Blackberry 10 Boot Up Screen Leaked

                                 We are already seeing different aspects of the Blackberry 10,though it will not be released before 2013. Those are proofs that Blackberry 10 is going to be quite different.However, BlackBerry 10 faces stiff competition now,and needs to have a few features that make you say, "Wow!" . Merely matching Android will not be enough for RIM.

This is allegedly the boot up screen for BlackBerry 10

Above,you can see a pivture  that shows the first "L" series model of BlackBerry 10 getting booted up. As you can tell by the percentage indicator on the screen, this is going to be a much different look than what you see booting up your BlackBerry 7 device.

Blackberry 10

                          RIM is still on track to launch BlackBerry 10 in the first quarter of 2013. And everything needs to go smoothly without a repeat of the BlackBerry Storm 9530 launch debacle that saw huge number of Verizon customers buy the device thinking that it would approach the Apple iPhone in quality and functionality. But that was under the old regime. Thorsten Heins and crew knows that this is RIM's ultimate shot at proving that Blackberry is still not gone from the mobile world.

Nokia's ESPN App Updated

                                Along with the official launch of Windows Phone 8, Nokia also updated their ESPN app .  The update mainly deals with increasing how you can be notified on scoring and news updates through the Live tile and toast notifications.

                            The update adds the ability to save and pin your favorite teams and sports to your Windows Phone Start Screen, customize the Live Tile score updates and you can now receive toast notifications for news and score updates.



                                   This update allows Nokia ESPN app keep you informed on game day when you might not be able to give the game your undivided attention. The Nokia ESPN app is an exclusive to the Nokia Lumia line of Windows Phones. It is a free app that you can find here at the Windows Phone Store or from the Nokia Collection on your Lumia Windows Phone.

Windows 8 Has Nokia Maps 2.9

The Nokia Lumia 920 is runninng Nokia Maps 2.9.Now,it is possible to update the maps from within the app itself..

Nokia Maps 2.9

                   Nokia Maps on Windows Phone 7.5 has recently introduced the synchronisation options but map performance was not the best. The Nokia Maps running on the Lumia 920 showed superb performance, and didn't have the issues with drawing the map that can sometimes be seen in Windows Phone 7 version.

Downloads

                   Clearly taking full advantage of the underlying “where” platform that Nokia embedded into Windows Phone 8 to enable these features it’s a great example of what we can expect from apps that leverage these abilities. Synchronised favourites combined with offline maps that can also update whilst on Wi-Fi is going to catapult the usefulness of mapping on Windows Phone.

Settings Nokia Maps 2.9

                          If this is final software then its looking compelling indeed and I am really excited  to find what else is in store for the Nokia Exclusives.

Adding Favourites In Internet Explorer 10

                             Internet Explorer is the default browser of Microsoft surface and the one thing that was odd  was the lack of a way to save a website as a favorite.  

                  However,as i found out that the process is rather simple. Just tap on the "pin" button and you'll find two options. First to pin the site to your Start Screen for easy access and second, to add the site as a favorite.

To access your favorites, just tap on the URL field to pull up a tile list listing of frequently visited sites as well as your favorites.

Scott Forstall To Leave Apple In 2013

                                   Apple has announced that the  senior vice-president of iOS software Scott Forstall will be retiring. Forstall will leave Apple in 2013 and till then will act as an advisor to CEO Tim Cook.




                      After he will leave,his responsibilities will be shared by four of Apple's current executives. Jony Ive, who is in charge of the Industrial Design department at Apple will now head the Human Interface department as well. This means Ive will now be in charge of the hardware as well as the software designs at Apple.
                          Meanwhile, Eddy Cue will take on responsibilities of Siri and Maps, Craig Federighi will lead both iOS and OS X and Bob Mansfield will lead a new group called Technologies that covers all the wireless teams at Apple.
                              It is said the Forstall was liked by few people within the company, least of all by Jony Ive, who apparently wouldn't even sit in the same meeting room as Forstall. According to John Gruber of Daring Fireball, Forstall's "design taste, engineering management and abrasive style, and the whole iOS 6 Maps thing" were key factors in Forstall leaving the company, or to put it bluntly, him being made to leave the company.
                         According to The Verge, Forstall's biggest mistake was him refusing to sign his name on the apology letter that Apple issued regarding the customer dissatisfaction with the new iOS 6 Maps software. He thought the complaints over the data quality were over-blown, so instead Tim Cook signed his name on the letter.
                             With Craig Federighi leading iOS and Jony Ive handling the design department, we are really looking forward to some new design innovations in iOS in the future versions. Jony Ive's minimalist design taste with the hardware is almost universally loved and we would love to see more of that in the software, with less leather and linen backgrounds. Still, we would like to give credit where it's due and would like to thank Scott Forstall for giving us one of the best mobile operating systems of all time, which was nothing short of groundbreaking at the time it came out.
              Moreover, Apple's head of Retail John Browett is also leaving Apple. Browett joined the company in January this year and was apparently not one of the best employee choices made by Apple.

Can Windows 8 Make A Difference?

                   This morning in San Francisco, Microsoft unveiled infront of us the latest iteration of its mobile OS- Windows Phone 8.  The new OS features the same minimalistic tile-based user interface we’ve come to know and love from Windows Phone 7, with some tweaks to tile sizes, layout, and animations. Especially once version 7.8 starts rolling out to the masses, it’s not going to be terribly easy to tell Windows Phone builds apart from a distance,since that resizing tiles are gonna come in 7.8

                     Windows Phone market share was still stuck below 4% at the top of October, according to ComScore. The reasons behind Microsoft’s struggle to gain place in the mobile world are many and varied, but a bad user experience isn’t one of them: Windows Phone 7 has garnered more critical praise than almost any mobile platform in memory.

