New Technology 2011 Gadgets, Best Gadgets, Desktop Gadgets

Saad Hamid on June 7, 2012

I must say that if there is one iPhone app that I simply can't live without, it has to be Sparrow for iPhone.

Sparrow for iPhone is an email client much similar to the default Mail.app client in iOS but rich with a lot of features that make it simply much more pleasing to the eye.

And not just the iPhone, the Sparrow mail client for Mac has actually forced me to ditch the default Mail.app in Mac OS X due to its light-weight, pleasing gestures, and easy-to-use functionality. And looks like, the iPad will be next.

The company is prepping up to launch the iPad version of Sparrow for which they have setup a special page on the URL http://www.sprw.me/ipad/ that teases "We are preparing something bigger".

Although, one feature that have been keeping Sparrow users in disappointment is support for Push. Let's hope they add Push support to the iPad client at least.

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Owners and lovers of devices running the Android operating system will regularly tell you that one of the shortcomings of iOS is the fact that the visuals of the software can’t really be customized in any way. While this may be true for stock installations of Apple’s mobile operating system, performing a jailbreak on the device leaves the whole system open to intense customization.

Some jailbreakers prefer to go down the route of installing full home screen themes that involves pretty much every aspect of the user-interface being aesthetically changed, as well as individual system sounds being added and amended. One of the main benefits of that is; it makes your iOS device completely unique.

Some users prefer a more subtle approach to customization, something which the StatusTint tweak may provide. The StatusTint package is available from the jailbroken Cydia store and allows modification of the system-wide status bar that appears at the top of the operating system containing things like the signal strength indicator, the current time and battery level, as well as any data or Wi-Fi icons.

There are a number of reasons why an individual may want to amend the look and feel of the status bar, ranging from changing it to your favorite color or altering it so that it suits the aesthetics of your favorite or most used apps. Regardless of the reason, if you can look past the fact that it isn’t one of the most earth shattering packages in terms of functionality, it actually is a fun and relatively useful tweak.

No additional home screen icons are added with StatusTint, with all of the modifications being possible through a dedicated preferences section in the Settings app. The required color can be set and amended using the supplied RGB sliders, with users also being given the option of setting the status bar to a solid color or mashing their own gradient pattern through the use of two colors.

StatusTint is available as a free of charge download from the ModMyi repository with no specific iOS version requirements being given.

Be sure to check out our iPhone Apps Gallery and iPad Apps Gallery to explore more apps for your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

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Jun 19, 2012

Sparrow for iPhone, formerly just a Mac OS X app, was launched a few months ago as a Gmail client. Recently, version 1.6 of the desktop app was released with support for POP accounts which meant that Hotmail and the likes would work with Sparrow. The same feature has just been added to the iPhone app as well so the list of compatible email services now looks something like below:

Use your Gmail, Hotmail, Google Apps, iCloud, Yahoo, AOL, Mobile Me and custom IMAP/POP accounts.

Apart from this, there’s not much new apart from mandatory bug fixes. Folder mapping issues have been addressed in this update.

Despite support for an increased number of email services ( virtually all of them since Sparrow supports both IMAP and POP accounts ), push notifications are still not supported which means that here at iThinkDiff, Sparrow is still not our primary choice of a go to email app. Sparrow would provide push notification support in a future update but let us hope that it’s free and not a paid feature. Another issue is not having the app already updated with the latest email every time it’s opened, like how Mail.app works â€" something we doubt we would be able to see in the near future due to iOS restrictions.

Download Sparrow for iPhone from the App Store

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We are invited to a number of launch events and we have almost attended all of them, and being in Pakistan we have always been part of launch events for devices that are about to be launched in Pakistan.

Thanks to Nokia Pakistan, for the first time ever, a new Nokia phone announcement was made from Pakistan at a global launch event held at Marriott Hotel, Karachi last week.

This was a media event held just for the traditional media, newspapers/magazines and online media (this is where we come in!). Sizzled Core, along with a bunch of other bloggers around Pakistan were invited to be a part of this grand event.

Nokia’s decision to choose Pakistan for the global launch of their upcoming devices was a clear sign of how important Pakistani market is for Nokia. Nokia envisions to connect the next billion people with the newly launched Nokia 110 and Nokia 112. Great presentations, and overview of how strong the telecommunications industry is in Pakistan, dance, music, fireworks… This was all part of the Nokia event.

Nokia has the biggest app store in Pakistan which includes 2,000,000+ weekly downloads on average! Almost all of media fro mPakistan is accessible on the Nokia Store â€" apps include: Geo, Aaj TV, Dawn News, Express Tribune, ARY News, Radio Pakistan etc.

