Android 4.3 update for Samsung Galaxy S4, Galaxy S III, Galaxy Note II due by Q4

The Samsung Galaxy S III, Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note II will be upgraded to Android 4.3 Jelly Bean by year-end, if a report is to be believed.

Sammobile has revealed that Samsung is planning to roll out Android 4.3 update for its top of the line smartphones soon. The site mentions that the company has plans to roll out Android 4.3 Jelly Bean update for its 2013 flagship, the Galaxy S4 in October while the 2012 flagship device, the Galaxy S III can be expected to get the new Android update by October end or even November.

The site further states that the Galaxy Note 3 predecessor would also be getting the taste of the new Jelly Bean iteration, but that would only be by the end of November, or early December. All three smartphones are also likely to receive a revamped TouchWiz interface with some added functions, claims the report.

Further the report affirms that Samsung is also testing the Android 4.3 Jelly Bean update for Galaxy Mega phablets. However, Sammobile has not revealed details on what new exclusive features to expect in the rumoured Android 4.3 Jelly Bean update for the three devices, the Galaxy SIII, Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note II. But given that Galaxy Note3 runs Android 4.3 with new features, we are hopeful that the three devices will be receiving some features of the latest phablet.

Samsung has made no secret of its plans to launch Android 4.3 Jelly Bean update for its leading Galaxy smartphones, but so far the South Korean major has offered nothing in the way of release dates as well. But now it looks like the company is getting closer to having its latest software update finalized for its three smartphones. As of now, we would take this with a pinch of salt until the company confirms updates rolling out to the Galaxy smartphones.

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A small view of google birth house and it's celebration on it's 15 years age

It all started in a garage that you can still find with minimal effort — especially if you're using Google Maps.

Less than one mile off U.S. Route 101, the highway that links San Francisco to the rest of Silicon Valley, you'll come to a quiet neighborhood a stone's throw from Stanford's beautifully manicured campus. It was in Menlo Park, in a single-story home on Santa Margarita Avenue, that Googleco-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin rented the garage from Susan Wojcicki, now a Google senior VP, who was fresh out of business school and afraid of missing her mortgage payments.

The duo spent the winter of 1998 in the now famous garage, building the tech company that would change search, and consequently the Internet, forever.

That was 15 years ago, and Google has since become a multi-billion dollar corporation that answers all of our questions and may soon even drive our cars. The company now owns the house, which is no longer lived in, but will always serve as a reminder of where Google started.

To celebrate the company's 15th birthday, Mashable put together a slideshow looking back at the company's earliest days and the garage where it all started.

What is your favorite memory of Google from the past 15 years? Tell us in the comments below.

Small space rented by Sergey Brin and Larry Page served as crib for one of the world's largest companies

As with other technology companies, Google had very humble origins. Proof of this is that, 15 years ago, the company operated from a rented garage by his co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, while both were still living in their dorms at Stanford University.

Although the company currently owning the place, it is not the scene of any of your activities today, serving only as a portrait of his past. That changed only slightly in last Thursday (26), on which day the garage was used to announce the latest changes in the search algorithm.

The site can be found easily through Google Maps system, which allows you to explore a little more inside.Over the past 15 years, the company has witnessed an impressive growth and its operations now go far beyond the search systems, involving areas such as mobile telephony, electronics that can be dressed up and even developing cars entirely automatic.

The Google Garage 

was 15 years ago in this very garage that a young Larry Page and Sergey Brin started building one of the the world's largest tech companies. Google's co-founders rented the space -- along with three rooms inside the house -- while they were still living in the dorms at Stanford, less than two miles away. (The co-founders used Stanford's servers to host their new search engine.)
Google now owns the house and doesn't use it for much. On Thursday, the company announced changes to Google's search product from the garage to commemorate its 15th anniversary.

Susan Wojcicki -- The Former Landlord

Susan Wojcicki, now a senior VP at Google, owned the home when the two young men from Stanford came looking for office space. Wojcicki had just finished getting her MBA and was worried about covering her mortgage. "I didn't know I'd be renting it out to a company like Google," she joked on Thursday at a press event at the house.

