HP Launches Elitebook Folio 1020 Laptops; Lighter and Thinner Than Macbook Air

HP on Tuesday introduced two new Windows 8.1-based laptops, the HP Elitebook Folio 1020 and HP Elitebook Folio 1020 Special Edition, for business-oriented consumers. While the company did not announce the pricing of the laptops, it has detailed that the standard Elitebook Folio 1020 notebook will be available in February, and the Special Edition will be available in April.

The two notebooks - Elitebook Folio 1020 and Elitebook Folio 1020 Special Edition - are not only inspired by the Apple Macbook Air in terms of design, it appears as if HP has gone out its way to ensure they are also thinner and lighter than the MacBook Air. The ultra-thin notebooks are just 15.7mm thick, and while the Elitebook Folio 1020 weighs up to 1.2kg, the Elitebook Folio 1020 Special Edition is lighter of the two models at 1.029kg, being made out of carbon fibre and magnesium-lithium alloy. The 2014 13-inch MacBook Air is 17mm thick, and weighs 1.35kg.

HP says that the two machines pass military-grade drop and shock tests. The "always on" capability of new Elitebook Folio 1020 laptops can help track them, even when they are turned off. The company says that in case of theft users will also be able to remotely wipe the data from the notebooks. Also, since it is targeted at business users, it comes with a proprietary enterprise port, certified Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2/2.0(6), pre-boot authentication, and a fingerprint reader for additional security.

The HP Elitebook Folio 1020 features a 12.5-inch full-HD (1080p) display, and is upgradable with an optional touchscreen. The HP Elitebook Folio 1020 Special Edition includes a 12.5-inch quad-HD display, but doesn't include the optional touchscreen.

Both Elitebook Folio 1020 notebooks comes with the Intel Core M processors with 8GB of RAM, and SSD hard drive storage from 128GB to 256GB. Both machines are fanless for quieter operation, and HP claims that the battery is rated to deliver up to 9 hours of usage time.

Guru4Tech Team

Google Rolls Out New Editing Options for Docs and Slides Platforms

Google on Tuesday announced updates for its Docs, Sheets, and Slides platforms, with new editing options for making "documents, spreadsheets, and presentations more beautiful and useful."

The company published a Google+ post saying that Docs now has the ability to merge cells together in a table.

Additionally, Google Docs users will be able to customise images right inside a document without leaving it. These added customisation options include recolouring images, changing its transparency, brightness, and more, apart from already available customisation options of colouring tables and managing line thickness.

For Slides, users will now be able to add slide numbers to a presentation (see above).

Last month, the company had unveiled a new feature for Hangouts video calls that allowed users to share Drive files without having to leave the conversation window. During a Hangouts video call, users will see a Google Drive icon on the bottom right corner of the conversation to select the file that they want to share as a link. Upon selecting the file link, the chat window will also show a preview of the file contents, "even when other participants don't have their chat window open."

"When you're meeting with your colleagues remotely you want to get things done quickly, and face-to-face conversation is still the fastest and simplest way to communicate. Today, #Hangouts is making collaboration even easier by letting you share links to Drive files without ever leaving your conversation," noted Google for Work on its Google+ post.

Guru4Tech Team

Internet of Things Chipmakers to Merge in $4 Billion Deal

Chipmakers Cypress Semiconductor and Spansion announced plans to merge Monday in a $4 billion deal bringing together two key makers of components for "Internet of Things" devices.

The all-stock deal brings together Cypress, which is known for chips controlling touchscreen devices, and Spansion, a major maker of chips for the automotive and industrial control market.

"This merger represents the combination of two smart, profitable, passionately entrepreneurial companies that are number one in their respective memory markets and have successfully diversified into embedded processing," said T.J. Rodgers, the Cypress founding president who will be chief executive of the new group.

Spansion shareholders will receive 2.457 Cypress shares for each share they own, resulting in shareholders of each company holding 50 percent of the post-merger company.

The company will have an eight-person board of directors consisting of four directors from each firm. Ray Bingham, the Spansion chairman, will serve as the non-executive chairman.

Subject to regulatory approval, the deal creates a new firm to be headquartered in San Jose, California, and called Cypress Semiconductor Corporation.

Guru4Tech Team

Facebook Argentina Fined Over Fake Profiles

Facebook Argentina was ordered to pay a fire-fighter ARS 1 million ($177,000, roughly Rs. 1 crore) for failing to comply with an order to delete insulting fake profiles of the plaintiff, the Ministry of Justice said Tuesday.

