Social Media Roundup In USA

Automated tweets get less engagement than handcrafted ones, WhatsApp is making inroads at a USA Today sports site, and sometimes all you can do when a years-old piece takes off on Facebook is shrug.

It's been a good week for gleaning insights from media outlets, which seem increasingly willing to share which social strategies are working for them. Here's a rundown of recent social media news you might have missed.

Human tweets > RSS tweets

Los Angeles Times social media editor Stacey Leasca shared some tips on Twitter's media blog this week.

Among her insights was the fact that moving from RSS tweets improved engagement. It's no surprise that a human touch makes a difference, but it's interesting to see how much the change seems to have increased the rate at which the newspaper's accounts are gaining new followers

A perfect example of this is, again, @LANow. We moved @LANow off of an automated feed in the summer of 2013. The account was then staffed by editors and reporters working in the section. They are our real local experts and the Twitter account quickly became richer with information and much more personal for Angelenos. @LANow quickly went from averaging about 1,500 fans a week to more than 2,500 fans a week.

I've noticed Times tweets generally seem very by-the-book, to the extent that the occasional tweet with a human flair seems jarring (the tell is that they're written down-style instead of up-style, as Times headlines are). The Wall Street Journal, perhaps its chief competitor, has embraced pictures and charts on Twitter, and is much more conversational at times. The Journal also liberally retweets its reporters. It's fascinating to see how much the two newspapers — still somewhat staid in print and on their websites — diverge when it comes to social media.

Ryan Osborn, NBCUniversal News Group vice president of innovation and strategic integration, echoed most of the other outlets' reasons for choosing not to automate social media posts: "While scaling a strategy 24/7 has taken time, we’ve found that engagement is greater when the accounts are manually curated."

After Facebook's acquisition of the messenger platform in February, I wrote that WhatsApp could become a useful tool for "dark social" content sharing — in other words, an alternative to email for sharing links privately rather than publicly. BuzzFeed had already started experimenting with a WhatsApp button in stories on the mobile Web.

Now, Digiday's Ricardo Bilton reports that USA Today's viral, mobile-friendly sports site, FTW, saw 18 percent of its mobile sharing activity come from WhatsApp in its first week of using the WhatsApp share button. That's more than Twitter.

Facebook launches new website for nonprofits master

The social media giant announced a new website on Thursday dedicated to resources for nonprofits and NGOs to get the most out of their Facebook Pages. The new site reads like an extensive instruction manual, covering everything from setting up a Page to building a support network of "likes," and it also includes a step-by-step guide covering how to use the platform's latest fundraising tools.

Facebook says the new resource will be essential for nonprofits and NGOs looking to create a presence on the social network — or for organizations looking to up their game when it comes to their existing Pages. The site serves as a simple, accessible roadmap of best practices, with tips and tricks coming from the platform itself.

"We are constantly blown away by the ways people and organizations use Facebook — not just to connect, but to make an impact in their communities and around the world," Joanne Sprague, marketing manager of social good at Facebook, wrote in a blog post announcing the release.

"This is especially true of nonprofits, who inspire us every day by raising awareness about their causes, activating supporters and raising the funds they need to support their organizations. We want to help nonprofits use Facebook more effectively to achieve these goals," she said.

The company hopes the Facebook for Nonprofits toolkit will allow nonprofits and NGOs to strengthen their presence on the platform, teach them how to further their work through social media, and instruct organizations on how to use Facebook features specifically tailored to charitable efforts.

The site also shows innovative ways nonprofits have used the platform effectively through a section of success stories.

This toolkit, Facebook hopes, will help solve those issues, giving nonprofits "a valuable resource ... regardless of their size, focus or location."

More than half of children use social media by the age of 10

52 per cent of eight to 16-year-olds ignored Facebook's age limit

Other popular sites include WhatsApp, BBM, SnapChat and Ask.fm

43 per cent had messaged strangers, starting from an average age of 12

Other popular sites include WhatsApp, used by 40 per cent of eight to 16-year-olds, BBM (24 per cent), SnapChat (11 per cent) and Ask.fm (8 per cent).

The study found that although 59 per cent of children are social networking by 10 years old, just 32 per cent of parents feel 'very confident' about helping them stay safe online.

The poll found 21 per cent of children had posted negative comments, starting from an average age of 11, and 26 per cent had 'hijacked' another person's account and posted without permission.

Some 43 per cent had messaged strangers, starting from an average age of 12.

While 63 per cent of parents check their child's internet activity at least once a week, more than a fifth (21 per cent) are not confident they could install parental controls, and just under a half (46 per cent) admit not being confident or aware of the school internet policy.

Dr Richard Woolfson, child psychologist and Knowthenet spokesman, said: 'The internet offers wonderful experiences for growing and inquisitive young minds.

'Yet, as social media has removed the barriers between a young person's public and private self, children can become vulnerable, and compulsive online sharing can lead to danger.

'Parents can no longer protect children by simply trying to limit their online experiences. Instead parents need to maintain an open dialogue and encourage children to share both good and bad online experiences, talk openly and straightforwardly about the risks they may encounter online without scaring them and make sure they keep up with the latest social media crazes and work with their children rather than trying to control them.'

Opinium surveyed 1,006 parents of children aged eight to 16 online and 1,004 children aged eight to 16 between October 17-24.

Iphone 6s Rumors!! Apple Phablet Is Releasing In Next 13 Days

Oh noes: The Apple iPhone 6s will be bigger than today's iPhone. Confirming previous mutterings, photographs from China show an iPhablet that's taller, fatter and wider than before.

But not by much. The thought is Apple's making the case stronger, to prevent another rash of bendgate headlines, and making room for Force Touch hardware.

But Apple isn't making room for a bigger battery. On the contrary, it seems the new cells in the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus will actually hold less charge than the previous models. That sounds like a terrible idea.

And, as usual in early September, our thoughts turn to the release date for the new shinies. But commentators are saying it might not sell well. And others are saying it'll break records. So that's clear, then.

In IT Blogwatch, bloggers experience denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Not to mention: "The best thing to come out of Alabama"...

Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment.

Here's Eric Slivka with this oh-so astoundingrevelation:

For months, rumors have indicated the upcoming "iPhone 6s" may be...larger than its predecessor, likely due to...a change in the aluminum being used for the shell, thickening of weak spots [to] address concerns over bending, and new support for Force Touch.

[I've] received several photos showing an iPhone 6s [showing] full measurements of the device. [They] show the iPhone 6s measuring 7.08 mm thick compared to Apple's official measurement of 6.9 mm on the iPhone 6. ... The new photos also reveal slight increases for the height and width...138.19 mm tall and 67.68 mm wide, compared to 138.1 mm and 67.0 mm.

On a percentage basis, the thickness would see the biggest increase [which] could be enough to prevent some tight-fitting iPhone 6 cases from fitting the 6s, but many cases should have enough wiggle room.

And Matt Hanson describes fatt handsets: [You're fired -Ed.]

As size increases go [it] isn't the most ground (or pocket) breaking leap, but it does make us wonder what other tech Apple could be making room for. 

Individually the increases in size might not seem like much, but...if you're already struggling to fit an iPhone 6 into your pocket, you're going to have even more trouble with the iPhone 6S.

But Ben Lovejoy is overjoyed to read yet another rumor:

A report from the usually-reliable KGI [says] the front camera will be upgraded to 5MP [and] the rear camera lens may not be sapphire, as it...failed drop tests. ... It is more brittle, and thus at greater risk of shattering when dropped.

