$25 Smartphone by FireFox OS

Mozilla is aiming squarely at the dominance of Google Android in the smartphone field by introducing the cheap smartphone with the FireFox OS on it. Mozilla unveiled the phone at a press event at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Mozilla partnered with chipmaker Spreadtrum to develop the smartphone that has a $25 suggested retail price. Even if it comes with a low price tag, the device still has some respectable specs. TechRadar got shipping unit of the device and reported that it has a single-core ARM Cortex-A5 chip clocked at 1 GHz backed by 256 MB of RAM. It also has a 2GB flash memory and a 3.5 inch display, along with a 2 megapixel camera.

The $25 smartphone from Mozilla is the ideal first smartphone for people who have not been able to afford other smartphone models according to Jay Sullivan, the chief operating officer of Mozilla. Sullivan was quoted by Bloomberg as saying,“we are about bringing people online.”

A cheap smartphone will be perfect for developing markets where internet penetration rates are not high yet. Smartphones can help people in these markets leapfrog the progression to getting access to the Internet and avoid purchasing personal computers or laptops just to connect to the Internet.

The cheap smartphone also appears to be Mozilla’s first push to stake its claim in the smartphone OS market which is dominated by Google’s Android OS. Q2 2013 data from IDC shows that Android had a smartphone market share of 79.3% while iOS had market share of 13.2%. Mozilla will most likely aim at breaking Linux’s market share, at least for the initial phase. Mozilla only needs to capture more than 0.8% which is Linux’s share in the smartphone OS market.

Smartphones Reduce the Digital Divide

One of the projections from

Ericsson’s ConsumerLab’s 10 Hot Consumer Trends 2014 is that smartphones will reduce the digital divide. The study found that people in Indonesia and India already primarily use smartphones for instant messaging and online banking. That is a big contrast to the U.S. and the U.K. where people are more likely to use their laptop for online banking. People also believe that mobile phones are the most important tool for carrying out daily activities. Ericsson’s study shows that 51% of people think about mobile phones this way.

Aside from offering cheap phones, there is also a need to address the other side of the equation and that means the infrastructure for connecting smartphones to the Internet. Telecommunication firms are doing their best to offer the 

<a href="http://www.moneyhero.com.hk/en/broadband">best broadband plans</a> 

to mobile consumers but there is more work that needs to be done. Facebook, for example, has the Internet.org project where they try to connect more people to the Internet and they are doing this by trying to bring down the cost to access the Internet. The Internet.org is aiming to connect 5 billion more people to the Internet.

Mozilla is not alone in trying to offer lower-priced smartphones to the market. Nokia, for example, has also introduced a new line of phones that run on the Google Android system that costs around $120. BlackBerry also unveiled the Z3 and the Canadian smartphone maker will sell the phone in Indonesia before selling it to other Southeast Asian countries.

There are also smaller handset makers that are making cheaper smartphones. ZTE from China is not as well-known as Nokia or Blackberry but they have been making cheap smartphones. In the Philippines, there is also Cherry Mobile that sells affordable smartphones. The race to offer cheaper smartphones is a good development for breaking down the digital divide in the world. These devices can help bring all of the benefits of having information at the tip of your hands to the rest of the world’s population that still do not have access to the Internet.

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Apple Wins Big Against Samsung In Court in South Corea

Samsung lost its bid on Thursday to ban sales of Apple's older iPhone and iPad models in South Korea. A court dismissed a lawsuit, filed in March 2012, claiming the U.S. firm had infringed on three  of Samsung's mobile patents.

The lawsuit was another part of Samsung's global courtroom war with Apple dating back to 2011 when the iPhone company first sued Samsung for copying the look and feel of its products.

"We are glad the Korean court joined others around the world in standing up for real innovation and rejecting Samsung's ridiculous claims," Apple Korea spokesman Steve Park said.

A judge at the Seoul Central District Court said that Apple products did not violate Samsung patents on the display of short messages and group messaging features. The court ruled against a sale ban on the products and subsequently threw out Samsung's claim for $95,100 (£58,000, AU$105,000) in damages.

