Bharadwaj Chandramouli | Fone Arena

Microsoft invests $15mn in Foursquare, enters deal for licensing data

Foursquare, the popular location-based social network, has just received a 15 million dollar investment from Microsoft. This equity investment from the Redmond company comes after a successful $35mn round of VC funding for the New York based Startup in December last year, reports the Wall Street Journal. Along with this fresh investment, Microsoft has also entered into a multi-year deal with Foursquare for licensing its vast location-based data. This will apparently be put to use in its Search Engine Bing, and naturally in Windows Phone too, as an extension. Foursquare has a massive point of interest database that’s heavily crowd sourced with tips, check ins, comments and so forth, hence we think this deal is a biggie for Microsoft.

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It’s official, Satya Nadella is the new Microsoft CEO

Just as several reports had predicted, Satya Nadella is officially the new Microsoft CEO, succeeding Steve Ballmer as the tech giant’s third Chief Executive Officer. Having led several Microsoft divisions including the wealthy Enterprise and Cloud business, Satya Nadella becomes the insider CEO, after several reports of an outsider being considered as the next CEO. Bill Gates also announced that he will leaving the board Chairman position, leaving way for John Thompson to take over that post, which is seen as a move to appease investors of radically lesser influence from the Gates-Ballmer era. While we scour for more publicly available information, here’s an introductory video directly from Microsoft –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8JwNZBJ_wI

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Samsung Huron Windows Phone 8.1 specifications leaked?

Samsung will still be making Windows Phones, if the previously leaked press image of its first Windows Phone 8.1 device is to be believed. Codenamed “Huron”, the Samsung made Windows Phone will be a sequel to the ATIV S that coincided with the launch of WP8, the big reboot to Microsoft’s fast growing platform. But Samsung hasn’t announced any device since, so at this moment, this leak comes more as a surprise than the usual expected ones. Curiously though, the render, leaked by evleaks, shows off a device that looks exactly like the ATIV or a Galaxy, but misses the camera button on the side, which used to be mandatory for Windows Phone. And of course, the screen is “off” so we are not able to get a glimpse of Windows Phone 8.1 either, which evleaks claims the phone is running on. But there are more details.

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Pebble’s app store lands on iOS with over 1000 apps, Android gets a developer beta

Pebble, the company responsible for the uber popular Smartwatch that goes by the same name, recently unveiled its new hardware, the Pebble Steel Smartwatch and along with it came the announcement of the first ever app store for Smartwatches. Yes, Pebble has its own app store now, consisting of a whole lot of Watchfaces and native apps that work standalone, like mini games or work with the phone over Bluetooth and can even access the internet now. One of the many changes that Pebble did with its ecosystem was opening a mature version of its SDK to many developers, making it easier to program for the Smartwatch. We think the app store is a natural progression of that announcement. The store resides inside Pebble’s own smartwatch app in iOS as well as Android, but the latter is only available for developers and is in beta, with consumer availability stated as coming soon.

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Felix Baumgartner’s jump captured through GoPro’s cameras in its SuperBowl commercial

SuperBowl has been the most lucrative ad-spot in the United States for many years, known for its highest TRPs and naturally insanely priced ad-slots. The massive event is usually full of noteworthy or weird ads, depending on how you see it, and companies try to capture the little time they get on one of the biggest country wide sporting events. This time, amongst many, GoPro, the popular adventure camera manufacturer, has released its ad, featuring Felix Baumgartner’s stratospheric jump. The mission, called “Red Bull Stratos” was a hugely popular stunt featuring the Austrian man, who survived a 24 mile high free fall from near-outer-space. The event, captured by GoPro cameras, is the company’s stab at the SuperBowl spot, watch it here –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEsIMp67pyM

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FlappyBird to introduce the sensation of rage quit to Windows Phone soon

FlappyBird is coming soon to Windows Phone, possibly in just 10 more days, if the developer’s tweet is to be believed. The recent mobile sensation is a frustratingly simple game with intentionally clunky physics that has taken over the world for its difficulty in scoring. It’s also been made into Internet memes and is hugely popular with the young crowd for the ability to make people “Rage quit” the game in frustration. Like all new releases, this game too evades support for Windows Phone, but if the developer’s tweet is to believed, this game will likely be landing on Windows Phone really soon.

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Windows 8.1 Update 1 leaked ahead of official March release

Windows 8.1 Update 1, a small evolutionary update to the controversial operating system from Microsoft, has leaked ahead of its official March release. The update 1 is squarely aimed at desktop users, with enhancements made to lessen the gestural actions that don’t make sense for people using Windows 8 with a keyboard/mouse combination. New mouse-focused context menus, search and power/shutdown buttons on the lock screen and the ability to add metro apps to the taskbar are some of the notable changes in Update 1. This sets the stage for the next version of Windows codenamed “Threshold” which will be detailed at the Build developer event in April and released to OEMs sometime next year.

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HTC M8’s on screen buttons revealed?

The HTC One successor, codenamed M8, is all set to be released to the market in a couple of months, as the Taiwanese company plans to repeat its predecessor’s success. One interesting rumour that had persisted all this while was that HTC was finally going for on screen buttons instead of the weird capacitive ones on the HTC One and other devices. According to a leak from one Seina Weibo user, the HTC M8’s one screen buttons, the one you see in the image above, might just have been revealed. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus was one of the first devices to incorporate on-screen buttons after the introduction of Android 4.0 for phones and tablets and then the trend caught up with other OEMs like Sony, but HTC curiously avoided it, which might change with the M8.

