New Launch: Lava launches 'Iris Fuel 60' in India at Just Rs. 8888

Homegrown handset maker Lava on Tuesday launched a new smartphone -- Iris Fuel 60 -- offering a greater battery life to help users work for longer hours without frequent charging.

Priced at Rs. 8,888, the handset is second in Lava's range of smartphones focussed on longer battery life.

"With smartphones becoming part and parcel of everyday life, battery life has become a matter of concern for smartphone users," Lava International Vice President & Head Product, Navin Chawla told reporters.

With Iris Fuel 60, the aim is to put an end to the recurring problem of frequent charging which has become quite a norm for smartphone users, he added.

The handset features a 5-inch HD IPS display, 1.3 GHz quad core processor, 1GB RAM and 8GB internal memory (expandable up to 32GB).

With a 4,000 mAh battery, the device sports Android KitKat operating system and can be upgraded to the latest Android Lollipop in future. It has a 10MP rear and 2MP front camera.

"The battery allows users up to 32 hours of talktime on 2G without a need to charge the phone. The phone is also equipped with quick charge technology that restricts the charging time to 3 hours 15 minutes," he said.

The handset also boasts of a "solder-less" manufacturing technology where each component is connected to PCBA via connectors, unlike conventional smartphones where manual soldering is used.

This results in lesser defects and makes it easier for service engineers in case of any fault.

India is one of the fastest growing smartphone market in Asia Pacific region, witnessing a growth of 84% year-on-year in the April-June 2014 period.

Read More: http://www.hindustantimes.com/technology/gadgets-updates/lava-launches-new-smartphone-for-rs-8-888/article1-1297078.aspx

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Toyota Mirai – Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle

Toyota has been teasing its upcoming hydrogen fuel cell car for the better part of the year, but at the Los Angeles auto show it has announced that consumers will be able to buy the Mirai sedan for $57,500 when it goes on sale in 2015. However, Toyota claims the final price for the four-door vehicle should be significantly lower when factoring in state and federal incentives that could push the price "under $45,000" when all is said and done.

As for the technology behind this car, Toyota claims that its fuel cell stack will be refillable in about five minutes and provide a driving range of 300 miles. It's no performance beast, but that range should make the driving experience much more like a standard gas-powered vehicle rather than most current electric vehicles, which still aren't quite feasible for most long-distance drives.

Of course, there are even less places to refuel a hydrogen-powered car than there are standard electric chargers — that five-minute refuel time won't be very useful if you can't find a place to fill up your car. To that end, the Mirai will first be only available in California, where a hydrogen refueling infrastructure is currently being built out. By the end of 2015, Toyota says some 20 stations will be online, with another 28 launching in 2016. Toyota also says that 2016 will see the first construction of stations on the east coast, with 12 stations spread across five states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island) expected that year.

Until more stations become commonplace, hydrogen-powered cars will remain a niche curiosity — but it's easy to see the attraction to such a vehicle. The Mirai (and other similar vehicles) use no gasoline and emit only water vapor in the process. That complete lack of emissions coupled with a more extensive range than current electrical cars makes hydrogen-powered cars sound like a pretty huge step forward in automotive technology.

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7242785/toyotas-new-hydrogen-powered-mirai-sedan-will-be-on-sale-next-year

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Google Launches Hindi Voice Search, to Add More Regional Languages Soon

Amit Singhal, Prakash Javadekar and Rajan Anandan at the launch of the Indian Langauge Internet Alliance in New Delhi.

Aiming to bring 300 million people online, search firm Google has partnered content providers such as ABP News and Amar Ujala, along with government agency, CDAC to make regional content available on Internet.

Google, which currently offers voice search in English, has also added Hindi language service and plans to other languages like Tamil, Marathi and Bengali to the list in coming months.

"India has about 200 million Internet users with about 5 million new users being added every month with 100 per cent coming through mobile devices. At this pace, India will overtake the US in terms of number of users in the next 12 months," Google India Vice President and Managing Director Rajan Anandan said in New Delhi.

However, only 198 million people in the country are estimated to be proficient in English with most of them already on the Internet, he added.

