Bharti Airtel has started taking pre-orders for the 16GB variant (black) of the Apple iPhone 5 for Rs. 45,500. Airtel's listing says the device will be available from November 2, while shipping is promised within 7-8 days. There's no word on availability and pricing of the other variants of the iPhone 5. However, both Airtel and Aircel have listed the device on their websites and are expected to announce special plans. The iPhone 5 is expected to officially launch in India on November 2.

E-xpress Interactive, distributors of Assassin’s Creed III in India, have come forth to appease the fans of the franchise. It has been announced that Assassin’s Creed III Day One Edition will be a special edition for PS3 and the Xbox 360. While the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions both feature unlockable content and a Dangerous Secret, the PS3 version of the Day One pack will also feature 60 minutes of exclusive gameplay which is not on the Xbox 360.

Rockstar Games has announced that for the 10 year anniversary of GTA: Vice City, their most popular Grand Theft Auto game yet, for Android and iOS. Vice City was the first game where the protagonist, Tommy Vercetti, could use bikes as vehicles along with the ability to change costumes in order to dodge the cops.

Rockstar has stated that the game will be visually rich, featuring “native high resolution graphics and several enhancements.” Unfortunately, those are the only details available so far, if they may be considered details at all. What enhancements will make their way into the final version of the game are unknown, as is the release date. All we have for now is a “coming this Fall” banner.

Rockstar’s own GTA III was a big success when it made its way to iOS and Android devices and we’d expext the same from GTA: Vice City.

Gmail has seen a lot of changes since its inception, with innumerable features being added to what was essentially a mailbox. When you compose mails in Gmail from now on, a New Message box will open just like a chat window. So say you are looking at mails in your Inbox and you want to compose a mail, the Gmail will not open a separate compose mail page, instead, you will be able to see the contents of your inbox and write out your mail in the New Message box. You can even insert messages inline.

Apple is the largest and most successful technology company in the world’s history, but how did it arrive at that lofty perch? Did it create all the ideas folded into its shiny gadgets, or did it beg, borrow and steal them?

Of course, the answer is, all of the above. That’s the point of this infographic from BestMastersPrograms.org, using a variety of sources to arrive at this extensive collection of stats, illustrations and information about Apple and its explosively popular product line.

Steve Jobs liked to brag about how Apple has “always been shameless about stealing great ideas,” but the Cupertino company didn’t just lift all of its product ideas, did it? No. After you’ve traced every Apple product back to its humble origins, consider the possibility that Apple’s obsessive attention to detail wasn’t copied from many other companies.

According to Brief Mobile, which published shots of the tablet Friday. The bigger brother to the Nexus 7, released earlier this year, the Nexus 10 Is expected to be announced on Monday at a Google event in New York City. The rumoured Google Nexus 10 is made by Samsung about it's specifications :
 

Nexus 10 Features :
- Samsung-built Exynos 5250 processor (the same processor being used in Google’s new Chromebook).
- 2GB of RAM.
- 16GB of built-in storage.
- 10-inch tablet’s screen will have a 2560 x 1600 resolution (198.9ppi).
- 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, as well as a forward-facing camera.
- W-Fi only device will also support Bluetooth 4.0, and NFC.

According to Brief Mobile’s source, the Nexus 10 will be the first to run the next version of the OS, Android 4.2. Confusingly, 4.2 will still hold on to the Jelly Bean name rather than moving on to the next moniker for Android: Key Lime Pie. Google is expected to lift the lid on the Nexus 10 on the 29^th of October.

Google Maps has gotten a fresh new look, adding some “visual improvements” to its design.
The application now lets users get a clearer view of natural geography by showing terrain and color gradations to illustrate vegetation. It also includes labels for natural land formations.

“This enriched visual data allows you to quickly and easily see where the great forests, deserts and mountain ranges around the world begin and end,” Maps software engineer Karl Johann Schmidt said in a Friday blog post. “It also conveys how natural land formations can impact where, how and why man-made developments like urban cities, dams and bridges are made.”

