Nokia 808 PureView set to launch in India on June 6

Nokia's much-hyped 41MP camera phone, 808 PureView, is scheduled to release in India on June 6. Nokia has posted a countdown timer on www.nokiapureview.in, a dedicated website for the upcoming smartphone, which suggests the phone should reach the country in 29 hours, 52 minutes.

Nokia is also conducting a quiz on the teaser site. Visitors have to answer a quiz before being directed to the timer on the teaser site. Visitors can also add email ids to get notified “when the action begins” according to Nokia.

Nokia's 808 PureView camera phone has already been in news for a while. The device recently went up for pre-order at online story, “buytheprice”, for Rs. 32,000; however, Nokia India didn't confirm the pricing and said it will reveal the original pricing at the launch. The Finnish company has however started taking pre-orders of the device. Those who are waiting to lay their hands on the new Nokia device, visit www.nokiapureview.in.

To refresh your memory, Nokia's camera phone was first showcased at the Mobile World Congress event held earlier this year. The Nokia 808 PureView features a large high resolution 41MP sensor, which comes with high-performance Carl Zeiss optics and new pixel oversampling technology. The device runs on Nokia Belle operating system.

The Nokia 808 PureView is powered by a single-core 1.3GHz processor. The device features 512MB of RAM, 16GB built-in storage, USB-on-the-Go, Bluetooth 3.0, HSDPA 14.4Mbps, HSUPA 5.76Mbps, Wi-Fi N with DLNA, GPS and A-GPS, stereo FM radio, and NFC connectivity. To know more about the new Nokia 808 PureView , visit www.nokiapureview.in.

Nokia, meanwhile, is extensively promoting its new smartphone on social media sites. That being said, lets wait till June 6 to see if India becomes the first nation to receive the 808 PureView.

HP, Oracle Clash Over What Their Hurd Deal's Wording Means

Hewlett-Packard said Oracle committed itself to porting its core software products to future versions of Itanium in a 2010 partnership agreement with HP, while Oracle said that deal fell far short of a true contract, as the companies' lawyers gave opening arguments on Monday in a courtroom in San Jose, California.

HP sued Oracle for breach of contract last year after the database giant announced in March that it would stop developing new versions of its future products for the Itanium processor. Itanium powers HP's so-called Business Critical Systems hardware for highly demanding enterprise applications, but Oracle says the chip line is reaching the end of its life.

On Monday, the companies' lawyers faced off before Judge James Kleinberg in Santa Clara County Superior Court. Oracle co-President Safra Catz and HP board member and former enterprise business chief Ann Livermore, the main negotiators of that agreement, looked on in the courtroom. Livermore was set to testify later Monday. In the first phase of the trial, Kleinberg, without a jury, is to rule on whether the two companies had a valid contract.

HP's attorney, Jeff Thomas, focused in on the wording of the so-called Hurd Agreement, in which the companies reaffirmed their longstanding business partnership after Oracle hired former HP CEO Mark Hurd and HP sued Hurd for breaching a confidentiality agreement. Both he and Oracle's lead attorney focused in on a paragraph of the agreement that said Oracle would "continue to offer its product suite on HP platforms ... in a manner consistent with the partnership as it existed prior to Oracle's hiring of Hurd."

That clearly means Oracle has to keep porting its database, middleware and other key software the HP's HP/UX version of Unix for its Itanium-based Integrity servers, Thomas said.

"The language of the contract itself is perfectly consistent with HP's interpretation," Thomas said. "It cannot remotely be squared with Oracle's interpretation."

Oracle's lead attorney, Daniel Wall, called that clause of the deal "brief, breezy language" and said actual porting contracts are far more detailed, covering the scope, time period and monetary terms of an agreement, among other things. Catz, Livermore and the other high-level executives and lawyers who crafted the Hurd Agreement lack the knowledge to hammer out such a deal, Wall said. With all due respect to them, "they couldn't negotiate a porting agreement on a dare," Wall said.

Instead, the Hurd Agreement was chiefly a deal involving personnel, not software porting, Wall said. "It's a tiny fraction of this bargain," he said.

