Oops! BlackBerry even worse off than it thought

More bad news for BlackBerry. The smartphone company said Wednesday that its business is in even worse shape than what it reported just a few weeks ago.

BlackBerry (BBRY) said the 4,500 employees it is laying off by the end of the year will cost $400 million -- four times as much as the company had previously expected. That's particularly bad news, since BlackBerry is racking up giant quarterly losses and rapidly burning through its cash.

The company is also quickly losing its appeal in key markets. BlackBerry said Wednesday that customers in typically loyal international markets are switching allegiances to Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android devices.
BlackBerry also said consumers are looking for devices with the largest number of apps. That's definitely not BlackBerry's forte.
Making matters even worse, BlackBerry said that its core base of corporate customers are also now looking towards greener pastures. Long delays in the BlackBerry 10 platform have angered corporate IT departments, which like to deploy new BlackBerry phones and software together.

 

How BlackBerry fell so fast

Many business professionals have been demanding Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) iPhones and Android devices for years. But BlackBerry said it was surprised by the rate at which it is losing support from corporate customers.
The company also said that uncertainty surrounding its ongoing "strategic review" impacted demand for BlackBerry smartphones -- something that should impact sales to an even greater extent now that the company has announced plans to go private.
Yet shares of BlackBerry rose more than 1% on Wednesday after The Wall Street Journal reported that private equity firm Cerberus might be interested in buying the company. Shares had previously been down by as much as 5%.
Wednesday's financial release was an update to its latest quarterly report on Friday. BlackBerry announced a $965 million quarterly loss, which included a $934 million charge for unsold BlackBerry Z10 devices, the first phone launched on the new BlackBerry 10 operating system.
BlackBerry said it delayed the full report of its numbers due to its ongoing negotiations to be taken private by Fairfax Financial, a Canadian insurance company.

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Facebook Graph Search now finds comments, status updates

Facebook announced an update to Graph Search on Monday that will enable users to search for conversation topics within status updates, comments and posts. Some users with Graph Search can now browse Facebook for topics of interest — for example, "posts about Facebook announced an update to Graph Search on Monday that will enable users to search for conversation topics within status updates, comments and posts. Some users with Graph Search can now browse Facebook for topics of interest — for example, "posts about Breaking Bad" or simply "Breaking Bad."

The update also allows users to search for posts or comments from a certain time period or location (for example, "posts by my friends from last month") or posts that they already composed or commented on.

The update makes Facebook much more conducive to real-time conversations, an area where it has been making major strides to compete with the likes of Twitter. The two social networks have been competing for eyeballs during primetime television events like the Emmys, the NFL's Monday Night Football, and Sunday's Breaking Bad finale.

When users' eyes aren't glued to the TV screen, Facebook and Twitter want them to be having conversations or voicing their opinions on their respective networks.

Opening up Graph Search to enable post and comment searches will help Facebook to do so. When a user logs into his profile during a primetime event, he can quickly scan all conversations about the game or his favorite show — even if he isn't near the top of the News Feed. If a user want to talk about an event hours (or even days) later, he can search for all relevant conversations on Facebook, something users can't easily do using Twitter.

Facebook has been working to add partnerships around live media in an attempt to fuel this social conversation. Earlier this month, the social network announced a content deal with FOX Sports to promote Facebook data and conversations alongside live NFL and college football broadcasts. Facebook has also added features like searchable hashtags and verified accounts in an attempt to make finding topics of interest easier on the platform.

Facebook reported on its Q2 earnings call that 88 to 100 million people are actively using the social network during primetime television hours — a number that Facebook advertisers will pay close attention to.

Twitter is making similar efforts ahead of the company's IPO; the company is expected to file its public IPO papers as soon as this week. Just last week, Twitter announced ad partnerships with both CBS and the NFL, which will bring real-time video into your Twitter stream.

