Apple is reportedly reducing its dependence on electronics manufacturer Foxconn by throwing more business to Foxconn competitor and Apple partner Pegatron.

Pegatron, which already makes some iPhones and iPad Minis, has been chosen to be the primary assembler of a low-cost iPhone expected to be unveiled later this year, according to aWall Street Journal report. Despite Apple’s longtime business relationship with Foxconn, CEO Tim Cook wants to achieve greater balance in the company’s supply chain by shifting more work to Pegatron, the Journal reported.

The shift is also reportedly due in part to Foxconn’s production troubles with the iPhone 5, which is thinner and taller than its immediate predecessor, the iPhone 4S. One unidentified Foxconn executive told the Journal last year that producing the iPhone 5 is “very complicated,” causing supply issues. The official went on to say that the handset is “the most difficult device that Foxconn has ever assembled.”

CNET has contacted Apple and Foxconn for comment and will update this report when we learn more.

Pegatron is reportedly going on a hiring spree, with plans to beef up its workforce in China by up to 40 percent during the second half of the year, leading to suspicion that the company is equipping its factories to produce the much-rumored low-cost iPhone.

Charles Lin, Pegatron’s chief financial officer, declined to comment to Reuters earlier this month as to whether the company would produce a low-cost iPhone this year. But Lin did say that 60 percent of Pegatron’s 2013 revenue is expected to come during the second half of 2013.

Analyst Gene Munster is eyeing a September release of a $300 nonsubsidized iPhone, which could bring in unit sales of 75 million next year. The cheaper iPhone is reportedly expected to go into trial production as soon as next month, but some sources speculate it won’t come out until the fourth quarter.

When you think video conferencing, you probably associate it with one of two services: Skype or FaceTime. Both are popular options for face-to-face chats over long distances and both have the ability to be used as a verb. While Google Hangouts doesn’t quite pass the verb test (“Let’s Hangouts!”), it is definitely a solid option when it comes to video communication. The service was once housed inside Google+ and though it’s still keeps ties with the social networking service, Hangouts has broken out into its own app that will eventually be Google’s all-in-one communication tool. Eventually is, unfortunately, not today.

As it stands, Hangouts is Google’s offering for a messaging and video chat service between Google+ users. You do have to have a Google+ account to use Hangouts, which may turn some people off, but it’s not particularly difficult to make one nor will it cost you anything. The Hangouts app allows you to carry on a conversation with up to 10 other users, either from your address book or from your Google+ Circles. The selection screen for picking the people to chat with is a little confusing; some users are listed with photos in boxes on the top of the screen and the rest of your contacts are in list form at the bottom. The best assumption we can make is the ones in boxes are your recent or most common chat partners, but we’re really not sure. There is a search feature – of course there is, this is Google after all – so if all else fails you can just type in your intended contact, but it seems like the contact list could use some fixing.

Once you are in a chat, you can converse with your Hangout partners via text messages (complete with emojis), photos, or video chat. The texts come scrolling in in real time and Hangouts keeps an archive of your conversations so you can go back and forth over a long period of time. Of course, the real appeal here is the video chat. Google Hangouts also gives you the option to have an on-camera conversation with up to 10 people at the same time, and it lets it happen across multiple platforms. Android, iOS, and desktop users can all be in the same video conference. When a person talks in the video chat, their video is brought to attention on screen, sending the others in the call down to a smaller box until they speak again. It’s a cool feature, though it can get a little messy with too many voices. Still, for the most part it works great and keeps your attention on the person talking. The quality of the call will vary based on your connection, but on our Wi-Fi connection it worked well.

The text side of the equation does still live a bit to be desired, though. It doesn’t really feel like a fully functioning instant messaging client in the way that Kik or Imo.im does. There is no ability to set statuses or make people aware that you’re away from keyboard and there’s no indication in your address book of who is available to chat. People who are online in some form – they could be in a call, set to away or busy, or actually online and available – don’t have their photo faded like those that are definitely offline, but that’s the only indication that they may be around and ready.

