WhatsApp Voice Calling Now Open to All Android Users

WhatsApp appears to have opened its voice calling feature to all Android users, with the invite window now open for several hours. The world's most popular messaging app has been gradually rolling out this feature by opening the invite window only for a few hours at a time. This time however, WhatsApp may have opened the floodgates, reports Android Police.

The report says that many people have been receiving the WhatsApp calling feature on their Android smartphones. To activate the feature, all you need is the latest version (v2.11.561) of WhatsApp (via APKMirror) and a WhatsApp call from someone who already has the feature. After you get the call, you will see WhatsApp's interface switch from just showing recent chats to three tabs - calls, chats and contacts.

This move appears to have come on the back of another milestone for WhatsApp - over 1 billion installs via Google Play. The app's Google Play page now shows that it has between 1 billion and 5 billion installs. These numbers of course don't reveal the actual number of WhatsApp users because anyone who installed the app once is counted in this number. The number isn't reduced if the person proceeds to delete the app. Even then, the number shows just how popular the messaging app is.

Earlier, the voice calling feature was rolled out to some users, but the invite window was closed before most people could get the feature. WhatsApp still has not announced the voice calling feature officially on its website or the release notes on Google Play. WhatsApp for iPhone still doesn't have this feature even though a voice calling button appeared in the app some time ago.

Having established itself as the world's most popular messaging app with over 700 million monthly active users, WhatsApp seems to be augmenting its offering by adding features available in competing messaging apps. WhatsApp for Android users also recently got a Web version that works well. Both these features have been available for some time with competing messaging apps such as iMessage (calling via FaceTime), Line, Viber, among others.

 Source: NDTV Gadgets

Introducing Windows 8

Windows 8: how to install Consumer Preview

We show you how to install Windows 8 using the setup wizard, with a DVD ISO image and via USB.

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The full consumer release of Windows 8 is coming in late October - but if you want to get ahead of the pack and see what Windows 8 looks like now, the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is now available to download If you previously installed the Windows 8 Developer Preview you will need to carry out a clean install.

The Developer Preview was a pre-beta version of Windows 8 for developers and cannot be uninstalled, it is also missing a lot of the functionality now available in the Consumer Preview. As Microsoft revealed at their Windows 8 Consumer Event in Barcelona, there have been over 100,000 significant product changes since Windows Developer Preview.

 

System Requirements

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview works great on the same hardware that powers Windows Vista and Windows 7:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
• Taking advantage of touch input requires a screen that supports multi-touch
• To run Metro style Apps, you need a screen resolution of 1024 X 768 or greater

The Preview is available in English, French, German, Japanese and simplified Chinese languages.

How to download Windows 8

There are two methods to download the Consumer Preview:

 

Windows 8 Consumer Preview Setup (Simple)

This is the easiest of methods (and fully automated). Windows 8 Consumer Preview Setup will check to see if your PC can run Windows 8 and select the right download. This setup process also checks to see which of your apps (programs) are compatible and offers upgrade assistance should you need it.

Install from an ISO image (Advanced)

Windows 8 Consumer Preview ISO files (.iso) are provided as an alternative to using Windows 8 Consumer Preview Setup (it is not recommended for computer novices).

An ISO image must be converted into installation media stored on a DVD or a USB flash drive.

The easiest way to convert an ISO file to a DVD in Windows 7 is to use Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool. You can get it here.

 

Once downloaded, run the tool and browse to your ISO file. Click 'Next' and choose from either 'USB device' or 'DVD' installation options. Insert your USB/DVD and select 'Begin copying'.

A note on installing the Consumer Preview

Windows 8 Consumer Preview is prerelease software that may be substantially modified before it's commercially released. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the information provided here.

Some product features and functionality may require additional hardware or software. If you decide to go back to your previous operating system, you'll need to reinstall it from the recovery or installation media that came with your PC.

Download Windows 8 Consumer Preview

VIA: www.msn.com

Facebook: One Billion and Counting

Mark Zuckerberg has just six billion more people to go.

 

Facebook said it has topped one billion monthly active users, a milestone that raises growth questions anew for the social network and whether it can profit off its giant user base. Geoffrey Fowler reports on digits. Photo: Getty Images.

Mr. Zuckerberg said Thursday thatFacebook Inc., FB +0.54% the social network he started in his Harvard dorm eight years ago, reached the milestone of one billion monthly active members on Sept. 14.

The Menlo Park, Calif., company had reached 500 million active users in July 2010, making Facebook one of the fastest-growing sites in history.

Facebook didn't specify whether the one-billion count includes fake accounts, but it has been on a campaign to remove them. In August, Facebook said fakes constituted 8.7% of its users.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in San Francisco on Sept. 11.

