BlackBerry Priv Android Apps Hit Google Play, 'Productivity Edge' Leaked

BlackBerry's much-anticipated Priv Android slider smartphone is now up for pre-orders at $699 (roughly Rs. 45,500), and is slated to begin shipping in the US starting November 6, 2015

Ahead of the release, some highlight features of the Priv are making it to the Internet and the latest in the series is the handset's 'Productivity Edge' or notifications on the curved edge display. In the meanwhile, BlackBerry has released Priv-specific Android apps to the Google Play store. These include MicrosoftexFAT, Notes, BlackBerry Calendar, Contacts, BlackBerry Hub, BlackBerry Keyboard, BlackBerry Services, Tasks, BlackBerry Device Search, BlackBerry Password Keeper, BlackBerry Launcher, BlackBerry Camera, and DTEK. Some of the apps are brand new, while others have been updated. The apps listings were first spotted by BlackBerry Central. Also new, is the release of the BlackBerry Content Transfer app for BlackBerry Priv users, available on BlackBerry World.

The Content Transfer for BlackBerry app will allow users to switch to the new Priv by moving data that is saved on an old BlackBerry 10 device (running 10.2.1 and later).

"Data that is associated with a web-based account, such as contacts and calendar events, is transferred when you add the account to your new device. Your data can be transferred with password-protected encryption using Google Drive, your media card, or a private Wi-Fi network," explains the app listing in the Store.

BlackBerry previously revealed updates for its device roadmap for the year which primarily included Priv Android smartphone. Notably, BlackBerry has been pitching its first Android smartphone as a flagship slider device.

Getting back to the leaked Productivity Edge, to recall, the BlackBerry Priv sports a 5.4-inch Oled QHD (2560 x 1440) display with curved edges, something we have already seen on the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and Galaxy S6 Edge+. However, the Canadian company has so far not detailed the function of the Priv's curved edges.

A Crackberry Forum member however, has shared images from a Priv simulator, hinting at several unannounced features. In one of the slides, the Priv's 'Productivity Edge' has been detailed and shows how users can select an icon to view app preview. The slider reads, "Tap the Home icon. Drag out the Productivity Edge tab. Select an icon to view an app view. Select another icon to view an app preview. Tap the Settings icon."

In the leaked slider, an image of Productivity Edge on the Priv can be seen with icons for quick viewing calendar, mails, tasks, and contacts. BlackBerry's 'Productivity Edge' sounds similar to Samsung's People Edge, which majorly allows user to quickly access select contacts. Samsung also includes an option to light up the edge screen when mails, messages, or calls arrive.

Another leaked slider shows 'Pop-up widgets' feature which appears when swiping an icon. We can expect the company to detail the functions at the release of the handset.-Independent News

Tim Peake set for first spacewalk by British astronaut

Tim Peake is to carry out the first ever spacewalk by a British astronaut, Nasa has confirmed.

Mr Peake and Nasa astronaut Tim Kopra will venture outside the International Space Station (ISS) on 15 January to replace a failed voltage regulator.

Mr Peake launched on a Russian rocket on 15 December to begin a six-month stay on the orbiting outpost.

This will be the second spacewalk in under three weeks for Mr Kopra, who has flown into space once before, in 2009.

The two Tims will don their spacesuits and exit the US Quest airlock to replace an electrical box known as a Sequential Shunt Unit (SSU), which regulates voltage from the station's solar arrays.Its failure on 13 November last year compromised one of the station's eight power channels.

The unit is relatively easy to replace and can be removed by undoing one bolt. Once this task is complete, the spacewalkers will deploy cables in advance of new docking ports for US commercial crew vehicles and reinstall a valve that was removed for the relocation of the station's Leonardo module last year.

Mr Peake supported a spacewalk on 21 December last year, in which Mr Kopra and station commander Scott Kelly moved a stalled component known as the "mobile transporter" on the outside of the ISS.

The Briton stayed inside the ISS, helping the Americans don their spacesuits and monitoring their progress for mission control.

This time, he will be the one to get inside the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) - the spacesuit used by US and European astronauts on the station.

The spacewalk is scheduled to start at 12:55 GMT and last for six-and-a-half hours.Mr Peake and Mr Kopra were both crew members on the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) Soyuz flight that arrived at the ISS on 15 December. As such, they have trained closely with each other.

