Technologies Area

  Google has announced that it is cutting the price of the Nexus 4 smartphone. The Nexus 4 is now available at a discount of about 25 percent which means that the 8GB variant will sell on Google Play Store for $199 while the 16GB variant will be available for $249. The discount is reportedly being offered in selective markets that include the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Spain, Korea and Australia. The search giant announced the discount via its official Twitter handle. The  tweet  said, "We've lowered the price of #Nexus 4. Get it for 25% off or more in Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, Korea, US, UK. This is the first time Google has revised the prices of the Nexus 4 which was being offered at a price of $299 for the 8GB variant and $349 for the 16GB variant since its arrival on the Google Play Store in November 2012. The price cut can be expected to be an attempt to boost sales ahead of Apple's announcement of the new iPhone 5C, which is rumour...

German automotive parts maker Continental AG is close to agreeing alliances with Google and IBM to develop autonomous driving systems for cars, a German newspaper reported. Daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung cited unspecified sources as saying Continental aims to unveil the two pacts at the Frankfurt Car Show in September. Continental is already in an alliance with U.S. network equipment maker Cisco Systems to work on systems for automated and driverless automobiles and on data transfer between cars. A Continental spokesman declined to comment. Spokespeople for Google and IBM in Germany were not immediately available for comment. Google has been working on self-driving technology since 2010, including testing a fleet of self-driving cars along California roadways. A raft of automakers including GM, Ford, Toyota and Volkswagen are developing computer-controlled features that help drivers avoid accidents.

Microsoft Corp has set up a special committee to find a new chief executive after Steve Ballmer announced his retirement on Friday. The world's largest software company has no anointed successor, and has had only two CEO's in its 38-year history - Ballmer and co-founder Bill Gates. The following is a list of tech executives that Microsoft might consider. 1. Tony Bates - Came to Microsoft two years ago as CEO of the acquired Skype and was recently elevated to lead Microsoft's business development and overall strategy. 2. Terry Myerson - The executive in charge of operating systems, which is still the heart of Microsoft, ranging across PCs, tablets, phones and the Xbox game console. 3. Satya Nadella - Heads Microsoft's cloud and enterprise group, which is coming to the fore as the company struggles to catch up in online and mobile computing. 4. Kevin Turner - As Chief Operating Officer for the last eight years, the former Wal-Mart Stores Inc executive leads Micro...

A new device from Google makes it easy to stream video from several popular services to a high-definition TV. Chromecast is tiny enough to dangle from a keychain when not in use, but it packs a big punch for a low price. At merely $35, Chromecast is irresistible. Using your home Wi-Fi network, it streams some of your favorite shows from some of your favorite services, including Netflix and Google's YouTube. It takes only a few minutes to set up, and the device worked flawlessly. Chromecast joins Roku, Apple TV and several other devices meant to project Internet content onto TVs. In the early days of online video, people were content watching movies and shows on their desktop or laptop computers. But as these services become more popular and even replace cable TV in some households, there's a greater desire to get them playing on television sets, which tend to be the largest screens in living rooms. That's especially true when your computer is a phone or tablet...

In ancient times B.V.G. (Before Video Games), here's how kids played: Take all your toys - dolls, soldiers, cars, blocks, that thing you got from a cereal box - and dump them on the floor. Forget about logic or plot consistency because the most important goal is to create an entertaining adventure. (My neighborhood is still reeling from the sordid G.I. Joe-Barbie affair of 1974.) That's the essence of "Disney Infinity" (for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, Wii, $74.99 for starter kit). Why not let Buzz Lightyear ride Dumbo? Or invite Mickey Mouse to hang out with Wreck-It Ralph? There's one limitation: the characters have to belong to The Walt Disney Co. But given the depth of Disney's roster - which now includes "Star Wars," Marvel superheroes and the Muppets - the possible combinations do seem endless. The starter kit comes with figurines of Mr. Incredible, Capt. Jack Sparrow and Sulley, and "play sets" for their correspond...