Necessary measures

Samsung said it would carefully review the ruling before deciding on whether to launch an appeal. "We are disappointed with the court's decision …. Apple has continued to infringe our patented mobile technologies [so] we will continue to take the measures necessary to protect our intellectual property rights," Samsung said in a statement.

Similar rulings in the past have gone in Samsung's favour. In August last year the same South Korean court ordered Apple to pay $38,000 (£23,100, $AU42,000) in damages for infringing on wireless technology patents.

Thursday's court ruling comes after a German court in Mannheim dismissed Apple's claim that Samsung infringed on a utility patent. Apple and Samsung have gone to trial twice in the past two years in California, where juries awarded Apple $930 million (£567 million, AU$1 billion) in damages.

Here’s the complete ruling courtesy of FOSS Patents:

14-01-21 Apple v. Samsung Summary Judgment Order

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How To Block PopUp Ads On Your Android Smartphone

Ads and pop-up windows on your computer are one of the most annoying things in the world, and that's why practically everyone has a pop-up and ad blocker installed on their desktop. But for some strange reason not everyone bothers to do the same thing for their Android - and then suffers from various sites that pop up more windows and tabs than you can poke
a honey-covered stick at (for catching the pop-ups with, you see). Suffer no more! We'll show you the best way to block ads, including pop-ups, on your Android.

You can disable ads, video ads, sound ads and pop-ups (as well as all ads!). 

see also :- Top 60 Free Apps on ANDROID Smartphones

Instructions

Step 1:

Open the Web browser on your Android smartphone. Type the URL address, “market.android.com” in the “Search” text box. Tap on the magnifying glass icon (search button).

Step 2:

Tap on the “Gmail” link located near the top of the page. Use your Gmail account information to log on to Android Market. Enter your username in the “Username” text box. Enter your password in the “Password” text box and tap the “Sign In” button.

Step 3:

Type the keywords “ad blocker” in the “Search” text box on the homepage. Tap on the magnifying glass icon (search button). Browse the list of free ad-blocker applications. Scroll down the page until you see one that will block and prevent popup ads from appearing on your phone.

Step 4:

Tap on the “Install” or “Buy” button next to the name of the ad-blocker application that you want to download on your Android smartphone. If you want to buy an ad-blocker application, you will need to provide your credit card information to make the purchase. Follow the website's instructions for purchasing the ad-blocker application. 

Step 5:

Tap the “OK” button and confirm that you want to install the application. Follow the on-screen instructions for downloading the ad-blocker application. When the installation is complete, go to the “Application” list and tap the ad-blocker icon to launch the application.

Step 6:

Follow the ad-blocker application instructions on how to use the software to block popup ads. For example, if you're using “Ad Blocker” on your phone, tap on an application icon that you want the ad-blocker application to block popup ads. A popup menu will appear on your display screen. Select the “Block” option to add the application to the Ad Block list. To remove the application from the Ad Block list, tap on the “Unblock” option.


Step 7:

Go to “Menu” and then “Setting” to enable or disable the Ad Blocker service. If you want to disable your Internet connection to prevent popup ads from appearing on your phone, tap the “Home” key and use your finger to press down on an empty area on the Home screen. Select “Add to Home Screen Menu” and then select “Widgets” and “Network Toggle.” Tap on the network icon to turn the Internet connection on or off.

see also:- How to Unlock Android Pattern Lock Or Password

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The Best And Worst Gadgets Of 2013

2013 was a heady year: a time of hope; a time for sadness; a time for twerking; and a time for doge.

But it was also a time for gadgets. As we wait for 2013 to come to a close and hope for brighter things for the year to come, here’s a look at the gadgets we loved, the ones we hated, and the ones that we found aesthetically offensive.