[KGI] also repeated its concerns [about] flat or negative sales growth. [But] KGI’s pessimism...contrasted with data from Kantar, which suggested “ample opportunity for iPhone upgrades” this year and next

The Next Social Network Is The Virtual Reality

Oculus VR, the virtual reality company owned by Facebook, released an app called the Oculus Social alpha. It's for users of the Samsung Gear VR virtual reality headset, which uses a Samsung phone as the screen and brains of the headset and is based on Oculus technology

Oculus Social is, for now, a virtual reality movie-watching app. The experience is that you choose an avatar to represent yourself, and then you suddenly show up in a kind of small movie theater, sitting in one of the seats. You can watch a video from Twitch or a preselected video from Vimeo and, if you want to, chat with up to four other people who are also in the theater and are also represented by avatars.

In the current version, there are no avatar bodies. Just heads floating above the seats. As the real-life users talk, nod or turn their heads, so do their avatars. Stereo sound bolsters the illusion of presence by making the sound of the movie come from the screen, but the sound of users talking comes from the avatars.

Next year is going to be the Year of Virtual Reality. The Oculus Rift platform is expected to ship in the first quarter of 2016. The enterprise version of Microsoft's Hololens should also emerge some time next year. Google's Cardboard platform, an open-source way for any company to make inexpensive VR headsets that can be used with a smartphone, should finally gain mainstream traction. And many other hardware, software and VR content products should become available for consumers.

The public thinks the big VR app will be gaming. But I think it will be social interaction. That's why the appearance of the Oculus Social alpha is significant. It's a milestone as important as when the first smartphone came out -- a first product in its category that will completely change how humans interact with one another.

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in March of last year that Facebook would acquire Oculus VR, the news was greeted with a collective "Huh?!"

After all, why would a social network company buy what everyone viewed as a gaming console? Zuckerberg himself addressed that question in his announcement post. He wrote: Oculus Rift "is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures."

In other words, virtual reality is a social space, or will be one day. But why?

Social Media Is Actually A Very Big Addiction Problem

Social networks are massively addictive. Most people I know check and interact on social sites constantly throughout the day. And they have no idea how much actual time they spend on social media.

If you're a social media addict, and your addiction is getting worse, there's a reason for that: Most of the major social network companies, as well as social content creators, are working hard every day to make their networks so addictive that you can't resist them.

Facebook: I wish I knew how to quit you

Cornell Information Science published research earlier this month that looked at (among other things) the difficulty some people have in quitting Facebook and other social networks. They even have a label for the failure to quit: "social media reversion."

The study used data from a site called 99DaysofFreedom.com, which encourages people to stop using Facebook for 99 days.

The site and study are interesting because they revealed the difficulty people have quitting Facebook because of addiction. Participants intended to quit, wanted to quit and believed they could quit (for 99 days), but many couldn't make more than a few days.

The network effect itself is addicting, according to Instagram software engineer Greg Hochmuth, as quoted by The New York Times. (A network effect is the idea that any network becomes more valuable as more people connect to that network. The phone system is the best example of this phenomenon -- you have to have a phone because everybody else has a phone.)

In fact, Hochmuth and artist and computer scientist Jonathan Harris created a web experience called Network Effect. The site simulates the experience of browsing through social media by giving you a feed of people engaging on various activities. Then, after a few minutes, the site won't let you watch anymore (for 24 hours) so you can experience the subtle withdrawal symptoms.

In the world of social networking, Facebook benefits most from network effect. Facebook happened to be the top social network when social networking busted out as a mainstream activity. Now, everybody's on Facebook because everybody's on Facebook. And even people who don't like the social network use it anyway, because that's where their family, friends and colleagues are -- and because of addiction.

How A New Launched Company Can Get Likes And Shares On Facebook Within A Week

In an interview Mr.James Told that:

We pre-launched Reader’s Legacy six months ago but decided that it was time to start our publicity campaign on February 1. Over the past six months, we have had many discussions on where we will start spending our advertising dollars. We are still in the middle of a major fundraising campaign, but we knew that we had to start driving people, who loved to read, to our community. We also knew that Facebook advertising was going to be part of the plan, so I started studying the art of Facebook advertising four months ago.

I decided to share the results of our first week to my tribe, as I know that there are thousands of us (entrepreneurs) out there who are trying to figure out how to bring new customers and users to our web properties. I think those results were very respectable -- and I learned a lot. I’ve even included screenshots to help you really understand what we learned. 

Related: 10 Quick Steps to Creating a Facebook Ad Campaign

Here are few points that we learned in the past week.

1. Decide who your clients / users are, and market directly to them.

Facebook gives you the ability to choose exactly who you want to advertise to. Take this very seriously. Do your own research to determine who your targets are. We decided that we were going to market to men and women in America and Canada between the ages of 35 and 60 who liked to read. All of our research told us that 75 percent of readers were women, but we decided to advertise to men and women in order to determine if the statistic on the female dominated space was correct. We choose these criteria very specifically.

2. Offer real value.

Our research told us that everyone is advertising on Facebook now, and that we would have to offer real value to catch our readers attention. We did the math and decided that we could afford to give each new user that joined a free Book. Yes, that’s right, a real physical book that we would ship to them.

We sell over 16 million books and operate an affinity program (points program) where users can collect points (LitCoins) to buy books. So we decided to run a promotion for the months of February and March, whereby every new user would get enough LitCoins to buy a new book and, if they referred another user, they would get enough LitCoins for a second book.

Facebook's India's News Updates From Reddy

Facebook India’s managing director Kirthiga Reddy has announced she will be stepping down and moving back to the US after six years in the role.

The announcement follows an embarrassing week for the internet firm and its effort to grow its audience in a key developing market of 1.25 billion people.

Reddy said in a post on Facebook that she will be returning to the US with her family in the next six to 12 months as part of a “natural transition” for her school-age children, describing the move as “bittersweet”. She will work at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

Reddy’s announcement comes days after Facebook’s limited free internet program was rejected by India’s telecom regulator, which barred companies from charging different rates for internet access based on content.

The Indian launch of Free Basics, Facebook’s free internet service for selected developing countries, has been a rare public debacle for the social networking firm.

On 9 February, a Facebook board member posted that India was better under colonialism and ought to be happy to have Facebook’s internet, even if there’s potential for Facebook to exert undue control over what users can access.

 “People like [Facebook board member] Marc Andreessen are speaking from places of such massive privilege and are still so massively wrong,” said Rohit Sharma, a venture capitalist with True Ventures, which has raised $878m. “Someone in India’s needs are just the same as someone in San Francisco. How dare you imply otherwise? No.”

Mark Zuckerberg – who rarely dives into controversy – posted a note to his Facebook page distancing himself from the board member. Andreessen apologized several times and has not tweeted in the days since, rare for the voluble venture capitalist. 

Facebook said in a comment: “As she had planned for some time, Kirthiga Reddy is moving back to the US to work with the teams in headquarters. We are extremely proud of the work she has done to grow our global sales business in India.

“During her time in India, Kirthiga was not involved in our Free Basic Services efforts.”

Facebook apologises Viz magazine's page For Blocking Their Page

The frequently foul-mouthed comic, a parody of titles such as The Beano and Dandy, took to Twitter on Monday to air its grievance at being blocked to its 150,000 followers.

Ian Westwood, group managing director at parent Dennis Publishing, told the Guardian that Viz staff had no clue what content had triggered the page being blocked but that Facebook’s rules meant that the publication ran a risk of being “permanently deleted” from the social networking platform.

A spokeswoman for Facebook UK implied that Viz’s frequently risque language and humour had triggered the content block, but that should not have been grounds for removing the Facebook page.

“We want Facebook to be a place where people can express their opinions and challenge ideas, including through satire and comedy,” she said. “Upon further review we found that the Viz page had been removed in error. We have now restored it and would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.” 

Following Facebook’s move to reinstate Viz’s brand page on Monday night, the comic tweeted followers to say “we’re not going to tone anything down”.

However, in this case Facebook moved to block the page for an unexplained breach of those rules.

Enforcement is handled by a “community operations team” that includes both a manual and automated review of content.

