Microsoft Slams Google for Revealing Windows 8.1 Bug

It has been just another example of a competitive business world when Google has revealed the bug involved in Windows 8.1 by Microsoft. Both giant companies Google and Windows got on the wrong sides with each other on 11th of January 2015 when Google as a part of their Project Zero revealed a Windows 8.1 bug to the entire public. (Project Zero is a 90 day grace period that Google gives any software company compelling them to rectify or improve the flaws to improve the web or computers to be more secure to use and also to users.

Now if that is not met by the software companies, Google makes the flaws pubic). In this instance Google pre notified Microsoft of the flaw or the bug as we say on the 11th of October 2014 allowing Microsoft to get the bug fixed by 11th of January 2015 after which Project Zero would be what Google would resort to however since this was not fixed Google made the flaws pubic. Despite all this Chris Betz who is the chief of Microsoft Security Response Centre was found stating in a blog that Microsoft asked Google to hold off revealing the mistake/flaw for a couple of days more as they needed to develop a fix for the issue.

Mr.Betz also said that they have specifically asked Google to work in protecting customers by holding on to details till 13th Jan which is when a fix for the issue will be released. Mr.Betz added that they are aware with the fact that revealing flaw is consistent by Google's Project Zero guidelines, but also deliberately makes Microsoft less impressive to the security of Windows 8.1 customers' devices.

Mr. Betz criticized Google in this instance further adding that the action taken by Google is more of expressing pleasure at catching someone rather than the principles eventually leaving customers to suffer. Mr.Betz came back stating that what is right for Google may not always be the same for the customers and would want Google to make customer protection as the entire collective and primary goal.

With all this said and done Microsoft took a step ahead and notified that its Advance Security Notification System as also known as ANS will not be available for public and this step has been taken as a part of evolution from Microsoft’s side. This in future will be available only for paid premier support contracts and companies who are involved in the security programmes to access ahead of a fix.

This brought about mixed opinions in the technical communities where in a few were with Microsoft understanding that fixing a patch is not instant as they need to keep in mind various other facts like not to hamper other processes just by getting the broken patch fixed for Windows 8.1 eventually causing customers to suffer with the existing process. While on the flip side there were also customers who were on the same page with Google indicating that Microsoft is a giant but they are very slow or too dainty who could not fix the bug in time.

Whatsapp and iMessage Could Be Banned Under New Surveillance Plans

According to recent reports, Snapchat, WhatsApp and iMessage could be banned in the U.K. after the murder of Charlie Hebdo. It was the shocking event in Paris where leaders of the world prove that, how little they understand the latest technology. David Cameron, in an event in Nottingham, England, stated about how Britain has been able to access any form of communication with advanced technology and tools.

Phone calls, internet traffic, letters all can be intercepted due security and intelligence reasons, but as per the Cameron few services such as; WhatsApp, Facebook, iMessage, Snapchat and countless other smaller versions can be problem for national security. At the end of whole speech, David Cameron stated, “The first duty of government is to keep the country safe for our people, so that they can enjoy the life.”

As per another member and Mayor from Cameron’s party, Boris Johnson, “I am pretty interested in civil liberties stuff and if they are threat, so I want to listen their calls and check their emails to”. It can be alarming quote for those who have tipped to be a future British PM. No doubt, David Cameron was referring to listen only terrorists, but we all know that for this they need to keep an eye on all residents.

In the world of democracy, if you have elects those who are best according to you and later you are managing the money after paying taxes to live in better country. According to normal peoples we haven’t elect them to spy on our private life, to stop us from having basic rights and freedom, we didn’t have put them in charge, it means they couldn’t have a understanding about latest technology then our teenagers.

The argument presented by government and its officials, mobile services such as; WhatsApp, Facebook, iMessage, Snapchat are not freely accessible from their intelligence agencies. It is expected that government has approached those companies and asked to keep an eye on their messages, but their request denied. Now government has only option either to break in their security or to get a court order for further records.

But it’s nothing other than stupidity to stop normal people doing normal things through their instant messaging services; the latest technology is the easy medium for terrorists to communicate securely. If two or more machines are running for communications through Tor, while using 256bit encryption with the help of an IRC server so it can give same headache to government. Government can have little trouble to see those chats as the source and destination with the chat content of messages would be fairly secure throughout the process.

Ultimately, this is all what British government wants, and French government seems to follow the same route in a system as China is doing as they are routing all the traffic through government firewalls and normal people can access only approved sites and services. But the other fact is it is more difficult to stop the people from using the communication apps.

3D-printed 'Star Wars' Buddhas: Zen and the art of the Force

We all know about an epic space opera, Star Wars and its hero Zen master. If you are the fan of Star Wars, so you can easily find Star Wars movies, books, television series, and videos games, but now you can also get Star Wars Buddhas with the help of 3d printing technology. Yoda was always known to have some kind of Zen master inside him. Chris Milnes, proprietor of the muckychris storefront and Etsy seller has really put in lot of effort and brought g the Zen side of this little green person with the help of his 3D-printed Zen Yoda figurines. These 3D statues have the combination of Buddha's pleasingly plump body apart from the Yoda’s head.

So what all is in for offering? 

As far as Milnes in concerned, Zen Yoda is just one of his many creations in offering. He has also design many greek related items which includes Boba Fett (Buddha Fett?), Iron Man, Darth Vader, "Battlestar Galactica”, Stormtrooper Buddha and Judge Dredd figurines. These statues are built using the Hotei body (laugh Buddha), figure, which was originally created by Sammy Davis, Thingiverse user. After this Milnes takes the most popular 3D models of superhero and sci-fi heads and melds these two onto a base. Thus, create flawless little nerd-gods. These designs have been possible due to the modeling work of Milnes apart from Creative Commons licensing from the original 3D modelers.

According to Milnes, his art comprises of mash up of existing item and creating new items with meaning. In case of the Zen Zode, it is aiming to create and balance Creative Commons licensing from the original 3D modeler with the force and the 'Star Wars' lore. Milnes is a digital sculptor and carries out all his modeling and 3D print work himself. Apart from being busy with his Etsy Store, he has been quiyte busy with the invention of the SquareHelper, which is a 3D-printed widget capable of keeping Square card readers from spinning around in case of being attached to an iPad or iPhone. He is a Makerbot user with Replicator 2x and Replicator 2 machines in use. According to what he offers, it takes nearly an hour to print a 2-inch figure, about three to four to print a 4-inch figure and around six hours to print a a 6-inch figure. This at present is the largest size offered by Milnes. The prices of these statues ranges from $7.99 (about £5, AU$10) for the small ones and about $27.99 (about £19, AU$34) for the big statues. What catches the eye most is the chrome and shiny gold offerings.

According to Milnes, his Etsy store has a few popular geek brands in offerings but even he agrees that Darth Vader, Stormtrooper and Yoda statues are the most popular ones. Considering the fact that Jediism has a very minor religious following around the world, it is quite obvious for the Yoda-Buddha to become immensely popular and such a hot commodity.

US Military Social-Media Accounts Hacked

According to the reports, a hacker group who is claiming to be with the terrorist group ISIS and call themselves as the “Recently, Cyber Caliphate, took the complete control over the operation of Centcom YouTube channel and Twitter account that represents the United States central military command. There was a Pastebin tweeted by the hackers titles as “Pentagon account hacked with a message that, American soldiers, we are coming, now its time when you should watch your back. #CyberCaliphate”. This message included links to what is suppose to be with some confidential US Army files.