The plaintiff, whose identity was not disclosed, called on the social network for over a year to delete fake profiles by people who wrote insults related to a labour dispute.

On Tuesday, judge Carlos Cadierno ordered the fire-fighter be compensated and the company to pay a ARS 50,000 ($5,900, roughly Rs. 3,59,000) per month penalty.

The case began in April, 2013 and initially the plaintiff did not ask for compensation, the ministry of justice's news agency said.

According to the plaintiffs' counsel, Facebook made "excuses" for why it didn't need to unsubscribe users who attacked his client online.

Notification of the court decision was sent to the social network's offices in Argentina and in the United States, the plaintiffs' lawyers said.

The judge issued the first favourable ruling for the fire-fighter a year ago, but to date the profiles are still active.

Contacted in Buenos Aires, Facebook Argentina declined to comment.

In Argentina, Facebook has 23 million active users per month, and about 1.2 billion active monthly users worldwide.

Guru4Tech Team

Android 5.0.1 Lollipop Pushed to AOSP; Factory Images Start Rolling Out

It seems Google is finally gearing up to release an incremental update to Android 5.0 Lollipop, dubbed Android 5.0.1. The new updated build of Android 5.0 Lollipop has been posted to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) with build number LRX22C. Additionally, factory images of Android 5.0.1 for Wi-Fi only Nexus tablets have been also published.

As of now, there is no word on what precise changes the Android 5.0.1 update brings; though we can expect the release to bring fixes to various bugs and issues reported by Android 5.0 Lollipop users in the recent few weeks.

The Android 5.0.1 factory images for the Wi-Fi only Nexus 7 (2013), Nexus 9, and Nexus 10 have been published. The factory images for the Nexus 4, Nexus 5, 3G-enabled Nexus (2012 and 2013), Nexus 6, and Nexus 9 LTE are yet to be published.

Android Police, citing Google+ user Derek Ross, claims that Android 5.0.1 update will be headed to Android Wear as well. Ross notes, "Not that I personally have an issues with battery life on Android Wear, but for those that want their smartwatch to last for days, the battery life on Android Wear 5.0.1 seems to be drastically improved."

In last few weeks, Android 5.0 Lollipop has been in the news for all wrong reasons with several user reports pointing to multiple bugs in the final release.

Some of the Android 5.0 Lollipop bugs recently reported by users include a Wi-Fi bug; an SMS bug, app switcher bug; another bug that  removed the very useful 'silent mode' from phones, and a flashlight bug was also reported to be affecting some Nexus 5 and Nexus 4 users.

Adding to the long list of Android 5.0 Lollipop bugs, two new ones were reported last week - one about the broken manual account sync button in settings, and another about frequent restart of apps in the background.

Guru4Tech Team

Cyber Monday Sales Jump 17 Percent to Over $2 Billion

Online shoppers set a set a single-day spending record on Cyber Monday, despite deals being stretched out this holiday season.

Online sales Monday jumped 17 percent from last year, totaling nearly $2.04 billion (roughly Rs. 12,629 crores), research firm comScore Inc. said Tuesday. That represents the heaviest online spending day in history and the first to surpass $2 billion (roughly Rs. 12,382 crores) in sales, said the firm, which tracks online sales.

Retailers from Target to Amazon have been offering online deals since the beginning of November, and are promising "cyber" deals all week.

Some anticipated the extended period would hurt Cyber Monday sales. And the lackluster start to the holiday shopping season in brick-and-mortar stores also lowered expectations. But shoppers appeared to be eager to go online.

The weekend after Thanksgiving was popular for online shopping too, with sales up 26 percent compared to the same weekend last year. The two-day period raked in $2.01 billion (roughly Rs. 12,443 crores) in online sales, according to comScore.

"Any notion that Cyber Monday is declining in importance is really unfounded, as it continues to post new historical highs and reflects the ongoing strength of online this holiday season," comScore Chairman Emeritus Gian Fulgoni said.

This may be part of a larger shift toward online buying as mobile phones spur the practice known as "showrooming," Fulgoni said in a statement. The term describes the practice of a consumer going into stores to see an item but then buying it, or a similar product, online.

"The data we're seeing suggest it may be more a change in shopping behavior than a lack of consumer demand," Fulgoni said.

