BBC Micro Bit Computer heading to 1 million UK schoolkids

By

-

July 9, 2015

BBC announced that it would distribute about 1 million Micro bit computers to school children aged 11 to 12 years old across the United Kingdom.

The tiny computer was unveiled during a conference in London this week where future plans to be implemented in October were discussed. Micro bit project had been introduced early this year as a sub-project of Make It Digital initiative.

“Developing the Micro:bit technology remained a marvelous project for us as a team”,

said Tony Hall, Director BBC.

“We are aiming towards the provision of 1 million Micro Bits to roll all over the UK”,

he added.

The BBC Micro bit is a joint project of a number of leading companies including mainly ARM, Farnell, Microsoft and Samsung.

The partners of this project hope that this micro-computer will have an impact on the next generation of children, imbibing in them an urge to understand computer basics and programming languages.

Micro bit will be commercialized this October when free units of the device will be offered to students between the age bracket of 11 to 12 years.

Microsoft has a special contribution in the development of Micro bit i.e. the development of browser-based programming interface.

The Micro Bit is 4 x 5 cm (1.6 x 2 inches) in dimensions, but this tiny gadget wraps lots of features in it including a grid of 25 LEDs that form a particular display pattern when programmed.

It also has 2 programmable buttons and a built-in accelerometer and a compass.

The Micro Bit can link with other devices either through five input/output rings or wirelessly via Bluetooth.

BBC expects the upcoming generation to move digitally and Micro bit is specially designed for children who are home-schooled so that every child can have his hands on it.

This is a great initiative by BBC and the partner companies as we take another step towards a digital world.

The ultra-thin Samsung Galaxy A8 will arrive for the china market on July 17

By

Nitish Singh

-

July 9, 2015

0

It has been quite some time that Samsung fans have been expecting the rumored Galaxy A8. Most thought it will forever be in the dark, but now it seems it will see daylight, possibly as soon as next week. According to reports Samsung could launch the Galaxy A8 in China on July 17.

Leaked pictures show that the device will come with an ultra-thin bezel, which concurs nicely with the devices ultra-slim 5.94mm body. It will be the slimmest Samsung phone till date.

The Samsung Galaxy A8 will come at a retail price of around $494. Some of its rumored (though having a solid base) spec are mentioned below.

The Specs

5.7 inch 1080p Super AMOLED display
4G connectivity
Qualcomm’s Octa-core Snapdragon 615 SoC
2GB RAM
16GB internal memory
MicroSD card expandable up to 128GB
16MP ISOCELL camera with f/1.9 lens.
5MP front camera
3050 mAh battery.

The camera department of this device will be quite on par with the latest Samsung Flagship Galaxy S6. & S6 Edge.

At the mentioned price point, the device will most likely be the replacement for the Samsung Galaxy Alpha which can be considered as its predecessor.

The Galaxy A8 is also rumored to have a fingerprint sensor presumably accessible by placing your fingers on the Home button.

The device will be launching in colors black, white and gold combinations.

Hopes are up on this device to be a ‘budget flagship’ device from Samsung but with great Flagship form factor. The time of an International release is not known at this moment, but we are certainly waiting eagerly.

Samsung Galaxy S6: company’s profits disappoint as new flagship phone struggles

By

Jia Khan

-

July 9, 2015

0

Samsung is facing some set back in its profits and the launch of the new Galaxy S6 is really not helping. The company’s financial position has been jeopardized continuously in the last seven quarters.

The profit earned by Samsung in the last three months i.e. till June 30, added up to 6.9 trillion won (6.1 billion dollars) that shows a sharp decline of 4.2% from the sales in the previous year.

It is being suggested that the company has faced the shortfall in the sale of its phones after they introduced the curved display for its S6 edge phone.

“S6 wasn’t able to come up to the customer’s expectations after the remarkable and outstanding performance of iPhone products”,

said Greg Roh, a Korea-based analyst told Bloomberg.