Facebook has to monitor a large volume of content posted on a daily basis and on occasion legitimate pages like Viz are mistakenly blocked.

Taking advantage of the widespread publicity the publication received following the Facebook block, the magazine moved to offer 15% off all Viz T-shirts when its brand page was reinstated. 

Effects Of Social Media On Youngsters

New technologies always provoke generational panic, which usually has more to do with adult fears than with the lives of teenagers. In the 1930s, parents fretted that radio was gaining "an invincible hold of their children". In the 80s, the great danger was the Sony Walkman – producing the teenager who "throbs with orgasmic rhythms", as philosopher Allan Bloom claimed. When you look at today's digital activity, the facts are much more positive than you might expect.

Indeed, social scientists who study young people have found that their digital use can be inventive and even beneficial. This is true not just in terms of their social lives, but their education too. So if you use a ton of social media, do you become unable, or unwilling, to engage in face-to-face contact? The evidence suggests not. Research by Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Research Centre, a US thinktank, found that the most avid texters are also the kids most likely to spend time with friends in person. One form of socialising doesn't replace the other. It augments it.

"Kids still spend time face to face," Lenhart says. Indeed, as they get older and are given more freedom, they often ease up on social networking. Early on, the web is their "third space", but by the late teens, it's replaced in reaction to greater autonomy.

They have to be on Facebook, to know what's going on among friends and family, but they are ambivalent about it, says Rebecca Eynon, a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, who has interviewed about 200 British teenagers over three years. As they gain experience with living online, they begin to adjust their behaviour, wrestling with new communication skills, as they do in the real world.

Parents are wrong to worry that kids don't care about privacy. In fact, they spend hours tweaking Facebook settings or using quick-delete sharing tools, such as Snapchat, to minimise their traces. Or they post a photograph on Instagram, have a pleasant conversation with friends and then delete it so that no traces remain.

This is not to say that kids always use good judgment. Like everyone else, they make mistakes – sometimes serious ones. But working out how to behave online is a new social skill. While there's plenty of drama and messiness online, it is not, for most teens, a cycle of non-stop abuse: a Pew study found only 15% of teens said someone had been mean or cruel to them online in the last 12 months. As wrenching as the worst-case scenarios of bullying are, and as urgently as those need to be addressed, they are not, thankfully, a daily occurrence for most kids. Even sexting may be rarer than expected: Pew found only 4% of teenagers had sent a "sext" and only 15% had received one – less of an epidemic than you would imagine.

But surely all this short-form writing is eroding literacy? Certainly, teachers worry. Pew Centre surveys have found that teachers say that kids use overly casual language and text speak in writing, and don't have as much patience for long, immersive reading and complex arguments. Yet studies of first-year college papers suggest these anxieties may be partly based on misguided nostalgia. When Stanford University scholar Andrea Lunsford gathered data on the rates of errors in "freshman composition" papers going back to 1917, she found that they were virtually identical to today.

But even as error rates stayed stable, student essays have blossomed in size and complexity. They are now six times longer and, unlike older "what I did this summer" essays, they offer arguments buttressed by evidence. Why? Computers have vastly increased the ability of students to gather information, sample different points of view and write more fluidly.

When the linguist Naomi Baron studied students' instant messaging even there she found surprisingly rare usage of short forms such as "u" for "you", and as students got older, they began to write in more grammatical sentences. That is because it confers status: they want to seem more adult, and they know how adults are expected to write. "If you want to look serious," as the teenage Sydney told me, "you don't use 'u'." Clearly, teaching teens formal writing is still crucial, but texting probably isn't destroying their ability to learn it.

Benefits Of Social Media For Teenagers

I asked a teenage girl, how often do you text? "250 times a day, or something," she tells me. Shocking! The digital lives of teenagers have become the target of weekly attacks. In a recent essay for the Guardian, the novelist Jonathan Franzen bemoaned online socialising, arguing that it was creating a uniquely shallow and trivial culture, making kids unable to socialise face to face. Then the American comedian Louis CK proclaimed on TV that he wouldn't give his daughters cellphones for fear they wouldn't develop empathy.

There's also the scientist and writer Susan Greenfield's famously apocalyptic warnings: "We could be raising a hedonistic generation who live only in the thrill of the computer-generated moment and are in distinct danger of detaching themselves from what the rest of us would consider the real world."

As a parent of two boys at primary school, I'm not immune to worry about these issues. And you don't need to be a parent to fret about the effect of all this technology on young people. Newspapers are constantly filled with frightening accounts of pornography addiction and aggression supposedly caused by violent videogames – particularly now, as Grand Theft Auto V hits the shelves. But even when these titillating accounts touch on real concerns, they do not really reflect the great mass of everyday teenage social behaviour: the online chat, the texting, the surfing, and the emergence of a new teenage sphere that is conducted digitally.

I don't think so. Let's go back to that girl who texts 250 times a day. The truth is, she was an extreme case I cherry-picked to startle you – because when I interviewed her, she was in a group of friends with a much wider range of experiences.

Two others said they text only 10 times a day. One was a Facebook refusenik ("I'm all Instagram, pictures of what I'm doing in the city, with my friends. We're visual people"). A few were devotees of Snapchat, the app that lets you send a picture or text that, like a cold-war communiqué, is destroyed after one viewing. One had a phone filled with charmingly goofy emoticons, another disapproved: "I'm a skilled writer," she told me. "People sometimes misunderstand tone, so you have to be precise." As it turns out, the diversity of use in this group of friends is confirmed by research. Fewer than 20% of kids send more than 200 texts a day; 31% send barely 20 or fewer.

Facebook Rolls Out Suicide Prevention Tool

Created in consultation with British charity Samaritans, the tool will allow users to report content to Facebook or reach out to their friends.

"We worked with organisations including Samaritans to develop these tools, and one of the first things they told us was how much connecting with people who care can help those who are struggling to cope - whether offline or online," said Julie De Bailliencourt, head of safety at Facebook.

Facebook and Samaritans have collaborated on a suicide prevention feature since 2011.

If a person on Facebook thinks a friend is in need of support, then they can use a form in Facebook's Help Centre to flag their concern to Facebook or report their concern via the reporting links found across Facebook's site.

Reports to Facebook are triaged and those reported that where someone may be at risk are prioritised.

"If someone is reported to us, as at risk of suicide, Facebook's safety team will look at their account. If they consider that a person is at risk of immediate harm then we may, in very rare cases, alert local police," Samaritans wrote on its website.

"If we don't consider that someone is at immediate risk but is showing signs of distress then we will interrupt their Facebook experience. At this time we will send them a message to say that a friend has flagged that they may be in crisis and offer them information about how to get help via Samaritans," it further added.

If you report worrying content, users will be sent a notification asking them whether they need support from a friend or helpline, and will be given tips and advice on how to deal with suicidal thoughts or thoughts of self harm.

"Those who report explicit threats of suicide will be given the number for emergency services, while less serious content will be flagged to Facebook," the charity noted.

In 2014, the charity launched an initiative with Twitter which flagged "worrying tweets" to the service but was withdrawn later.

Nokia!!! Windows Phone Rebranded Microsoft

A purported confidential document has surfaced online hinting at Microsoft's plans to remove the Nokia branding from its upcoming devices this holiday season, alongside reports of plans to drop the 'Phone' from the Windows Phone name and logo as part of the transition to the unifying 'Threshold' Windows 9 update.

"As part of our phased transition, we will drop the manufacturer name [Nokia] from product references during the Holiday campaign," stated one of the slides (Seen Below) from the leaked document, titled 'Product Naming'.

The leaked internal document suggests that Microsoft will be removing the Nokia branding altogether, leaving Lumia as the only brand name for its upcoming smartphones. In addition, the recently launched Nokia Lumia 730 Dual SIM, Lumia 830 and Lumia 735 are also said to be the final devices carrying the 'Nokia' brand name.