However, according to sources, it has come to light that these files might have been made available to public previously, in other words, these files cannot be deemed highly confidential. These files might not be confidential but at the end of the day, it was the files of Centcom’s social accounts that were compromised. This clearly indicates the pathetic state of the cyber security in the United States government. And if the hackers are able to get their hands on some of the most confidential files then it clearly indicates that ISIS is a more dreadful cyber-opponent than anyone can expect.

According to the tweets of Politico reporter Hadas Gold at 9:46AM PST, Twitter is aware of the cyber attack on Centcom and taking necessary steps to work on the issue. According to the update at 10:05AM PST, Twitter was able to remove the cover image and the profile image from Centcom. This was followed by the suspension of the Centcom account at 10:10AM PST. At 10:15AM PST, there was an update posted indicating one of the defense officials has confirmed these attacks to Fusion reported Brett LoGiurato. Brett LoGiurato tweeted that, defense official have confirmed that the United States Central Command Twitter account has been compromised. At 10:35AM PST another update followed indicating that even YouTube has suspended the hacked account of Centcom from YouTube. Around 11:55AM PST, The Next Web’s Matt Navarra tweeted that there has been a request received from Pentagon pertaining to an account security issue and they are working on the issue to resolve it.

Before the accounts could be shut, the following tweets were released from the account: 

1. Pentagon network hacked: Korean scenarios.
2. American soldiers, we are coming to you, now it’s time when you should watch your back.
3. We will not stop; we know everything about you, your wife, and your children.
4. ISIS is already here, we are in your computers, in each of your military base

While the US and its satellites kill our brothers and soldiers in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, then we broke into your networks and personal devices and know every information about you. The Cyber-Caliphate has also claimed to have taken control over the US media affiliates of CBS News and Fox in Tennessee. According to one of the Anonymous post left out in Pastebin, “In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, the Cyber-Caliphate under the auspices of ISIS will continues with its Cyber-Jihad.

Gogoro, the Electric Scooter Could Make Battery-Swapping Work

We all know that technology is growing day by day and now one more chapter in the world of advanced technology as after smartphones, smartscooters are ready to hit the market globally. Recently, Gogoro launched as smartscooter by occupying the stage at CES. Gogoro is electric scooter and work on the zero-emissions policy. This smartscooter is designed to get power from batteries and in present it is available in all over the world through the subscription from a wide range of network vending machines.

Technology on wheels: 

Gogoro is smartscooter, which is equipped with cloud connectivity, an integrated mobile app and in an addition 30 onboard sensors. It allows all the users to take an advantage of premium features like; customized regenerative braking, adaptive throttle control, to find the battery-vending GoStation and detailed scooter diagnostics. Apart from these extra features, riders can also track the driving details such as; top speed, time and they can also analyze the driving patterns in order to energy consumption to optimize power.
According to the Megan Zaroda, spokesperson of company, it is expected that Gogoro will ship its first product this year as they are targeting the megacities on worldwide level.


The more he added that other devices will integrate into this smartscooter and it is kind of portable power. Before four years, Gogoro raised US $150 million, when they was looking for funding to start its operations, but the price plan for Gogoro smartscooter is still surprise. In present, Gogoro's Smartscooter is targeting the teenagers and young people, who are in the age of 18 to 28 years. While coming to its component, it is consist of ultracompact G1 electric motor, which drive performance. This smartscooter is made up of Aeroframe monocoque chassis, which is light in weight with inbuilt programmable LEDs. You can drive it with maximum speed of 95 km/hour as it can reach to 50 km/hour in just 4.1 seconds.

This smartscooter is designed for customizability and it allows riders to choose any specific throttle acceleration, lock-and-unlock audio, lighting themes and the dashboard-screen color spectrum. According to officials of Gogoro, If user will take the monthly subscription plan, so he will be free to use unlimited battery swaps and this process will take only six seconds, apart from that use will get the free roadside maintenance for the time period of two years. Each full battery will provide a chance to run the scooter up-to to 100 km. Battery is consist of automotive-grade lithium-ion, which is cylindrical with a 18650-size of energy cells from Panasonic. It also provides near field communication connectivity, which is of 256-bit security encryption.

When it comes to looks, so no doubt it looks great with sleek lines as it is so common in most of the scooters and motorcycle in these days. As per the company officials, If user will handle the batteries carefully with regular diagnostics, so it can work till several years, as regular diagnostics is one of the key element.

Galaxy Tab Price – The Tab Offer Full Value for its Price

Samsung is no new name in the entire arena of mobile phones’ industry. With a complete set of phones in each series, Samsung seems to push itself ahead of others. Like its other series, Samsung Galaxy with its tablets saw a huge number of buyers rushing to get their hands on thei first tablet.

Prices of Samsung Galaxy Tab

Samsung Galaxy Tab is considered as one of the best series of tablets available in the market. The tablets falling under this category include:

• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Neo SM-T111 (WiFi+3G+8GB) priced at Rs. 9,599
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 T231 (WiFi+3G+8GB) priced at Rs. 14,849,
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 211 T2110 (WiFi+3G+8GB) priced at Rs. 12,999,
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 8.0 SM-T331 (WiFi+3G+16GB) priced at Rs. 21,160,
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 311 T3110 (WiFi+3G+16GB) priced at Rs. 19,990,
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 (WiFi+3G+16GB) priced at Rs. 31,670,
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 (WiFi+3G+16GB) priced at Rs. 38,900 and
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 10.1 SM-T531 (WiFi+3G+16GB) priced at Rs. 25,999,

Each of these above tablets actually has more or less the same specifications. But some of the high end models have better camera quality, storage capacity and a high quality processor and better RAM capacity. It is because of these variations in specifications that Galaxy Tab price India varies from model to model.


For example the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Neo SM-T111, priced at only Rs. 9599 has basic features like 3G, Wi-Fi, Dual Core 1.2 GHz Processor, 1 GB RAM, 8 GB inbuilt memory, 7 inches, 600 x 1024 px display and many more. But for the operating system the device uses an outdated Android version that of Jelly Bean 4.2. Along with it, the device also lacks the front camera, which is a necessity for all tablet users, these days. This is due to the rising demand of video calls and video conferencing. It also doesn’t have flash and FM radio, which makes this tablet a bit old fashioned in the market, with respect to the configurations.

On the other hand Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4, which comes around at a price of Rs. 31,670 is loaded with tons of unstoppable features like Quad Core 2.3 GHz Processor, 3 GB RAM, 16 GB inbuilt memory, 8.4 inches, 1600 x 2560 px display,8 MP Camera with flash, an operating system of Android Kit Kat version 4.4.2, 2.1 MP front camera, 1080p HD Video Recording, auto-focus and a lot more. These features make it stand like a “diva” in the market.

Likewise the reason behind the varying prices is the difference of configurations. Of course, since each tablet comes from the reputed house of Samsung, the quality of each would be different but really good. Each tablet can actually give you one new and a perfect experience of its own kind. Samsung doesn’t compromise with the satisfaction of its customers and never will.

Mercedes-Benz Shows Off Self-Driving Car of the Future

Mercedes had taken an innovative and influential step in developing a highly advanced car which might even look too much futuristic. Mercedes has revealed a concept car which boasts of self-driving capabilities at the Consumer Electronics Car in Las Vegas. This innovative and futuristic car has been dubbed as the F015 Luxury in Motion. It features a sleek four-door automobile which brings in a futuristic design and construction dynamics that would feel like a slice of future.

Mercedes Believes in Better and Advanced Future 

Mercedes is upbeat about its product which is turning heads at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Dieter Zetshe is the head of the Mercedes Benz cars and he stated that if you solely focus on the technology then you won’t be able to grasp the advantages of the autonomous driving which could change our society dramatically. He further affirms that this innovative car is beyond its role a mere transport product and it will become more like a mobile living space.

