Knowledge Bytes ! !

There were already signs that Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone app market might be a bit more lively than expected before Apple’s (AAPL) big patent win over Samsung (005930). Now, the threat of U.S. handset sales injunctions and possible new litigation against HTC (2498), Sony (SNE), LG (066570) and other Android vendors could give Windows Phone some extra oomph. In a recent Vision Mobile study, 37% of the app developers polled were currently using Microsoft’s mobile platform. This was well below Android at 76% and iOS at 66%, but it already tops BlackBerry OS at 34%. Implausibly, 57% of developers said they were planning to adopt Windows Phone in the future. Windows Phone crossed the 100,000 app threshold in June 2012. The number lags far behind the iOS App Store, which now tops 700,000. But Windows Phone hit the 100,000 mark in 20 months – four months faster than Android and four months slower than iOS. That isn’t half bad. Anecdotally, several app developers have rece

Block Websites from appearing in your Google Search Results Google has been getting better at identifying and removing spam websites from their search results pages but sometimes not-so-useful sites do manage to slip through the Google filters. What can you do to prevent such sites from appearing in your Google results? → Approach #1: Block Sites at the Browser Level  Google offers an easy-to-use Chrome add-on called Personal Blocklist that lets you block entire web domains from showing up in your Google search results. If you spot any irrelevant website in search results pages, just click the block link (screenshot below) and all pages from that website will be hidden from your Google results forever. The Chrome add-on implements client-side filtering – the blocked websites are still getting served in Google search results as before and the add-on simply hides them on your screen using CSS. A limitation with this approach is that it works only inside Google Ch

W ith the Nokia World event just around the corner, reports of the brand’s upcoming smartphones appear to be trickling in. A handset that had been mention before, named Phi, has surfaced once more and this time noted tech blogger Eldar Murtazin reveals some information on the Nokia Windows Phone 8 device, a report by  Obozrevatel.com  states. The Russian blogger has revealed in a conversation with the website that this Windows Phone 8 device currently goes under the codename Phi and is made up of a similar unibody design that is presently found on the Lumia 800 and Lumia 900 devices from Nokia. The major point he mentioned was that it was thinner and larger in comparison to these existing handsets.  Eldar Murtazin says that the display of the handset will be 4.7-inches and commenting on the AMOLED display, he goes on to state, “The screen is very nice, with no points or complaints possible against it.” The blogger goes on to mention other features of this handset as well and sta

As blogger Eric Mack points out in his post today, taking pot shots at our friends to the north has practically become a national pastime, rivaling baseball -- or hockey, depending on which side of the border you’re on. But Mack is not ready to count RIM out. In his blog titled “RIM's secret weapon is actually pretty cool,” Mack points out that the maker of BlackBerry smartphones and related software may still have a trick or two up its Canadian sleeve. RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system, though late, may still pack a wallop, Mack suggests, by virtue of its built-in abilities to talk securely to embedded systems in cars, and beyond. The capabilities are related to RIM’s acquisition of the embedded OS called QNX, which will form the basis of the BB 10 system. In an editorial published Tuesday in Canada's Globe and Mail , RIM’s new CEO Thorsten Heins insisted that even though it won’t ship until 2013 now, the new OS is worth waiting for. Unlike existing m

Nokia is set to announce two Windows Phone 8 smartphones at its September 5 event in New York. The Verge is reporting the two smartphones will be the Arrow and Phi (internal codenames) and will be branded under Nokia’s Lumia range. The Phi is expected to be the higher-end device, which could be the one that surfaced a few weeks ago. It is expected to be thinner than the Lumia 900 and sport a 4.7-inch display. Microsoft and Nokia are said to unveil the final design on September 5 but it is likely to have the typical polycarbonate casing that is similar to the Lumia 900 and Lumia 800. The Arrow will be a mid-end smartphone but little is known about it.

Let’s admit it, Microsoft is gearing up for one hell of a year. The company has adopted a new design language, formerly known as Metro, through out its entire product line up. It is only apt that now this very design language is trickling down to the company’s official logo. This change comes 25 years after Microsoft had unveiled it previous logo. The new logo integrates a multi-color Windows logo as well, that also highlights the fact that Windows is the flagship product for Microsoft. Clearly this is the biggest year in the history of Microsoft and we are seeing an unprecedented level of integration in its entire product line. All products including Windows, Windows Phone, Office, Outlook.com , Skydrive, Xbox and Windows Azure are in for a revamp and the adoption of the new ‘Metro’ like logo is seem like the final culmination of this integration.

