Apple is reportedly negotiating the purchase of Beats for $3.2 billion, according to a new report from The Financial Times. The deal would include both the streaming Beats Music subscription service, as well as the part of the company that produces headphones and speakers. The move, which would be Apple's largest acquisition ever, could be announced as soon as next week, the paper says. Citing sources, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, and Recode also confirmed that the deal was nearing completion.

As per reports, the new Gmail interface will bring modifications to the new configuration of the email services. The new design indicates that the sidebar will be swapped with a slide-in sheet to utilize the entire display for mails. The update also offer UI modifications to Hangouts, and includes features like ‘rest an email‘, important reminder from Google about your appointment and other prior dates, your do-to list or replying to an email. The refurbished look also demonstrates that the stars via the post office will be replaced with pins and all the pinned mails might be set to stay on top of other mails. The new refurbished looks seems that the Gmail App for mobile version has a cleaner, less jumbled look compared to the desktop one.

Still there is no word from the search giant about the launch of this update for public, though Google is working on its design and testing is still under progress which means soon you will be able to use this revamped Gmail Interface.

Google has recently released the Classroom tool in Google app. The application was released on Teachers Appreciation Day and is intended to make and collect assignments and give feedback to students. The Classroom tool coordinates Drive, Docs and Gmail to support teachers in making assignments without wasting paper.

Should children beneath 13 age of age be allowed to connect the ethnic networking websites? It has been one of the abundant debated issues globally, especially in the rouse of thriving mortal of cyber bulling, soul porno and angling. In Bharat, the regime is already making efforts to prevent children under 13 eld from accessing the interpersonal networking websites. Nevertheless, a new meditate conducted by ASSOCHAM reveals virtually 73 proportionality of children under 13 years of age in Bharat are using the cultural networking websites much as Facebook.

The meditate was conducted in railway as easily as tier 2 cities of in Bharat including Delhi-NCR, Bombay, Metropolis, City, Kolkata, Ahmadabad, Metropolis, Pune, Beleaguering and Dehradun. Examination promote points out about 75 proportionality of the parents are knowing nearly their children in the age radical of 8-13 geezerhood using Facebook. Another shocker is around 82 pct of parents provided deplorable content to create a Facebook statement for their children.

"Nearly 25 percent of 13-year-olds, 22% percentof 11-year-olds and 15 pct of 10-year-old are on Facebook, patch 5-10 percent of 8 and 9 year-olds are also open on the tract." Facebook has emerged as the most preferred sociable networking situation among this age radical. Otherwise sites equal throw.com, Google Positive, Pinterest are being utilised by 85 proportionality of children in the age forgather of 10-16 years," adds the summary.

Commenting on the examination findings, Mr. D.S Rawat, Comprehensive Helper of ASSOCHAM, says, "Children are gaining admittance to interpersonal media sites at a younger age, which could expose them to aggregation, group or situations that are out of their depth."  He points out that much a sopranino numerate of children below under 13 eld of age on party networking sites could lead process in cases of cyber aggression, which could someone harmful psychological effect on them.

ASSOCHAM's new analyze comes months after the Delhi Full Respect took a thoughtful comment of children below 13 period having accounts on the cultural networking websites. The government asked Facebook to put a denial on its internal author stating that children beneath 13 geezerhood cannot ingenuous reason on the friendly cloth. The Metropolis HC also rapped the Soldier government for not having sufficient laws to forestall children from beaten through the social networking sites.

A joint work agreement has been signed upon between Finnish telecom giant Nokia and Japan’s NTT Docomo on research in fifth generation (5G) technologies.

The research on 5G networks is required to meet the demand for extreme capacity and performance. Also it will help overcome the challenges that will become relevant for operators, such as guaranteeing cell-edge rates in excess of 100 mbps and reducing latency by a factor of 10.
Hossein Moiin, executive vice president & chief technology officer of Networks, said, “Expanding our cooperation with NTT Docomo on 5G radio technology is an important step towards defining future mobile networks.”

According to a statement released by network division of Nokia, “Nokia and NTT Docomo have agreed to collaborate on research and standardization of 5G technologies and to work jointly on a 5G proof of concept (PoC) system.”
A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by the two companies in January 2014 to research future radio access experimental systems.
 
The wireless networks in the coming future will not only interconnect humans only but also machines and objects, Moiin added. It will help in creating a vibrant overlay of virtual and physical worlds together in the most effective form. NTT Docomo Chief Technology Officer Seizo Onoe said, “We chose Nokia as our partner for the 5G research project based on its clear vision as well as its extensive mobile broadband experience and technology leadership.”

Google has begun tumbling out a v4.4 update to its Google Change Services. The update includes bailiwick enhancements to Maps, an intromission of Street Sight, new features in Position, Games Services, and such more.