Features Of the Mercedes New Car

The low contour design of the new car is more oriented toward providing comfortable riding than just driving. This car is over 17ft long which is just similar to the length of a Cadillac Escalade SUV. This car provides lounge style char which can swivel 30 degree when the suicide-style door open and it allows the four people to sit facing one another. The two front chairs could easily swivel around to face the windshield if the manual driving is necessary in some case.

Its steering wheel can easily fold up into the dashboard when you are not using it. It also features six display screens in the instrument panel and side & rear panels which can relay information from the outside world or play movies and other entertainment content from online sources.

How Autonomous System Works In New Mercedes Car? 

This car’s autonomous systems are designed to be guided by the stereo camera, radar and ultrasonic sensors. You can differentiate whether the car is being run autonomously or not by looking the headlights colour beams. If the car is being driven autonomously the headlights and grille would light up in blue colour and white if driven manually.

F 015 is built from the industry based lightweight carbon fibre, high-strength steel and aluminium. This car possesses a rechargeable hydrogen fuel cell technically. This car uses an innovative method to charge up the battery by just parking the car on a charge pad.

This Car Is Just In Conceptual Stage

This car is no where likely to come on the streets before 2030. This car had however allowed the Mercedes to flex its technical and creative abilities and let it test to the utmost limit. Apart from the Mercedes many new cars are offering the self-driving basics which include the radar-based cruise control, autonomous braking system as well as lane keeping assist. It is being expected that by 2017 the brands like Cadillac, Audi, Tesla and Mercedes would allow the high end-models to travel autonomously.

FAA Touts Growing Drone Market at CES 2015

With the latest craze of drones right now, the year 2015 has brought up a shining market for drones this providing satisfaction to the customers who have been waiting for the mainstream return of the drones. This automatic aerial vehicle that has come up is no doubt one of the greatest innovations so far and through certain experiments it has been revealed to be most efficiently working too.

These flying robots now have gained their own section in the Consumer Electronics Show that has been held every year. This section has no doubt gained immense popularity and more and more interested customers are seeping in. More people are attracted towards these machines as these auto- robots can take photos and videos from a dimension that you cannot ever imagine.

Some oil companies have taken up these robots to work for its own business as with the help of these they can be thoroughly updated no matter what. Also the random use of this machine is really helping a lot in the upsurge in profit for these companies. This device helps in the monitoring of the low cost security and disaster management simultaneously at a go.

The device is still getting evolved and soon we will get to see the consumers paying $103 million on drones by the time 2015 is ending and the industry is definitely going to spike up if the work goes on in this pace. The only thing that has been pulling back this market is that this has not produced what we know as the must buy products. The main reason for this being the price which is very costly but there is a bit of hope that as time goes by, these high profile gadgets will be cheaper and more efficient so that it becomes mandatory to use them.

The four drone companies that were brought up this year is ZANO, Parrot, Qualcomm and Nixie, and they had brought about a camera that could be attached to your wrist. Another thing that will stun you is that it adds a definite style to clicking selfies as because you can toss it high up in the air and it will click your selfie before gating back to your hand. Also the device is hardy enough and that is the reason why you will not have to think twice before tossing it up.

Things that these devices need to change 

There are some impractical design problems that needs to be fixed first so that the devices become lighter and easy to handle. Also the prices need to be lowered a bit so that everyone can afford it and it can turn into a necessity for every field. Now each and every company are bent upon making their deign perfect so that more and more consumers are allured to it.

FAA has suggested that with the gradual passage of time the machines will definitely gain the perfection that the consumers have been craving for since the last two to three years.

How to Manage Your Print Services More Effectively

If you own or operate a small business that has been experiencing some steady growth recently, you may have noticed an increase in the amount of documents you need to have printed. While the task of printing may have seemed simple enough when your business was first starting out, increased sales combined with more customers and employees means you have more documents that need to be printed. The longer you continue to do this task yourself, the more time-consuming it will become. However, there is an easier solution. There are companies that specialize in performing the printing tasks of businesses of all sizes. Here are some of the ways a business can benefit from hiring a company that performs managed print services.

Costs will be reduced

This is the number one reason why companies start to outsource their various printing tasks. When a business is just starting to build up a customer base and make a name for itself, money is usually very tight. It is at this critical stage in a company's history that every decision that is made will have a huge impact on whether the company succeeds or fails. Therefore, the choice of dramatically cutting costs by outsourcing the company's printing assignments seems like an obvious one. The amount of money that a business can save will depend on which company it chooses to perform their printing. Many companies offer bulk discounts, so the more items you have printed, the more money your company can save.

Less chance of a data breach

Nowadays, corporate security is a greater concern for businesses of all sizes than it has ever been before. Every day, there seems to be a new story about a company's sensitive information being compromised. If you print statements by yourself, the sensitive information of your employees or clients may fall into the wrong hands if you do not have the proper security protocols in place. However, companies that specialize in print outsourcing will have facilities that are guarded around the clock, with all employees being thoroughly searched before they leave the premises. This helps to prevent your data from being stolen and ending up being used by international hackers, competing companies or anyone else. This is peace of mind that you can not put a price on.

No need to buy expensive equipment

Printing equipment, especially machines that are on the high end, tend to be very expensive. This is not even considering the enormous amount of money it costs to maintain and repair this equipment when it inevitably breaks down. By outsourcing your printing, you can not only avoid the high price of printing equipment, you do not need to have your office space taken up by bulky printing machines.

The Five Most Disruptive Innovations At CES 2015

This year is just at its beginning and already newer innovations have started coming up. Interested enough? Well this year CES has introduced a lot of disruptive innovations that are bound to stun you and today we are going to discuss about all these innovations. As you proceed in reading this article, you will get to see how fast the technology is taking you to greater heights.

The innovations that will surprise you:

• Transportation- On the basis of transportation the technology has served a great deal. This we can know because of Toyota’s new discovery, Mirai hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that is sure to lessen the pollution of the environment as it promises to emit nothing except for water. This specific vehicle is going to be launched in this year in California. Another interesting fact is that this vehicle is stylish looking unlike the former Google cars and so you can take it anywhere you want to. Also this vehicle has evolved to be self driving or autonomous which is the reason why driving this has become even easier.
• Health and fitness- Getting back to this field, technology has made it better in multifaceted dimensions. A lot of new applications have come up for the better treatment of the patients. Yes it is true that these innovations are costly enough but that is nothing compared to the heightened level of treatment that the patients will be receiving. The ReSound LiNX is the sort of a hearing aid which is very easy to carry as because it is almost invisible. What’s more! It can be controlled with the Apple and android devices by Bluetooth connection.
• Manufacturing- 3D printing has recently come up to be in craze and almost every object of interest has 3D printing on it. Now a portable 3D printer has come up that is very easy to use and comes just in $300 per piece. This is much better than the heavy machines that were formerly used. Now if you want to make a fashionable item with 3D printing on it, the work is much easier! Graphene Frontiers is the new innovator who has received the funding from the National Science Foundation for its work.
• The Internet- The New Year has come up with the resolution of better connectivity and it has definitely fulfilled that condition in the best possible manner. This year’s innovation includes companies like Intel, Samsung and Bosch using fundamental technology in a variety of new ways. It is like the world has become a smaller place with the help of this better connectivity. With the help of internet now every other gadget can be connected and then the control process becomes a lot easier due to this.
• Display and audio- In this field, technology has gained immense progress- progress that is undeniable. With better display and audio quality the virtual world is bound to seem almost real like with enriched multilayered quality. Oculus Rift, a 3D gaming company that claims to have the gaming quality much better.

