Few Pics : Apple Watch

Ericsson India to hire 400 graduates

Swedish telecom equipment maker, Ericsson, is looking at adding around 400 graduates from management and engineering to its 19,000-plus team in India in 2015. In the year ending 2014, the company is expecting to close its hiring with almost 300 people from similar backgrounds.

"Based on the positive momentum that we are seeing in the market, our hiring has seen a 10% increase this year. For next year, we will be looking at a 40% increase on our 2014 hiring numbers," says Chris Houghton, head of India region, Ericsson.

In its third quarter ending 2014, the company's revenue grew by 56% as compared with the same quarter in 2013. On the diversity front, the company has set a glob al agenda of having women comprise one-third its workforce by 2020. However, in India, the proportion of women to the total workforce is only 10%.

Ericsson will also facilitate student projects across all the Indian Institutes of Technology, together with the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer at IIT Delhi. Ericsson is looking at supporting a few of these ventures at IIT-approved technology business incubators.

For this, the company has launched 'Innovation Awards', where it will recognize student innovations in areas like web design, cloud computing, storage and networking, human-machine interface, embedded and hardware system design, research, and so on.

As part of the award, winners will receive a funding of Rs 10 lakh each for incubation of the project over a two-year period.

Samsung launches Mobile Video streaming service

Services like Spotify are disrupting and revolutionizing the way consumers discover and access music and Samsung is betting that video is about to go the same way. 

It has launched Milk Video, which pulls together the best video content on the web and, like a music streaming service, classifies it and orders it based on a user's likes and preferences.
These initial content partners include Conde Nast, Funny Or Die, Red Bull, Vevo and VICE, but Samsung also plans to offer exclusive content through the app too. 

The Milk Video app will get to know a user's preferences over time in order to tailor the video feed and there is also a social element - it's easy to share content via Facebook and the like, to comment on it and to follow other friends or brands. 

The app is currently only available in the US and is compatible with the Samsung Galaxy Note II; Note 3; Note 4; Galaxy Mega; and Galaxy Edge tabblets and the Galaxy S III; S4; and S5 smartphones.

Most Realistic Colors on Galaxy Note 4’s Display

Color accuracy is one of the most important factors that go into making a good display. No one wants to watch a movie where the protagonist has a slightly unhealthy blueish hue. With that in mind, DisplayMate decided to pit this year’s six best mobile displays against one another to see which one actually offered the most true-to-life color reproduction.

DisplayMate tested six devices: The Apple iPhone 6 Plus, the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, the Galaxy Tab S 10.5, the iPad Air 2, the Microsoft Surface Pro 3, and the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9. On these products they measured for five areas of color accuracy: full color gamut, facial skin tone, organic color, blue region, and white point.

All the displays exhibited fairly good accuracy for general viewing, but the winner in the study was the Galaxy Note 4. The Note 4 scored or tied for the highest ranking in each of the areas tested. In close second were the Surface Pro 3 and Galaxy Tab S 10.5. The iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6 Plus, while scoring highly for skin tone accuracy, ended up ranking last and second to last, respectively, while the 2013 Kindle Fire HDX ranked fourth.

But there’s still plenty of room for improvement for all of these mobile displays in the future. Using software, companies can adjust color filters on OLED or LCD displays to get even better color accuracy. Right now, this is done almost exclusively using hardware and display material chemistry. For example, displays could offer different color modes when text is primarily onscreen versus when images are onscreen since a bluish white hue that’s amenable for reading text isn’t ideal for photographs. Adjusting the display calibration depending on the amount of ambient light will also improve the experience.

Mozilla to end partnership with Google, strikes Firefox deal with Yahoo

Mozilla Corporation and Yahoo have announced a "strategic five-year partnership" agreement. The deal makes Yahoo the default search experience for Firefox on mobile devices and PCs.

The new deal replaces a longstanding partnership between Mozilla and Google which concludes at the end of this month after 10 years. The most recent three-year renewal of that agreement paid Mozilla $300 million a year.

As part of the pact, the announcement says, "Yahoo will introduce an enhanced search experience for U.S. Firefox users which is scheduled to launch in December 2014. It features a clean, modern and immersive design that reflects input from the Mozilla team."

The announcement also mentions, "a framework for exploring future product integrations and distribution opportunities to other markets."

According to Mozilla CEO, Chris Beard :

“Today we are announcing a change to our strategy for Firefox search partnerships.  We are ending our practice of having a single global default search provider. We are adopting a more local and flexible approach to increase choice and innovation on the Web, with new and expanded search partnerships by country.

The only new international search partner announced today is Yandex Search in Russia. Baidu will continue to be the default search partner for China, with Google, Bing, Youdao, Taobao and "other local options" available in China. For now at least, Google will continue to be the default search choice in the rest of the world, and it will continue to power the Safe Browsing and Geolocation features in Firefox.”

Nokia N1 Tablet : Nokia’s Comeback Device

Nokia has recently unveiled it’s latest tablet Nokia N1, which looks very similar to Apple’s iPad mini. The first device to come from Nokia since its phone division was purchased by Microsoft, the N1 is a 7.9-inch tablet with a display resolution of 2048 × 1536, like the iPad mini, and features an aluminum body. The N1’s speakers look similar to the mini’s. Even the N1’s volume and power buttons are in the same place as the mini’s.

Measuring 7.9 × 5.5 × 0.27 inches and weighing 0.7 pounds, the N1 is a bit wider but still slimmer than Apple’s iPad mini. The N1 weighs a drop less than the mini, 0.7 pounds vs. 0.73 pounds.

Although Nokia N1 looks like iPad mini, it comes loaded with Google’s new Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system. Riding on top of that is Nokia’s new Z Launcher, an Android “skin” in the same vein as Samsung’s TouchWiz and HTC’s Sense interfaces.

Z Launcher looks and feels completely different from the standard Android Lollipop operating system, but it still runs the same apps and has the same basic settings menus. What sets Z Launcher apart from other Android skins is how you interact with it.
 
While on the home screen, you can write the first letter of the app you want to open, and Z Launcher will automatically search for it for you. Also, the interface learns which apps you use the most and at what time and ensures that they are on the home screen when you’re likely to need them.

Unlike the iPad mini, the N1 comes with an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front camera. (The mini features a 5-megapixel iSight rear camera and a 1.2-megapixel FaceTime front camera.)

As a bonus, the N1 comes with a reversible USB Type-C port, which means you don’t have to struggle while trying to plug in a microUSB port the right way. A new kind of connection, the reversible micro-USB port lets you insert your charging cord either way, so that it’s never “upside-down.”

The company will launch the tablet in China in time for the first quarter of 2015 for about $249. That’s well below the $399 the iPad mini 3 costs and the $299 the mini 2 goes for.
Release dates for the U.S. haven’t been revealed.