Members of the North Korean female music group Moranbong Band arrive at a hotel after concert rehearsal on December 11, 2015 in Beijing, China. Photography by ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images
Hit songs include “Do Prosper, Era of the Workers’ Party”
What do you get when you combine South Korea’s pop music with North Korean totalitarian dictatorship? The Moranbong Band, a pop group with striking similarities to a military orchestra (think: absolute structure, harmony, and national anthems).
North Korea’s version of the Spice Girls is a collective of about two dozen female musicians, each of whom wear identical Soviet-style uniforms during performances. Seeing them them on stage is like going back in time to the 80s: a time of bad hair, lots of synth, and, well, communism. Song titles include: “My Country is the Best!”, “Let’s Support Our Supreme Commander in Arms”, and “Do Prosper, Era of the Workers’ Party.”
According to the New York Times, Moranbong is a favorite of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, and each member is rumored to have been handpicked by him. Now, the band is off to Beijing for a weekend of “friendship performances” meant to improve North Korea’s relations with China.
The Times reports that Hua Chunying, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said about the visit: “The good-will visit and performance of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea art groups in China are not within the remit of the Foreign Ministry.” However, she noted that “state-to-state exchanges and cooperation in various forms will help increase mutual understanding and friendship between the peoples.”
Painted with the faces of
celebrities like Bob Marley and Tupac Shakur, and furnished with disco
balls that lurch and twinkle as they weave through traffic, the
thousands of matatus on the roads in Nairobi are bright and loud.
Blaring music and honking their way through congestion, these mini-buses
are the main mass transit network in the Kenyan capital, and 70 percent
of the population uses them to get around. They’re cheap and
convenient, filling the public transit void. But the system is chaotic.
Individual matatu buses and routes are privately owned and operated,
which means schedules and ticket prices can change at the whim of
whoever’s in charge. Even finding the right stop can be tricky. You just
kind of have to…know. If you choose the wrong line, you could waste
half a day on an already long trip. Since most routes run through the
city center before going back out, the roads—not designed for the
megacity that Nairobi has become—are flooded with matatu congestion. One
or two accidents on the main thoroughfares can shut down traffic for
hours.
The situation makes it difficult for riders, who could save time if
they knew about better routes, and challenging for major transit
projects meant to improve city life. A recent highway project in Nairobi
didn’t plan for the matatus, and the informal highway stops they make
are dangerous, adding traffic that the planners didn’t anticipate. A
full picture of the matatu system would be useful, to say the least.
That picture now exists: In a collaboration called Digital Matatus,
researchers from MIT, Columbia University, and the University of Nairobi
along with the design firm Groupshot released a map of the entire
matatu system last year—a first for a non-formal transit system. And on
Wednesday, it became the first informal network to be launched on Google
Maps. Just as New York commuters can plot their subway routes on the
service, residents of Nairobi can now jack into the matatu system on
their smartphones.
Click to Open Overlay GalleryRoute 8 takes people from Kiberia Slum to City Square. Google
“Hats off to Digital Matatus and Google for doing this,” says Robert
Cervero, a professor of city and regional planning at the University of
California, Berkeley. “This is a very important pilot test demonstration
and if the data can be put to good use designing better systems, it can
have tremendous benefits.”
The idea to map the matatus began in 2012 when Sarah Williams and
Jacqueline Klopp, two researchers working on land use projects in
Nairobi, connected with Groupshot co-founder Adam White. “Adam and I
started talking about the problem of working on sustainable
transportation,” says Klopp, an associate research scholar at the
Columbia Center for Sustainable Urban Development. “There were all these
transportation projects going on, but there was no basic data about the
existing transit system in Nairobi.”
The annals of the city government held some matatu data, but not
much. Digital Matatus found records for about 75 percent of the routes,
but they only included the start and end points, making it impossible to
know how the buses navigated through the city. So armed with
smartphones, ten university students spent four months riding the
matatus, noting the name and location of each stop in a purpose-built
app, which also used GPS to track the route. In dangerous neighborhoods,
they followed behind the brightly painted buses in private cars.
By the end, the students recorded almost 3,000 stops on more than 130
routes. Next, all that data needed to be put in a
usable format—specifically, a global standard called the General Transit
Feed Specification (GTFS), which is compatible with open-source
software used to make routing apps like Google Maps. But GTFS, developed
in 2005, is geared towards formal transit systems, ones with fixed
times and schedules.
