Nokia unveiled two sleek new Microsoft Windows phones on Wednesday, a first step in the ailing cellphone maker's fightback against Apple and Google. The flagship Lumia 800 and more basic Lumia 710 will go on sale in key European markets by the Christmas holiday season. Examining the first fruits of Chief Executive Stephen Elop's big bet on Microsoft software that spooked investors earlier this year, some analysts were impressed, but others said the pairing remains well short of finding an iPhone killer. "It's a new dawn for Nokia," Elop told about 3,000 customers, partners, developers, analysts and journalists gathered in London for the much-anticipated launch at the company's annual conference. He said the new phones' minimalist design and superior navigation features would make them stand out among rival Windows phones, some of which have been faster to market with Microsoft's new mobile platform. The Lumia 800, with vivid colours and a curved, black display, features live icons on the home screen that automatically update news, weather or Facebook feeds. It also boasts free navigation and Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 9 browser. It will sell for about 420 euros ($584) excluding taxes and subsidies, putting it in the same bracket as Apple's new iPhone and Samsung's top-end Galaxy phones. The Lumia 710 will sell for about 270 euros. "These devices are a good start but the reality is that they are pretty much plain vanilla Windows Phone products," said Ben Wood, director of research at UK-based telecoms analysis firm CCS Insight. "The real fruits of Nokia's and Microsoft's labours will come next year... but it remains a Herculean task to recapture this lucrative market from Apple and Android." Visit us at Pulse360 or FastFind
Epic, the Mozilla-based browser providing the Indian browsing experience has been upgraded and improved. Created by Bangalore-based start up, Hidden Reflex, Epic is now 70% faster. It comes with an India sidebar that supports Indian content by providing users access to the latest national and regional news from 100+ publications, 14 live television channels including 9 new channels, thousands of feature films, live cricket scores and more. Full length television shows can be accessed from channels like TV9 Gujarat and the National Geographic channel. It also has Epic Radio, which has more than 5000 radio stations with song alerts. You will even get Gmail, Facebook and Twitter alerts. One of the more coveted features of this browser is that it comes with EpicSafe, a program protecting you from over 3.3 million malicious websites. In addition, Epic now adds a 'Download' button to Youtube pages, it offers to translate webpages from another language into English as part of its autotranslate function, and they've added support for the Oriya language making the total languages supported count, 13. As always, you can customize the browser with Indian themes ranging from Bollywood and cricket stars to landscapes. As part of the language support, Epic allows you to write on any webpage in one of its 13 supported languages or in its word processor, "Write". Epic also has a range of other applications like Picture in Picture Video Sidebar, My Computer, To-do List and Maps. The browser is available for free and can be downloaded from 
Google Buzz was started as a direct competitor to Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service. It was started not too long back, in early February, 2010. Google's Blog has a new post today that announces that it would discontinue the Buzz service, along with a couple of others, prominently Jaiku, Code Search and some social networking elements from the iGoogle customized homepage service. Buzz was tightly integrated into Gmail and it let users post messages along with photos and videos. The service will be suspended in the coming weeks. Google had made the decision to suspend some of its services and their Labs projects. Code Search will meet its fate on 15th of January, 2012 as will the social networking features on iGoogle, Jaiku and also the University Research Program for Google. Also, the main Labs site will be shut down today. Clearly, Google is putting all its efforts into what matters the most. At this point in time, Buzz will be replaced by Google+. The decision was long overdue and it had many wondering when Google would make it. Google will channel its resources from the projects shut down into existing products and as Bradley Horowitz, VP, Product at Google likes to put it ,"Our users expect great things from us; today's announcements let us focus even more on giving them something truly awesome." 
The Samsung Unpacked Event was scheduled to take place on the 11th of October 2011. Along with the Samsung Galaxy Prime, Google was set to officially unveil their latest firmware update, Android Ice Cream Sandwich. However, spokespersons from both Samsung and Google had revealed that the launch date of the product and the OS was pushed back to pay respect to the passing of Apple's co-founder, Steve Jobs. When Samsung and Google made the announcement about the delay of the event, no word was given as to when the launch would take place. According to a report by Engadget, Samsung has confirmed that the official debut of Ice Cream Sandwich will take place at an event scheduled for the 19th of October 2011. There is also confirmation of the hardware launch in the form of the Galaxy Nexus, so at the event we will see new hardware as well as software. The event will takes place in Hong Kong and as the leaked promotional video from Samsung suggests – 'Something BIG is coming.' 
Microsoft has tried to cut down redundant information stored in the memory. Another change being made is to the way services are initialized when Windows boots. Services will be started when needed, left on an idle mode for a while after the task is completed and then terminate. Some non-critical services will not be loaded during startup. While using the Metro interface, only essential components of the OS will be loaded. There will also be better prioritization of resources for applications, which means less important programs will not idle in the memory for too long. 