Samsung- SmartThings a Roadmap towards Smart Home

Samsung is taking a huge gamble in terms of Smart-Things, which is all about connecting all the devices in the internet of things. Samsung acquired this start-up nearly a year back and taking the assistance of this system to win this bet. During the 2015 CES (Consumer Electronics Show) conducted last week in Las Vegas, co-CEO Boo-Keun Yoon led the company took the promise that the company’s products would be built on this new platform and they will not only be open but also compatible with other products as well.

According to Yoon, 90% of their products (ranging from refrigerators to smartphones) will easily be able to connect to the web or the internet by 2017. According to him, in the next five years, each and every product listed in the company's entire catalogue can be expected to be connected to internet.

The company is getting prepared for the concept of IoT (Internet of Things), this means that anything can be connected into the internet means of sensors and other technologies. According to the prediction made by Analyst firm Gartner, the total number of devices connected to the network will increase to 26 billion units by 2020. The same number was around 900 million in 2009. This technology was all about changing dumb devices into Smart ones, which can communicate with each other. IoT market is expected to hit as high as $3.04 trillion by 2020.

Samsung and Smart-Things

Smart home start-up Smart-Things was acquired by Samsung in the month of August to increase their sales. Smart-Things technology is all about helping the customers to control their appliance with the help of their smart-watches, smartphones and other smart devices. This technology is being considered as the key to Samsung’s IoT and smart home efforts. They have already released their next generation smart home automation hub.

Cost of the service: 

The price is expected to be inexpensive and the idea of this technology is about security. Smart-Things Premium will be able to create an ID of any kind of incident that has occurred in the house.

Samsung TVs preloaded with Smart-Things? 

It might take some time for the company to release the TVs preloaded with the feature as the 2015 market is already filled with the existing TVs in the retail channel. There is no set time frame for the existing TVs to replace the existence of separate hubs but depending on the pace of the change in technology, anything can happen anytime.

Even though the company has been having issues with openness but with making their devices open, the company has open the doors for a future, wherein any devices from any company can interconnected. Even though Apple has their own Home-Kit, Samsung is the only company having access to this platform (Windows Phone app) as if now. The company truly believes that there version of hub will be compatible with Apple’s Home-Kit but this is not the same situations from their side. Samsung has been enjoying a huge company base of iOS and they want their customers to have the best of experience.

Researchers Turn Computer Into Poker Shark

According to the researchers at the University of Alberta, a computer program dubbed as “Cepheus” has been able to solve the game of Poker. Cepheus, has been created by computer poker research group, asserts that it can not only play heads-up limit Texas hold'em poker, but also beat human opponents.

When it comes to artificial intelligence, games like poker and chess have always been used as the test beds by researchers who are looking towards developing new concepts. There have been many success scenarios in the past like IBM's Deep Blue, which had defeated world champion Garry Kasparov in chess, and IBM's Watson, which defeated top-ranking Jeopardy! Champions. When it comes to a game of poker, it gives special challenges to artificial intelligence researchers because the computers or the players do not have the complete knowledge of past events and also they cannot see the cards held by their opponents.

Test of Cepheus: 

According to CPRG, any game can be solved if it is played over a period of time and if it is played with 95% confidence. The computer was trained to test Cepheus with poker over a period of two months. During this time it utilized more than 4,000 CPUs, and each of this CPU can handle 6 billion hands of poker. This was more poker which had been played by my entire human race.

Each of this hand, Cepheus constantly kept on managing its play and the choices kept on refining their choices and to find the best possible solution to each move. The main effort of University of Alberta's effort is to use a computer to play and win an imperfect information game when compared to perfect information games like checkers, chess and tic-tac-toe. The players will have access to all the information pertaining to the game.

While developing Cepheus, the CPRG's goal was to make sure the technology is able to make the computer think in some of the imperfect situations. This technology can be applied to any situations where there is a possibility of imperfect situations. According to Neil Burch, a Ph.D. student at the University of Alberta and a coauthor of the study, it will be interesting to see this research being used in different problems. As far as Cepheus is concerned, it has proved its power with the cards but no one can say about its ability as it will be dependent on the limitation of the computational capabilities.

Computers will learn more as the time passes by as CPU/GPU, storage and RAM will continue to evolve which will allow more complex supercomputing, software programming and problem solving. When it comes to computer, if it goes wrong it will learn to go right and take the correct step in the situation again.

It is important for the computer to learn every possible step based on the database and determine the best possible move. Even though the artificial intelligence has lot awaiting in the future, Cepheus has a lot of contribution towards it.

Kepler-438b and 442b: Are These the Planets We're Looking For?

Tuesday was one of best days for astronomers as they announced that they have discovered eight new planets which are potentially habitable planets and they are further than our solar system. Two of discovered planets are mostly similar to our planet Earth. All these eight planets have been located for the first time in their far-away suns by NASA's Kepler mission. These planets are pretty much in their habitable zone or so called region which is expected to have liquid water existing on the surface of their orbiting planet. However, two of these eight planets are expected to be made out of Rock and similar to Earth.

What are these planets? 

Kepler-438b, which is 12 percent greater than Earth in diameter and made up of 70 percent of being rocky actually lies nearly 475 light-years away. On the other hand, Kepler-442b is expected to be light-years away and nearly one-third larger than Earth. This also has 60 percent chances of being rocky. These new candidates have already been added to the "Hall of Fame" of NASA Kepler for being a potential habitable-zone planet.

All about these promising candidates

Both Kepler-442b and Kepler-438b, orbit red dwarf stars. These stars are not only smaller but also cooler when compared to the sun. Kepler-438b has been expected to circle its star every 35 days but still can receive more than 40 percent light when compared to Earth. According to the parameters, this planet has 70 percent chances of being in the habitable zone of its star.

On the other hand, Kepler-442b usually completes its orbit in about 112 days and can get 2/3rd as lighter as Earth. According to the scientists, there are 97% chances of the planet being in the habitable zone. According to David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics and second author on the paper, they are not sure if the planets are habitable based on their samples but still they fall in being the promising candidates.

According to the records, the two most Earth-like planets known were Kepler-186f is 1.1 times the size of Earth and Kepler-62f, which is 1.4 times as big as Earth.

Neighbourhood like Earth: 

At the moment, the data can only help in giving details about the size of the planet, the distance of the planet and the amount of energy it gets from its sun. The data still doesn’t give a clear picture about the actual facts about a planet. However, Kepler-438b is expected to be the closest to Earth. Astronauts have been able to find many planets not only similar to Earth but they are most likely filling up our neighbourhood.

According to NASA, Kepler mission was mainly designed to establish the statistics of Earth-like planets and finding planets similar to stars is no longer rare. Even though there are a promising future in studying these planets, but still it is difficult to find complete information about them. Scientists believe that there are millions and millions of planets in our milky way.

Self-Driving Concept Cars Impress at CES

During the International CES 2015 in Las Vegas, CEO Mark fields announced that Ford Motor is constantly focusing on the concept of bringing out the autonomous automobiles to the masses. According to the CEO, even though Ford might not be the first company who is producing a self-driving car, but still it can certainly be the first company who is delivering a car which falls totally out of the concept of luxury cars. He also suggested that fully autonomous cars might hit the streets (if not the highways, by end of 2020 but one thing to notice is that it might not be from Ford as expected.