That’s when Digital Matatus connected with Google Maps. Along with
the rest of the robust GTFS community, Google agreed to update the
global standard to make room for flexible transit networks with
constantly changing schedules, routes, and stops. Nairobi was a perfect
test bed. “In our efforts to expand public transportation on Google
Maps, it was a good place to go next because there were people eager and
willing to work on it,” said Mara Harris, a Google rep.
In the meantime, the Digital Matatus team turned to the project of
visualizing the entire matatu system in one map. When they plotted the
GPS coordinates in their software, they generated a neuron-like mass of
overlapping routes and colors. Separating and structuring that mass into
a formal subway-style map, designers at the MIT Civic Data Design Lab
gave each of the main corridors going through the city center a
different color, with well-known landmarks such as the Karura Forest and
Ngong Road Forest anchoring the map in the city. A little over a year
after starting the project, Digital Matatus released the Nairobi Matatu
Routes paper map and the free GTFS transit data in January 2014.
Click to Open Overlay GalleryThe official Matatu map of Nairobi developed by the project team. Sarah Williams and Wenfei Xu, MIT Civic Data Design Lab
City officials, who had been passively attending project meetings
throughout, finally made it their official transit map. And, crucially,
they also started using it as a guide for their evolving mass rapid
transit proposals. The strength of an ad-hoc system like the matatus is
that over time—over many traffic jams and missed
appointments—trial-and-error driving can lead to more efficient,
emergent routes.
The tech community pumped out five routing apps for smartphones and
old-school feature phones as well as one payment app that calculated
actual ticket fares in an effort to combat price fluctuations. Matatu
drivers began planning more routes to underserved areas and alternative
routes to avoid congestion. And citizens were shocked to see all the
routes on the map, said Williams. They could find more efficient routes
that they didn’t even know existed. “There were interesting observations
from women, especially, who said ‘This is really valuable because at
night, I want to make sure I’m on the right matatu,’” said Klopp. “‘I
don’t want to get on the wrong one where I don’t feel safe.’”
Click to Open Overlay GallerySarah Williams identifying locations for new Matatu routes with transit stakeholders. Adam White
Launching the matatu routes in Google emphasizes the need to study
the informal transit networks that shuttle masses of people around in
sub-Saharan Africa, southeast Asia, and south Asia. “You’re saying this
is part of the system,” said Klopp. And since the GTFS data structure
and the Nairobi data are open source, Digital Matatus gives other groups
in Mexico City, Manila, Dhaka, China, and elsewhere a plan to collect
and disseminate data on their transit. The collaboration has already
received requests from around the world to map their cities.
Digital Matatus has also started talks with four more cities in
Africa—Kampala, Accra, Lusaka, and Maputo—to use the same methods to map
their informal mass transit systems. “So many of our problems in
developing cities where you have extreme poverty and awful environmental
conditions—they’re always tied in some way to the transport sector,”
said Cervero. “It’s very chaotic and unmanaged, so this is a huge first
step towards enhancing those services.”
People in Nairobi still use the paper maps because the matatu routes
have not changed since their release, and the ultimate goal is a formal
transit system with set maps, times, and prices. But hopefully “formal”
will still mean you enjoy your commute with twinkling disco balls and a
good beat.
Donald Trump thinks asking Bill Gates to close the internet will defeat Isis
Donald Trump suggests asking Bill Gates to close the internet will stop Isis terror attacks in the USReuters
Republican
presidential candidate Donald Trump has called on Bill Gates and other
technology figureheads to "close up" the internet. Trump believes this
would help prevent Islamic State (Isis) from recruiting Americans.
Speaking
at a campaign rally at the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier in South
Carolina on 7 December, Trump said he believed that "closing that
internet up in some ways" would prevent acts of domestic terrorism in
the US. During the same speech, Trump demanded that the US shut its
borders to all Muslims.
Trump said: "We're losing a lot of people
because of the internet. We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of
different people that really understand what's happening. We have to
talk to them about, maybe in certain cases, closing that internet up in
some ways. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.'
These are foolish people."