Google Recreate services 4.4 lets developers embed Street Orientation in third-party apps using a new Google Maps API. Developers gift be able to reach street look imagery including panorama views. This capital that developers module now be healthy to guide Google Maps collective far into their apps, instead of only linking a person.

Google has supplementary new features to Inside Maps of the API, allowing developers to founder off the choice base chooser so that they can build their own. It has also other the aptitude to key of when a new business comes into centering to chance the currently-active building and storey. The street study body will also be helpful for interior correspondence for shopping paseo or museum, which could wage guided virtual tours with the devoted app.

The update also adds two new reflexion detectors to their emplacement app, which permits apps to thank when a individual is locomotion or functioning and behave accordingly. This give be reclaimable to Humanoid powered Fitness apps and those streaming Golem fag. Google Roleplay services present now let users beam Strategy Gifts to bigeminal recipients in apps that employ Google Movableness Games. Else updates are aimed at developers including activity for in-app promo ads and easier exploit of a 'Buy With Google' button in apps using the Notecase Fragment API.

NASA is now live-streaming views of Earth from space captured by four commercial high-definition video cameras that were installed on the exterior of the International Space Station last month. The project, known as the High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment, aims to test how cameras perform in the space environment. Some of the cameras' components were designed by high school students as part of the High Schools United with NASA to Create Hardware, according to a NASA description of the experiment. The students are also operating the experiment.

"The cameras are enclosed in a temperature-specific housing and are exposed to the harsh radiation of space," NASA officials write in an online description of the HDEV experiment. "Analysis of the effect of space on the video quality, over the time HDEV is operational, may help engineers decide which cameras are the best types to use on future missions.


The HDEV gear arrived at the orbiting lab aboard SpaceX's robotic Dragon capsule, which blasted off on its third contracted cargo mission on April 18. (SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion deal with NASA to make 12 such resupply flights.) Astronauts then installed the cameras on the space station, and they became operational on April 30. The Vancouver-based company UrtheCast (pronounced "Earthcast") has two HD cameras on the orbiting lab. One of them, known as Theia, takes pictures with a resolution of 16.5 feet (5 meters), while the other camera records video that can resolve details as small as 3 feet (1 m) across.

These two cameras, which together cost $17 million, were installed by spacewalking cosmonauts in January. UrtheCast released the first images from Theia last month and plans to begin streaming near-realtime views of Earth from orbit soon, bringing lots of viewers to their website.
UrtheCast also aims to sell its imagery to a variety of customers, including government agencies interested in tracking resource use and private companies that want to keep tabs on their operations (and perhaps the operations of their competitors).

cassette tapes were the only medium of listening to personal audio till the time CDs hit the market for a short span of time only to be replaced by iPods and smartphones. The medium may be "dead" when it comes to daily consumer storage tech, Sony has gone ahead and developed a new way of revitalizing the magnetic tape technology.

Sony presented the new cassette tape format at International Magnetics Conference (Intermag) in Europe last week. The tape comes with much more storage capacity than the tapes we once knew. It is capable of holding 148GB per square inch which is it a new record holder for the highest storage density in the magnetic tape medium.

Magnetic tapes have been the most preferred way of backing up large amounts of data since the 90s. Even though, hard drives have replaced magnetic tape as the preffered way of storage for consumers. But the reality is that the magnetic tapes are drives are still used by companies for mass data backup.
A new cassette created by Sony capable of holding 185TB of storage sounds mammoth when compared to 50GB Blu-Ray discs and 1TB PC hard drives.

How Sony did it
The Japanese electronics giant utilized and enhanced a technology know as "sputter deposition" which creates layers of magnetic crystals by firing argon ions at a polymer film substrate. Creator of Walkman says that the cassette is more of an experiment than a product for consumer space. But Sony is looking to commercialize the product and launch it in the market in the near future.
Surprisingly, storage tape shipments grew 13% two years ago and increased to 26% growth last year. The only issue that magnetic tape storage media faces is its read and write times which is very slow compared to other mainstream storage mediums. But when it comes to storage capacity, such mediums don't even compete against the tape storage - the sole reason why big corporations still use it.

Symantec reveals this type of scam was first circulated in 2011, while the current variation has been around since early 2014. Scammers manage to gain massive success with this scam earlier this year with gaining 50,000 to 100,000 likes and followers on a number of pages and profiles.

American multinational corporation SanDisk, which designs and develops flash memory storage solutions and software, has developed world's first 4TB SSD named Optimus MAX SSD. Solid state drives are usually manufactured in smaller storage capacities for consumer use.