Another factor that contributed towards Samsung’s down fall was the enforcement of a law that prohibited the companies from giving hefty subsidies to phone buyers.

“The failure of shipment ad provision of the phone was the root cause of this fall down. Other than India, this phone also needed to be commercialized in Russia and Japan”,

said Lee Ka-keun, analyst at KB Securities.

“In the same manner, the demand also kept on decreasing”, he added.

This law was a blessing for Samsung’s rivals like Apple Inc. as the sale of iPhone increased remarkably in South Korea thus ruining the market for Samsung’s upcoming products.

Apple iPhones also featured bigger screens with almost same specs as that of Samsung, but Apple took the law enforcement advantage.

Still the curved display is considered the root cause of this issue as it was difficult to meet the demand with the production of curved screen and S6 was pushed into a corner.

Samsung hopes to increase its sales but still it has to come up with new innovations so as to compensate for the slowdown in profit.

The next teaser from OnePlus: OnePlus 2 will have 4GB RAM

By

Nitish Singh

-

July 9, 2015

0

OnePlus a Chinese company, which had got the world by storm with their debut OnePlus One handset, is all ready to launch its successor, the OnePlus 2 on July 27.

What’s the monster holds?

OnePlus 2 has been confirmed to come with a 4GB RAM and have the next-generation LPDDR4 memory chip. At present, the Samsung Galaxy S6 & Galaxy S6 Edge are the only notable phones running a DDR4 RAM.

The specs will help OnePlus 2 to run a 64-bit processor for faster operations of the latest apps. Hence, it will be a future proof investment which is quite an attractive offering at its suggested price.

OnePlus had written on their form answering: Why did we choose LPDDR4 for the OnePlus 2?

“The RAM of the OnePlus 2 uses a lower operating voltage than its predecessor, decreasing from 1.2V to 1.1V. And with speeds up to 32 GB/s, it is also twice as fast as the LPDDR3. It offers optimal support for power-saving low-frequency mode that brings clock speeds down when performing those everyday and necessary tasks.”

OnePlus 2 will cost less than $450, OnePlus revealed yesterday. There was a circulating rumor that OnePlus 2 will have a pricing around $299.

Though the mentioned pricing by OnePlus is quite high, still it will offer great specs for a price relatively lower than the likes of HTC, Samsung, etc.

The device will also pack Qualcomm’s new 64-bit octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor.

It has been spotted on leaked photos of OnePlus 2 that in terms of design it will resemble its predecessor but have a metal body.

This teaser of the OnePlus 2 having a 4GB RAM is 4th in line of the row of teasers that came before this.

OnePlus has already mentioned that OnePlus 2 will boast a 5.7-inch display, will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 processor. And will sport a USB C-type port.

Hopes are up for July 27 when the device will be launched via virtual reality.

Opt for Udacity Nanodegree program and get half your money back on completion

By

Nitish Singh

-

July 8, 2015

0

Udacity has quite a name in the Online learning arena or e-learning. They have been offering the Nanodegree programs for quite some time, now there is an incentive. Udacity is hoping the incentive will help more people learn new skills that will help them get ahead in life.

How to get half your money back?

People who enroll in Udacity’s Nanodegree program will get half their money back on completion the program. Starting July 2015, all Nanodegree graduates will get 50% of their tuition back.

Udacity introduced this scheme back in May as a limited time offer for candidates that cleared their degree programs within one year. But now it seems that the offer is going to stay.

The Nanodegree program costs $200 per month and there has been no change in this aspect as a part of the announcement.

There is a total of 6 Nanodegree programs currently on Udacity and they have stated that a total 8600 students are enrolled in the variuos programmes.

Udacity has also announced the Udacity Summit. It is an annual conference held in Silicon Valley. Students around the world, in need of further help or motivation, are welcome to come there and “meet experts in the field, get career advice and meet companies that are hiring.”

Udacity has also stated that top Nanodegree students who wish to attend the Udacity Summit are free to submit an application if they want to attend.