It
is not clear if Trump wants to censor the internet, clamp down on
websites and communication networks run by IS (Daesh), or if he lacks a
basic understanding of how the internet works. Trump's vision for a
closed internet went down well with the crowd of 500 supporters, who
cheered him on.
Later in the day, Amazon chief executive Jeff
Bezos tweeted to suggest that he send Trump into space on the company's
Blue Origin rocket, presumably with a one-way ticket. Trump had earlier
criticised Bezos's ownership of the Washington Post newspaper, claiming
he bought it "for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no profit
company, Amazon".
What is the Difference Between a Quick and Full Format?
The term formatting is used for different things.
First it is used for low-level formatting of a hard disk. This
includes taking the disk and dividing it into small units – the blocks,
which can be accessed by the operating system. Nowadays the
manufacturers configure the sector size (like 512 bytes or 4096 bytes)
and low-level format the disk. Normally the user can’t low-level format a
hard disk anymore.
Second, formatting is used for high-level formatting of a hard disk.
This means that the operating system is writing a file system structure
to the disk. With good old FAT (File Allocation Table)
for example, the system would write a boot sector to the first disk
sector and an empty FAT to the following sectors. Empty in this case
means that all entries in the File Allocation Table are marked as
unused.
High-level formatting might include scanning the disk for bad sectors
(check if every sector can be read), and it might include writing
zeroes to all data sectors on the disk.
When you format a disk, Windows XP does a high level format and it
writes a file system structure to the disk. When you say full format,
then Windows XP also scans all sectors on the disk for bad sectors (see MSKB 302686). Since Windows Vista, a full format writes zeroes to all data sectors (see MSKB 941961).
Accessing each sector on the disk takes much more time than the quick
format, which only writes the blocks that contain the file system
structure. So normally a quick format is what you want because it is
much faster. But there are cases where you might want to do a full
format. 1. You might have a disk that you want to destroy or
give away. If you just do a quick format, then the file data is still
on the disk, only the file system structure (file names and information
where the files are stored on the disk) are deleted. With specialized
programs someone might try to “undelete” your files – the data is still
there, the task of the program is to guess/know which data block belongs
to which file. 2. You might not be sure if the hard disk is in a
good state. Then a full format is a good idea because it accesses every
sector, so if any sector is bad, this will be recognized. With a quick
format only a few sectors will be written to. With bad luck you end up
with a successful quick format, and when you want to write data to the
disk later, it fails. Then you will probably be wishing you had done a
full format that would have checked the entire disk right at the
beginning. Of course you can always run a ‘chkdsk /r’ later to scan a
disk for bad sectors.
You asked about risks and consistency. I wrote about the risks above.
Regarding consistency there is no difference. With every format the
operating system writes the file system structure, and this structure is
the starting point for every file system access. It does not make any
difference if unused sectors are zeroed out or filled with random data.
Windows installation of 7, 8, 8.1, 10 hard disk format.
When you first pop-in your
Windows disk, the operating system will prompt these choices for you to
choose from. Here are the format options:
Format the partition by using the NTFS file system (Quick)
Format the partition by using the FAT file system (Quick)
Format the partition by using the NTFS file system
Format the partition by using the FAT file system
When
you choose to run a Full format on a volume, files are removed from the
volume that you are formatting and the hard disk is scanned for bad
sectors. The scan for bad sectors is the reason why the Full format
takes twice as long as the Quick format.
If you choose the Quick
format option, the format removes files from the partition, but does not
scan the disk for bad sectors. This option is best when your hard disk
has been previously formatted and you are sure that your hard
disk is not damaged nor has bad sectors. This can be a problem later
because bad sectors that are not located can cause damage to the hard
drive. For example, if data is later installed on this “bad sector”, the
data will read errors or as corrupted files.
In
simple terms, a Full format will truly scrub through the hard drive
from scratch, rebuild all of its file structures, and scans the drive to
make sure that everything is on a satisfactory level. On the other
hand, what a Quick format does is lay down a blank FAT and directory
table without checking for bad sectors.
This is why when you buy a
brand-new unformatted hard drive, you cannot give it a Quick format.
The drive needs a Full Format because it needs the entire file
structures set-up, so the FAT actually has blocks and sectors to track,
rather than a chaotic mess. However, like we mention earlier, if your
hard drive is already has a clean slate and has no bad sectors, a Quick
format will be suitable.