The front of the house

Because Page and Brin were using the garage for work, there was always an issue when it came to parking, says Wojcicki. Menlo Park didn't allow street parking at night during that time, she says, so the Google employees and home owners had to get "creative."

 Blue Carpet

Wojcicki says that the garage has not changed much since Page and Brin used it in the winter of 1998. Even the blue carpet remains the same. Wojcicki says she put the carpet in to make the boys feel more at home when they first moved in.

The Google's living room 

Google had a whiteboard in one of the house's back rooms that read: "Google's Worldwide Headquarters." The company stayed in Wojcicki's home until January when it had seven employees. Then both parties decided it was time to relocate.

The kitchen 

After the group moved to new offices, Susan decided she wanted to work for Google. (She went through the interview process and everything, she says.) As the company's first marketing manager, she remembers asking the co-founders who they wanted to market to. Their response: "Everybody." 

The Back yard

Despite the late nights and daily comings and goings, Wojcicki says that there were never any complaints from neighbors about the company taking up lodging in the house.

The Google's first home

The garage wasn't only used for work. Wojcicki says Brin and Page kept a ping pong table in the garage as well. (Rumor has it there was a jacuzzi out back that was a favorite of the co-founders, but it wasn't on display during Thursday's press announcement.) 

Google turns 15

Google is celebrating its 15th birthday on Friday. Google celebrates its birthday every year on Sept. 27, although the co-founders originally filed for incorporation in the state of California on Sept. 4, 1998.
The Google.com domain name was filed on Sept. 15, 1997. So why is the company birthday on the 27th? Because Google says it is, and who are we to argue?

The original office

For Google's press announcement Thursday, the company rebuilt the co-founders' workstation in the back of the house, complete with original desks and chairs (the monitors are not the originals). 

Photo Gallery by QuickGallery.com

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Stanford scientists create world's first carbon nanotube computer

Computers of the future could be even smaller, faster, and more efficient — all by doing away with the very material that currently comprises their core.

In a finding that builds on earlier work from several institutions, including IBM, a team of electrical engineers at Stanford University today announced the creation of the first-ever computer based on carbon nanotubes. The nanotubes are used to create a novel kind of transistor, one that doesn't rely on conventional silicon. "This is the most complex electronic ever built with carbon nanotubes," said Max Shulaker, a co-author on the paper announcing the progress, which is published in Nature. "There's been a lot of hype around this field, but people weren't actually sure if you could use them in a practical way like this."

ENHANCED SPEED AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Carbon nanotubes, or CNTs, are infinitesimally small cylinders made from sheets of carbon atoms. When arrayed into transistors, the nanotubes are small enough that engineers can fit many more of them onto a single chip compared to silicon transistors. Their size, combined with other properties of the nanotubes — including high conductivity and rapid on-off ability — would mean enhanced speed and energy efficiency. That's particularly important given the inherent limits of silicon-based transistors: researchers have been doubling the number of transistors on a chip approximately every two years (a process known as Moore's Law) but that progress will within decades reach an end.

"WHEN ONE CHIP HAS BILLIONS OF TRANSISTORS, THAT 2 PERCENT BECOMES A BIG PROBLEM."

The computer that Shulaker and his colleagues build is extremely basic: it contains only 178 transistors, and runs a rudimentary operating system that allows for the completion of counting and number sorting tasks (as well as the ability to toggle between the two). Still, getting to this point has been years in the making — and required that researchers overcome two daunting challenges. Carbon nanotubes tend to self-assemble unpredictably, and that assembly process also yields some nanotubes with metallic properties, which will cause a transistor to short-circuit. "We had to do a lot of work to get these nanotubes to align how we wanted, and to be perfectly reliable," Shulaker said. "Even 98 percent isn't good enough; when one chip has billions of transistors, that 2 percent becomes a big problem."

To overcome those challenges, the Stanford team used what they've dubbed as "an imperfection-immune design." The approach essentially uses electricity to vaporize metallic nanotubes during the fabrication process, and relies on an algorithm to create circuit designs that function despite any misalignment of the nanotubes. According to Shulaker, the methods can be scaled to support industrial manufacturing of carbon nanotube transistors in the future. "You can't expect to make these transistors one-by-one," he said. "I think what this shows is that we can actually start to compete with silicon."

