Sony has just released a press statement indicating they have officially separated from the Ericsson brand name for their mobile division. The partnership was formerly a joint venture with Telefonaktiebolaget LM, but now that Sony has purchased the other 50% stake for $1.37 billion, the new name for Sony’s mobile division is Sony Mobile Communications.

Sony Ericsson will be officially known as Sony Mobile Communications from now on. Every new phone launched from the company will bear only Sony’s name, and we have seen a couple of them already. However, the existing range of devices out in the market will continue to bear the Sony Ericsson name.

VIA

Samsung Galaxy S II is still going strong in sales, but now there is an inside leak of updates reporting that Samsung is to release Galaxy S III in May. It was known that the next smartphone is about to come, but just this early was not expected. According to a news publication in Korea, ETNews, Samsung’s new smartphone, which many are referring to as the new Galaxy superphone, will be its slimmest yet measuring just 7mm. This makes it about 1.5mm thinner than the last one.

So one thing is certain with such a tiny measurement and that is Samsung has taken the race of bringing out the slimmest phone very seriously. To get their latest smartphone out by May, Samsung has reportedly used components which are 10% – 20% smaller than the conventional parts. This includes parts like the printed circuit board (PCB), connector parts and chips. Now this would be fun to have such a smartphone with unconventionally thinner components. It is also reportedly Samsung’s first quad-core smartphone that will have 8-megapixel rear-facing and 2-megapixel front-facing camera. It will also have support for LTE networks.

Now this sounds like a really smart and cool smartphone to have. Already the features of Samsung Galaxy S II are very impressive and it considered the best smartphone introduced last year. Those who still have not bought it can wait till May to have an even better version. Already there are anti-Apple advertisements from Samsung which are calling for more competition. Here is hoping the best one tops them all.

Samsung Galaxy S III

Facebook has just made a much-anticipated status update Wednesday:

“The Internet social network is going public eight years after its CEO Mark Zuckerberg started the service at Harvard University.”

This means anyone with the right amount of cash will be able to own part of a Silicon Valley icon that quickly transformed from dorm-room startup to cultural touchstone.

If its initial public offering of stock makes enough friends on Wall Street, Facebook will probably make its stock-market debut in three or four months as one of the world’s most valuable companies. Facebook, which is now based in Menlo Park, Calif., hopes to list its stock under the ticker symbol, “FB,” on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq Stock Market.

In its regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook Inc. indicated it hopes to raise $5 billion in its IPO. That would be the most for an Internet IPO since Google Inc. and its early backers raised $1.9 billion in 2004. The final amount will likely change as Facebook’s bankers gauge the investor demand.

Amid the buoyant optimism about Facebook’s prospects as a public company, some analysts see troubling parallels to the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, which turned into a devastating bust in the early 2000s. The biggest fear is that some investors will become so enamored with Facebook’s brand and brawn that the will try to buy the IPO share with little financial analysis or recognition of the risks.

The IPOs of Zynga and LinkedIn showed that success isn’t guaranteed even for profitable companies with huge followings. Zynga’s stock is currently trading just slightly above its IPO price. LinkedIn is considerably higher, but still far below the $122.70 record that it hit on its first trading day.

“It seems there’s so much excitement, innovation around Internet startups in Silicon Valley and yet a lot of these companies, have not performed well at all,” Kessler said. “The concern is the sustainability of the growth and profitability. It’s very, very difficult to prove those things out over a short period of time.”

Mark Zuckerberg, 27, has emerged as the latest in a lineage of Silicon Valley prodigies who are alternately hailed for pushing the world in new directions and reviled for overstepping their bounds. In Zuckerberg’s case, a lawsuit alleging that he stole the idea for Facebook from some Harvard classmates became the grist for a book and a movie that was nominated for an Academy Award last year.

VIA

Shah Rukh Khan allegedly assaulted Farah Khan’s husband and filmmaker Shirish Kunder at Sanjay Dutt’s party on Sunday.

According to reports, Shirish was drunk and followed Shah Rukh everywhere and even entered the lavatory with him. Irritated SRK then pinned him to a sofa and allegedly punched him.

Farah Khan confirmed the incident. “Shirish was beaten up by Shah Rukh and his three bodyguards in Sanjay Dutt’s party. Shah Rukh asked Shirish why he had tweeted against him. There was no provocation from our side. He had screamed at Shirish telling him that he would destroy me as well.”

Farah Khan also texted reporters: “Shahrukh has always told me that physical abuse is the worst way to sort out a problem, and that its means the person who’s hitting has either a personal or professional crisis going on, and it saddens me to see him doing the same, sick!”

