Samsung VS Apple

   Three models of Samsung Galaxy smartphones will be banned from sale in europe. The court in The Hague has ordered the injunction.
   From mid-October, it'll be impossible to obtain the Galaxy S, the Galaxy S II, and the Galaxy Ace in europe, says Saskia Panchoe, spokesman for the Dutch court in The Hague. Apple asked the court for interim measures to prohibit the sale of these models, and three Samsung tablets due to a violation of its patents.
   "The court found that there was much offense for the phones, but not for the tablets, which may be sold." said Saskia Pancho.
   The offences are related to the EP 2059868 in connection with how to scroll through the images or unlock the cell phone.
   "Patents are generally valid for several countries, which means that the prohibition applies to all countries where the patents are valid" said the court. The countries concerned should be in addition to the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany, Finland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Sweden and Switzerland. This injunction is valid until the case is judged on its merits, and it will not be before 2012. Many referrals are also underway on other models in the Samsung.
   Since April these two companies are at open court war, accusing each other of violating their patents. Recently, Samsung has even argued that the principle of tablet was not invented by Apple, but Stanley Kubrick's film 2001, A Space Odyssey. 

IBM aims to create "cognitive computers"

   U.S. computer group IBM announced, Thursday, Aug. 18, to have developed a chip duplicating the human brain function, which can be used to build computers capable of learning from their own experience.
   The "cognitive computers" built with these chips are not programmed the same way today's traditional computers are. These computers, instead, learn from their experiences, find correlations, develop assumptions, remember - and learn - results, thus imitating the plasticity of the human brain, IBM promises.
   Two prototype chips have been manufactured and are being tested, said the American group. Both were burned with an ultimate line of 45 nanometers on silicon on insulator, and contain the equivalent of 256 "neurons".
   IBM is testing two types of architectures for these chips: one with 262,144 synapses (zone of interaction between nerve cells) programmable, the other with 65,536 synapses for learning. The long term goal of IBM is to build a complex component which contains 10 million "neurons" but it's still very far from the human brain, which includes 100 billion. The goal is to get at creating 100,000 billion synapses in a space less than 2 liters, while using one kilowatt of electricity, said the American group.
   In terms of applications ,a "cognitive"computer is for example capable of triggering a tsunami alert by analyzing data from different types of marine sensors, compiling data on temperature, pressure and wave height, explains IBM. It could also help retailers manage their inventories fresh products through its sense of "smell".
   For the second phase of the project, called Synapse, IBM has enlisted the help of several renowned universities such as Columbia, Cornell, the University of California and that of Wisconsin. The project also benefits from a funding of $ 21 million (14.6 million) from Darpa, the agency that funds high-tech projects in the field of defense.
   IBM has already designed Watson, a computer with the ability to learn from mistakes, and a surge capacity of semantic analysis which makes it much more effective than traditional software in the association of ideas.

  Source: lemonde.fr

Large decrease in computer sales

   According to figures published by Gartner, PC sales have decreased by 19% between the second trimester of 2010 and the second trimester of 2011, including a 17.8% decrease only in france. Which means a decrease of 2.8 million units sold.
   Are Tablets to be blamed ?
   The decrease could be caused by the economic climate, aswell as the competition from touch pads(chich is not included in the study of Gartner) and to a lesser extent, smartphones. As for manufacturers, almost all of them show decreasing sales in the French market: HP -9%, -13% for Dell, -23% for Asus, and  to -40% for Acer. Apple pulls one out of the game, with sales rising by 6.4%.
   Aware that the development of touch pads is one of the causes for poor sales of laptop computers (-20.4% year on year), the different manufacturers should continue to release new tablet models in the weeks or months ahead.  They should also focus, like Dell, on products and services with high added value (computer services, data security, or cloud computing).

Phone that supports Windows 7

   Fujitsu is launching a new and unique smart phone today in japan, Known as the Fujitsu F-07C, the device works as a symbian standart phone but can switch to windows 7 mode with the touch of a button. Yes, it's a phone and a computer at the same time ! The pricing, however, will not be announced untill the device goes on sale through NTT DoCoMo. But, since the phone has some high-end hardware, it will probably cost a lot more that even the most expencive smart phones available today.
    If the price of the device doesnt convince you to buy it, maybe the fact that it cant make it up to two hours of runtime on windows mode will. Not a very persuasive reason, but we have got to admit that this is as far as a mobile phone ca go. And even so Fujitsu could get better focusing on a mass-market product rather than the small-market this phone will surely find.
   After all, using windows, a desktop operating system on a 4-inch, 1024×600 mobile device screen will be really frustrating except for the most patient. Because for mobile use, Windows phone 7 is enjoyable, but Windows, not so much without a keyboard and mouse.
   There is an issue though, Intel’s 1.2 GHz Atom Z600 chip will only run at 600 MHz in the F-07C, which will reduce the performance of the phone's windows mode. The chip could probably be boosted to run at full speed, but that will drastically reduce the battery's runtime. And once you end up using all of the battery's runtime you'll be stuck with neither a mini-computer or a mobile phone.
   The concept of a full computer in your pocket sounds cool, but between cons and pro the fate of this computer-phone seems unpredictable. So all we can do for now is sit and watch where it goes.

