Thursday, 19 February 2015

Motorola set to unleash the powerful Moto Maxx in India very Soon...

  Author : Harmanpreet Singh     No comments
06:13

Flipkart has just teased the imminent arrival of the Motorola Moto Maxx smartphone in India. The handset is the global version of the Droid Turbo, which was announced back in September as an exclusive via American carrier Verizon Wireless. Beyond this, the Moto Maxx was only available in Brazil, but it's good to see that Motorola is finally looking to bring the smartphone to India as well.



Flipkart's teaser doesn't mention the Moto Maxx outright, but the hints are pretty obvious. The use of phrases like "Turbo charged", "Accelerated Performance" leaves nothing to the imagination. The Moto Maxx retails for 2,199 Brazilian Real, which is somewhere around the Rs 48,000 mark.

The actual arrival date of the smartphone is not known yet as this is merely a teaser, but we're hoping Motorola or Flipkart will share more details over the coming days. Read on for more details about the hardware on the Moto Maxx:

· 5.2-inch QHD (2560x1440) display
· Ballistic Nylon body texture
· 21MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture size
· 2MP portrait camera
· 2.5 GHz Snapdragon 805 chipset
· 64GB internal storage (no microSD card slot)
· 3GB of RAM
· Android 4.4 KitKat with the Android 5.0 update on the horizon
· 3,900 mAh battery

Considering the popularity of Motorola smartphones in India, we expect the Moto Maxx to do fairly well when it arrives in the region. Price will obviously play a crucial role in the success or failure of the smartphone and we're sure Motorola will be mindful of that. The Moto Maxx has hardware to rival even the best handsets in the market today, so we're guessing Motorola will treat it like a flagship.


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Monday, 5 January 2015

Meet the all new G Flex 2, LG's next attempt at making the Perfect Curved Smartphone

  Author : Harmanpreet Singh     No comments
09:40

Let's face it: With its curvaceous body, low-res screen, self-healing tendencies and lousy camera, the original LG G Flex was a mixed bag if there ever was one. When it came time to craft the inevitable sequel, though, the Korean tech giant agonized over customer feedback for months to figure out what went awry and what was really important to people. The end result of all that brainstorming is the LG G Flex 2, and it shows -- it's dramatically better than the original in just about every way that matters.

One of the first lessons that LG learned? Bigger isn't always better. The 6-inch pocket-buster of a screen that graced the original G Flex has been downsized to a more manageable 5.5-inch panel, but its resolution has been cranked up to 1080p in the process. That screen is all the more durable now thanks to a little chemical ingenuity on LG's part -- they took some normal chunks of Corning's Gorilla Glass and basically burned it via chemical reaction to make it 20 percent more durable. While we're talking durability, that self-healing feature that protected the G Flex's back has returned with just a little more oomph: It used to take scratches about three minutes to disappear from the phone's finish, but now we're looking at a full recovery usually within 10 seconds.

Physical design is one thing, but what's probably most impressive is what's thrumming away inside. The G Flex 2 is one of the first devices we've seen to come with one of Qualcomm's octa-core Snapdragon 810 chipsets. Those 2.0GHz processor cores are partnered up with 2GB of RAM and support carrier-aggregated LTE Category 6 to boot -- the G Flex 2 is meant to be a speed demon, no doubt about it. You'll be able to choose from either 16 or 32GB of internal storage, and charging the thing shouldn't take too long either; the included high-speed charger will get you from 0 to 50 percent in about 40 minutes. Oh, and remember the camera on the original G Flex? You probably don't, because it sucked. Rather than reinvent the wheel this time, LG basically just plopped the G3's 13-megapixel rear camera (complete with super-fast laser autofocus) into a new body.