By launching Optimus MAX SSD, SanDisk wants to target the enterprise market by offering enterprises to maintain their current SAS storage infrastructures while providing fast and cost-effective performance. SSD usually produce less heat and consume lower power than HDDs.
SanDisk claims that Optimus MAX SSD provides read/write speeds of up to 400MB/s of up to 75,000/15,000 I/O operations per second (IOPS) via its 6Gb/s interface. The company is targetting the drive at read-intensive applications required in data warehouses, media streaming, web servers, video-on-demand (VOD) and web-based applications.

SanDisk is yet to reveal the pricing of the SSD. The Optimus MAX SSD and renewed Optimus family of drives will be available with TCG Enterprise Security Subsystem Class compliance to select OEMs and through the channel in Q3-2014. It will also come with a 5-year limited warranty.

Oral B’s new app controlled Bluetooth 4.0 toothbrush makes sure you brush your teeth properly, lets your dentist peek at your brushing habits and personalises your brushing. The toothbrush connects to the free Oral B app for the iPhone and Android, and will track your every brush stroke, collect data and chart your progress while giving you real-time guidance on how to get the job done faster and better.

“It provides the highest degree of user interaction to track your oral care habits to help improve your oral health, and we believe it will have significant impact on the future of personal oral care, providing data-based solutions for oral health, and making the relationship between dental professionals and patients a more collaborative one,” said Wayne Randall, global vice president of Oral Care at Procter and Gamble.

Oral B sees the connected toothbrush, launched as part of Mobile World Congress’s Connected City exhibition, as the next evolution of the smart bathroom. This plugs into a trend kickstarted by fitness trackers, and provides a useful resource for dentists.

The new brush will be available in Spring in Germany and the rest of the world in June priced at about £199, and promises to allow users to personalise their electric toothbrush, changing brush head speed, as well as brushing patterns to focus on specific problem areas in the mouth. Dentists can also programme special brushing routines. The Oral B app connects to the brush over low-power Bluetooth 4.0, a standard which is used by a whole series of connected gadgets, including smartwatches and fitness bands. The Bush will store up to 20 brushing sessions, should the user not have their smartphone to hand, ready to sync at a later date.

Activision has released the debut trailer for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, the next game in the gargantuan first-person shooter series.

"Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare envisions battlegrounds of the future, where both technology and tactic have evolved to usher in a new era of combat for the franchise," reads the official blurb.
The Sledgehammer-developed game launches on 4th November 2014.

The trailer includes footage captured on Xbox One, suggesting publisher Activision and Microsoft have once again signed exclusivity deals. The video also confirms House of Cards actor Kevin Spacey's role in the game as head of a private military corporation. Of particular interest is the future setting. Advanced Warfare features advanced weaponry, including soldiers wearing powerful suits that let them leap great distances. There are also cloaked helicopters, wall scrambling, portable cover and hover bikes.

Platforms haven't been announced but we can safely say it'll be on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One at least. Internet super sleuth Superannuation claims Transformers developer High Moon is making a Call of Duty game for last-gen consoles, but isn't sure whether it's Advanced Warfare or a different title.

Firstouch, A new Indian Invention which can translate text from English to Gujarati,Hindi & Marathi. A Mumbai based company Mofirst Solution have developed a solution to break the language barrier. A group of  Three IIT graduates Sudhir Bangarambandi, Rakesh Deshmukh and Akash Dongre have developed Matra keyboard which helps to translate text from English to various Indian languages simply by using swipe technology.

It has 48-keys virtual keyboards which helps to translate into various regional language with simply swiping from left to right on screen. Also, Default keyboard is English & we don’t need to change keyboards for  using different languages.

Key Specification:

• 1.2 GHz Dual Core processor
• 4.0 IPS WVGA Capacitive Touch Screen 
• 2MP Primary Camera with Flash 0.3 MP Front Camera
• 512 MB RAM
• 4GB ROM Expandable upto 32 GB
• Dual SIM Card
• Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2
• 1300 mAh Battery

It is said that the Firstouch will hit to Gujarat’s Rajkot district from this month for Rs. 6,000 which is quiet budget phone. Which will be followed with Hindi & Marathi transalation by June. They expect to serve all Indian languages by end of this year.

Internet Users in 2014: The developing world is playing catch-up

In case you missed it, within five years, the number of internet users in the developing world is going to experience a two-fold rise, to an estimated 1.9 billion in 2014 from 974 million in 2009. This means that the developing nations will make up two-third of the global 3 billion internet population by year-end. Globally in 2014, 44% of households will benefit from an internet connection this year. In developed countries, the percentage flirts with 78 while in emerging nations, households with internet access will amount to 31%. However, as the report also mentioned, 4 billion individuals are not yet connected to the internet and 90% of them live in the developing world.