Contradicting what the newly leaked document suggests, a report from June hinted Microsoft would rebrand the Nokia Lumia smartphones to 'Nokia by Microsoft'.

Geek On Gadgets, the website that procured the purported confidential document, added that Microsoft is also planning to gradually remove the 'Phone' from its 'Windows Phone' brand name until it fades away completely. This fits in well with the company's announced plans for its upcoming 'Threshold' update (expected to be called Windows 9) that will merge the phone, tablet and desktop platforms into a unified operating system.

On a related note, last month Nokia was spotted hiring engineers, designers and camera specialists for upcoming devices, on LinkedIn job-listings. Nokia's Senior Vice President of Strategy, Sebastian Nystrom, later confirmed it was hiring for "new products businesses."

Microsoft in July announced the biggest job cuts in its 39-year old history - with some 18,000 jobs being axed, of which 12,500 were from the Nokia acquisition. The Redmond giant further dumped its Android experiment and also announced that the Nokia X series of phones would be making the transition to Windows Phone as Lumia devices.

Some Of The Best Phones Under Rs 10,000

Over time, we have seen smartphones often being boasted either for their camera, battery, or any other specification but not as an overall package. This makes it difficult for users to choose which is the best value for money phone and where does it exactly fall when it comes to overall performance.

It is worth noting that while certain specifications may appear good in theory, they may not necessarily translate into a smartphone with best overall performance. Smartphones with high-end specifications, for example, can often give underwhelming results.

Here's a list of smartphones - all available under Rs. 10,000 - with best overall performance in our reviews, in no particular order. Note that we've restricted ourselves to phones launched in roughly the last six months.

Yu Yureka Plus:

The Yu Yureka Plus, which was launched back in July this year, has already made it to the list of best camera phones under Rs. 15,000 and is now one of the best smartphones under Rs. 10,000 as well. The smartphone after going through rigorous tests gave impressive results and got an overall rating of 9/10 in all the sections except in design and battery life where it settled for 8/10. Available for as low as Rs. 8,999, the Yureka Plus smartphone runs on Cyanogen OS 12.1.

Coolpad Note 3

Coolpad Note 3 is a comparatively a newcomer as it was launched in October this year. The smartphone fared well in our review, scoring a 9/10 rating for value of money. We were impressed by the smartphone's quick and accurate fingerprint sensor, camera, battery life and overall performance. However, the UI customisations were not up to the mark. The handset is available for Rs. 8,999 from leading online retailers.

Xiaomi Redmi 2 Prime

The Redmi 2 Prime by Xiaomi was one of the Chinese tech company's iconic smartphones this year as it was the first 'Made in India' handset. It was launched in August this year and carried the same price tag as Meizu m2 - Rs. 6,999. The Redmi 2 Prime managed to secure a spot for itself in the list mainly because of its 4.7-inch IPS Sharp display with HD resolution and a decent battery life. The camera and design of the handset also got a respectable 7/10 rating in our review.

Phicomm Passion 660
Phicomm Passion 660 smartphone received a 9/10 rating for value of money in our review. Launched in June this year in India, the dual-SIM smartphone got a worthy 8/10 rating for its ergonomic design and also fared well when it come to display, performance, and camera. Although the smartphone was launched at a price tag of Rs. 10,999, it can now be purchased for as low as Rs. 8,999 from third-party online retailers.

Nokia Lumia 730 Dual SIM Ending on a High Note

Nostalgia reigns supreme as we start writing this review. Nokia, as a brand, evokes a lot of emotions. For a large number of Indians, their first phones would most likely have been Nokias. We are talking about a brand that transcended all divisions based on social class - rich, poor and middle. A brand that a surprising number of Indians swear by even today. A brand that truly "connected people".

This phone is a big upgrade to last year's Lumia 720 (Review | Pictures). The mid-range Lumia 730 Dual SIM adds a good mix of features that include a capable processor, sufficient RAM, 6.7-megapixel primary camera, and - its most promoted feature - a 5-megapixel, 24mm wide-angle front camera. Let's find out how the Lumia 730 Dual SIM fares in our tests, and ascertain if Nokia can exit the world stage with its head held high.

Look and feel:

The Nokia 730 Dual SIM's design is not starkly different from that of its predecessor. It retains the rectangular candybar design and would have looked nondescript but for its funky coloured rear shells. These are available in glossy orange and matte green, white and black.

The engineers managed to fit a 4.7-inch display in a phone that has dimensions of 134.7x68.5x8.7mm, which is great because it keeps the body compact. The girth of 8.7mm notwithstanding, the Lumia 730 Dual SIM actually feels much slimmer in the hand thanks to gentle slope on the rear. It is also pretty light at 130g. We got the green variant for review and its matte rear ensured that the phone didn't feel slippery. The edges are sharp but not to the point that they feel uncomfortable. We would still have preferred it if the edges had been rounded off instead.

The power/wake button and the volume rocker are on the right. There is no dedicated camera shutter button, just like on the Lumia 630 Dual SIM (Review | Pictures). This is a bit of a downer for us considering we expect this on Nokia phones. The primary camera on the rear is accompanied by an LED flash, and beside it lies a microphone.

The loudspeaker sits on the bottom right corner of the rear. On prying open the rear cover, one can find the battery compartment, two Micro-SIM card slots, and a microSD card slot. The Micro-USB port is bang in the centre of the bottom of the phone, while the 3.5mm jack is on the top. Above the screen one can find the earpiece and front-facing camera.

There is a row of buttons for navigation on-screen, which takes up some real estate. However, Windows Phone 8.1 hides these buttons automatically when an app/game goes full-screen, just like Android 4.4 (KitKat). However, we noticed that bottom portion some apps, such as one called App Social, were cut off because of the bar on the bottom. This could probably be fixed with an update, but it was still jarring (check the screenshot in the software section).

Goodbye Applets!! Another Cruddy Piece of Web Tech Is Here

Oracle says that it’s discontinuing its Java browser plugin starting with the next big release of the programming language. No, Oracle isn’t killing the Java programming language itself, which is still widely used by many companies. Nor is it killing off JavaScript, which is a completely different language that Oracle doesn’t control. What Oracle is getting rid of is a plugin that allows you to run programs known as “Java applets” in your browser.

You may not think you even have the Java plugin installed, but if you’ve ever installed Java, or if Java came pre-installed on your computer, then you probably do, even if you never use it. The good news is that Oracle won’t be automatically installing the Java plugin when you install Java anymore. The bad news is that it won’t be providing security updates anymore either, so you should go ahead and uninstall it now. In fact, there’s a good chance you can uninstall Java entirely.

Sun Microsystems, which was acquired by Oracle in 2010, introduced Java applets in 1995 and the technology was briefly popular with scientists and educators, who used them to create things such as interactive physics simulators. You can still relive the heyday of Java applets through UltraStudio, an online museum of educational applets, but Java has been mostly replaced by Flash and JavaScript for creating interactive programs on the web.

Unfortunately, it’s managed to stick around, thanks to Oracle’s practice of bundling the plugin with the Java installer. That’s made it a huge target for malware creators, and browser makers have slowly tried to phase the plugin out on their own. Google Chrome stopped supporting the plugin standard on which the Java plugin depends last year, and Mozilla has announced it will do the same by the end of the year. Microsoft Internet Explorer still supports the standard, but the newer Microsoft Edge browser does not.

With Microsoft dropping support for old versions of Internet Explorer and Adobe slowly phasing out Flash, it looks like a nightmarish era for web security is finally drawing to an end.

New Programming Languages Keep Chipping Away

Several new languages have been introduced in recent years, including Google’s Go, Mozilla’s Rust, the scientific languageJulia, and of course Apple’s Swift.

These languages shook up the tech industry as new technologies like Go leapfrogged more established languages in popularity. Now that action may be slowing down, according to new data published by IT analysis firm RedMonk.