India ahead of US, Japan in PC security: McAfee

India may have low penetration of computers, but it is ahead of countries like US, Japan and Singapore when it comes to basic PC protection, says a report by security software maker McAfee.

It conducted a global study across 24 nations, analysing data from voluntary scans of an average of 27-28 million PCs per month to determine a global estimate of the number of consumers who have basic security software installed.

Finland had the highest number of 90.3% PCs with a basic security software solution in place, followed by Italy (86.2%) and Germany (85.55%).

Basic security protection is defined as working anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall technologies.

India ranked 14th on the list with 82.67%, while China ranked 17th (82%), followed by Japan and US at the 19th spot (80.65%) and Singapore at 22nd position (78.25%). The global average stood at 83%.

According to estimates, India had a total installed base of over 60 million PCs at the end of 2011.

"Its gratifying to see that the majority of consumers have gotten the message that at the very least they need to have basic security protection installed," McAfee Co-President Todd Gebhart said.

"Protecting digital devices against cybercrime from malware not only benefits each of us personally, but also serves to discourage illicit activity and preserve the integrity of the Internet," he added.

Cases of cyber-attacks against banks, technology firms, e-stores and government agencies are on the rise and have cost millions of dollars worth of losses, McAfee said.

However, 17% of the PCs scanned either had no anti-virus installed or the software was installed, but disabled.

Spain (16.3%) topped the list of countries where the PCs scanned did not have a security solution in place, followed by Japan (13.2%) and China (12.9%).

About 10.9% of the PCs scanned in India did not have a security solution, placing India at the 8th spot.

The study suggests often people do not understand that once the trial subscription expires (which came pre-installed with the PC), they are no longer protected.

Some consumers may disable their security protection on purpose, for example to play online games, while some PC users believe they do not need protection if they simply adhere to safe surfing best practices, it added.

"Security software is consumers' first and, in many cases, only defence against cybercrime," the study said.

Apple CEO Tim Cook on Facebook: Stay tuned

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said he would like
 to see more of the company's products assembled
at home than in China and contain more US
components such as semiconductors.

Apple's chief executive Tim Cook has suggested that he could end the firm's long-running rivalry with Facebook in a bid to integrate more social networking features into the iPhone and iPad.

Cook said users should "stay tuned" to see the two firms working more closely.

"Facebook is a great company," he said during the D10 technology conference in California.

"And the relationship is solid. I saw Sheryl [Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer] earlier outside. We have great respect for each other," The Telegraph quoted him, as saying.

According to the paper, Apple and Facebook have had a strained business relationship for years.

In 2010 Steve Jobs publicly described failed negotiations with Facebook over the integration of Ping, Apple's iTunes-based social network, as "onerous".

Apple was also reportedly frustrated by the way it took Facebook until October 2011 to produce an app tailored for the iPad.

According to the paper, Cook appeared to suggest an entente could be in the works.

"We appreciate each other. For us, we want to provide customers simple and elegant ways to do the things they want to do," the paper quoted Cook, as saying.

"Facebook has hundreds of millions of customers. So, anyone that has an iPhone or iPad, we want them to have the best experience with Facebook on those platforms. So stay tuned," he added.

Pre-book the Samsung Galaxy S III on Snapdeal for Rs. 250

Will you buy it?

The Samsung Galaxy S III is now available for pre-booking via Snapdeal.com at a price of Rs. 250, which is significantly lesser than the Rs. 1,000 pre-order price tag that Infibeam had and a whole lot lesser than Samsung’s official pre-order listing. Samsung will be officially launching the Galaxy S III on the 31st of May in New Delhi but it’s still uncertain whether it will be a hard launch or a paper launch. The Galaxy S III is Samsung’s upcoming flagship smartphone that will replace the Galaxy S II. Currently, the S III will go on to compete with the HTC One X, the only other quad-core, ICS-running smartphone in the market.

