Your Smartphone Is Going To Have A Major Change Soon – Keep Your Eyes Open!

An Indian-origin scientist and his team is working to make smartphones function better. The team is adapting accelerometers, Global Positioning System (GPS) chips, gyroscopes and other sensors which will help smartphones study a user's mood, remove passwords and protect monetary transactions too.

The team is being led by Nitesh Saxena at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and they are working on an innovation that will become your favourite device soon. Saxena is the director of the Spies lab at the university and the team is pulling together data from accelerometers, gyroscopes and proximity sensors to chart the characteristic gestures that are generated by a user while answering a call or clicking a selfie.

Once your moves are understood by the software it can unlock your phone automatically or freeze it if the phone goes in wrong hands. As revealed by Saxena, the system will tap into user interactions with multiple connected devices like Google Glass and Apple Watch and this system is more secure too. The new smartphones will be able to measure temperature, humidity and barometric pressure too. All these readings will help a secure log-in to your computer and make passwords obsolete too.

The “Zero-interaction” authentication systems operate like the keyless entry. Saxena's team has also found out that readings from multiple sensors, including GPS, audio, temperature and altitude can actually hinder attacks. An Android based app has been developed, called BlueProximity++, that will use the readings to unlock devices instantly and securely as soon as the phone gets within the range.

The financial transactions can also be protected as the team has developed a countermeasure to verify the payment request. The system will use signals from a combination of sensors, like nearby WiFi hotspots and their signal strengths, and short audio snippets too that are captured by the phone's microphone.


 Courtesy:- EFYTIMES News Network

A Smartphone Announced That Would Not Intrude Into Your Personal Space

Is your personal life too much intruded by your smartphone? Then you can hope for a better hassle-free smartphone soon that will keep you connected without unnecessary intrusion.

Monohm Inc. has announced a device called Runcible which is modelled on the pocket watch. The device boasts of high resolution, round screen and it is a high performance phone too. It has a high-end camera too and it lets users refocus their attention on the real world much more. In a statement, Monohm Inc CEO and co-founder Aubrey Anderson has said that people are looking for something that will allow them control their digital lives in simpler ways.

Smartphones are usually invasive and commodified and Runcible is a good alternative too. Usually the app-centric approach of smartphones distract us from our lives instead of helping us leading better lives, as stated by Anderson. Runcible is built around Mozilla's open-source Firefox OS and KDDI Corporation is the first carrier partnership for the new smartphone. Runcible's operating system is based on Open Web standards. Runcible users can access the power of the web to command and control the growing number of IoT devices as well as other connected things around us.

Smartphones normally become obsolete within two to three years of launch, but this device's parts can be removed, repaired and upgraded, which means the device can be used for decades. Runcible never interrupts us with a beep or an alert and it helps users to stay focused all the time. The device will be made available by the end of 2015. 


Courtesy:- EFYTIMES News Network

Google To Introduce Paid Search Results In Google Play

Google is now planning to bring paid search results in its app store Google Play. This service is going to be similar to sponsored results from the web search to Play Store search. The company has shared that the testing of paid search results will be tested in the coming weeks. Apart from bringing revenue for the company, the paid results will also help the developers promote their apps.

Michael Siliski, product management director at Google Play wrote in a blog post, “App discovery plays a critical role in driving your continued success, and over the past year Google has provided best practices to enhance app discovery and engagement, as well as app promotion tools to get the most out of search and display advertising for developers. We are always looking for new ways to help you get your apps in front of potential new users. That’s why, in the next few weeks, we will begin piloting sponsored search results on Google Play, bringing our unique expertise in search ads to the store.”

According to Google, the sponsored results will be available only to a set of consumers and advertisers at the initial stage. After a few months, Google will evaluate the adoption of the paid results and feedback of the users and will take a final call on whether paid results will bring any benefit to Google Play. 


