Steve Jobs tells us a secret

Confusion over surname earns Facebook flak

Facebook recently found itself in a sticky situation when a community in Assam, India, raised their voices collectively against the social networking site deactivating the accounts of thousands of its members. The reason? The members belonged to the popular 'Chutia' (pronounced as Sutiya) community of Assam, which essentially is an ethnic tribe of the region with a rich historical background in the state history, reports The Times of India. Facebook assumed these accounts to be fake and fabricated, in addition to confusing the community name with derogatory Hindi slang.

Facebook irks users

The big mix-up has left the members of the community deeply infuriated. Members of the All Assam Chutia Students' Union (Aacsu), as a mark of their protest, will stating their point by burning an effigy of the social networking site in the five upper Assam districts of Tinsukia, Dibrugarh, Sivasagar, Jorhat and Golaghat, today. What also angered the members was that the social networking site went on deactivating several accounts without even verifying the truth behind them. Reports also suggest that the community now seeks a public apology from Facebook.

Quoting Aacsu, General Secretary, Jyotiprasad Chutia, the report stated, "Facebook has blocked the accounts of all the subscribers belonging to the Chutia community of Assam thinking the names are false and fabricated. For Chutia being an abusive word in the Hindi language, Facebook authorities thought that the account holders are fake and fabricated. But, they are still unknown to the fact that Chutia is an ethnic tribe of Assam which has a rich historical background in the state history." He further added that, "We are very unhappy with authority as they have even failed to verify the matter seriously before taking a step like blocking thousands of our accounts. We think it may be a deep-rooted conspiracy against our community and so we warn them to abstain from such acts in the future. They even failed to verify the truth when they blocked the accounts of some prominent personalities and popular artists like Krishnamoni Chutia, who belongs to our community. We protested this negligence and demanded them to reactivate our accounts immediately."

A quick look-up on Facebook has confirmed that the group's page is up on Facebook, again.

Cloud to overtake PCs by 2014, predicts Gartner

The PC market hasn’t been at its best for the past year or so, for there has been a noticeable slowdown, due to the increasing popularity of tablets and smartphones. The Thailand floods, last year, affected hard drive factories and that too has taken a toll on the PC market. There are those who believe that tablets will completely replace PCs, and Gartner feels that the PCs are going to be threatened by 2014, not by tablets specifically, but by the cloud. PCs are considered to be at the centre of people’s digital lives, soon the Internet and the cloud will take that place. Cloud apps and storage services will allow users to use them from any device of their choice - a PC, notebook, a smartphone or a tablet. 

Cloud to be in the spotlight by 2014

Gartner feels that the biggest change has taken place in the past two years and that the enterprises will have to figure out how future apps and services are provided to their employees. There are a number of reasons for this change. Improved mobility and dependence on mobile phones and tablets means that users have the choice of accessing the cloud from anywhere and at any given time. The cloud also offers a lot of flexibility, as compared to traditional applications. Users can choose what kind of apps they use and what kind of content they want to consume. There’s also a noticeable move from traditional desktop applications to web-based apps that are available on all popular platforms. This is a growing trend and it’s likely to speed up even more over the next few years. All these trends over the years point out to the fact that the cloud will be the most important component of our lives. PCs will be just another access medium, like smartphones and tablets are today. 

Of course, there are some niche areas, such as mainstream gaming that will continue to be split between gaming consoles and PCs. This area, too is under attack by tablets and smartphones, as they get more powerful and offer enough performance to handle high-quality games.

Google, Asus to launch a 7-inch Android tablet in May

Confirming initial speculations, a Digitimes report now confirms that Google, together with Asus will soon bring in a 7-inch tablet to the market, by May. that Google and Asustek are currently working at introducing, what they refer to as a '7-inch iPad rival'. it's essentially a smaller, cheaper Android tablet, which reportedly would cost the user roughly between $199 - $249. The tablet, which will compete with Amazon's Kindle Fire at launch, will reportedly be built, like the Kindle Fire to play music and video from Google's Play store, and reportedly, at launch, the tablet will be the first in the market to do so. Another report also quoted Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt speaking in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra, as saying, "In the next six months, we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality."

Big plans for May! 

Rumoredly, HTC and not Asus were Google's first choice for partners. However, Google seem to have finally zeroed in on Asus for their ambitious venture. insisted on directing the development of the model, which it would launch with Google. Further, HTC had its reservations developing a low-price model, since it feared that it would mar the brand's image in the market. Acer, one of the other options did not have in-house R&D capability. Finally, Google zeroed in on Asus for the latter's good product quality.

The report further states that, "Asustek's motivation for cooperating with Google is to win Google's confidence to facilitate development of its Android-based devices, learn Google's technology to develop software and content, as well as enter the tablet US market, the sources indicated."