"MAYBE ONE DAY, SILICON VALLEY WILL BECOME CARBON VALLEY."

Despite the exciting progress, Shulaker is also realistic about the prospects of electronics running on carbon nanotubes anytime soon. Additional research will be necessary to yield more sophisticated CNT-based computers, and the nanotubes are only one of several emerging technologies with the potential to replace silicon. Not to mention that any major disruption to the silicon-based electronics industry would be a formidable challenge. "I'd be naive to think that one fine morning, the industry will just wake up and toss silicon out the window," he said. "But I like to think that, maybe one day, Silicon Valley will become Carbon Valley."source by : The Vergue

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Google introduces new 'Hummingbird' search algorithm and exposed it's detials on it's turning of 15 years birth day

Google has quietly retooled the closely guarded formula running its internet search engine to give better answers to the increasingly complex questions posed by web surfers.

The overhaul came as part of an update called "Hummingbird" that Google has gradually rolled out in the past month without disclosing the modifications.

Google is trying to keep pace with the evolution of internet usage. As search queries get more complicated, traditional 'Boolean' or keyword-based systems begin deteriorating because of the need to match concepts and meanings in addition to words.

Hummingbird is the company's effort to match the meaning of queries with that of documents on the internet, said AmitSinghal, a company vice presiden"Remember what it was like to search in 1998? You'd sit down and boot up your bulky computer, dial up on your squawky modem, type in some keywords, and get 10 blue links to websites that had those words," Singhal wrote in a separate blog post.

"The world has changed so much since then: billions of people have come online, the web has grown exponentially, and now you can ask any question on the powerful little device in your pocket."

The changes could have a major impact on traffic to websites. Hummingbird represents the most dramatic alteration to its search engine since it revised the way it indexes websites three years ago as part of a redesign called "Caffeine", according to Singhal. He estimates the redesign affects about 90 per cent of the search requests Google gets.

Any reshuffling of Google's search rankings can have sweeping ramifications because they steer so much of the internet's traffic.

Google disclosed the existence of the new search formula on Thursday at an event held in the Menlo Park, California, garage where chief executive Larry Page and fellow co-founder Sergey Brin started the company 15 years ago.

Google celebrates its corporate birthday on September 27 each year, even though the company was incorporated a few weeks earlier. The company is now based in Mountain View, California, at a sprawling complex located about 11 kilometres from the 1900-square-foot home where Page and Brin paid $US1700 per month to rent the garage and a bedroom. The co-founders' landlord was Susan Wojcicki, who is now a top Google executive and Brin's sister-in-law.

Wojcicki sold the home to Google in 2006 and it is now maintained as a monument to the company's humble beginnings.

Google's modifications haven't triggered widespread complaints from other websites, suggesting that the changes haven't resulted in a radical change in the way that Google displays its search rankings. The Caffeine update spurred a loud outcry because it explicitly sought to weed out websites that tried to trick Google's search engine into believing their content was related to common search requests.

Just as Page and Brin set out to do when they started Google in a garage, "we want to keep getting better at helping you make the most of your life," Singhal said.

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Apple Updates iMac With New Intel Processors, Speedy 802.11ac Wi-Fi And Faster Flash Storage

Apple has just released an updated version of its iMac all-in-one computer. The update is a minor one, unlike the considerable redesign it got at the end of last year, but it brings brand new improved performance and internal specs to the iMac line. New features include Intel quad core processors, 802.11ac Wi-Fi and faster PCIe-based flash storage.

These new iMacs now feature a 2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor on the base 21.5-inch model, which is the first desktop with Intel’s Crystalwell architecture, and new Iris Pro graphics. Iris Pro is a new Intel GPU that’s popular on mid-range gaming PCs, and should offer considerable improvements over the previous model. There are also CTO options up to 3.4GHz Core i5 Haswell processors, and NVIDIA GeForce 700 series graphics on the top model, with up to 4GB of dedicated memory.