Some really cool local applications are also available, such as Cricket, Ludo, Toffee TV etc. Islamic apps on the App store have millions of downloads. There are over 400 local apps, with 200+ Pakistan developers contributing to the Nokia App store which bring the download count of the Pakistani content to over 17 million!

These statistics and figures were shared by the three key speakers of the main event â€" Imran Khalid Mahmood, Saulo Passos and Calin Turcanu. The event had global and regional spokesperson from Nokia to share their thoughts on emerging markets and the new devices. Let’s take a brief intro to each of these speakers.

Imran Khalid Mahmood

Imran Khalid Mahmood is the VP, Near East, Nokia Corporation. In his line of duty he is responsible for heading the sales strategy for Nokia in this region. He is the frontrunner of all measurable KPIs and maintains a strict vigilance over them which are the main reason for Nokia’s success and popularity in this region.

Saulo Passos

Saulo Passos is the Global Director Mobile Phone Communications at Nokia, based in London, England. As part of the global Mobile Phones leadership team, his main focus targets the Next Billion strategy, a Nokia effort to connect more people to the internet, using a mobile device as the leading path.

Calin Turcanu

Starting from August, 2011, Calin Turcanu is the Head of Mobile Phones Business Unit, Nokia India, Middle East & Africa and overseessales, marketing and business development of Nokia devices in the region. Calin is actively involved in developing business strategies to ensure market success of key Nokia devices and strengthen Nokia’s brand presence in the region at the same time.

Remember the dance and music I mentioned earlier? Check out the photo below.

We’ll try to get a full video coverage for you to watch it as well. This performance was just before the Nokia team unveiled their new Nokia 110 and Nokia 112.

These new devices will be available in Pakistan and soon after into rest of the world, starting from the end of May. Prices of these new Nokia phones were one of them ain concerns by the attendees there. Nokia 110 is priced at Rs. 3800 and Nokia 112 will be available for Rs. 4000. Very affordable, isn’t it?

Nokia is continuously working on making the value rich features affordable to all price points â€" Nokia 110 and Nokia 112 are great examples of how even the entry-level Nokia devices don’t just offer optimized and affordable internet but at the same time flaunt a stylish design that will cater to a variety of lifestyles.

These devices will prove to be a true enabler in providing the people of Pakistan and the consumers from other growing economies with their first internet experience on mobile phone. Having internet on mobile phone opens up doors for new opportunities for the masses and helps them follow their dreams.

Now, we expect Nokia to make a bigger global launch announcement from Pakistan next time!

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With the year drawn to a mid, the tech industry has had its share of highs and lows. Whether it was the ensuing patent war, workforce taking the employers to court on grounds of anti-trust activities, a go-live of IPv6 or the CISPA coming into effect, it would probably be quite fair to assume that the industry has been in the sight of the regulators more than innovators.  Google’s controversial privacy policy changes, as exposed by SafeGov.org fit the discussion best.

Before we proceed with the details of the story that holds a different interpretation from the plaintiff to the pontiff, let’s identify the premise first. The privacy policies binding both the consumer and the government were announced to go through changes by Google. With the announcement released in January, the changes were to take effect from early March. As per the public statement, the changes were aimed at the simplification of the privacy policies. The ‘fine print’ was decoded by SafeGov.org, a group dedicated to ensuring uptake of best practices for cloud adoption within the Government Sector.  As per it, users’ data across all Google services would be synced to ensure customized service delivery across all platforms. The only flaw inherent within it was the contradiction it posed to Google services contracted to government employees.

Workers using Google Apps For Government (GAFG) are individually contracted, and not bound by privacy policy changes, stated Google when prompted by SafeGov.org. Google’s word was taken in goodwill and the case came to a suspension until recently, SageGov.org brought forward contracts signed with government employees for GAFG, publicly posted. And there was reason to believe that SafeGov.org had been inquisitive on legible grounds indeed.

Suitably titled, ‘Do Google’s Government Contracts Really Supersede its Privacy Policy’, a exposé posted on the website on the 15th of June 2012, relates three separate instances of policy posted contracts. Raising an argument around the security and privacy of classified information the government deals in, that now stands compromised post the adoption of amendment s to the privacy policy, stands similar for both consumer and government from what the contracts reed.

As quoted by our source, Google VP of Enterprise, Amit Singh was reached by The Washington Post, to share a word on the same to which, he responded with, “Enterprise Customers who use GAFG have individual contracts. These have always superseded Google’s Privacy policy.”