Currently, the company is still in the process of figuring out which “experts” will be there but confirms that companies in partnership with the Nanodegree program will be present.

Udacity is the main place for my learning. I have completed more than 5 free courses on this platform and recommend anyone who is reading this to try out the platform.

Also, the nano degree will give you a clear advantage in the market, which is slowly but steadily recognized by the industry. Visit Udacity

Videos will now float on Facebook

By

Nitish Singh

-

July 8, 2015

0

Previously we have heard news that Facebook is improving how videos will work on its website. And it appears that they have decided to let the videos float.

A button to the rescue

A new button has appeared on Facebook which will allow videos to pop out from the newsfeed so that it can still be watched while we scroll.

Once the button is pressed the video from the newsfeed will come out and be placed on the lower left corner of the screen. Though we can drag it and place it anywhere we like.

After this, the video will continue to play and we can continue to scroll. This solves the old problem of not being able to scroll while we watched videos in Facebook.

The floating video window is rather very basic. It only has a pause, play button, a cross to close the video. And of course, it has options to share and like the video.

Does it have any drawbacks?

There are also some negatives. The video once made movable will be downsized to a small window. For some users, it’s too small to enjoy, and frustratingly it can’t be resized.

The video will not stay if we switch to a new page, including your FB messages screen, events or even a friends profile. It is also not available in the mobile app versions of Facebook and just in the desktop via your browser.

Now there is certainly room for improvements. This year alone Facebook has made so many changes to how videos are managed on the website.

First Facebook included an option to let people embed videos directly from their websites. Then they started to give revenue shares to video creators for Facebook. And now they have introduced floating videos.

Facebook is clearly not going to let YouTube be a monopoly. And one thing to love about this is that when two great companies fight (I emphasize company) the winner is always the consumers.

Hacking Team: Surveillance company Yet to Gain Control of Assets

By

Nitish Singh

-

July 8, 2015

0

Hacking Team, an Italian company had been hacked few days ago and all their documents have been shown to the public. People are quite furious with them for spying on civilians.

No sense of Control

Since the Hack, the company’s attempt to regain control back has backfired and has only led to more damage.

400GB worth of company’s internal files, sources and communications all had been made public via a link posted on their hacked twitter account.

Hacking Team’s CEO, Christian Pozzi woke up on a fine Monday morning to find that all personal and delicate information has been leaked on the internet.

Pozzi reacted by threatening the security researchers for discussing uses of a poorly chosen passwords on twitter. Immediately following this was his twitter account being hacked and shut down.

Motherboard has reported that Hacking Team had asked all their customers to shut down all operations they were conducting with their software.

But strangely Hacking Team did have the capability to do this remotely without the knowledge of the client.

Motherboard also had informed that Hacking Team wasn’t able to regain control of their email system till late afternoon.

Who were the hackers?

The identity of the Hacker is still unknown whereas all this devastation Hacking Team is trying to reorganize themselves.

The means by which Hacking Team advertises their service is via, a YouTube video. Their website is also indicating that they want to hire new personnel.

But all this is of little use as companies and countries will be skeptical to use the service after such a major breach in the system. And individuals are also not willing to join as Hacking Team is on the “Enemies of the Internet” list.

We only have to wait as the scenario unfolds and more news comes in. Until then, you can subscribe to our newsletter for any breaking news!

Material Design Lite For Websites By Google

By

Nitish Singh

-

July 7, 2015

0

OK, GOOGLE! What’s Material Design Lite?

Material Design Lite (MDL) is a front-end web framework launched by Google to help websites to look more like an Android application.

It will bring “Material Design” design as a form of guidelines to the internet using technologies like CSS, JavaScript and HTML and its code is under 27KB.

Can we be more specific?

Material Design Lite is the use of a collection of stuff like typography, breakpoint widths, animations, and more to create a website true to the Material Design specifications.