Mr Peake was selected by the European Space Agency in 2009, and is the first British astronaut to fly into space since Helen Sharman spent a week on the Soviet space station Mir in May 1991. Her flight was privately funded, under a venture known as Project Juno.The UK government has traditionally been opposed to human spaceflight, which has led other Britons to fly into space with Nasa - wearing the American, rather than UK flag on their uniforms.

Michael Foale, who hails from Louth in Lincolnshire, became the first British-born person to carry out a spacewalk when he stepped outside the shuttle Discovery on 9 February 1995.

Mr Foale flew on six Nasa shuttle missions, with extended stays on both Mir and the ISS. He has dual citizenship on account of his American-born mother.

Piers Sellers, who was born in Crowborough, flew on three space shuttle missions between 2002 and 2010. Over the course of six spacewalks, he accumulated 41 hours and 10 minutes of "extra-vehicular activity" time - the most of any UK-born astronaut.

Another UK-born Nasa astronaut, Nicholas Patrick, travelled into orbit on the Discovery shuttle in 2006.BBC

Gravitational waves from black holes detected

In a landmark discovery for physics and astronomy, scientists said Thursday they have glimpsed the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space-time that Albert Einstein predicted a century ago, reports AFP. When two black holes collided some 1.3 billion years ago, the joining of those two great masses sent forth a wobble that hurtled through space and reached Earth on September 14, 2015, when it was picked up by sophisticated instruments, researchers announced.
"Up until now we have been deaf to gravitational waves, but today, we are able to hear them," said David Reitze, executive director of the LIGO Laboratory, at a packed press conference in the US capital. Reitze and colleagues compared the magnitude of the discovery to Galileo's use of the telescope four centuries ago to open the era of modern astronomy. "I think we are doing something equally important here today. I think we are opening a window on the universe," Reitze said. The phenomenon was observed by two US-based underground detectors, designed to pick up tiny vibrations from passing gravitational waves, a project known as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO. It took scientists months to verify their data and put it through a process of peer-review before announcing it on Thursday, marking the culmination of decades of efforts by teams around the world including some 1,000 scientists from 16 countries, according to the National Science Foundation, which funded the research.
Gravitational waves are a measure of strain in space, an effect of the motion of large masses that stretches the fabric of space-time -- a way of viewing space and time as a single, interweaved continuum. They travel at the speed of light and cannot be stopped or blocked by anything.
As part of his theory of general relativity, Einstein said space-time could be compared to a net, bowing under the weight of an object. Gravitational waves would be like ripples that emanate from a pebble thrown in a pond. While scientists have previously been able to calculate gravitational waves, they had never before seen one directly.
According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) David Shoemaker, the leader of the Advanced LIGO team, it looked just like physicists thought it would.
"The waveform that we can calculate based on Einstein's theory of 1916 matches exactly what we observed in 2015," he told AFP.
"It looked like a chirp, it looked at something that started at low frequencies, sweeping very rapidly up over just a fraction of a second... up to 150 hertz or so, sort of near middle C on a piano."
The chirp "corresponded to the orbit of these two black holes getting smaller and smaller, and the speed of the two objects going faster and faster until the two became a single object," he explained. "And then right at the end of this waveform, we see the wobbling of the final black hole as if it were made of jelly as it settled into a static state."
The L-shaped LIGO detectors -- each about 2.5 miles (four kilometers) long -- were conceived and built by researchers at MIT and Caltech.
One is located in Hanford, Washington, and the other is in Livingston, Louisiana. A third advanced detector, called VIRGO, is scheduled to open in Italy later this year.
Tuck Stebbins, head of the gravitational astrophysics laboratory at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center, described the detector as the "one of the most complex machines built by humans."
Physicists said the gravitational wave detected at 1651 GMT on September 14 originated in the last fraction of a second before the fusion of two black holes somewhere in the southern sky, though they can't say precisely where.
Physicist Benoit Mours of France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), described the discovery as "historic" because it "allows us to directly verify one of the predictions of the theory of general relativity."
Einstein had predicted such a phenomenon would occur when two black holes collided, but it had never before been observed. An analysis by the MIT and Caltech found that the two black holes joined about 1.3 billion years ago, and their mass was 29-36 times greater than the Sun. The wave arrived first at the Louisiana detector, then at the Washington instrument 7.1 milliseconds later.
The two instruments are 1,800 miles apart, and since both made the same reading, scientists consider their discovery confirmed. Accolades poured in from across the science world, as experts hailed a discovery that will help mankind better understand the universe.-- AFP

Liquid water found on Mars: NASA

   

A handout image made available by NASA on Sunday shows the dark narrow streaks called recurring slope lineae emanating out of the walls of Garni crater on Mars. The dark streaks are up to few hundred meters in length. They are hypothesized to be formed by flow of briny liquid water on Mars. AFP PHOTO

Liquid water has been observed on the planet Mars which makes it far more likely that life could be found there, US space agency NASA said yesterday, reports AFP from Washington.