Contracts entered with government bodies for the use of Google Apps, portray a different picture. Although, Google hasn’t been taken through any legal proceedings for the same, the tech giant shouldn’t overlook the matter in passing.

 

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Saad Hamid on June 7, 2012

I must say that if there is one iPhone app that I simply can't live without, it has to be Sparrow for iPhone.

Sparrow for iPhone is an email client much similar to the default Mail.app client in iOS but rich with a lot of features that make it simply much more pleasing to the eye.

And not just the iPhone, the Sparrow mail client for Mac has actually forced me to ditch the default Mail.app in Mac OS X due to its light-weight, pleasing gestures, and easy-to-use functionality. And looks like, the iPad will be next.

The company is prepping up to launch the iPad version of Sparrow for which they have setup a special page on the URL http://www.sprw.me/ipad/ that teases "We are preparing something bigger".

Although, one feature that have been keeping Sparrow users in disappointment is support for Push. Let's hope they add Push support to the iPad client at least.

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Steve Jobs’ unfortunate passing back in October of last year left a gaping hole in the technology industry, for it wasn’t just his innovations; but his character, dogmatism and demeanour that made him one of a kind. Responsible for co-founding Apple, he was ousted when things weren’t going particularly merrily, but after making strong progress in his absence with the likes of Pixar, he returned â€" like the knight in shining armor â€" to rescue his beloved Apple from its knees.

His life was a fascinating series of events, and in the run-up to his passing, Jobs made a point of documenting it with the help of biographer Walter Isaacson. Unfortunately, the book was something of a disappointment, and although Isaacson has a very credible resumé, he failed to really capture the imagination with what turned out to be a pretty mediocre prose.

Still, those taken in by the life and times of Steve Jobs have two movies â€" both with quite different agendas â€" which are currently in the works for release in the not-so-distant future. The version starring Ashton Kutcher as Jobs got underway first, but our money’s on Aaron Sorkin â€" the guy behind the rather brilliant The Social Network â€" to offer a more captivating iteration, which will be released under Sony Pictures.

If you, like us, are really looking forward to the Jobs motion pictures, then you might be interested to check out a well put together archive of videos of the great orator, which are compiled in quite the biographical sense. As you’re probably aware, videos featuring the former Apple CEO aren’t exactly in short supply, but one Art Matsak has created a detailed catalog based on events discussed in the Isaacson Book.

In many respects, this could be seen as the accompanying documentary to the book, and while much of it is famous footage, even the most ardent of Apple fans are bound to discover some hidden gems they’ve never seen before. It’s certainly not the first collection of videos dedicated to Jobs, but we’ve yet to stumble across anything pieced together quite as nicely as this.

It is well worth having a look at, and if you’re interested, you can find the Steve Jobs video archive here.

(via TheNextWeb)

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Jun 19, 2012

Sparrow for iPhone, formerly just a Mac OS X app, was launched a few months ago as a Gmail client. Recently, version 1.6 of the desktop app was released with support for POP accounts which meant that Hotmail and the likes would work with Sparrow. The same feature has just been added to the iPhone app as well so the list of compatible email services now looks something like below:

Use your Gmail, Hotmail, Google Apps, iCloud, Yahoo, AOL, Mobile Me and custom IMAP/POP accounts.

Apart from this, there’s not much new apart from mandatory bug fixes. Folder mapping issues have been addressed in this update.

Despite support for an increased number of email services ( virtually all of them since Sparrow supports both IMAP and POP accounts ), push notifications are still not supported which means that here at iThinkDiff, Sparrow is still not our primary choice of a go to email app. Sparrow would provide push notification support in a future update but let us hope that it’s free and not a paid feature. Another issue is not having the app already updated with the latest email every time it’s opened, like how Mail.app works â€" something we doubt we would be able to see in the near future due to iOS restrictions.

Download Sparrow for iPhone from the App Store

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We are invited to a number of launch events and we have almost attended all of them, and being in Pakistan we have always been part of launch events for devices that are about to be launched in Pakistan.

Thanks to Nokia Pakistan, for the first time ever, a new Nokia phone announcement was made from Pakistan at a global launch event held at Marriott Hotel, Karachi last week.

This was a media event held just for the traditional media, newspapers/magazines and online media (this is where we come in!). Sizzled Core, along with a bunch of other bloggers around Pakistan were invited to be a part of this grand event.

