Nokia reveals 41MP cameraphone

Rory Cellan-Jones takes a look at the Nokia 808 Pureview

 

A 41-megapixel Nokia smartphone was among the new technology on show during the opening day of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The 808 Pureview offers enhanced low-light performance as well as sophisticated image compression designed to help users share pictures.
Nokia hopes to regain ground lost to Google and Apple in the mobile market.
However, some have criticised Nokia's decision to use its own operating system, Symbian, on the device.
Nokia's other smartphones typically run on Microsoft's Windows Phone software.
Symbian, which first appeared on Nokia phones in the 90s, is widely regarded as inferior to the app and social media-driven Windows Phone system.
"The Pureview 808's Symbian Belle operating system might detract from its appeal to a broader market, where it deserves recognition," said Tony Cripps, a principal analyst with Ovum.
"It's a pity that Nokia was unable to combine the photographic prowess of the PureView 808 with the style of the Lumia 900.
"Such a device may well have been the first smartphone to truly deserve the title of 'superphone'."
'Breathtaking'
Nokia claims the 808 sets a "new industry standard" in mobile imaging devices.
"People will inevitably focus on the 41 megapixel sensor," said Jo Harlow, executive vice-president of Nokia smart devices.

Nokia say the 808 will set a "new industry standard" for mobile imaging

"But the real quantum leap is how the pixels are used to deliver breathtaking image quality at any resolution and the freedom it provides to choose the story you want to tell."
The BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones said he expected some consumers would be surprised over the choice of platform.
"Nokia's put this on a Symbian phone, which will seem strange to people," he said.
"It's also pretty chunky, pretty heavy - but it does take amazing pictures."
China push
Also on show were new models in the company's Lumia range - including the 610, a cheaper device aimed at a "younger audience".
The firm also announced it plans to make the Lumia available in China "in the coming months".
Nokia's chief executive Stephen Elop said that introducing the cameraphone and entry-level smartphone were "the actions necessary to improve the fortunes of Nokia".
Once the mobile world's dominant player, Nokia has struggled to compete as sales of Google and Apple devices have soared in recent years.
Last month Nokia announced it was to stop manufacturing mobile phones in Europe, instead relocating to Asia at a cost of 4,000 jobs.

'Aakash 2 tablet to be launched in April/May'

New Delhi: The upgraded version of Aakash tablet -- touted to be the world's cheapest -- would be launched in April or May without hike in price, said Dr D Purendeswari, Union Minister of State for Human Resources Development, here today. 

She was talking to PTI after attending National HRD Conclave organised by Federation of Gujarat Industries here. 

The new tablet was completely indigenous, and defects noticed in the earlier version had been rectified, she said. 

Kapil Sibal, Union HRD Minister, had said a few days ago that there were some "problems" with the original manufacturer Datawind, and the company would not be associated with the tablet anymore. 

Aakash tablet is priced at approximately $49 (Rs 2400-2500). 

Apple has more money than it needs: CEO Tim Cook

Apple Headquarters

CALIFORNIA: Apple CEO Tim Cook says he believes the world's most valuable company has more money than it needs. His next challenge is to figure out whether Apple should break from the cash-hoarding ways of his predecessor, the late Steve Jobs, and dip into its $98 billion bank account to pay shareholders a dividend this year. 

During a question-and-answer session Thursday at the company's annual shareholders' meeting, Cook indicated he and the rest of Apple's board are nearing a decision. 

The board and management are "thinking about this very deeply," Cook said. "This isn't a case where 100 per cent of people are going to agree with what we do." 

The question of how to handle Apple's cash stockpile is a touchy one, partly because company co-founder Jobs had steadfastly brushed aside suggestions that the company restore its quarterly dividend. Apple stopped making the shareholder payments in 1995 when it was in such deep trouble that it needed to hold on to every cent. 

Things got so bad that Apple turned to rival Microsoft Corp. in 1997 for a $150 million infusion to stay afloat. Microsoft came to the rescue at the same time Apple named Jobs as its CEO - a decision that turned out to be one of the smartest business moves ever made. 

Haunted by memories of Apple's grim times, Jobs kept accumulating cash even as the company's fortunes soared during the final decade of his life. 

Cook, though, appears willing to return some of the cash to shareholders since he succeeded Jobs as Apple's CEO last August. Jobs died Oct. 5 after a long battle with cancer. 

