Technology

Apple has said that the company will finally launch the much awaited Apple Watch in March 2015 as it has been consistently asserting to launch the product this year.

According to the Verge, Apple is working at finalizing the Watch’s software, optimizing and improving the battery life and inductive charging mechanism.

An expert stresses that the launch could slip but if Apple wants to meet its early 2015 timeframe, they should not delay the launch till April.

Apple also said that its retail training is set to start in mid-February.

—ANI

WhatsApp has reportedly revealed that its messaging app is being used by 700 million people every month, up from 600 million in August.

The company’s CEO Jan Koum wrote in a Facebook post that users are sending 30 billion messages per day, reported CNET.

The figure makes the messaging app one of the world’s largest social networks, bigger than Twitter’s 284 million or even the photo-sharing service Instagram, which counted 300 million users last month. Facebook itself, however, is still bigger, and tallies 1.3 billion users signing in every month.

America’s chief technologist, Megan Smith, who left Google to work under US President Barack Obama, has had to give up her technologically advanced devices and settle for a Blackberry phone and a 2013 Dell laptop.

According to the Verge, when Smith left the private sector, she hoped to infuse the government with Silicon Valley know-how, as the administration was still reeling from its disastrous healthcare.gov rollout.

However, Smith was in for a culture shock after she discovered that the government was still holding on to archaic technology.

Google has reportedly received requests to take down more than 345 links to pirated content by copyright holders in the year 2014, a report said.

With more and more people leaning on the search engine giant to use brute force to fight privacy, the figures have seen a 75 percent jump from the previous year, reported The Verge.

Google now gets more than one million takedown requests each day and honours most of them.

The company got merely 177 takedown requests in 2007, a number that dipped to 62 in 2008, just before beginning its rapid ascent to current heights.

NASA is closer than ever to finding a twin for the Earth, astronomers said today, announcing the discovery of eight new planets that circle in the habitable zones of their stars.

Two of the eight are the most Earth-like of any known planets found so far outside our solar system, astronomers told the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington.

The pair are likely to have hard, rocky surfaces in addition to being an orbiting distance from their stars that is neither too hot nor too cold for water and possibly life to exist, astronomers said.

Samsung India Tuesday launched four mid-segment smartphones – Galaxy A5, Galaxy A3, Galaxy E7 and Galaxy E5, a company statement said here.

The new range of smartphones will be available from mid-January. Galaxy A3 will be priced at Rs.20,500, A5 at Rs.25,500, Galaxy E5 at Rs.19,300 and E7 at Rs.23,000.

“Both Galaxy A and Galaxy E smart phones have been designed to empower young minded consumer and provide accessibility to iconic design and flagship Galaxy features.

Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai has broken his silence on the hacking of the corporation’s computer systems which has been blamed on North Korea, describing the attack as “vicious and malicious”.

Hirai is on a visit to Las Vegas to attend the annual Consumer Electronics Show, and used the opportunity to make his first public address since the incident which has led to a new wave of tension between Washington and Pyongyang.

The new generation of televisions in 2015 will draw viewers closer to a theatre-like experience with the help of quantum dot technology, as announced by manufacturers on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) opening Tuesday in this US city.

The technology is being employed by, among others, South Korean companies Samsung and LG, Japanese firm Sony, and TCL of China.

According to statements by the manufacturers Monday, the new technology allows better image quality and lower costs, which is the biggest obstacle for the new high-resolution 4K technology.

In order to demonstrate its self-driving technology, Audi is letting a specially made A7 drive itself to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.

The car, named “Jack,” would make the first major debut of Audi’s “Piloted Driving” technology which it said is now production ready, reported The Independent.

The 550-mile-long journey will demonstrate the car’s ability to drive on motorways, including changing lanes and doing overtaking maneuvers.

Have you come across a car that refuses to crash? BMW’s i3, which comes with an array of well-concealed external sensors, is a car that will not just allow the driver to avoid collisions but will also perch itself in an open space in a parking lot.

The moment the driver gets too close to an object on the road, the car applies moderate brakes with a soft beep to avoid collision. The system works not just on the sides but in the reverse too and allows you to park in a tight spot without getting in the way, reported The Verge.

Mercedes Benz has unveiled its autonomous F015 Luxury in Motion car at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that has a self-driving concept.

Highlighting Mercedes’ vision for autonomous driving, the chairman of Daimler AG and head of Mercedes-Benz Cars Dieter Zetsche said that the vehicle is geared towards future roads populated with “exclusive cocoons on wheels.”

Zetsche said that people who focus only on technology have not grasped how autonomous driving will change the society.

The capsule shaped car measures 17 feet in length while only 5 feet in height, reported CNET.

Mark Zuckerberg’s New Year resolution to read a book every two weeks in 2015 has send the sale of books on Amazon.com soaring.

The Facebook CEO had he invited his 30 million followers to join him and his first selection had sold out within 24 hours, the Independent reported.

The 30-year-old billionaire, who is known for making New Year’s resolutions that are by turns banal and bizarre, has set up a ” Year of Books ” Facebook group, which, as of Monday afternoon, had almost 150,000 likes and had received suggestions for his resolution from some 50,000 people.

Sony has unveiled its Android powered Walkman ZX2 with high resolution audio playback, priced at 1,200 dollars.

According to Mashable, the walkman supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and is NFC-enabled, said the company.

The walkman looks like a differently shaped smartphone rather than a music player.

The feature of the Android powered device includes a touchscreen and runs 4.2 jellybean version of Android operating system.

The Walkman also supports Android apps that can be downloaded from its Play Store.

The S-Master HX processor in the Walkman enables the high resolution audio.

In an attempt to develop voice recognition, Facebook has reportedly acquired Wit.ai, an open platform for natural language processing.

The Wit.ai team said that the platform will remain open and available in the wake of the acquisition; however, it’s unclear how the platform will develop in the future, reported The Verge.

Wit.ai said in a blog post that the technology will play a big part in helping Facebook achieve its mission of connecting everyone and building amazing experiences for the over 1.3 billion people on its platform.

Samsung has reportedly released a 34-inch ultra-sharp curved monitor which is being dubbed the “best that has emerged yet,” a report said.

With a tack sharp resolution of 3440 x 1440 and a 3000R curvature, the SE790C Curved Monitor has deep, vivid colors and pretty fantastic viewing angles, reported The Verge.

The monitor is primarily aimed at gamers as it comes with a Game Boost feature that adjusts color and contrast depending on the scene. It also has built-in speakers.

However, customers will have to pay a hefty price for Samsung’s new flagship which is launching today.

A fake Facebook copyright post has once again gone viral on the social networking website that claims to protect users’ content.

According to ABC News, the message being circulated claims to protects users’ copyright on their posts after they share it as their statuses.

The message is a hoax since Facebook does not own whatever the users share on the site.

Under Facebook’s privacy policy, users have the right to share and distribute their posts, subject to their privacy and application settings.