Nokia’s decision to choose Pakistan for the global launch of their upcoming devices was a clear sign of how important Pakistani market is for Nokia. Nokia envisions to connect the next billion people with the newly launched Nokia 110 and Nokia 112. Great presentations, and overview of how strong the telecommunications industry is in Pakistan, dance, music, fireworks… This was all part of the Nokia event.

Nokia has the biggest app store in Pakistan which includes 2,000,000+ weekly downloads on average! Almost all of media fro mPakistan is accessible on the Nokia Store â€" apps include: Geo, Aaj TV, Dawn News, Express Tribune, ARY News, Radio Pakistan etc.

Some really cool local applications are also available, such as Cricket, Ludo, Toffee TV etc. Islamic apps on the App store have millions of downloads. There are over 400 local apps, with 200+ Pakistan developers contributing to the Nokia App store which bring the download count of the Pakistani content to over 17 million!

These statistics and figures were shared by the three key speakers of the main event â€" Imran Khalid Mahmood, Saulo Passos and Calin Turcanu. The event had global and regional spokesperson from Nokia to share their thoughts on emerging markets and the new devices. Let’s take a brief intro to each of these speakers.

Imran Khalid Mahmood

Imran Khalid Mahmood is the VP, Near East, Nokia Corporation. In his line of duty he is responsible for heading the sales strategy for Nokia in this region. He is the frontrunner of all measurable KPIs and maintains a strict vigilance over them which are the main reason for Nokia’s success and popularity in this region.

Saulo Passos

Saulo Passos is the Global Director Mobile Phone Communications at Nokia, based in London, England. As part of the global Mobile Phones leadership team, his main focus targets the Next Billion strategy, a Nokia effort to connect more people to the internet, using a mobile device as the leading path.

Calin Turcanu

Starting from August, 2011, Calin Turcanu is the Head of Mobile Phones Business Unit, Nokia India, Middle East & Africa and overseessales, marketing and business development of Nokia devices in the region. Calin is actively involved in developing business strategies to ensure market success of key Nokia devices and strengthen Nokia’s brand presence in the region at the same time.

Remember the dance and music I mentioned earlier? Check out the photo below.

We’ll try to get a full video coverage for you to watch it as well. This performance was just before the Nokia team unveiled their new Nokia 110 and Nokia 112.

These new devices will be available in Pakistan and soon after into rest of the world, starting from the end of May. Prices of these new Nokia phones were one of them ain concerns by the attendees there. Nokia 110 is priced at Rs. 3800 and Nokia 112 will be available for Rs. 4000. Very affordable, isn’t it?

Nokia is continuously working on making the value rich features affordable to all price points â€" Nokia 110 and Nokia 112 are great examples of how even the entry-level Nokia devices don’t just offer optimized and affordable internet but at the same time flaunt a stylish design that will cater to a variety of lifestyles.

These devices will prove to be a true enabler in providing the people of Pakistan and the consumers from other growing economies with their first internet experience on mobile phone. Having internet on mobile phone opens up doors for new opportunities for the masses and helps them follow their dreams.

Now, we expect Nokia to make a bigger global launch announcement from Pakistan next time!

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(For PCWorld Pakistan)

Are These Self-Inflicted?

Are the security breaches happening with some of the leading names in the online space, rightly justified? What seems to be the case, a domino effect elucidates best. Tracing back to late 2011, PayPal was in the limelight as the most phished brand due to an omnipresent market penetration strategy and favorable market repute. According to a study conducted by Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) reporting findings from April this year, Taobao.com, China’s largest e-commerce site had surpassed PayPal as the most phished site. An interesting observation that can be conjectured from this, is that PayPal had indeed managed to surpass the leading e-commerce brands Amazon and eBay, in being targeted. Customer security continues to be the largest concern of PayPal nevertheless. The concern appears to be quite reasonable from what the ‘others’ have had to go through.

Cashing on the business of e-commerce, social/professional networking forums are the eloquent trendsetters these days. Not in competition as such, these often complement the business models of internet merchant intermediaries like PayPal, Mobile Payment Solutions etc. Two of the globally-leading networking forums have had massive password leaks in the recent past with unfortunate consequences.  Twitter, a micro-blogging platform and the second-largest networking forum had more than 55,000 passwords leaked to Pastebin. While Twitter immediately commanded a reset of Twitter passwords, another gaffe was waiting to happen.

