Here's a quick look at what made news in the world of technology in the week just gone by...
1. Apple has sent out invites for a
media event scheduled for September 9, with the tagline "Wish we could say more." It is widely expected that Apple will announce two versions of iPhone 6 (one featuring a 4.7-inch display and the other a 5.5-inch screen), along with its first wearable gadget — a smartwatch.
While the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 model is expected to go on sale on September 19, the 5.5-inch variant's launch may be delayed till late October. The Apple smartwatch, on the other hand, is rumoured to
hit the market as late as next year.
2. The Indian government has launched
.bharat domain name for companies who are interested in owning a website with domain in Hindi, Konkani, Marathi or other languages written in devanagari script. With this move, organizations can now have names .bharat domain names instead of .com, .net and .in.
3. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's next big push to free up service delivery from the hold of the lower bureaucracy will be in the form of a
'digital cloud'. Certificates issued by the government — education, residential, medical records, birth certificates etc — are to be stored in individual 'digital lockers' and a communication protocol established for government departments to access them without physically having to see the hard copy.
4. Just a month after its launch in India,
Xiaomi's Mi 3 smartphone will not be available for purchase in the country, at least for the time being.
Xiaomi India GM Manu Jain said the company wants to focus on pushing the sales of Redmi 1S and Redmi Note for the time being, and has suspended the sales of Mi 3. He said the company will assess the market situation for a few weeks and take a call on resuming sales of Mi 3.
5. E-commerce titan
Amazon is buying Twitch, a platform for video gamers to share their videos with others across the world, for $970 million in cash.
Twitch had 55 million unique visitors in July, up from 20 million in 2012. Most visited the Twitch.tv website to watch other people play live or recorded games — competitions interspersed with advertising.
6. Samsung and LG unveiled their next-generation smartwatches, named Gear S and G Watch R respectively, this week. The Tizen-powered
Samsung Gear S features a curved glass display and is the world's first smartwatch that lets users make phone calls, send messages or catch up to their social media updates without being paired with a smartphone.
Like other smartwatches in the market, the Android Wear-based
LG G Watch R needs to be paired with a smartphone before it can perform any of the above functions. It has a round watch-face (like the upcoming Moto 360's), a heart rate monitor and can withstand the impact of water up to 30 minutes up to 3 feet.
Both smartwatches will go on sale in the fourth quarter of the year, but there is no word on their pricing yet.
It is rumoured that Samsung and LG
pushed up the announcement of these smartwatches as Apple will announce its first smartwatch on September 9.
7. In 2013, Microsoft had announced that its MSN Messenger will be retired and gradually integrated into Skype. However, it had remained available in China due Microsoft's partnership with TOM Group, a Chinese media company. Now, Microsoft has announced that MSN Messenger, which had 330 million users at its peak, will be
officially shut down on October 31.
8. India saw the first Firefox OS smartphones hit the market this week.
Intex's Cloud FXsmartphone has been priced at Rs 1,999, while
Spice's Fire One Mi FX1 smartphone costs Rs 2,299. Firefox OS-based smartphones are aimed at the extreme low end of the Indian mobile phone market, which is dominated by feature phones.
Instead of phone-based apps, Firefox OS smartphones come with HTML5 apps that are more like shortcuts to mobile websites and, therefore, need internet connection to perform most functions, including playing games. However, these phones can make calls and send SMSs without an internet connection.
9. Do you know who the inventor of email is?
The credit goes to Indian-American scientist VA Shiva Ayyadurai, who received official recognition as the inventor of the computer programme for electronic mail system from the US government on August 30, 1982.
In 1978, he developed a full-scale emulation of the interoffice mail system which he called "E-mail" and copyrighted in 1982. The official US copyright notice for "E-mail" is now with the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History (Sinmah).
10.
Facebook is now letting members search for past posts of friends using smartphones or tablets. While searching for past posts, people are only shown content they are permitted to see by the person who posted it.
11. Google is developing airborne drones capable of flying on their own and delivering anything — from candy to medicine — under a new initiative, named
Project Wing. An early version of the drone, which Google showcased in a video on its website, has a 1.5-metre wide wingspan and is capable of flying pre-programmed routes.
The drone Google showed in the video was equipped with rotors to allow for vertical takeoff and landing, as well as a fixed wing for plane-like flying. The drone flew about 40-metres above the treeline and dropped a package of chocolate bars to a farmer in Queensland, Australia.
12.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) is recalling about 6 million laptop power cords after 29 reports of the cords melting or charring. The recalled item, the LS-15 AC power cord, was distributed with HP and Compaq notebooks and mini notebooks and with AC adapter-powered accessories, such as docking stations. About 5.6 million power cords are being recalled in the United States, along with 446,700 in Canada.
13. HTC has become one of the few companies in the world to offer a smartphone powered by a 64-bit processor, named
Desire 510. The Android4.4 (KitKat)-powered smartphone runs on Qualcomm's mid-range Snapdragon 410 processor, which is designed on 64-bit CPU architecture.
However, the phone will not see much of a performance boost as 64-bit apps require 4GB of RAM, while Desire 510 comes with only 1GB memory. Moreover, Android KitKat doesn't support 64-bit processors, though the upcoming Android L OS does.
14. Sony's PlayStation Network (PSN), which was hacked by Twitter user @LizardSquad over the previous weekend,
went back up on Monday. Sony said that PSN had been taken down by a Denial of Service-style attack, which overwhelmed the system with traffic, but did not intrude onto the network or access any of its 53 million users' information.
Hi guys If u like this post please leave a comment in comment box... comment box will top right of every post and bottom of every post. its useful for me give a better information.. check top of the blog there is menu bar in that go to comments i replied for u r comments because there is no direct option for reply for u r comments. if u want to give any suggestion in bottom of blog there is contact information option please leave a msgs with u r mail id sure i will get u.
.