It has the potential to be used as any front-end solution to a web developer or designer. Anyone familiar with Bootstrap can get a hold of MDL in no time.

With it a developer can take pieces of ‘Material Design’ to use when the entire code is not required.

This is called ‘Paper element’. For example, a developer can plug in just a graph provided in ‘Material Design Lite’ without using any other components that might accompany the graph.

Developers can get ‘Material Design Lite’ on Google’s content delivery network on GitHub.

Currently, MDL is inclined to comply in case of specs, but Google will continue to fine tune it as they receive feedback.

Material Design Lite will include Material Design style components. Buttons, checkboxes, input fields, custom topography and more Material Design style components will be included.

Responsive grid and Breakpoint (i.e. what happens when the windows get too narrow to display all elements side-by-side) as specific to the Material Design adaptive UI guidelines are also included.

Google has explicitly said that MDL is tailored and best for websites heavy on texts, e.g. blogs and marketing pages.

MDL will work best on the following browsers:

Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Microsoft Edge and Safari. Read More

Microsoft’s New Tossup App Lets You Poll Your Friends, Plan Events

By

Jia Khan

-

July 7, 2015

0

Microsoft has introduced a new app called Tossup for Android phones and the iPhone that allows the users to plan and schedule group meetings and other gatherings.

So far several apps have been created, especially for Android users, which provide a proper platform for friends and colleagues to schedule their gatherings and other formal meetings.

But now there is a proper polling app known as Tossup App which provides a variety of different planning modes.

The app allows friends vote so as to decide where and when to meet. Though the app is primarily meant for scheduling gatherings and meetings, it can also be used for general polling/voting purposes. The main focus of Tossup App is to manage gatherings.

In order to use this app, you need to register yourself using your phone number and either your Facebook or email id.

After you login, you can generate different questions. You can create questions by using the formal Tossup templates e.g. “where to gather for the Lunch?” or you can write any of your own.

The app also suggests nearby restaurants, cafes, bars etc. as a gathering point so as to help you make your decision.

Microsoft has claimed that the app is focused on making “event planning and opinion-gathering a cinch.” People who have to go through the hassle of planning several meetings a week can readily understand the significance of this app .

So you can get rid of long email threads and cumbersome conversations and can have the decisions through a simple poll.

Tossup App description states that “Making decisions together might be great fun.”

All you need is to download the Tossup app and let the fun begin. Luckily, another app (web-based) has also been created by Microsoft as a side product which doesn’t require any download.

This effort by Microsoft is a great step forward in meeting management. Download here

Why Self Driving Taxis Could Mean Far Lower Emissions

By

Jia Khan

-

July 7, 2015

0

A new research by Jeffrey Greenblatt and Samveg Saxena of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory indicates that in the near future, cabs would be self-driven and a new era of autonomous driving is coming.

The scientists firmly believe that autonomous cars will significantly reduce the production of carbon that is considered as the root cause of global warming which is the most serious issue being discussed in environmental circles these days.

The revelation was made by the scientists in a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change

According to some estimates, carbon emission will be reduced per mile by 94% in 2030. However the researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory maintain that it is impossible to reduce carbon emission by this amount if we continue to employ gasoline run vehicles in the future.

Researcher Jeffrey Greenblatt believes that the reduction rate is totally dependent on the size of the cabs.

“Most of the taxis make a single or double person routes in US that means a double seater would satisfy the case”,

said Jeffery.

The research further highlighted that if an average autonomous car costs $150,000 and it runs round the clock, without any driver salary or gasoline emissions/expenses, it would reach break-even within five years.

The study also incites the researchers to extend the technology so as to include the production of bigger vehicles as well in order to limit the gasoline emissions at an even larger scale.

“You can consider the big energy savings enabled by these vehicles in near future”

says Greenblatt.

“I am amazed to know the costs you will save using cheaper electric-battery powered car when it runs 70,000 miles a year”,

he added.

The future of this technology depends a lot on its public acceptance. Learn More