When you get into a Hangout, be it video or text, the Google Hangouts experience is great. But it does feel like the rest of this app could be better. The contacts list is an unexplainable mess and there seems to be features missing that really differentiate Hangouts as a standalone from the chat features in Google+ itself. While Google has made it clear that it intends to bring SMS functionality and integrate Google Voice into Hangouts, it’s not there yet. Once those features find their way into Hangouts, it will likely be a formidable choice for all forms of communication, especially given its unique cross platform capabilities that buck the operating system problem. Until then, it’ll continue to feel like Hangouts left home a little prematurely.

Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-hangouts-app-review/#ixzz2VtP6lmxA

Liquid crystal displays have become so ubiquitous that it is easy to take them for granted.

But one of the key players in LCD’s development says the innovation wasn’t “highly regarded” in its early years. Martin Schadt isn’t exaggerating.

In 1970 the Swiss physicist achieved a breakthrough that would pave the way for LCD read-outs at first on calculators, watches and alarm clocks, and then flat-panel TVs, laptops and smartphones. But one year later his employer, Roche, thought the feat was a mismatch with its other pharmaceutical-focused efforts and canned the project. Thankfully, the decision proved short-lived and Dr Schadt helped the firm become a major supplier to the screen-making industry, as well as making further contributions to the technology’s evolution. His admirers know him as the “father of the pixel”, and this week the European Patent Office gave him its lifetime achievement award, noting that sales of devices featuring LCD panels totalled $120bn (£80bn) in 2012. On learning of the news, the 74-year-old stressed that “many people” had contributed to the technology. But he also wanted to make clear it was too soon to say if the innovation would be eclipsed by rival organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens.

Low voltage

Liquid crystals are unusual. Unlike most substances they can hover in an intermediate state between being a solid and a liquid. They were first discovered in 1888 by a botanist studying carrots who extracted a compound that appeared to have two melting points. At the first it softened and became milky, at the second it turned transparent. In the 1960s, researchers at RCA Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey used the finding to create the first basic LCD screen. It used an electrical charge to make liquid crystals scatter light, causing the display to take on the appearance of a frosted glass window.

However, the effort had drawbacks.

“It required current flow so power consumption was an issue, the current degraded the electrodes which limited the lifetime of the device, and the voltages required were relatively high,” Dr Schadt tells the BBC.

“So when we started looking at alternatives to this effect we wanted a device with low power consumption, which had a low operating voltage and offered much better contrast.”

Dr Schadt achieved his goal at Roche in 1970 with the help of another physicist, Wolfgang Helfrich. They proved that by using electrical jolts the spiral molecular structure of LCD crystals could be “unwound” causing them to block light, and then “re-twisted” so that they became see-through again. The voltage required to achieve this was much lower than expected, meaning the effect could be produced with an ordinary battery.

“This was a surprise – we expected from theory [to need] much higher voltages of about 50 volts,” Dr Schadt says.

“What I found was that only three volts was needed to get very high contrast.

“But such an experimental finding is often the case in physics – you have a vague idea how things should operate and then you find they operate differently.”

Pixel pioneer

The men called the process the twisted nematic effect. By placing a layer of liquid crystals between two plastic surfaces coated in a grid of transparent electrodes, and then applying electricity, they discovered they could create individual “pixels” which could be used to draw shapes. They filed a patent for the idea in Switzerland on 4 December 1970 and published a paper in the journal Applied Physics Letters four days later. Although this was to prove highly influential to other LCD researchers, Dr Schadt says the use of organic substances in electronics remained an “exotic” idea to others. As a result Roche underestimated the value of its team’s discovery and cancelled the project. Dr Schadt switched disciplines and spent the next two years studying biological reactions including the effects of a drug given to chickens. It was only when watchmaker Seiko offered to buy his LCD patent in 1973 that Roche reconsidered. The Japanese company was attracted by the fact the technology only needed a few microwatts of power per square centimetre to function, making it suitable for wrist-worn displays. Although Roche opted not to make LCD screens itself, it realised the invention was too valuable to sell off, and decided to license the technology to Seiko and others. It also reformed its liquid crystal research division and put Dr Schadt in charge, cutting short his brief stint in medical research. The unit was later spun off as an independent company, Rolic, where Dr Schadt served as chief executive until he retired in 2002. Over his three decades at the helm he helped tailor LCDs to suit consumers’ needs.