The Good tech gadgets

The Fitbit Force

Fitness trackers are many and varied, but Fitbit consistently delivers top-notch hardware. The Fitbit Force is the latest. It takes the successful formula of the wrist-borne Fitbit Flex and adds a basic screen so you can get information right from your wrist, instead of having to open an app on your phone every time you want to check your progress (in more detail than via a few lighted dots).

The Pebble

Many tried to make a smartwatch people wanted to wear and use this year, and many failed. Pebble succeeded. Success for a smartwatch still doesn’t look like massive millions of units sold, but it looks better than when the Pebble team tried this a few years ago with the inPulse smartwatch for BlackBerry. “The what?” you say. Exactly.

iPad mini with Retina Display

The iPad mini with Retina display takes the winning form factor of the original iPad mini and slaps a super high-res screen in there. It’s essentially a no-compromise machine, in that it’s cheaper than the iPad Air, and has the same processor, computing power and battery life. Plus if you have big pockets, it’s pocketable.

Raspberry Pi

Kids need coding skills if they want to survive in our dystopian future. The ability to hack a circuit board could be the difference between eternal servitude and mastery over a private robot army by 2050 and we all know it. This educational tool is the perfect, cheap apocalypse survival kit. It’s technically from last year, but we contend it had more impact this year when production really spooled up.

Kindle Paperwhite

Amazon knows when it’s got a good thing going. Last year’s Kindle Paperwhite was a good thing, and this year’s update keeps all the good and adds some better stuff. Like faster page refresh, greater text/page contrast and more even lighting.

The Bad tech gadgets

Samsung Galaxy Gear

Pebble made a good smartwatch, and Samsung made a dumb one. They made weird ads to try to promote their dumb smartwatch, too, which helped nothing and creeped out the entire world. Plus it only works with a small pool of Galaxy devices, and it has terrible battery life and looks awful. Go home Samsung, you’re drunk.

Gamestick

“Android-based game console” is a phrase we wrote so many times this year. So. Many. Times. And it turns out, they mostly blow. Atop the pile of those that miss is the Gamestick, a crowdfunded disaster that no one loves.

Ouya

The Ouya is like the Gamestick, in that it was a disappointing “Android-based game console,” but to its credit, it isn’t the Gamestick. It’s still not great by any stretch of the imagination, but huge hype didn’t help, and it has decent niche appeal for anyone who really likes emulation and would rather have something permanent instead of plugging their phone into their TV repeatedly.

Leap Motion

Speaking of startup gadgets that really blew it in 2013, the Leap Motion Controller doesn’t live up to its massive hype at all. Sure, if you’re a billionaire inventor like Tony Stark or Elon Musk it’s great for designing space ships or giant death airships, but for regular people, trying to, say, browse the web, you’re going to try this once, hate it and stick it in a drawer.

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10 Quotes That Will Inspire You to Have the Best Year Ever

If you're like me, you're probably wondering where the past year went. You probably feel a sense of accomplishment about the things you did — and you should! But there are probably other things that you didn't get to and wish you had.

It's true that you can't do everything, but sometimes, you need some extra inspiration to put yourself out there and do the things that you really want to do. It could be to try something you've always dreamed about, like starting your own business, or skydiving, or taking on last year's winner in the New York state hot-dog eating contest (um, what? Let's move on).

Either way, you can make this your year. On this beautiful day, go get inspired.

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Top 10 Best Charts OF 2013

The 345 days that have passed in 2013 (94.5 percent of the year) have, necessarily, been the 345 most-technologically advanced in human history, meaning that this year's crop of interactive infographics can be considered among the best the world has ever seen. Here, the best of the best.

1. The PRISM Slides

On June 6, The Washington Post published the first in an ongoing series of files leaked from Edward Snowden to the paper. Included among them was this, apparently created either in late 2012 or early 2013, demonstrating how the world's most popular websites were collaborating with the NSA to facilitate surveillance of targets.

2. The Map of the Internet

The Internet map uses data on website size and activity to present a unique way of looking at the internet — as a series of larger and smaller planets around which other bodies and constellations swarm. The depth of its scale is one of its most remarkable features; it allows you to take even the smallest site and see how it compares to the rest of everything online.