With a level of severity exceeding the Twitter infraction by 10-fold, account passwords of the 6.5 million LinkedIn users were hacked and posted online in hashed format. As compared to Twitter, the accounts leaked weren’t of a few but of the entire LinkedIn community. A repercussion to the same was a class action suit filed by an Illinois resident, Katie Szpyrka holding LinkedIn responsible for not using adequate safety measures, to provide immunity to its users against security breaches and account hacks. LinkedIn was found guilty of saving the account passwords of its users in an unsalted SHA1 hashed format, which is below the basic industry standard encryption methods, promised in the contractual obligation between LinkedIn and the accountholder. The complaint filed against the professional networking giant identifies an SQL Injection, a process through the website is rooted to attack the databases, to have led  to the password leakage.

Holding ‘Anonymous’ Resposnible??

In the case of LinkedIn, how plausible would it to be consider the security-breach to be self-inflicted? A technical glitch left unaddressed was maliciously catapulted against the largest professional networking forum, members to which aren’t all premium accountholders. Leaked passwords of premium accountholders are likely to have opened access to, and endangered, credit card information of these using their accounts to buy services. Had the encryption firewalls met the bare minimum industry standards, the resultant could have been avoided. In a way, there is reason to believe the security breach was indeed called for.

Recalling the case of PayPal, there is an even more of a reason. According to wallstreetdaily.com, PayPal was considered to have mucked into unwarranted territories with the launch of a mobile payment service that works without Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology. To avail the facility, PayPal accountholders simply needed to enter a phone number and a PIN code. According to many security evangelists, there were serious security shortcomings to the plan. Not requiring the interjection of a physical device, such as a credit card, or a smart-phone for the transaction to be completed, renders a PayPal mobile payment account quite permeable.

A posted comment of Wall Street Daily reader pretty much summarized the flaw, “With NFC, someone has to steal your phone. [With] the proposed PayPal solution, someone could key log your phone number and PIN. NFC appears to be more secure to me.” That is so because the NFC chip comes built-in within the mobile phone. There are however, a limited number of phones equipped with the chip. A feature used by Google Wallet, the NFC Chip turns the smart-phone into a digital wallet, protected by two PIN codes and three layers of encryption. Other than Google Wallet that lets you make use of the app by ‘adding funds’ synced with your credit card, ISIS (a joint venture of Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile) is another Mobile Payment Solution built of NFC. PayPal is another competitor to Google Wallet, but not a potential one given the unaddressed vulnerability checks.

When it comes to PayPal therefore, a self-inflicted attack can be assumed quite reasonably to be the case.

Countering the same, PayPal is running a ‘bug bounty’ program.  As announced by PayPal’s Chief Information Security Officer in a blog post, PayPal is offering security researchers with verified PayPal accounts, monetary rewards for reporting Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF), SQL Injection (SQLi) and Authentication Bypass vulnerabilities. How will this influence others to follow that have faced/are privy to security attacks(s), is quite uncertain.

What is certain though, is the necessity for websites with necessitate account-opening for P2P interaction or e-commerce, to fortify the security algorithms. Appreciating the crucifying the need for the same, PayPal is offering community-wide monetary incentives. A smarter move would have been to revisit the operational model of PayPal’s Mobile Payment Solution, firstly.

The accountholder’s security compromised shouldn’t be a casualty to an enhanced business model of a website.

 

 

 

 

 

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PTCL Offers EVO / Nitro Compatible WiFi Routers

By KayCee · Monday, Jun 25, 2012 1 Comment

PTCL today announced the availability of WiFi enabled Tenda routers that are compatible with its EVO and Nitro devices.

Tenda 3G EVO router is a battery powered (with three hours backup) 3G Wi-Fi router by Tenda (A Chinese company) which offers support for plug-in of EVO and Nitro USB modems to enable wireless internet connectivity for multiple devices simultaneously using a single USB device.

It supports power over USB, so you can plug in any PTCL EVO/Nitro USB and create an instant hotspot for sharing Evo 3G Wireless Broadband internet virtually anywhere.

Here is the web page for said Tenda router on its official website: http://www.tenda.cn

It merits mentioning here that PTCL previously introduced Evo Wi-Fi cloud that had similar capabilities â€" in fact it had built-in EVO device.

Unlike Evo Wi-Fi cloud, Tenda routers will not offer built-in EVO support, instead users will have to connect EVO or Nitro devices with router to start using internet through WiFi environment.

Price:

Tenda WiFi Routers that were already available in open Market, will be sold by PTCL for Rs. 4,000.