Facebook's search update is not yet available to all Graph Search users, according to a company spokesperson. It will be tested starting on Monday with a small group of users and will roll out more expansively after that. Users will only be able to search for content that has been shared with them, in addition to public posts. In other words, your conversations should not appear in a search run by someone outside of your network unless your comments and posts are public.

What do you think about Facebook's new Graph Search update to find conversations? Tell us in the comments below.

This article originally appeared on Mashable.

" or simply "Breaking Bad."

The update also allows users to search for posts or comments from a certain time period or location (for example, "posts by my friends from last month") or posts that they already composed or commented on.

The update makes Facebook much more conducive to real-time conversations, an area where it has been making major strides to compete with the likes of Twitter. The two social networks have been competing for eyeballs during primetime television events like the Emmys, the NFL's Monday Night Football, and Sunday's Breaking Bad finale.

When users' eyes aren't glued to the TV screen, Facebook and Twitter want them to be having conversations or voicing their opinions on their respective networks.

Opening up Graph Search to enable post and comment searches will help Facebook to do so. When a user logs into his profile during a primetime event, he can quickly scan all conversations about the game or his favorite show — even if he isn't near the top of the News Feed. If a user want to talk about an event hours (or even days) later, he can search for all relevant conversations on Facebook, something users can't easily do using Twitter.

Facebook has been working to add partnerships around live media in an attempt to fuel this social conversation. Earlier this month, the social network announced a content deal with FOX Sports to promote Facebook data and conversations alongside live NFL and college football broadcasts. Facebook has also added features like searchable hashtags and verified accounts in an attempt to make finding topics of interest easier on the platform.

Facebook reported on its Q2 earnings call that 88 to 100 million people are actively using the social network during primetime television hours — a number that Facebook advertisers will pay close attention to.

Twitter is making similar efforts ahead of the company's IPO; the company is expected to file its public IPO papers as soon as this week. Just last week, Twitter announced ad partnerships with both CBS and the NFL, which will bring real-time video into your Twitter stream.

Facebook's search update is not yet available to all Graph Search users, according to a company spokesperson. It will be tested starting on Monday with a small group of users and will roll out more expansively after that. Users will only be able to search for content that has been shared with them, in addition to public posts. In other words, your conversations should not appear in a search run by someone outside of your network unless your comments and posts are public.

What do you think about Facebook's new Graph Search update to find conversations? Tell us in the comments below.

This article originally appeared on Mashable.

Lets Watch what will be going to happen??

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Google Glasses: Specs And Other Details

The Google Glasses, which have a five megapixel camera and voice-activated controls, have started to be shipped.

The first devices will go to developers and “Glass Explorers”. Google held a competition earlier this year inviting potential users to come up with ways to use the device, while developers have been eager to be among the first to try out the technology.

Developers working on apps for Google’s smart glasses have been told they will not be allowed to place advertising within the device’s display. The newly-published terms and conditions for developers working on Glass also prohibit companies charging for apps.

According to several sources, those in the Glass Explorer Program are now receiving email notifications about device shipments, while Google also posted the technical specifications of the device for the first time.

Woman Wearing Google Glasses

The bone conduction transducer allows the wearer to hear audio without the need for in-ear headphones – sound waves are instead delivered through the user’s cheekbones and into the inner ear.

The company promises a battery lasting for “one full day of typical use”.

Its display is the equivalent, the company says, of looking at a 25in (63cm) high-definition screen from eight feet away. The device is able to record video at a resolution of 720p.

It has 16GB on-board storage, and connects with other mobile devices via Bluetooth and wi-fi.

The Telepathy One headset developed by a Japanese company has functions similar to Google’s Glass device

Also keeping an eye on the excitement generated by Google will be Japanese firm Telepathy Inc. Their device, the Telepathy One, has been touted as a possible competitor to Google Glass. Chinese search giant Baidu has also confirmed it is working on a Glass-like project – but details are so far scant.

