Business News Holding

Tag: hardware-and-technology

  • Hilarious Reviews For Samsung’s $40,000 HDTV on Sale on Amazon


    Often whenever people purchase products from Amazon, they write a short review of the product. This is true for a Samsung TV that is for sale for $39,997.99. By viewing the Amazon site, the TV actually looks like quite a deal.

    The 85-Inch Samsung TV is 4K Ultra HD and has a micro dimming for the best possible picture quality. The TV also has a smart TV voice control that allows people to interact with streaming content as well as the web. The price has been reduced by more than $5,000 and 2 AA batteries are included as well as free shipping.

    So which customers can buy this? Well, we are not sure but there are already 613 people who have written reviews and rated it with 4.2 out of 5. However, we are guessing… that most of these reviews are not genuine, but are hilarious:

    My wife and I bought this after selling our daughter Amanda into white slavery. We actually got a refurbished. It's missing the remote, but oh well– for $10K off, I can afford a universal, right? – James O. Thach

    At first I hesitated to make the purchase, but then I saw the two AA batteries were free with the remote, and I was all in! Having this really fills in that empty space we called a bathroom! – Cheryl A. Gustafson

    I am very thankful that it has low energy costs as I am on a very tight budget. – Nick

    So much better than the crappy 84" we used to have. – Guy Hutchinson.

    Check out all the reviews here. 

    If you are not able to afford the discounted version, there are two used sets that are available for $31,499 as well as two refurbished ones that are available for $35,000. If you need a new one, there are only three left on the shelf. However, Amazon indicated that there are more on the way in case you are searching for stocking stuffers.

  • Russian Yota Smartphone with Two Screens Saves Battery


    Russian company Yota has released a smartphone with two screens and a prolonged battery life. The phone is already in the market in Russia, France, Germany, Spain and Austria. The two screens are layered on top of each other. One of them is a normal LCD and the other, which is always on, uses e-link technology.

    The e-link technology is used in e-readers and requires less energy than the much brighter LCD displays. The Yota phone transfers text-heavy pages to the e-link display, so that the LCD screen does not drain battery when reading.

    The Android powered phone allows users to view information and notifications without waking up the phone. According to Yota Devices chief executive Vlad Martynov, the typical smartphone user activates their phone more than 150 times each day. This is because the users worry about hidden messages behind their Smartphone’s black screen.

    Technology experts are of the view that the phone will be definitely welcomed by people who are frustrated by their smartphone running out of battery.

    Ben Wood, a mobile phone analyst with research firm CCS Insight indicated that the Yota phone is an ambitious project, which might be considered as a gimmick by critics but has merit in design. He also added that having a phone with an option of a second screen that uses little power could be very attractive to people who struggle to keep the battery on their smartphone for a day.

    The device also features a 12-megapixel rear camera as well as a 1.5GHz dual-core processor. Yota plans to launch the phone in 20 other countries by March 2014 at a cost of 499 Euros.

  • My Cloud from Western Digital

    Nowadays, it is almost impossible to create a digital baggage. You need to start by backing up your PC’s data. Your devices also need more storage space for backups, offloading photos to storing secondary media libraries. If you think like me, then you definitely need cloud based storage services.

    With the help of a 2TB external NAS Western Digital’s WD My Cloud, you can create your personal cloud at home and consolidate your data within easy reach.  Any Wi-Fi-enabled mobile device can read and write to the drive because the external hard drive connects through Ethernet cable to your wireless router instead of the traditional USB to your PC, Android or iOS devices.

    The WD My Cloud hardware sets up instantly by plugging in the AC adapter and snapping the Ethernet cable into your wireless router. There are downloadable and administrative apps for PCs and Macs and also apps for Android and iOS mobile devices. You can also type in a URL in any browser to connect to the drive’s onboard management tools, much like you would do to gain access to your browser based dashboard on the router.

    After login in to the WD portal and creating a My Cloud password account, all your mobile devices connected can read and write to the drive whenever they are connected to Wi-Fi.

    You can move content into folders called ‘shares’ that can be either private or public. It is possible to set up permissions for users of any of the shares. You will start off with some preset shares that include a private share with your name, a public folder SmartWare folder for backups and a “TimeMachineBackup” folder for Mac users.

