the nation's top university, which test everything from maths to foreign languages.

The robot's artificial brain would analyse a mash of words, numbers, and equations before spitting out the -- hopefully -- correct answer to questions on Tokyo University's notoriously tough exam.

"It has to analyse the exam questions and convert formulations and equations to a form that it can process before solving it through computer algebra," said Hidenao Iwane from Fujitsu Laboratories, the Japanese IT giant's research unit.

Fujitsu and Japan's National Institute of Informatics said the target is to have their robot score high marks on the exam for Tokyo University, one of the world's top-ranked schools, by 2021.

Before then, they're hoping the robot can sail through national entrance exams which all university-bound students must take in Japan.

The ultimate goal is to develop technology that would "enable anyone to easily use sophisticated mathematical analysis tools", Fujitsu said.

"(But) getting a computer to understand text that was intended for humans is not an easy task," it added.

© 2012 AFP

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Is Alibab the biggest online e-commerce site in the World?

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Think Amazon is the king of e-commerce? Think again. Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce site, will process more sales this year than Amazon and eBay combined, at least according to an executive at the company.
“From their annual reports we did a rough calculation and we were similar last year but we are growing faster than them this year, so this year we are probably larger than them,” Zeng Ming, Alibaba’s chief strategy officer, told reporters over the weekend, according to Reuters.  ”The gap is just going to get bigger and bigger when we grow faster.”
Zeng did not reveal Alibaba’s total sales projections for 2012, but he did note that Alibaba’s goal is for the Taobao Marketplace, the company’s main source of sales growth, to generate nearly half a trillion dollars in annual sales in the next five to seven years. By comparison, Amazon’s net sales for the first six months of 2012 were $26 billion.
Alibaba’s success is a testament both to the growing buying power of China’s Internet community and to the company’s dominance of the e-commerce market in that country. Based on the most recent estimates, there are more than half a billion Internet users in China. Retweet this story

New Amazon Kindle Fire tablet

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Amazon unveiled new models of its Kindle Fire tablet computer, including a bigger version with a high-definition display, in a clear challenge to the market-leading iPad.

Analysts said the Amazon upgrades -- as well as launching the hugely popular Fire devices outside the US, starting in Europe later this year -- signaled the online giant has its sights on challenging Apple's longstanding dominance.

The new Kindle Fire HD will be offered with an 8.9-inch (22.6-centimeter) display, along with an upgraded version of the tablet launched in a smaller format last year, said Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos.

"Kindle Fire HD is not only the most advanced hardware, it's also a service," Bezos told reporters in Santa Monica, California.

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Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, gives a press conference in Santa Monica, California. Analysts said the Amazon upgrades -- as well as launching the hugely popular Fire devices outside the US, starting in Europe later this year -- signaled the online giant has its sights on challenging Apple's longstanding dominance.

"When combined with our enormous content ecosystem, unmatched cross-platform interoperability and standard-setting customer service, we hope people will agree that Kindle Fire HD is the best high-end tablet anywhere, at any price."

Analyst and consultant Rob Enderle tweeted: "Is Amazon the New Apple? I think Amazon just stole the tablet market," adding that for "the key uses of a tablet -- reading, games, movies -- Amazon is now better in all three."

Industry analyst Jeff Kagan said Kindle Fire "is bigger, stronger and better than before and will compete more directly with the big guys on the playing field."

The large-display tablet is only 0.3 inches thick, and weighs 20 ounces (567 grams). The Kindle Fire HD has dual-band Wi-Fi and two antennas.

Bezos said the upgraded Wi-Fi specifications and increased processing clout would make it run 41 percent faster than the latest version of the iPad, launched earlier this year.

Amazon will offer three versions of the tablet.

The seven-inch Kindle Fire HD will cost $199 and ships September 14, while the iPad-challenging larger version, with 16 GB of memory, will cost $299 and go on sale on November 20.

In an even more direct challenge to the iPad, a 4G version of the larger Kindle Fire HD will sell at $499 -- the same price as a basic iPad.

Bezos said Amazon kept its prices lower than many competitors because it wants to make money from selling content, rather than from devices themselves.

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Amazon, which launched the Kindle Fire in the US market last year, said last week that the first version had captured 22 percent of the market for tablet computers, although it did not reveal detailed sales data.

"We want to make money when they use our devices, not when they buy our devices," he told reporters gathered for a press conference, the subject of which had been a mystery before the event.

The Kindle Fire HD announcements came after Bezos unveiled a new Kindle e-reader with so-called "paperwhite" display. It will have a battery life of eight weeks with the backlight on, and will ship October 1.

The paperwhite Kindle will retail at $119, while a 3G mobile version will cost $179. A new version of the basic Kindle will be reduced in price from $79 to $69.

Amazon, which launched the Kindle Fire in the US market last year, said last week that the first version had captured 22 percent of the market for tablet computers, although it did not reveal detailed sales data.

Offering the Kindle Fire outside the US for the first time, all except the new bigger-screen version will go on sale later this year in five European countries -- Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

"We want to get into as many places as we possibly can over time," Kindle vice president David Limp told AFP.

Apple's iPad has about two thirds of the global market for tablets, and the company is expected to introduce a smaller version later this year.

Limp was cautious when asked if the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD was directly aimed at Apple's iPad.

"This is a big market, and I don't want to speak to competitors. But I think they've had a great run in this market, and we're super-excited to join," he said. "Customers in the end will choose how we'll do."

© 2012 AFP

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Dr. Dre Top As The New Hip-Hop’s Top Earner

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Six years ago Dr. Dre was walking
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At age101, meet Facebook's oldest user

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She may be nearly four times as old as its founder, but Florence Detlor likes Facebook.

At 101 years old, she's been named by the social network as the oldest of their 900 million registered users.

And she also happens to live near Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, a fact that helped her get a personal tour and chance to meet some of the site's leaders.

On her own page, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg posted a photo Monday of herself, Detlor and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (who is 28, the same age Detlor was in 1939).

"Honored to meet Florence Detlor, who at 101 years old is the oldest registered Facebook user," Sandberg wrote. "Thank you for visiting us Florence!"

Detlor says on her profile page that she's a 1932 graduate of Occidental College. She joined the site almost exactly three years ago (August 19, 2009). As of Tuesday morning, Detlor had 652 Facebook friends.

"I like to think of new friends," she posted Monday, suggesting that some on that list may have appeared thanks to her 15 minutes of social-media fame.

She's a regular, but not overly prolific, poster on the site. But in three years, she's "liked" only two things: the Sony Dash, a pre-iPad tablet of sorts, and Dogwork.com, a site that specializes in animal videos.

Detlor's status as Facebook's oldest active user has already inspired some light-hearted competition.

"Ok -- so now I'm feeling competitive and ready to get my grandma on Facebook. She's 103. ;-)" wrote a commenter on Sandberg's page.

Detlor may be on the extreme end, but she's part of a trend that's been evident for the past few years.

The percentage of Internet users 50 and up who said they use social-networking sites spiked from 22% in 2009 to 42% the next year, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

Respondents 65 and older reported a 100% increase, while those between 50 and 64 jumped 88%. By comparison, the number of users from 18-29 who said they use networking sites rose a much more meager 13%.

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The Man who made 50cent rich is dead

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brokering a multimillion-dollar deal for 50 Cent. for more click here Retweet this story

TV that you change the channels by your Eyes

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An eye-controlled television has been unveiled at Berlin's. here for more click here Retweet this story