Key highlights:

• Plug & Share Anywhere
• Portable 3G router designed for true mobility
• Convert your home/workplace into a personalized Wi-Fi zone with 3G connectivity sharing amongst multiple gadgets/users simultaneously
• Connects up to 5 users/ Wi-Fi gadgets at a time.
• Tenda 3G EVO router does not offer built-in EVO connectivity. 3G connectivity is established by plugging in PTCL EVO/Nitro devices into the router
• Compatible with all PTCL Evo & Nitro USB devices
• Excellent pocket size alternative to large DSL modems for home users & for business users with frequent travelling needs.
• Battery back-up time of up to 3 hours
• Secure connectivity through a unique identification key for each device
• Enjoy seamless roaming in 200+ cities nationwide at EVO speeds with nitro connectivity in more than 70 cities across the country.
• 1 year warranty by Tenda.

Related Stories

• PTCL Introduces Jadoo Box
• PTCL Introduces WiFi Routers for DSL Customers
• PTCL EVO WiFi: Share Internet with Others
• Official: PTCL Launches 9.3 Mbps EVO Nitro Device
• Get EVO, Nitro, EVO Wi-Fi Cloud Free Against Advance Line Rent
• PTCL Commercially Launches EVO Nitro 3G
• PTCL Announces EVO Jagao Offer

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Saad Hamid on June 7, 2012

I must say that if there is one iPhone app that I simply can't live without, it has to be Sparrow for iPhone.

Sparrow for iPhone is an email client much similar to the default Mail.app client in iOS but rich with a lot of features that make it simply much more pleasing to the eye.

And not just the iPhone, the Sparrow mail client for Mac has actually forced me to ditch the default Mail.app in Mac OS X due to its light-weight, pleasing gestures, and easy-to-use functionality. And looks like, the iPad will be next.

The company is prepping up to launch the iPad version of Sparrow for which they have setup a special page on the URL http://www.sprw.me/ipad/ that teases "We are preparing something bigger".

Although, one feature that have been keeping Sparrow users in disappointment is support for Push. Let's hope they add Push support to the iPad client at least.

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Having recently become a fully-fledged company, Facebook is now obligated to make a statement of intent by diving head-first into the acquisition pool, and with Instagram secured and Opera also thought to be on the cards, the hotly-rumored coup of Face.com has now become official.

The big IPO was dogged by controversy, no less because many felt Facebook was grossly over-valued, and as such, Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to make all the correct moves in order to appease shareholders. The Face.com purchase has been on the cards for quite a while now, and we first caught wind of the murmurs at the end of last month that Facebook was ready to write another hefty check for the site, which includes a bunch of impressive facial recognition technologies.

Face.com’s auto-tagging suggestions facility is already utilized by the 900 million or so Facebook users, and now, Zuck’s pursuit of the company has been given the proverbial rubber-stamp. Speaking to AllThingsD, Facebook declared that its latest purchase "brings a world-class team and a long-time technology vendor in house."

The buy is suspected to be apart of Facebook’s aim to bolster its flimsy clasp of mobile apps, and although Instagram is the leader when it comes to pure image sharing, it doesn’t paper over the cracks Facebook still has in the mobile field. Its inability to monetize the ever-increasing mobile market was noted by analysts as one of Facebook’s glaring weaknesses, although with Instagram and Face.com now secured, plus Opera and others looking like future acquisitions, Facebook will be hoping mobile becomes a strength, as opposed to a weakness.

The deal is thought to be in the region of $100 million, although we’ll obviously know more once the purchase has been completely closed â€" expected in the coming weeks.

With a large portion of Facebook users (and web surfers in general) using their smartphones and tablets to log in, the next few moves of Mark Zuckerberg’s company could be crucial as to the path Facebook eventually takes. Eventually, the vast majority of Facebook use will move from desktop to mobile devices, and unless the company gets its act together â€" and soon â€" the consequences could be devastating.

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Jun 19, 2012

Sparrow for iPhone, formerly just a Mac OS X app, was launched a few months ago as a Gmail client. Recently, version 1.6 of the desktop app was released with support for POP accounts which meant that Hotmail and the likes would work with Sparrow. The same feature has just been added to the iPhone app as well so the list of compatible email services now looks something like below:

Use your Gmail, Hotmail, Google Apps, iCloud, Yahoo, AOL, Mobile Me and custom IMAP/POP accounts.

Apart from this, there’s not much new apart from mandatory bug fixes. Folder mapping issues have been addressed in this update.