Google Glass Tech Specs:

Fit
•Adjustable nosepads and durable frame fits any face.
•Extra nosepads in two sizes.

Display

High resolution display is the equivalent of a 25 inch high definition screen from eight feet away.

Camera
•Photos – 5 MP
•Videos – 720p

Audio
•Bone Conduction Transducer

Connectivity
•Wifi – 802.11b/g
•Bluetooth

Storage
•12 GB of usable memory, synced with Google cloud storage. 16 GB Flash total.

Battery

One full day of typical use. Some features, like Hangouts and video recording, are more battery intensive.

Charger
•Included Micro USB cable and charger.

While there are thousands of Micro USB chargers out there, Glass is designed and tested with the included charger in mind. Use it and preserve long and prosperous Glass use.

Compatibility
•Any Bluetooth-capable phone.
•The MyGlass companion app requires Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or higher. MyGlass enables GPS and SMS messaging.

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Website maps 1.2 billion Facebook faces

Facebook has so many users -- more than a billion, or roughly the population of India -- that squeezing them all into one Web page seems almost impossible.

And yet someone has done just that.

A new project, "The Faces of Facebook" collects more than 1.27 billion Facebook profile photos on one site, arranged in chronological order according to when the person joined the social network. Users can sign in via Facebook to pinpoint their photo on the page and see where they show up in relation to their friends.

At first glance, the site looks like colorful, pixelated white noise. But users can zoom in to see individual photos and then scroll around or click on a photo to visit that person's Facebook page. (Be warned, however: the page is experiencing heavy traffic and can be slow and buggy.)

The site launched last week and was built by Natalia Rojas, a self-described "creative technologist" in Barcelona, Spain.

"I was playing around with Facebook API, and I discovered that there is a way to access everyone's public information with a very simple (but not obvious) algorithm".At that time, I thought I could do something beautiful/interesting with that, like showing them all together. Then I started to write the code to achieve it."

Rojas said she is not breaking Facebook privacy rules because she is not storing anyone's name, photo or private information -- just linking out to public Facebook profiles. She also said she hasn't heard from the social network, which she thinks is good news because "I was a bit worried about things like using their name in the URL."

Rojas said it took her a year and a half to code the site. The hardest part, she said, was stripping out the default silhouette images that appear on some inactive Facebook profiles.

Asked about her hopes for the project, Rojas said she was inspired by the idea that each Facebook profile photo is an example of that person's best self, and that millions of those images together combine to present a positive, universal message.

"There is a mix of people from all over the world. And somehow we are all telling our friends: 'Look, this is me, when I like myself.' Feeling happy, being creative, looking good, being passionate about something, proud of something, enjoying the life," she said.

"So I think, why don't we try to BE our Facebook profile picture? Even if life is difficult some times, there is always a way for us to be what we want to be happy."

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Google search turns 15, gets a makeover

The largest search engine in the world is getting a few updates, the company announced on Thursday. Google tied the news to its 15th birthday and held the announcement in the original Google Garage.

The overall design has been updated and borrows the "card" look from Google Now, lumping relevant information into rectangles and carousels and placing it above any links to websites.

Answers will now be "richer" and include comparisons, filters and sorting. For example, if you ask Google to compare two foods, it will return a chart of their nutritional values. There are new results for song and music searches, and push notifications will soon come to the Google iOS app.

The company is continuing to focus heavily on voice search, improving its conversational skills on the Web and in search apps.

"We believe that voice will be fundamental to building interactions with future devices that we will see," said Amit Singhal, Google's senior vice president of search. Devices such as smartwatches and Google Glass forgo traditional input devices in favor of voice interactions.

No corporate birthday party is complete without a trip down memory lane and balloons and birthday cake, both of which were also present at the event.

In September 1998, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin started their company in Susan Wojcicki's home garage in Menlo Park. The space remains largely unchanged and still has the same sky blue carpet Wojcicki had installed as a perk to persuade Brin and Page to rent the space.