Also, If you installed Windows on a
partition that was formatted by using the Quick format option, you can
check your hard drive by using the chkdsk /r command
after the installation of Windows is completed. In conclusion—don’t be
lazy. You already went the distance with the tedious task of
reformatting. Select the Full Format and both your computer and you will
live in harmony… until the next format.
If you use the setting format EMMC in clockwork mod recovery > mounts/storage, consider your phone BRICKED. Dead.
You will have a totally blank Internal SD Card that will have no
Operating System, and the card will have to be partitioned with a file
allocation table before the operating system can be restored!
Unless you know how to set up partitions and give them their sizes and
to format them, you are totally screwed,, and you will have to recover
your phone.
If you select the setting format emmc and you have an external SD card
installed, it may wipe and format this card by default as it may recognize this card as the default storage so if you don't want to lose
all the data on your external SD card by mistake, then remove it.
EMMC stands for Embedded Multi Media Card, and not external memory card
like some people believe, its the built in SD card, that's built into the
electronic circuit board on your phone, its embedded.
Its split into partitions, in order to give the operating system its own space to boot, hold and execute its system files.
The FAT boot method is the same process as MMC/SD Configuration flashing
and booting procedures, which are not embedded like your external SD
card or the type you would insert in your portable camera.
The EMMC/SD card must be formatted with the correct partitions prior to
flashing any device. Once the EMMC/SD is configured it will contain two
separate partitions that will be used to boot the device.
The FAT32 partition is used for uboot, xloader and kernel. The ext3
partition is used for the actual file system. Once both of these are
loaded onto an EMMC/SD the device can boot up and run the selected file
system.
The EMMC is an Embedded device. So we have to partition and format the
EMMC using a kernel utility like (fdisk, mke2fs) and what's available in
the File System.
So there you have it my friends, LEAVE well alone this is an administrative setting and only for advanced users, not for Joe bloggs!!
Each Security Key has an individualized secure chip
which performs cryptographic functions triggered by a simple touch of
the key. You never see the details, but behind the scenes FIDO U2F
Security Key provides a unique public and private key pair for each
application it protects. Only those keys can correctly complete the
cryptographic challenge required for login.
The secure chip is of the same class as those used in SIM Cards,
electronic passports, military electronic IDs and chip-and-pin credit
cards. Like those devices, the chip is specially “hardened” so it’s
extremely difficult to steal the secrets hidden inside. The secrets
contained in the Security Key belong to the end-user exclusively and are
never transferred, copied or stored by a service provider or any other
application provider.
This is not a biometric device, instead it uses a
capacitive sensor activated by the small bit of electricity the human
body naturally produces.
The Skinny on Universal Second Factor (U2F)
FIDO U2F is an emerging open authentication standards
initiative with strong support from more than 120 end-user and vendor
companies in the FIDO Alliance, a consortium working to bring strong
authentication to the masses.
U2F breaks the mold for high-security, public-key
hardware devices by removing the complexity of drivers, clients software
and the traditional costly certificate authority (CA) model. With FIDO
U2F, one single device can be used with any number of online services
with no user information or encryption keys shared between the service
providers.
Internet and cloud services can dramatically improve
the security of their existing password infrastructure by adding a
simple but strong, U2F-based second factor for login.
For more information, you can access the full U2F Specifications on the FIDO Alliance website.
More from Yubico
Take a look at our other Yubico YubiKeys,
which support a range of authentication methods and security features
in different combinations and form factors including one-time passcodes,
OATH, Challenge-Response, Smart Card functionality (including OpenPGP
and PIV), MIFARE, and Near-Field Communications.
Learn more about how you can integrate FIDO U2F protocol with your online service at developers.yubico.com
Quite unsurprisingly following the story of the exploding charger at the end of last month, network operator EE has issued a recall of a particular batch of its portable Power Bars.
According to the announcement, only batch E1-06 pose a fire safety
risk and need to be returned. Bars from other batches aren’t affected,
it added.
Katy Emslie’s badly burnt hand, which resulted from trying to extinguish a flaming EE Power Bar.
“It’s our intention to replace these chargers once we’ve completed
our investigations; we’ll be in touch once these have been concluded.
We’re really sorry for any inconvenience this may cause,” EE says.