Despite support for an increased number of email services ( virtually all of them since Sparrow supports both IMAP and POP accounts ), push notifications are still not supported which means that here at iThinkDiff, Sparrow is still not our primary choice of a go to email app. Sparrow would provide push notification support in a future update but let us hope that it’s free and not a paid feature. Another issue is not having the app already updated with the latest email every time it’s opened, like how Mail.app works â€" something we doubt we would be able to see in the near future due to iOS restrictions.

Download Sparrow for iPhone from the App Store

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We are invited to a number of launch events and we have almost attended all of them, and being in Pakistan we have always been part of launch events for devices that are about to be launched in Pakistan.

Thanks to Nokia Pakistan, for the first time ever, a new Nokia phone announcement was made from Pakistan at a global launch event held at Marriott Hotel, Karachi last week.

This was a media event held just for the traditional media, newspapers/magazines and online media (this is where we come in!). Sizzled Core, along with a bunch of other bloggers around Pakistan were invited to be a part of this grand event.

Nokia’s decision to choose Pakistan for the global launch of their upcoming devices was a clear sign of how important Pakistani market is for Nokia. Nokia envisions to connect the next billion people with the newly launched Nokia 110 and Nokia 112. Great presentations, and overview of how strong the telecommunications industry is in Pakistan, dance, music, fireworks… This was all part of the Nokia event.

Nokia has the biggest app store in Pakistan which includes 2,000,000+ weekly downloads on average! Almost all of media fro mPakistan is accessible on the Nokia Store â€" apps include: Geo, Aaj TV, Dawn News, Express Tribune, ARY News, Radio Pakistan etc.

Some really cool local applications are also available, such as Cricket, Ludo, Toffee TV etc. Islamic apps on the App store have millions of downloads. There are over 400 local apps, with 200+ Pakistan developers contributing to the Nokia App store which bring the download count of the Pakistani content to over 17 million!

These statistics and figures were shared by the three key speakers of the main event â€" Imran Khalid Mahmood, Saulo Passos and Calin Turcanu. The event had global and regional spokesperson from Nokia to share their thoughts on emerging markets and the new devices. Let’s take a brief intro to each of these speakers.

Imran Khalid Mahmood

Imran Khalid Mahmood is the VP, Near East, Nokia Corporation. In his line of duty he is responsible for heading the sales strategy for Nokia in this region. He is the frontrunner of all measurable KPIs and maintains a strict vigilance over them which are the main reason for Nokia’s success and popularity in this region.

Saulo Passos

Saulo Passos is the Global Director Mobile Phone Communications at Nokia, based in London, England. As part of the global Mobile Phones leadership team, his main focus targets the Next Billion strategy, a Nokia effort to connect more people to the internet, using a mobile device as the leading path.

Calin Turcanu

Starting from August, 2011, Calin Turcanu is the Head of Mobile Phones Business Unit, Nokia India, Middle East & Africa and overseessales, marketing and business development of Nokia devices in the region. Calin is actively involved in developing business strategies to ensure market success of key Nokia devices and strengthen Nokia’s brand presence in the region at the same time.

Remember the dance and music I mentioned earlier? Check out the photo below.

We’ll try to get a full video coverage for you to watch it as well. This performance was just before the Nokia team unveiled their new Nokia 110 and Nokia 112.

These new devices will be available in Pakistan and soon after into rest of the world, starting from the end of May. Prices of these new Nokia phones were one of them ain concerns by the attendees there. Nokia 110 is priced at Rs. 3800 and Nokia 112 will be available for Rs. 4000. Very affordable, isn’t it?

Nokia is continuously working on making the value rich features affordable to all price points â€" Nokia 110 and Nokia 112 are great examples of how even the entry-level Nokia devices don’t just offer optimized and affordable internet but at the same time flaunt a stylish design that will cater to a variety of lifestyles.

These devices will prove to be a true enabler in providing the people of Pakistan and the consumers from other growing economies with their first internet experience on mobile phone. Having internet on mobile phone opens up doors for new opportunities for the masses and helps them follow their dreams.

Now, we expect Nokia to make a bigger global launch announcement from Pakistan next time!