For the past five years RedMonk has tracked the popularity of different programming languages by charting the number of questions about each language asked on the popular programming question-and-answer site StackOverflow and the number of lines of code written in each language stored on the code hosting and collaboration site GitHub.

These metrics don’t tell us much about how widespread use of each language is in the commercial sector, nor how many jobs are available for developers conversant in particular language. But it does give us a way to ballpark the level of interest different technologies have garnered from developers themselves.

Not much has changed since RedMonk released its last rankings in June 2015, more than six months ago. Swift managed to creep up one spot to 17 on the list, while Go held steady at 15. Rust moved up two spots, from 46 to 48, and Julia moved up one spot to 51.

None of these languages are close to displacing the top languages. JavaScript, which is all over the web and an increasingly important part of mobile development thanks to tools such as Facebook’s React, is still number one. Java, which is still used to build Android apps and powers big data technologies like Hadoop, is still number two. If Swift and Go are going to replace Objective C and Java, it’s going to take some time.

But even though old languages may reign supreme, the crop of new languages has already altered the development landscape for years to come. Even as things stabilize, developers have more choices than ever.

Buzz Feed Is Changing Its Popularity

Today, BuzzFeed said it’s going to change how it measures itself. Specifically, the company said it will no longer rely on web publishing’s old standby, the “unique visitor.” Instead, in an effort to look at itself more holistically, BuzzFeed publisher Dao Nguyen says the company will embrace a range of metrics, from time spent with a piece of content to what it calls “content views.”

“Even two years ago, when we all lived in a simpler media landscape, we believed there was no ‘one metric to rule them all,'” Nguyen wrote in a blog post. “Today that is even more true.”

For BuzzFeed, abandoning the unique visitor makes sense. The company, after all, publishes a whole lot of content all over the Internet—not just on its website. It may publish a so-called listicle on BuzzFeed.com, for example, but then a food video directly on Facebook or Snapchat. While BuzzFeed may be able to track “uniques” on its website, app, and certain parts Facebook and YouTube, Nguyen says, it can’t for Snapchat, Instagram, Yahoo, Tumblr, Vine, and other parts of Facebook and YouTube.

“We estimate that our current comScore metric of about 80 million [unique visitors] represents less than one-fifth of our actual global reach,” Nguyen says.

For BuzzFeed, the claim that its actual audience is significantly bigger sounds reasonable. But as Recode‘s Peter Kafka has written, BuzzFeed’s unique visitor growth has indeed slowed. A cynic might say that BuzzFeed is trying to change the conversation by creating a new way to showcase its growth.

But that wouldn’t be entirely fair. It’s a fact that the media industry is no longer simple. It can’t be measured by one metric. And advertisers know it.

Difference Between Server-Side And User View Programming

Sometimes it is desirable to have web pages that are dynamically generated from a database each time a user visits them, based on user login, or generated from the user's previous entries in a web form. The site owner usually wants to keep the data and logic of page generation hidden from the viewer, so a client-side script is not appropriate (since client-side scripts are text-based, embedded in the HTML page itself, and can only operate on data that is also embedded in the HTML page, they keep neither the data nor the program secret). So, the usual practice is to store data in a database program running on the web server (or perhaps a separate database server), and generate the HTML pages the viewer sees from programs or scripts also running on the web server.

These so-called "server-side" scripts and programs can be quite complex, and can be written in any programming language. When the web server receives a request (from the user's browser) for a particular page, it passes the request on to the server-side script or program, which could gather information from a database, read information entered by the user in forms, do text manipulations, or perform numerical calculations; the program then puts the result in HTML format. This end result is passed back to the web server, which sends it to the user's browser for display as a standard HTML page.

The most commonly-used database programs for web pages are MySQL and Microsoft SQLServer; some web pages also use Oracle, PostgreSQL, and other databases. And while server-side programs can be written in any language, the most common languages are PHP, Perl, and ASP/Visual Basic/C#; some server-side programs are also written in JSP/Java, C++, and other languages. Typically, a software developer is needed to write server-side scripts, but some pre-written scripts can be purchased or downloaded for use by less technical web designers (such as scripts for shopping carts, guest books, form-email, blogs, and forums).

There are also collections of server-side scripts known as "content management systems", which are pre-written scripts for managing web site content. My article on Web Programming Resources has a review of several content management systems.

Some Information About HTML & CSS

HTML is supported by all web browsers (by definition), and CSS is supported by most relatively recent versions of browsers.

Client-Side Scripts:

"Scripts" is a general programming term for short, text-based software programs. Client-side scripts are embedded in HTML web pages, which execute within the viewer's web browser software (i.e. they execute on the "client" side of the client/server web architecture, rather than on the web server).

These scripts can be used to do simple computations, verify data, display calculated information on a page, respond to the user's mouse motion and mouse clicks, put new browser windows on the screen, show and hide text and images, change text styles, and create drop-down menus and similar effects. Client-side scripting languages do not have the complete functionality that would be available in a full-fledged programming language (such as C or Java), and for security reasons, are limited to doing calculations and actions based on the content, markup, and embedded data from the HTML page they are in, along with information entered by the user in forms on that page, and reactions to things the user does in the browser window (such as moving the mouse).

The most commonly-used client-side scripting language is JavaScript, which is supported on most relatively recent browsers; unfortunately, each browser has its own variation of JavaScript, as there are not any real standards for the language. Other client-side scripting languages, which are supported only by a limited number of browsers, include VBScript and JScript. Typically, a software developer is needed to write client-side scripts, but many pre-written scripts can be purchased or downloaded, for use and modification by less technical web designers.

Browser Plug-Ins:

Browser plug-ins are programs a user can download, which run inside a web browser window and add functionality to the browser -- that is, they allow the browser to display non-HTML content, and interact with the user in ways that go beyond client-side scripting. In some cases, the plug-in enables content to be displayed inside an HTML page; in other cases, the plug-in takes up the whole browser window. Generally, once the user has downloaded a plug-in for their browser, whenever the browser encounters content that corresponds to the plug-in, it automatically displays it in the current browser window.

Creating a plug-in program requires significant software development expertise and time, and each type of browser, on each operating system, requires a separate plug-in to be developed. For that reason, most web designers and developers will not develop their own plug-in software, but instead may develop content that can be displayed using existing plug-ins (such as Flash Action Scripts, MPG movies, and PDF files). Software development expertise is also necessary to create complex Flash scripts and Java applets.

Adonit Jot Dash

A stylus is an essential piece of kit for the designer on-the-move, for use with your favourite drawing apps for iPad and trying out new Photoshop brushes. So we were excited to see what the latest Adonit Jot stylus could do to impress us.

We've seen lots of Jots from Adonit, but the Dash has to be the thinnest electronic stylus from the company yet. The tip is just 1.9mm, while the clip-and-carry body has an 8mm diameter. Compare that to the 12mm of LynkTec's Rechargeable Apex stylus. The result is a balanced, pen-like feel that's comfortable, light and extremely precise to use.

The drawback is that there's no palm rejection or pressure sensitivity, and no extra button support. But if you're just using the Dash to sketch a quick scene or mock up a storyboard, its lack of Bluetooth is no big loss. It even works as a navigational tool for swiping through screens to find your preferred sketching app.  

A quick click on the top of the Dash turns it on, generating an electric field that simulates the conductivity of a human finger. It's powered by a rechargeable battery and Adonit quotes 14 hours' charging time – the power LED stayed lit throughout a week of evenings testing the device with the Evernote, Paper and Notability apps. Mounting the pen in the neat little magnetic USB charging dock brought the pen back to full charge in under half an hour.

If you're looking for a simple, convenient, long-lasting stylus that you can pick up and start writing and sketching with just like a traditional pen straight away, then the Dash is ideal. But painting folks seeking different strokes should look at Bluetooth alternatives, such as the Jot Touch.