If you’ve got an EE Power Bar, best check the little code on the side
to see if you have one of the special potentially ‘fizzy’ models.
Until the investigation has been completed, the exchange program has been temporarily suspended.
There's a silent revolution brewing in India, and it's called The Ugly Indian. It is anonymous, faceless and leaderless, and has seen thousands of citizens coming out to fix local civic problems following a simple motto: Kaam Chalu Mooh Bandh. Only Work No Talk. What started off as a series of social experiments in Bangalore in 2011, to see what it takes to change everyday ugly Indian behaviour in public spaces (littering, spitting paan, public urination and more), has now transformed into a nation-wide movement that is spreading virally – both on social media, and on the ground. The centrepiece of the TUI approach is the 'spotfix ' where ugly spots are 'fixed' by citizens. There is no activism, no sloganeering, no lecturing, no finger-pointing and no ideological debates – just a sincere attempt to solve problems by focusing on a spot - using one's own time, hands and money.
Facebook, which has been working to build its user base in Africa through programs like Internet.org and lightweight versions of its app, is opening a new business office in Johannesburg, South Africa, the company’s first permanent office on the continent.
The office will serve as a sales hub, helping Facebook learn about
and attract small businesses from the region that may want to advertise
to Facebook’s audience, which is growing in the region. Facebook has hired Nunu Ntshingila, chairman of Ogilvy South Africa, to run the new office as the company’s Head of Africa, a new position.
International revenue has always been important for Facebook. More
than half of the company’s ad revenue comes from outside the United
States and Canada, and has for a number of years.
That percentage is slowly eroding, though, from 56 percent in Q1 2013
to 52 percent last quarter. Facebook is relying more and more on
high-priced ads in North America versus other parts of the world. A new
office like the one in Africa could help expand on that international
business.
Facebook is also hoping to learn more about what kinds of advertising
actually work in Africa as a way to lure big brands like Coca-Cola and
Virgin Mobile that may want to reach the site’s African user base. The
company launched a Creative Accelerator program earlier this year to do just that.
Product head Chris Cox also talked at the Cannes Lions advertising
festival last week about Facebook’s plans to build ads that work on
feature phones for users who don’t have strong wireless connections.
All of this adds up to a pretty healthy interest in Africa, and
Facebook hasn’t been shy about its aspirations. Africa is still very
much an emerging market; most of the continent is still without Internet
access and those who are online are getting there on mobile devices.
For Facebook, a service that’s already amassed 1.4 billion users,
Africa provides a region where there’s still plenty of room for growth.
Facebook is experiencing some of that growth now. There are now 120 million Africans who visit Facebook each month, up from 100 million back in September. That’s 20 percent growth in nine months, almost three times the growth rate of Facebook’s total user base.
Facebook has made significant efforts in trying to reach this group
of Internet newbies. Internet.org is probably the most well known — and most criticized
— example. The initiative offers a free slate of Internet services,
including Facebook, to some parts of the world where Internet is not
widely available.
Of the 14 countries with Internet.org access, six of them are in Africa.
The new office will not include Internet.org employees, though, at
least not right now. Facebook plans to hire 25 employees in its South
Africa office, all of them on the business and advertising side of the
fence. That number will increase throughout the year.
The Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral this morning
exploded just minutes after liftoff. The rocket was supposed to deliver
cargo to the International Space Station, and no humans were on board.
It was the first Falcon 9 that has ever failed, following 18 successful
missions.
The mission was also going to serve as the third test of SpaceX's
reusable rocket plan. The first stage of the Falcon 9 was supposed to
separate three minutes after launch and land itself on a drone ship at
sea. The next time SpaceX is scheduled to test the Falcon 9's
reusability is on the August 9th launch of the Jason-3 satellite. SpaceX
has said that landing will be attempted on land at Vandenburg Airforce
Base, not at sea.
There is no immediate threat to life of the astronauts aboard the space station.
There is no immediate threat to life of the astronauts aboard the
space station. Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, has another resupply
mission scheduled for July 3rd. Since NASA always plans ahead, the
astronauts are currently stocked through October with supplies.
Still, this is the third space station resupply mission to fail in the last year. In October, Orbital ATK's Antares rocket exploded on the launchpad. And last month, Russia's space agency Roscosmos sent a resupply ship to the station only to have it spin wildly out of control and eventually burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.