“Mars is not the dry, arid planet we thought of in the past,” Jim Green, NASA’s planetary science director, told a press conference. “Under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found on Mars.”

Scientists have long speculated that there may once have been life on the Red Planet. The presence of liquid water makes it possible that life could currently exist there, NASA said.

"The really exciting thing about this is that our view of this ancient Mars, and the possibility of life originating on Mars, had been really about seeking chemical fossils of possible past life on Mars," said astronaut John Grunsfeld, who is also associate administrator of NASA's science mission directorate.

"The existence of liquid water on Mars -- even if it's super salty briney water -- gives the possibility that if there's life on Mars we have a way to describe how it might survive."

With several missions to Mars already in the planning stages, the question of whether there's life on the planet is now "a concrete one we can answer," Grunsfeld said.

The presence of water will also make it easier to send a manned mission to Mars, which NASA aims to do in the 2030s. "To be able to live on the surface, the resources are there," Grunsfeld said.

Water is "critical" he said, but the planet also offers other key elements like nitrogen which could be used to grow plants in greenhouses and the types of salts that could be used to make rocket fuel.

The announcement comes days before the blockbuster film "The Martian" opens in which Matt Damon manages to survive on his own after being left for dead with about a month's supply of food.

Scientists have long believed that water once flowed across the Red Planet and formed its valleys and canyons, but a major climate change about three billion years ago changed that.

"Today we're revolutionizing our understanding of this planet," Green said. "Our rovers are finding there's a lot more humidity in the air." The rovers have also found that the soil is more moist than anticipated.

In 2010 scientists observed dark streaks running down Martian slopes. They suspected that the streaks -- which would form in spring, grow by summer and then disappear by fall -- could be water.

"It took multiple spacecraft over several years to solve this mystery, and now we know there is liquid water on the surface of this cold, desert planet," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars exploration program.

"It seems that the more we study Mars, the more we learn how life could be supported and where there are resources to support life in the future." --AFP from Washington

US tech giants concerned over 'digital protectionism' in EU

As American tech giants extend their global reach, fears are growing on their side of the Atlantic over trade barriers some see as "digital protectionism."

While China has long been a difficult market for US firms to navigate, tensions have been rising with the European Union on privacy, antitrust and other issues, impacting tech firms such as Google, Facebook and Uber.

In recent weeks, Europe's highest court struck down an agreement which allowed US firms to transfer personal data out of the region without running afoul of privacy rules.

In parallel, Brussels is looking to create a new "digital single market" simplifying rules for operating across EU borders -- but which could also include new regulations for online "platforms."

Some see this as a jab at US retailers like Amazon, "sharing economy" services like Airbnb or even news outfits.

Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, said the platform proposal "has the potential to be troublesome."

"Nobody has defined what a platform is," Black told AFP. "It feels like a proposal to solve a non-problem."

After the European Court of Justice invalidated the so-called "Safe Harbor" data-sharing agreement this month, secretary of commerce Penny Pritzker said Washington was "deeply disappointed."

For the past 15 years, the key transatlantic accord allowed tech firms like Facebook to operate on both sides of the ocean without running afoul of EU privacy laws.

The ruling, Pritzker said, "creates significant uncertainty for both US and EU companies and consumers and puts at risk the thriving transatlantic digital economy."

"We're waiting to see which way Europe goes," says Daniel Castro, vice president at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a Washington think tank.

Castro detects "an undercurrent of fear" in Europe because of the popularity of services such as Google and Facebook but argues that the US and EU "need to be on the same side when it comes to free trade."

Another source of friction is Europe's effort to enforce the "right to be forgotten," allowing individuals to remove online content from searches that are outdated or inaccurate.

France has ordered Google to carry this out worldwide, not just in Europe -- but US firms see this as a form of censorship, effectively enabling people to rewrite history to hide embarrassing data.