The Android exclusive photo app Camera MX combines powerful enhancement tools with a beautifully simple user interface. Thanks to intelligent image prcoessing you can take visibly sharper snaps, as well as cutting and trimming them to perfection in the edit.

In the latest version you can record those hard to capture moments with the 'shoot the past' feature. Take pictures before the actual photo and never miss a moment again.

Microsoft Translator

Microsoft is giving Android device owners a way to translate text messages in several languages, even if their smartphone cannot connect to the Internet. The latest update to the Microsoft Translator app adds a new engine that includes this new offline translation feature, with the help of downloadable language packs.

Microsoft says:

Deep Neural Networks, also known as Deep Learning, is a state-of-the-art Machine Learning technology that has been in use for almost a year by the popular Microsoft Translator cloud service to deliver high-quality translations to the many experiences that it powers — Microsoft Translator apps, Skype Translator and Bing.com/translator. By bringing this technology to offline translations on your mobile device, you will have access to the highest-quality offline translation provided. Our standard tests have shown that it is comparable to the translations you get when connected to the Internet, and significantly better than any offline translation experiences available previously.

The offline translation language packs include Chinese Simplified, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. More language packs will be released for Microsoft Translator in the coming months. The app can still perform text translations in 50 different languages while online, along with speech translations for several languages.

Mobile Strike App (MMO) In Playstore

Mobile Strike is an Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) game in which you are trying to build up your home base and an army to defend that base, and then launching attacks to destroy nearby enemy bases. The game is split into two different types of play — internal construction and external destruction. You'll need to juggle construction, resource gathering, troop training, and research within your home base. Going to the world map lets you scout and then attack nearby bases of other players.

This game has a ton of different element that are all sort of mashed together, with varying success. This means that if you have access to a tablet, that's probably where you'll want to play this game. It's because with a smaller screen it can be difficult to see everything going on clearly. You'll also want to stick close to a charger since the game can easily drain your battery once you get sucked in.

If you head out to the world at large, you'll see your base along with any other neighboring bases in the area. Each one will have a designation, level indicator, and the tag from that player's alliance. From this screen that you'll be able to scout out the neighbors that you plan to attack, and send out attacking parties. When you're on the world map you'll also be able to see coordinates, which is how you'll let other friendly players know where you are placed.

As you might guess, resources play a huge part in this game. You need them to do everything from researching new technologies, to upgrading your buildings for better troops and weapons. Stone, oil, iron, food and silver are the five in-game resources that you'll need to succeed. There is also gold, which you can obtain by completing certain quests or through in-app purchases.

You'll need to collect resourced by building the appropriate resource gathering building, and continuing to level it up as you go along. You'll be able to have multiples of each type of resource building, but you also need to make sure that you have enough storage to hold everything. Each resource will be consumed differently, depending on the situation. Just keep an eye out when you go to build troops, or choose new construction, you'll always be informed what it will cost both to build, and to maintain.

Top Most Photo Collag Maker Tools

Photo collages are a hugely popular way to collate your photos – and this should be no surprise as we all carry a camera around with us at all times and take more snaps than ever before. Gathering these images in a collage is a great way to present your image library or a snapshot of your life on one page.

But photo collage making can be a laborious (if rewarding) task if you use Photoshop CC or similar – you may need the assistance of some Photoshop tutorials to get you started. However you could take some of the effort out with a collage maker.

Facebook-owned Instagram has released Layout, an app designed to help people create collages of their images and share their creations via social media. Although only on iPhone just now, an Android version of Layout is reportedly in the tubes and scheduled to arrive soon. 

Layout lets you select and rearrange images by dragging and dropping. You can also control the size of images by pinching. When you're done, you can easily save, and share your collage across your social media networks. 

The guys behind Capcam – called Germany's Best-Kept Secret (and they may well be) – reckon that the best way for us all to tell our life stories is with collages and captions. That's why the collage maker takes centre-stage in this cool iPhone app, which makes collating and captioning your treasured images simpler than a simple thing.

Photovisi is a stand-alone collage maker with no fripperies and no photo editing tools to distract and confuse – and it's all the better for it. It is the easiest to use of all the apps on this page – you select a collage design, add your photos and drag them around till you're satisfied, then download it. What could be easier?

Picasa is Google's image organiser and photo editor (which is soon to be phased out and replaced by Google Photos), but did you know it comes with a built-in collage maker? You can experiment with six different collage types in the hands-on collage creation screen, and they will be saved in your 'Collages' folder. Hopefully this feature will be carried over into Google Photos…

Virtual Server Hosting

Host1Plus offers four virtual server hosting plans to choose from. The good thing is that all of them are customizable, so you can easily change them according to your requirements. There are 5 VPS hosting server locations to choose from – US (Los Angeles, Chicago), Brazil (Sao Paulo), Germany (Frankfurt) and South Africa (Johannesburg). It’s important to note that the prices in each location could differ.

If you would choose their cheapest virtual server hosting plan you will be amazed by its price – it costs only $2.5 USD per month. With it, you get 0.5 CPU cores, 256 MB RAM, 20 GB disk space and 500 GB bandwidth. Plans price varies from $2.5 to $5/mo according the chosen location. The cheapest ones are located in US and Germany. Also, you can choose VPS hosting in Brazil or South Africa.

If you have bigger requirements, you could look into their Silver VPS hosting plan. Its cost varies from $5 to $8 per month. What you will get for that price is 1 CPU core, 768 MB RAM, 30 GB disk space and 1000 GB bandwidth.

The third plan called Gold has 2 CPU cores, 2048 MB RAM, 40 GB disk space and 2000 GB bandwidth. Its cost reaches $21 per month, but the cheapest option (in USA or Germany location) is $15/mo. That kind of server could be used for data storage, websites, online apps hosting etc.

However, if you are looking to host a big project, depended on server resources, you should consider signing up for a Platinum plan that is the most powerful that Host1Plus can offer. Its cost varies from $40 to $50 per month and it can provide you with 4 CPU cores, 4096 RAM, 70 GB disk space and 3000 GB bandwidth. That is more than enough for a lot of different uses.

If you are worried about their general service quality, they are rated with 4.7 stars out of five in 1147 verified customer reviews. If they are satisfied then why you should not be?

Link checkers for your Browsers

An anti-virus software is a a program that prevents unwanted threats from entering and potentially destroying your computer or laptop. It is able to detect and remove the viruses and malware on individual computing devices and IT systems.

The need for an anti-virus software was first generated with the introduction of a “virus”. However, with the progress of technology, these software systems have evolved and come to include protection against different kinds of malware, more popularly known as worms, rootkits, trojan horses, keyloggers, adware and ransomware.

Today, the internet has almost 5 billion pages indexed. But lurking in between these pages are some malware, phishing websites and viruses waiting for someone to click on, so their computers can be added to their zombie lists that sends out spam to the world.

However, you can avoid all these threads by never clicking on any link that you don’t recognize or installing any software that you haven’t heard of. Especially that are on Social Media websites or in your email inbox.

The best way to know if a website is harmful or not is by installing a link checker. A link checker will scan the link and let you know whether it’s safe to visit the website or not.

Dr. Web, which is available for web consultation on the Firefox, Chrome and Safari. The software installs itself into the right-click context menu, which upon clicking and choosing the option “Check with Dr. Web” will show the results. The Dr. Web plugin also has a small logo placed next to the Chrome URL bar, showing you the trackers and webpage content that it is blocking for your safety.

Apple sharpens focus on new maps development center with the help of India

Apple is setting up a maps development center in India, part of a broader effort to  grab a bigger share of one of the world's largest markets. 

India is one of the few smartphone markets that is is experiencing growth even as other heavily populated countries like China are showing signs of saturation.

