Cablevision launches Wi-Fi-based phone service

Cablevision entered the wireless service fray on Monday with Freewheel, a Wi-Fi-based phone service that will cost as low as $9.95 a month.

That price is for current Cablevision subscribers; those who sign up for Freewheel as a standalone service will pay $29.95 a month (those prices don't include the $99 for a Moto G, which is required access the service). The phone won't work out of Wi-Fi range, but Cablevision will give Freewheel customers automatic access to the Optimimum Wi-Fi network of 1.1 million hotspots.

Cablevision CEO James Dolan cited the "growing shift to Wi-Fi-driven consumer electronic devices and services.

"As a company, we are focused on providing services for these consumers and solidifying our position as the New York market’s premier connectivity company," Dolan dded. "Freewheel is the next leap forward in the advancement of the connected lifestyle, and our Optimum W-iFi network and the prevalence of W-iFi nationwide serves as its foundation.”

Cablevision's entry comes after T-Mobile announced Wi-Fi-based calling and texting in September.

T-Mobile's plan is designed to augment areas in which T-Mobile's wireless network provides weak service. Sprint also offers Wi-Fi-based calling for Android phones.

Smaller players have also attempted to use Wi-Fi to pare down wireless costs. Scratch Wireless charges $99 for a Motorola Photon Q and then has no fees at all, unless you want to tap into Sprint's wireless network (prices range from $1.99 for 24 hours to $24.99 a month for unlimited data). Republic Wireless also offers Wi-Fi-based plans employing the Moto G and Moto X that range from $5 a month (100% Wi-Fi) to $40 a month ("unlimited" 4G service up to 5 GB via Sprint's network.)

AT&T, meanwhile, is expected to begin offering Wi-Fi-based calling sometime this year. Verizon is expected to do the same in mid-2015.

Posted by : Gizmeon

Amazon Kindle Textbook Creator turns PDFs into e-textbooks

Amazon on Thursday released a tool meant to help educators and writers publish e-textbooks.

It's straightforwardly titled the Kindle Textbook Creator, and it makes it easy to transform PDFs into an e-book format. Plain PDFs are pretty static learning materials, but Amazon says its Textbook Creator offers a simple (and free) way to organize an array of educational materials — graphs, equations, charts or anything else you might find in a textbook.

Textbooks created with the platform will also give readers a variety of Kindle tools to take advantage of. There's a multicolor highlighting tool, a notebook feature to capture key passages, a dictionary/Wikipedia lookup function, and flashcards. Once readers buy the Kindle textbook, they can read it on all sorts of devices, like Amazon's Kindles, of course, as well as iPads, iPhones or Android devices.

This is all part of a new education-oriented spinoff of Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing division, which allows authors to self-publish. Another division of KDP, for example, is KDP Kids, which helps self-publishing children's book authors.

Amazon hopes to draw in educators by highlighting the promotional opportunities of using the Kindle Textbook Creator. As Amazon puts it, KDP EDU users will have the benefit of "Amazon's powerful marketing tools and global reach."

Textbook authors will have the opportunity to keep up to 70% of book royalties, according to Amazon, all while keeping control of the content they're shelling out. Of course, this isn't all altruistic. Amazon is hoping to attract more self-publishers to KDP so it can get a cut of the profits and bring more users into its Kindle ecosystem. The overall U.S. textbook industry has been estimated to pull in $10 billion annually.

The tool works for Mac and PC, but for now it's only available for download in English.

Posted by : Gizmeon

internal glitch and not cyber attack by Lizard Squad, caused global outage, says Facebook

Facebook said it suffered a self-inflicted outage lasting an hour on Tuesday that made its site inaccessible to users worldwide. The glitch reported in Asia, the United States, Australia and the U.K. affected access from PCs and Facebook’s mobile app. The social media giant’s Instagram service was also inaccessible.

A Facebook statement said the disruption was caused by a technical change it made to the site and not the result of a cyberattack. Lizard Squad, a group notorious for attention seeking antics online, claimed responsibility on Twitter for the outages.

“The downtime was caused by a technical issue we introduced. It was not connected to Lizard Squad, Snowmageddon, or any other external party,” Facebook said.

The temporary loss of service may be Facebook’s biggest outage since Sept. 24, 2010 when it was down for about 2.5 hours.

The statement said users would have been shut out of Facebook for roughly 50 minutes. On its website for developers, Facebook said the “major outage” lasted one hour.

Facebook has about 1.35 billion active users and Instagram has some 300 million.

News of the Facebook outage set rival social network Twitter alight, propelling the hashtag “facebookdown” to top trend on the site. It comes ahead of Facebook reporting its quarterly earnings on Wednesday.

As access to Facebook returned, some users in Asia reported that the site was loading slowly or not offering full functionality.

Lizard Squad on Monday claimed responsibility for defacing the Malaysia Airlines website and has said it will release data from the airline. The group has claimed responsibility for a variety of hacks over the past year, most of them aimed at gaming or media companies.