The announcement couldn't come soon enough for Facebook. Investors today value the business at a fraction of the $100 billion opportunity they saw in the company when it held its initial public offering in May.

Other social media businesses are also running into difficulties. On Thursday, social-games maker Zynga Inc. lowered its earnings outlook for the year, in part because consumers appear to be losing interest in some of its games.

The question for Facebook is just how much value Mr. Zuckerberg can extract from all those people that Facebook signed up for free. Last year, the company produced nearly $4 billion in revenue, mostly from advertising—far less than the nearly $38 billion that Google squeezed out of an equally large set of users in the last fiscal year.

Facebook still trails behind other Web companies in capturing revenue from users. In the U.S., search engines such as Google and Yahoo make about $88 per person who uses its search engine, while Facebook makes about $15 per user, according to eMarketer Inc.

This week, Facebook executives attended New York's Advertising Week, trying to convince advertisers that its mix of direct access to people and their network of friends provide a potent marketing tool equivalent to five Super Bowls each day.

Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said earlier this week Facebook is looking at "premium services for businesses" as a way of adding to its revenue stream.

Meanwhile, Facebook has grown increasingly bold in its efforts to find alternative lines of revenue.

           

On Wednesday, it began testing a service in the U.S. that charges members $7 to ensure that their friends see posts on the social network, angering some users who said Facebook was turning its back on a long-standing promise to remain free.

Facebook's next billion members may be tough to come by. There are some 2.5 billion people on the Internet today—and many of the ones not on Facebook are in countries like China that haven't welcomed Facebook's particular brand of online communication.

Mr. Zuckerberg has visited China, home to more than 500 million Internet users, but the site remains blocked there except to people who use tools to bypass government censors.

On Monday, Mr. Zuckerberg met with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, another market where Facebook has had difficulty growing.

Mr. Zuckerberg, 28 years old, showed just the extent of his aspirations in a celebratory post on his Facebook profile in which he compared his social network to other inventions that have "connected" humans.

"We belong to a rich tradition of people making things that bring us together," he wrote. "We honor the humanity of the people we serve. We honor the everyday things people have always made to bring us together: Chairs, doorbells, airplanes, bridges, games."

Lately, Mr. Zuckerberg has also touted Facebook's efforts on mobile phones, which will prove crucial to the company's ability to attract more members from the developing world, and more ad dollars from consumers around the world amid changing Internet habits.

On Thursday, Facebook said it had 600 million mobile users, meaning more than half of the social network's members access the service on phones or other on-the-go devices. There are five billion mobile device users in the world.

Facebook has struggled to keep up with this trend, only this year beginning to show mobile users ads. Investors have been concerned that Facebook won't be able to generate ad sales at the same rate as desktop ad dollars.

Last month in an onstage interview at a technology conference, Mr. Zuckerberg admitted the company's previous mobile strategy was wrong. But he said Facebook could eventually make more money per user on mobile phones than on desktops.

More

Digits: Facebook's Milestone

In a "Today" show interview that aired Thursday on NBC, Mr. Zuckerberg sought to reassure investors that he is the right person to lead Facebook, as some on Wall Street have questioned whether he has the ability to helm a large public company. "I take this responsibility very seriously," he said.

A Facebook spokesman said Mr. Zuckerberg wasn't available for an interview.

To date, people have made 140 billion friend connections on Facebook, the company said. As it matures, Facebook users are getting younger: The median age of a user joining today is about 22, down from 23 for a user who joined at the time the site hit 500 million users.

The Web industry has various ways of measuring user reach so it's difficult to full compare companies. Facebook defines active users as a logged-in member who visits the site at least once a month, or accessed it in some way through a third-party site connected to Facebook.

Looking at reach by another measure, Google is the only Web company with more than a billion unique users visiting its stable of websites monthly, according to data from comScore Inc. It took Google from 1998 to 2011 to reach the one billion mark.

Steve Jobs -- The untold tales Friends and colleagues shed a light on Jobs by revealing some of their most indelible moments with the late Apple leader via Forbes magazine.

Steve Jobs left strong impressions among the people he knew, and some of them have shared those impressions in the latest issue of Forbes. 

Stories about meetings and encounters with Jobs are always intriguing due to the multi-faceted personality of the man.

This Friday marks the one-year anniversary of death of the Apple leader, prompting the magazine to publish some of the "untold" tales about Jobs as related by friends and colleagues.

Web browser guru and now venture capitalist Marc Andreessen related a story in which Jobs showed him a prototype of the first iPhone in 2006. After playing with the phone, Andreessen asked Jobs if he thought users might have a problem typing on the screen without a physical keyboard. With a piercing look, Jobs merely said: "They'll get used to it."