So yes, on paper, the G Flex 2 seems like a more-than-worthy upgrade. But what's it like to actually use? As far as first impressions go, the Flex 2 leaves a strong one -- I find that the pictures I've taken just don't do this flexible body justice. It's just... lovely. The G Flex 2 is tremendously comfortable to press up against your face too (you know, when you actually need to use your phone as a phone), and the curve is meant to put the microphone much closer to your mouth than a regular candy bar design would. And as you might expect, I couldn't get the G Flex 2 to so much as stutter during my brief time playing with it -- it's a little too early to make sweeping judgments, but it seems clear that the octa-core Snapdragon chipset is a potent one. Overall performance is helped by the fact that LG usually doesn't futz with stock Android too much, and that still seems to be the case here. That means we've got a version of Android 5.0 Lollipop that isn't overly encumbered by bloatware and visual cruft. Other than the upgrade to Lollipop, though, there isn't a ton in the way of new software -- the most notable addition is a peek feature that lets you pull down from the top of the display to catch a glimpse at the time and your notifications. Alas, it didn't work terribly well on our (admittedly non-final) tester unit, but LG still has time to work out the kinks.

I'll be honest: It was a little hard to leave that conference room. If the original G Flex was a test balloon meant to see how regular people would react to the notion of a weirdo, curved smartphone, the G Flex 2 seems like a supersonic jet, a leap forward in evolution that makes its predecessor seem like a chump. There's still no firm word on when it'll be released or how much it'll cost when it does, but stay tuned -- we'll certainly bring you more as we get it.



Source: Engadget.

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Tuesday, 30 December 2014

Gmail traffic trickles back into China.

  Author : Harmanpreet Singh     No comments
13:45

Google's data shows Gmail traffic slowly rising again in China after a four-day outage.

Gmail is starting to see life again in China.

Google's e-mail service has seen a slight uptick in traffic going into the country, according to the company's Transparency Report. The Financial Times (subscription required) was the first to notice that access had returned.

The increase hints at the end of a four-day outage in China, one with no explanation. Greatfire.org, a China-based anticensorship group, suggested the country may have been responsible, Reuters reported.

Google told CNET in an e-mail that there was nothing on its end that caused the outage, while a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told Reuters that she wasn't aware of an issue.

A spokesman from the Consulate General of China's office in New York couldn't be reached for comment about the outage.

Google has had problems operating in China for years, and the country blocked Gmail access to its browsers in June ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. A loophole that allowed users to access Gmail through Microsoft's Outlook or Apple's email client had been closed over the past four days. That loophole has once again opened.

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NSA Had Trouble Breaking Into These Encryption Tools.

  Author : Harmanpreet Singh     No comments
13:13


Edward Snowden is now globally known as the man who blew the whistle on U.S. National Security Agency’s spying programs. He leaked a treasure trove of top secret documents detailing vast spying plans over the past year and he’s not stopping now. Der Spiegel has a new report up, backed by documents provided by Snowden, which reveal some of the encryption tools that proved a bit too much for the NSA to break into.

One of the tools that the NSA had “Major Problems” with is the infamous Tor network. It was difficult for the agency to follow users across the global anonymity network. Email messages sent through Zoho, an email provider that promises strong encryption, were troublesome as well. So were files encrypted with TrueCrypt, which was an open source disk-encryption program that was pulled a few months back.

Even if the NSA had problems with some tools this doesn’t mean it wasn’t able to break into many others. Leaked files show that the agency considers decrypting emails sent through Mail.ru, a popular Russian service, “moderate.” Documents also show that the NSA is building capacity to snoop on 20,000 VPN connections per hour, which is alarming to say the least.

The report also reveals how NSA was able to go past the HTTPS system, commonly used to secure connections between web browsers and websites. Documents from late 2012 show that the agency had capacity to capture 10 million HTTPS connections every single day.

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Monday, 29 December 2014

High School Student Creates Smart Gun That Only Unlocks With Fingerprints.

  Author : Harmanpreet Singh     No comments
15:41


There have been a lot of debate about gun safety over the years, and there have been many suggestions that have come up. For example earlier this year gun manufacturer Armatix came up with a solution which is to pair a gun with a smartwatch, thus allowing it to fire only if the smartwatch is in range. This means that if you don’t have the watch, you can’t fire it, which would hopefully help reduce accidental shootings or gun theft.

Well it looks like we now have another possible contender for smarter guns, thanks to a 17-year old by the name of Kai Kloepfer, a high school student from Boulder who won the $50,000 grand prize in the SmartTech for Firearms Challenge. Kloepfer’s answer to gun safety was to embed a fingerprint sensor on the gun, thus unlocking it only if an authorized fingerprint is detected.
Kloepfer’s creation will also store the fingerprints locally within the gun itself as opposed to in the cloud where it could potentially be hacked. This would also make it ideal for military use. Kloepfer has also suggested that multiple fingerprints could be stored in the database so that guns could be shared amongst authorized users, such as police in a precinct.