  • VoIP Provider Jajah Shattered By Telecom Giant Telefonica after Skype and Others Drive Prices to Bottom

    European telephone giant and 5th largest carrier worldwide, Telefonica said that it will shut down Janah, its VoIP unit on January 31st 2014. This is yet another sign of mounting trouble in the VoIP industry.

    The shattering will end what was once considered a success story in the industry. Janah was once of the very few companies offering VoIP services that survived the onslaught of consolidation in 2010. Telefonica was sold by Skype for $207 million, at a time when even competitors like Jaxtr and Jangl were sold for pennies in asset sales or went out of business.

    The closure means that Jajah Direct services and Jajah.com will no longer be offered and customers will not be able to make any calls. According to the company, Janah account holders will continue to use their accounts until31st January. However, the statement did not shed light on why Janah is closing.

    It is possible that Janah was not making any meaningful profit and may even have been getting losses. The company had clearly lost the race to Skype that was acquired by Microsoft in 2011. Earlier this year, Microsoft indicated that Skype now had 33% of worldwide VoIP calls.

    However, industry experts have pointed out that the voice traffic is dying; has become commoditized and overall prices, revenue and traffic are dropping. This means that Skype’s victory may be a hollow one for Microsoft, which has declined to indicate whether Skype is profitable or not.

    All this has not been helped by the large number of popular VoIP providers including Viber, Vonage Google Voice and FaceTime from Apple.

  • University Community Linked By Unified Communication


    The University of Washington has sought the services of unified communication to combine its data, voice and networks as well as to build a platform that supports diverse products.

    The University of Washington finds the effective connection of data and people extremely paramount. The university serves more than 51,000 students as well as about 31,000 faculty members across 3 different academic campuses as well as 500 buildings scattered across Bothell, Wash, Tacoma, and Seattle.

    About three years ago, the communication infrastructure in the University was out of date. It was not sufficient for supporting many of the systems and applications that are needed in today’s education environment such as BYOD, mobility and video conferencing. Roland Rivera, UW's director of network strategy and telecommunications noted that better integration of data services is extremely critical and it was apparent that there is need for getting unified communications infrastructure.

    The unified communication system supports products from different vendors such as AVST, Microsoft Lync, Polycom and Cisco. With the use of a web-based management console, the IT tem can isolate different communities of use, oversee routing and dial plan management and also better manage licensing and security.

    Rivera indicates that the unified communication solution has brought the school’s infrastructure to the digital age. In the long run, it is expected to trim IT costs as well as administrative overheads while providing greater flexibility and simplicity.

  • mSpy: A Terrifying Smartphone And Tablet Spying App


    If you are keen in preserving your privacy, then you should definitely be weary of the mSpy app. When installed on an iOS or Android device, the app can track phone records, keyboard strokes and location data in the background without your knowledge.

    It is specially designed for legal monitoring use, and there are legitimate reasons for installing it if you intend to use it for legal matters. For instance, companies can use the app for monitoring company phones for security purposes. Parents can also use the app for monitoring the usage of devices that they give their children.

    The app dances around the issue of legal surveillance and has a disclaimer stating that it is intended for use by companies or parents who own or have legal consent for monitoring. The disclaimer further indicates that the users of such devices should be notified that they are under surveillance.

    However, on mSpy’s website, you can also see that it is indicated as a bugging tool for gathering evidence from a phone. It further ominously refers the tapped phone as the target and states that the app is 100% undetectable. However, this information is not necessary if users are informed that they are being monitored.

  • For Greater Insight And Control over Content, Cloud Storage Provider Box Buys dLoop

    Box, a cloud storage company has acquired dLoop, a data analytic firm. This acquisition is expected to add protection, enterprise content discovery and insight to Box’s platform that offers employees easy sync and sharing between several apps and devices and platforms.

    According to an announcement that was made this week, dLoop technologies is expected to provide permission level, control and visibility of files that enterprises require in order to trust cloud storage.

    The acquisition comes just a week following the announcement by Box of its intentions to raise another $100 million in venture investment that will be in form of Series E-1 Preferred stock.  This is according to a recent regulatory filing.

    Box had earlier developed a powerful admin tool that helps to protect business critical content. These tools are expected to expand following the acquisition of dLoop and offer administrators even greater safeguards on enterprise content.