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List of Motorola Service Centers in India leaks ahead of Moto G launch

Motorola Moto G, the most highly awaited launch for the company here in India, just got more credibility with the leak of the list of Motorola Service Centers in India. This leak comes at a crucial time, just ahead of the February 5th launch Motorola has planned for releasing this device in India. The service center list is straight from the Motorola Mobility website, which lends a lot of credibility to the list, apart from it being Moto branded and all. A huge amount of doubt prevailed on how Moto was planning to bring back the distribution and service channels it abandoned, when it left the country years back, but now we are starting to see the details. The image above shows you just a glimpse of the list, which you can download as a PDF here –

Download the list of Motorola Mobility service centers in India (FoneArena can independently confirm that the list is real)

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Red Google Nexus 5 leaks again in a press image

Not long ago, we saw that the UK retail box of the red Google Nexus 5 leaked out. It was an interesting colour choice for the popular smartphone, which released with only two colours – Black or White, back in October. We had compared the two colours and found that the material used for them are vastly different with each providing a different level of build quality and handling. Now, we have a new red coloured version which looks like the real deal, as the press image leaked by evleaks showcases it in bleeding red. Riding the colour wave started by Nokia with its Lumia series of devices, the Nexus 5 in red might be really tempting for people who are still holding back on the purchase because of the lack of colour choices.

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Satya Nadella all set to be the new Microsoft CEO according to reports

The end to a long CEO search is getting near, as reports are piling up from the other side of the planet that Satya Nadella, a senior VP who heads the enterprise and cloud business at Microsoft, is all set to become the new third CEO, after his predecessors Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. It’s been a long while since Ballmer announced his retirement from the CEO position, with pressure from investors mounting as Microsoft fumbled its mobile and tablet strategy, the two fastest growing consumer electronics markets. However, under the same leadership, Microsoft became a company with a diversified portfolio, with hit consumer products like Xbox and the fast growing enterprise products like Office 365, a key initiative by Satya Nadella. This might be one of the biggest reasons why the Board members are narrowing down on Nadella to be the next CEO, he is the moneymaker in Microsoft’s wealthy still-growing division.

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Android runs on 79% of 2013 smartphones, Windows Phone posts fastest growth

It’s the numbers season, with various analysis groups releasing their take on the smartphone market for the whole year of 2013. We saw the IDC report recently that the Smartphone market has crossed the 1 billion threshold. In that lineup, we have Canalys reporting that Android dominated 2013 with almost 80% of that whole Smartphone market in 2013, and amongst them, Windows Phone posted the fastest growth, with a 69% rise YoY between the three major platforms. Both Android’s meteoric rise to the top and Windows Phone’s slow rise from the bottom are pretty much known quantities now, but some of the numbers are interesting. The second biggest platform, Apple’s iOS, has almost stagnated with only 7% growth by losing marketshare, whereas Android is steadily growing at 54%, a good 10% above the market growth percentage. This technically means that Android will reach its maximum in about 2 or 3 years if it and the market retains the growth pattern. Yes, it can happen only at the expense of gobbling up other platform’s shares but it begs this question. Will we we start to see saturation in the Smartphone market soon?

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Bing rewards goes live for iOS and Android, Windows Phone curiously left out

Bing Rewards is a program that Microsoft started, to encourage use of its search engine, so that it could dole out rewards for doing so. It was a desperate, yet successful attempt, as people started using it for gaining credits that could be redeemed at Amazon, Fandango or even get you an Xbox console, just through using the rarely used search engine. Till now, the rewards program was exclusively on the desktop, where one could sign in to Bing and use it to gain rewards, but finally, it is now coming down to mobile, through the Bing mobile apps for iOS and Android. Nope, Windows Phone support is apparently “coming soon”, and we might have reasons why. That aside, the Bing rewards feature will give you certains “tasks” to finish, like a game, and once you finish it, you’ll be rewarded with credits of varying amounts depending on the task.

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Facebook announces Paper, a slick social news aggregator that lets you share your own stories

Facebook has taken the wraps off Paper, a new social news aggregator app that is designed to help you bring all the important stories, and even let you create your own. The app is first of the many apps that are in the works at Facebook Creative Labs, which plans to unveil a suite of mobile apps soon. Paper, which has very similar ideologies as Flipboard, shows you all the long form stories from your news feed, and lets you like and comment on them from the app, much like Facebook home, with a really cool presentation of full screen images and a card-like interface for other content. Other than that, you can also add your own categories and populate them with your own desired sources, just like you would, on a traditional news aggregator. Here is a promo video of the app in action

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhrbT9O6kW8

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Dell’s Wyse Cloud Connect is a $130 Android dongle that turns any HDMI screen into a workstation

Dell was rumoured to be working on a really unique product, an Android dongle that could run the operating system, in a compact form factor comparable to a Chromecast. As wild as the idea seemed, it has now taken the form of a real product in the Dell Wyse Cloud Connect, an Android dongle, aimed at enterprise users who want to carry their work for access everywhere, in a compact form factor. The dongle runs Android 4.1 Jellybean and can be used on any HDMI supported screen, like a HDTV, a projector, MHL compatible touch monitors(for full Android touch functionality), or can be paired up with Bluetooth mice and keyboards for the usual interaction like a PC. Out of the box, the Wyse Cloud Connect will also run Citrix, VMWare or Microsoft remote desktop clients. Dell hopes this will entice enterprise users for the portability it offers.

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