Samsung features a pliable screen

   Many companies today orient their research on flexible and rollable screens, but Samsung just introduced it's pliable screen. The presented prototype consists of two displays of the type AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) protected by a glass slide and attached by a hinge.
    Until today, the double-screens were always consisting on separation at the center, as a plastic hinge separated the two screens. The advantage of this model lies in the fact that this plastic has been replaced by a hyperelastic material silicone rubber, giving the illusion of the continuity of a single screen.
   One half of the screen is built into that material and the other adheres to the surfaces of the hinge, the whole being covered with a touchpad. The curvature has a radius of 1 mm, so that whether the screen is folded or unfolded, it is almost perfectly flat.

   The screen was tested by closing and opening it 100 000 times, there were no signs of wear or cracks detected, but the brightness at the center was decreased by 6%, and the Korean company announced that this device has a lifetime of aproximately 5 years. If no comercialization is expected to date (the cost of the flexible AMOLED remaining prohibitive) the prototype has the technical possibilities that could emerge in the coming years.

Baidu's new web browser

   In my last review I introduced to you the Chinese conquest of the internet. And while at it I figured I could offer you, today, some very recent news about the Chinese search engine Baidu.
   The group of the Chinese search engine Baidu launches into the battle of web browsers, as it released, in beta, for Windows operating systems,  a new web browser similar to Google Chrome.
   So the users can, for example, download extensions and customize the software from the homepage and they can access the search engine Baidu directly from the navigation bar. Even regarding it's similarities with Chrome, Baidu web browser also holds some similarities with internet explorer.
   By engaging in the area of ​​Web browsing, Baidu intends to strengthen its presence in the Chinese market. The last census of the Chinese authorities reported 485 million Internet users in the country. With this service, Baidu may also diversify and seek new growth opportunities. Baidu already represents almost 76% of the search market in China, against 19% for Google, according to Analysys International, a research firm in Beijing.
   Baidu will, however, find it difficult to expand in the area of ​​Web browsing in China, largely dominated by lnternet Explorer. According to the statistics of StatCounter, Internet Explorer represents over 86% of the market share of the country and Chrome, second, is just over 5%.
   If Baidu poses as the competitor of the American group of web browsing, it would not be the case in the search area on the internet. Baidu announced at the beginning of July reaching an agreement with Microsoft, which will allow users to directly obtain results generated by the search engine Bing in english.

China's conquest of the Internet

   China is a country very known for it's high population and it's évolution in economy and politics. It is also a special case regarding Internet.
   In fact, in 30 June 2010, China announced having 420 million internet users, and in just a year after the number grew amazingly to reach 485 million users. But what's more interesting is the websites and services used by the chinese internet users.
   We are all used to global or continental services like: Google, Spotify, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter,Skype, Google+, ...etc. But in China, just like Russia, Korea and Japan, many services are country specific. And some are sky high !! I'll introduce some of those services to you:

•    Weibo: A micro-Blogging service similar to Twitter, and even more evolved, now it has nearly 200 million users. Twitter has recently reached 175 million users.

          However there are 2 major differences between Twitter and Weibo:
          Twitter is used worldwide, Weibo is exclusively used in China, the first was launched in 2006, and the second was launched only 2 years ago. In the last 6 months, the users of Weibo increased from 63.1 million to 195 million !!

•  Baidu, the Chinese Google: 

          In addition to Weibo, there is of course the search engine Baidu. It is used by over 70% of the chinese internet users, way ahead of Google and Bing ! Baidu has even paid the luxury of increasing it's market shares in the recent years, and it's aiming for the international with Bing exactly.

• QQ, the Chinese ultimate phenomenon:

          QQ is the Chinese messaging system made in Tencent, used by almost all Chinese internet users. According to the Tencent website, it's users in 31 March 2011 was 674.3 million, making it the second most used service in the internet after Facebook.