With that in mind, the Indian Language Internet Alliance (ILIA) has been formed, he said.

"The group is committed to promoting the growth of Indic- language content online. ILIA hopes to enable 300 million Indian language speakers to become highly engaged Internet users by 2017," he said.

The Alliance will work together to accelerate building Indian language content for Indians who will come online for the very first time, mostly via smartphones and mobile devices.

"If Internet is available in Indian languages, then the Internet usage will go up to 50 crore and it is possible. This will help in realisation of digital India initiative of the government. It is an important initiative," Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar said.

As a part of its efforts, Google showcased demos of voice search in Hindi and launched a website 'www.hindiweb.com' to help Hindi-speaking Internet users discover Hindi content across websites, apps, videos and blogs.

"India is a significant market for us and is growing at a strong pace. Internet is empowering and that is why we want to take Internet to the next billion," Google Senior Vice President Search Amit Singhal told PTI.

He added the alliance will help content creators build relevant content for these new Indian language mobile users.

"Its a catch 22 situation. There is not enough regional content and current user base is also small. Through ILIA, we want to address both the issues," he said.

Source: BusinessToday

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Yahoo Planning to Launch Its Own YouTube Service

Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) is reportedly working to enter into YouTube’s territory with its own video sharing service and even though the firm is officially remaining tightlipped, it has been rumored that the website will be ready for a launch in the next few months.

It has been said that Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Meyer had contacted YouTube’s content providers, star talents and network channels with the promise of more money to switch from Google to the Yahoo fold. YouTube is under the banner of Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), which had paid $1.65 billion for the popular video sharing website in late 2006.

In its move to launch its own YouTube service, Yahoo is supposedly also offering better deals to the rival’s video makers by offering better advertising revenues, guaranteed ad rates and promotional space on Yahoo’s heavily trafficked home page on a non-exclusive basis, among other inducements.

The move comes at the right time for Yahoo as over the recent months, YouTube’s content providers have complained of difficulty in making profits from the video sharing website’s services. There have also been complaints from the talent stars that they are not being paid enough.

Not much has been learnt about the website that Yahoo is coming up with, but it has been reported that a content management system is being prepared by the firm so that video stars would be able to manage their clips. Yahoo, reportedly, does not want anyone to be uploading content to its service. The firm is more interested in popular, professionally made content and therefore, is seeking mostly already established stars and professionals.

On the flip side, financial analysts are focusing on how Yahoo will fare in competition against the massively popular YouTube. In a long shot, once China’s Alibaba becomes public, Yahoo can sell its entire stake and gain $37 billion cash, which it can use to invest against YouTube. However, YouTube’s resources is far more massive as Google sits on cash and short-term investments worth $50 billion, which it will likely use to counteract any of Yahoo’s moves.

According to Paul Ausick of 24/7 Wall Street, Yahoo will need a massive investment in popular talents to dislodge YouTube. Ausick said this is not likely to come cheap. He said that even though Katie Couric’s addition to Yahoo’s stable was a start — four months earlier, Couric announced she was becoming the first-ever global anchor at Yahoo — the company would need bigger stars like American radio personality, television show host, author, actor, and photographer, Howard Stern at an enormous contract rate.

Moreover, Yahoo would also have to compete against YouTube in the music streaming sector. Popular services like Spotify, Pandora Media Inc. and Rdio, pale in comparison to the business YouTube has. Yahoo will have to invest significantly in this sector to compete not only against YouTube but also popular music streaming services like Spotify.

Meanwhile, as reports are making rounds of Yahoo looking to launch its own YouTube service, claims are also being made the firm is in attempts to buy existing video sites such as Vimeo. It may be recalled that last year, Yahoo was eyeing a potential takeover of Dailymotion, but the bid was quashed by the French government.

Source: Guardianlv

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Nobel Prize in Chemistry - Microscopes to See into Living Cells and Molecules

One German and two American researchers won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for discovering how to see into living cells and molecules with unprecedented clarity, overcoming a barrier that had limited the use of microscopes for centuries.

Working independently, the three scientists developed a set of imaging techniques that have transformed the fundamental study of disease and basic biology world-wide. So challenging was the work, however, that one of today’s newly minted Nobel laureates had quit academic research in frustration for almost a decade before his ideas finally triumphed.

