BlackBerry Unveils The Torch 9850/9860 Smartphone

BlackBerry Unveils The Torch 9850/9860 Smartphone: "

Research In Motion (RIM) has finally unveiled the much-awaited BlackBerry Torch 9850/9860 smartphone. This handset is the successor of the BlackBerry Storm 2. The Torch 9850/9860 runs on the latest BlackBerry 7 Operating System. This handset was originally called as the Storm 3, but it has been renamed to Torch 9850/9860. The BlackBerry Torch 9850 will work with the CDMA carriers and the Torch 9860 will work with GSM carriers. The BlackBerry Torch 9860 will be exclusively available to the AT&T customers in the US. Check out the complete specs below.

“BlackBerry customers are passionate about their smartphones – and they know to come to AT&T for the best choice,” said Jeff Bradley, senior vice president, Devices, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. “From being the first carrier to offer the BlackBerry solution in 1999 to the broadest lineup of 4G-capable BlackBerry smartphones this year, we’ll continue to offer our customers the leading BlackBerry portfolio in the U.S.”

BlackBerry Torch 9850/9860 Specifications:

• 3.7 inch TFT LCD display
• 800 x 480 pixels resolution
• 1.2 GHz Processor
• BlackBerry 7 OS
• Optical trackpad
• On screen QWERTY keyboard
• 5 megapixel camera with flash
• 4X digital zoom
• Continuous auto focus
• HD (720p) video recording
• Built-in GPS functionality
• BlackBerry Maps
• 768 MB RAM memory
• 4 GB eMMC
• microSD card slot
• 32 GB expandable memory
• Dedicated Camera and Lock Keys
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
• 4G Connectivity
• Bluetooth 2.1
• Up to 6.8 hours Talk time
• Up to 13.9 days Standby time
• Up to 44 hours of Music playback
• Up to 6.6 hours of Video playback
• 1230 mAh lithium-ion battery

BlackBerry Torch 9810 comes with the premium version of Documents To Go, which offers powerful document editing features as well as a native PDF document viewer. The price of this handset has not been announced yet. This handset is expected to release by the end of this month.

Share: Comment on This Post | Tweet This | Share on Facebook | Save to Delicious | Stumble This | Digg This | Reddit This

TAGS: Blackberry, BlackBerry OS 7, BlackBerry Torch 9850, BlackBerry Torch 9860

BlackBerry Unveils The Torch 9850/9860 Smartphone originally appeared on Techie Buzz written by Omkar Dutta on Thursday 4th August 2011 03:31:53 AM under Mobile News. Please read the Terms of Use for fair usage guidance.

"

Gmail’s Preview Pane Makes it Look More Like A Desktop Email Client

Gmail’s Preview Pane Makes it Look More Like A Desktop Email Client: "

I am more of a browser person and never felt the need of a desktop email client like Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird. These email clients have so many features but the one I have always liked and envied is the 3 way scrolling pane in Microsoft Outlook. All messages are lined up in one pane while you can preview a specific message in it’s dedicated preview pane. The third pane lets you navigate around your inbox, jump to a label and access other options.

This helps you save time as you don’t have to jump back and forth between messages and recursively refresh your inbox folder. You can quickly preview a message, reply to it and preview another one in fewer clicks.

Some good news for Gmail users, this feature is now available in Gmail labs and after you activate the preview pane Gmail labs feature from Gmail > Settings > Labs, your inbox should look something like this:

Few days back, Google introduced inbox styles which lets you choose a specific style for your Gmail inbox. It’s about time they have realized the frustration of folks like me who have to deal with dozens of email every single day.

With the 3 way pane setup, I am never really out of the inbox and can read and reply to messages directly from the inbox. The selected message open up in a new pane while existing messages from a label are accessible from the middle one. This also helps in better organization and I can refer to the headline and date of an earlier message while I am rushing out on a reply. Sweet!

You can either choose a vertical pane or a horizontal one cy clicking the small arrow icon at the right top corner of Gmail inbox. I will stick to the vertical pane as it produces an effect close to “Windows Live mail”  desktop client.

All other Gmail labs features e.g keyboard shortcuts will continue to work in the split view. And this labs feature is not limited to the new Gmail theme by any means.