802.11ac networking means the new iMacs can work with the latest AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule routers, which introduced that wireless standard earlier this year. PCIe-based flash storage should offer speed improvements of up to 50 percent over last-gen models, according to Apple, for faster booting, loading of apps and general system performance. All-flash CTO options now range up to a full 1 TB of storage, with Fusion Drives available in either 1TB or 3TB.

8GB of RAM and a 1TB drive are now standard, with 32GB max configuration options for custom orders. Apple starts selling the new iMac today on its website, and in stores as well, according to its press release. Customers can choose between stand-mounted versions, and ones with built-in VESA adapters if they’re mounting on their own swingarms or other hardware. Prices start at $1,299, and range up to $1,999 for base configurations.

The top-end 27-inch model offers up to 40 percent faster graphics, and combined with PCIe and the new Intel Haswell quad-core processors, that’s a might attractive package for anyone doing some gaming or heavy-duty video editing. Plus, it’s all wrapped up in the slimmer body design, which, as mentioned in my review of last year’s model, is a big improvement on the iMac’s aesthetics.

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Microsoft introduces the Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 tablets

Microsoft has just introduced the second generation of electronic tablets marketed under its own brand, with two models on sale according to architecture, 2 Surface and Surface Pro 2, accompanied by a good number of new accessories to complement in New York.

I was singing and the event programmed by Microsoft was intended for the presentation of its new electronic Tablet Surface 2, improved in various aspects of hardware and software updated with the 'Blue' treatment or what is the same, with the update Windows 8.1 RT and Pro versions respectively.

Few news can tell you because almost all the forecasts that we spoke of this morning have been met. There will be Mini Surface (for now) and if two models with different ARM architecture and x 86 which come to renew the current Surface RT and Surface Pro and that you list your main specifications: (Surface 2)

Display: Multi-touch IPS 10.6 inches - resolution 1920 x 1080 pixelsProcessor: SoC Tegra 4 1.7 GHz NVIDIARAM: 2 GBStorage: 32/64 GBConnectivity: Wi-Fi, BT 4.0, USB 3.0, MicroSDXC, GPSCameras: Front 3.5 MP and rear 5 MP with 1080 p video recordingSensors: Accelerometer, gyroscopeAutonomy: 10 hours of video playbackOS: Windows 8.1 RT

Surface 2 hit the market on October 22 in two versions with 32 and 64 Gbytes of storage capacity for 499 to 599 dollars respectively. Their availability will cover 22 selected countries (including Spain) and through the store online Microsoft Store and also in the retail channel. Surface 2 will include a copy of Microsoft Office 2013 RT with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook. 
(Surface Pro 2)

Display: Multi-touch IPS 10.6 inches - resolution 1920 x 1080 pixelsProcessor: Intel Haswell Core i5-4200U -RAM: 4 or 8 GBStorage: 64/128/256/512 GBConnectivity: Wi-Fi, BT 4.0, USB 3.0, MicroSDXC, GPSCameras: front and rear 720 pSensors: Accelerometer, gyroscopeAutonomy: 10 hours of video playbackOS: Windows 8.1 Pro

Surface Pro 2 will reach the market on 22 October in versions with 64, 128, 256 and 512 Gbytes of storage capacity and respective prices of 899, 999, 1299 and $1799. Their availability will cover 22 selected countries (including Spain) and through the store online Microsoft Store and also in the retail channel. Surface Pro 2 included in the price a stylus with 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity, as well as free calls with Skype and storage space in SkyDrive.



As you can see, the forecasts are met and Microsoft maintain screen sizes, improves the resolution of the RT, the base of both hardware and updated systems. In terms of prices, the new models are somewhat more expensive than the current but cheaper than at its launch a year ago. 


Another point of interest of the Surface have been new accessories that have been presented for the tablets, from docking stations, covers, connectors keyboards in good number.

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Intel Haswell-powered laptops that contains on long battery of deliver of 4 items from MacBook Air from Apple, XPS 12 from Dell,Vaio Pro 13 from Sony,Aspire S7 from Acer

Just in time for the back-to-school season, new laptops with extended battery life are hitting store shelves.