Wojcicki, now a senior vice president at Google, kicked off the event.

"Even though a lot of thing are different at Google, the core is still the same," she said, citing the company's commitment to improving search, being a global company and thinking big.

The original Google was indexing pages on the Internet, returning links to 10 Web pages that had a high probability of containing information that matched a query. The system was imperfect, easily flummoxed by synonyms, misspelled words and sites that gamed the system.

Over the years, Google has launched various changes to the search engine to improve results.

It added spell check, grasped the concept of synonyms and rolled out auto-complete. In 2007, it moved on from just links and started including other types of relevant content such as images, news articles and maps as part of its "universal search." A subtle update happened in 2010. Google Instant shaved fractions of seconds off each Google search by predicting your search terms as you type them.

"Google gives me back an hour of my life every month," said Singhal of Google Instant. "That's not small, that's huge."

More recent changes have focused on how Google understands information. The Knowledge Graph debuted in 2012 and connects search terms with real objects, places and people.

Now the company is indexing information. Instead of the top 10 pages about Picasso, you will get information on the painter directly from Google at the top of your search results, including background, images of famous paintings and related artists.

People who use Google might not notice one of the bigger changes. The company has updated its under-the-hood search algorithms to something called "Hummingbird," which will affect 90% of searches worldwide. The changes will make a difference in how results are ranked.

"Finding relationships between concepts is a very, very hard problem. And you have to balance the meaning of what that query is looking for with what the document is saying," said Singhal.

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Windows Live Folders – Coming Soon

Microsoft is coming up with a new online service called Windows Live Folders, which is in the early beta testing stages now. According to the features listed on the site, for each folder you create, you choose who has access to it. Add new folders, rename them, or change who has access at any time.
The features:

• 500 MB of free online storage, available from any computer with Internet access.
• Create personal, shared, and public folders — you decide who has access to each folder.
• Folders work well on any Windows or Macintosh computer with Firefox 1.5 or higher, or Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher.

It is currently under limited beta abd is expected to open up for more beta accounts soon.
I tried to signup, this is what I got in response:

Sorry, this beta service isn’t accepting new participants right now. However, you can use other people’s folders if they give you permission. To find out when space becomes available for you to join this beta, sign up for the mailing list or visit the team blog.

Watch this space or the Windows Live Folders team blog for more information on this.
If you are lucky enough to try it already, please let us know your feedback in comments here.

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Facebook launches Internet.org Initiative To Connect The Unconnected World

Facebook announced that it has partnered with Samsung,Nokia, Ericsson, MediaTek, Opera and Qualcomm to launch a project called Internet.org, to make the worldwide web available to two-thirds of the planet still not connected to the Internet with internet access via cheaper devices, better business models and better infrastructure.According to Facebook, only 2.7 billion people — just over a third of the world’s population — around the world currently have access to the Internet. And, the goal of Internet.org is to connect the remaining five billion people and provide the same opportunities enjoyed by those in the connected third of the world.

“There are huge barriers in developing countries to connecting and joining the knowledge economy,” Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, said in a statement. “Internet.org brings together a global partnership that will work to overcome these challenges, including making internet access available to those who cannot currently afford it.”
Improving the global economy is certainly a laudable goal, although Facebook stands to benefit from this, too.
The Internet.org website is currently live and provides an overview of its mission and goals, and in coming weeks, it is expected to feature interviews with technology leaders and experts, along with the latest news on the project’s progress.
Few months earlier Cisco released the infographic below: “What Will The World Look Like When We Connect The Unconnected, Internet Of Everything“.

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BURN A CD WITHOUT SOFTWARE.

In win. 98, Me, 2000, often a software is used to burn a CD, but Windows XP comes with a builtin CD copy feature. If you are using a system which has not any burning software don’t worry. With the help of windows XP feature, you can write some data or any music files to a CD/DVD or erase it also.

 Main Requirement.

