They're here! BlackBerry 10, Q10 and Z10 smartphones
Today is the big day -- Research in Motion finally took the wraps off BlackBerry 10 and two new smartphones. The Waterloo, Ontario, Canada-based company, which new name is same as the device, bleeds market share to Androids and iPhone. During fourth quarter, BlackBerry fell out of the top-5 smartphone makers, as measured by shipment share, according to IDC. The latest operating system and new handsets might just well be the last chance to regain lost ground.
CEO Thorsten Heins officially launched the much-anticipated platform during BlackBerry World. The BlackBerry Z10 comes with a 4.2-inch touchscreen display and 356 pixels per inch, whereas the BlackBerry Q10 sticks to a traditional layout featuring a physical keyboard. According to Heins, both the on-screen as well as physical keyboard provide the best mobile typing experience, but more on the two after the break.
YouMail unveils Business Edition premium service for demanding users
On Wednesday, popular cloud-based voicemail provider YouMail unveiled a new premium service aimed at businesses and professionals. Dubbed Business Edition, it comes with a host of exclusive features ranging from more customizable greetings to the removal of in-app ads.
YouMail Business Edition runs for $6.99 per user, per month, and builds atop of the currently available functionality. Subscribers can choose to implement "smart business greetings" which can accommodate the user's full name and company, as well as other information.
Brilliant! RIM's name is now BlackBerry
Maybe one head really is better than two. Today during the BlackBerry World keynote, Research in Motion CEO Thorsten Heins made a startling, and quite unexpected, announcement. There's a new name, adopted from the flagship product -- BlackBerry.
Heins replaced co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie a year-ago this month, promising to aright the badly listing RIM. Today, BlackBerry 10 operating system and new devices officially launch, as Heins seeks to deliver on the promise. Apparently, the name change is part of that.
Microsoft Surface Pro has a BIG storage problem
Microsoft is no stranger to controversy, even attracting negative attention when it comes to the advertised storage of its own Surface tablet lineup. The interwebs buzzed after the company admitted the shortcomings of Surface RT, which only comes with 16GB of user-accessible storage in 32GB trim, and now the same issue is raising its head all over again with Surface Pro, just days before the big launch.
As most knowledgeable Windows users will concede, Microsoft's latest consumer operating system does take up quite a bit of storage space due to its fully-fledged nature. For example, on my personal computer running Windows 8 Pro 64-bit, the "Windows" folder by itself uses just over 16GB. So it's not overly difficult to imagine Windows 8 Pro will take up a lot of Surface Pro's free space. Of course this is something that educated pundits surely know (or at least they should).
Export PDFs in a range of different formats with PDFMate PDF Converter
Adobe’s PDF is a great format for sharing information with others, and normally you might go to considerable effort to export a particular file as a PDF document.
Occasionally, though, you might have an existing PDF file which you’d really prefer to be in another format: HTML, plain text, images, whatever it might be. That’s when a PDF conversion tool comes in handy, and the free PDFMate PDF Converter -- which claims to export your documents to EPUB, TXT, HTML, SWF and image formats, amongst others -- just might be able to help.
The new Office has launched -- let the advertising blitz begin
We spent a lot of time dissecting Microsoft's Office launch yesterday and one thing was clear. The software giant wants you to move away from the desktop and into the cloud with Office 365 Home Premium. Something which I for one do not think is a bad idea. To prove where its priorities lie, Microsoft has unveiled its very first video ad for the new suites and predictably it's all about Office 365.
The 30-second length of the clip indicates that it is likely headed for TV, although I personally have not seen it there yet. It does nothing to show customers the actual apps like Word, Excel, and the rest. Instead it focuses on more of the Metro Modern UI aspects, and the suite's ability to be available for users at all times, wherever they are.
Get better security and stability with Opera 12.13 FINAL
Norwegian browser developer Opera has announced its first release of 2013. Opera 12.13 FINAL is a security and stability release with a couple of notable bug fixes. The release, also available as a separate 64-bit build for Windows 64-bit users, comes just 48 hours after Opera 12.13 RC2 was released for public testing.
Bug fixes include a resolution that saw no webpages being loaded on startup if Opera is disconnected from the internet, plus one that led to internal communication errors appearing on Facebook.
