Dell launches new Android HDMI dongle with desktop virtualization

Dell has just launched a new Android based HDMI dongle, which can transform any display into a virtualized desktop computer. Portability is the essence of mobile technology, but Dell aims to go one better by packing in as many feature as possible into its tiny USB sized computer.

Dell’s Wyse Cloud Connect can be hooked up to any TV or display with an HDMI or MHL port. The little device comes with full support for mice and keyboards via Bluetooth or a mini-USB port, so productivity won’t be an issue. The dongle itself is barely any bigger than your standard flash drive, but packs sufficient punch to output at full-HD 1080p.

Whilst Android dongle computers have been available for a long time, this dongle offers access to Dell’s own desktop virtualization software via its Wyse Cloud Connect app and your choice of client, either Citrxi, Microsoft or VMWare. So on top of a full Android 4.1 Jelly Bean experience, you’ll also have full access to your Windows or Mac machines.

Hardware specs are a little thin on the ground, but Dell has listed the device as running on a “multi-core” Cortex A9 CPU, it has 1GB RAM, 8GB of internal flash memory, microSD card slot with support for an additional 72GB of storage, and the dongle can display an output resolution of up to 1080p.

The Dell Wyse Cloud Connect also features a range of connectivity options, including a HDMI/MHL output, a DisplayPort video interface, 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi adapter, 1x USB mini connecter for peripherals, 1x Micro USB port, and Bluetooth V3 connectivity to support a range of wireless peripherals.

The Wyse Cloud Connect dongle is currently priced at $129 on the company’s website, however Dell is apparently more interested in targeting business clients than the regular consumer. The dongle’s permissions are currently managed through Dell’s business grade Wyse Cloud Client Manager software, but Dell’s VP and GM of cloud client computing, Steve Lalla, said that “It’ll bleed into the consumer space” eventually.

Xperia Z1 and Z Ultra update adds White Balance setting, improved Wi-Fi, and more

Taking to its official Twitter account, Sony has revealed a new software update is rolling out for the Xperia Z Ultra and Z1. While the update is still packing Android 4.3, there are a few noticeable changes making their way to the firmware upgrade.

First, there’s a new “White Balance” setting for the display, which lets you manually adjust your colors to find the perfect balance. If this setting sounds at all familiar, that’s because Sony first introduced it with theSony Xperia Z1 Compact. Some of the other changes for the update include improvements for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth music streaming and email.

It’s important to note that the only way to get the update right now is through Sony’s PC Companion or the Mac Bridge. It’s also possible it will eventually make its way out as an OTA, but no word on when just yet.

Minuum Keyboard updated: new look, improved predictive abilities

Fans of the Minuum Keyboard will be happy to know that an app update has now arrived to Google Play!

For those that have never heard of Minuum, the app essentially takes an entire keyboard and scrunches it down to just one line. The idea is to fully maximize your screen real-estate, which could especially be important if you’re rocking a smaller-screened Android device. For those moments when you need a full-size keyboard, it’s easy to switch back and forth.

So what’s new in Minuum 1.2.3? The most noticeable change is the new keyboard layout, which has been redesigned to provide a cleaner look. While the change is mostly cosmetic, there are a few minor differences when it comes to keyboard spacing as well.

Aside from the layout, the keyboard’s predictive abilities have been enhanced, adding a few new changes. First, there is a new ‘deletion-aware’ prediction system that sees when you delete an incorrect word and then offers a new (hopefully more accurate) suggested word to replace it. Second, the smart auto-spacing technology has been improved so it doesn’t get in the way of smileys. Lastly, Minuum 1.2.3 makes it easier to create new (made-up) words and custom suffixes.

For those that have never tried Minuum, it is a premium app with a $1.99 asking price and there certainly is a bit of a learning curve, but it’s still a pretty solid choice for those looking for a keyboard that takes as little space as possible. To grab the update or to learn more about the app, head on over to Google Play.

Lenovo takes aim at Apple and Samsung: “our mission is to surpass them”

Lenovo’s £2.91 billion acquisition of Motorola from Google is certainly the talking point of the week. Hot on the heels from a meeting with Motorola employees about the purchase, Lenovo’s CEO Yuanqing Yang discussed the deal and the company’s plans to compete in the smartphone market with Fortune Magazineyesterday. The interview sheds some much needed light on the deal, as well as what Lenovo has planned for Motorola.