What these laptops have in common are microprocessors that belong to a new family of Intel chips called Haswell. The chips consume less power than previous generations and promise a 50 percent boost in battery life for watching video. The improvements extend to word processing, Web surfing and other computing tasks as well.

Put another way, you can unplug your laptop in the morning and go a full day without a charge, with some breaks for meals, exercise and errands. The 13-inch (33-centimeter) MacBook Air, for instance, promises up to 12 hours of battery life. Three Windows machines I tried promise seven to nine hours. For students, that's a full day of cutting classes - and more. For business travelers, that's a cross-country flight including delays.

The catch
Slim, lightweight laptops with Haswell chips cost more than $1,000. Cheaper laptops will be heavier or come with older chips.

I reviewed Apple's MacBook Air and Dell, Sony and Acer computers running Microsoft's Windows 8. Samsung and other PC makers are just coming out with Haswell laptops, so you should expect even more choices by the holidays. The four I tested use solid-state flash drives, which keep laptops light but don't have as much capacity as traditional storage. They also lack Ethernet ports for wired Internet connections and slots for DVDs. Expect to use Wi-Fi a lot, though USB ports are available to connect devices. Base models come with 128 gigabytes of storage. You can spend a few hundred dollars more for additional storage and faster processors.

Here are the four Haswell laptops I tried, starting with the cheapest:

1. MacBook Air from Apple starts at $1,099 for 13-inch model
With a screen measuring 13.3 inches (33 centimeters) diagonally, the larger model weighs 2.96 pounds (1.34 kilograms) and costs $1,099. An even lighter, 11.6-inch (29.5-centimeter) version is available for $999, but promised battery life is just nine hours. Spend the extra $100 for three additional hours and a larger screen if you can afford it.

It's odd that the Air is the cheapest of the four I reviewed, as Apple's computers are traditionally pricier than their Windows counterparts. But in this case, the Windows laptops I tested all come with touch screens, something Apple has avoided in laptops on the premise that people don't want to lift their hands off the keyboard to use touch controls. The base model of the Air also has a slightly slower processor - at 1.3 gigahertz, compared with 1.6 gigahertz for the three Windows laptops.

Although promised battery life on the 13-inch review unit was 12 hours, I was able to get more than 14 hours once by turning off the Wi-Fi connection. I typically got nine to 11 hours for general Web surfing. Apple promises up to 10 hours for playing video downloaded from its iTunes store. I ran that test four times and got nine to 10 hours of playing the same episode of "Revenge" over and over. As with other laptops, performance drops significantly when streaming video over Wi-Fi, down to six to seven hours of Hulu.

Beyond having a long battery life, the Air is a solid machine that is easy to hold and carry. Although its aluminum exterior is easy to scratch and dent, I feel comfortable banging it around in my backpack because it has few moving parts that might be susceptible to damage. I even ran four miles home with it once.

Only the 13-inch model has a slot for SD memory cards.

Apart from its limited storage compared with laptops with regular hard drives, the MacBook Air will work fine as a primary computer. However, if you need an even more powerful laptop, see if Apple will update its MacBook Pros with Haswell this fall.

2. XPS 12 from Dell starts at $1,200
The XPS 12 is part of a category called ultrabooks - slim and light laptops, much like MacBook Airs, except they run Windows. The XPS 12 is also a convertible. The screen spins like a pig roasting on a spit. In one position, you get a laptop. Spin it 180 degrees, close the lid, and you have yourself a tablet. Magic.

Unfortunately, the XPS 12 is on the heavy side. The base model is 3.35 pounds. On paper, it's less than a half-pound heavier than the Air. But in practice, it feels heavy - especially as a tablet, at more than double the 1.44 pounds for the full-size iPad. The XPS 12 is alone in lacking an SD card slot, and its 12.5-inch screen is the smallest. But it is also the only one to have physical volume buttons on the side, and it's more affordable than the other two Windows laptops I reviewed.