Jobs and NeXT software engineer Randy Adams both owned Porsches at a time that NeXT was looking for venture capital. One day, Jobs told Adams that they had to hide the Porsches. When Adams asked why, Jobs said that Ross Perot, who was thinking of investing in the company, was stopping by for visit. But Jobs didn't want Perot to think NeXT had a lot of money. Hiding thecars must have worked, according to Forbes, since Perot invested $20 million in the company in 1987.

Though often typecast as unfeeling, Jobs had a softer side and seemed to instinctively know how to help people in need.

Venture capitalist Heidi Roizen related one tale in which she was on a business trip when told that her father had passed away. As Jobs called her to discuss a deal, she informed him of her father's death. Immediately, Jobs told her to come home and said he would be right over.

According to Roizen, Jobs spent a couple of hours getting her to talk about her father and share her grief. Jobs' mother had died a few months before, so she believes he was especially "attuned to how I felt and what I needed to talk about. I will always remember and appreciate what an incredible thing he did for me in helping me grieve."

Other memories of Jobs can be found in Forbes' online edition and in the magazine's October 22 print issue.

VIA : news.cnet.com

Who is the next Steve Jobs (and is there one)?

 It's a loaded question, one with no clear answer. But in the year since Apple's co-founder and visionary CEO died, it's been asked in tech circles over and over:

Who is the next Steve Jobs?

There's one easy response. It's safe to say that no figure in the tech industry will perfectly duplicate the unique blend of vision, salesmanship, mystique and eye for detail possessed by Jobs, whodied one year ago Friday.

And it's complicated further, some say, by the fact that for much of his own life, many wouldn't have predicted Jobs himself would earn tech-icon status.

"Steve Jobs had a strange career. He really wasn't celebrated as a genius until really late," said Leander Kahney, editor of the Cult of Mac blog and author of books on Apple, including "Inside Steve's Brain."

 Not until Jobs returned to Apple and introduced the iPod and iPhone did people begin to praise him as a modern-day Thomas Edison, Kahney said. "He was dismissed before then as a marketing guy, a fast talker who didn't know much about technology. He only really was lionized in the last four or five years."
#WhatSteveJobsTaughtMe: Share your thoughts on his life and career
But industry observers abhor a vacuum. Futile though it might be, it's perhaps human nature to speculate about who could emerge to fill the void left by the passing of tech's biggest personality and most recognizable face.
One can make cases for or against a handful of nominees. And no list is long enough to include an as-yet unknown creator who may be birthing the industry's next game-changer in a garage or dorm room somewhere.
Did Apple's fanboy fever peak with Steve Jobs?
But here are some names worth considering, with thoughts both for and against their candidacies:
Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon
Pros: Bezos actually has a host of traits that mirror Jobs. Like Jobs was with Apple, he's the founder of Amazon as well as its CEO. Being a part of a company's life story helps. As much as anyone, Bezos also captures a bit of Jobs' panache at live events. At last year's rollout of the Kindle Fire, he got high marks for introducing a game-changing product in a stylized fashion, then getting off the stage. (Tech giants Google and Microsoft have been accused of being rambling and unfocused at similar unveilings.) Reports say Bezos shares Jobs' penchant for attention to detail (some would say micromanaging) and, like Jobs, he's been willing to take the company into new and unexpected directions.
"I've met Bezos personally, and he is mesmeric. Brilliant smile, quick mind, very engaging and decisive," Kahney told CNN. "He has the same obsession with the ordinary consumer; to make and sell things from the consumer's point of view. ... Bezos has Jobs' focus and drive. He's a little bit maniacal in his drive and ambition."
Cons: Despite the Kindle line, Amazon is, at its core, a content company. The mobile devices are a means of delivering books, music, movies and other data to customers as directly as possible. Will the public ever be as excited about the CEO of the company that peddles e-books and data-storage space as it was about the one that sold it its personal computers, laptops, phones and music players?
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook
Pros: The Steves -- Jobs and Wozniak -- had their garage. Zuckerberg had his Harvard dorm room. And in those two rooms, perhaps the two best-known origin stories in tech were born. As head of the social network that has changed the way people use the Internet, Zuckerberg is maybe the only tech boss who, like Jobs, has become a household name. ("The Social Network" didn't hurt.) He created a product that millions of people now use. And he's even cultivated his own trademark, casual-wear style, as the Zuckerberg hoodie is now almost as iconic as Jobs' mock turtleneck.
"Zuckerberg has some of the characteristics (of Jobs), and perhaps the most important one -- the pursuit of a vision," Kahney said. "That sets him apart."
Cons: He's gotten better at speaking in public. But as a pitchman, Zuckerberg still falls miles short of the charismatic Jobs. It's seems Zuck would rather be the idea man behind the scenes than front-and-center when it comes time to sell the final product. Also, the fact that Facebook's stock price is not already racing toward Google/Apple heights doesn't help.