I must mention that preview pane looks a bit ugly in Firefox 5, with scrollbars and all. At least for me, it is ugly.

Looks like Google’s non verbal communication is going strong with each day – “Switch to Google Chrome, will you? We have also ditched Google toolbar for Firefox.”

Share: Comment on This Post | Tweet This | Share on Facebook | Save to Delicious | Stumble This | Digg This | Reddit This

TAGS: Gmail, Google News

Gmail’s Preview Pane Makes it Look More Like A Desktop Email Client originally appeared on Techie Buzz written by Amit Banerjee on Thursday 4th August 2011 08:37:10 PM under Tech News. Please read the Terms of Use for fair usage guidance.

"

Early Earth Might Have Had Two Moons, Which Collided To Form One

Early Earth Might Have Had Two Moons, Which Collided To Form One: "

Imagine that the full moon night had two moons instead of one, making it doubly romantic! If you could somehow magically survive in the volcanic early Earth, then you would have been able to play the perfect Romeo. Scientists think that the early Earth had two moons, which collided and fused to make the one that we see today.

This startling new revelation comes from the fact that the two sides of the moon – the one facing us and the “dark side” – have very different landscapes. The dark side is so called because we just cannot see it, even though it is just as lit as the visible side.

Lunar Apocalypse?

The tell-tale marks, or lack of them

The visible side has flat expansive plains, called ‘maria’ (meaning ‘sea’ in Latin), while the far side is mountainous, with mountains as high as 2 km. Simulations, trying to explain this discrepancy, now point to the earlier presence of a second moon, which might have slammed into the larger one, producing the maria and giving the features of the moon we see today. This is further backed up by known observations that the lunar crust on the near side has more phosphorus and radioactive elements of potassium (the radioactive isotope), uranium and thorium. On the far side, as far as we know, they do not occur or are deeply embedded in the surface. This can be explained by noting that impact could have melted a part of the near side, allowing for hidden elements to rise to the surface. The companion body is calculated to have been just 4% as massive as the bigger moon and about 750 miles across.

The Simulation done, which shows the collision (Credit: Asphaug and Martin Jutzi, Bern University, Switzerland)

The stability of the companion body: why it crashed into the bigger moon

There is also another explanation that is required: why the companion moon crashed into its larger partner. Asked to a physicist, this implies a stability problem and the underlying question involved asking about why instability crept into the system. There are points in the space around any celestial body orbiting another celestial body, where the gravitational attractions of the two bodies cancel each other out. These points are stable points and are known as ‘Lagrangian points’. There is two Lagrangian points in the current Earth-Moon system, one just in front of the moon and one just behind it. It is conjectured (and can be calculated via lengthy calculations using Newton’s gravity law) that the early Earth-two Moon system also had Lagrangian points just in front and behind the bigger moon. The companion moon would’ve nested itself in and around that Lagrangian point. When the moon moved away from the Earth (which is still happening due to the presence of tidal forces), the stable Lagrangian points also shifted. This led to the destabilizing of the orbit of the smaller moon, which then crashed into the nearby large body.

Explaining the dark side of the moon

Even though slightly off-topic, it is worth mentioning that the equality of the periods of orbital and axial spins of the moon is due to the energy loss mechanism due to tides. The most efficient way to distribute energy in the Earth-Moon system, given that the energy dissipation from the entire system is miniscule, is by having the period of the moon around the Earth and on its own axis as identically same. This, remember, leads to the dark side phenomenon. The enigmatic dark side, which has even inspired great music (Pink Floyd, anyone?),  is closely related to tides.

Asphaug and Martin Jutzi of University of Bern, Switzerland, who are responsible for coming up with the calculations and simulations, published their findings in the August 4 issue of Nature.

Share: Comment on This Post | Tweet This | Share on Facebook | Save to Delicious | Stumble This | Digg This | Reddit This

TAGS: Moon, Space

Early Earth Might Have Had Two Moons, Which Collided To Form One originally appeared on Techie Buzz written by Debjyoti Bardhan on Friday 5th August 2011 04:32:50 AM under Science. Please read the Terms of Use for fair usage guidance.

