Sony Ericsson had been a poor performance this past quarters, it has been announced before that Sony will finally acquire Ericsson's 50% stake on Sony Ericsson partnership. And the divestment has now finally completed.
Press Release:
"Ericsson has today
completed the divestment of its 50 percent stake in Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB ("Sony
Ericsson"), including the broad IP cross-licensing agreement, jointly announced by Sony Corporation ("Sony") and Ericsson on October 27,
2011.
This makes Sony Ericsson a
wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony. The agreed cash consideration for the
transaction is EUR 1.05 billion. Ericsson's gain on the transaction will be approximately SEK 7.5 billion and will be reported in the first quarter result on April 25, 2012, as 'Other
operating income' in the income statement."
source: Sony
China launched a super-rapid test train over the weekend which is capable of travelling 500 kilometers per hour, state media said on Monday, as the country moves ahead with its railway ambitions despite serious problems on its high-speed network.
The train, made by a subsidiary of CSR Corp Ltd, China's largest train maker, is designed to resemble an ancient Chinese sword, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
It "will provide useful reference for current high-speed railway operations," it quoted train expert Shen Zhiyun as saying.
But future Chinese trains will not necessarily run at such high speeds, CSR chairman Zhao Xiaogang told the Beijing Morning News.
"We aims to ensure the safety of trains operation," he said.
China's railway industry has had a tough year, highlighted by a collision between two high-speed trains in July which killed at least 40 people. Construction of new high-speed trains in China has since been a near halt.
In February, the railways minister, Liu Zhijun, a key figure behind the boom in the sector, was dismissed over corruption charges that have not yet been tried in court.
The Computer History Museum (CHM) will honor Steve Jobs in a virtual exhibit including a rare presentation by the former iCEO. The exhibit is called “From the garage to the world’s most valuable company” and tracks Apple from its beginning to its recent rise to the top.
The exhibit puts its collection of Apple-related material in the limelight with photos of the Apple I, an original Homebrew Computer Club newsletter and early pictures of Jobs in highschool.
"For some crazy reason in the universe, two people from Los Altos and Cupertino, California managed to want something that just so happened to be what about a million other people wanted," CHM’s curator Dag Spicer says.
What’s most interesting probably though is the rare video footage in which Jobs speak about how much luck had to do with the founding of Apple computers. Hit the source link below to tour the virtual exhibit.
via phonearena
German researchers armed with smoking candles have come up with a cheap and easy way to coat surfaces so that oil droplets bounce or roll right off. The advance could eventually lead to eyeglass coatings and tablet computer screens that can evade the mark of even the greasiest fingerprints.
Making surfaces able to repel fluids—whether water- or oil-based—is also important for industrial and biomedical applications. But it's harder to make a surface that repels oil or organic solvents as opposed to water because oil has a far lower surface tension than water.
What's required is a very specific type of surface roughness—akin to the branches of a budding tree—that achieves oil-repellency. This has been understood for some time, but it has been difficult to fabricate such a texture. Earlier work at MIT and elsewhere involved complex nanolithographic techniques.
 |
Grease gone: A five-micrometer drop of a solvent bounces off a surface coated with the new material.
Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Hans-Jurgen Butt |
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, in a paper published today in the journal Science, say they've come up with a simpler way, using a combination of candle soot and silica baked at just the right temperature.
Neelesh Patankar, a mechanical engineer at Northwestern University, says the work is an important step toward finding a commercially viable way to make such materials. "It has been known what surface chemistry as well as geometries would work" to repel oils, he says. "This work shows a good way to make such coatings with the right kind of practically relevant properties."
source: technologyreview
 |
| Contract between Sony and Ericsson |
Goodbye Sony Ericsson, long live Sony. Ericsson will have until "mid 2012" to clear its things from the spare room before the electronics giant begins a new solo venture. The revitalized enterprise will leverage its parent company's brand strength, R&D and content (since it owns a massive chunk of the entertainment industry) and in comments made to Times of India, company Vice President Kristian Tear said there would be a "fierce" advertising push to restore the company's reputation as a major player worldwide -- before taking a Pilates class to try and fit back into its bachelor pad.
source: Times of India
Youtube now uses a more simple design just like the other google sites.
The new polished design features a grainy grey background with red and black color schemes.
With this new design, Google is hoping this will make it easier for people to find stuff they like while also luring them into spending more time on the site. But the ultimate goal is much more ambitious than just making the video-sharing site look less cluttered: Google wants YouTube to be so wonderful that people will use it the way they use TV—surfing channels when they’re bored and want to be entertained rather than when they’re looking for something specific.
“To be totally candid, what we’re doing is bringing YouTube up to 2011,” said Noam Lovinsky, group product manager at YouTube. “The old look and feel is one we’ve had since the launching of the site, and over the past six years the site has built up some crust, to say the least.”
Now, with the redesign, “we’re looking across every page, and every template, and we’re trying to standardize, streamline, and simplify,” Lovinsky says.
“The message of that investment was that if you’re a professional content producer, YouTube is now a legitimate first place to bring your programming,” says Fred Seibert, head of Frederator Studios, a longtime creator of animated TV shows that has signed on to make a channel for YouTube.
Also in the mix is
Google TV, software that connects the Internet to your living-room TV. So far Google TV has not caught on, but that could change if Google can improve the software and convince more TV makers to build Google TV into their sets.
The broad outlines of Google’s ambitions are becoming clearer: give YouTube a fresh, friendly interface that makes it look more like TV; pay Hollywood producers to create professional content; and use Google TV to bring that content into the living room.