Apple's Tim Cook has inherited Steve Jobs' role as chief Apple pitchman.
Tim Cook, CEO, Apple
Pros: Well, there's the obvious one. Job's was Apple's CEO. Now Cook is. At the helm of the company, Cook gets to be the face of every new innovation rolled out by Apple. He's got the biggest stage and brightest spotlight in which to put himself forward.
Cons: Cook comes from more of a business background than one of innovation and design. He may masterfully steer Apple's course for years to come, but, rightly or not, few observers at this juncture are inclined to give him credit for vision, or influence over products' design, the way they did Jobs. Plus, being Apple CEO after Jobs is like being the football coach who follows a retiring Bear Bryant or Vince Lombardi. What were those guys' names? Exactly.

Apple design chief Jonathan Ive chats with Kate Middleton at an event in London on July 30.
Jonathan Ive, senior vice president, Apple

Pros: When Jobs stepped down, there were many who expected Ive, not Cook, to step up. Ive is senior vice president of industrial design and is believed to be the creative mind behind products from the Macbook Pro to the iPod to the iPad. The London native already has a knighthood, as well as a healthy dose of Jobs' true-believer passion for the product.

Cons: Well, he's not the CEO. (Nor is marketing mastermind Phil Schiller, another name bandied about to replace Jobs). To truly ascend to Jobsian levels, Ive would need to set out on his own -- which, at 45, is doable. It's hard to envision Ive bolting from Apple, where he's worked since 1992. But, boy, it would be fun to watch.
Marissa Mayer, CEO, Yahoo
Pros: If you need proof of how well Google alum Mayer is liked in Silicon Valley, just look at the number of folks she's been able to lure to join her at a Yahoo that was floundering when she took the reins in July. At Google, where the former engineer was the 20th employee, she's credited with everything from the clean design of the search page to becoming one of the leading public faces of the tech giant.
Cons: It looks like a turnaround has begun at Yahoo. But the job's still a long way from done. If Mayer becomes the face of a dramatic rebirth, she will have accomplished something few predicted. If she doesn't (the four CEOs before her all fell short), it likely won't hurt her reputation all that much -- but neither will it bump her up to the next level.

Elon Musk hopes to revolutionize several industries.
Elon Musk, serial entrepreneur
Pros: How's this for an origin story? Musk grew up in South Africa before leaving home at 17, without his parents' consent, rather than serve a compulsory stint in an army which, at the time, was enforcing the race-based apartheid system. He'd end up in the United States four years later -- although he'd already sold his first software, a video game called Blastar, when he was 12. Since then, all he's done is create publishing software Zip2 (sold to AltaVista for $300 million), co-found PayPal (he owned 11% of its stock when eBay bought it for $1.5 billion) and help create Tesla Motors, makers of the first commercial electric car. Oh, wait ... he also runs SpaceX, a company working on space exploration. Director Jon Favreau says Musk was his inspiration for Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark character in the "Iron Man" movies.
"His ambitions are so huge," Kahney said. "He's definitely a ballsy character. And he's a good leader, like Jobs. He's surrounded himself with good people."
Cons: With the exception of Tesla, none of Musk's projects, so far, have directly involved consumer products. Tens of millions of people had something Jobs made in their pockets, on their desks or piping music into their ears. Among the public, Musk may be less well-known than all of the names above -- at least for now. But, at 41, he's got time to change that and it would be foolish to bet against him.
Seth Priebatsch, CEO, SCVNGR, LevelUp

Pros: Who? Priebatsch is the wild card on this list. But consider him the representative of a new generation of young, creative tech "makers" who could ascend to loftier heights in the years, or decades, to come. At 22, Priebatsch's SCVNGR raised more than $20 million in funding. He founded his first Web company at 12 and has moved on to start LevelUp, a mobile-payments system that's also raked in millions from investors. He got rock-star treatment for a speech he gave last year at South by Southwest Interactive. Plus, he's already cultivated a Jobs-like signature fashion statement -- his trademark orange sunglasses and shirts.
Cons: In the startup world, for every success story, there are countless washouts. Not every young turk even wants to be another Jobs, and not every killer app has the potential to make millions, or billions, of dollars -- even when they're well-liked and widely used.
Good or bad, what lessons did you learn from Jobs? Share your responses in the comments below, or join the conversation on Twitter using #stevejobstaughtme.