It turns out that Lenovo was interested in acquiring Motorola all the way back in 2011, when Motorola initially split into two companies. Yang and Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, even discussed the prospect of Lenovo taking over Motorola’s hardware business when Google acquired the company back in 2012, which turns out to be the basis for the recent deal. Just two months ago, Google reinitiated contact with Lenovo to ask if they were still interested in Motorola, and now here we are.

The interview also confirmed one of our suspicions about why Lenovo was so interested in Motorola – the brand and access to Western markets.

Lenovo is already a big name in China, and other emerging countries, but the company’s focus on lower end products has so far kept it out of the U.S and Latin American smartphone markets. Lenovo aims to leverage the Motorola brand to branch out into the mid and premium tier market segments, which means that we’re very likely to see Motorola stick around in the west, but Lenovo also may make use of the brand in other markets.

We will fully leverage the Motorola brand in the U.S. and Latin America, just like we leveraged the ThinkPad brand in the PC space. Motorola will be our smartphone product. Yuanqing Yang

Following its acquisition of Motorola, Lenovo is setting its sights high, with a lofty sales target of 100 million smartphones by 2015. Yang even stated that the company’s “mission is to surpass” both Samsung and Apple.

I wish we could sell more than 100 million smartphones together in the year 2015.Yuanqing Yang

Despite the seemingly bold talk, we must remember that Lenovo finished in the top five smartphone developers in 2013, regarding the number of devices shipped. Lenovo is a company with substantial clout, even though it may not be a western household name like Samsung or Apple.

Looking at the numbers, the 2015 100 million smartphone shipment target is fairly reasonable. Lenovo already almost doubled its handset shipments throughout 2013. The company was also the fastest growing manufacturer out of the top five, if this trend continues the company could be close to the 100 million target by the end of 2014. Not to mention that Motorola managed 10 million sales itself in 2013, and could act as Lenovo’s gateway to the much sought-after Western markets.

Of course challenging Apple and Samsung is another matter entirely. The two smartphone giants also saw decent growth figures in 2013, although Apple was by far the weakest of the top five. Catching them up is going to be a much more difficult and drawn out task.

Do you think that Lenovo and Motorola can challenge Apple’s and Samsung’s dominance, or has Lenovo spent $2.9 billion on a dead weight?

Lenovo takes aim at Apple and Samsung: “our mission is to surpass them”

Google ended 2013 strong, reported $3.92 billion operating income for Q4

Google’s 4th quarter 2013 results are in and things are looking very good for the company. For Q4 2013 Google reported $16.86 billion in revenue, which was up 17 percent when compared to the $14.4 billion it brought in during Q4 of 2012. Google also reported $3.38 billion in net income, up from its $2.89 billion in Q4 2012.

In the official earning release Google’s CEO Larry Page also issued the following statement summing up the quarter results:

We ended 2013 with another great quarter of momentum and growth. Google’s standalone revenue was up 22% year on year, at $15.7 billion. We made great progress across a wide range of product improvements and business goals. I’m also very excited about improving people’s lives even more with continued hard work on our user experiences.

Although 2013 was an excellent year for Google, the same can’t be said for Motorola. The Moto maker ended the year with a total loss of $1.245 billion, and a $384 million loss just for Q4 2013. The continued loss highlights yet another reason why Google is unloading the company and selling it to Lenov

Samsung prepping a new 'Life Times' app, may launch alongside the Galaxy S5

A new Samsung app is on its way, according to SamMobile, and they have the evidence to prove it. Dubbed "Life Times", the new app is something of a diary that is being compiled automatically by your smartphone as you go through the day. Of course, we're talking a richer kind of diary, one that uses a plethora of sources to feed content onto its virtual pages, including Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, but also your call logs, e-mails, messages and so on. This will allow Life Times to sketch a fairly informative snapshot of your day.

The new app is likely already headed for release, and it'll be probably announced on stage alongside the Galaxy S5 -- after all, numerous new features and apps have been a part of Sammy's repertoire lately. That said, Life Times looks like an exact copy of LG's Life Square app, which does the exact same thing -- it creates the very same kind of 'diary', and pulls its content from the very same sources. Hopefully, Sammy has put more of an effort into its version of the idea, as LG's sure could use some polish. Regardless, we found such apps kind of useful, as they essentially allow you to take a peek into the past, without having to rely on your fallible memory.