3. The world sets a new carbon dioxide record

Earlier this year, the observatory at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, for the first time recorded a reading of 400 part-per-million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As TheWashington Post put it, it marked the highest level of atmospheric CO₂ in 800,000 years.

4. America's favorite porn [NSFW]

The adult site Pornhub (which does what it says on the tin) figured out what porn Americans in every state liked the most. That is a more interesting map than the chart above, which shows the states that spent the most time on the site (do you need a hobby, Mississippi?) — but it also contains language that might make some people a bit uncomfortable. Because it is about porn.

5. The other Earth-like Planets we know About

Another great Times interactive, this one shows each of the 150 Earth-like planets that have been discovered by NASA's Kepler mission — their size, their orbits, their temperatures. It's pure data, just representations, but it's still enormously suggestive of what could be.

6. How much various people make in one minute

Speaking of professional basketball players, CNN Money's interactive video shows the relative earnings of various people and occupations over the course of 60 seconds. If you are not Kobe Bryant, this will be humbling.

7. The web's love affair with charts

This is how often an increasingly chart-obsessed internet has created postsdedicated to proving something "in one chart." We prefer long articles with multiple charts, ourselves

8. The GOP civil war, mapped

Another one we had to update multiple times. In the wake of the government shutdown, we created this map of the two sides in the increasingly hostile civil war in the Republican Party.

9. Wired's breakdown of Food Network recipes

Wired magazine decided it wanted to run an experiment in scraping content off the web. So Dylan Fried created a script that pulled in information from Food Network's 49,000-plus recipes, building a variety of beautiful graphics with the resulting data.

10.

All of the Obama conspiracy theories

We created this graphic (zoomed-in version here) to try and categorize the various theories about why or how President Obama was purportedly involved in scandals. The premise at the heart of each? That Obama hates America.

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Why Wall Street isn't ready for Bitcoin

By Aaron Sankin on December 09, 2013Email

As the price of Bitcoin has shot into the stratosphere, there’s been a growing chorus talking about the virtual currency not only as means of exchange but as a vehicle for investment.

Just consider the following: A single Bitcoin purchased for $65 six months ago is now worth around a $1,000, and a Malta-based Bitcoin hedge fund has posted returns of nearly 5,000 percent this year (making it the single best performing hedge fund in the world).

What is surprising, however, is that for all the chatter about Bitcoin’s investment potential, a group of major players has been notably absent from the conversation: large, established Wall Street firms.

The biggest organizations in the financial world have been conspicuously silent when it comes to Bitcoin, almost entirely staying out a staying out of a sector that’s been a huge moneymaking opportunity for those lucky enough to get in early.

We reached out to several of the largest Wall Street investment banks to inquire about their Bitcoin holdings. Most declined comment or didn’t respond. A Citigroup spokesperson said the company hasn’t made any investments in Bitcoin.

There are a number of factors why Wall Street’s institutional investors are reticent to invest in the cryptocurrency, but one oft-stated reason—volatility—likely isn’t one of them.

The price of Bitcoin is certainly skittish. During one 24-hour period last week it fluctuated in value over a range of 370 points. ‟[But] that volatility isn’t what’s scaring off major investors,” said Garrick Hileman, an economic historian at the London School of Economics, who noted that savvy operators with deep pockets often generate their largest returns when markets experience wild fluctuations.

Given the decentralized nature of the currency, when the money in them disappears, there’s not much people can do about it.

‟I write about it every day,” sighed Daniel Cawrey, editor of the Bitcoin news blog Coindesk, ‟exchanges getting hacked, people losing their money.”

Fears about a sudden inability to sell bitcoins if exchanges shut down are largely secondary to the main issue preventing companies like Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse from jumping into the Bitcoin game: government regulation—or rather, the lack of it.