Judge rules Samsung did not ‘willfully’ infringe Apple’s patents
On 24 August 2012, after a thirteen day trial and three full days of deliberation, a California jury found Samsung guilty of infringing on several Apple patents and awarded the American company $1.05 billion in damages. The jury also found that Samsung had willfully stolen design elements from Apple, a damning finding which could have seen the amount of damages significantly increased.
Fortunately for Samsung, following post-trial hearings held over the past few months, US District Court Judge Lucy Koh last night issued a ruling overturning the jury’s willful infringement finding, a move which prevents Apple from being able to seek additional damages.
These are the good old days
Yesterday was my 60th birthday. When I came to Silicon Valley I was 24. It feels at times like my adult life has paralleled the growth and maturation of the Valley. When I came here there were still orchards. You could buy cherries, fresh from the fields, right on El Camino Real in Sunnyvale. Apricot orchards surrounded Reid-Hillview Airport in San Jose, where I flew in those early days because hangars were already too expensive in Palo Alto. My first Palo Alto apartment rented for $142 per month, and I bought my first house there for $47,000. I first met Intel co-founder Bob Noyce when we were both standing in line at Wells Fargo Bank.
Those days are gone. But that is not to say that these days are worse.
RKill terminates malware processes
Blocking malware before it manages to infect your PC is relatively easy. Your antivirus package scans the file, email attachment or whatever it might be, recognises the threat, and deletes it before any damage can be done: simple.
Should the malware bypass your protection, though, and manage to install itself, then it’s a very different story. Now the threat may be able to hide from your security software, prevent you running particular programs, reaching certain sites -- and that can make removing it a very real challenge. Unless you’ve a copy of RKill on hand to help.
Microsoft and I agree -- Office 365 is the future
This doesn't happen every day. Microsoft, which serves as both my daily computing platform and bane of my existence, does something I completely agree with. It is not the first time -- I am an unashamed Windows 8 lover. I also love Office, and the product has steadily improved and become easier to use with each iteration. But desktop software is quickly becoming old-school. I find myself using more and more web apps and storing more data in the cloud.
Today, Microsoft officially launched Office 2013...sort of. Yes, the software suite is out there, available to everyone, as we knew it would be. What we didn't realize was that the actual software suite would be downplayed. A lot.
Nexus 4 is back in stock, but for how LONG?
In the United States, Google Play has both Nexus 4 models available for sale -- after nearly two months stocked out. The bumper is available, too. If you're one of the gadget geeks looking for this smartphone, get it while you can, and that might not be for long.
Google launched Nexus 4 on November 13, but sold out in just hours. The phone reappeared on November 27. A day later, Google Play redefined "sold out" by listing shipment date as 8-9 weeks. From a retail distribution perspective, Nexus 4 is pure disaster. It's anyone's guess how many could have sold over the holidays, but greedy gadget geeks couldn't get the phone short of paying extortion-like prices.
Microsoft really doesn't want you to buy Office 2013
They're here! Today Microsoft released new versions of the flagship productivity suite alongside cloud companions. But if you look closely, all the chatter is about Office 365. The software giant wants your head in the cloud, and tidy, easy-to-account subscription revenue with it. CEO Steve Ballmer and team endlessly blather about "reimagining" Windows, but Office gets the bigger makeover -- not just how people work, but how they pay to do it.
Subscription revenue is Microsoft's Holy Grail, and one sought since the mid 1990s, because it smooths out revenue and locks in customers. New Office releases come about once every three years. Office 2007 launched six years ago tomorrow and its successor in May 2010. The company can't depend on consistent sales, which tend to spike around new releases. Subscription -- how Microsoft sells Office 365 -- is smoother.
Google donates 15,000 Raspberry Pi microcomputers to UK schools
Although the Raspberry Pi was originally aimed at encouraging school children to learn to program as they did in 1980s and 90s, the affordable credit card-sized ARM GNU/Linux computer has actually ended up appealing to a broad range of ages.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has never lost sight of its initial purpose though, and thanks to the generosity of Google, it’s about to make some serious headway into British schools.
Microsoft joins the party, warns users against Java
Oracle has had no shortage of headaches recently, thanks to Java. The exploits have been running wild lately, making attempts to fix the problems resemble a game of whack-a-mole. In fact, the troubles even resulted in the United States Department of Homeland Security being forced to post a warning against using the platform.
In a post to the government website, the DHS warned that "by convincing a user to load a malicious Java applet or Java Network Launching Protocol (JNLP) file, an attacker could execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system with the privileges of the Java plug-in process".
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