“To make it commercial one had to find and discover new liquid crystals,” he says.

“The target was to find molecules which gave you a specific display performance.

“For example a TV display has to have very fast response times which is not necessary in a watch. Or in an automotive display you need a very broad temperature range… which would not be required in an iPhone, for instance.”

LCD v OLED

Among the 110 patents registered to Dr Schadt’s name, one sticks out: a 1969 document detailing his work on an organic light-emitting diode screen. He abandoned the research in favour of liquid crystals, but now LG, Samsung and others are promoting OLED TVs as the superior option. Deep-pocketed customers are promised brighter colours, deeper blacks, thinner screens and lower electricity bills. However, Dr Schadt isn’t convinced OLED screens will ever match LCD equivalents for price or lifespan.

“The blue OLED materials are not as stable as the red OLED materials,” he says.

“So if you have an RGB display the blue colour will age differently from the red and green ones and this will change the colour quality of the display.

“The question has not yet been answered whether OLED will be stable over 50,000 hours to prevent the consumer seeing any deterioration in the appearance of the screen.”

He adds that a new type of “reflective LCD” screen also promises to beat OLED displays at energy efficiency. The technology uses light from the surrounding environment instead of a backlight to illuminate its liquid crystals. The result resembles a thin e-reader display capable of playing back colour videos.

“I just came from a conference in Vancouver where there was a presentation of prototypes by the Japan Display Consortium which showed a beautiful 6in LCD display with a power requirement of only two milliwatts,” Dr Schadt says. “It will be very very competitive with e-ink.”

The lesson one should take from a Razer press event is that there’s no challenge the company doesn’t think it can’t take on.

That’s the personal attitude of CEO Min-Liang Tan, so when he wanted his engineers to meet customer cries for an ultra-portable gaming laptop with a smaller screen, they put their noses to the grindstone.

Gamers’ calls were answered as Tan introduced the new Razer Blade, a gaming notebook with a 14-inch screen that measures 0.66-inches high when closed. Thinner, Tan demonstrated during its an event to introduce the laptop on May 30, than a standing dime.

Razer drew inspiration from two sources – Apple’s MacBook Air and theAlienware M14X gaming laptop – for form factor and power.

The result isn’t a machine that makes you say “wow” – until you pick it up. It’s an airy 4.135 pounds and while we didn’t have any dimes handy ourselves, perceptibly thin. It is, as Razer hoped, portable while still performing at an enviable clip.

Specifications

The 14-inch screen, which is 3 inches smaller than previous Blades, sits at a resolution of 1600 x 900. It’s not the most dazzling display, to say the least.

It’s a bit of shame because the game play is snappy thanks to its CPU. We only know that it’s the 4th generation Core i7 processor by Intel, formerly known as Haswell.

Aside from the fact that it’s a 37 Watt chip, details are scarce. Razer folks were remiss to release specifics or performance figures like frames per second until Intel’s Computex announcement comes to pass next week.

On the GPU end there’s a Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M. Anticipating the problem of gamers everyone, Razer threw in a 70 Wh lithium ion polymer battery that can last 6 hours of normal use and about 3 of gameplay.

The device comes standard with 128GB of solid-state storage, though users can bump it up to 256GB or 512GB. Memory-wise the new Blade has 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3L.

Because of its Killer NIC N1202 Wi-Fi by Qualcomm, Razer didn’t feel the need to include an Ethernet port. There are three 3.0 USB slots – two on the left and one on the right – plus a headphone jack and HDMI port.

Performance

Windows 8 is the Blade’s operating system and there’s nothing much to say about it. You’ve got your tiles, your standard apps. Flip from email toBioShock Infinite…you know the drill.

Metro: Last Light, a graphic intensive game, popped off the screen, though there was some flatness one often encounters on LCD TVs.

We were pleased to learn that while there’s a noticeable zippiness to games played on the Haswell chip, users of professional apps like Adobe Premier will also see a performance improvement as well.

The Dolby Home Theater v4 speakers were more than sufficient – after we commented on the volume, we found out they weren’t even turned up all the way. The grids are located on either side, providing a quasi-surround sound experience those who like to hear the splatter of zombie guts are sure to appreciate.