The ongoing explosion in independently developed, low-budget video games has been a boon for players who travel. Whether I'm on the road with an iPad, an Android smartphone or a laptop, I know there's a huge library of games to play. When I get home, though, I want to play on a bigger screen. That's where the Ouya comes in. It promises to deliver the best in inexpensive indie gaming on a high-resolution screen, through a small device that runs the Android operating system designed for phones and tablets. Ouya costs just $100, a few hundred dollars less than what you'd pay for a major game console. Thousands of gamers and game developers got Ouyas over the past few months after contributing at least $95 to Ouya's creators through the group-fundraising site Kickstarter. The device went on sale more broadly on Tuesday. Ouya runs Google's Android system and is built around Nvidia's Tegra 3 processor, used mostly in smartphones and other mobile devices. ...

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Finnish telecom giant Nokia has told India's government that the country is now its "least favourable market" to operate in and it makes better sense to export its products from China, a report said Friday. Nokia, which is fighting a 20-billion rupee ($311 million) tax demand from Indian authorities, urged the government to "act quickly to correct the wrong perception of India as a place for business", The Indian Express newspaper reported. "The political risk of operating in India" has become "suddenly substantially higher and may inevitably influence future decisions to develop one's operations in India", Nokia said in a letter quoted by the daily. The reported warning comes at a bad time for India when foreign direct investment has slowed to a trickle amid mounting domestic economic woes including a plunging rupee, a huge current account deficit, slowing growth and perceived government policy paralysis. The Finnish grou...

Micromax has introduced a new smartphone, Canvas Fun A76, which has been listed on ecommerce website  Snapdeal  for Rs. 8,499. The company has not officially announced the launch, yet. The Micromax Canvas Fun features a 5-inch FWVGA (480x854 pixels) display. The device is powered by a 1.2GHz dual core processor coupled with 512MB RAM. It sports a 5-megapixel rear camera accompanied by an LED flash and a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera. It includes 4GB of internal storage which can be expanded up to 32GB via a microSD card. The Micromax Canvas Fun runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and is a dual SIM (GSM+GSM) device. Connectivity options on the device include 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, EDGE, GPRS and GPS. The phone includes a 2000mAh battery. Earlier, Micromax's next phablet, the Canvas Doodle 2 was also spotted on an online retailer's listing with a coming soon tag. The company has been teasing the phone on its Facebook page, which is expected t...

Nokia is all set to pull the plug on its Symbian smartphones. The Finnish smartphone maker had announced in January 2013 that PureView 808 was the last Symbian smartphone to be manufactured by the company. Even at that time it was evident that the company will eventually stop shipping Symbian smartphones and concentrate completely on its Windows Phone line-up. Now, it is official. A news report by The Financial Times  states that Nokia will be dispatching the final shipments of its Symbian smartphones this summer. The report also claims that Nokia managed to sell only 5,00,000 Symbian units during the first quarter of 2013. However, in the same period the company managed to ship over 5.6 million Lumia smartphones based on the Windows Phone operated system. Nokia was once an undisputed leader in the mobile space, but it failed to keep pace with the changing times. It failed to offer compelling products and Apple and Google soon took over the lead. In ...

While the purported iPhone 5C, Apple's low-cost iPhone, has made several online appearances, including in some really high resolution pictures and videos that surfaced on the Internet, a website now claims to have published the official press shots of the phone. Romania based publication, Mobilissimo.ro, claims that a Romanian retailer sent a couple of press shots of the iPhone 5C to the website. The press photo features the White coloured variant of the iPhone 5C running iOS 7.The front panel is also in White unlike some previous leaks, while the back of the phone features the same plastic poly carbonate body panel that appeared in recent leaks, in glossy White, complete with a round camera lens and LED flash, Apple logo and iPhone branding. The left-hand side of the phone features the same pill shaped volume rocker and mute keys that had appeared online, in a recent leak. These are also White in colour. In addition to the press pictures, the site ha...

After emergence of September 10 as the date when Apple will host a special event, and reports of Apple asking its suppliers to begin shipping two new versions of the iPhone shortly thereafter, it appears that the Recuperation giant will indeed launch its new iPhones soon, if two new reports are to be believed. A report in Nikkei mentions that Apple's next generation iPhone, the iPhone 5S and the low-cost iPhone 5C would launch on September 20, ten days after the phones are announced at an even in San Francisco. Greece-based website, Techmaniacs also confirms that the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 5C will launch on September 20, while it also claims that Apple will release the final version of iOS 7 on September 16. Just a few days back, image of a purported Gold coloured iPhone 5S had appeared online. The phone was pictured from various angles and sports a form factor similar to the current generation iPhone. This is in line with what we've heard earlier s...

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