According to Michael Rogers of the Practical Futurist, Fields is not suggesting that the autonomous cars will be completely adopted by people by 2020 but he meant to say that it will be commercially available at certain price. At the CES show this week, automobile converged with computerized technology has been generating a lot of attention. According to Tania Yuki, CEO of Shareable, self driving car has been able to generate the most required buzz like never before. The biggest potential of this technology lies with the ride-sharing. The biggest question remains if the technology will be able to change the means of transportation in future.

Driverless concept: 

While Ford was able to put forth their concept of driver less cars, luxury automakers like Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz actually was the front runner at CES. The demo of F015 Luxury in Motion concept car by Mercedes-Benz took everyone by surprise. This car is fully autonomous and powered by a fuel cell and battery that produces no carbon emissions. The front seat in the car can swivel 180 degrees and make all the four passengers can easily face each another. This car is only about concept and most likely won’t be on the public roads, at least till 2030.

Still a long road ahead

The jack in Audi was able to pilot their car nearly 550 miles to Las Vegas and used an amalgamation of a laser scanner dubbed "LIDAR," five radar systems, and numerous 3D cameras. When the car gets into a heavy traffic area it directs the driver to take over the manual control. This feature is being promoted as comfort feature as it will be able to reduce the stress to the driver in many situations.

As far as the future of this technology is concerned, it is not guaranteed whether it will help the people with their driving; it will certainly help in making the roads safe all around. BMW came forward with the demonstration of their i3 electric car, which features its Active-Assist technology. This system will give a 360 degree around the car and serve as the foundation of the automated valet system BMW.

Safety is the main concern for every company in the automobile. This concept is all about providing assistance in safety of the driver and it will ensure that more automobiles are on the road.

Facebook Buys Voice Recognition Start-Up Wit.ai

Facebook has recently announced that it had successfully acquired Wit.ai which a speech recognition and natural language processing service. The social media giant in last few years has acquired some of the essential start ups and highly performing tech companies both in order to eliminate the competition and to boost its resources and revenue. Acquiring the Wit.ai would help Facebook in developing various related features on its platform as well as it gives Facebook an opportunity to invest in new products.

What is Wit.ai? 

Wit.ai was founded by Alex Lebrun, Laurent Landowski and Willy Blandin in 2013 with a goal of building as service which would bring revolution in the wearable technological products. This start up mainly worked to make it easier and simpler for the developers to build voice interfaces for multiple numbers of gadgets and devices. It streamlined the voice interfaces for the mobile applications, wearable devices and the website which offer voice support for improved functionality. Interestingly Wit.ai had raised $3 million in October with funding round led by the venture capital firm Andreeseen Horowitz.

Wit.ai appeared to be extremely delighted and enthusiastic about the takeover by the Facebook. They see this acquisition as an incredible acceleration in the execution of their vision. They believe with Facebook unlimited resources and with their great talent they could create a new revolution. Wit.ai team had maintained that the platform will remain open and eventually it will become completely free for everyone.

How Facebook Will Benefit From This Acquisition

The buying of Wit.ai by Facebook suggests an indication towards reaching out to the consumers on almost every kind of gadget they might be using. Nowadays consumers use a wide variety of device to get connected to internet which ranges from traditional computers, tablets to smartphones. Wit.ai simply makes the much needed software which can understand spoken words and written text in splendid fashion. And it is already being used by hundreds of apps and devices at the moment.

Using this feature of Wit.ai Facebook is expected to make its website much more accessible from all kinds of gadgets. Facebook users would also get the ability to speak commands that could be converted as texts as posts or messages. It will help in increasing it wider penetration among the masses as well as it will be bringing in cosy revenue. This technology offers various implementation, advantages and usages; Facebook would certainly keep surprising its users in upcoming year.

The Future Prospects and Returns For Facebook

Facebook has announced its deal in the ongoing International Computer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where tech companies are showing off their upcoming devices. Facebook rivals mainly the ‘Big Three’ Apple Inc., Microsoft Inc and Google Inc already have an integrated voice recognition technology in to their mobile operating systems for mobile.

Facebook clearly understands that voice recognition would play a vital role in mainstream adoption of the internet connected devices and the wearable technological devices. Buying Wit.ai just keeps Facebook step ahead of its competitors.

Halo 5: Guardians Multiplayer Beta Preview - a New Hope?

Since the announcement of the game, the Xbox One gamers have been eagerly waiting for the announcement of the game. At present, the gamers were expecting the game to be launched in early 2015 but now looks like the developers have nearly pushed the release of the game to the end of the year. Still the developers have managed to go ahead with the beta test of their multiplayer section.

The Halo Series: 

The halo series has always been synonymous with the Xbox Brand and more than that, it is the very first successful first-person-shooter (FPS) game on a console. There are players who have now gone bored of all sort of running games and especially games like Call of Duty (CoD). Halo: Combat Evolved is a sci-fi FPS that will put the players in the role of Master Chief, who is a human super soldier who squared off against an alien force known as the Covenant.

Even though single-player campaign still had a strong but the multiplayer games have really caught everyone's attention. Multiplayer revolutionized the genre and made the first-person-shooters on consoles playable, instinctive, and most importantly, fun. This is a genre, which was running for the longest time on domain of PCs and meant for PC only. There are players who still find the keyboard and mouse combination on desktop computers best to play these kinds of games but 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved and its sequel Halo 2 have proven that slick controls and multiplayer goodness are better for consoles.

The latest game in this series is the Halo 5 but there are difficulties that have been faced by the developers. Developer Bungie has created five Halo games (the three main series entries, and side-stories ODST and Reach), will be ending his partnership with Microsoft and will be moving the Halo series to 343 Industries. Halo 4 series was one of the games which received mixed responses, some of the players complained that the game lacked innovation while others that the game keeps on changing all the time.

Now, 343 Industries is getting all prepared for the release of Halo 5. Even-though there still time for the final release but an early multiplayer beta has been started on the Xbox One for those people who have already picked up Halo: The Master Chief Collection - a compilation of the first four games that makes the players as Master Chief in the series. The beta version started on December 29, 2014 and is expected to continue till the date January 18, 2015.

Whether the new game work or not, but still the previous version Halo 4 has only managed to get meager 20,000 peak population day a year after release, Halo 3's on the other hand got 1.1 million and Halo Reach's got 900,000. It will be quite interesting to see how 343 Industries will be able to manage to maintain what seems to be a very inquisitive mix of old and new.

NASA Designs Ape-Like Robot for Disasters

NASA has developed the “RoboSimian”, which is an ape-like disasters relief robot designed to pick up and manipulate the objects in emergency response at the time of disasters. “RoboSimian” is headless robot; NASA has designed it in Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “RoboSimian” has four identical limbs to do double duty as legs and arms, seven cameras as eyes, the robot is able to run on any surface as it has wheels that makes it smooth enough.

NASA scientists has also designed a robot named as “Surrogate” with the help of left-over parts of “RoboSimian” and “Surrogate” was more traditional to ran on the tracks of complicated disaster. According to researchers “Disaster relief robots can go into dangerous environments where human rescue workers can’t go and these robots can also execute the simple tasks such as; lifting debris off survivors or the turning off a valve.

As per Supervisor, Brett Kennedy from RVMG (Robotic Vehicles and Manipulators Group) of JPL, “The stable, durable and deliberate approach suites to their technical strengths and it also provides the model for different vital element of the ecosystem, it is expected that robots will be deployed for disaster scenarios in the future”.

The tasks of RoboSimian will also include the maintenance and assembly of orbital structures, exploration of low-gravity bodies such as; comets, moons and moons; exploration of cliffs and caves on Moon and Mars. The software technique of RoboSimian was influenced by programs which can control the Mars rovers, but now JPL is focusing on the ape-like design, so that it can be used for Earth-bound applications.