Apple has launched its new lineup of iMac and Mac mini desktops, and 13-inch MacBook Pro laptops in India. The new generation of devices is thinner and more powerful than the last, with much upgraded hardware. All three devices ship with Mac OS X Mountain Lion.

The new 13-inch MacBook Pro features a high-resolution (2,560x1600 pixel – 227ppi) Retina Display, made out of an 13.3-inch IPS panel with a viewing angle of 178 degrees, as well as 75 percent less reflection and 29 percent higher contrast than the previous generation. It is just 0.75-inches thick (20% thinner than its predecessor), and weighs in at 1.62 kgs. It ships only with flash storage options, up 8GB of RAM, and up to Intel Core i7 (Ivy Bridge) processors.

Microsoft officially announced Windows 8 Thursday at a massive event in New York City. Windows 8 will be available in 140 markets and in 37 languages on Friday. Users can start downloading Windows 8 at 12:01 a.m. and copies will be available in stores at midnight local time at retailers around the globe.

Existing Windows owners can upgrade to Windows 8 for $39.99. In addition to Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro, Microsoft is also announcing Windows RT. Windows RT will come preloaded on ARM devices such as the Microsoft Surface tablet.

At the launch event, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that Windows 8 is ushering in a “new era for Microsoft.” Windows 8 is the first product of this new era.

Nokia unveiled the new smartphone at an event in Delhi and the phone will be available in the market in next two weeks. Nokia Lumia 510, and entry-level Windows Phone device, has been unveiled for a striking Rs 11,000.

The struggling tech firm has placed the Lumia 510 at a very aggressive price, no doubt to attract new users to a Windows smartphone. Nokia, however, has stated that it will reveal the exact price of the phone a day before it’s released in the market.

Processor — 800 MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S1

RAM — 256MB

Storage — 4GB built-in memory, 7GB SkyDrive cloud storage, no microSD card slot

Colour variants —White, Black, Red, Cyan, Yellow

 
India's telecom giant Bharti Airtel has become fourth largest telecom operator in the world in terms of subscribers, according to the Wireless Intelligence report.

Microsoft Surface RT Tablet has surfaced (pun unintended) on eBay with exorbitant pricing. The listings on eBay offer two choices, the 32GB Surface RT without the Touch Cover for Rs. 38,490 and the Surface RT with Touch Cover (choice of Blue, Red, Pink, Black and White covers) for Rs. 48,990 for the Black version and Rs. 49,990 for all the rest. There is no 64GB version on eBay (yet), but the Surface RT does come with a microSD card slot that can gobble up a 64GB card to offer you more digital territory to let your movies and songs frolic in.

Currently, the official Microsoft Store is offering the base 32 GB model of the Surface for $499, which roughly translates to Rs. 27,500 while the Touch Cover version is pegged at $599 or Rs. 33,000. The eBay pricing is definitely much higher, but that is to be expected if you’re looking at having the Surface RT around the same time as the US counterparts. The listings are being marked as “Genuine Import from USA” with a ship date of November 2.  Surface RT is Microsoft’s home-grown 10-inch tablet that will run Windows RT (the ARM version of the Windows 8 OS) and will ship with a copy of Office RT (student version) that can be upgraded to the full version for free when it is finally out.

Nokia has launched the Asha 308 dual-SIM touch phone in India and is available from its online store at Rs. 5,685.

The Nokia Asha 308 Features : 

- 3-inch capacitive display
- 2MP camera and microSD card slot
- Runs on Nokia’s S40 full-touch interface
- Supports Bluetooth and EDGE/GPRS.

China to rip off the iPad Mini –- one vendor has already announced the remarkably similar ‘Goopad mini’ for just $99.

The tablet was first spotted by Chinese tech website Gizmochina and comes from Chinese company Goophone, which also launched the “Goophone i5″ shortly after the launch of the iPhone 5 last month.

However, the company apparently patented the iPhone 5’s design in China, based on early leaks of the device, no doubt in a bid to save itself from a prospective court date with Apple.
While the looks and name of the Goopad mini may make for some amusement, the tablet actually sports some pretty decent hardware specifications.There’s an 8-inch 1024 x 768 resolution display, a dual-core 1.4GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage and dual-facing cameras. The device seems to run a customized version of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

The tablet will launch in November for $99, making it $230 cheaper than the entry-level iPad Mini.