While government officials in the United States, at least at the federal level, have appeared sympathetic to Bitcoin, but there’s a lingering fear this relatively permissive attitude could change at any moment.

The lack of regulatory clarity’s also pushing banks away from doing business with companies who deal in Bitcoin.

Silicon Valley Bank, which announced a partnership with the Bitcoin business incubator Coinlab early this year, has since put the brakes on working with Bitcoin firms. ‟Until regulatory guidance is clear on banking and payment processing for virtual currency companies, we are not adding more relationships in this sector to our client portfolio,” wrote a Silicon Valley Bank spokesperson to the Daily Dot.

Bitcoin’s market cap—that is, the combined value of every Bitcoin currently in existence—is only about $12 billion. In terms of Wall Street’s biggest banks, that’s pocket change. It’s about the same dollar figure added to Apple’s market cap following a single tweet by famed activist investor Carl Icahn. It’s not really enough to justify navigating the still choppy waters of emerging Bitcoin regulation and risk the reputational risk of getting slammed by the Securities and Exchange Commission for doing deals in it that would otherwise be completely unremarkable.

“If you’re a professional investor or an financial institution, it can be difficult to invest in Bitcoin,” explained David Kintisky, general manager of the Bitcoin Investment Trust. ‟There’s no stock symbol, so you first you have to figure out how to buy it, then you have to figure out how to hold it, and explain it to your compliance guys how it all works, and then find a way to report it on your taxes.”

‟The lack of major players allows for smaller startups, like Coinbase and Bitpay, to come in and be instantly competitive,” said Cawrey. ‟If Citibank or Bank of America was handling Bitcoin transactions, these companies wouldn’t exist because banks could do it themselves with the benefit of their massive infrastructure.”

Kintisky’s Bitcoin Investment Trust is operated by the New York-based Second Market, which is primarily known for trading in pre-IPO shares of companies and functions by simply buying a whole heap of bitcoins and riding the price up and down. The fund currently holds about $70 million in assets, and Kintisky asserts that it’s the de facto player in the U.S. Bitcoin investment market.

Kintisky notes that the main investors in his fund are Silicon Valley/Silicon Alley tech entrepreneurs attracted to the novel technological aspect of Bitcoin, folks from family offices or wealth management firms (read: really rich people), and Wall Street employees making investments on their own behalf.

It’s this third category that’s most interesting because it demonstrates that, while Bitcoin may still be too risky for Wall Street firms themselves, the opportunity isn’t lost on people who follow markets for a living. “We see that there are people who work at these big firms that are very interested in Bitcoin,” Kintisky confirmed.

This interest in Bitcoin runs the spectrum from junior traders all the way up to some of the most powerful people on the industry. In October, Michael Novogratz, chief investment officer of the $58 billion Fortress Investment Group hedge fund, praised the virtual currency, saying that he has ‟a nice little Bitcoin position.”

Novogratz added that, while Fortress had looked into investing in Bitcoin in an official capacity, the firm stopped short of actually adding Bitcoin to its portfolio.

The Wedbush report argues that Bitcoin has the potential to be worth up to 100 times its current value, comparing it to a ‟biotech [company] that had a molecule that may cure the common cold.”

Bank of America, on the other hand, was more cautious, writing that the recent drastic increase in prices put Bitcoin ‟at risk of running ahead of its fundamentals,” which is a polite way of saying “bubble.”

However, both reports insisted that, contrary to the charges of critics like former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Bitcoin’s ‟intrinsic value” comes as a result of its usefulness as a medium of exchange—an alternative to electronic payment formats like Visa, Mastercard, or eBay.

Gil Luria, the author of the Wedbush report, explained that once institutional investors understand the source of Bitcoin’s intrinsic value they’ll likely feel more comfortable using it as an investment vehicle. Confusion and trepidation of regulation is hindering Bitcoin investment right now, but ‟the regulatory path for how Bitcoin moves out of the grey and black markets and into a regulatory environment where institutional investors feel comfortable is pretty clear,” he said.