During Thursday's meeting, Cook dropped his strongest hint yet that Apple will part with some of the money. "Frankly speaking," Cook said, "it's more than we need to run the company." 

One Apple shareholder, Asif Khan of Sugar Land, Texas, urged Cook to resist committing to a dividend every three months. He said he thinks it makes more sense for Apple to pay a one-time dividend later this year before the expiration of a provision that limits the federal tax rate on dividends to 15 percent. 

If Apple opts for a regular quarterly dividend, Khan is worried it might be misinterpreted by some investors as a sign that Apple is losing confidence in its ability to keep propelling its stock price higher as the company churns out hit products such as the iPhone and iPad. 

During the past year, Apple's stock has surged 50 percent to create about $160 billion in shareholder wealth. Apple now has a market value of $480 billion - more than the combined value of Microsoft and prominent rival Google Inc. 

Apple shares gained $3.35 Thursday to close at $516.39. The high price sparked a question Thursday about whether Apple plans to split its stock to make it more affordable to buy. Cook indicated it's unlikely to occur, saying the board has studied the history of other companies that regularly split their stock and concluded "it does nothing" for long-term returns. Apple last split its stock seven years ago. The shares have increased 11-fold since then. 

Although most of those gains occurred under Jobs' leadership, Apple's stock and financial results have remained stellar under Cook, Job's hand-picked successor. Cook has worked as a top Apple executive since 1998. 

Given how well Apple has been doing, shareholders had little reason to complain at Thursday's hour-long meeting. 

While shareholders waited in a 40-minute line to get inside the meeting at Apple's Cupertino headquarters, a few protesters carried signs urging the company to ensure that workers building its products in Taiwanese and Chinese factories are paid more and treated humanely. "Stop iSweatshop," one sign implored. Another stated: `iWant an ethical phone." No questions about the conditions in Apple's overseas factories were posed during the meeting. 

In other matters, Apple agreed to adopt a proposal from the public pension fund Calpers that will require all of the company's directors to receive a majority of shareholder votes to remain on the board. The proposal was backed by more than 80 percent of the shareholder votes counted in the preliminary results announced by Apple Thursday. 

All eight of Apple's current directors were re-elected with at least 81 percent of the shareholder votes in the preliminary results, so the switch to majority-voting rules wouldn't have changed this year's outcome if the new rules had already been in effect.

Remembering a legend: The book of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs smelled so foul that none of his co-workers at Atari in the seventies would work with him. Entreating him to shower was usually futile; he'd inevitably claim that his strict vegan diet had rid him of body odor, thus absolving him of the need for standard hygiene habits. Later, friends would theorize that he had been exercising what would prove a limitless capacity for sustained and gratuitous lying that came to be nicknamed the "reality distortion field."

Jobs originally learned the "reality distortion field" from Bob Friedland, an enterprising hippie he met by chance one day when he returned early to his dorm room and found Friedland having sex with Jobs' girlfriend. Bob was four years older than Steve, and had taken two years off to serve a prison sentence for LSD trafficking. Like Steve, Bob would eventually become a billionaire, just in the mining business. His followers would often invoke his old drug dealer nickname "Toxic Bob."

Steve Jobs needed no nickname. As the title of his definitive biography reminds, Steve Jobs speaks for itself. His name was his essence, what set him apart even among greats like Einstein and Kissinger, iconic figures with whom he shared a biographer, Walter Isaacson (though not the cheesy, descriptive subheads Isaacson used in his books about the other two subjects).

* Photos: Steve Jobs over the years

* 15 reasons why Steve Jobs will stay alive for ever

* Steve Jobs: 11 business secrets to know

Steve Jobs, the book, is very much a product of its time, which is to say, a product of its subject's fastidious narcissism and the broader culture's limitless capacity for nurturing it. With any luck future generations will saddle Steve Jobs, the brand, with the blemish of all the jobs (small "j") a once-great nation relinquished because of brand-name billionaires like Jobs. But we are not there yet.

Arriving in stores all of a fortnight after his death, the book was instantly deemed by the New York Times as "clear, elegant and concise enough to qualify as an iBio."

In truth Steve Jobs is the antithesis of concise, but words have a way of inverting meanings in the reality distortion field. Surely Isaacson might have dropped one of 92 references (according to Kindle) to Bob Dylan.