Government websites attacked 200 times during CWG 2010, says DRDO

There was a rise in cyber attacks during the Commonwealth Games, which took an even uglier turn, due to some nefarious political acts. Researchers at the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) have revealed that computer servers of government departments were attacked about 200 times during the Commonwealth Games in 2010, held in New Delhi, as per report by ThinkDigit. DRDO is an organization working towards researching newer technologies for defence and combat. 

Cyber attacks on rise (Image Credit: Getty Images)

Reportedly, DRDO chief and scientific adviser to defence minister, Dr V.K. Saraswat disclosed that there were several hacking instances, which had originated from other countries. He further revealed that a very skilled and efficient team helped DRDO combat these online attacks. However, he doesn’t stop before disclosing that although they did manage to stop attacks, DRDO lacks tools required to do so, effectively. So, DRDO is planning to form a powerful encryption group, which will create encryption techniques to fight back such attackers. The DRDO plans at crafting some superior servers and routers, along with operating systems to help fight back such attacks. 

There has been a rise in the number of hacks, owing to the increase in digital content in recent times. There were several hacks that happened last year, while just last month the Andhra Pradesh government websites were hacked. Hackers attempted to break into the various websites of the Andhra Pradesh government, even though a security audit was being conducted at the State Data Centre. Fortunately, the hackers weren’t successful, who reportedly belong to Jakarta (Indonesia), Algeria and Turkey. In January this year, several Irish government's finance and justice department websites were hacked in a protest against a new web law. Late December last year, yet another such web attack on the Congress website. 

A rise in such attacks on government websites calls for better technologies and security, so that such nefarious acts are curbed.

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Intel banking on Ice Cream Sandwich to succeed in the mobile space

After surveying the mobile segment for many years, Intel has finally decided to take the plunge and enter the tablet and smartphone segment with their brand new Medfield System on a Chip (SoC). While Intel has always been about pushing the limits of what’s possible on the hardware front, since that’s what they do best; they seemed to be taking a slightly different approach when it came to their new mobile devices. In order to succeed in this cut-throat industry, the hardware giant is banking heavily on the success of Google Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich Operating System. We get this from Intel’s CEO, Paul Otellini’s comment, “The thing is, tablets are a little bit about hardware and an awful lot about software," he said. "And I think that until you get to Ice Cream Sandwich, the offering isn't as powerful as what's out there with Apple."

Exploring new markets

Intel believes that when it comes to tablets and mobile devices, it’s not so much as the hardware, but the software that really differentiates a good product from a great one, and they are quite right. Take the longest standing example if you will, Apple. Right from their first iPhone to the iPad and other subsequent products, their choice of hardware components has never been the ‘best in the market’, but still, they managed to offer a user experience that’s unrivaled till today and that primarily due to the OS. Intel has realized that and have chosen to enter the mobile space now, because they believe Android has matured enough over the years and is finally ready to go toe-to-toe with iOS. Intel may have joined the party late, but going by the performance delivered by their prototype devices at CES 2012, it doesn’t seem they are too far behind ARM. Also, if Ice Cream Sandwich is truly better optimized for a multi-core architecture then the hardware really shouldn’t matter all that much. We can actually learn a lesson or two from Nokia here. Take a look at their Symbian Anna and Belle phones; most of them are powered by a 650MHz processor, but still, they can easily handle 720p video with ease. For Gingerbread, you need a minimum of 1GHz for smooth 720p playback, which is proof right there that Android isn’t as optimized as it could be. 

Intel’s Medfield does seem quite promising, as it will finally break the monopoly that ARM has been enjoying all along. This makes for better competition which leads to better products and more affordable products for us, so not matter how this goes, it’s a win-win situation for us.

Intel Inside Android - An Interview with Prashanth Adiraju

Hot on the heels of this year’s Mobile World Congress, Prashanth Adiraju, Director of Intel South Asia’s New Platforms & Business Group sits down with us for a chat about Intel’s newly launched Medfield processors for smartphones, and the interesting partnership with India’s Lava to launch the XOLO Android phone in India.

What does Intel think about the smartphone market?

If you step back and look back at the phone industry, phones have become smarter and much more compute intensive in the past few years—only ten percent of the usage is for voice calls. The things consumers are beginning to do on phones are very similar to what a typical computer would do: browsing the web, posting pictures online, watching multimedia videos, playing some immersive games. That’s the essence of what makes this opportunity very interesting for us. India is in the early phase of a smartphone run. We’re moving from first time buyers in the basic- or feature phone-type market to growth being driven by smartphones. Growth in India is 3X of the world average. That’s what makes this market an interesting opportunity for us. Fundamentally, our objective is to help deliver the best technology, so we’re taking what we’ve done in the PC industry to the smartphone industry.