Promised battery life is about 8.75 hours. I got nearly 8.5 hours for word processing, spreadsheets and other tasks that didn't need Wi-Fi. With wireless turned on, I got 7.5 to eight hours of use. Like the other two Windows machines, I got five to six hours of iTunes video. That's about half of what I got on the Air, but Apple has the advantage in being able to optimize its hardware for the software it also designs. I got about 5.5 to six hours of streaming video on Hulu, which is just about an hour less than what I got on the Air.

I did have some trouble with the battery losing its charge quickly when not in use, but a software update seems to have fixed that. That said, the XPS 12 took up to four hours to get a full charge, compared with two hours or less for the others.

What I like most about the XPS 12 is the fact that it automatically disables the on-screen keyboard when in laptop mode. On the Acer and the Sony laptops, the touch keyboard gets in the way when you already have a fully functioning keyboard attached. Tablet computers need that keyboard, so it comes back automatically when you flip the screen into a tablet. It's a smart strategy that I wish all other Windows 8 computers would adopt.

3. Vaio Pro 13 from Sony starts at $1,250
The Pro is an ultrabook that's light. Very, very light.

The 13.3-inch (33.8-centimeter) laptop weighs just 2.34 pounds (1.06 kilograms), only 60 percent more than an iPad. Sony uses carbon fiber to keep it light. It feels to me like cheap plastic that's about to break because it bends. But Sony assures me that it's more durable than aluminum. And Sony says the fact that it bends isn't a sign of weakness but a characteristic that lets it absorb shock. The base model starts at $1,250, though you can save $100 with an 11.6-inch (29.5-centimeter) Vaio Pro 11 instead.

I was ready to hate the Pro 13 because the cursor keeps jumping around when I type, making it difficult to complete sentences. But I tried three machines without problems at a Sony store in New York. Turns out I had to download a piece of software to give me settings for touchpad sensitivity. I had two weeks of frustrations until then, though Sony tells me most consumers won't need the separate download.

Once that got fixed, the laptop worked fine. The laptop hinge serves as a kickstand when open to prop up the keyboard, making it slightly easier to type.

I consistently got more than the seven hours of battery life promised for general Web surfing and word processing. I reached 8.5 hours once with Wi-Fi turned off. Battery life drops below six hours, though, for iTunes video download and Hulu streaming. If you do a lot of that, you can add a spare battery for $150, doubling the battery life. The system is still less than 3 pounds with the spare battery attached. The other units I tried won't let you replace batteries or insert a spare at all.

4. Aspire S7 from Acer starts at $1,450
The Aspire has what I want in a laptop, except for the price.

The laptop's aluminum body is covered on one side with glossy white glass. It reminds me of a refrigerator, but I came to appreciate the durability it brings once I started lugging it around. It's also fairly light, at 2.87 pounds (1.3 kilograms).

You can flip its screen all the way back so that both the keyboard and the screen are level with the surface, just like a tablet on a tabletop. I can't think of any scenarios in which I would need that, though Acer says it's good for presentations. Just press Function-O on the keyboard and the image on the screen rotates 90 degrees at a time, allowing you to show something to others sitting at your table.

Acer's website promises eight hours of battery life. I exceeded nine hours with Wi-Fi off and got seven to 8.5 hours of general Web surfing. But I got less than six hours of iTunes video and Hulu streaming.

Two complaints about the design: The power button is near the hole for the charger, so I accidentally turned the machine off by mistake several times. Acer also places the "page up" and "page down" keys next to the arrows to move the cursor. So instead of moving the cursor one line up, I've often moved it a whole page up or down and lost my train of thought.

I also had the cursor jump around when I first used it. A replacement unit Acer sent me to review worked without a hitch. I eventually noticed the first machine had the touchpad-sensitivity settings missing, even after resetting the unit to factory conditions and downloading new software for the touchpad.

My advice is to check return policies in case you run into trouble. The MacBook Air worked well out of the box, but the three Windows machine all required software adjustments. If you want a touch screen, you'll need to go with Windows 8.

Whatever you choose, these are all great machines that will give you several hours of use on a single charge - as long as you can afford them.

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