Twitter Announces New Design With Focus On Profile Pages, iPad Update On The TODAY Show

Today, Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo announced a new design with a focus on profile pages and an iPad update on the TODAY Show, live. The show teased “big changes” coming to Twitter, and drew it out pretty well giving a company tour.

The company announced that there are over 140 million users, with 340 million tweets per day, currently. Twitter also has an $8B valuation, which is just massive, not to mention a whopping 900 employees in San Francisco alone.

At times, this felt like a commercial for Twitter, discussing the free snacks they get.

“Twitter brings you closer to the action and your heroes” said Costolo.

 

Here’s what the company had to say on its blog about the web update:

Starting today you can make your presence on Twitter more meaningful with new Twitter profiles. Upload an all-new header photo on mobile apps for iPad, iPhone and Android or twitter.com, and the same image will appear whenever anyone views your profile on the web or these apps. You can upload your header photo, which appears above your Tweets, to express yourself instantly, anywhere.



These big changes might explain the recent issue that the company had during its maintenance routine to fix photo uploads, when verified accounts started getting random profile images in place of their own. Perhaps a little bug introduced in preparation?



With a push towards creating a place on the web to serve as your “home”, Twitter is getting down to the nitty gritty with Facebook to fight for your eyeballs and clicks.

Twitter for Android has also gotten a fairly decent update, including support for new profiles and photo streams. All mobile updates, as expected, have stripped out the ability to post images using third-party services.

We’ve known about Twitter’s appearance on the TODAY show since yesterday, but had no idea what would be discussed or announced.


The company didn’t let us down, as this is a fairly grand way to announce design changes. Oh, and don’t forget, these changes are to help brands engage…so the business model is in full effect here.
Courtesy : http://techcrunch.com

Apple Announces Record Pre-Orders For iPhone 5: 2M in 24 Hours, 2X iPhone 4S Day One Sales

Apple today announced that it managed to rack up 2 million pre-orders for the iPhone 5 in 24 hours, two times as many as it managed for the iPhone 4S last year, which sold over 1 million devices during its first 24 hours of pre-order sales. That’s a new record, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s been watching the progress of iPhone pre-order sales since the device originally hit the market.

 

The iPhone 4S eventually went on to sell more than 4 million devices over the course of its first weekend actually on store shelves, so expect the iPhone 5 to blow past that milestone, too. The iPhone 5 is initially available in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the U.K., adding two new countries (Hong Kong and Singapore) to the list of launch regions for the iPhone 4s, so expect that to influence early sales as well, especially since Hong Kong is a popular destination for those looking to resell the iPhone at a premium on the grey market in China.
Apple’s pre-order sales actually went relatively smoothly this time around, with few hiccups in site performance and availability when they went live early Friday morning, by most accounts. The initial crop of iPhone 5s (those shipping immediately in time for the September 21 release date) also sold out much, much faster than previous models, up to 20 times faster than the iPhone 4S. AT&T also saw record pre-order sales, it announced this morning, though specific numbers haven’t yet been released.

Courtesy :  http://techcrunch.com

Bing Vs Google — Don't Bother Comparing

Earlier this month, a Microsoft contest called BingItOn encouraged people to try out Bing vs Google in the same window — and decide which was better. Microsoft's claim was that the overall Bing:Google win ratio is 2:1. Our claim is that a comparison is pointless.
People quite enjoy comparing search results in an "objective" way, then pronouncing "The Best" across parameters. Less objective people simply root for their personal favourite in the same way they root for sports teams — which the folks at Bing noticed, and thought up the BingItOn contest. The event has brought in some PR for Microsoft — good and bad — and it's invited quite a bit of commentary (objective as well as just-for-fun). But here's why (IMHO) there's either no question of, or no need for, a comparison:

#1. "Relevant results" is a subjective matter. You can't have an objective ranking based on subjective judgments. This point is somewhat obvious, but think about it.
#2. The relevance of the phrase "Relevant results" is questionable: Very few of us are looking for one (or two) pages that we want to get to. The search term leads into an area of exploration, so to speak. To elaborate: We place considerable objective emphasis on relevance, but how often do we read the most relevant result page(s) — and stop the search there?
#3. On a results page (on most pages, actually!), we're used to scrolling through. We're close to having perfected the art of spotting what we want to see. Suppose the "best" search engine brings up "the most relevant" result at #5, and the other one puts it at #8. How much time do we typically lose when we scroll down by 3 results? 430 milliseconds?
#4. What we end up reading is guided, to a good extent, by what the search engines show us. This modern-day cyclicality pretty much throws Relevance out the window.
Come to think of it, "relevance in search results" — and results quality — is a hangover from 2001, when search engines sometimes went off track. "Google versus Bing" is, now, more a matter of whose results pages we enjoy.