    At the moment, dLoop is able to discover documents that would normally be unreachable by pattern matching solutions or the normal search. This is done by creating continuous documents graphs as well as clusters from unstructured content with the use of machine-learning algorithms that find related and relevant content.

    Following the announcement, dLoop co-founder Divya Jain will be joining Box in order to lead their efforts in advanced content analysis and data classification.

  • Amazon Black Friday 2013 Deals For HDTVs, Cameras, Tablets And Games Galore Goes Live

    The black Friday deals from Amazon are finally up and running. The site has some pretty impressive bargains this season. Here are some of the hot deals available from BlackFriday.com.

    This year, all categories are covered by Amazon Black Friday Deals. You can find products that are marked off for the entire week and there are a number of products with limited-time deals that offer even much more savings. There is an additional deal on Amazon every 10 minutes and buyers can expect great bargains coming later in the day.

    The black Friday deals include a number of electronic products including many HDTVS, laptops and digital cameras with 30% off or more, many tablets with 20% off or more and Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 at 40% off or more. Amazon also has superb black Friday 2013 deals on smartphones, movies, gift cards as well as jewelry. You can also get great deals on grocery items this season.

    Some of the Amazon black Friday 2013 highlights include Samsung 40-inch LED HDTV for $397 that comes with free prime shipping. You can also get the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 for $159.99 with a pink LeapPad 2 Explorer for $59.99.

    However, so far there hasn’t been any indication of a strong black Friday deal on any of the iPad versions, which is one of the hottest items for the season. Comments and tips about the Amazon Black Friday are welcomed and you can share details about the best deals that you have found.

  • Nokia Upgrades Asha 501 with VoIP and WhatsApp

    Nokia has updated Asha 501 with WhatsApp, voice-over-IP and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync features. The company has continued to improve the competitiveness of the Asha family while waiting for Microsoft to complete the acquisition of its devices and services business. At the moment, the company is still facing insurmountable competition from low-cost android based devices.

    The GSM Asha 501 was launched in May and it features a 3-inch screen, Wi-Fi, a 3.2 megapixel camera and the choice between one or two sim cards. The list price was $99 without taxes or subsidies at the time of the launch.

    The upgrade offers users similar software to what is used in the recently announced Asha 500, 502 and 503. Once the update has been received, users can download the WhatsApp client and begin sending instant message.

    The software allows users to make voice calls over data connections through the use of social messaging Apps like Nimbuzz in the beginning and more are expected soon. Nokia has also implemented the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync features for enterprise users.

    Nokia has also made significant changes to the operating system, not just the third-party applications. Users for example can long press the screen to access the camera settings, swipe the screen to start the camera and also swipe to switch to the video mode to the image mode and vice versa.

    Fastlane is a key feature in the user interface that shows social networks, apps and recently accessed contacts. Users can now personalize the application to feature their desired contents. The users can also choose to view full notifications or notification icons on the lock screen.

  • Bitcasa Announces a Tenfold Increase in Unlimited Cloud Storage Pricing

    Cloud storage provider, Bitcasa that has established itself as a provider of unlimited cloud storage invoked the wrath of its customers this week when it unveiled a new pricing scheme that increased its unlimited storage plan tenfold. However, there is a good chance that the new price scheme will not affect all customers.

    Bitcasa, up until this price increase was charging organizations $99 annually for the unlimited cloud storage, but this price has been bumped up to $999. According to Brian Taptich, Bitcasa CEO, the current pricing plans for existing customers will not change. Besides, 98% of Bitcasa’s customers use less than 5TB of data in the cloud. Taptich further noted that 92% of the customers use less than 1TB.

    New customers will be affected and 1TB of data will ring at $99 annually but it will not make a big difference considering the amount of data Taptich said that customers use. Those who will be most affected will be the ones who are looking for a large amount of storage.

    New customers on 5TB storage plan will pay $499 annually while the unlimited plan will cost $999 annually. The free plan will also be changing, with old customers keeping their 10GB of free storage while new customers will be provided with 5GB of free storage instead.

    The new changes will not affect the current customers for now but it has certainly not been received well by Bitcasa’s followers.

    Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, termed the price increase as ‘breathtaking’, although he indicated that the reasoning seems sensible. He further noted that the growing competition will keep pressure on Bitcasa.