The track pad is a joy – it’s responsive and needs the lightest of touches to move from one spot to the next. It has a soft finish that’s almost velvety, a sensory experience repeated on other parts of the Blade as well.

Early verdict

The biggest disappointment of the 14-inch Razer Blade is its screen. With so much compute power and a form factor just begging to be taken wherever you want, it’s quite a let down when you flip it open to see limp icons and fuzzy outlines.

It comes to life more when a game is going, but hopefully Razer can figure out a way to give the next Blade more pixels and a greater resolution, otherwise it’d be a shame.

There’s a sleekness to the matte black finished and punctuations of radioactive green that make you just want to touch the Blade, always a good sign if you plan on spending hours beating bosses and saving the universe. It feels solid enough, though unlike a Sudden Valley home, isn’t as solid as a rock.

One design aspect we couldn’t get over was the thickness of the plastic on the top part of the screen. Yes, we may be too picky, but it invaded our eyesight at times and proved distracting.

All in all, Razer has put together a machine that, starting at $1,799 (around UK£1,182, AU$1,860) plenty of gamers are going to want. It’s also set the stage for a whole new niche of gaming laptops, one that should accelerate rather rapidly..

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/laptops-portable-pcs/14-inch-razer-blade-1155531/review

LOCAL PAPER BOY GETS NEW BIKE TO REPLACE STOLEN ONE

Hayfield Wheelers Cycle Centre Replace Stolen Bicycle for ‘Harry’ to keep working!

Hayfield Wheelers Cycle Centre in Doncaster have donated a new bike to local school boy Harry Birkett with Aspergers after his got stolen in Campsall, Doncaster.

Hayfield Wheelers are a social enterprise managed by Doncaster Council and staffed by people with special educational needs. Marc Plant who runs Hayfield Wheelers was contacted by Alexander Van Steen of Axita Limited after a plea for help from Harry’s grandmother.

“Harry’s Grandmother got in touch with me asking if there was anything we could do. It was such a touching story we called South Yorkshire Police and with their help, secured a bicycle for Harry through the Cycle Centre.” said Alexander from Axita.

Harry suffers with Aspergers, this makes it difficult for him to communicate socially and has problems being out in the community. Harry has had a paper route since Christmas, helping him with his condition and raising his confidence and social skills. “It really brought him on,” his mother said “it made me and his dad so proud.”

“We hoped having a paper route would help his independence and to enable him to afford his own phone.” commented Harry’s Mother.

After having his second bike stolen, Harry was understandably upset, but this hasn’t deterred him from getting a new one and continuing his paper route.

Harry was invited down to the Hayfield Wheeler Cycle Center on Monday 20^th May to choose a new bicycle from the shop and to meet some of the staff donating it.

“We were very happy to help out Harry after what he had been through.” Says Marc Plant, who runs Hayfield Wheelers. “Any young person with aspiration should be helped as much as possible.”

While in the shop, Harry told us “I feel bad, I don’t want to be demanding, there are so many other people that deserve this more than me” after being shown a selection of bicycles to choose from.

The work at Hayfield Wheelers teaches adults with learning disabilities skills in cycle mechanics, along with job and life skills in a busy working environment, aiming to provide a service to maintain and repair bicycles for the general public of Doncaster. In addition they also take end of life or donated bicycles which they repair and offer for sale at discount prices.

Harrys Grandmother who was there on the day said “we were speechless and close to tears, this is just wonderful” after being shown such generosity and community spirit. She is now hopeful that this new bike will keep him on track and further aid in his confidence in others and his local community.

Samsung says it has developed technology that could sit “at the core of 5G” – the successor to the 4G mobile-communications standard. The company says its equipment is capable of transmitting data at more than 1Gbps across a distance of up to 2km (1.2 miles). It suggests the tech would eventually allow users to stream ultra-high-definition video while on the move. However, one expert says the news needs to be put in context. Prof Rahim Tafazolli – who heads up the University of Surrey’s 5G research efforts – suggests that even if the latest development was used, it would only be “a small part of the larger jigsaw” of technologies needed to deliver 5G.His words carry weight since his own £35m project to develop a 5G standard is part-funded by Samsung.