Apple's ability to grab a significant share of the Indian market will depend on its ability to offer cost-effective models for a price-sensitive population, according to analysts. It has so far tried to build up its share by selling earlier models of its phones. Apple may also have to consider manufacturing their products in India, as have many other smartphone makers, to benefit from incentives for local manufacturing.

The company said on Tuesday that it is opening a development office in Hyderabad that will have over 150 Apple employees supporting maps development. "The office will also have space for many contractors who will support our ambitious efforts locally," it added, without providing details.

Data released by IDC on Tuesday showed that Apple did not figure among the top five smartphone makers in the country. Samsung had the largest market share, with 26.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015, followed by Indian vendor Micromax with more than 14 percent.

The Indian smartphone market grew 15.4 percent in the quarter, year over year, to 25.6 million phones. Sixty percent of the market was held by Indian and Chinese vendors who mainly target the price-sensitive segments of the market. On Wednesday, a new entrant, Ringing Bells, is expected to announce a smartphone that could be priced at around US$7, according to reports.

Apple announced last month that it was setting what it described as Europe's first iOS app development center, in Italy.

Intel Processors News

If you bought a PC over the holidays chances are it came with Intel’s newest processor. That chip also comes with an obscure bug – that, fortunately, doesn't appear to impact the average consumer.  

Intel’s newest chip – branded as the 6th Generation Intel Core processor and codenamed “Skylake” – is its first redesigned chip in about two years. A few weeks ago, various online forums.

The bug was promptly reproduced on a variety of systems running both Windows and Linux. Then an organization called GIMPS, or Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, saw the bug when running its Prime95 application. Suffice to say, Prime95 is an obscure math application that has been used to benchmark and test computers but doesn’t appear to affect the average user.

Related: Apple Watch winning as Samsung, Android Wear struggle, says researcher

What does Intel have to say about it? The “majority of people” won’t come across it, an Intel spokesman told FoxNews.com in response to an email query. “Under some complex workload conditions, like those encountered when running applications such as Prime95, the processor may hang or cause unpredictable system behavior,” Intel said.

More importantly, Intel has released a “fix” that resolves the issue. “And we are working with external business partners to deploy this fix through BIOS updates,” Intel said.  A BIOS – or basic input/output system – update is typically part of a suite of updates distributed by PC manufacturers.

But if you’re a die-hard techie and want to see if your new PC has the glitch, there are ways to detect it, as pointed out by some PC-centric sites.

Related: New HP EliteBook Folio is like a 12-inch MacBook but with military-grade toughness.

Why worry? Intel bugs always have the potential to instantly impact tens of millions of PCs worldwide. The most infamous case was back in 1994 when the so-called Pentium FDIV bug caused errors in calculations. That bug was discovered by a math professor at Lynchburg College in Virginia when he noticed some inconsistencies in the calculations he was doing. It was arcane but serious enough that Intel offered to replace all flawed Pentium processors. And the financial impact on the company was a whopping pre-tax charge of $475 million.

That was then. This glitch appears to be easily fixable – that FDIV bug wasn’t.

Bugs aside, Intel’s greatest challenge with 6th Gen processors now shipping with the latest laptops has been to make the chips run cooler with longer battery life. More consumers are snapping so-called 2-in-1 PCs (that can convert to a tablet) or ultraportables like the 12-inch MacBook. And for the kind of work that category of consumer typically does, an esoteric math bug in select versions of the processor is probably irrelevant.

Carbon films can give microchips energy storage capability

The discovery, which was reported in the Feb. 12 edition of the journalScience, is the culmination of years of collaborative research by the team who initially created the carbide-derived carbon film material for microsupercapacitors and published the concept paper in Science in 2010. Since then, their goal has been to show that it's possible to physically couple the processing center of an electronic device -- the microchip -- with its energy source.

"This has taken us quite some time, but we set a lofty goal of not just making an energy storage device as small as a microchip -- but actually making an energy storage device that is part of the microchip and to do it in a way that is easily integrated into current silicon chip manufacturing processes," said Simon, who led the research under the aegis of the French research network on electrochemical energy storage (RS2E). "With this achievement, the future is now wide open for chip and personal electronics manufacturers."

The challenges that the group faced in the development of the material were questions about its compatibility, its mechanical stability and durability for use on flexible substrates. With these answered, it opens up a myriad of possibilities for carbon films to work their way into silicon chips -- including building microscale batteries on a chip.

"The place where most people will eventually notice the impact of this development is in the size of their personal electronic devices, their smart phones, fitbits89 and watches," said Gogotsi, Distinguished University and Trustee Chair Professor in the Department of Materials Science Engineering who directs the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute in Drexel's College of Engineering. "Even more importantly," Gogotsi adds, "on-chip energy storage is needed to create the Internet of Things -- the network of all kinds of physical objects ranging from vehicles and buildings to our clothes embedded with electronics, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data. This work is an important step toward that future."

The researchers' method for depositing carbon onto a silicon wafer is consistent with microchip fabrication procedures currently in use, thus easing the challenges of integration of energy storage devices into electronic device architecture. As part of the research, the group showed how it could deposit the carbon films on silicon wafers in a variety of shapes and configurations to create dozens of supercapacitors on a single silicon wafer.

Supercapacitors have been desirable devices to use in microelectronics because they can store a great deal of energy for their size, they can be charged and discharged their energy extremely quickly and their lifespan is nearly limitless. With this discovery, the path is clear for microchip manufacturers to take a big step forward in the way they design their products.

Beyond the energy storage applications, these carbon films offer good prospects for the development of elastic coatings with a low coefficient of friction that can be used in lubricant-free sliding parts, such as dynamic seals. They may also be used in production of membranes for gas filtration, water desalination or purification, because their pore size is in the range of single molecules. The carbon films produced by this method are quite versatile and may find applications in many areas.

Samsung Galaxy S7 water resistance and wireless charging

An advert showing what some think could be the Samsung Galaxy S7 has been 'leaked' on YouTube.

A full-length advert for an unnamed phone was released on Samsung Indonesia's YouTube channel, and adds to a number of existing rumours.

Wireless charging is one of the first things we see, as the advert's star, Indonesian archer Dellie Threesyadinda, takes her phone off a circular charging pad.

The phone also looks to be water-resistant, to an extent - in one sequence, we see Threesyadinda practicing in pouring rain, using her phone without any problems.

There's also a few brief shots showing off the phone's fitness-tracking capabilities and its camera.

It's not clear whether all these cool features will be present in the S7, however, because the advert only shows an S6 Edge+, as Android Police editor David Ruddock pointed out on Twitter. Even though the video was published on 12 February and is titled '#TheNextGalaxy', it's not clear whether it's even about the S7 at all.

However, water resistance and camera tweaks have both been rumoured for the S7, so it's possible that Samsung just used the S6 Edge+ as a stand-in for the new phone.

Both of these pieces of promotional material have been released through Samsung's official channels, so they should be genuine. It's less clear just what device they refer to, and whether they were leaked or simply released in a PR move intended to add to the hype.

It's been a confusing day, but at any rate, we'll know more on 21 February, when Samsung unveils the S7 and S7 Edge at a press event in Barcelona, just ahead of the Mobile World Congress trade show.

Apple Confirms iOS Problem Breaks iPhones

Posting an update to its support pages, Apple has revealed that changing the date to January 1 1970 on any iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 8.x or iOS 9.x can stop it from turning on the next time it is restarted. It has confirmed a preventative fix for this will be released soon and in the meantime anyone already affected by the bug should contact Apple support (given their devices won’t be able to switch on to receive the update).

Of course the obvious question here is: Why would anyone change the date on their device to January 1 1970? The answer: to unlock easter eggs.

Yes, this was the promise made on a Reddit thread last week. It claimed any user who rolled back their device to this date would unlock a secret 1970s themed hidden feature. Instead they were greeted by something far more literally reminiscent of 1970s computing, a device which would turn on. In fact even placing the device in Recovery Mode (hold sleep/wake and home buttons continuously until you see the recovery screen – about 15 to 20 seconds) failed to address the problem.