Besides, the market is pretty broad, in terms of reach and there are players that have established a good presence for themselves in the last few years. They’ve established a very healthy feature phone business for themselves. So as we looked at the India market what was critical was to deliver a reference design that essentially fits in the premium smartphone segment and give our customers the ability to take it to market quickly and modify the user experience, which has to do with how apps get consumed and how the user interface looks.

The man with the plan

So Intel is going down a path of extending our business model to build a smartphone reference design that delivers leading edge technology: 8 megapixel camera that takes 10 pictures in less than a second; being able to view 1080p video with HDMI on your TV. Having 14 days of standby and providing leading-edge browsing capabilities.

Now the second aspect of the strategy as far as India is concerned was to take the smartphone reference design and engage with a partner who is looking at transitioning from what has been a feature phone business to what will be a higher growth business around smartphones. Lava is one such customer. We’ve partnered with them with our smartphone reference design and what they will do in the next couple of months is bring this design to market. Lava is one of India’s fastest growing mobile handset companies and they will be able to demonstrate to the market how innovative and compelling this product can be. 

Can you tell us how the association with Lava came about?

It boils down to a few things. Over the long run, we will engage with many partners. What was important for us was the speed with which we would be able to bring this technology to market. The second aspect was how innovative and cutting edge, in terms of a user experience, Lava has built its business. In the last three years, they’ve been one of the fastest growing companies, because they’ve been able to build a lot of innovation around their existing business.

What was the strategy for creating a new brand, XOLO, for this product?

There are two branding strategies here: Lava is essentially a mass market feature phone brand. They’re looking at this new higher growth business and they have to communicate innovation around a smartphone, which is significantly different to a feature phone, which is the essence of the XOLO brand. This brand is a line-up of products that Lava will build out over the next few years to represent that smartphone line. The role that we want to play is to communicate that here is the technology inside the smartphone—“Intel inside”. The pull that we want to create is to communicate the technology goodness that we’ve built. Communication to the market will essentially be a joint approach. 

Power house processors

Can you tell us about the choice to go with stock Android 2.3? Will customers see any fragmentation between X86 and ARM when it comes to buying a phone or using apps?

We got into this new business and focus was important. We had to be able to deliver a certain product around a certain operating environment. The choice of Android was obvious, because that’s where the market momentum currently is. In India, more than 45 percent of smartphones being sold have Android OS. In other markets, it’s 50 to 60 percent. With regards to what we’re going to ship in the near term, we are optimizing this reference design around android 2.3 and then there will be a refresh of that quickly in the market. If you buy the 2.3 version, you’ll get a refresh in a few months to the 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich product. In the second half of the year, you’ll see products shipped around ICS.

They key distinction is that Android is being optimized for X86—google and Intel announced a partnership, wherein the android experience will be optimized around X86 architecture. The best experience on Android is going to be on X86. I think you’ll see the ecosystem and developer community take advantage of that capability over the next few quarters.

If you’re a developer, and lets’ take the favorite game of Angry Birds, the only ecosystem that existed at the time was ARM. When we had a reference design out there, Angry Birds seamlessly worked on X86. If you’re a developer, it seamlessly gets ported to this architecture and it works. Now, if you really want to unleash the best of imaging, high-def playback, browsing performance and things around the nature of the real core technologies that Intel is building, then you’ll start seeing new games and applications released uniquely on X86. That’s where you’ll start seeing the capabilities of the architecture, but our direction right now is going to be the Android Marketplace. The majority of these applications with seamlessly work. Some will work significantly better because of the technology capability of the new architecture.

From a consumer standpoint it’s going to be seamless. If you’re a developer and you have written an application, you’ll essentially recompile for X86 as well as ARM and you’ll be able to release it. As far as our strategy is concerned we’re going to be driving this from the Google marketplace. We’re going to use the Intel AppUp program to reach out to developers to start optimizing applications around these new capabilities. 

When it comes to buying a smartphone, will consumers have to have debates about X86 vs ARM?

For the end consumer it’s going to be less about the underlying architecture. It doesn’t really matter. Our objective is to communicate the goodness of Intel Inside. What consumers will care about is the 4-inch high-res touchscreen, the 8 megapixel camera, HDMI… these are the things consumers are going to pay attention to. For example we have the fastest processor, you can multitask in a very efficient manner and there’s also a fast web browsing experience. The gaming experience is much better than what is available in the market. 

Can you talk about Intel’s plans for Medfield phones from the world’s major manufacturers?

