A neighbourhood-friendly App in Nokia phones

Want to know the nearest restaurant or transport facility available in your neighbourhood?

The City Lens augmented reality browser on Nokia’s Lumia (Microsoft Windows) and Belle (Symbian) devices are a guide to everyday needs. It allows the user to explore options in food, hotel, shopping, landmarks, transport and entertainment.

Available at Nokia Beta Labs, the App has data from 196 countries, including India, and for nearly 2,000 cities and towns in India. The user has to choose from the options: food, hotel and landmarks, and point the device in the direction of search. A list of the places available in the direction comes on the screen with details of distance. When the specific place is chosen, the address, photos, reviews, and directions to reach the place are available. There are multiple sources for data collection in each city for this feature, apart from the Nokia points of interest.

Another feature available on Lumia phones is public transport. The feature is available for 11 Indian cities now. Only the schedules of public transport are available. In other countries, real-time update of the transport service is available. For instance, when details of the destination and the current location are entered, a point-to-point information on public transport is available. It also provides different modes of public transport and real-time update of the schedule.

(The correspondent was at Nokia’s design studio in Helsinki recently on invitation by the company).

Samsung may unveil Galaxy Note successor in August

It's been likened to a piece of toast, a device for elephants and a throwback to the 1980s-style brick phone.

And yet, despite all the sniggering, Samsung Electronics has sold over 5 million of the phone/tablet Galaxy Note.

More than a freak hit, consumer and design experts believe the surprise success of the "phablet" marks a deeper shift in the fast-paced world of mobile devices.

The most obvious thing about the Note is its size. Its 5.3 inch (13.5 cm) screen is almost as wide as the iPhone's screen is long. And then there's the stylus.

Where Apple's co-founder, the late Steve Jobs famously ridiculed the idea of using a pen to interact with a screen, Samsung has partnered with Japan's Wacom Co Ltd, a market leader in digital pen technology, to come up with something less clunky.

There's good news for Samsung Galaxy Note fans. Fresh reports quote sources "familiar with the matter" that the Note 2 may be unveiled in late August at this year's IFA in Berlin, with an October launch date.

The rumoured specs include a 5.5-inch display, a quad-core processor, a 12+ megapixel camera and, of course, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

Malware threat: How to avoid losing Internet access tomorrow

About a quarter-million computer users around the world are at risk of losing Internet access on Monday because of malicious software at the heart of a hacking scam that US authorities shut down last November.
The software found its way into thousands of computers worldwide last year. It redirect users away from trusted websites, towards spoof websites in a bid to steal financial and personal information. When the attack was noticed, the FBI routed infected machines through its server to stop the attacks.
But the servers will be taken down 9 July. When this happens, computers still infected are likely to lose their internet connection without warning. Warnings about the problem have been splashed across Facebook and Google, and the FBI has set up a special website.
So how to tell if you’re computer is infected and how to fix it ? Here are few must-take steps. For details you can click here. The DCWG or DNS Changer Working Group is working to ensure that those who were infected don’t lose access to the Internet on Monday.
So how can you check if your computer is infected? For Windows 7 users, there are few simple steps they can follow:
• Go to the “Start” icon and type cmd, which is the DOS Command prompt.
• Type ipconfig /allcompartments /all and hit enter. In some cases ipconfig /all should also work, but might not list all the routing compartments if you have a VPN setup in Windows 7.
The output will be very long, since Windows7 by default has support for IPv6. Look for the IPv4 information under the section entitled Ethernet adapter. Check out DNS Servers line, and write down these numbers. There may be two IP addresses listed there.
• The DCWG site has a list of infected DNS numbers on their site at this page. If they match up then, it means your computer has been infected. If not, then you needn’t take any steps as you won’t be affected by DNS change servers shutting down.
What to do in case you computer is infected?
• The DCWG site recommends that you make a back up of all your important files.
• The site has a list of “self help” malware clean up guides which will remove the malware. For more links you can click here.
• Some sites you can access are: Hitman Pro (32bit and 64bit versions), Kaspersky Labs TDSSKiller, McAfee Stinger,   Microsoft Windows Defender Offline.
The DCWG site warns that Changing DNS is only one of the functions of the malware kits. The malware could have been used for capturing keystrokes or acting as a proxy for traffic to sensitive sites like bank accounts or social media. It would be a good idea to check your bank statements and credit reports as well as change passwords on any online accounts especially saved passwords from your applications or web browsers.

Nokia 808 Pure view to be launched in India

After the global launch in February this year, Nokia 808 Pureview is all set to capture the Indian smartphone market on June 13. The phone has revolutionized the high-end mobile imaging technology with 41-mega pixel camera.
Nokia 808 Pureview, has already been appraised a lot globally and has received Best Mobile Device at Mobile World Congress 2012 and an award for Best Imaging Innovation for 2012 from the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA).
The smartphone is crafted with a large, high-resolution 41 megapixel sensor with high-performance Carl Zeiss optics and new pixel oversampling technology and an ability to capture a high quality image, then zoom, reframe, crop and resize.
The Nokia 808 PureView also features full HD 1080p video recording and playback with 4X lossless zoom. The phone has Nokia Rich Recording facility that enables you audio recording of CD quality.
Dolby Headphone technology in the phone gives you an experience of personal surround sound with the headphone and Dolby Digital Plus for 5.1 channel surround sound playback.

Motorola launches two smartphones

Motorola has introduced two new mid-range Android smartphones - Defy XT and Defy Mini, in India. Sporting the water-resistant body, both these Defy series handsets come in candy bar form factor and feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 series processor. The Motorola Defy XT is a mid-range smartphone that will retail at the recommended price of Rs 16, 190 while the Defy Mini is the entry level Dual-SIM handset to retail at a recommended price of Rs 11, 490.
Perfectly suited for the Indian users and environments, both these handsets come with Android 2.3 Gingerbread running with the MotoSwitch 2.0 user interface. The new MotoSwitch 2.0 UI learns from the way user uses the phone and adapts to provide better options.

Sony to launch smartwatch in India

Sony India has announced the launch of Sony smartwatch in India by the end of this month. The watch will feature an OLED colour display, which will come with different colour straps. Through your smartwatch you can read SMS, email, social networking updates from Twitter and Facebook. Moreover, the watch also provides you the facility of calendar reminder. The features of the phone synchronises with your Android phone too. In addition to that, you can accept, reject and mute calls through Bluetooth headset.
One of the best thing with this smartwatch will be you don?t have to own a Sony branded phone to use it as it syncs with other Android phones as well. Since, the watch is Android based, hence you can port other android applications other that provided by sony. The syncing is done over Bluetooth 3.0.
                                                      

Nokia Maps to give real-time traffic

The 'Traffic feature' - available for both Symbian and Windows Phone users - can be accessed by updating the Maps installed on the handset. The service is powered by Navteq Traffic Pro.