Microsoft plans to deliver Office 2013 RT starting in November

Company's Office Home & Student 2013 bundle for ARM-based Windows devices, due to begin rolling out later this year, is slightly different from its x86-based counterpart.

Microsoft let slip back in June that the version of Microsoft Office 2013 that would be available to Windows RT tablets and PC customers would be a "preview" test-build. In blog post yesterday, Microsoft confirmed that information and added a few more particulars about the Office Home & Student 2013 RT bundle that will be available to those with ARM-based Windows devices.

Office 2013 RT won't be available for purchase as a separate product. It will be "included" with ARM-based Windows RT tablets and PCs and will function as a desktop app, meaning it won't be available through the Windows Store.

The final version of Office Home & Student 2013 RT will be available to customers between early November through January 2013, with exact timing depending on language, Microsoft officials said. Those who buy Windows RT devices before the final is out will get the preview build, which will be updated to final for free via Windows Update.

(The rumored release to manufacturing date for the final version of Office 2013 for x86/x64 hardware is November 2012, with consumer/general availability in early 2013. Microsoft officials still have not said when Office 2013 will RTM or launch.)
word2013wordrt2013

The Office 2013 RT apps -- Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote -- are very similar to, but not exactly the same as their Office 2013 counterparts, as they had to be built to run on ARM. Yes, they were built on the same code base as "regular" Office, but the RT apps had to be tweaked to meet the security and battery-life stipulations of ARM-based hardware, Microsoft officials noted in this week's blog post.

Because of these requirements on ARM, Microsoft is dropping support for a number of features with Office 2013 RT that will still be available iin the x86/x64 versions of Office 2013.

    Features that won't be supported/will be limited supported in Office RT, listed in the "Office Next" blog post -- include:
    Macros, add-ins, and features that rely on ActiveX controls or 3rd party code such as the PowerPoint Slide Library ActiveX control and Flash Video Playback
    Certain legacy features such as playing older media formats in PowerPoint (upgrade to modern formats and they will play) and editing equations written in Equation Editor 3.0, which was used in older versions of Office (viewing works fine)
    Certain email sending features, since Windows RT does not support Outlook or other desktop mail applications (opening a mail app, such as the mail app that comes with Windows RT devices, and inserting your Office content works fine)
    Creating a Data Model in Excel 2013 RT (PivotTables, QueryTables, Pivot Charts work fine)
    Recording narrations in PowerPoint 2013 RT
    Searching embedded audio/video files, recording audio/video notes, and importing from an attached scanner with OneNote 2013 RT (inserting audio/video notes or scanned images from another program works fine)

Microsoft officials said to expect a more detailed release schedule for Office 2013 RT on October 26, which is the day Windows 8 and Windows RT devices will be available at retail.

Courtesy : news.cnet.com

Microsoft touts touch in Office 2013

To entice potential Windows 8 tablet users, the company has taken to its blogs to explain the touch capabilities in its upcoming Office suite.

Microsoft is aiming Office 2013 at touch-screen devices as well as PCs. So the company is starting to pull out the stops to convince tablet users that the new Office is just right for them.

In a blog post yesterday, Clint Covington, a lead program manager for Microsoft's User Experience team, explained how touch works in the new suite. Products such as OneNote and Lync have been redesigned from the ground up to fully support touch. The other applications in Office have been "touch-enabled," which means they support certain touch features but remain true to their roots as desktop applications.

Designing apps to respond to a finger instead of a mouse can be challenging, so Microsoft had to enlarge certain elements in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Users will find fixed parts of the interface larger, such as the Quick Access toolbar, the ribbon, the status bar, and folders in Outlook. Certain menus will also appear larger.

But the size only increases when touch mode is enabled. You can turn touch mode on and off, depending on what type of device you're using, and the interface adapts. The onscreen keyboard also provides a fuller view of your document by automatically minimizing the ribbon and giving you more room to work.

Drag-and-drop gets an assist in touch mode through the use of selection handles that appear when you try to move or copy an item. Other touch features have been enabled through the suite, and Microsoft says it's still working to polish them up.

Office's new touch features will work onWindows 7 devices, Covington noted. But improvements in Windows 8 mean the experience will run better on tablets running the upcoming new OS.

In supporting touch, Office 2013 seems to be walking the same fine line as Windows 8.