Sometimes the repetition serves a purpose: The drug LSD, referred to 33 times, is clearly important to Jobs. (The FBI thought the same, according to documents released this month.) "How many of you have taken LSD?" Jobs taunts an audience of Stanford business school students. "Are you a virgin? How many times have you taken LSD?" he demands of an Apple interviewee. Bill Gates would "be a broader guy if he had dropped acid." Tripping was "one of the two or three most important things he'd done in his life." People who had never dropped acid "would never fully understand him." The generations that followed his own were more "materialistic" and less "idealistic" for not having tripped; also, they all looked like "virgins." In the binary world within Steve's reality, having consumed LSD was the key determinant of whether a colleague or employee was deemed "enlightened" or "an asshole."

To iSummarize: Steve Jobs had a litmus test for evaluating workers: It was a lot like a literal litmus test.

Steve never learned to program computers, but he was far too skilled at manipulating people. He wooed all manner of women who were too good for him - such as Joan Baez, who was good enough for Bob Dylan to neglect in the sixties-only to discard them so thoughtlessly it seems like a joke. According to Baez, he experienced a "fervor of delight" while demonstrating a computer programmed to play a Brahms quartet and explaining that future generations of computer orchestras would sound better than humans, down to the innuendo and cadences. This filled Baez with "rage," she recalled later on with evident amusement; it reinforced Jobs' growing suspicion that she was "antiquated." Later, Baez brought him to a dinner party at which he met a 20-year-old who became his new girlfriend.

* Photos: Steve Jobs over the years
* 15 reasons why Steve Jobs will stay alive for ever
* Steve Jobs: 11 business secrets to know
* Remembering a legend: The book of Steve Jobs

BlackBerry launches new PlayBook OS

Friday, February 24, 2012, 18:37
New Delhi: Research In Motion (RIM), makers of BlackBerry smartphones, on Friday launched a new operating system (OS) for its PlayBook tablets with additional functionalities, including the ability to run Android-based applications.

The BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 will add advanced messaging features, increased social integration and better browser, among other things, Research In Motion (RIM) Manager, Carrier Product (India), Ranjan Moses told reporters here.

The new OS also supports Android applications like Pool Break Pro.

This will enable developers create applications for Android and make the same applications available to PlayBook users as well.

The new OS is available as a free update for existing users and the new devices will have the new OS in-built.

BlackBerry Playbook is available at an offer price of Rs 19,990 for the 64 GB model.

In December last year, the Canadian giant had slashed the price of its PlayBook by more than half to Rs 13,490 for the 16 GB version to cash in on the festive season and burgeoning demand for tablet PCs in India.

RIM, which is known for its BlackBerry series of phones, had introduced PlayBook in June in the Indian market.

According to analysts, sales in the tablet PC segment in India are expected to touch one million units over the next 12 months.

With 3G (high-speed internet services) being rolled out aggressively, the opportunity has only expanded, they said.

Since the launch of Apple's iPad in the country, the tablet market has been witnessing huge competition, with more and more new contenders launching their devices.

Microsoft released another Google attack ad

Microsoft just launched another attack in its war with Google.

Earlier this month the company released a video spoof on Google’s privacy policies called the Gmail Man. This time Microsoft’s target is Google Apps.

The video claims that Google is guilty of Googlighting, a term it coined to describe how Google prioritizes its search business over its office-style applications. The video is a reference to Moonlighting, an ABC Bruce Willis drama from the 1980s.

Microsoft also released a scathing blog post which further attacks the search giant. “Many businesses find that Googlighting means taking shortcuts, making assumptions about how people should work, and generally  failing to build and deploy solutions which meet a wide range of business needs,” the post reads.

It goes on to pitch Office 365 to any consumer Google doesn’t appeal to. Microsoft calls its own service the “solution for businesses who don’t want their documents and mail read.”

Watch the video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=k4EbCkotKPU

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz celebrated in a Google doodle

Heinrich Hertz

Google's latest animated doodle celebrates the 155th birthday of Heinrich Hertz, the German physicist whose experiments with electromagnetic waves led to the development of the wireless telegraph and the radio.

Born in Hamburg, where he demonstrated great skill in grasping the dynamics of physics even in boyhood, he later enrolled to study the subject in Berlin following a year at the University of Munich.

In Berlin, his progress in investigating electromagnetic phenomena was so rapid that in February 1880 he received his PhD – on electromagnetic induction in rotating spheres – at the age of 22.