• Baidu and Tencent are worth more that Yahoo! and eBay:

          The importance of the group Tencen in the Chinese stock market is valued at 831 billion Yoan, or about 60 billion US dollar. This makes it the third company in the world in Web listing, behind Google (194 billion) and Amazon (98 billion), and way ahead of companies like Yahoo (19 billion) and eBay (44 billion). Baidu is ahead of those two American giants aswell, with a rating of 53 billion dollars.
          The rate of internet users in the Chinese population is only 36%, which gives Tencent, Baidu and Weibo a very important potential of growth only in China! And sooner or later, these companies will have international ambitions, so beware !

Laptop that includes two 17 inches screens

   GScreen just introduced it's SpaceBook 17, it's a laptop that includes two 17 inches screens. It comes in two versions, a model with a 4 Gb DDR3-1333 memory and comes with the Dual Core processor Inter Core i5-560m 2.66GHz, and a second model that comes with an integrated 8 Gb memory and has a Quad Core i7-740QM at 1.73 GHz. the first model is sold at 2 395 $ and the second at 2 795 $, both only available in Canada and the United States.


   Some features of the SpaceBook 17:

•   Thickness: 4.7 cm.

• Weight: 4.5 Kg.

   The computer includes:

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 250M with 1Gb of memory.
• Hard drive: 500Gb 7200 rpm.
• DVD burner.
• 6 cell battery.

   The purpose of this configuration is not portable to improve the autonomy, but to make the system easily moveable.
   Compared to SpaceBook15 released in 2009, the price dropped slightly, aswell as the weight, despite the increase in the diagonal of the two screens. It remains a model for a very small niche market.

New Facebook music service: Facebook Vibes ?

   Facebook continues to enrich it's services. After it's partnership with skype, this social networking website attacks online music. According to developer Jeff Rose, the competitor of Amazon music, or soon to be called iCloud, could be named Facebook Vibes. On his blog, "Jeff Rose" says: "The application Vibes connects with a dialog box to download it's music, so I guess it must be expected to offer online music on Facebook soon."
   Some rumors suggest that the most probable release date for this feature will be in August, to integrate this feature into the biggest social networking website that could make the partnership with Spotify, although that doesnt close the door  to other music services online. But instead it is considered in the catalog for the 750 million users of Facebook.
   On the other hand the timing of Facebook recently seems to be well prepared, considering the fast growth of Google+ which is likely to be it's next competitor.

Firefox 6 beta: Here already !!

   Today a big percentage of internet users surf the web using the Firefox browser. Now that most of them updated to Firefox 4, and Firefox 5 less that a month ago, Firefox 6 beta1 is already available !! and the final release will be in the next few weeks, probably next month. Add to this that the foundation is already working on a Firefox 7 !!

   Firefox 6 beta1 available on Windows, Mac and Linux includes:

• Add-ons Manager with Plugin Check: Check that your plugins are up-to-date directly from the Add-ons Manager.
• Improved Panorama Groups: Reduces browser startup time by only loading saved tab groups when you use Panorama.
• Improved Address Bar: Highlights the domain name of the website you’re visiting to make it easy to identify where you are online.
• Streamlined site identity block.
• The Scratchad: Quickly build and test JavaScript snippets in the browser.
• Support for Web Sockets with a prefixed API.
• Moveable Web Console .
• New Web developer-specific menu.
• Window.matchMedia API.
• Support for server-sent events.

   And not to forget the release for Android which includes:

• New initial experience: Firefox starts faster and uses less memory..
• Higher-quality image scaling: View crisp Web pages and images with less pixelation
• Enhanced Firefox experience on large screen tablets
• Improvements to the form helper on Android
• Fresh visual style on Gingerbread OS
• Optimization for pages that use right to left layout rendering, e.g. in Hebrew and Arabic
• Touch Events for better interaction with Web pages
• IndexedDB allows Web pages to store data offline for faster access
• Automatic text hyphenation

   Seeing how fast this goes I personally wouldn't be surprised if Firefox 8 is released before Firefox 7 !!