Courtesy:- EFYTIMES News Network

Internet Speed Reaches New High – 1 Tbps With 5G Data Connection

U.K. researchers have made a new record as testing of 5G data connections have showed that it can offer speed up to 1 Tbps. Researchers at the University of Surrey's 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC) managed speeds of 1 Tbps which is basically thousand times faster than the currently available data connections.

If the Internet speed is 1Tbps, it would mean that a file, which is 100 times the size of a feature film, can be downloaded in just three seconds. The speed is more than 65,000 times faster than average 4G download speeds, as reported by BBC News. Earlier, Samsung Electronics had set a 5G speed record at 7.5Gbps, which is 1 per cent lesser than the Surrey team's research results.

According to 5GIC director professor Rahim Tafazolli, ten more advanced technologies have been developed by the team too and one of them would allow exceeding the speed of 1 Tbps wirelessly. Fibreoptics also offers the same capacity but the team has successfully done it wirelessly. The tests have been conducted in lab conditions over a distance of 100 meters, as reported by a news website V3. Now we wonder if the speeds can actually be implemented in the real-world conditions. Tafazolli hopes to showcase the technology in public in 2018. 



Courtesy:- EFYTIMES News Network

LibreOffice 4.4.1 Released With More Than 100 Fixes

The Document Foundation has announced the first maintenance release of the stable LibreOffice 4.4, that is an open-source and multi-platform suite. The new updated release is available for download too. LibreOffice 4.4.1 release introduces some minor fixes so that office suite stays stable and dependable on all platforms.

According to the official announcement, LibreOffice 4.4.1 fixes more than 100 bugs which were discovered by developers as well as users in the previous release, LibreOffice 4.4 “Fresh”. It was announced at the end of January 2015 and it was said to be the most beautiful LibreOffice ever.

The press release by The Document Foundation says, “The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.4.1, the first minor release of LibreOffice 4.4 'fresh' family, with over 100 fixes over LibreOffice 4.4.0. The release represents the combined effort of the over 900 developers attracted by the project since September 2010, with at least three new developers joining the project for 60 months in a row.”

The press release further says that LibreOffice 4.4.1 and LibreOffice 4.3.6 can be downloaded from http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. 

Courtesy:- EFYTIMES News Network

WhatsApp Web Can Now Be Accessed On Firefox And Opera Browsers Too!

WhatsApp Web has increased its reach far and wide and can now be accessed on Firefox and Opera browsers too. The web version of WhatsApp was initially launched only for Chrome browser. As of now, Internet Explorer is the only major browser that the app doesn't support and we are unsure when the makers will introduce WhatsApp for IE.

 


WhatsApp Web can also be accessed on Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry platforms as well. WhatsApp has also been in the news for rolling out the voice-call support. The makers have not revealed any plans for a broad roll-out, but they have intermittently released voice-call feature to select users over the last few days. With this feature, users can invite their friends by calling them, but one doesn't know when is the official launch happening. 

Voice-calling is one major feature coming on WhatsApp and the company is testing it rigorously these days, to check whether it is fit for the prime-time. 

Courtesy:- EFYTIMES News Network

Apple Watch May Use 30 Per Cent Of World's Gold: Report

If reports hold any truth, Apple Watch will use as much as one-third of the entire gold supply of the world. A report from TidBits, Apple will reportedly use about 746 metric tonnes of gold per year to produce one million units of Apple Watch Edition per month. Globally, about 2,500 metric tonnes of gold are mined in a year.

The report is completely based on rumours and speculations. So, for now, just take it with a pinch of salt. But, we assume that Apple will buy the supplies in bulk, as it does always, to bring down costs and stifle competition. The super-luxury Apple Watch edition made up of gold will cost about $10,000.

Apple Watch Edition will reportedly come with a casing made up of 18 carat gold. Each watch is likely to use 62.2grams of gold, claims the report. Going by these parameters, the total gold that will be used used by Apple would roughly be around roughly 746 metric tonnes, almost 30 of the total gold mined across the globe. 


Courtesy:- EFYTIMES News Network