If you will imagine the robots of the future, so they will work and move more like humans via using a pair of arms to work and grab the objects and standing up on two legs, but Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA was working on a different type of robot, which can help them in disaster response, which is designed to look and move like an ape. The seven cameras will act like head in this headless robot, whereas; the four identical limbs will act as pair of arms and legs.

RoboSimian is the final entry in DARPA Robotics Challenge from JPL. DARPA Robotics Challenge is 27 month long competition among the world’s top organizations and individuals, who have create robots for an emergency response such as; a nuclear disaster, climate disaster and more. In June 2015, RoboSimian along with other 18 finalists will have to find their way through multiple obstacles simulates eight common scenarios to test the strength and artificial intelligence of robots. In this each and every robot will have to drive car, use a tool and climb stairs, move across rubble and more without human controlling or support. The final winner will receive the prize of $2 million.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is well known and recognized for robotics the robots for space exploration like those robots who can work on Mars and Moon, but the DARPA competition will be an opportunity for the JPL group to come up with new robotics research where they can directly approach to other talented teams.

ASUS ZenFone Zoom is the Thinnest 3x Optical Zoom Smartphone

Smartphones manufacturers are continually improving the cameras in the mobile devices. But ASUS has just run past the top mobile device manufacturers by bringing in the world’s thinnest 3x Optical Zoom in its new Smartphone offering. Asus new Smartphone Zenfone Zoom is similar to the Samsung’s Galaxy Zoom Line but it claims to have the thinnest and best Smartphone featuring a 3x optical zoom camera.

Specifications of Asus Zenfone Zoom

The Asus Zenfone Zoom boasts a robust and efficient 13 MP shooter with a 3x optical zoom along with a 12x digital zoom. It also possesses laser auto focus with optical image optical stabilization. For the users who are crazy about clicking selfies Asus had given a 5 MP front facing camera.

This camera is aptly complimented with a 5.5-inch screen featuring a full 1080x1920 resolution of IPS display on Gorilla Glass 3. ZenFone Zoom will run on Android 5.0 Lollipop with a ZEN UI which provides excellent interface and adds multi-functionality. It will have the modern 802.11 ac WiFi and storage could be enlarged upto 128 GB for storing all the beautiful photos.

Asus Zenfone is the thinnest of all with a 3x optical camera at just 11.95mm. It weighs around 185 grams and is powered by a 3000 mAh battery.

Some other distinct features of ZenFone Zoom are a dual-color LED Flash, HDR mode, Low light mode and enhanced beautification mode. It also has a zero shutter lag feature and manual camera controls which gives more opportunities to the users to take better pictures.

Anatomy of 3x Optical Zoom Camera

Wondering how ASUS happened to place 3x optical zoom camera within a slim body of its Smartphone. All credit goes to its development team which intelligently placed the periscope flat against a round metallic place. The front group of moving optics helps in zooming while the group behind helps in focusing and optical stabilization. Furthermore the camera machinery is crafted in such a way that the camera mechanics lies flat inside the phone’s body and there is no protruding part while zooming.

Technical Features of Asus Zenfone Zoom

Asus has undertaken a careful engineering in implementing a 10-element lens into a phone which is extremely thin. The lens of Zenfone Zoom has an aperture of f/2.7 to f/4.8 as well as it has a 13 mega-pixel sensor which promises to deliver highly sharp and detailed images. In order to enhance the photographing experience on the Smartphone Asus gives an important optical image stabilization system which stabilizes the photo and video capturing.

Price and Availability of This Influential Smartphone

Asus had revealed that this iconic is all set to launch in the second quarter of 2015. Tech experts believe that Asus wants to clear its existing ZenFone 4,5 and 6 series before it could launch another mobile device. However this Asus Smartphone falls under the premium phone category and therefore it rightly commands a price of $399. Company would inform about the geographical availability later on.

Qualcomm's Universal Media Streaming Comes To Soundcloud

The mobile chip constructor company Qualcomm has been quite steady with their footsteps in the competitive market of gadgets. The start of this New Year has been no different for the company Qualcomm; rather it is proving to be better considering their previous records. The Qualcomm’s universal media streaming for AllPlay devices has not been much of a success compared to their fellow technologies like DLNA, Apple’s Airplay etc., but a recent move made by the company might earn them good dividends.
Briefing

The Qualcomm’s universal media streaming is all set to extend their range of access across SoundCloud and Tidal devices that will let you use AllPlay as well. The company’s recent unveiling of such new set of plans seems promising and will definitely gain them enough momentum in the gadget market. Later this year, the Tidal and SoundCloud have both promised to extend their support to the company’s universal media streaming which will enable the users to hear to remixes, pristine-sounding songs and podcasts available at large range of networked stereos and speakers.

Special Mention

Meanwhile, there is good news for Korean and Chinese listeners, as they will be delighted to see that QQ music and KT music also kept on deck.

USP of the Qualcomm’s Universal media streaming 

The universal media streaming of the mobile chip maker company is expected to deliver a platform of simple and convenient streaming of media universally. And with its vision of having floating partners alongside them and extending their app program, will definitely fulfil the expectations. You will be able to stream in AllPlay, SoundCloud and Tidal devices through several music (audio and video) services which even include Spotify. You can have your albums blasting on every system in the house of yours, if you want. To be straight, both Monster’s SoundStage speakers and Fon’s Gramophone media hub will take your AllPlay, SoundCloud and Tidal tunes.

Its Competitions 

There are a lot of similar gears in the market that promises to match the required services. The first WiFi speaker of the House of Marley, the One Foundation (that can take your AllPlay tunes), Bayan Audio, Goodmans, OptomaNuforce, Inkel/Sherwood, SVS, TCL, TP-link and many more, that are vowing to match each other’s services throughout the year 2015.

However the list of partners that have extended their support can be trusted upon, as it is highly improbable that any of them will ditch by holding back their existing services or devices.

By the end of this year, one can definitely expect some more apps to work with the Qualcomm’s media streaming and in the near future as well, before the wave of such supporting software applications reach the wild. But one feels that it will not take much longer time before all of our music applications have an in built audio sharing ability. Although it is big enough that one should not have much problem in streaming their favourite music on devices they are happy using.

Carpenter Who Cut Off His Fingers Makes 'Robohand' With 3-D Printer

Richard van As was recalling the moment of May 2011, when he was in the hospital of Johannesburg and waiting for the statement that his fingers can be stitch back, before an hour he was in carpentry workshop where saw slipped and ripped through his four fingers of right hand. And all of this happened too quickly to understand and know that what actually happened. Rather than the fear of losing his fingers, he was thinking for the way to fix the problem, which is the habit of any real carpenter.

After a lot of research in medicinal field and scouring on the Internet, he couldn’t find it anywhere to buy a functional prosthetic finger whereas the cost of prosthetic hands and limbs was thousands of dollars. But in the end his online research and surfing paid off as he finds the amateur video which was posted by a mechanical effects artist Ivan Owen, who was from Washington State. After five minutes he finds that, actually people can use it.

Printing Prosthetics: 

The pair of a mechanical finger was developed for Richard van As, but the process has gone for the countless benefit in all over world. In January 2012, it was official launched to create affordable mechanical prosthetics with the help of 3D printers. It has been designed in open source, so anyone with the help of desired technology and 3D printer can print out hands, any fingers, and arms as well.