Windows 8 becomes officially available on Friday, but the Windows Store made its official debut on Thursday, opening online in 231 markets worldwide in 109 languages.

The Windows Store offers an impressive amount of software for download — Microsoft Windows division president Steven Sinofsky said at a Microsoft event on Thursday that there are more apps available at launch than any app store in history.

According to Wes Miller, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, there were 7,873 Windows 8 “Modern” apps available in the store worldwide as of Wednesday, and 4,516 in the U.S. Windows Store. He added that of those nearly 8,000 apps worldwide, 88% of them are free. In the U.S. version of the Windows Store, 83% (3,749) of the apps are free.

Among those apps, so far we’ve seen Skype for Windows 8 (that we favorably reviewed), Netflix, which we think “looks great and provides easy access to new releases, recommendations and genres,” and the ubiquitous Angry Birds, one of the first games to be available at the Windows Store.

Speaking at Stanford University, Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that if his website had failed to pick up, he’d have gone over to Microsoft to work as an engineer. What’s not clear is whether he already had an offer or had hoped that the Redmond giant would hire him.

Skype has announced the launch of an updated version of its current desktop program for Windows and Mac. Dubbed as Skype 6.0, the voice over internet protocol application now features support for signing into the service via Microsoft or Facebook accounts.

Skype's update has a special emphasis on integration with Microsoft products. The update also brings the ability to instant message contacts from Hotmail, Outlook and Windows Live Messenger.  The Skype 6.0 for Windows desktop includes support for six more languages, namely Thai, Croatian, Slovenian, Serbian, Catalan and Slovak, bringing the total languages that Skype supports to 38. The user interface has been refreshed with a simpler and less cluttered look. The look for instant messaging and SMS sections have also been updated.

Apple announced on Tuesday the iPad mini the highly anticipated pint-sized version of its popular tablet. The device has a 7.9-inch display with a 1024 x 768 resolution, Apple A5 processor, and a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera. With a starting price of $329 for the 16GB Wi-Fi model, the tablet is the least expensive iPad ever made. The iPad mini isn’t the first small tablet to hit the market, and will face some tough (and cheaper) competition.

Apple Inc is expected to launch its much-hyped iPad Mini at an event in California on Tuesday. iPad Mini is expected to be unveiled at California Theatre, San Jose, on Oct 23. The presentation would start at 10:30 PM IST (10 AM PDT).  The price tag remains a big question mark as Apple prepares Tuesday to unveil what is expected to be a smaller iPad. Apple hasn't said anything about the device, but the veil of secrecy that the company throws over unreleased products has been a see-through affair this year. Most of the details of the iPhone 5, for instance, were known well in advance of its launch a month ago.

In the case of the "iPad Mini" (the real name is not known), tech bloggers and analysts expect a device with a screen measuring 7.85 inches on the diagonal, making it about half the size of the regular iPad. It would be slightly larger than the 7-inch tablets it's presumably designed to compete with, including Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire and Google Inc.'s Nexus 7.


Apple iPad mini Specifications :

- 7.9-inch display.
- 1024 x 768 resolution.
- Apple A5 processor.
- 5-megapixel rear-facing camera.
- 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera.
- Wi-Fi model.
- iOS 6 support.
- battery 10 hours.

The Kindle Fire starts at $159, and the Nexus 7 at $199. Meanwhile, Apple sells the iPad 2 for $399 and the 4-inch iPod Touch for $199. The iPad mini starts at $329 for the Wi-Fi-only version with 16GB capacity. Higher capacities and 4G LTE options are available. Prices for Wi-Fi-only versions are: $429 for 32GB, and $529 for 64GB. For the cellular versions, prices are $459, $559 and $659 for 16, 32 and 64GB, respectively. Pre-orders begin Oct. 26. Wi-Fi devices ship Nov. 2, and the cellular models will come about two weeks later.