But back to the redesign. Highlights include:
• A new homepage that has been restyled to show which channels you’ve subscribed to and let you quickly flick through them each time you come to the site. There’s also a darker background, which “really makes the videos pop—it makes the video the star of the page,” Lovinsky says.
• A channel “store” that helps you shop around for channels you might like to subscribe to, using Google’s search algorithms to bring up channels relevant to you based on the other stuff you’re already watching.
• New player controls that let you adjust the size and quality of the player.
• New templates for content producers that aim to create a more uniform look across all of YouTube, “so it can’t be all `MySpacey,’” Lovinsky jokes.
credits: thedailybeast.com
It is expected that Windows 8 will be released in 2012, but the exact expected date for the completion and shipping of the forthcoming operating system remains undisclosed. However, knowing the release time frame of the beta itself allows us to better project when the work should be done on the Windows 8 project.
Citing sources close to Microsoft,
TheNextWeb, claims that the Windows 8 public beta is set for release in February 2012.
Excited for it? Feel free to post your comments below
via gsmarena
Sure, your OG iPhone may look like a relic from Apple's past, but for a true bite of old skool memorabilia you may want to consider bidding on the company's original founding documents signed by
Steve Jobs,
Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. The three-page treasure, which established the Apple Computer Company way back in 1976 won't come cheap, though, as they're expected to go for a cool $100,000 to $150,000. Besides the starting papers, Sotheby's New York is throwing in Ronald Wayne's Statement of Withdrawal as part of the package, a document that gives up his ten percent stake in the biz -- what some may call a $2.6 billion dollar mistake.
via engadget
SEAGATE SOUPS UP LAPTOP PC PERFORMANCE WITH FAST SOLID STATE HYBRID DRIVE
Cupertino, Calif. - November 29, 2011 - Tip for revving up the speed of your laptop PC: Slip in a new Seagate (NASDAQ:STX) Momentus XT drive for faster computing, snappier gaming and lickety-split boot-up!
Seagate is now shipping the second generation of Momentus XT, its groundbreaking solid state hybrid drive for consumer and commercial laptop personal computers. With a simple drive installation, users can boost boot-up speed and overall performance to transform the use of an ordinary laptop or desktop computer into a high-performance computing experience. Momentus XT is available at online retailers Amazon, Canada Computers, CDW, Memory Systems, NCIX, Newegg, and TigerDirect, and seven original equipment manufacturers are gearing up to ship laptops powered by Seagate's fastest laptop drive ever.
"Personal computer users are creating and using more documents, photos, video and other digital content than ever before, driving strong demand for systems that deliver the highest performance they can get their hands on," said Scott Horn, vice president of worldwide marketing at Seagate."Seagate's second-generation Momentus XT is serving up solid state drive (SSD) speed, more storage capacity and simple, easy installation at an affordable price for even better, faster computing."
"High-speed storage devices make a difference when it comes to improving overall PC performance," said John Rydning, research vice president at IDC. "Seagate's newest Momentus XT gives notebook PC users an economical option for boosting PC performance while at the same time providing spacious storage capacity all in one device."
The Momentus XT drive is three times faster than a traditional hard disk drive, delivering speeds rivaling much pricier SSDs. The all-in-one design of Momentus XT makes installation for system upgrades simple, easy and affordable: the drive works in any laptop or desktop computer and with any operating system.
Momentus XT – Satisfying the need for speed
The Momentus XT hard drive delivers a massive 750GB of storage capacity and owes it speed to a Serial ATA 6Gb/second interface, 8 gigabytes of high-speed Single Level Cell NAND flash, 32 megabytes of drive-level caching and Seagate's Adaptive Memory and FAST Factor technologies. Adaptive Memory works by identifying data usage patterns, and then moving the most frequently retrieved information to the embedded solid state memory for faster access – effectively tailoring hard drive performance to each user and their applications. FAST Factor blends the strengths of SSDs and hard disk drives into a powerful device for faster access to applications, quicker bootup and higher overall system speed.
Now shipping in volume worldwide, the Momentus XT hard drive is backed by Seagate's 5-year limited warranty. Manufacturer's Suggesting Retail Pricing (MSRP) for Momentus XT 750GB is $189.
The Patent and Trademark Office in the US has setup a new exhibit at their museum in Alexandria, Verginia to honor Steve Jobs, one of the greatest inventors of our time.
The exhibit consists of 30 giant displays designed in the shape of the iPhone placed next to each other in a rectangle. Most of the displays show the front page of over 300 patents and trademark filings that mention Steve Job’s name as inventor or co-inventor. The rest of the display show his pictures.
The exhibit can be visited till January 15, 2012 at the USPTO Museum. If you live nearby and respect the man you may want to pay a visit.
via gsmarena
The game will only be available on the Amazon Appstore, which is great for those in the US but not so much for others. It will be available for free on the first day and for $0.99 thereafter.
The game has been available on iOS since October but it’s only making its way now on Android, that too through a store used by a minority of the Android users. Sure, it may be great for Amazon and its Appstore, which will see a lot more people using it now but it also puts a spotlight on Android’s Achilles’ heel: fragmentation. Hopefully, it will make it’s way to the Android Market eventually and won’t remain an Appstore exclusive forever, like Plants vs. Zombies.
As for the game itself, it’s based on the same basic premise of you having to swipe on the screen to slice fruits except now you have a few more levels and game modes to do that in, along with a popular character from the Shrek movies. You can call it just a means of promoting the recently released
movie but this one’s actually fun to play and worth a download, that is if you’re in the US.