In the days since he published his report on Bitcoin, Luria has been flooded with calls from institutional investors interested in learning more about what it would take for their firms to begin investing in Bitcoin.

“The reaction I’ve gotten to the report has been tremendous,” he said. “It’s all I’ve been talking about all week.

“To see all of this excitement coming from so many different areas, from so many different people, leads me to believe that this is something real, that this isn’t tulips.”

Illustration by Jason Reed

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Top 10 Android Tips and Tricks

Many android users don’t know much about the hidden features of android phones. Today we are sharing an article with secret android tricks and hidden features of android phones. Different versions of android versions support different set of android tricks, so try them all

1) Force reboot


Many times android users face a problem of freezing in mobile phone, in case your android phone is frozen, you can reboot it:

Just press Power Button+ Home Key + Volume up button simultaneously.


see also - How to unlock android pattern lock


2) Quick Google Access


Android phones is built primarily for the Internet, many of Android users don’t know that android phones provide a way by which we can access Google search in just a single click:

Press menu key and hold it for couple of seconds, it will launch the Google search.

3) Reboot Android in safe mode

As many computers, we can also reboot Android phones in safe mode. The latest Android- Jelly Bean version provides an option to reboot in safe mode, if something goes wrong.
To reboot your android in safe mode, follow the below given instructions.

*Long press the power button
*Long press on the power off option.


see also - Wi Fi password hack using Android Phones

Android phone will show a confirmation message about rebooting it in safe mode, if we reboot android phone in safe mode then all the 3rd party application will be disabled. These applications can again be enabled when we reboot our phone normally. This is a great Android utility in case when, one of your 3rd party application is causing trouble for you and you want to hunt it.

4) Voice typing

Not all Androids have it, but if yours does, it is a pretty sweet feature. It’s available on latest versions. While typing a mail or a message, look at the space bar. If you see a mic icon there, you can tap it and Android will convert your speech to text. It won’t be absolutely correct so you’ll have to make changes.

see also - Top Features of Android JellyBean

5) Call a contact with just a single tap

I’m sure you are aware of the fact that you can add app icons to your home screen. Just like those app icons, you can add contact icons to the screen as well. To add a contact icon, long press the empty space on home screen. You’ll see a popup menu. Select Shortcuts>Contact. Now go through the contact list and tap on the person you want to add there.

see also - Run Android Apps on Pc


6) Unlock android phones by face detection

In the jelly bean version, Android provides a way by which android phone can be unlock using face detection, to make this feature more secure, Jelly Bean version added another layer of protection in which Android phone can be unlocked only when the face is matched as well as we have to blink eyes in order to unlock phone. The Above tricks n tips are provided by IHA.Blinking eyes tells the android security system that person is live and it’s not an illegal attempt of unlocking using a still image.
To activate this:

Go to Settings > Security > Screen lock > Face unlock.

see also - 30+ secret codes of Android phones


7) Get detailed information about phone status

We can get the detailed statistics like phone information, battery information, usage statistics and WiFi information by just dialing *#*#4636#*#*

This is a handy USSD to get the details about battery usage, DNS check, Ping, Application time usage time and so on.

8) Amazon App Store

This app store is trusted, AND it gives one premium app for free each day. Check this store to download paid apps for free.

Want more cool Android tips and tricks? Keep watching this space for more. And don’t forget to leave your comments in case you have any questions/problems with your Android.

see also - Top 10 Most Popular Android Apps

9) Download Non-Playstore apps

Google Playstore has tons of apps, but if you still want more apps, there are other stores out there as well. Though Google Playstore is safer (I don’t know how true that is because many apps of Playstore have been found to be infected), if you want, you can open your options to other app stores as well. To do this, go to Application settings, and check the option that says “Unknown Sources”.  But make sure you download apps from only trusted sources.

10) Special characters

Want to quickly access special characters? No need to switch keyboards to type comma and slashes- just long press the period key and you’ll see a popup with all the recent characters.

see also - Top 60 Best Free Android Apps

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