Nasa's Curiosity rover has zapped its first Martian rock. The robot fired its ChemCam laser at a tennis-ball-sized stone lying about 2.5m away on the ground. The brief but powerful burst of light from the instrument vapourised the surface of the rock, revealing details of its basic chemistry. This was just target practice for ChemCam , proving it is ready to begin the serious business of investigating the geology of the Red Planet. It is part of a suite of instruments on the one-tonne robot, which landed two weeks ago in a deep equatorial depression known as Gale Crater. Over the course of one Martian year, Curiosity will try to determine whether past environments at its touchdown location could ever have supported life. The US-French ChemCam instrument will be a critical part of that investigation, helping to select the most interesting objects for study. The inaugural target of the laser was a 7cm-wide rock dubbed "Coronation" (previously N165

QR or Quick Response codes are handy little barcodesthat can store data like numbers, websites and text. They've been used in many boring ways before, but now ET show you some offbeat and fun ways to use them to your advantage. Reminders for friends/family Do people complain about your handwriting? Instead of leaving handwritten reminders or notes, you can generate a QR code with a reminder message that you want to convey to friends or family. Create your QR code using one of the listed services in the box, print it and place it somewhere with high visibility (like the fridge). Anyone can quickly scan the QR code using a phone or tablet to view the reminder on their screen. Use them as clues for a treasure hunt A treasure hunt normally has a series of clues which leads to a final treasure — in this case, you can replace the text clues with printed QR codes to make a 'geeky' treasure hunt. To make things harder as the hunt progresses, the initi

A new threat targeting infrastructure in the energy industry has been uncovered by security specialists. The attack, known as Shamoon, is said to have hit "at least one organisation" in the sector. Shamoon is capable of wiping files and rendering several computers on a network unusable. On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia's national oil company said an attack had led to its own network being taken offline. Although Saudi Aramco did not link the issue to the Shamoon threat, it did confirm that the company had suffered a "sudden disruption". In a statement , the company said it had now isolated its computer networks as a precautionary measure. The disruptions were "suspected to be the result of a virus that had infected personal workstations without affecting the primary components of the network", a statement read. It said the attack had had "no impact whatsoever" on production operations. Rendered unusable On Thursday,

The 2012 London Olympics have come and gone. The celebrations were beautiful and we cheered for our teams and our favourite athletes and now it is time to look away from the television screens and then weep at our growing pot bellies . And the tech-savvy crowd generally does not have the perception of being too fit. But not to worry, advances in personal technologycan help you get that ripped bodies that you've always wanted, or try to anyway. Here we look at some of the mobile apps that can help you in your personal fitness regimens. Nike+ running app Nike has understood its market. They're not just about making shoes anymore. They want to offer fitness. And they have developed an entire range of products to make technology work for you. The Nike+ running app, out of all the running apps in the market, seems to be the most popular, and it is available for iOS and Android devices. According to the Google Play store, the app has been downloaded over million times

In Dubai next month, 50-year-old telecom entrepreneurSunil Tagare will pitch a new cable project — his third — to telecom carriers from around the world. In the late 1980s and early '90s, Tagare, then with US telecom company Nynex (now Verizon), helped implement the giant 28,000-km FLAG cable system which was the first privately financed submarine optic fibre cable network. FLAG, now owned by Anil Ambani's RCom, remains one of the cornerstones of the global telecom network, moving phone calls and internet pages across the world, from Singapore to Europe to the US. It's too early to talk of success or failure for Tagare's latest project — and even if it does take off, any new cable venture will only add to a decade-long global oversupply of bandwidth. Prices of bandwidth in the past five years, in a key market like London, have fallen by an average of 31% every year, according toTelegeography, a telecoms consultancy. In response, prices for retail customer

A new computer virus, dubbed Gauss, has been discovered in the Middle East. Researchers say can it steal banking credentials and hijack login information for social networking sites, email and instant messaging accounts. Cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab said Gauss is the work of the same "factory" or "factories" that built the Stuxnet worm, which attacked Iran's nuclear program. Here are some key facts about Gauss, according to Kaspersky Lab. What is its purpose?  Gauss is a surveillance tool. It steals credentials for hacking online banking systems, social networking sites and email accounts; it also gathers information about infected PCs, including web browsing history, system passwords and the contents of disk drives. Can it do anything else?  There is a mysterious module, known as Godel, that copies malicious code onto USB drives when they are plugged into infected PCs. Godel's purpose is unknown because some of its code i

Social media has changed the way people communicate. Maybe older people complain that it has replaced the good ol’ fashion “tea party”, so to speak. Most people these days own a smartphone, and if they don’t, then they at least have access to the internet. Because of this, the simplest way to contact a friend is to ping them on one of the many social networks they belong to. I remember my introduction to social media. I was about 12 or 13, and America Online was still the primary method used to connect to the internet. I would spend hours playing on bolt.com , a social networking site started by a community of teenagers. It was through that site that I met my first online crush (whom I have never forgotten to this day). Unfortunately, the site only lasted for 13 years before shutting down. It is not uncommon for such a site to loose their standing on the internet. There is always something bigger and better that comes along. In the case of bolt, the next big thing t

T he Google I/O 2012 conference brought us a whole bunch of new stuff from the software giant. But who can argue with the fact that the service that made it this massive company is also the one thing we're all so dependent on - Google’s search engine. It’s quick, it gives you the information you need and there’s a huge environment built around the search engine that we’ve all gotten so used to.  However, there are some downsides that aren’t very apparent, but they exist. Google’s search engine uses a certain algorithm and there’s a system which prioritizes sites based on how reputed a site is, along with a bunch of other variables that ensue in the background.  Now, what if you were looking for information on photography tips for a particular camera, say a new Nikon D3200 DSLR, you might find reviews and information about the D3200 on the popular sites, because it’s a popular product, not you might not necessarily find the best techniques and details you’re looking for. That