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Xiaomi isn’t a household name in the western part of the world. But that is because the Chinese electronics conglomerate only sells its products in a handful of Asian regions. Despite its limited demographic, the company has managed to turn many heads. In its five years of existence, Xiaomi has become the largest smartphone vendor in its home country China and fifth largest manufacturer in the world.

Earlier this year, Xiaomi announced its plan to debut some of its products in US and UK by the end of 2015, and the company is now starting to deliver on that promise. It announces today that it will be holding a beta test flash sale on May 19 on its official Mi.com portal. The company will be accepting orders from people in the United States, United Kingdom as well as France and Germany.

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The results of a recently conducted study have shown that our attention span is... oh wait, I lost you.

That’s right. Our attention span has dropped from 12 seconds back in 2000, to an alarming eight seconds today. To put things into perspective, a goldfish’s attention span is nine seconds. So yes, a goldfish can read this article longer than you do without getting bored to death and opening Facebook.

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Companies that accept credit card payments and process cardholder data are facing some significant changes that they will need to comply with by June 30th.

This is a result of new Data Security Standard requirements from the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, known as PCI DSS 3.0. This will see many of the things that were previously only seen as best practice become mandatory.

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Google is facing something of a European revolution as mobile companies consider blocking ads on a massive scale. Israeli company Shine has developed software that blocks mobile ads, and it has gained the attention and support of a number of telecom companies in Europe.

Talking to the Financial Times, one wireless carrier said that the software had been installed at its data centers and could be enabled by the end of the year. With the potential to automatically block most ads on web pages and within apps, the repercussion of the ad boycott could be huge as mobile providers try to wrestle control from the likes of Google.

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The mobile landscape seems to be set for the near future. Android and iOS will continue to dominate, while Microsoft will hope to reach respectable market share with Windows 10 Mobile. While there are other hopeful operating systems in this segment, such as Ubuntu and Firefox OS, the odds are not in their favor. With that said, more options are better and I see potential in Mozilla's operating system.

Today, Mozilla announces the launch of new devices running Firefox OS, courtesy of Panasonic. Wait, is Panasonic releasing new smartphones? No. Actually, these are televisions running Firefox OS and they are available now. Whoa. A 4K TV that can run web apps? Sign me up!

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Google has announced that, this summer, some of its self-driving vehicle prototypes will be unleashed on the streets of Mountain View. The weird-looking cars will be equipped with the typical controls and go out on the public roads of the search giant's home town with a safety driver on board.

As you may already know, Google's prototypes do not currently feature the usual controls that are on the average vehicle. But, at least in this following testing phase, a removable steering wheel and accelerator and brake pedals will be installed in each car. There will be a "neighborhood-friendly" 25 mph speed limit in place.

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Last month Google announced a series of changes to the way it handled search results on mobile devices, and now Microsoft is following suit. Now there is a focus on promoting those sites that are optimized for viewing on a smaller screen. Microsoft said six months ago that it would start to push mobile-friendly sites, and today this plan is being put into action.

The project started off by simply highlighting mobile-friendly sites to aid identification, but now they will be promoted further up search rankings. If there are two sites rated equally highly for their content, the one which is considered most suitable for viewing on a mobile device will appear higher in results when a search is conducted from a mobile device.

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Internet companies might not seem like major contributors to pollution, but Greenpeace is not letting them have a free ride, in a new report showing how some companies are much cleaner than others when it comes to energy.

For those that don’t know, most large-scale Internet companies invest heavily in data centers. These data centers run on electricity 24/7, meaning companies like Google, Oracle and Amazon are indirectly pushing the rate of pollution.

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Given all of the hype surrounding the Internet of Things and intelligent devices you might think that consumers would be keen to make use of all the latest options.

However, a new study by UK online retailer Appliances Direct suggests that for many people even mastering their washing machine is too much.

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When choosing a portable Bluetooth speaker you’re probably swayed by several factors -- size and brand being chief among them. I own a Cambridge Audio Minx Go, and the Cambridge Audio name was definitely one of the reasons I considered that speaker in the first place.

Sond Audio probably isn’t a name you’re familiar with. It’s actually Ebuyer’s own audio brand, and products under that label include speakers, headphones and soundbars. The Sond Audio portable NFC speaker is the first Sond product I’ve tried, so is it a hit or miss?

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If your desktop is cluttered then you could create a few folders to hold shortcuts, important files, whatever you access regularly. That works, but it’s less convenient: you’re forced to open a folder to view the contents, then close it when you’re done.

Install Wincmder Shellex and just right-clicking a folder displays a menu listing its contents (shift+clicking gets you the previous context menu). Choose a shortcut or file and it launches as usual, no need to open the folder at all.

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Spending on Platform-as-a-Service (Paas), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is forecast to reach $118 billion this year, and it's clear the cloud is now big business. Companies are fighting to enter the space with new industry- and marketing-specific offerings. But what effect will this have and will it worry the big players like Amazon Web Services?

We spoke to Scott Swartz, VP, CTO Enterprise and Cloud Billing at Ericsson and founder of MetraTech, an enterprise billing specialist recently acquired by Ericsson, to find out more about the state of the IaaS space.

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At an ongoing event in New Delhi, Google launches two new Chromebook models from Xolo and Nexian. Aimed at the education sector, both the Chromebooks are priced at Rs 12,999 ($200), and go on sale starting today.

The Xolo Chromebook sports an 11.6-inch display of 1366x768 pixels resolution packed in a glossy plastic body. It is powered by a quad-core Rockchip Cortex A17 processor coupled with 2GB RAM, and 16GB of internal storage. The notebook flaunts a decent enough keyboard with tactile feedback.

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China has warned its soldiers not to use smartwatches and wearable gadgets as they could be in breach of army security protocols.

The country’s military issued a statement against the use of Internet connected devices after a recruit attempted to take a photograph using a smartwatch. Restrictions surrounding mobile phone use are already in place.

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Cloud storage is all the rage nowadays, and for good reason -- it is convenient and oftentimes free (depending on capacity). With that said, there are still benefits to physical on-premises storage for redundancy and possible security reasons. For businesses in particular, it can be daunting to trust confidential information and trade secrets to the cloud. I rather like flash drives for operating system installs, such as Ubuntu and Windows.

Today, Toshiba announces two new models of USB flash drive; the USB 3.0 U362 and the USB 2.0 U201. Besides speed differences, the former is retractable, while the latter is very small and colorful. In other words, the company is offering consumers different options and price points.

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