                But another wave of glowing press won’t be enough to force Windows Phone into relevance. Does version 8 bring enough features to cement its position in the mobile world .Lets find out!

                I am gonna break this article into two parts -first why and how WP 8 can make a difference and second -why it can't.So lets get started.

Positive Thinking

                      Microsoft didn’t just demo family-centric features like the earlier versions of Windows. It also gave us some solid figures to get excited about. Figures like app counts: 125,000 in the Windows Marketplace. That’s 25,000 more than the company reported in June. And Microsoft is putting its focus on apps that people need the most. Windows Phone Manager Joe Belfiore’s quote might not be the event’s most elegant, but it’s ambitious and exciting: “We will be at a point where we will have 46 of the top 50 of the most heavily used apps on other platforms.”

             Moreover, big names like Pandora, are coming,which is offering a free one-year premium subscription for buyers of WP8 devices.

            Promotional deals like that put us in mind of marketing, and Microsoft has some big talk in that department. As Windows Phone continues to lag behind other platforms in mind share, Microsoft’s renewed commitment to advertising is heartening, and inspires confidence that it knows where it needs to bring the heat. 

There are many more variables at play in the Windows Phone-vs-the-world equation, and a lot of room in the market for things to go disastrously wrong -or incredibly right- for Microsoft. Whether you believe the most “beautifully different” platform in mobile will succeed or fail in version 8 will of course depend on your own choices, conceptions, and other thoughts .Fortunately, the speculation period won’t last long, because the first Windows Phone 8 devices will launch in Europe this coming weekend. 

Not so positive thinking

               

               Crucial to understanding this argument is to look at where Microsoft put its focus in this morning’s announcement. There was precious little time devoted to blockbuster, competition-crushing features; instead what we got was in-depth explorations of a few new capabilities catering to niche markets. We got to see Jessica Alba tell us all about how Kids Corner lets her rest easy knowing her four-year-old can’t bang out a nonsense-tweet to four million people. Then there is  Data Sense, a (carrier-dependent) collection of utilities devoted to saving money on data costs through smart network use and traffic compression(for those with a modest data plan). Needed,but not something new There was more talk about keeping your contacts synced across all of your devices with SkyDrive.

               Truly speaking,WP 8 is still lagging behind Android.It doesn't support the highest resolution screens,nor does it support full multitasking(which I desperately need).Infact,I was astonished that even in WP 8 they didn't add an option to close an app,the only way was to press the back button continuously until you are out of the app.Also,seriously speaking not many new and important features were added.So yeah it was a bit of gloomy at the end of the day.

                 However,it depends upon you people completely how you welcome this OS.So will you buy a WP 8 phone?

Paul Ceglia Arrested

Paul Ceglia is charged with one count of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud, each of which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

                              Federal agents arrested Paul Ceglia, a New York citizen who claims he's owed 50% of Facebook, Friday morning on charges of perpetuating a "multi-billion-dollar scheme" to defraud the company. If convicted, Ceglia can face up to 40 years in prison.

                  The move could end a bizarre saga that began in July 2010, when Ceglia filed suit in New York claiming that he paid Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to build a website similar to what became Facebook, and that they agreed to split the company. Both Facebook (FB) and founder Mark Zuckerberg have strongly denied his claims.

                          Ceglia "doctored, fabricated, and destroyed evidence to support his false claim," according to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office in New York City.The government's complaint accuses Ceglia of altering a contract and inventing emails that didn't exist.

                     Zuckerberg acknowledged signing a business contract in 2003 with Ceglia for a small programing job, one of many work-for-hire gigs that Zuckerberg accepted as a college student. But Facebook says that contact predated Facebook, which was conceived in 2004, and didn't mention the social networking site

                      The government's investigators agree. The real contract, discovered on one of Ceglia's hard drives, and "does not refer to Facebook in any fashion," according to the U.S. attorney's office.

                     Ceglia is charged with one count of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud, each of which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Federal agents arrested Ceglia Friday at his home in Wellsville, N.Y., about 90 miles south of Buffalo.

Ceglia's attorneys did not immediately reply to a request for comment. 

                      When Ceglia filed his charges in mid-2010, Facebook was caught off guard. A state court in New York's Allegany County, where the case originated, briefly froze the company's assets, while Facebook's lawyers scrambled to untangle Ceglia's claims and Zuckerberg's pre-Facebook business dealings.

Back in April 2003, Ceglia arranged to pay Zuckerberg for development work on a now-defunct site called StreetFax. Ceglia claimed the deal also covered work on a fledgling site called "the Face Book" and produced a contract to back his claim.

Government investigators say Ceglia "simply replaced page one of the real contract with a new page one doctored to make it appear as though Zuckerberg had agreed to provide Ceglia with an interest in Facebook."

              Ceglia's lawsuit got a fresh round of attention when he re-filed it in April 2011 with the backing of high-profile law firm DLA Piper (which dropped the case a few months later). The new documents included dozens of incendiary e-mails allegedly exchanged between Ceglia and Zuckerberg from July 2003 and July 2004 -- an email trail that the government says was entirely faked.