Crowdsourcing Twitch app could turn swipes into cash

Want to make some money in crowdsourcing but don't have time? Maybe you should start "twitching".

Workers who pitch in to complete crowdsourcing projects can earn a small fee for undertaking simple tasks such as captioning photos of famous landmarks. But tasks on computers often take too long and people soon lose interest.

Now an app called Twitch, developed by Michael Bernstein at Stanford University in California and his colleagues, replaces a phone's unlock screen with an interface for crowdsourcing. Instead of swiping to unlock the phone, you can complete tasks such as choosing the better of two stock photos or verifying if a "fact" on a website like Wikipedia is true.

Bernstein's team put Twitch on Google's Play app store and recruited 82 of the people who downloaded it. These users completed a total of 11,200 tasks in three weeks. The team thinks the idea will catch on because each task is so fast: a regular swipe-to-unlock move took users 1.4 seconds and the quickest task – picking one of six pictures to say what you were doing at that moment – took 1.6 seconds.

This negligible additional mental load gives such apps great potential when it comes to crowdsourcing, says team member Rajan Vaish of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who will reveal the app at a computer-human interaction conference in Toronto, Canada, in April .

"Crowdsourced processes in general might be tedious, but when shown one at a time on Twitch's mobile unlock screen, it encourages participation without enforcing any time commitment," Vaish says. "Surveys can now be created by anyone and important things can be learned quickly and from a large amount of people using mobile phones."

Samuel Johnston, spokesman for Open Signal , a London based company using phone apps to draw up crowdsourced maps of phone signal strength, finds the idea behind Twitch compelling.

"Twitch's process of solicitation is uniquely mobile in that it allows tasks to be tailored to an individual's location and ties into the frequent and rapid interactions individuals have with their mobile devices," Johnston says. "The killer use-case for Twitch may well be consumer surveys. Allowing coffee shops or the like to ask brief questions to immediately gauge the success of promotions, new products and store layout, perhaps with some kind of compensation given based on the questions answered."

However, Johnston says Twitch will face competition from apps that crowdsource data automatically, for example, by guessing a phone user's speed for traffic apps and using a phone's sensors to guess what they are doing.

Indian IT workforce gets middle age-heavy

MUMBAI: The executive suite is not the only place that is greying in India's 40-year-old information technology sector.

As the $108-billion industry enters middle age and its growth slows, the three-million-strong workforce is also getting older, making it harder to extract some of the cost advantages of the young, cheap labour for which it is known.

Firms have had to change in order to attract and support employees with a more mature set of priorities, as the bright youngsters they recruited years earlier have become earnest family types.

"Middle-aged or married couples prefer to go back home on time, so don't like to stay back at work till late or do weekends," said Megha Jain, 34, a Bangalore-based employee of an Indian IT company. "There is more focus by the company to fine-tune policies around work from home and overtime."

Less partying, more parenting
The likes of Bangalore-based Infosys and Wipro were built on a young, cheap and educated workforce that also drew global giants such asIBM and Accenture to the country.

And the vibrancy of the new industry was epitomized by a corporate culture that was far more influenced by Silicon Valley than traditional Indian attitudes.

In India, many in their first jobs continue to live with parents, whereas working in IT often meant moving to another city, such as Bangalore, Hyderabad or Pune.

Organized weekend outings for staff were a common way of building bonds in the workplace for IT firms whose employees had mostly come straight from college.

Some firms also gave employees free movie tickets and let them expense meals with boyfriends or girlfriends.

Flush with money and new-found independence, these IT staffers were known both for working late and partying hard.

"There were not many mothers, or not many parents," Kingshuk Sanyal, a management consultant at Booz and Co, said of those early years in the industry.

Now, many Indian IT firms have tied up with childcare centers to help working couples manage. Some offer flexible working hours or extended time away from work, options that exist with few other Indian employers.

Market leader Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which once had ad hoc policies around flexible hours and vacations, formalized them about four years ago as the ranks of older staff grew, said HR head Ajoyendra Mukherjee.

Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco, California. His unwed biological parents, Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, put him up for adoption. Steve was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs, a lower-middle-class couple, who moved to the suburban city of Mountain View a couple of years later.