We have all heard those crazy stories about phone
chargers. Some are so farfetched that they borderline on superstition.
There are a lot of rules regarding charging phones. Some of them are
true and should be followed by everyone. However, some are just plain
foolish. Over the years, batteries have evolved just as much as phones
had. These batteries will last for around three to five years if taken
proper care of.
Here are the top five myths about charging phones that have been proven untrue-
5. MYTH– Different chargers will destroy the battery Truth-Different chargers work fine as long as they are not replicas
People claim that using different chargers for
different phones will affect the battery of the phone. Now this is
nothing but a myth. Different chargers work just as fine as the original
charger. The performance may not be optimum, but it will charge fine
without damaging the battery. The problem is using knockoff chargers.
Those things can and does damage the batteries.
4. MYTH– Charging all night will kill your battery Truth– Your battery knows when to stop.
The myth about charging overnight is a common one.
People think that charging all throughout the night will damage and
eventually kill the battery. The truth is that your batteries are
equipped to take the overnight charging. Once it reaches maximum charge,
it stops charging altogether. This means that the battery isn’t even in
use at all. However, that does not mean you will charge your phone all
night every day. Keeping the phone charged between 40% to 80% will allow
your battery to last longer.
3. MYTH – Shouldn’t use the phone while it is charging Truth-Using it is fine as long as the chargers are original.
There are legit concerns over this charging myth.
People believe that if you use the phone while it is charging then the
phone will explode. Some say that you can be electrocuted if you are
using it while the charger is on. There have been a few incidents where
the phone did explode. However in all of those cases, the user was
charging their phones with fake charges. Those things can be deadly. If
you are using the manufacturer approved charges then there are no risks
of the phone exploding. So you can use it as much as you want.
2. MYTH-Never turn off your phone. Truth-Turning off the phone helps the battery.
Everything has its limits even if the thing in
question is a phone. Turning off your phone every once in a while helps
the battery life. According to an Apple expert, turning off your phone
from time to time will maximize the battery life. So if you are somebody
who is always on the phone, it is advisable that you turn off your
phone at night to get the best out of your battery.
1. MYTH-Charge your phone only when it is completely dead. Truth-Frequent charging is better than deep charging.
The idea that your phone should be charged only when
it is completely drained is actually wrong. If you constantly let your
batteries drain till 0% then the battery becomes somewhat unstable. So
it is better to charge your phone every now and then.
BONUS FACT – Heat will destroy your battery.
There is no denying the fact that heating will damage
your battery. Lithium-ion batteries heat up as you charge them. So if
you place them near a hot surface then chances are that they will be
damaged. Similarly, cold temperatures also affect the batteries. Cold
batteries die quicker in low temperatures.
Forget fingerprint identification, Amazon has developed a way to unlock phones using the shape of a user's ear.
The ear is as unique as a fingerprint and could be used to unlock phones
Amazon has received a patent for technology that would see a smartphone scan a user's ear to unlock itself.
A smartphone's front-facing camera would be used to scan the user's ear shape, which can be as unique as a person's fingerprint.
The image would then be matched with the saved image and outline of the user's ear, unlocking the device.
The smartphone would take a photograph of the ear
The abstract of the patent paper said: "An electronic device
can attempt to capture at least one image including at least a portion
of a user's ear when the user utilises the electronic device for certain
purposes, such as to receive a call or listen to an audio file."
Researchers have previously said the ear is one of the most
reliable biometric identification devices as it does not change much as
someone ages.
It would then process the image to try to match it to the user
The next version of Android - Android M - will add
fingerprint recognition to phones, following Apple's Touch ID system
which was launched on the iPhone 5S.
Amazon could try to use to ear-unlocking system to differentiate itself from two of the big players in the smartphone market.
There is also a possible alternative use for the ear
recognition technology - automatic speaker-phone volume adjustment based
on the distance from the phone to the user's ear.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Samsung approaches BlackBerry about buyout
(Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) recently approached BlackBerry Ltd (BBRY.O) (BB.TO)
about buying the smartphone maker for as much as $7.5 billion in a play
for its patent portfolio, according to a person familiar with the
matter and documents seen by Reuters.