"You're taking about Europe imposing its version of how the world should be on everyone else," Castro said.

President Barack Obama expressed concerns about digital trade barriers in an interview earlier this year with Re/code.

"We have owned the internet. Our companies have created it, expanded it, perfected it in ways that (European firms) can't compete," Obama said in response to a question about European actions in the digital sphere.

"And oftentimes what is portrayed as high-minded positions on issues sometimes is just designed to carve out some of their commercial interests."

That view was echoed by Kati Suominen, who heads the Future of Trade initiative for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank.

Europe sees it is lagging and is moving on policies in order "to buy time," she argued.

"Europe is seeking to build its own digital economy by complicating the operations of foreign companies on European soil. In that sense, it is protectionism," she said.

Rather than throw up new barriers, she argued, Europe should be tearing them if it wishes to foster a digital economy -- notably to enable better access to venture capital.

Last month Guenther Oettinger, the EU commissioner for the digital economy and society, brushed aside suggestions of protectionism.

"Our rules on a European level are relevant for everybody, for European producers and players, for Asian players, and for American players as well," he said during a visit to San Francisco.

While Google has been the target of a contentious EU anti-trust probe among other issues, Facebook has been especially impacted by privacy rules, with Ireland become the latest to examine the legality of its transfer of user data across the Atlantic.

Belgian officials have also sought to prevent Facebook from using a data "cookie" that gathers information about users. The social media giant says the tool helps verify legitimate accounts and combat spam.

A key element in the US-EU row over privacy has been the fear that US Internet firms are handing over data to the National Security Agency, in light of revelations from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

To address those concerns, US lawmakers have moved to pass a bill allowing non-citizens to enforce their data protection rights in US courts under the Privacy Act.

THE TIMES OF INDIA

Yahoo Weather app gives warnings 15 minutes before rain or snow

Yahoo has released a new feature in the form of its Weather app.

According to the Engadget, the app will send the users an alert 15 minutes before rain or snow is expected to start so the users have enough time to prepare.

The new feature in the app takes readings from the barometric sensors in users' iOS devices.

Yahoo says its Weather software is more accurate with improvements made to the methods it uses to determine and serve forecasts, with the ability to zoom in on small areas should the need arise.UNB

Sony: Bracing for smartphone slowdown

Tawfique Infotech Online Desk :

Sony Corp, widely regarded as a key supplier of image sensors for Apple Inc's iPhones, said it was bracing for a slowdown in the premium smartphone market after sales of its sensors fell in the third quarter, reports ‘The Times of India’.

Videogame sales and cost cuts in Sony's flagging mobile unit pushed October-December operating profit up 11 percent, beating analyst estimates, but the firm confirmed a much-feared hit to a segment that in recent quarters helped it shake off years of losses.

"Demand for image sensors from certain customers has slowed since November due to a slowdown in the high-end smartphone market," chief financial officer Kenichiro Yoshida told reporters at a briefing, without naming the clients.

Worries about weaker iPhone sales and a slowdown in China's smartphone market -- the world's biggest -- have weighed on Sony shares in recent weeks. The stock closed up 6.1% ahead of earnings, still down around 16% since the start of 2016.

Yoshida said Sony was planning its budget for the next year assuming a fall in global demand for high-end smartphones.

Sony also said October-December sales of devices, including image sensors, fell 13% from a year earlier. The segment, also hit by weak battery sales, booked a loss of 11.7 billion yen compared with a 53.8 billion yen profit in the year prior.

In addition to image sensors, Sony has depended on cost cuts and strong sales of PlayStation 4 games to improve its bottom line over the past year.

The two factors helped its fiscal third-quarter operating profit rise 11% from a year earlier to 202.1 billion yen ($1.68 billion), beating the average 175 billion yen forecast of 8 analysts according to Thomson Reuters data.

It said quarterly sales of its game and network services division rose 11%, helped by strong holiday sales of PlayStation 4 videogames. It raised its full-year forecast for the division to an operating profit of 85 billion yen from an October forecast of 80 billion.

In mobile, sales fell 15% in a division struggling to compete with Apple and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, as well as low-cost Asian rivals. But operating income more than doubled to 24 billion yen as Sony cut spending on marketing and development and gave up its pursuit of market share.

The company maintained its outlook for full-year operating profit to grow to 320 billion yen from 68.5 billion in the previous year.unb