Starbucks inaugurated its first store in India on October 19 in the historic Elphinstone Building in south Mumbai. The company, in a joint venture with Tata Global Beverages, plans to open two additional stores in Mumbai - one in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel and another in the Oberoi hotel - before launching in New Delhi early 2013.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz with Tata group Chairman Ratan Tata at the inauguration of the first Starbucks outlet in India, in Mumbai. Employees of the newly inaugurated Starbucks India outlet at work in Mumbai.

Apple's largest store in Asia opened in Beijing on Saturday. The store, located in the city's commercial street of Wangfujing, is Apple Inc's third in Beijing. A full range of accessories for Apple products is available in the store, according to Browett.

Hundreds of Apple fans waited in line before the store opened at 9 am. "We will bite the Apple," said one customer. Apple currently has 390 retail stores around the world, and the company is stepping up its efforts to expand its presence in China. Browett said a store in the south China city of Shenzhen is also about to open and there will be more stores across China in the future.

Asus has taken the wraps off the latest avatar of its pathbreaking Padfone - the smartphone-and-tablet combo bundle. The smartphone cum tablet having many features :

- Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core chip
- Clocked at 1.5GHz and 2 gigs of RAM to power it
- 4.7-inch (1280 x 720 resolution, 312 pixels per inch) Super IPS+ display.
- Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) 4.0 (Jeallybean is also available).
- 10.1-inch IPS (1280 x 800 resolution, WXGA, 149 pixels per inch) display..
- 2140mAh battery of the phone is rated to offer a talktime of 16 hours over 3G networks.
- 50GB of free Asus WebStorage for 2 years.
-  Internal 5,000mAh battery for tablet.
-  135gm device.
- 13-megapixel rear camera and 1-megapixel front camera.
- Rear autofocus camera with a f/2.4 aperture is capable of 100 continuous full-resolution shots at six frames per second, an LED flash, and a 1.2-megapixel front camera.
- Main camera is capable of recording 1080p HD video at 30 frames per second (fps) and 720p HD video at an impressive 60 fps.
-  Available both as a standalone phone and along with the tablet dock
- Available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities.
- Prices will range from between $600 to $750 for the handset, with an additional $200 for the tablet.
 

According to Head of Facebook India Kirthiga Reddy, companies have increased their expenditure on online advertisements, which is now growing at 25 percent year-on-year. With an increasing Internet population, including the smartphone users, in India, Facebook is expected to post growth at the same pace in the near future. However, sustaining the growth will not be that easy.

As WSJ in its report points out, the social networking website has cater to millions of Indians still using the feature and low-tech phones. Moreover, it has to make its platform more accessible to the local developers to boost its ecosystem. If Facebook's model succeeds in India, it could apply same in other emerging markets such as Indonesia and Brazil. Facebook has definitely taken a lot of measures to make its services popular in the country. It recently rolled out support for Hindi and seven other Indian languages for its feature phone app.

Apple has announced it will be removing its default Java plugin from Safari, and other web browsers on Mac OS X. The update, called Java for OS X 2012-006 1.0, uninstalls the Java applet plug-in from web browsers. Users will still be able run Java applets via the browser however, if they download the plugin directly from Oracle. The update also upgrade’s the operating systems default Java version to the latest - Java SE 6 1.6.0_37.

The advisory says: "This release updates the Apple-provided system Java SE 6 to version 1.6.0_37 and is for OS X versions 10.7 or later. This update uninstalls the Apple-provided Java applet plug-in from all web browsers. To use applets on a web page, click on the region labeled "Missing plug-in" to go download the latest version of the Java applet plug-in from Oracle." Cyber-criminals have started to target the Mac OS however, whether by click-based attacks, or via third-party plugins.

HSBC on Thursday confirmed that it had suffered a cyber attack that took down several of the bank's websites around the world. The company was hit by a denial of service attack, which limited access to its websites and online banking services. HSBC did not provide any information about who might be responsible, but a group with links to Anonymous took credit for the attack on Pastebin and Twitter.