South Korea's Samsung proposed
an initial price range of $13.35 to $15.49 per share, representing a
premium of 38 percent to 60 percent over BlackBerry's current trading
price, the source said.
Executives
from the two companies, which are working with advisers, met last week
to discuss a potential transaction, the source said, asking not to be
identified because the conversations are private.
It
remains unclear whether Blackberry, which has regained some of its lost
swagger under CEO John Chen over the past year or so, was open to the
approach. Representatives for the company declined to comment.
News
of the meeting, which sent Blackberry shares up nearly 30 percent,
comes as the smartphone maker looks for renewed growth and for how to
regain market share it has lost to Apple Inc, Google Inc and Samsung.
A deal would give Samsung access to Blackberry's patents, which the source said would help it take on arch rival Apple (AAPL.O).
Any tie up with Samsung would have to have the blessing of Prem Watsa, whose Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd (FFH.TO)
is a major Blackberry shareholder. Fairfax helped bankroll a debt
recapitalization that led to Chen's arrival in November 2013 as CEO of
the one-time investor darling that pioneered the smartphone.
BlackBerry
launched its long-awaited Classic model on Wednesday, hoping to help
win back market share and woo customers still using older devices with a
keyboard. The phone resembles its once popular Bold and Curve handsets.
In the third quarter, revenue at
Blackberry fell to $793 million from $1.19 billion a year earlier,
falling short of analysts' expectations of $931.5 million.
Shares of Blackberry jumped as much as 30 percent on heavy volume in afternoon trading at $29.71 per share in New York.
The
offer price would imply an enterprise value of $6 billion to $7.5
billion for BlackBerry, assuming conversion of $1.25 billion of
convertible debt, according to the documents.
BlackBerry
announced a high-profile security partnership with Samsung in November.
The partnership will wed BlackBerry's security platform with the South
Korean company's own security software for its Galaxy devices.
Representatives for BlackBerry declined to comment while Samsung and Fairfax could not be immediately reached for comment.
(Reporting by Jennifer Ablan and Liana Baker in New York, additional
reporting by Alastair Sharp in Toronto Editing by Soyoung Kim and Christian Plumb)
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
TextBlade fits a QWERTY keyboard in 8 smart multitouch keys
No matter how good on-screen keyboards get, we’re still left with the
inescapable fact that they take up valuable screen real estate. You
could always carry a physical keyboard, but that’s no more convenient.
TextBlade is a Bluetooth keyboard for iOS and Android devices that tries to make carrying a physical keyboard less annoying. It’s less than a third the size of an iPhone and crams a full QWERTY layout on just eight physical keys.
TextBlade is composed of four pieces, all of which snap together into
a small block for storage and transport. There’s a stand, a spacebar,
and two keyboard halves
with the buttons. The spacebar and the two parts of the keyboard
connect magnetically and tether to your phone or tablet over Bluetooth
4.0.
Each of the eight keys has several letters, symbols, and modifiers on
it. Each time you press a letter, the entire key depresses, but
TextBlade uses multitouch technology to keep track of which letter your
finger was on when the button activated. So it knows the difference
between W and X, even though they both trigger the same physical switch
when pressed. Simply having a physical button to press will probably
speed up touch typing dramatically. There are also a few key
combinations that you’ll have to learn for functions like text selection
and cursor control.
The spacebar might look a little bulky, but there are several reasons
for that. First, it houses the battery, which has a little USB dongle
for easy charging sans wires. Supposedly it runs a month on a charge,
but that sounds optimistic. It would be impressive if true. The spacebar
is also where you’ll find the function key — simply press on the lower
right section of the spacebar and the green layer of key markings become
active (numbers, lesser-used symbols, and so on).
TextBlade looks quite impressive on video, but we’ll have to wait and
see if the familiarity with QWERTY is enough to make this form factor
workable. The TextBlade is currently available for preorder at $99, but all units through late late March are spoken for already.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Server Settings for Popular Email Providers
Below is a list of email providers that support IMAP (Internet
message access protocol). Most major email providers support IMAP
because it provides a better method to access your mail from multiple
devices. If you check your email at home, on your mobile phone, and
again at work, IMAP ensures that new mail is accessible from any device
at any time. Cloze requires an IMAP connection. Below is a list
of popular email providers and their corresponding IMAP server. If you
do not see your email provider listed below, please refer to their
support for additional IMAP help.