These specialized printers use the additive manufacturing technique and PLA (thermoplastic material Polylactide) to print body parts like; joints and knuckles which can be produced through the combination of stainless steel and aluminum with personalized approach to assemble and fit in the body of human through the guidance of free open-source manual.

After the five minute of installation people can start ti use it. According to, Leonard Nel, communications manager of team, “It’s anatomically driven by the shoulder, elbow and wrist, which means its movements will be controlled by the user”.

Richard van As drives the whole process simply, by removing unnecessary red tape to reduce the cost with something as essential as a limb. The first Robohand was created for the five-year-old Liam in South Africa, who was born with ABS (amniotic band syndrome) and the syndrome left him with none fingers on his right hand, but after fitting the newly printed mechanical hand Liam he was able to pick up stuff within five to ten minutes.

The hand cost for full adult is $2,000 and it takes five and a half hours to print it and approximately ten to fifteen hours to assemble it. Placing an order for prosthetic is pretty simple as customers need to send measurements by filing the forms and 3-D scans of their hands to get their translation into the software and later that will print out the parts for their desired prosthetic, but for this now an eight-month waiting list from the date of order.

Welcome the Next Generation of Narratives Wearable Camera

The first generation of the Narrative’s life logging camera has made its debut nearly a year back and it is almost time that the company should think about unveiling a sequel to this device. At CES, people could finally see as what the company has been working on till now and do not jump to the conclusion that nothing additional has been added to the sequel. You will be very wrong. As if now the company has given the name to the device as narrative Clip 2 and has even added a bulk of changes to the device.

The CEO, Martin Källström has given a very clear indication that the Swedish outfit has taken a completely new approach with their second-generation wearable camera and supported the fact that there is no need to fix a device until it is broken. Unlike other companies, the company did not look into developing something new but instead they focused on the some of the major issues encountered with the original device.

Three biggest issues fixed: 

Narrative Clip- The customers were facing issues with that was given to attach the device or the unit to the clothes. The company has now replaced this clip with a flexible mount, which can not only accommodate tripods but lapel pins as well.

Image quality- The unit was initially released with a 5-megapixel sensor but the company has now replaced this with 8-megapixel senor with 90-degree unit that will be offering much better low light performance compared to the previous version.

Sync Images- The initial device was dependent on the USB for syncing data but the company has added Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to enable the users to be able to sync the images with their phones or even through online services offered by the company. Bluetooth can be used for connecting with iOS apps and Android apps. So, now the users will be able to manage and see their photos on their phones.

According to the company, the initial Narrative was more about clicking pictures and making is a part of someone’s private journal, but the latest Narrative will make it much more social with their addition of the social layer. The Narrative Clip 2 is expected to be available in the market in 2015 and people can either have a black, white, or red one as their options.

The device is currently priced at $199. If the users are finding this a bit heavy on the pocket, then the company is still keeping their original narrative available and they are bringing down the price to $149. In United Kingdom the unit will available at £100 and in Australia it will be available at AU$245. At the moment the company is not sure about the existing stocks but they have promised that they will keep on manufacturing the previous version as long as they are receiving demands from the customers.

This device is the perfect companion for the people who are addicted to photography. This clip on camera will be automatically snapping pictures every 30 seconds and each of these photos will be stamped by GPS.

ViewSonic V55 Smartphone With Iris Scanner

One of most exciting rumors of 2014 was the inclusion of Iris-scanning technology as a prominent feature of the smart phones. Even though the technology was expected to be introduced in the flagship Samsung Galaxy handset, it really did not happen but still kept making headlines throughout the year. The technology was expected to see the daylight in 2014 but it could not happen.

However, the good news is here in 2015, the New Year brings out a break to this jinx and hopes are soaring higher as we will see the very first smartphone featuring the iris scanning and recognition technology. This is expected from ViewSonic, which is company largely associated with displays. The company will reportedly launch a smartphone packed with the Iris recognition technology sometime in January 2015.

Viewsonic’s New Smartphone: 

The California-based company is known to highlight their products at CES every year and hopes are quite high that the company will be launching the smartphone at the event this year. Gizmochina in a report has depicted the functions, features and also some of unseen images of this new  smartphone. The publication has even gone ahead and posted a YouTube video with the title "ViewSonic V55 teaser with Iris recognition technology". This video highlights the different features and how these features work on the smartphone. At the moment there is no information pertaining to the price of the new smartphone.

According to some of the reports, the new technology will ensure that only the owner of the phone, whose iris patterns are pre-recorded with will able to unlock the phone and allow the user to access information from the smartphone.

The reports also suggest that the ViewSonic V55 smartphone will have the iris scanner on top right corner of the handset, which will be covered with a small piece. The users of the phone will have to slide this covering piece to use the scanner. The report also indicates that when the user slides the screen to open the scanner, a light will automatically turn on to indicate that that scanner has been activated.

 The user or the owner of the smartphones will be able to protect their personal files and documents stored on their V55 smartphone by making use of the iris scanner. The reports add that for anyone to access any information that has been stored and protected by the Iris recognition sensor, they will need to the owner to scan their eye into the sensor and that’s how the information will be unlocked.

Specifications of ViewSonic V55: 

This smartphone is expected to be full of pack a 64-bit Snapdragon 410 quad-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz; 2GB RAM, Adreno 306 GPU; and comes in two built-in storage variants - 16GB and 32GB.

Further the smartphone is expected to sport a 5.5-inch full-HD (1080x1920 pixels) OGS display and also includes a 13-megapixel rear Sony camera. The smartphone is expected to support 4G LTE networks. But the only drawback is that there is no information pertaining to the operating system used on the smartphone.

Vine Appears to Have Verified a Fake Beyoncé Account

According to the reports, the recently verified Beyoncé account, which was opened four days ago on Vine, appears to be fake. The account was suspended on Sunday afternoon, but until that time the account was able to get nearly 40, 000 views on the single video posted, this is the same video, which was posted by the star on her Instagram account. However, all this was after the welcoming tweet links to the video-sharing network were tweeted by employees of Twitter and Vine.

This also included Vine’s head of production. All these people later went on to delete their tweets. Therefore, the main question that remains is as to why the company Vine, verified a fake account. At present, the company was not reachable to respond to any of this issue and this issue clearly highlighted a loophole in the Vine’s verification process that has easily hackers to fake a Beyoncé and also get her green badge.

The verification process

The Vine has two ways of verifying their users, one of the ways is a manual process and the second one is by authenticating the user with the Twitter account (which owns Vine). If a user tries to open a Vine account by making use of their Twitter account, there Vine account will get automatically verified.

Once the verification has been completed, the user can change their Vine account to whatever they like. This method was used by Ross Miller to create a perfectly verified account for Vine for his Twitter super-friend Taye Diggs.

He just had to borrow the username that is used by Diggs for his Instragram account, he changed the profile photo on Vine and over: Verified account for Taye at Vine, at least working till it gets suspended.

On a boarder security scale, it is really a big loophole which requires immediate attention and needs to be fixed soon. Twitter as more than 100000 verified people and the verification bug is grabbing for attention. This loophole can easily make impersonator to fake an account for American singer. Reports have clearly indicated that the account created for Beyoncé has been already identified to be fake.

About Vine: 

Vine was founded in June 2012 by Rus Yusupov, Colin Kroll and Dom Hofmann, it provides the sharing services for a short-form videos. Microblogging website Twitter has acquired it in October 2012 before the official launch of website.