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(For CIO Afghanistan)

Adding another gold star to an effort started well, can mean quite a lot to a community especially if a substantial amount of the community’s livelihood is linked to it. In the context of Afghanistan, none other fits the scenario better than Roshan Telecom. Although it is a far-off comparison, Roshan Telecom’s hinged support in transforming the ICT Industry of Afghanistan can be equated with Finland’s Nokia. As covered in our previous posts, the many achievements of Roshan Telecom that have truly made it a success story include:

• The largest rate of market penetration covering 6 million customers. Held jointly by The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED), Monaco Telecom International (MTI) and TeliaSonera, Roshan Telecom has  invested an amount exceeding $550 million in Afghanistan’s network infrastructure extending high speed data services to 60% of Afghanistan’s population;
• It is the only telecom company based out of Afghanistan, offering customized data packages to the different market segments;
• Driving ICT-led innovation, Roshan Telecom was the creator of mobile money market in Afghanistan with the introduction of M-Paisa in 2008 in partnership with Vodafone. It was the second country in the world to partner with Vodafone towards expansion of mobile money.
• Facilitating the 97% of the Afghanistan’s unbanked; Roshan Telecom took the facility international in March 2012. In collaboration with Western Union, Roshan opened ways for international money transfers into the mobile accounts of Afghans, connecting these with the ones residing outside the country.

An effort that needs to be lauded above all, is the activity-level maintained by the Corporate Social Responsibility wing of Roshan Telecom, also known as Roshan Social Programs. Enabled by Roshan Social Programs for internet connectivity, One-Laptop-Per-Child (OLPC) Project Afghanistan was brought to the country in 2008. Initiated by the USAID/Afghanistan Small and Medium Enterprise Development, XO laptops were distributed to schools under the OLPC Project, programmed in Dari and Pashto languages by the IT company, Paiwastoon.

A multi-stakeholder driven cause, OLPC Project Afghanistan was truly an offspring of a public-private unison. Distributed by USAID, and enabled by Paiwastoon and Roshan Telecom, the project was backed by Ministry of Education (MoE) and Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) Afghanistan.

With an aim to distribute 5,000 laptops to fourth-to-sixth graders throughout the country when the project was brought to the country, approximately 2000 laptops were distributed to schools in Nangarhar Province and Kabul by 2009. The laptops distributed under the program meant to revolutionize the concept of learning in Afghanistan by providing the students with a browser software, email, and word processing in addition to various other training/education programs all in Dari and Pashto with hardware specifications three times lighter than a normal laptop and an extremely affordable cost structure.

Commenced well, what is a bit difficult to trace is the progress made till date. Whether it is SEETA, OLPC Afghanistan’s official page, or any other technology blog narrating the success of Afghanistan’s ICT Industry within less than a decade, numbers on XO laptops distributed within the country reiterate the deployments made till 2009 and not beyond.

This in particular, rests an interpretation of how successful was the effort indeed, vague when it shouldn’t be. The impetus, with which the project saw daylight in Afghanistan, makes an eventual failure difficult to believe. From the facts on hand from 2009, on an in-the-process transformation of Afghanistan’s educational domain with mobilized support from the largest telecom operator of the country in alliance with other public-private players, appears to be a story larger than of Roshan Telecom itself.

 

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Microsoft Jumps into Tablet Business â€" Announces Surface and Surface Pro

By Azeem Ullah Hassan · Tuesday, Jun 19, 2012 4 Comments

Monday saw Microsoft coming into the tablet business directly challenging Apple’s iPad. Microsoft announced 2 tablets, in fact two versions of same tablets with variation in specifications. Surface which is a lower-end tablet and Surface Pro is said to be a higher-end tablet.

Those who had the chance to experience Windows Surface tablets in a press event yesterday are throwing positive reviews about the hardware as well as for software.

Analysts are calling these two tabs a new era in mobile computing.

Here are the specs of the both tablets:

Surface

• Windows RT operating system
• Weight: 676 grams
• Nvidia Tegra ARM CPU
• 10.6 inch display
• Thickness: 9.3mm
• 32/64 Gb versions
• MicroSD card slot
• MicroHD video
• USB 2.0
• 2×2 MIMO Wifi antennae
• Battery 31.5 W-h
• Front and rear facing HD cameras
• Kickstand

Surface Pro

• Windows 8 operating system
• Weight 903 grams
• Intel Core i5 CPU
• 10.6 inch display
• Thickness: 13.5mm
• 64/128 Gb versions
• MicroSDXC card slot
• USB 3.0
• Micro DisplayPort video
• 2×2 MIMO Wifi antennae
• Battery 42 W-h
• Front and rear facing HD cameras
• Kickstand

Microsoft also announced the Touch cover and Type cover. Both are keyboards that attach to the tablet. Type cover is a 5mm thick keyboard with physical buttons and trackpad while Touch cover is a 3mm thick keyboard with no physical keys and trackpad.

Microsoft remained quite on pricing and availability but its expected this fall, sometime after tha release of Windows 8.

  

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• Djuice Offers Nokia Asha 302 with Free Mobile Internet

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