Update: Google+

   Until now, Google+ has made quite a fuss on the internet reaching up to 10 million accounts in such a short period, or what could be refered to as "Total success" even though there are still 3 weeks until the official release.. However that can hardly be compared to the 750 million accounts on the current Empror of social networking: Facebook, and to the fact that Facebook is observing the situation verry closely, launching a partnership with Skype lately.
   Speaking of Facebook "Cnet" notes that the most Google+ vewed profile is none other than Mark Zuckerberg's, Facebook CEO, stealing the lead of Larry Page.
   Any way most facts speak of Google+ as a success, and keep in mind that the access conditions still represent limits to the internet users who request to subscribe at the moment.
   Google also announced some important numbers: more than one billion publications were shared and the button "+1" is used more than 2.3 billion times a day. 
   I you have any questions or anything to add feel free to express it in the comment section bellow. 
   There is an older review made in this blog about Google+ it explanes a lot about it you'll find it here: Google+: Quick intro. Thank you

Windows 8: Coming soon..

   Many people today, worldwide, use the windows 7 OS, so if you like it, you'll definitely love the coming "Windows 8".
   Windows 8 is the reimagining of Windows, from the chip to the interface. A windows 8-based PC is nothing like the computers you use right now, it scales from touch only small screens to large screens, with or without a keyboard and mouse. The OS (Operating System) interface is reimaginated for a whole new generation of touch-centric hardware.

   Here are a few aspects of the new interface:

•	Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.
•	Live tiles with notifications, showing always up-to-date information from your apps.
•	Fluid, natural switching between running apps.
•	Convenient ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you can really multitask using the capabilities of Windows.
•	Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.
•	Fully touch-optimized browsing, with all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet Explorer 10.    It seams that Windows 8 is also compatible with all Windows 7 logo PCs, software and peripherals, and it works as good with a mouse and keyboard as in a touch screen computer.    Windows 8 apps use the power of HTML5, tapping into the native capabilities of Windows using standard JavaScript and HTML to deliver new kinds of experiences. These new Windows 8 apps are full-screen and touch-optimized, and they easily integrate with the capabilities of the new Windows user interface.    The new Windows experience will ultimately be powered by application and device developers around the world. One experience across a tremendous variety of PCs. The user interface and new apps will work with or without a keyboard and mouse on a broad range of screen sizes and pixel densities, from small slates to laptops, desktops, all-in-ones, and even classroom-sized displays. Hundreds of millions of PCs will run the new Windows 8 user interface.      And there is so much more on the way! Microdoft is working very hard to get the product ready for early testing.    If you have anything to add please feel free to add it in the comments section as well as any suggestions and questions. <a href="http://www.newhostgatorcoupon.com">hostgator coupon code</a>

Google+ quick intro

   So you've heard of Google+ and that's why you are here.. and now that you're here I might as well give you the informations you want..
   Basically, Google+ is Google's version of Facebook, that means it's a social network where you sign in and get a personal page where you can post links, images from your phone, computer, or albums and videos from your computer, phone or from youtube. You can post threads but there doesn't seem to be a limit for the number of characters for threads. You can also get your location using the GPS function. You get your friends updates and you can see their posts just like Facebook and Twitter. Although you might find longer posts unlike Twitter due to the characters number limit.
   Right now only people who get invited by others who already have a Google+ account get to sign up and some of them get rejected due to the fact that this feature is limited to a certain number of people. Hopefully that'll change soon.
   Unlike the limit of Facebook, you can change your status to busy or offline. In Google+ you also get to choose your interests between Sports, Fashion... and when you choose an interest and add it you can access updates from that interest and put posts of your own such as videos threads and pictures.
   One of the best features of Google+ is Circles; they are groups in which you can sort your contacts to familly, friends, colleagues and make your own creative circles. And when you make posts you can choose which groups they'll be sent too.. If some of you contacts dont have Google+ yet it's no problem, because the posts will be sent to their Email. However they will not be able to comment unless they manage to make their own Google+ account. So you can control which circles are allowed to see each post and update you make on your Google+.
   There are also versions of Google+ available for Android phones, it's basically 2 apps, one of them is called Google+, and the other one is called Huddle and it's for Chat, and you can chat with multiple contacts at the same time that means you can chat with a whole circle and so..
   I forgot to mention the old Notification on top of the screen. And you can Also share links and stuf without leaving a page, so you dont have to go to your main page to share a link. And there are also more functions on the top of the screen like the old google bar.
   Another Cool feature of Google+ is the "+1" button which you can use in search results from google search, and in Google+ pages, this interesting function allows other people to choose between popular pages and ones that are not with much interest, and so when you press the "+1" button of a certain search result from the google search engine you tell other people that it's an interesting result and that they should check it out.  
   There are rumors that Google+ will be released for the public on the 31st of July but it should be released sooner if you ask for my opinion :)
   So that's pretty much it, I hope you enjoyed reading this post it's my first and feel free to contact me for comments and suggestions.. thanks you