Before you erase or write a CD you need to enable the CD-R features n windows XP. For this purpose:

• Double click on “My Computer”
• Right click on CD Drive and select “Properties”.
• Select the last option “Recording”
• Select by clicking “Enable CD recording on this drive”
• Also select Fastest for quick writing speed.
• And at last click “Ok”
• You’re done. Now the windows XP is ready to write or erase any CD/DVD.

Method to Format the Disk.  

You are using the CD for writing purpose, make sure that disk is blank. You might need to format it before use. For this purpose

• Insert a Rewritable CD/DVD into the drive.
• Double click on “My Computer”
• Open CD-Rom drive.
• Windows opens that shows the contents of the CD, on the left panel click on the menu. “Erase this CD-RW”.
• On the windows “CD writing wizard” click “Next”
• The wizard starts to erase or format the CD.
• After complete process, the wizard will disappear.
• You should confirm that windows don’t show any files on the CD,
• It is complete now. You’re done.

Method to Burn a CD on XP without any software.  

• At first insert a formatted CD (CD-R) disc into the CD drive.
• Double click on “My Computer”
• Select the files & folders and press “Ctrl + c” to copy.
• Double click on CD Rom drive and press “Ctrl + v” to paste.
• You will see as temporary files/folders at this time.
• Select “Write these files to CD” on the left panel.
•  The window “CD Writing Wizard” appears.
• Window shows default name of CD but you can change the CD name if you wish, then click “Next”
• The “CD Writing Wizard” starts to write files to the CD.

After the successful completion of the CD Writing process, the wizard will disappear and the CD Rom ejects CD automatically.

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DEDICATED TO MY FRIENDS...

Naatkall Nammai
Kadandhu Sendraalum…
Ninaivugall Nammai
Vittu Pirindhu Selvadhillai…!!!
Enrum Ungall Natpin Ninaivugaludan…
Ungall Nannban.

Vittu Koduppadhu
Mattum Natpalla
Exam-mil
Bittu Koduppadhudhan
Unmaiyana NATPU!!!

Neeril kulithaalum,
Neruppil Erindaalum,
Thangam niram maaraadhu.
Adhupol nee arugil irundaalum,
Tholaivil irundaalum,
Endrume en natpu maaraadhu.

Singaththai Yaaralum
Konja Mudiyaadhu…
Nam Natpai Yaaralum
Minja Mudiyaadhu!

Nam natpai oviyamai varaya ninaithaen…
Aaanaal mudiyavillai.
Yen Theriyuma?
Rojavai Varaindhu Vidalaam.
Adhan vaasathai eppadi varaiya mudiyum?

Karai illam kadal illai,
Raagam illamal paadal illai,
Uyir illamal udal illai,
Kadhal illamal manithan illai,
Un natpu illamal naan illai...

Thookkam enn kangalai thazhuvugiradhu, Aanaal
Thonginaal nee en kanavil varuvaaye!
Unnai kanavil kooda kaanavendam endrudhaan,
Kangalai moodamale kazhigiradhu en iravu!
Aanal Irulil kooda enn mun thondri,
azhavaikkiradhu unn Kangalum adhil theriyum throgamum!

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How to boost internet speed by 20% without any software

Increase internet speed by 20% without any software –

Microsoft reserves 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes like Windows Updates and interrogating your PC etc. By unreserving this bandwidth, you can make your internet connection faster. By 20%. The steps to do so are –

1. Click Start then Run and type "gpedit.msc" without quotes.

2. Then go to Local Computer Policy>Computer Configuration>Administrative Templetes>Network>QoS Packet Scheduler. Click on QoS Packet Scheduler. In the right side , find Limit Reservable Bandwidth and double click on Limit Reservable Bandwidth.

3. It will say it is not configured but the truth is under the ‘Explain’ tab. Select ‘Enable’ and set reservable bandwidth to zero.

4. Click on ‘Apply’ and your internet speed will boost up by 20%.

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