After becoming a professor at Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule in 1885, Hertz turned his attentions to open electrical circuits and demonstrated electromagnetic induction to his students using a condenser discharging through an open loop.

In the course of doing this, he noticed an unanticipated phenomenon, the emergence of 'side-sparks' in another nearby loop. By 1888, he was able to demonstrate that the electromagnetic emissions associated with these sparks behaved like waves.

The finding, which effectively clarified and expanded the electromagnetic theory of light that had been put forth by the British physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1884, was hailed as confirmation that electromagnetic waves could be transmitted and received.

Hertz's name later became the term used for radio and electrical frequencies, as in hertz (Hz), kilohertz (kHz) and megahertz (MHz).

He died in Bonn in 1894 after contracting Wegener's granulomatosis, a rare disorder in which blood vessels become inflamed, and was buried in Ohlsdorf, Hamburg.

Nomophobia is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact - and it's the plague of our 24/7 age

Getting married, starting a job or going to the dentist have long been recognised as sources of great stress.

But it seems they are now matched by a new, peculiarly 21st century affliction - the fear of being out of mobile phone contact.

Millions apparently suffer from "no mobile phobia" which has been given the name nomophobia.

They have become so dependent on their mobile that discovering it is out of charge or simply misplacing it sends stress levels soaring.

Experts say nomophobia could affect up to 53 per cent of mobile phone users

More than 13million Britons fear being out of mobile phone contact, according to research.

Keeping in touch with friends or family is the main reason why they are so wedded to their mobile.

More than one in two said this is why they never switch it off.

One in ten said they needed to be contactable at all times because of their jobs, while 9 per cent said that having their phone switched off made them anxious.

Experts say nomophobia could affect up to 53 per cent of mobile phone users, with 48 per cent of women and 58 per cent of men questioned admitting to experiencing feelings of anxiety when they run out of battery or credit, lose their phone or have no network coverage.

The Post Office questioned more than 2,100 mobile phone users. Stewart Fox-Mills, the company's telecom expert, said: "Nomophobia is all too real for many people.

"We're all familiar with the stressful situations of everyday life such as moving house, break-ups and organising a family Christmas.

"But it seems that being out of mobile contact may be the 21st century's latest contribution to our already hectic lives.

"Whether you have run out of credit or battery, lose your phone or are in an area with no reception, being phoneless can bring on a panicky symptom in our 24/7 culture."

Researchers advise those keen to avoid nomophobia to keep their credit topped up, carry a charger at all times, give family and friends an alternative contact number and carry a pre-paid phonecard to make emergency calls if your mobile is broken, lost or stolen.

Other tips include keeping a record of your numbers in case you lose your handset and carrying the phone in a closed pocket or bag to avoid loss or theft.

They add that you could also try to liberate yourself from the shackles of your mobile by simply switching it off.

Nomophobia — the fear of losing one's phone — on the rise: survey

TORONTO - Panic stricken when you think you’ve lost your cell phone? You’re not alone.

According to reports sponsored by SecurEnvoy, a company that specializes in digital passwords, nomophobia, or the fear of losing a cell phone is on the rise. The study found that 66 per cent of people have a fear of being without their phones, up from 53 per cent four years ago. The study also suggests more women worry about losing their phones than men.

The Stress Management Centre and Phobia Institute in North Carolina says 90 per cent of the U.S. population suffers from some type of anxiety disorder. Phobias belong to that category and are described as the persistent fear or an excessive avoidance of a specific object. 

Kate Gardiner, a registered hypnotherapist in Toronto, says while she’s never worked with clients who suffer from it, she has treated patients who are afraid to pick up phones. 

It’s not always obvious what started the phobia, according to Gardiner. She says there is always an initial sensitizing event that triggers the anxiety.

“You never know what it’s going to be,” said Gardiner. “When I’m working with public-speaking [phobia] for example, the initial sensitizing event [often] goes back to the first day of school. It’s something that happens between the ages of four and six, but not always.”

Other than nomophobia, here are other unusual phobias people struggle to conquer:

1. Agyrophobia is the fear of crossing streets.
2. Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of one's mouth.
3. Phobophobia is the particularly crippling fear of fear.
4. Caligynephobia is the fear of beautiful women. 
5. Technophobia or Computorophobia is the fear of technology and computers.