Tuesday 21 May 2013

YouTube turns eight, reveals over 100 hours of video being uploaded every minute

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YouTube has revealed that over 100 hours of video are now being uploaded to the world's most popular video-sharing site.
The company shared this information via a blog post celebrating eight years of existence of the web site that started in May 2005, and was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion in November 2006.
Today, more than 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. That's more than four days of video uploaded each minute! Every month, more than 1 billion people come to YouTube to access news, answer questions and have a little fun. That's almost one out of every two people on the Internet.
The impressive stat comes barely a couple of months after YouTube revealed it had reached one billion monthly users. "If YouTube were a country, we'd be the third largest in the world after China and India," the company had said at the time.
More recently, YouTube had launched paid channels, in a move that puts it in direct competition with services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. The company released a list of some 50 channels which will be part of the program. Subscription rates go as high as $7.99 per month.
"Every channel has a 14-day free trial, and many offer discounted yearly rates," a YouTube blog post said.
The new paid channels include Acorn TV, which offers British TV programs at $4.99 per month; National Geographic Kids, at $2.99 a month or $30 a year; and PrimeZone Sports, at $2.99 per month. Other channels offer programming from UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship), Comedy.tv, and iAmplify Fitness. A children's channel from Sesame Street is coming soon.

Jolla unveils first Sailfish OS smartphone with Android apps compatibility

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Finland based mobile startup, Jolla, has unveiled its first smartphone that runs on the Sailfish OS which has been developed in-house by the company.

It's not clear if the company has announced a name for the phone but it's using the term "The Other Half," derived from the phone's removable back that comes in different colours, and changing the cover also changes the phone's look and feel inline with its colour. The phone is priced at 399 Euros.

The phone features a 4.5-inch display and will be powered by a dual-core processor. It will sport an 8-megapixel camera with auto-focus and will offer 16GB of internal storage expandable via microSD card. The phone is "Android app compliant" which indicates that it will be capable of running Android apps though it's not clear at this stage if it will directly support them or require developers to port them similar to how they work with BlackBerry 10. The phone will also feature 4G LTE connectivity.

As we mentioned, the phone runs the gesture-based Sailfish OS which is based on MeeGo which received acclaim when it launched on Nokia's N9 smartphone. However, Nokia abandoned MeeGo and chose Windows Phone as the future OS platform for its smartphones,  following which a group of employees of Nokia's MeeGo unit left the company to start Jolla and work on their own smartphone. 

Jolla targets to ship the smartphone by end of 2013 and has introduced a Kickstarter-like 'Movement' in which people can participate by pre-ordering the phone. This will also be used by the company to gauge the response to its offering so that it can decide if there is demand for it. One can opt for a zero-cost pre-order option to reserve the phone when it launches, or pay 40 Euros for a limited edition phone and a t-shirt along with assured priority status. One can also pay 100 Euros and get all the goodies along with an extra back cover and 100 Euros off on the total price.

The number of countries where the phone will be shipped will be disclosed later and the 399 Euros price only includes VAT in Europe, so shipping costs, local taxes and duties will be extra.

Kerala software engineer develops software that detects movie bootleggers

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A Kerala-based software engineer has come up with an anti-piracy device to check recording of movies in theaters using sophisticated mobile phones or handy-cams.

Varghese Babu told IANS here that the product, which has gone for patent processing, was developed after three years of research.
"It has been named as 'Demolish Duplica' and has a hardware unit which is placed in movie theaters  The moment anyone tries to record a film, the hardware unit recognizes it and stops the recording. An alert is sent to a server and the anti-piracy cell of police," Babu said.
The product has been priced at Rs.1.5 million, the 30-year-old software engineer said.
"The serial number of the mobile phone or the handy cam gets recorded on the hardware device, and details of the location from where the recording is being done can be accessed by the authorities," Babu added.
He added that the product can also track tampering of the film during the editing process.
Responding to whether it is the only such product available in the market, Babu said: "Had there been any other application available, there would have been no pirated versions available of new releases."
"I have been receiving inquiries from the film industry and at the moment I am completing the formalities for getting this patented," Babu said.

New Samsung S4 on April 13 Coming soon

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