3D video

Samsung says it has developed the world’s first “adaptive array transceiver” technology, an innovation that allows part of the super-high-frequency Ka band of the radio spectrum – at 28GHz – to be used for cellular data transmission.

The firm indicates its equipment, which features 64 antenna elements, overcomes a problem involved with using this frequency, which can cause the signal to weaken in rainy conditions.

“Samsung’s recent success in developing the adaptive array transceiver technology has brought us one step closer to the commercialisation of 5G mobile communications in the millimetre-wave bands,” said Chang-Yeong Kim. head of the firm’s Digital Media & Communication Centre in Seoul.

A press release added that the South Korean firm hoped devices based on the technology could be brought to market by 2020, offering mobile data transfers “up to several hundred times faster” than today’s 4G tech.

“As a result, subscribers will be able to enjoy a wide range of services such as 3D movies and games, real-time streaming of ultra-high-definition (UHD) content, and remote medical services,” it said.

Capacity crunch

Prof Tafazolli stressed it would still be some years before the 5G standard was finalised. His own team’s efforts were focused on transmitting data over an even higher frequency band in the radio spectrum, he added. He also said it was not inevitable that whatever technology was agreed on would offer much faster data speeds, suggesting that finding a way for the next-generation system to cope with the expected growth in demand for mobile data use might take priority.

“Some of the companies are still putting too much emphasis on speed when discussing going from one generation to another generation,” he said.

“In my opinion 4G achieves a decent speed and what we need to do is crack the capacity crunch we are facing.”

Prof Tafazolli’s work is funded by Samsung, Huawei, Fujitsu Laboratories and the UK government, among others. Alternative work is being carried out in Japan, China and elsewhere. Developing the technologies involved in 5G could prove lucrative. As an industry standard, its inventors would have to license the innovations involved to rivals, but they would be able to charge a small fee for each device that used them. Discussions about which part of the radio spectrum to use will take place at the UN’s World Radiocommunication Conference in 2015.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22507512

This one involves an item you might have listed for sale such as a car, truck or some other expensive item. The scammer finds your ad and sends you an email offering to pay much more than your asking price. The reason for overpayment is supposedly related to the international fees to ship the car overseas. In return, you are to send him the car and the cash for the difference.

The money order you receive looks real so you deposit it into your account. In a couple of days (or the time it takes to clear) your bank informs you the money order was fake and demands you pay that amount back immediately.

In most documented versions of this money order scam, the money order was indeed an authentic document, but it was never authorized by the bank it was stolen from. In the case of cashier’s checks, it is usually a convincing forgery. You have now lost the car, the cash you sent with the car, and you owe a hefty sum of money to your bank to cover for the bad money order or the fake cashier’s check.

http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/scamsandidentitytheft/ss/top10inetscams_5.htm

Adobe is introducing a subscription model for many of its most popular programs, including Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Up to now, customers had perpetual access by paying a single fee for Adobe’s Creative Suite. From next month, continuing access to the programs, either individually or as a whole, will demand a monthly fee. Standalone versions will still be available but will not be upgraded. The change was announced at Adobe’s annual Max conference, at which it details the latest updates to its products.

‘Company free from upgrade cycle’

Adobe spokesman Scott Morris said the move to a subscription system would free the company from its traditional 18 to 24-month upgrade cycle. From June, he said, improvements would be released as they became available. At Max, Adobe said the standalone version of its Creative Suite, which bundles together 16 programs, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, Dreamweaver and Premiere, would be frozen at version 6. Bug fixes would be made available for this version but new features and enhancements would not. Currently, the standalone version of Creative Suite 6 costs about £1,800 from Adobe. Those who want to keep up with upgrades and changes to Creative Suite would have to take out a subscription to Adobe’s Creative Cloud – a web-based system through which customers can manage what they do with the different tools. In return, customers get access to the software as well as an online storage system and project management tools. In the UK, access to all programs in the Creative Cloud costs £47 a month provided customers agree to pay for at least a year. If customers opt to pay month-to-month the cost is £70. Access to individual applications costs just under £18 a month if customers sign up for a year.