Other organizations measured a more muted response for the day: IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark reported that online sales rose 8.5 percent this year compared to last on Cyber Monday. That is less stellar growth than last year's, when IBM says online sales jumped more than 20 percent by its measure.

"As the holiday shopping season becomes less concentrated on a single day, retailers and marketers took advantage by making it easier for consumers to find the best deals on the go, whenever and wherever they chose to shop," said Jay Henderson, director of IBM Smarter Commerce.

Still Cyber Monday is the busiest U.S. online shopping day of the year - a title it has held since 2010.

The name Cyber Monday was coined in 2005 by the National Retail Federation's online arm, called Shop.org, to encourage people to shop online. The name was also a nod to online shopping being done at work where faster connections made it easier to browse.

Some retailers painted a rosy picture of the day. Walmart said it received the most online orders in its history on Cyber Monday. It added that mobile made up about 70 percent of the traffic to its website between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.

But some shoppers were disappointed by the deals. Preston Neill, 28, from Philadelphia, took advantage of early online deals over the weekend like 40 percent off board games from Amazon and clothing that was 40 percent off from Banana Republic. But he said the deals on Cyber Monday seemed similar to what he had already seen earlier.

"I haven't seen anything that jumps out at me," he said. "I feel like (Cyber Monday) is the Super Bowl of shopping, there is a lot of hype, then it doesn't quite live up."

Guru4Tech Team

Mozilla Looks Set to Bring Firefox Browser to iOS Devices

While Mozilla has famously stayed away from entering the Apple's ecosystem, the non-profit appears to be re-thinking the matter, as there might be a new Firefox browser for iOS, if a couple of tweets by company employees are any indication.

A new tweet by Mozilla Firefox's Release Manager Lukas Blakk indicates that the firm, under new chief executive Chris Beard, is planning to bring out an iOS version of the Firefox browser soon. "We need to be where our users are so we're going to get Firefox on iOS #mozlandia," stated the tweet.

Another tweet from Matthew Ruttley, Manager of Data Science at Mozilla, also stated"Firefox for iOS!! Let's do this!!! #mozlandia #awesome #mozilla #teamNightingale." Both tweets were posted on December 2 during an internal Mozilla event.

Mozilla famously never released an iOS browser citing Apple's unreasonable policies with which the third-party browsers had to be made using Apple's own WebKit engine. Firefox has its own web rendering engine, and Mozilla felt using WebKit would have provided a compromised experience to iOS users. However, the firm now seems ready to make the sacrifice. For now, it is unclear how exactly will Mozilla bring Firefox to iOS devices.

As TechCrunch notes, Mozilla launched its Firefox Home and Firefox Sync client apps for iOS back in June 2010, letting iPhone users gain secure access to their Firefox browser bookmarks and open saved Firefox tabs on their iPhone handsets. However, the sync client app in August 2012 was removed from App Store.

Mozilla on Tuesday launched its Firefox version 34 (specifically 34.0.5) for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android (34.0) platforms. The browser gains a number of new features in its updated version.

Google Makes Editing Office Documents Easier From Gmail

After rolling out new editing options for its Docs, Slides and Sheets platforms, Google has announced a new feature that makes it easier to edit Office document attachments in Gmail.

Gmail users can now click on a dedicated button placed next to download a file or save to Google Drive button and start editing. Google explains the Microsoft Office attachment is saved and converted in Drive to Google's own document format.

"With just one click on the new edit icon in Gmail attachments, you can automatically convert Office documents -- giving you the additional benefits of a single document to keep track of, access from anywhere (even offline!), and revision history," stated Google Drive's Google Plus post.

Google also announced conversion support for 15 new Office file formats on Google Drive's Docs, Slides and Sheets editors. Docs now supports dot, dotx, dotm, docm formats, Sheets supports xlt, xltx, xltm, xlsm files and Slides can now run pot, potx, potm, pptm, pps, ppsx, ppsm file formats, as per Google Apps update page.

(Also see:Google Drive Users Can Now Open Files Directly in Desktop Apps)

Google reminds users they can also edit Office files in their original format directly, with the dedicated Chrome web browser extension. Once installed, users can then edit the file by clicking on the attachment card and selecting open from the top of the file preview, on the pencil icon to convert it to a Drive format and save back if required.

The Mountain View giant recently launched the new Gmail 5.0 with third-party email account support last month. It also launched the Google Inbox in October that combines Gmail with Google Now service.

Guru4Tech Team