When things got out of hand, Sanjay Dutt had to intervene to stop the brawl. But apparently he too slapped Kunder for sending lewd messages to his wife Maanyata and for misbehaving with a girl at the same party.

This isn’t the first time Shirish has messed with King Khan. The Joker director had made nasty remarks about RA.One after its release. Kunder had tweeted: “I just heard a 150 Cr firework fizzle.”

Rumours of a fallout between Farah and Shah Rukh Khan have been doing the rounds for a while now. But has this unfortunate incident put a nail in the coffin of this duo’s long-lasting friendship? No one knows.

Now every Facebook user will have Facebook Timeline. Because starting this morning, the new Timeline feature that up until now has been an optional switch, is now mandatory.

The Timeline differs from the default profile pages we know and love in several ways. Now, rather than showcasing only your most recent posts, your personal front page can be scrolled back months or years at a time. Most importantly, this change can offer visitors a glimpse at your entire social networking past, all the way back to the day that you joined up. The revamp can be both a blessing and a curse for seasoned social networkers, as it can produce a bit of  Pleasant Nostalgia, but also drag up some of your less proud public moments.

Your Timeline may remind of you of  ”Breakups, Job Troubles, or even a few Unfortunate Party Photos”  that you have long since buried. Depending on your settings, these black marks on your digital past could allow new followers, including friends or business associates to see a side of you that was better kept tucked away.

Privacy  is already a hot topic for Facebook users and the network’s litany of sharing options can be difficult to navigate, even for the most experienced users. The company isn’t oblivious to how the Timeline may drag up some unwanted past events, so a short buffer zone is in place to allow you to modify your online persona before making its new debut. You now have until Tuesday, January 31 to erase any past Facebook scars you’d prefer to hide.

The mandatory Timeline rollout will undoubtedly catch some by surprise, but you don’t have to fall victim to the Ghosts of Past Updates. Take some time to review your social networking history and don’t hesitate to prune anything that you wouldn’t want on the front page of a local newspaper. Because as of right now, the clock is ticking…..

By R¤m¥

With iPhone, the iPad and the MacBook Air, the Apple has been very successful over the past years favourable reviews. Nobody had ever thought that a tech company struggling a decade ago would be now world’s most valued. But all this grading does not come without the flaws. Apple has weaknesses to address, which are:

1. The cloud: The claim of iPad 2 being a “post-PC” device is not genuine because one still has to plug it into a computer to activate and sync it. Apple should think about the cloud like Google for removing these PC dependent services. Due sometime this year is Apple’s new version of iOS. Apple should not remain unaware of the variety of things that Dropbox, Amazon and Google, etc. are doing with the cloud. As of the present situation, Apple has not made its mark positively here.

2. Social: Apple has not been so social except with Ping, the social network based around iTunes music and GameCenter, the social gaming service. Not being so social can cost Apple in the long run. But this could be overcome in the next version of iOS.

3. The living room: The new Apple TV has a small upgrade with live video streaming for MLB and NBA games, but it still does not make it a strong product as it has limited video choices with no threat of high competition. To improve on the situation it has to decide between being a good platform and being a prominent content seller.

Different products from Apple

Dr Umar Saif, the Associate Professor for Computer Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), who was receognised by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) earlier this year, has been awarded the prestigious Google Faculty Research Award.
A statement released on LUMS website read that Dr Saif had been awarded for his research work, funded by the US State Department.
The Google Faculty award aims to provide funding to full-time faculty working on research in areas of mutual interest with Google. The second round of awards saw funding of 119 awards across 21 different focus areas for a total of six million dollars. The subject areas that received the highest level of support this time were systems and infrastructure, human-computer interaction, social and mobile. In addition, 24% of the funding was awarded to universities outside the US.
The US$ 100,000 Google Faculty Research Award makes Dr Saif the first faculty member in a Pakistani university to receive the competitive grant, awarded for the low-cost rural telephony systems that he has been working on for the past three years along with colleagues at UC Berkeley.
His collaborators on the research, in the Systems and Infrastructure category, include Tapan Parikh, Assistant Professor at the iSchool at UC Berkeley.
Dr Saif had earlier in the year been recognised by the MIT Technology Review as one of their top 35 innovators (TR35) for 2011. The list honours technologies for the developing-world which are being used by millions of people. He was awarded for the applications BitMate – that enhances the speed of Internet in the developing-world using peer-to-peer technology, and SMSall.pk – Pakistan’s largest SMS Social Network which has sent close to 4 billion SMS for users in Pakistan.
Dr Saif is currently on leave from LUMS, working as the Chairman of the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB).