Sony finally puts full weight behind Xperia phones

While Sony has famously been siloed in the past -- with different businesses and units working without any coordination or knowledge of what the others are doing -- Nookala said he is on the phone with the PlayStation team at least once a month, talking not only about the products, but common marketing strategies.

The next big campaign is the FIFA World Cup, the world's largest sporting event where Sony just happens to be a sponsor. Nookala pointed to June as the next potential catalyst to spark sales and boost the perception of the company.

"It's a good way to bring this into the mainstream," said Calum MacDougall, director of product marketing for the Xperia franchise, in the interview.

Bold words from what amounts to the new kid on the block for smartphones. While Sony is still a force to be reckoned with in areas such as televisions, video games, and cameras, it has struggled to make a name for itself when it comes to phones. But Sony hopes that will change, particularly in the US market, where the company believes it can more fully take advantage of its heft and influence in the consumer electronics market to push its smartphones. Nookala called the Xperia Z1S, currently being sold in the US by T-Mobile, a turning point for the company and the first time Sony has brought its full resources behind the device. The company, for instance, is specifically targeting T-Mobile customers who are also PlayStation fans, knowing there's already a brand affinity there, and offered discounts on the phone for anyone who purchased a PlayStation 4. The Xperia Z1S also came preloaded with the Sony PlayStation app, and some customers who bought the phone got a one-year membership to PlayStation Plus. A new "One Sony" While Sony has famously been siloed in the past -- with different businesses and units working without any coordination or knowledge of what the others are doing -- Nookala said he is on the phone with the PlayStation team at least once a month, talking not only about the products, but common marketing strategies. "[CEO Kaz Hirai] talks about One Sony, and it's starting to become a factor," he said. The next big campaign is the FIFA World Cup, the world's largest sporting event where Sony just happens to be a sponsor. Nookala pointed to June as the next potential catalyst to spark sales and boost the perception of the company. "It's a good way to bring this into the mainstream," said Calum MacDougall, director of product marketing for the Xperia franchise, in the interview. The sales pitch for the Xperia Z1S isn't just the hardware, but also the media content and family of accessory devices that are created by Sony itself, Nookala said. Whether they are Bluetooth speakers and headphones, those sorts of accessories are rarely made by the smartphone vendor themselves.

In addition, Nookala explained that the company had initially wanted to focus on locking down the Japanese and European markets. Now that there is stability in those areas, it is bringing its eyes back on to the US.

MacDougall said that the awareness of Sony's brand in connection to smartphones has grown significantly over the last 18 months.

Intel's 730 Series solid-state drive reviewed

Intel's X25-M solid-state drive was a special piece of hardware back in the day. The SSD market was still in its infancy, and the X25-M represented the chip-maker's initial entry into an exciting new arena. It was a pretty good first offering, too. The drive had wicked-fast performance, and it was reasonably affordable for its day. Intel's chip-making prowess, combined with its expertise in designing storage and memory controllers, seemed perfectly suited to tackling solid-state storage.

The X25-M's flash controller anchored three generations of desktop SSDs before it was finally retired. Instead of using another in-house chip, Intel started playing the field. A brief affair with Marvell produced the 510 Series, and its long-term relationship with SandForce fueled a string of successors.

SPECIFICATIONS

Intel’s direction with the SSD 730 Series family is towards the digital media professional, workstations and the PC enthusiast. It has a preliminary release date of March 18, 2014, and will be available in capacities of 240 and 480GB. Performance for the 240GB capacity is listed at 550/270MB/s throughout with up to 85K/56K IOPS read and write while the 480GB capacity increases significantly to 550/470MB/s throughput and 89K/74K IOPS read and write. Intel’s sale of the 730, however, highlights a two drive RAID performance of over 1GB/s throughput and up to 168K IOPS.

Power consumption for the 730 is listed at 1.4W Idle and 3.8W active for the 240GB with 5.5W active for the 480GB. The 240GB is rated at 50GB per day while the 480GB is rated at 70GB per day lifetime endurance for the length of the five-year warranty. Read latency is 50µs at 240GB, along with 65µs for the 480GB and the form factor is that of a ultrathin 7mm 2.5″ notebook size.

COMPONENTS

We spoke of the similarities between the SSD 730 and the previously released DC S3500 and we invite you to check out our previous report for comparison. The SSD 730 contains the Intel 3rd Gen PC29AS21CA0 6Gbps eight channel controller along with 2 modules of Micron DRAM cache memory. This controller is architected by Intel with Intel firmware. The 3rd generation Intel controller is manufactured exclusively for Intel. Intel contracts LSI for the manufacturing of this controller.Although there are 16 modules of memory on the 730, and similar to what we saw in the DC S3500, Intel goes against the grain in its NAND memory configuration.

If you look closely at the memory product numbers on both sides, you will find there are 14 modules of 29F32BO8MCMF2 (32GB), a module of 29F64B08NCMF2 (64GB) and a module of 29F16B08LCMF2 (16GB) for a total of 528GB of RAW memory.

The product number of the SSD730 memory is the same as the DC S3500, given exception to the marking of ‘-ES-’ on the end of the product number. Given the high endurance of this SSD, we might think that the memory would be HE memory, however, literature speaks to it as being ‘Compute Quality Components.

Lastly, the two capacitors on the side of the PCB remain in place, as with the previous 3500 and 3700 versions, to provide UPS protection should a power failure occur.

NASA to launch satellite in collaboration with ISRO

Washington: US space agency NASA on Tuesday said it would launch a water-related satellite in collaboration with India's ISRO. The NASA-Indian Space Research Organisation Synthetic Aperture Radar mission is a part of its plan to launch in the next seven years a series of satellite related to water and draught, the agency said. Among others include the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2); Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) Follow-on and Surface Water Ocean Topography mission. These satellite missions join more than a dozen NASA airborne sensors focused on regional-scale issues, understanding detailed Earth science processes and calibrating and validating NASA satellites," the space agency said. NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing," it said. "The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet," it said. NASA said it is scheduled to launch three new Earth science missions this year, which will contribute to water cycle research and water-related national policy decisions.

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, a joint satellite project with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency scheduled for launch Thursday, February 27, will inaugurate an unprecedented international satellite constellation that will produce the first nearly global observations of rainfall and snowfall. The new information will help answer questions about our planet's life-sustaining water cycle, and improve water resource management and weather forecasting. "ISS-RapidScat, scheduled to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) in June, will extend the data record of ocean winds around the globe. The data are a key factor in climate research, weather and marine forecasting and tracking of storms and hurricanes," NASA said. The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP), launching in November, will inform water resource management decisions on water availability. SMAP data also will aid in predictions of plant growth and agricultural productivity, improve short-term weather forecasts and long-term climate change projections, and advance our ability to monitor droughts and predict floods and mitigate their related impacts on people's lives," the space agency said.

How do I know if a website is secure

Internet security is a matter of great concern for internet users. It is important to know if a website is secure or not while surfing the internet. A secure website creates a safe connection between the website and the web browser so that entered data, such as personal information, credit card details, banking information, etc, is not accessible to unauthorized entities. When the browser opens a secured connection, "https" can be seen in the URL instead of just http. To know if a website is secure or not, look for the locked yellow colored padlock symbol on the lower right corner of the browser window.

Determine if you are on a secured page or not.

Some web sites use a secure connection between the web site and your browser. This may be important to you, for instance, if you want to pay online for a product or a service and have to enter credit card information or other personal information. To know if your browser is viewing a secure web site, you can look in the lower right part of the window. There is a small box in the frame of the window to the left of the area that describes which zone you are in (usually the Internet zone, with a globe icon). If you see a yellow padlock icon, the web site you are viewing is a "secure web site." If the box is empty, the web site does not have a secure connection with your browser. You can also have a look at the URL: if it starts with "[https://]", you are on a secured page; if the URL starts with "http://", you're not.

Google Launcher compatible with Nexus devices running KitKat Arrives On Google Play Store

While the actual launcher component is merely a stub placed on top of the Google Search/Now app, it does enable the useful ability of swiping to the left-most pane of the homescreen to access Google Now. When Nexus devices (other than the N5) were updated to Android 4.4, many users were frustrated that the feature was omitted.

Android: When the Nexus 5 first came out, there were whispers that its new launcher would arrive on all devices. While you could sideload it yourself, there wasn’t a simple option to download it from Google and get updates. Until now.

Unfortunately, the app only seems to be available for a limited number of devices right now. If you have a recent Nexus or Google Play Edition device, you’re in, but everyone else has to wait. Given that Australia hasn’t seen any official Google Play Edition devices, it’s not a very long list. Still, that’s a few more phones than were officially supported before. Hopefully, it’s only a matter of time before more devices get on the list. Hit the link to see if it happens to be available for your device.

Remember when the launcher on the Nexus 5 turned into the Google Now Launcher? We told you at the time that its appearance on the Play store as an app for everyone was likely imminent as it included a way to import settings from your old launcher.