In awarding the prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm said German Stefan W. Hell and Americans Eric Betzig and William E. Moerner brought “optical microscopy into the nanodimension.” The three equally share the prize and its cash award of 8 million Swedish kroner, or about $1.1 million.

Dr. Hell is director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and also works at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. Dr. Betzig is group leader for the Janelia Farm Research Campus at Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Ashburn, Virginia, and Dr. Moerner is a chemistry professor at Stanford University in California.

News of the award caught Dr. Hell in Germany by surprise. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. When he first proposed the idea underlying the new imaging technique, he encountered considerable skepticism, he recalled. “The scientific community wasn’t very receptive to the idea. It was kind of crazy,” he said.

Over the course of several decades, the three scientists each contributed to the development of a new technique called super-resolved fluorescence microscopy, which circumvents physical limits on the resolution of traditional optical microscopes. In essence, they perfected a way to watch the biochemistry of life at work inside a cell and the dance of a single molecule.

“This prize is about seeing,“ said chemist Sven Lidin, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, which selected the candidates for the prize. “The work of the laureates has made it possible to study molecular processes in real time.”

Source: http://online.wsj.com/articles/nobel-prize-in-chemistry-awarded-for-microscope-advancement-1412763790

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Now Windows 10 Straight from Windows 8

The next version of Microsoft's flagship operating system will be called Windows 10, as the company skips version 9 to emphasize advances it is making toward a world centered on mobile devices and Internet services.

The current version, Windows 8, has been widely derided for forcing radical behavioral changes. Microsoft is restoring some of the more traditional ways of doing things and promises that Windows 10 will be familiar for users regardless of which version of Windows they are now using. For instance, the start menu in Windows 10 will appear similar to what's found in Windows 7, but tiles opening to the side will resemble what's found in Windows 8.

Microsoft offered a glimpse of its vision for Windows at a San Francisco event today aimed at business customers. Microsoft is making a technical preview version available to selected users starting Wednesday. It plans to unveil details about consumer features early next year, with a formal release in mid-2015.

Analysts consider the success of the new Windows crucial for Microsoft and new CEO Satya Nadella, who must show that Microsoft can embrace mobile devices without sacrificing the traditional computing experience.

The new software represents an attempt to step back from the radical redesign that alienated many PC users when Windows 8 was introduced two years ago. But it's not a complete retreat from Microsoft's goal of bridging the gap between PCs and mobile devices. It still has touch-screen functions and strives to create a familiar experience for Windows users who switch between desktop computers, tablets and smartphones.

Microsoft executive Terry Myerson said Windows 10 will be "a whole new generation" and, as expected, will work across a variety of devices — from phones to gaming consoles.

Watch Windows VP Joe Belfiore talk about Windows 10:

Source: http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report-microsoft-skips-straight-to-windows-10-2022796

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After 20 Years, Yahoo Directory is Shutting Down at the End of This Year

Yahoo ends an era by officially announcing that Yahoo directory is shutting by the end of this year. With this Yahoo actually announce the closure of its three products: Yahoo Directory, Qwiki and Education.

Yahoo SVP, Cloud Platform Group, Jay Rositer said in a blog post, “At Yahoo, focus is an important part of accomplishing our mission: to make the world’s daily habits more entertaining and inspiring. To achieve this focus, we have sunset more than 60 products and services over the past two years, and redirected those resources toward products that our users care most about and are aligned with our vision. With even more smart, innovative Yahoos focused on our core products – search, communications, digital magazines, and video – we can deliver the best for our users.”

Here’s what he said about Yahoo Directory specifically: “Yahoo was started nearly 20 years ago as a directory of websites that helped users explore the Internet. While we are still committed to connecting users with the information they’re passionate about, our business has evolved and at the end of 2014 (December 31), we will retire the Yahoo Directory. Advertisers will be upgraded to a new service; more details to be communicated directly.”

While it’s supposed to be retired at the end of the year, a lot of people (myself included) are having trouble accessing it as of the time of this writing.

Source: http://bit.ly/1wT0R4Q

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