Yesterday afternoon, the @FawkesSecurity Twitter said it took down hsbc.co.uk, tweeting at the bank: "We just brought down your site." The group later attacked hsbc.ca and hsbc.fr.
When another Anonymous Twitter feed asked FawkesSecurity if they were using a botnet to take down the bank's websites, the group responded, "Yup, A very large one as well." The group also suggested that other banks, like Barclays, might be next on the attack list.

The hack, meanwhile, comes amidst what is known as Operation Ababil, or attacks on U.S. banks over the fact that the controversial film Innocence of Muslims is available online here. As Betabeat noted, the campaign recently entered its fourth week by targeting Regions Bank, but has also affected Capital One and SunTrust.

The latest reports surrounding the Apple iPad Mini claim that the as yet unofficial tablet from the fruity giant will hit store shelves 10 days after its launch, starting at a leaked price of €249. Apple’s scheduled press conference, with the search giant expected to showcase new Nexus products (probably including a budget tablet, or a 10-inch device), and the Redmond giant is expected to make Windows Phone 8 related announcements. The Surface for Windows RT will also begin shipping on October 26.

For now, not much is known about the new iPad Mini, except that it is expected to bear a 7.8-inch display. Leaks also reveal pricing of the 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB models, which are indicated to be €349, €549 and €649, for the Wi-Fi only models. As with previous Apple products, the U.S. pricing is expected to be the same, ranging from $249 to $649. The iPad Mini will also ship in black and white colours.

Google is planning to launch a YouTube pay-per-view services for users in India. The move is likely to help the film industry cope with the piracy and give consumers a wider range for viewing movies or other videos. Google's pay-per-view services are already available in multiple countries such as Australia, Korea and Japan.

“Our pay-per-view services or ‘rental’ model is a natural step here in India for the partners that we are working with. Once we have the functionality in, it will be done. There are many Indian media companies which are interested" The Hindu quotes Gautam Anand, Director Content Partnerships, Google Asia Pacific as saying.

YouTube's rental model includes a one-time fee to stream the movie for a limited period of time. Google, however, pointed out its main concern is the payment mechanism. “The major roadblock, which we are working on, is the payment mechanism – enabling carrier billing for example. We want to be able to ensure a seamless experience. Once this is done it will happen.”

A new report from the research and consulting firm Strategy Analytics says the numbers are set to double by 2015-end. The figures translate into one out of every seven people globally carries a smartphone. "By the third quarter of 2011, we estimate there were 708 million smartphones in use worldwide. After a further year of soaring demand, the number of smartphones in use worldwide reached 1.038 billion units during the third quarter of 2012,"

Google announced on Thursday a new budget Samsung Chromebook laptop, dubbed as “the computer for everyone.” Given the specs, the machine is less powerful than the Chromebooks Google unveiled earlier this year.

The 11.6-inch Samsung Chromebook priced at $249 and available for pre-order now from Amazon, Best Buy and other retailers aims to be the second or third computer in your household. It runs on Chrome OS and is super slim, measuring only 0.8 inches thick and weighing 2.5 pounds.
The device packs a Samsung-made ARM Cortex-A15 processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of flash storage. The screen resolution is 1,366 x 768, and the computer supports 1080p video playback as well as Bluetooth 3.0. It also comes with one USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0 port, is rated at hours of battery life and includes 100GB of free cloud storage on Google Drive.

LinkedIn currently has more than 175 million members, with 50 million of those members joining the service in just the past year alone. To put that growth in perspective, in 2009, LinkedIn had just 32 million people. The top of your LinkedIn profile is updated with a larger photo and a more Spartan look for your expertise and background. The profile editing process has been streamlined, making the page editing experience both easier and more intuitive.

When visiting a connection’s page you can see at a glance what you might have in common with that person, and what LinkedIn members are similar to that person. You can like and comment on posts and status updates your connections have made, as well as share out those posts to your connections. LinkedIn has also updated its service on the app front. You can also see what your connections are commenting and liking on the service, and get access to news and information about what’s happening on LinkedIn.

Your own page now displays a chart visually breaking down your network by location, industry, school, or company as well as a graph showing your own profile strength. Photos of the people who have recently viewed your profile also appear on the right side of the screen.