Features of Vine: 

If you love to record and edit vedio, so Vine if perfect platform for you. It allows all users to record and edit short vedios, which is of five- to six-second-long clips and later with the help of revine you can share it with other followers. Popular Vines have a feature to revined automatically and all of the Vines can be published or shared on other social networking sites such as; Facebook and Twitter. If you wan to browse the videos of others, so all you need to install a Vine's app where you will get the option of groups of videos by trend or theme or popular videos.

The New Panasonic 4K UHD Blu-Ray Player Prototype Packs a Punch

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2015 displayed some fantastic innovations that promise to light up the gadget market in the coming time. Among many, the Panasonic 4K Blu-Ray player prototype has managed to grab some attention of many visitors in CES 2015.

The electronic manufacturing company Panasonic has launched its generation next Blu-Ray player at CES this year, which was held in Las Vegas. The new launch is one of the series of Flagship televisions, called CX850U 4K TV. This prototype player is able to offer a resolution of 3,480 * 2,160 and a bit rate of 100 Mb per second. Its ability of displaying 4K resolution images at the rate of 60 frames per second makes it a special one. Its specific design is exclusive for supporting video processing technology which is presently on the way of inclusion in the current standards of Ultra HD Blu-Ray. It’s High dynamic Range (HDR) and immersive audio technologies are also expected to be included under the UHD standards.

Colour Features

Similar to other renowned TV manufacturing companies, Panasonic flaunts a modified LED version with phosphor coating that delivers the colour brightness never seen before. It has a much broader range of colours which fills up to 98 per cent of DCI colour space. The fresh new Panasonic CX850U stands out for its picture processor engine called Studio Master Drive that enhances richness of colours and emphasizes on the accuracy of the colours in vivid images giving a much superior quality of pictures. Going through the prototype player one can undoubtedly say that the CX850U 4K Panasonic TV is just the perfect alternative to the kind of colour features displayed on cinema theatres.

Operating System

The Panasonic CX850U runs on the Linux based Firefox Operating System along with an exclusive Graphical User Interface of Panasonic. It has got a versatile combination of web-based Operating System along with a clear and convenient interface for the user benefits. The Linux based Firefox OS has a voice assistant associated with it called Xumo Guide that has got a touch of smartness in it for content discovery and some more added functions.

Appearance

It was quite surprising to see that Panasonic did not prepare a centre stage for them on the occasion of announcing their new launch of 4K UHD Blu-Ray player prototypes. It deserved much bigger limelight than what it received having such fantastic features of its kind. The small black box Blu-Ray player will be developed in collaboration with UHD alliance which includes partners like Samsung, Panasonic and many more from the Hollywood industry such as 20TH Century Fox, Technicolor and Warner Brothers.

Prospect

The fact that there is a rapid increase in availability and affordability of the 4K TVs point towards the mere future where there will be hardly any homes left having 4K UHD Blu-Ray technology get installed in the drawing rooms, starting from the year 2015 itself. But before that there is a long distance to cover up starting from the point of being a prototype till ending up enjoying the success.

LG Defends OLED TVs Future

OLED, which stands for Organic Light- Emitting Diode, is in itself a film of organic compound with a layer of emissive electroluminescent, which responds to electric current with an electric current.

The Creation of Organic Light- Emitting Diode (OLED) 

LG, the famous Korean Electronics giant is the only major company which manufactures these OLED televisions. In the absence of any strong and solid competitor, this company has managed to reach the top and rule the market by itself. It has cornered the market in the absence of any cut throat competition. LG presented themselves as the promoters of the amalgamation of the OLED with the modern technology high definition television screens. They also focused their attention on the WebOS 2.0 TVs on the latest "wellness platform", which has a much simpler and uncomplicated user interface which operates with a much faster speed.

The Introduction of Organic Light- Emitting Diode (OLED) 

The company expressed its interest in continuing the production of OLED tv, better and improvised and more advanced versions. In the press conference conducted by company of LG at the CES 2015, they introduced some of the latest models. The center stage was taken up by the OLED.

The Evolution from Cathode- Ray Tube Sets to Organic Light- Emitting Diode (OLED) 

The company's spokesperson who happens to be the director of new products development, introduced the matter of the evolution of television to the spectators, which were majorly consisting of journalists. In his speech he placed emphasis on the fact that change and evolution keeps happening by the seconds. Prior to the LCD screen televisions, the cathode-ray tube sets were in vogue and most efficient. After the emergence of the LCD's, they slowly went out of vogue and at present, the OLED televisions have been evolved from the LCD screens. Currently, the OLED are better as they are known to produce nearly, perfect blacks, which are important for rich and brightly contrasted colors.

The Upcoming Year

LG has released a notice which states that the upcoming year will launch five latest designs. These designs will deal with a variety of changes, ranging from 55 inches to 65 inches, from flat screened to curved and slim bodied ones. They also plan on launching a 77 inch flexible television, which can be manipulated to be flat screened and form a curved conformation. Plus, it would have the added benefits of the amazing OLED picture quality and webOs interface as the smart features.

New Kids in the Block! 

In 2015 LG has lined up a plethora of new advanced gadgets. The reception of the OLED will determine the future course of this technology. The OLED is a complete class all by itself. Quantum Dot is another technology launched by LG, which is known for providing the rich- color technology. Though all these advancements don't come cheap, they are worth every dime that is spent on this latest updated version.

CES 2015: Toyota Opens Patents on Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology

In a strong hope of a developed future of Hydrogen fuel cell technology being an alternative fuel source, the Japanese car maker Toyota has promised to offer around six thousand patents (related to the technology), which is owned by them, as royalty-free. Last Tuesday, the Japanese car maker Toyota made the much awaited announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2015, which was held in Las Vegas.

Summary 

The pledge made by Toyota includes 5,680 Hydrogen fuel cell related patents, including the technologies that have been used in developing the company’s latest innovation Toyota Mirai. Approximately, 1,970 patents are related to fuel cell stacks, 290 patents are related to high-pressure hydrogen tanks, 3,350 patents are associated with the software used to control fuel cell system and rest of the 70 patents are related to hydrogen production.

Plan

The infrastructure required to support the electric cars has started to rise across many countries, even though the re-fuelling stations for hydrogen fuel cell powered cars are hard to find. Therefore the step taken by the Japanese car maker makes it all the more significant, by opening their patents for other companies to own and in the process boost up the places that the hydrogen fuel cell cars are starting to fill.

The announcement made by the company reflects their positive approach in supporting the development of infrastructure of the Hydrogen powered society.

Previously on many occasions, the Japanese Automaker has tried their hand with this initiative of developing hydrogen powered society. One such example is the developmental set up in California. Toyota made huge investments in improving the facilities of Hydrogen fuel cell technology in California and in the North Eastern states of America. Last year, the company extended their support towards First Element Fuels with a loan grant of $7.3 million covering around 19 different hydrogen fuelling stations of California.

The Japanese car making company welcomes the interested companies over negotiable individual contracts for the usage of related patents. However it must be notified that the pledge made by the company on Tuesday covers only the patents related to the fuel cell vehicles which will remain available until 2020 ends, whereas the patents that are related to the production of hydrogen and its supply are kept open over indefinite period of time.

There is a small catch in this pledge although, which is that the Japanese car making company expects the interested companies to share similar technology related information and make their patents related to fuel cell as open. But make no mistake thinking it to be a pre-requisite condition to be filled before approaching for patent negotiations.

Future of this technology: 

The company strongly believes that the first generation of Hydrogen powered vehicles, that are going to get unveiled in coming few years, requires good amount of collaboration between automakers/ car makers, state authorities, power generating firms and the family of researchers. The Consumer Electronics Show 2015 was probably the best platform to be had for such an effort to get initiated and for a whistle to be blown for the start of its on-field implementation.