Posted by : Gizmeon

1 day to go: Xiaomi to launch 4G device Mi4 tomorrow in India

Xiaomi has sent out a press invite saying that it will launch its next flagship device the Mi 4 in India on 28 January at an event in Delhi. It was reported earlier that the Mi 4 could launch on 28 January.

Interestingly, the message also says Mi hits a 4 and 6, a cricket reference. Also the image in the invite seen below shows three Mi 4’s arranged in what looks like stumps. While it’s unlikely that Xiaomi Note (which has 5.7-inch screen) and was launched this month will hit the Indian market, the cricketing reference could indicate a special-tie up to the sport by the Chinese smartphone maker.

The Mi 4 was launched last year and has a 5-inch (1920 x 1080 pixels) IPS display with 441 ppi resolution. It uses Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protection. It is powered by a 2.5 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor and has 3GB RAM.

The handset has a 13MP rear camera with LED Flash, Sony IMX214 BSI sensor and 4K video recording. It also has a whooping 8MP front-facing camera with Sony Exmor R sensor. The device will have either 16GB or 64GB internal storage space. The Mi 4 comes with Android 4.4.3 KitKat pre-installed, with a layer of the MIUI OS skin.

In terms of connectivity, the phone has 4G LTE, 3G, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n (2.4/5 GHz), WiFi Direct, Bluetooth and GPS. It has a 3,080 mAh battery. The device measures 139.2 x 68.5 x 8.9mm and weighs 149 grams.

The Mi 4 is expected to launch exclusively on Flipkart, just as most of its phones launched in India. It’s remains to be seen whether this phone will also have the flash sale model like other Xiaomi devices. Also the price is being speculated to be under Rs 20,000. Will Xiaomi impress on the price front? We will find out on Wednesday.

Posted by : Gizmeon

Rumoured fingerprint scanner in Nexus 6 was real afterall, but Apple killed it

Motorola-built Nexus 6 that launched last year was widely rumoured to feature a fingerprint scanner. This bit of news was true and the recess found on the back of the device that now houses the logo was originally meant for the fingerprint reader, ex-Microsoft CEO, Dennis Woodside told The Telegraph.

What ruined the plans? The report claims Apple is to be blamed as it went ahead and bought AuthenTec, the best  biometrics company in 2012 for $350 million. “The secret behind that is that it was supposed to be fingerprint recognition, and Apple bought the best supplier. So the second best supplier was the only one available to everyone else in the industry and they weren’t there yet,” Woodside told the news site. However, he also added that the inclusion of a fingerprint scanner wouldn’t have made a big difference.

It is believed that the internal prototypes of the device included a fingerprint scanner. Motorola wanted to either buy or license the sensor, but it was stymied by Apple’s purchase.

Woodside took over Motorola when Google bought the company, but left soon after it was sold to Lenovo and joined Dropbox, the most popular cloud-storage company. “One thing Woodside now says drew him to Dropbox is the freedom from some of those uncontrollable market forces as Dropbox isn’t trying to serve ads or sell hardware”,  adds the report.

The Nexus 6 comes with a huge 6-inch Quad HD display and runs Android 5.0 aka Android Lollipop. It is powered by a 2.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor with Adreno 420 GPU, backed by 3GB of RAM. A 3220 mAh battery promises up to 24 hours of battery life. The device is pitted against giants like Apple iPhone 6 Plus and Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

Posted by : Gizmeon

Apple: Bent iPhones Must Pass Visual Inspection to Be Replaced

In the wake of #Bendgate — the so-called controversy that the iPhone 6 Plus may bend in your pocket — it's possible that Apple will replace your warped device, if it's under warranty.

That's also if it passes a visual inspection by an in-store Apple Genius, The Next Web reports. Chatting with an Apple support representative, a reporter asked if, during normal use, a bent iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus would qualify for replacement under warranty.

The representative responded by iMessage: "That is 100% up to the Genius you speak with at the store. There is a test called a Visual Mechanical Inspection that the device will have to pass. If it is within the guidelines, they will be able to cover it. If not, the replacement would be a paid one."

Keep in mind that Apple released a statement on Thursday purporting that just nine customers have contacted the company about their bent iPhone 6 models, calling it an "extremely rare" occurrence. So it's unclear how stringent replacement guidelines may be.

Apple has fielded a string of tough publicity in recent days, receiving backlash for the disastrous iOS 8.0.1 update that caused numerous problems for iPhone users for which the company publicly apologized.

Posted by : Gizmeon

iPhone 6 Now Available in More Than 20 Countries

Apple has expanded sales of the iPhone 6 and its larger twin sibling, the iPhone 6 Plus, to more than 20 additional countries on Friday.

The iPhone 6 is now available in these countries:

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and United Arab Emirates.

Apple told Mashable stores are seeing record queues in these countries. The new iPhone's initial launch last week drew massive crowds to Apple stores where the phone was available.

It's been a hectic time for Apple, coming off a record-breaking opening weekend — when sales topped 10 million phones — and a duo of controversies: #Bendgate and the botched launch of iOS 8's first software update.

Apple first launched the iPhone 6 in eight countries and hopes that number will grow to 115 countries by the end of the year.

Posted by : Gizmeon