Global Mobile Broadband in 2014: Penetration will reach 32%

World Mobile-Cellular Subscriptions in 2014: Figures will hit 7 billion

Facebook has rolled out a new update of its Messenger app. The new 5.0 update brings feature improvements to both Android and the iPhone. It has a new, streamlined design for sharing and accessing pictures and videos along with a new shortcut for downloading sticker packs.

Users can download the Facebook Messenger 5.0 for iPhone and iPod from the Apple app store and from the Google PlayStore for Android devices.

The Facebook Messenger 5.0 makes it easier to share “photos, voice messages, and more”. Users can now share and access video clips with their friends in the new update, (as long as you have Android 4.3 or higher) which was earlier limited to only pictures and voice recordings. It also adds a new 'selfie' mode which is built in. Apart from all this, the new update also brings improvements in searching people and groups by name. Users also have the ability to download a sticker pack by pressing and holding any sticker that someone sends you.

Mozilla today officially launched Firefox 29 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. This is a massive release: Firefox Sync has been revamped and is now powered by Firefox Accounts, there’s a new customization mode, and the company’s major user interface overhaul Australis has finally arrived.

Firefox 29 has been released over on Firefox.com and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play.

The update also brings a "Customize" tool that transforms Firefox into a customization mode where users can add or move any feature, service or add-on. The update also allows users to create bookmarks with a single click and manage them from one place. Another new feature is the Firefox Sync service that lets you access browsing history, bookmarks, open tabs, saved passwords and form data across your computers and mobile Android devices. According to NetMarktShare, Firefox is currently the third most used browser after IE and Chrome.

Firefox Sync, the service that actually lets you take your bookmarks, tabs, and personal information with you to another device, is now more secure. More specifically, Mozilla underlines three improvements:

• Client side key stretching: a technique that protects against man-in-the-middle attacks, even when SSL credentials are compromised.
• End-to-end encryption: even if Mozilla’s servers are compromised, it is extremely difficult to access a user’s data.
• Public key cryptography and the BrowserID protocol: Separation between authentication, authorization, and data storage servers to minimize the number of servers that handle authentication material, and thus reducing our attack surface.

Here’s the full changelog for Firefox 29:

• New: Significant new customization mode makes it easy to personalize your Web experience to access the features you use the most (learn more).
• New: A new, easy to access menu sits in the right hand corner of Firefox and includes popular browser controls.
• New: Sleek new tabs provide an overall smoother look and fade into the background when not active.
• New: An interactive onboarding tour to guide users through the new Firefox changes.
• New: The ability to set up Firefox Sync by creating a Firefox account (learn more).
• New: Gamepad API finalized and enabled (learn more).
• New: Malay [ma] locale added.
• Changed: Clicking on a W3C Web Notification will switch to the originating tab.
• Developer: ‘box-sizing’ (dropping the -moz- prefix) implemented (learn more).
• Developer: Console object available in Web Workers (learn more).
• Developer: Promises enabled by default (learn more).
• Developer: SharedWorker enabled by default.
• Developer: input type=”number” implemented and enabled.
• Developer: input type=”color” implemented and enabled.
• Developer: Enabled ECMAScript Internationalization API.
• Developer: Add-on bar has been removed, content moved to navigation bar.

If you’re a Web developer, you should probably check out Firefox 29 for developers.

Source : TheNextWeb

Apple has officially announced refreshed MacBook Air laptops now running on the faster and more power efficient 4th Gen Intel Haswell processors.  The new range comes loaded with the new processors, flash storage, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, up to 12 hours of battery life and Apple’s iLife and iWork apps.

Apple claims that the new Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors work in combination with OS X Mavericks to give the 13-inch MacBook Air up to 12 hours of battery life and the 11-inch MacBook Air up to 9 hours of battery life. iTunes movie playback times increase to 12 hours on the 13-inch notebook and 9 hours on the 11-inch notebook.

The new MacBook Air is officially available through Apple Authorised Resellers. The 11-inch MacBook Air comes with a 1.4 GHz processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 2.7 GHz, 4GB of memory and is available with 128GB of flash storage starting at Rs. 65,900 inc VAT (Rs. 62,642.59 ex VAT), and 256GB of flash storage starting at Rs. 79,900 inc VAT (Rs. 75,950.57 ex VAT). The 13-inch MacBook Air comes with a 1.4 GHz processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 2.7 GHz, 4GB of memory and is available with 128GB of flash storage starting at Rs. 72,900 inc VAT (Rs. 69,296.58 ex VAT), and 256GB of flash storage starting at Rs. 86,900 inc VAT (Rs. 82,604.56 ex VAT). Configure-to-order options include a 1.7 GHz Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.3 GHz, up to 8GB of memory and up to 512GB flash storage.

“With MacBook Air starting at Rs. 65,900, there’s no reason to settle for anything less than a Mac,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.