If you find yourself constantly scrambling at the last minute to get
done what you managed to put off as long as possible, don't
worry--you're not alone.
Some people find they actually work better under pressure, but for a
lot of people, procrastination is a bad habit that keeps them from ever
feeling caught up.
It's a huge time suck. Productivity suffers. Putting everything off
to the last possible moment creates unnecessary pressure and stress.
As many as 1 in 5 adults might be procrastinators, but it's not a
life sentence. Whether your tendency to put things off is driven by
anxiety, fear, or some other demotivator, it can be remedied.
Check out these 15 procrastination-beating techniques from Essay Expert:
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Transfer Files Between a PC and Android Phone using WiFi
The
future is wireless and the trend is now being carried over by android
phones too . These days a very few people actually prefer to use USB
cables for transferring files between their PC’s and their phones /
tablets . The reason being transferring files wirelessly is very
convenient than transferring files through a USB cable and adding to the
advantages, you don’t have to wait beside your PC until the transfers
complete. While your files are being transferred to your phone you can
carry on with your other works .
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There
are many apps on the android store that can help you to transfer files
wirelessly between your PC and Android phones . Among these apps, some
come with bare and basic features like simply transferring files over
WiFi and some add many more exciting features apart from the basic file
transferring feature. For me, when it comes to features, i believe in
the more the merrier. So in this guide I will make make use of an
feature packed app to transfer files between a PC and an android phone .
How to Transfer files Wirelesssly between your Android phone and PC
AirDroid
is one such popular and feature packed free android app which i use
primarily to transfer files wirelessly across my phone and PC . The app
can be used to both receive and send files wirelessly between your PC
and android phone. Airdroid is basically an android app which helps to
manage your android phone from your PC’s web browser . The web
interface of the app is very neat and the usability is the best among
all the apps in its class. All in all its simple, beautiful and highly
effective .
Usually while transferring files using
AirDroid , i always get transfer speeds in excess of 3.5 Mbps, which is
pretty much good. Apart from the file transferring feature, the app has
many more useful features like :
You can view photos from your phone
You can send send SMS messages from PC
You can play music / videos from your phone
You can use your phone’s camera on your PC
You can take screenshots of your Phone
You can backup app as apk on your PC
All
of this and more can be performed from AirDroid’s PC interface itself .
Now lets move ahead and find out how we can use airdroid to transfer
files wirelessly between your PC and Android phone over a WiFi network .
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Instructions to transfer files wirelessly from your PC to your Phone
Step 1: Install AirDroid from the Google play store and open the app on your phone .
Step 2: Connect to your PC’s wifi network from your android phone . ( If you are using a USB WiFi dongle like me then you can use Connectify to create a Wifi hotspot )
Step 3:
Open the AirDroid app and Instantly the app will detect your WiFi
network and start the AirDroid server . The app will provide you with
an ip address , which you have to type into your PC’s web browser to
connect to the AirDroid server .
Step 4:
Manually type in the ip address provided by the AirDroid app in your
web browser and press enter . Simultaneously You will see the below
screen and your android phone will prompt you to accept the connection .
Step 5: On your android phone , tap on accept and you will be able to access the AirDroid interface on your PC’s web browser .
Step 6:
To the right of AirDroid web interface , there is a toolbox , click the
file icon and next you can select from the folder / files icon to
transfer a file or folder to your android phone .
Step 7:
To transfer a file to you android phone select the file tab from the
AirDroid toolbox and click on the folder /file icon to select from any
file from your PC . As soon as you select the file , AirDroid will
start transferring the file to your android phone . similarly you can
also transfer entire folders to your android phone .
The files will be stored in the following locations on your phone : SD card/airdroid/upload
Transferring files from your Phone to your PC
If
you want to transfer files from your Android phone to your PC , then
you have to use the Airdroid web interface on your PC . All you need to
do is click on the files icon from AirDroid’s web interface and select a
file from the file browser that opens up , right click on any file and
select download to download the file to your PC .
The
file will be downloaded as regular downloads in your web browser and
can be accessed from the download menu . Here is a screenshot of the
transfer speed i was getting while downloading files from my android
phone . I was able to get a constant download speed of 3.5 Mbps which
peaked around 4Mbps .
, and you will have to recover
your phone.
