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