Two Linux software groups have joined forces, they said on Wednesday, to develop a new operating system for cellphones and other devices in an effort led by Intel and Samsung Electronics. Under the deal, the LiMo Foundation and Linux Foundation are effectively merging their LiMo and Meego mobile operating systems and hope to gain wider industry and consumer support, but analysts said the new Tizen platform is likely to struggle. It would have to attract wide support from developers and manufacturers to compete with the dozen or so other mobile operating systems available in a smartphone market currently dominated by Apple's in-house software and Google's Linux-based Android. "The best hope for them is that big operators get worried by Android and decide to consciously switch their allegiances to rival platforms to restrict Google's huge influence over the mobile market," said analyst Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics. Earlier this year Nokia, the biggest phone maker by volume, ditched its own Symbian operating system this year in favour of Microsoft's Windows Phone software. Currently Windows Phone has a smartphone market share of 2-3 percent, according to industry analysts, and LiMo and Meego have less than 1 percent apiece, while Android's share is almost 50 percent and still growing. "This (Tizen) is driven by necessity. Linux rivals to Android have failed to gain traction and Samsung needs to reduce its dependence on Google," said Geoff Blaber, an analyst at London-based telecoms industry consultancy CCS Insight. The world's second-biggest cellphone maker behind Nokia, Samsung is the leading user of the Android platform, which has been one of the reasons for its escalating court-room fight over patents with Apple. Also, some other makers of Android-opera 
The suspense is over and India's low cost access device (LCAD), christened Aakash, was finally unveiled today by the Union Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal. Costing Rs. 2,276 (about USD 46), it is about USD10 more than the USD 35 envisaged earlier. This tablet, unlike the one Kapil Sibal unveiled last year, is an Android 2.2 tablet which runs on a 366 MHz processor with special support for HD Video co-processor and a separate graphic accelerator. It also has 256MB RAM and 2GB of internal memory which is expandable up to 32GB via the provided memory card slot. It also has two USB ports for connecting external/portable hardware. The tablet is being manufactured by a Canada-based company Datawind in a plant in India. "The USD 35 price is achievable at higher volume levels. When we supply the product to the government at USD 35, then too it will allow us a margin, albeit at higher volumes," said the Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of Datawind. Aakash will also be available for a subsidised rate of Rs. 1,200 for students. However, the commercial version of the tablet will be available for Rs. 2,999 (USD 60). It is not the cheapest tablet in the world. However, a quick search on the Internet shows that there are cheaper and better tablets available for as low as USD 39. 
A year after it pulled the plug on silent updates in Firefox 4, Mozilla said it will debut most of the behind-the-scenes feature by early next year. Assuming Mozilla pulls off silent upgrading this time around, it would make Firefox only the second browser to take that route. Google's Chrome has been the poster boy for automatic updates that remove the user from the equation and can't be switched off. Mozilla did not say it was copying Chrome -- it's denied doing so with other features -- but the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, Mitchell Baker, acknowledged what she called "update fatigue." "In the past we have been very careful to make sure people know something is changing with their Web browser before it changes," said Baker, who heads the non-profit organization that oversees the Firefox-making Mozilla Corp. "Today people are telling us -- loudly -- that the notifications are irritating and that a silent update process is important." The difference between then and now, a Mozilla developer explained, is the rapid release schedule that upgrades Firefox every six weeks. "Most users don't want to think about software updates nor version numbers and now they are being forced to do so every six weeks," said Brian Bondy, a Mozilla developer working on one component of silent updating, in a blog post last Friday. According to Bondy and other information published on the Mozilla website, the current goal for most of the multi-part project is Firefox 10, slated to ship Jan. 31, 2012. Some pieces will appear in earlier and later editions, however. When Firefox receives the feature, the browser will download the upgrade in the background, then install it the next time Firefox is restarted. Users will be reminded to install the upgrade 12 hours later if they haven't restart 
When Google first launched Chrome, there was a feeling that it was too basic and had almost no features. In comparison, Firefox had no dearth of features and plugins. Three years have passed since Chrome's launch and it's about to overtake Firefox as the second most used browser, according to a Computerworld report. The only browser to be used more is Internet Explorer, but that number is gradually dropping. At this pace, Internet Explorer won't be able to hold its lead for too long. Firefox, too hasn't seen a healthy growth. It's userbase has been declining since a while, despite several new releases and added features. While Firefox users have a whole bunch of browser add-ons at its disposal, Google Chrome's extension database is rapidly improving, as popularity continues to rise. Other browsers such as Apple's Safari, Opera, among others account for less than 5 percent of the browsers. They haven't seen a massive rise or drop in the adoption rates. At the rate at which Google Chrome is rising, it's likely to take the number one browser spot by the end of next year, maybe even earlier. The last stable build of Chrome was version 14, and was launched two weeks back.