’500,000 subscribers for Creative Cloud’

Discounts would be available for those that signed up before 31 July, Adobe said.

“Customers have to come to terms with the end of perpetually licensed software,” IDC analyst Al Hilwa told the Associated Press.

The move to a subscription model is the culmination of a long experiment by Adobe to see if customers would pay monthly for access. Adobe said it now had 500,000 subscribers for Creative Cloud after running a pilot programme for a year. Adobe is the latest in a number of large software firms that have moved to a cloud-based or subscription model. Microsoft has also introduced Office 365, a subscription version of its set of office productivity programs

There has recently been a huge breakthrough with 3D printing, working firearms are now available.

The world’s first gun made with 3D printer technology has been successfully fired in the US. The controversial group which created the firearm, Defense Distributed, plans to make the blueprints available online. The group has spent a year trying to create the firearm, which was successfully tested on Saturday at a firing range south of Austin, Texas. Anti-gun campaigners have criticised the project. Europe’s law enforcement agency said it was monitoring developments. Victoria Baines, from Europol’s cybercrime centre, said that at present criminals were more likely to pursue traditional routes to obtain firearms.

She added, however: “But as time goes on and as this technology becomes more user friendly and more cost effective, it is possible that some of these risks will emerge.”

Defense Distributed is headed by Cody Wilson, a 25-year-old law student at the University of Texas.

Mr Wilson said: “I think a lot of people weren’t expecting that this could be done.”

Personal liberties

The gun was made on a 3D printer that cost $8,000 (£5,140) from the online auction site eBay. It was assembled from separate printed components made from ABS plastic – only the firing pin was made from metal. Mr Wilson, who describes himself as a crypto-anarchist, said his plans to make the design available were “about liberty”.

He told the BBC: “There is a demand of guns – there just is. There are states all over the world that say you can’t own firearms – and that’s not true anymore. I’m seeing a world where technology says you can pretty much be able to have whatever you want. It’s not up to the political players any more.”

Asked if he felt any sense of responsibility about whose hands the gun might fall into, he told the BBC: “I recognise the tool might be used to harm other people – that’s what the tool is – it’s a gun. But I don’t think that’s a reason to not do it – or a reason not to put it out there.”

Gun control

To make the gun, Mr Wilson received a manufacturing and seller’s licence from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Donna Sellers, from the ATF, told BBC News that the 3D-printed gun, as long as it was not a National Firearms Act weapon (an automatic gun, for example), was legal in the US.

She said: “[In the US] a person can manufacture a firearm for their own use. However, if they engage in the business of manufacture to sell a gun, they need a licence.”

Amid America’s ongoing gun debate in the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, US congressman Steve Israel recently called for a ban on 3D guns under the Undetectable Firearms Act. Groups looking to tighten US gun laws have also expressed concern.

Leah Gunn Barrett, from New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, has said: “These guns could fall into the hands of people who should not have guns – criminals, people who are seriously mentally ill, people who are convicted of domestic violence, even children.”

3D printing technology has already been used by some criminal organisations to create card readers – “skimmers” – that are inserted into bank machines. Many law enforcement agencies around the world now have people dedicated to monitoring cybercrime and emerging technologies such as 3D printers.

Ms Baines from Europol said: “What we know is that technology proceeds much more quickly than we expect it to. So by getting one step ahead of the technological developments, we hope and believe we will be able to get one step ahead of the criminals as well.”

You have posted your resume, with at least some personal data accessible by potential employers, on a legitimate employment site. You receive a job offer to become a “financial representative” of an overseas company you have never even heard of before. The reason they want to hire you is that this company has problems accepting money from US customers and they need you to handle those payments. You will be paid 5 to 15 percent commission per transaction.

If you apply, you will provide the scammer with your personal data, such as bank account information, so you can “get paid”. Instead, you will experience some, or all, of the following:

• identity theft,
• money stolen from your account, or
• may receive fake checks or money orders for payments which you deposit into your account but must send 85 – 95 percent of that to your “employer”.

Soon you will owe much money to your bank!

http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/scamsandidentitytheft/ss/top10inetscams_6.htm