A quick recap of the S III - the phone is equipped with some of the latest tech to make it out of the mobile phone sector. From a 1.4 GHz quad-core Exynos processor (1GB RAM) running on Android 4.0 i.e. Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) flaunting the latest edition of Samsung’s TouchWiz UI, to NFC support, the device is quite feature-packed. Its 2100mAh battery should also provide users with quite a bit of usage as well. More than the design, Samsung is really pinning the success of the S III based on the new software tweaks that they’ve added. One of the main features of the S III is the Siri-esque voice recognition system called S Voice. It features Smart Stay, a technique that uses the front facing camera to track your eye movement so it keeps the screen on as long as you're looking at it. Pretty cool. Social Tag uses face recognition that scans the faces in your gallery and maps them to your friends on Facebook or other social media sites. S Beam lets you bond and share data instantly between two S III devices using a combination of NFC and Wi-Fi Direct. AllShare Play uses DLNA to share your photos and videos on compatible TVs. 

Here’s a closer look at some of the other specs revealed:

• 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1280 x 720
• 3G, EDGE/GPRS, Wi-Fi with, DLNA support
• GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS,
• USB 2.0, Bluetooth 4.0
• 8MP camera with AF, LED flash, BSI sensor and 1080p HD video recording
• 1.9MP front facing camera with a resolution of 720p for video chat
• 16/32/64GB Internal memory, expandable up to 64GB
• HDMI out

The Samsung Galaxy S III will be officially released tomorrow in India. 

Milagrow introduces seven-inch tablet for Rs. 10990

Milagrow Humantech has announced the launch of their 7-inch tablet - TabTop 7.4. At just 6.5mm thickness, company is dubbing it as India's thinnest tablet.

According to the company, it comes with over 55 most-used applications pre-loaded to provide out-of-box usability. TabTop 7.4 runs on Android 4.0.3, and features 1.2 GHz processor, 4000mAh battery, and 1.3MP front camera.

It has been priced at Rs. 10,990 for the 4GB variant and Rs. 13,990 for the 16GB variant.

Milagrow already sells variety of tablets in the country.

Key specifications

• 7-inch (17.8 cm) display
• 1.2 GHz processor with Dual Mali 400 MP GPU
• Support for 4G/3G/2G with multiple dongles;
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n;
• Supports external hard disk upto 500GB & multiple devices via USB Host.

Looking to Cut Costs? Ditch XP for Windows 7

Microsoft this week continued to push for the demise of Windows XP, arguing that it is more expensive for businesses to remain on the aging OS than it is to upgrade to Windows 7.

Pointing to a report it commissioned from IDC, Microsoft's Erwin Visser wrote in a blog post that "staying on Windows XP is an expensive investment when Windows 7 provides dramatic savings."

Specifically, IDC said that base IT and end-user labor costs associated with Windows XP are about five times as much as those for Windows 7. "That's a significant amount of money IT shops could put towards modernizing their departments and adding value to the businesses," Visser said.

Those prices are also still on the rise. "IDC found the longer you wait, the pricier supporting Windows XP gets: IT labor costs go up 25 percent in the fourth year of continuing to run Windows XP past deadline, and user productivity suffers as well, with an increased cost of 23 percent," he said.

Microsoft celebrated the 10-year anniversary of Windows XP last year, and promptly called for its demise. Support for the OS will end on April 8, 2014, so Redmond is making a push for businesses to switch to more modern versions of Windows. "10 years is a long time to have the same old technology," the company said back in October.

Anything before Windows XP Service Pack 3 is already out of support. In an effort to encourage upgrades, Microsoft's own Internet Explorer 9 only runs on Windows 7 or Vista because of graphics acceleration support. Other software, like some of the latest video editors, are starting to have similar requirements.

As of April 2012, 46.08 percent of PCs in the world were running Windows XP, followed by 36.67 percent on Windows 7, according to data from Net Applications. That's only a slight drop from December, when Windows XP closed out 2011 with 46.52 percent of the global OS market, followed by Windows 7 with 36.99 percent.

Microsoft is currently putting the final touches on Windows 8, which is scheduled to be released later this year. For more, check out PCMag's Hands On With Windows 8 Consumer Preview and the slideshow below.