At CES, we announced that we’re going to go after one of the other large markets, China. We picked a lead player, Lenovo. We also announced a multi-year worldwide partnership with Motorola, so you should expect products based on our architecture from Motorola later in the year. They will obviously go after volume markets: Western Europe, the U.S, China and India. 

In conclusion, how was your experience at this year’s Mobile World Congress?

I think it’s quite clear that the computing part of the phone business is happening. That’s very evident. Sheer connectivity and the path from 3G to 4G is in its early stages. The initial technology being delivered in mobile form factors for 4G is starting to become real. The third thing has got to do with the whole explosion around applications. And the other takeaway is how hardware intensive the whole smartphone game is becoming in terms of display quality and how performance intensive these products are becoming, and that goes back to my first point as well.

How to - Install the Windows 8 Consumer Preview

The next big OS from Microsoft is almost ready and we’ve been anticipating its arrival for a while now. So, the final release is still sometime away, from release but the second major preview that was expected early this year is here. MWC 2012 is almost over and Microsoft has gone ahead and opened up the gates for users to download and try out the new platform.

The first open build - the Windows 8 Developer Preview was made available for download in September 2011. The Windows 8 Consumer Preview is a more refined build and is something that should be functional till early 2013. So, let’s quickly look at how to download and install the operating system on your PC. We’ll start by first explaining how to install Windows 8 on a clean system and then, also how to upgrade your Windows 7 operating system to Windows 8 without losing too many settings.

However, before starting, we suggest you backup any important data and applications just in case.

Download Windows 8 Consumer Preview
The first step is of course, to download the operating system. Microsoft has setup a download page from where you can download a tool that will check your hardware and software to see if they’re compatible with Windows 8. If you want more information on the system requirements for Windows 8, head over to one of our news story on the official availability of the preview. The tool then downloads Windows 8 for you. You also have the option to download disc images (ISO images) and burn them on a disc and install it. There are 32-bit and 64-bit builds available on this page. Microsoft has also provided a serial key that can be used to install the operating system.

Burn a copy of Windows 8 on a DVD
Once you’ve downloaded the ISO file, burn it using a disc burning software. If you don’t have one installed, you can always use the default Windows Disc Image Burner that’s part of Windows 7, for example. If you don’t have one, you can download a copy of CDBurnerXP  for free. Microsoft offers other options for installing Windows 8 off a USB stick using their USB/DVD tool. Once you’ve chosen how you want to install Windows 8, the process is pretty common and straight forward. In fact, many of the initial steps are similar to Windows 7.

Downloading Windows 8 from the Microsoft site

In the case of a clean install, the entire hard drive or at least, one partition ought to be free. Microsoft recommends 16GB of free space if you’re installing the 32-bit version and 20GB if you opt for the 64-bit version.

Setup from an existing Windows installation
If you're doing a clean install of Windows 8, skip this. But assuming that you have Windows already installed, simply insert the burnt DVD and open Windows Explorer. If you have Autorun enabled, the installation setup should start automatically. If it doesn't, double click on the setup.exe in the DVD. The installation will ask you whether you'd like to update the installation before it begins. If you don't want to do this, you can click the Skip button.

Keeping existing Windows settings and data

Next, enter the product key provided by Microsoft on their download page. The next step is to choose which items from the existing Windows installation you’d like to keep. Choose one of the following and click Next. The user has the option to save Windows settings and personal documents or just personal documents. If you do not want to save anything, you have the option to do that too. The installation will then begin.

Samsung SCX-4321 SPECIFICATIONs

Printer Type
Printer Type	Colour Laser
Network Ready
Scanner Features
Maximum Horizontal Resolution	600
Maximum Vertical Resolution	600
Print Speed
First Copy Out Time ( FCOT)	11
Black Print Speed (ppm)	20
Colour Print Speed (ppm)	No Information
Print Speed - Black Graphic	No Information
Print Speed - Colour Graphic	No Information
Media Handling
Input (Plain Paper)	150
Maximum Paper Size	A4
Manual Feed	Yes
Duty Cycle	4200
Original consumables
Toner Type	No Information
Black Toner Cartridge (Print Capacity)	No Information
Colour Toner Cartridge (Print Capacity)	No Information
Colour Toner Cartridge	No Information
Connectivity
Parallel Port	Yes
Optional
USB Port	Yes
WiFi / Bluetooth Support
Memory / Buffer
Built in RAM Upgradeable	16
Environment
Relative Humidity
Noise Levels	49
Power
Power Consumption per Hr (Operating )
Power Requirement
Power Consumption (Standby) per Hr
Operating System
Operating System
Dimensions
Width	438
Depth	374
Height	368
Weight	10.4
More Features
Unique Feature
After Sales Service
Warranty Period	1