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)

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.

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.

Provider	Type	Incoming Address (IMAP)	Port	SSL	Outgoing Address    (SMTP)	Port	SSL
AT&T	IMAP	imap.mail.yahoo.com	993	Yes	smtp.mail.yahoo.com	587	Yes
1and1.com	IMAP	imap.1and1.com	993	Yes	smtp.1and1.com	587	Yes
Ameritech	IMAP	imap.mail.yahoo.com	993	Yes	smtp.mail.yahoo.com	587	Yes
AOL (America Online)	IMAP	imap.aol.com	993	Yes	smtp.aol.com	587	Yes
AIM mail	IMAP	imap.aim.com	993	Yes	smtp.aim.com	587	Yes
BT internet	IMAP	imap.mail.yahoo.com	993	Yes	smtp.mail.yahoo.com	587	Yes
CableOne	IMAP	imap.gmail.com	993	Yes	smtp.gmail.com	587	Yes
Centurylink	IMAP	pop.centurylink.net	993	Yes	smtp.centurylink.net	587	Yes
Charter	IMAP	mobile.charter.net	993	Yes	mobile.charter.net	587	Yes
Clearwire	IMAP	imap.gmail.com	993	Yes	smtp.gmail.com	587	Yes
Comcast	IMAP	imap.comcast.net	993	Yes	smtp.comcast.net	587	Yes
CompuServe	IMAP	imap.cs.com	993	Yes	smtp.cs.com	587	Yes
Cox	IMAP	imap.cox.net	993	Yes	smtp.cox.net	587	Yes
Cox Business	IMAP	imap.coxmail.com	993	Yes	smtp.coxmail.com	587	Yes
Eircom	IMAP	webmail.eircom.net	993	Yes	mail1.eircom.net	25	Yes
Frontier	IMAP	imap.frontier.com	993	Yes	smtp.frontier.com	465	Yes
Gmail (Google Mail)	IMAP	imap.gmail.com	993	Yes	smtp.gmail.com	587	Yes
GMX	IMAP	imap.gmx.com	993	Yes	mail.gmx.com	587	Yes
GoDaddy (Unlimited)	IMAP	imap.secureserver.net	995	Yes	smtpout.secureserver.net	465	Yes
GTE	IMAP	imap.mail.yahoo.com	993	Yes	smtp.mail.yahoo.com	587	Yes
Hotmail	IMAP	imap-mail.outlook.com	993	Yes	smtp-mail.outlook.com	587	Yes
Mail.com (Premium)	IMAP	imap.mail.com	993	Yes	smtp.mail.com	587	Yes
Netscape	IMAP	imap.aim.com	993	Yes	smtp.aim.com	587	Yes
Outlook.com	IMAP	imap-mail.outlook.com	993	Yes	smtp-mail.outlook.com	587	Yes
Prodigy	IMAP	imap.mail.yahoo.com	993	Yes	smtp.mail.yahoo.com	587	Yes
QQ Mail	IMAP	imap.qq.com	993	Yes	smtp.qq.com	465	Yes
RocketMail	IMAP	imap.mail.yahoo.com	993	Yes	smtp.mail.yahoo.com	587	Yes
SBC Global	IMAP	imap.mail.yahoo.com	993	Yes	smtp.mail.yahoo.com	587	Yes
Sky	IMAP	imap.tools.sky.com	993	Yes	smtp.tools.sky.com	587	Yes
US Army	IMAP	imap.us.army.mil	993	Yes	mailrouter.us.army.mil	465	Yes
Verizon	IMAP	imap.mail.yahoo.com	993	Yes	smtp.mail.yahoo.com	587	Yes
Zoho Mail	IMAP	imap.zoho.com	993	Yes	smtp.zoho.com	465	Yes

15 Ways to beat procrastination

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:

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 .

My fav is AirDroid <this is not an endorsment>