That should’ve been the end of it, but it gained momentum as a (predictably) evil trick friends and coworkers began playing on one another.

It is worth pointing out that, despite Apple’s promise of a quick fix, users running iOS 8 are unlikely to get a fix unless they update to iOS 9 as Apple no longer supports iOS 8. Of course the other obvious way to avoid this bug is to not do something you were incredibly unlikely to do in the first place…

Future iPhones Could Be Unlocked With Just Your Voice

When it comes to unlocking an iPhone, it’s a very hands-on task. You can either punch in a passcode or use one of your fingerprints to open it up. But in a future iPhone, such as the anticipated “iPhone 7,” users may be able to gain access to their device with another attribute unique to them — their voice.

A patent titled “Device Access Using Voice Authentication” was published and granted by the U.S. patent and trademark office Tuesday, revealing an invention which could allow a user to access restricted parts of an iPhone just by speaking. Speech inputted into the smartphone be compared against a voiceprint and if successfully authenticated, the user could then access the requested feature without need to unlock the device by hand. But if the voiceprint comparison fails, users can be asked to use another method to gain access to the device, such as a passcode or fingerprint scan.

It’s not the first time Apple has explored making the iPhone a more hands-free experience. With the iPhone 6S, it rolled out always-on Hey Siri, which enabled owners of the latest Apple smartphone to say “Hey Siri” to enable the voice assistant, even when the iPhone isn’t plugged in. On Feb. 2, Apple was also granted a patent which could enable its customers to control an iPhone by just hovering their hand over the screen.

As with many of Apple’s patents and patent applications, it’s unknown if or when it plans to use it in one of its products. Apple first filed the patent application on Mar. 21, 2011 and credits former Apple engineering director Adam Cheyer as the inventor.

Smartphone Launched For The Price Of A Morning Tea

An Indian company has launched a smartphone that costs just £2.50 - what many of us pay for our morning coffee.

The company behind it, Ringing Bells, says its mission is to give citizens in rural and semi-urban areas access to digital technology.

Such parts of India have a population of half a billion people.

The Freedom 251 phone (costing Indian Rs 251) has a four-inch screen and runs Android Lillipop software.  

It has a 1.3GHz quad-core processor and 8GB of memory, which can be expanded to 32GB.

There are cameras back and front.

A women's safety app is pre-loaded, while other apps are aimed at farmers, fishermen, and provide medical assistance to the elderly.

Ringing Bells is offering a one-year warranty and has more than 650 service centres across the country.

It is working with two Indian government initiatives.

India is the second-largest mobile phone market in the world, behind China, but only 19% of the population are on the internet.

A report from the Internet and Mobile Association of India, and KPMG, says that India has 236 million mobile internet users. 

That figure is expected to rise to 317 million next year.

But there are doubts about whether the Freedom 251’s low price is commercially viable. 

A mobile entrepreneur, Sachin Gaur, told Sky News: "India is a country of announcements and such launches need to be taken with a pinch of salt.

"It's an artificial pricing and subsidised by companies and investors. It's got to have a longevity and be able to sustain itself.”

Pointing to the Akash tablet, launched for just £30 in 2011, Mr Gaur said: "It fizzled out as it was unsustainable and fell by the wayside."

The slow but power-sipping LTE Category M technology is coming out in a chip

On Tuesday, Sequans Communications announced what it called the first chip for LTE Category M, a variant of the global mobile standard that is tuned for low-power IoT gear like utility meters, factory sensors and wearables. The chip, called Monarch, will be ready to go into devices when Category M networks go live late this year or in early 2017, the company said.

IoT devices need a different kind of network from what phones and tablets use. No one's firing up those IoT devices to watch HD video or play games, but no one's plugging them in for recharging every night, either. They need slower connections that don't drain the batteries, because they may be out in the field for 10 years.

Upstarts like SigFox, Ingenu and the LoRa Alliance sprung up in recent years to meet these specialized needs with LPWANs (low-power wide-area networks). The opportunity could be huge: Machina Research estimates nearly 1.5 billion connections by 2020.

 3GPP, the international body that brought you LTE, is adapting that standard so it can do some of the same things. This could make it easier for carriers to start bringing new IoT devices online through something as (relatively) simple as a network software upgrade.

The 3GPP let rivals get a head start in this area, but there's still time to make Category M a hit, Machina analyst Godfrey Chua said via email. IoT is in an early stage, and some regions and industries are adopting it only now. But a key test for Category M will be whether it works as well as promised.

"Tech specs are one thing, but another is proving it can perform in the field," he said.

Sequans already has at least one carrier partner, Verizon, for its Category M development. The companies previously worked together on LTE Category 1, an earlier standard for less power-constrained IoT devices like cash machines, point-of-sale terminals and vehicle telematics systems. Verizon has since brought Category 1 devices onto its network.

Sequans' Monarch chip complies with two variants of Category M. The first, Category M1, has an upload speed of 375Kbps (bits per second). Category M2 is even slower and less power-hungry and can upload data at 55Kbps. (These devices will send out more data than they download, so they're slightly faster upstream.)

The M1 standard is nearly done and M2 should be complete by the middle of this year, according to Sequans. M2 has been in the works for some time, previously under the name NarrowBand-IoT.

In addition to meters and wearables, things like health monitors, home-automation gear and asset-tracking devices may use M1 or M2 networks. With power management technology that Sequans builds in, the Monarch chip will allow small devices to last 10 to 15 years on a battery, the company said.

Gemalto, a digital security company, is partnering with Sequans to build IoT device modules with added features around the company's chips. In addition to working on Monarch-based LTE M1/M2 modules, on Tuesday Gemalto announced modules built around Sequans's LTE Category 1 chip. The new Gemalto modules are equipped for fallback to a 2G or 3G network if LTE Category 1 isn't available.

Linux!!! Stop what you're doing and apply this patch

A buffer-overflow vulnerability uncovered Tuesday in the GNU C Library poses a serious threat to countless Linux users.

Dating back to the release of glibc 2.9 in 2008, CVE-2015-7547 is a stack-based buffer overflow bug in the glibc DNS client-side resolver that opens the door to remote code execution when a particular library function is used. Software using the function can be exploited with attacker-controlled domain names, attacker-controlled DNS servers or man-in-the-middle attacks.

Glibc, which was also at the core of the "Ghost" vulnerability found last year, is a C library that defines system calls and other basic functions on Linux systems. Its maintainers had apparently been alerted of the new problem last July, but it's not clear if any remediation effort was launched at that time.

Google and Red Hat independently reported the problem this week and a patch is now available.

"Our initial investigations showed that the issue affected all the versions of glibc since 2.9," Google explained in its Online Security Blog. "You should definitely update if you are on an older version, though. If the vulnerability is detected, machine owners may wish to take steps to mitigate the risk of an attack."

For those unable to patch immediately, Google has found some mitigations that may help prevent exploitation, including limiting response sizes accepted by the DNS resolver locally.

The company does not plan to release its exploit code, but it did release proof-of-concept code to help users determine if they're affected by the issue and verify any mitigations.

"The part that makes this interesting is that DNS is a core infrastructure component, which means that a lot of subsystems and applications could potentially be impacted," said Mark Loveless, a senior security researcher at Duo Security. "The main things listed initially were ssh, curl, wget and similar command-line Linux utilities, but it is possible that other processes could also use the library calls in the exact way needed for exploit."

In theory, other non-Windows systems that use glibc could be affected as well, Loveless added, including other Unix-based operating systems or even operating systems for mobile devices or tablets.

All Linux servers and Web frameworks such as Rails, PHP and Python are likely affected, as are Android apps running glibc, according to a post by Kaspersky Lab.