Both have been designed as single products for touch-screen devices and traditional PCs. Such an approach clearly speaks to the challenge that Microsoft faces today. The company knows it must succeed in the growing market for mobile devices in order to stay relevant, yet it can't leave its core desktop users behind.

Of course, that approach is dicey. By designing one single product aimed at all devices, you risk creating a product that's feels just a bit off on any particular device. PC users of Windows 8 have already complained that certain Metro features of the OS can be difficult to use with a mouse and keyboard. With Office 2013, Microsoft erred on the side of caution by borrowing some of the flavors of Metro but maintaining the suite's roots in desktop applications.

Will the redesigned Office suite offer the right features to appeal to both tablet and PC users? With Office one of its bread-and-butter products, Microsoft is counting on it. But we'll have to see how consumers respond when the new suite hits the shelves.

Courtesy : news.cnet.com

iPhone 5 preview

Apple’s next iPhone is official, and despite being the sixth iPhone model (technically), we know it’s officially the iPhone 5.

Over the last year, we've heard a ton of rumors about what it might deliver with LTE, a taller display, and a redesigned connector being the most likely tidbits. Fortunately, we now can put all that speculation to rest as Apple spilled the secrets.

Eyes on Apple's new iPhone 5 (pictures)

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Taller, thinner, and a metal back
As expected, the new iPhone is 18 percent thinner (0.30 inch vs. 0.37 inch thick) than the iPhone 4S. Apple says it's the thinnest handset around, but that's a race that changes often. That means it's also 20 percent lighter for a total of 3.95 ounces. The Retina Display expands from 3.5 inches (its size since the original iPhone) to 4 inches. The total resolution remains the same, though, at 326 pixels per inch. The total pixel count is 1,136x640, and we now have a 16:9 aspect ratio.
To the user, that means a fifth row of icons on the home screen. That's pretty nice since it will let you cut down on the number of home screens. You'll also get a full five-day week view in the calendar, the calendar will show more events, and all iWork apps will take advantage of the bigger display. Third-party apps that haven't been updated will continue to work, but you'll see black borders on each side (so they won't be stretched or scaled). Apple also promises that wide-screen movies will look better, with 44 percent more color saturation than on the iPhone 4S.

Touch sensors are now built into the display itself, which makes it 30 percent thinner as a result and less prone to glare.
The iPhone 5 also fixes a design flaw that we first saw in the iPhone 4. Apple replaced the glass back with one that's mostly metal. Too many people (us included) cracked an iPhone 4 or 4S after dropping it accidentally. We don't think the change negatively affects the iPhone's aesthetics. In fact, many might see it as an improvement. A return to a metal back reminds one of the original iPhone, and the crisp, clean-cut back has a bit of the feel of other Apple devices like the iPad.
All of the design changes result in a new iPhone that's surprisingly light to hold. Think 20 percent lighter isn't a big deal? Pick one of these up and you'll feel the difference: the iPhone 4 may have been dense, but the iPhone 5 is a featherweight.
The screen is big, bright, and crisp, too, not shockingly so, but a subtly improved experience. It's akin to being the extrawide comfy chair of iPhone screens. Stay tuned for more, but this new iPhone has a good hand feel.

LTE and carriers
Not a shocker either, but the iPhone 5 will support 4G LTE networks. That's in addition to the current support for GPRS, EDGE, EV-DO, and HSPA data networks. LTE has a single chip for voice and data, a single radio chip, and a "dynamic antenna" that will switch connections between different networks automatically.
So which carriers will support an LTE iPhone 5? Well, in the United States that means AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless. So again, T-Mobile loses out. In Canada it's Bell, Telus, Fido, Virgin, and Kudo. In Asia the providers will be SoftBank, SmarTone, SingTel, and SK Telecom. For Australia there's Telstra, Optus, and Virgin Mobile, and in Europe it will go to Deutsche Telekom and EE. On carriers without LTE, the iPhone 5 will run on dual-band 3.5G HDPA+.

A faster chip
The iPhone 5 will offer an A6 chip, which is two times faster than the current A5 chip. Graphics will get faster speeds, as well. Yet, despite the speedier performance, the new chip will be 22 percent smaller than the A5. According to Apple's specs, users will see Web pages load 2.1 times faster, and the Music app with songs will load 1.9 times faster.
More battery life
LTE tends to be a power hog, but the iPhone 5 is set to deliver respectable battery life. Of course, the real story may differ, but here's what Apple is promising for now. We're supposed to get 8 hours of 3G talk time, 8 hours of 3G browsing, 8 hours of LTE browsing, 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing, 10 hours of video playback, 40 hours of music playback, and 225 hours of standby time. You can be sure that CNET will put these promises to the test when we get a device in our hands.