Paul Jobs and his son

The Santa Clara county, south of the Bay Area, became known as Silicon Valley in the early 1950s after the sprouting of a myriad of semi-conductor companies. As a result, young Steve Jobs grew up in a neighborhood of engineers working on electronics and other gizmos in their garages on weekends. This shaped his interest in the field as he grew up. At age 13, he met one the most important persons in his life: 18-year-old Stephen Wozniak, an electronics wiz kid, and, like Steve, an incorrigible prankster.

Five years later, when Steve Jobs reached college age, he told his parents he wanted to enroll in Reed College — an expensive liberal arts college up in Oregon. Even though the tuition fees were astronomical for the poor couple, they had promised their son's biological parents he would get a college education, so they relented. Steve spent only one semester at Reed, then dropped out, as he was more interested in eastern philosophy, fruitarian diets, and LSD than in the classes he took. He moved to a hippie commune in Oregon where his main activity was cultivating apples.

A few months later, Steve returned to California to look for a job. He was hired at the young video game maker Atari, and used his wages to make a trip to India with one of his college friends, in order to 'seek enlightenment'. He came back a little disillusioned and started to take interest in his friend Woz's new activities.

MACINTOSH

However, because of his hot temper and his relative inexperience in technology or management, Steve Jobs was thrown out of the Lisa project. He felt absolutely crushed by this decision. As a revenge, he took over a small project called Macintosh, a personal computer that was supposed to be a cheap appliance, 'as easy to use as a toaster'. In 1981, Steve Jobs became head of the Macintosh project, and decided to make it a smaller and cheaper version of the Lisa, complete with a GUI of folders, icons and drop-down menus, and a mouse.

Photo by Norman Seef

The three years it took to develop Macintosh were some of the most productive and intense for Steve Jobs. He formed a small group of dedicated, young, brilliant engineers who stood fully behind his vision of a computer 'for the rest of us'. They saw themselves as 'pirates' against the rest of Apple, 'the Navy'. The team antagonized both the Apple II group and the Lisa group, because the Mac was competitive of both. Yet in 1983, after it became clear the Lisa was turning into another major flop for Apple, all of the company's hope started to rest on the Macintosh. Steve was supported in his mission by John Sculley, Apple's new CEO whom he hired in 1983 to help him run the company and groom him into a future chief executive.

         Developer Information for Chrome OS Devices

Hardware-specific developer information (organized chronologically):

Release date	Manufacturer	Model	Project code name	Board name
December 2010	Google	Cr-48	Mario	x86-mario
June 2011	Samsung	Series 5 Chromebook	Alex	x86-alex
July 2011	Acer	AC700 Chromebook	ZGB	x86-zgb
May 2012	Samsung	Series 3 Chromebox	Stumpy	stumpy
May 2012	Samsung	Series 5 550 Chromebook	Lumpy	lumpy
October 2012	Samsung	ARM Chromebook	Snow	daisy
November 2012	Acer	Acer C7 Chromebook	Parrot	parrot
January 2013	Lenovo	Thinkpad X131e Chromebook	Stout	stout
February 2013	HP	Pavilion Chromebook	Butterfly	butterfly
February 2013	Google	Chromebook Pixel	Link	link
October 2013	HP	HP Chromebook 11	Spring	daisy_spring
October 2013	Acer	Acer C720 Chromebook	Peppy	peppy
October 2013	HP	HP Chromebook 14	Falco	falco
January 2014	Dell	Dell Chromebook 11	Wolf	wolf
February 2014	Toshiba	Toshiba Chromebook	Leon	leon

bugatti veyron

The development of the Veyron 16.4*) is one of the key milestones of 21st-century automotive engineering. Volkswagen CEO Ferdinand Piëch made high demands: the designers were to revive the heritage of Ettore Bugatti with this new super sports car. Equally challenging were the impressive technical requirements the exceptional serial production vehicle had to meet: a top speed above 400 km/h and 736 kW (1,000 HP). A truly formidable challenge. Yet the Veyron 16.4 unites the dichotomy of elegant form and high-tech function, of grace and power, aesthetics and safety in perfect harmony.

The Veyron’s exterior styling unobtrusively yet unmistakably quotes classic Bugatti design elements while defining its very own, modern style. Innovations for top performance, high acceleration capacity, and an extensive security system are signature elements of this super sports car. Ettore Bugatti occasionally made technical compromises for the sake of aesthetic integrity. This is the only tradition that was broken in the development of the Veyron 16.4.