"

Sony introduces new Vaio Z laptop in the U.S., includes dock with external AMD graphics card

Sony introduces new Vaio Z laptop in the U.S., includes dock with external AMD graphics card: "

When we last saw the Sony Vaio Z laptop, all 2.5 pounds of it, it was available in United Kingdom, but now it’s made its way across the pond. Starting for a shade under $2,000, the 13.1-inch ultraportable notebook comes complete with the Power Media Dock, which not only includes an optical drive but also [...]

"

Windows and Desktop Software Aren’t Dead

Windows and Desktop Software Aren’t Dead: "

The ‘debacle’ of Windows Vista and the proliferation of quality Web applications had Microsoft on a sticky wicket couple of years back. Critics, and even a section of fans, wondered if Microsoft could pull off a winner in Windows 7 against the negative sentiments and the overt Apple hype and if Microsoft was doing a wise thing investing in desktop applications in the age of online productivity suites.

Well the obituary writers were clearly wrong if the numbers are any testimony. Great reviews by both consumers and businesses followed the launch of Windows 7 in October 2009, and today at the annual Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles, Steve Ballmer announced that more than 400 million Windows 7 licenses have been sold in less than two years. During the keynote, Ballmer also announced that Office 2010, shipped in June 2010, has sold over 100 million copies.

Microsoft Corp.’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) is a four-day event that celebrates the accomplishments of the company’s global partners. Steve Ballmer delivered the keynote on the first day of the event today before nearly 15,000 partners from around the globe. You can find the recording of the keynote here.

Windows is arguably the heart of the Redmond company and  Windows and Office together have traditionally been major revenue-grossers for Microsoft in the consumer as well as enterprise market. A dent in this space would’ve hurt Microsoft’s overall ecosystem. In a rough sense, an enterprise not on Windows is most likely not a customer of any of the Microsoft’s slew of server and enterprise products.

The latest numbers reveal that Microsoft is still going strong with the old workhorses – in sales, if not in the mindshare. Windows 7 is the fastest-selling operating system in history and according to a previous statement by Microsoft, 7 copies of Windows 7 sold every second. According to Net Applications, Windows 7 is now running on 27.13% of all PCs worldwide as of June 2011. Office 2010 is also the fastest-selling version of Office in history.

Share: Comment on This Post | Tweet This | Share on Facebook | Save to Delicious | Stumble This | Digg This | Reddit This

TAGS: Office 2010, Windows, Windows 7

Windows and Desktop Software Aren’t Dead originally appeared on Techie Buzz written by Abhishek Baxi on Monday 11th July 2011 07:05:01 PM under Microsoft. Please read the Terms of Use for fair usage guidance.

"

End of the Road for Microsoft Office XP and Vista SP1

End of the Road for Microsoft Office XP and Vista SP1: "

Microsoft will be retiring Office XP and Vista Service Pack 1 at the end of the day. They will be reaching the end of their support phase (extended support phase for Office XP), which means that Microsoft will stop releasing hotfixes and security updates for these products.

Office XP was released way back in May, 2001. It introduced SharePoint, Web Services integration, speech recognition and more. However, the thing for which Office XP will probably be remembered fondly by users is not a new feature. Rather it’s the omission of a feature that had characterized earlier Office releases. In 2001, Microsoft finally killed Clippy, for good.

Clippy

Vista SP1 is a much more recent offering. It was released in a phased manner during the first quarter of 2008. However, it has since been superseded by Service Pack 2 and Windows 7. Vista Service Pack 1 fixed many of the annoying bugs that Vista had originally shipped with, in addition to adding support for exFAT file system, 802.11n wireless networking, IPv6 over VPN connections.

Windows Vista SP2 will lose its mainstream support on April 10, 2012, but extended life support will last till April 11, 2017. Extended life support as well as Mainstream support entitles users to free security updates, however the former doesn’t include non-security related miscellaneous updates. Microsoft is yet to announce the support lifecycle for Windows 7.

Share: Comment on This Post | Tweet This | Share on Facebook | Save to Delicious | Stumble This | Digg This | Reddit This

TAGS: Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Windows, Windows Vista, Windows Vista SP1

End of the Road for Microsoft Office XP and Vista SP1 originally appeared on Techie Buzz written by Pallab De on Tuesday 12th July 2011 12:33:41 PM under Microsoft. Please read the Terms of Use for fair usage guidance.

"