Apple promises respectable battery life, though the iPhone 5 has a larger display and LTE.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

Camera
The main shooter, or the "iSight" camera, stays at 8 megapixels (with the best resolution being 3,264x2,448 pixels) with a feature list that includes backside illumination, a hybrid IR filter, a five-element lens, and a f2.4 aperture. A dynamic light mode is new, and you should be able to launch photography apps up to 2.1 times faster. Another addition is an image signal processor in the A6 chip. That will bring spatial noise reduction and a "smart filter" that produces better low-light performance and captures photos faster. Finally, there's a built-in panorama mode that stitches shots together for one large 28-megapixel photo.

The secondary front camera now can shoot 720p HD video and it gets a backside illuminated sensor. And as we heard at the announcement of iOS 6 back in June, FaceTime will work over 3G cellular networks. Some carriers like AT&T have already announced restrictions for that feature, so be sure to check with your provider first.

Video resolution remains at 1080p HD, though image stabilization has been improved and face detection is now available in clips for up to 10 people. And in a nice move, you can take photos while you're shooting video.
Audio
The iPhone 5 gets an additional microphone for a total of three. You'll find one on the bottom, one on the handset's front face, and one on its rear side. What's more, the speaker now has five magnets (so up from two), which is apparently better and it's supposed to use 20 percent less space. The noise-canceling feature should be improved, as well, and there's a new wideband audio feature that promises more-natural-sounding voices. Twenty percent of carriers will support wideband audio, but so far we only know that Orange in the United Kingdom will be among them.
Smaller dock connector, smaller SIM card
On the bottom of the iPhone 5, there's that new and long-anticipated smaller dock connector. Called "Lightning," it has an all-digital, eight-signal design and an "adaptive interface" (we're not quite sure what that means yet). It's 80 percent smaller, and since it's reversible, both ends will be the same (that's kind of nice).

Apple says the iPhone 5 is the thinnest smartphone around. We'll see how long that record lasts.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

By all means, it's bound to annoy owners of current speaker docks, accessories, and charger/syncing cables since it will render them obsolete. Apple will offer an adapter and adapter cables (of course it will), which range from $19 to $39. We imagine, though, that the adapter may be awkward to use with some current accessories like a bedside alarm clock/music player. For new accessories, Apple says that manufacturers like Bose, JBL, and Bowers are working on new products.
Though we welcome the idea of a smaller connector, we're miffed that Apple couldn't just adopt the semi-industry standard of Micro-USB. That would make things easier for smartphone users across the globe. Yet, even so, the smaller connector may be a smart move for the future. The 30-pin connector has been around since 2003, long before the iPhone even existed: frankly, it's a dust magnet. A smaller connector helps shave extra space to achieve a smaller phone with perhaps a bigger battery. The new connector cable will mainly be used for syncing and charging by most people who own an Apple TV or Bluetooth/AirPlay accessories.

The smaller dock and cable connector is in the usual place on the phone's bottom.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

iOS 6
Inside, the iPhone 5 will debut with iOS 6 already onboard. Highlights include the new Apple Maps app, Passbook, shared photo streams, Siri updates, and the aforementioned FaceTime over 3G. For more on Apple's newest mobile OS update, check out our iOS 6 First Take. iOS 6 will be available for download next Wednesday, September 19.
Release date and pricing
The iPhone 5 will be available in three capacity models, all of which will come in black and white versions. The 16GB is $199, the 32GB $299, and the 64GB $399. On September 21, it will go on sale in nine countries: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Anyone in that first batch of countries can preorder starting September 14. More countries will follow by the end of this month, and by the end of the year, the iPhone 5 will land at 240 carriers in 100 countries. As a reminder, the U.S. carriers are the Big Three: Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint.
Is this the iPhone you've been looking for?
During very brief hands-on time with the iPhone 5, this much is clear: it's the weight you'll remember more than its thinner profile. The iPhone 4S is already a svelte device: most people probably won't spot the difference if they see the new iPhone from the side.
The screen size, also, is more of a subtle improvement. This isn't a jaw-dropping leap from the iPhone 4S: it's a gradual increase, done almost so cleverly that the front face of the iPhone 5 might, with the screen turned off, look very much like the iPhone 4S. The proof will be in the pudding for how app developers and iOS 6 take full advantage of that extra screen real estate, but the bottom line is this: more screen size and more pixels are good things.
The real killer app on this phone -- no surprise -- might be the iPhone's 4G LTE, as well as the promised battery life. If data speeds and battery life can live up to the promises, those alone will make many want to upgrade.
VIA : news.cnet.com