The teen has managed to create a prototype with a plastic model of a gun which costs him about $3,000 to put together. The money he won from the challenge is expected to go towards purchasing a 3D printer to create new parts for his prototype and the rest will go towards the integration of the fingerprint scanner.

We should point out that there have been concepts and prototypes of guns with fingerprint security in the past, so safe to say this isn’t the first, but it’s still a worthy effort for the youngster.

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Politician's Fingerprint 'cloned from photos' by Hacker...

  Author : Harmanpreet Singh     No comments
15:40

Mr. Krissler provided details of his technique at a convention in Hamburg.
A member of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) hacker network claims to have cloned a thumbprint of a German politician by using commercial software and images taken at a news conference.

Jan Krissler says he replicated the fingerprint of defence minister Ursula von der Leyen using pictures taken with a "standard photo camera".

Mr Krissler had no physical print from Ms. Von der Leyen.

Fingerprint Biometrics are already considered insecure, experts say.

Mr. Krissler, also known as Starbug, was speaking at a convention for members of the CCC, a 31-year-old network that claims to be "Europe's largest association" of hackers.

'Wear gloves'

He told the audience he had obtained a close-up of a photo of Ms von der Leyen's thumb and had also used other pictures taken at different angles during a press event that the minister had spoken at in October.

Mr. Krissler has suggested that "politicians will presumably wear gloves when talking in public" after hearing about his research.

Fingerprint identification is used as a security measure on both Apple and Samsung devices, and was used to identify voters at polling stations in Brazil's presidential election this year, but it is not considered to be particularly secure, experts say.
German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen's fingerprint was cloned just from photos, the hacker claims.

Living Biometrics

"Biometrics that rely on static information like face recognition or fingerprints - it's not trivial to forge them but most people have accepted that they are not a great form of security because they can be faked," says cybersecurity expert Prof Alan Woodward from Surrey University.

"People are starting to look for things where the biometric is alive - vein recognition in fingers, gait [body motion] analysis - they are also biometrics but they are chosen because the person has to be in possession of them and exhibiting them in real life."

In September this year Barclays bank introduced finger vein recognition for business customers, and the technique is also used at cash machines in Japan and Poland.

Electronics firm Hitachi manufactures a device that reads the unique pattern of veins inside a finger. It only works if the finger is attached to a living person.

Trials in the intensive care unit at Southampton General Hospital in 2013 indicated that vein patterns are not affected by changes to blood pressure.

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Apple Now Allows European Customers Up To 14 Days To Return A Digital Purchase 'Without Giving Any Reason,' And That Could Spell Trouble For App Developers.

  Author : Harmanpreet Singh     No comments
15:23

iTunesEuropean users will essentially be able to "sample" iTunes content for 14 days.

Apple has a new return and refund policy, and it could spell trouble for app developers.

Thanks to Apple's new 14-day, no questions asked return policy for iTunes and App Store purchases in the EU, it's now incredibly easy for people to get a refund. The new policy could also lead to people "sampling" purchases only to return them shortly after.

Apple used to offer refunds on purchases up "until delivery of the product has started," but Apple's new refund policy in the UK, France, Italy, and Germany allows customers up to 14 days to ask for a refund "without giving any reason," according to 9to5Mac.

Here's the wording of Apple's new return policy, which essentially lets anyone sample an iTunes or App Store purchase and return it two weeks later.

Right of cancellation: If you choose to cancel your order, you may do so within 14 days from when you received your receipt without giving any reason, except iTunes Gifts which cannot be refunded once you have redeemed the code.

So why did Apple make the change?

It looks like Apple is complying with a recent consumer rights directive specific to Europe that requires a "14-day right or withdrawal period" for goods and service sold in the EU.

This two-week return window could become a headache for app developers, however, as customers would be within their rights to download and try an app for thirteen days, only to to return it for a full refund on the fourteenth "without giving any reason."



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