*) Gearbox: 7 Gear DSG, fuel consumption combined: 24.9l/100km, fuel consumption in town: 41.9l/100km, fuel consumption out of town: 15.6l/100km, CO₂ emission combined: 596g/km, Efficiency Class: G
Annual tax for this vehicle €1132
Energy costs at a mileage of 20,000 km:
Fuel costs (Super Plus) at a fuel price of 1.624 EUR/billing unit €8087.52
Created on: 11/30/2011
The values were calculated using the prescribed measurement method (§ 2, numbers 5, 6, 6 per car energy labeling ordinance in its current version).CO2 emissions, which result from the production and provision of fuel or other energy sources are not taken into account in the determination of CO2 emissions pursuant to Directive 1999/94/EC. The figures do not refer to a specific vehicle and are not part of the offer, but only serve the purpose of comparing different vehicle types. The fuel consumption and CO2 emissions of a vehicle not only depend on the efficient utilization of the fuel by the vehicle, but also on driving style and other non-technical factors. CO2 is the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming. Notice pursuant to Directive 1999/94/EC of each current valid version: For more information on official fuel consumption and the specific official CO2 emissions of new passenger cars can be acquired from the "Guide for Fuel Economy, CO2 Emissions and Power Consumption of New Passenger Cars" available at all sales outlets and at DAT German Automobil Treuhand GmbH, Hellmuth-Hirth-Strasse 1, D-73760 Ostfildern – available free of charge or at www.dat.de. Efficiency classes of vehicles are evaluated in terms of CO2 emissions by means of the vehicle's empty weight. Vehicles that correspond to the average are classified as D. Vehicles that are better are graded with A+, A, B or C. Vehicles that are worse than the average are given an E, F or G.

Windows system key combinations

• F1: Help
• CTRL+ESC: Open Start menu
• ALT+TAB: Switch between open programs
• ALT+F4: Quit program
• SHIFT+DELETE: Delete item permanently
• Windows Logo+L: Lock the computer (without using CTRL+ALT+DELETE)

Windows program key combinations

• CTRL+C: Copy
• CTRL+X: Cut
• CTRL+V: Paste
• CTRL+Z: Undo
• CTRL+B: Bold
• CTRL+U: Underline
• CTRL+I: Italic

Mouse click/keyboard modifier combinations for shell objects

• SHIFT+right click: Displays a shortcut menu containing alternative commands
• SHIFT+double click: Runs the alternate default command (the second item on the menu)
• ALT+double click: Displays properties
• SHIFT+DELETE: Deletes an item immediately without placing it in the Recycle Bin

General keyboard-only commands

• F1: Starts Windows Help
• F10: Activates menu bar options
• SHIFT+F10 Opens a shortcut menu for the selected item (this is the same as right-clicking an object
• CTRL+ESC: Opens the Start menu (use the ARROW keys to select an item)
• CTRL+ESC or ESC: Selects the Start button (press TAB to select the taskbar, or press SHIFT+F10 for a context menu)
• CTRL+SHIFT+ESC: Opens Windows Task Manager
• ALT+DOWN ARROW: Opens a drop-down list box
• ALT+TAB: Switch to another running program (hold down the ALT key and then press the TAB key to view the task-switching window)
• SHIFT: Press and hold down the SHIFT key while you insert a CD-ROM to bypass the automatic-run feature
• ALT+SPACE: Displays the main window's System menu (from the System menu, you can restore, move, resize, minimize, maximize, or close the window)
• ALT+- (ALT+hyphen): Displays the Multiple Document Interface (MDI) child window's System menu (from the MDI child window's System menu, you can restore, move, resize, minimize, maximize, or close the child window)
• CTRL+TAB: Switch to the next child window of a Multiple Document Interface (MDI) program
• ALT+underlined letter in menu: Opens the menu
• ALT+F4: Closes the current window
• CTRL+F4: Closes the current Multiple Document Interface (MDI) window
• ALT+F6: Switch between multiple windows in the same program (for example, when the Notepad Find dialog box is displayed, ALT+F6 switches between the Find dialog box and the main Notepad window)

Shell objects and general folder/Windows Explorer shortcuts

For a selected object:

• F2: Rename object
• F3: Find all files
• CTRL+X: Cut
• CTRL+C: Copy
• CTRL+V: Paste
• SHIFT+DELETE: Delete selection immediately, without moving the item to the Recycle Bin
• ALT+ENTER: Open the properties for the selected object