New Samsung SSDs coming with tablet storage

Tablet users may need more storage capacity in the future, and Samsung Semiconductor on Thursday announced it is now making its fastest solid-state drives for tablets and laptops with capacity of up to 512GB.

The PM830 SSD offers throughput to transfer movies at faster speeds and also to shorten boot times of PCs to 10 seconds, the company said in a statement. The SSD offers throughput of 6 gigabits per second, which doubles the speed of older Samsung SSDs.

The PM830 will also be available in capacities of 128GB and 256GB, though the company declined to reveal price and availability information. The SSDs are targeted at use for "premium notebooks" and tablets, the company said.Apple's iPad 2 tablet offers up to 64GB capacity, so the new drives would double storage capacity. SSDs are still considered expensive, but prices are falling and the drives could become a primary storage option for mainstream users next year, Gartner said earlier this year. By the second half of 2012, prices of mainstream PC SSDs could reach US$1 per gigabyte, according to Gartner.

Many laptops use SSDs (but with much less storage capacity) to quicken boot times. For example, Lenovo installs SSDs on motherboards on some laptop models to assist for quick Windows 7 boot times. SSDs are considered faster and less power hungry than magnetic hard drives, and are already being offered as a primary storage option in laptops from most computer makers.

Samsung already offers SSDs with 512GB capacity, but with slower I/O capacity. Samsung faces competition in the space from companies including Intel, Toshiba, OCZ and Super Talent.

The new PM830 SSD offers sequential read speeds of 500MB per second and sequential write speeds of 350MB per second. The new SSD supports the Serial ATA Revision 3.0 interface, and by year-end will replace the older Samsung SSDs transferring data at 3 gigabits per second.

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Now you can enjoy Google+ Games live very soon.

Google’s new social network, Google+, took a big step forward by adding games to its site.

Google+, which is less than two months old, said Thursday afternoon that it’s beginning to roll out a games button at the top of users’ streams. The highly popular Angry Birds is one of the first games to be added to the site, along with Zombie Lane and Edgeworld.

Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of engineering at Google, announced the gaming news in a blog post. Gundotra noted that users will be able to click on a Games button that will be placed above their streams. The button takes them to a games page, allowing games to be available when users want them and hidden when they don’t.

“The experiences we have together are just as important to our relationships,” wrote Gundotra. “We want to make playing games online just as fun, and just as meaningful, as playing in real life. That means giving you control over when you see games, how you play them and with whom you share your experiences.”

And that’s going to be an important feature for Google+, which has grown quickly since its launch, according to Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research.

“Games are a real complement to social networking,” said Gottheil. “When people play games with other people, it is often more about being with other people than about the game itself. It actually fits the Circles model well. If you’re a serious gamer, you want to talk about the game with other players, but that bores the rest of us silly.”

And Gottheil also noted that adding games to the site, while not surprising, is a smart move. If people are able to access great games and engage with Circles of gamers, it easily could draw more users to the fledgling network.

“I think Facebook has to be nervous about Google+ taking away some of its time-on-site more than taking away users,” he added.

In Thursday’s blog post, Gundotra noted that users will find their high scores, other games that friends have played recently and invitations to play with friends and family. And he also noted that Circles will only be updated with a user’s scores and game play if they are interested in gaming, as well.

“Today we’re starting to gradually roll out games in Google+,” wrote Gundotra. “We look forward to making them fully available to everyone in Google+ soon. When you see a Games page in your account, please give games a try and send us feedback. Look for the “send feedback” button in the bottom right-hand corner of any page in Google+.”

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Leaked: Speech to text feature will on iOS 5 beta screenshot

Apple hasn’t revealed much about features that we’re going to see in iOS 5, but according to the latest news, it appears that Apple is working on integrating Nuance’s text-to-speech features into iOS 5. So far, only information about this feature is a screenshot leaked that clearly shows the presence of a microphone button on iPhone’s virtual keyboard. Pressing this button will show you an even larger microphone, which means that your speech will be recognized and transferred from speech to text. As for the accuracy of this feature, reports say that it works pretty well, but we’ll have to wait and see for ourselves.

Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory

Since its first release back in 2004 Firefox has been my web browser of choice. It was the first browser to give Microsoft some serious competition and soon took over as the better choice for those in the know.
Google Chrome has come along since and injected a lot of speed into browsing the web, and Firefox has duly responded and even outperforms it easily in some tasks, but it does have one niggling problem that users regular complain about: memory use and memory leaks.

If you leave Firefox running for any length of time its memory footprint seems to keep increasing. This can escalate to the point where it stops responding and there’s nothing to do but restart the browser. Personally, I’ve seen this problem have less of an impact during my daily usage since moving to Firefox 5, but it’s still there.
Mozilla knows this problem exists and aims to fix it. By the time we see Firefox 7 available for download it will use as much as 50% less memory than any version that has gone before, as well as having those problematic memory leaks fixed.

Posting on his personal blog, Mozilla developer Nicholas Nethercote has stated that Firefox 7 will be noticeably faster. You will be able to leave it running overnight without issue, and closing tabs will free up memory. The reason for this is a new Mozilla project called MemShrink.
MemShrink is an internal effort that focuses on improving Firefox’s speed, stability, and perception. Speed will come in the form of less paging and less pressure on the cache. By sorting out the paging the stability will improve due to fewer out of memory crashes. The perception improvement comes from a combination of the two other goals of MemShrink: fewer crashes and better performance takes the perception of the browser up.
Endurance testing carried out at Mozilla using synthetic tests has already proved that MemShrink is going to mean significant savings in memory use as the following charts show:

Amazon issues Kindle Cloud Reader, sidestepping Apple's subscription rules

If you can’t beat the rules, go around ‘em. That seems to be the idea behind Amazon’s new Web-based Kindle Cloud Reader, a transparent attempt to give iPad readers direct access to both their Kindle books and the Amazon bookstore without cutting Apple a 30-percent slice of the pie. 
Amazon’s launch of the iPad-optimized Web service is the latest blow in a battle that has been brewing since February, when Apple announced it would take a 30 percent cut of sales made through in-app purchases of books, periodicals, music, and movies—and that sellers couldn’t use their websites to offer better deals than available through the apps. Cupertino later relaxed its requirements a bit, but still mandated that Amazon and other ebook app vendors scrub their apps of direct links to their online stores. And the Financial Times showed a new way forward in June by offering one of the first subscription-based iPad-optimized websites.

Amazon is following the Financial Times model with the Kindle Cloud Reader; while its new read.amazon.com site is also compatible with the Chrome and Safari desktop browsers, the site is clearly aimed at iPad Safari users. (An iPhone version isn’t available yet.) When you log into your Amazon account from within the app for the first time, you’re shown your entire library of ebooks—and prompted to add the page to your iPad’s home screen. The Web app claims 50MB of storage space on your iPad, which in turn gives you the ability to store cloud-based books for offline reading.

The Web app comes with a number of downsides; it simply doesn’t offer as alluring a reading experience as the official iPad app. For one thing, there’s no access to periodicals: If you recently started subscribing to newspapers or magazines through Amazon, you’ll need to stick with the iPad app. The same goes for the ability to share book quotes via Facebook and Twitter. And there’s no highlighting or note-taking enabled—though you can see the highlights and notes you’ve made using Amazon’s other Kindle apps (or actual hardware Kindles). Even the page-turning is little bit uglier: Readers merely tap to change screens instead of “swiping” back-and-forth. If anything, the experience is closer to the desktop Kindle app than the iPad app.

The only clear advantage to the Web app, in fact, seems to be the easy access to Amazon’s store. The iPad-optimized store is beautifully designed, with a narrow-but-total focus on Kindle publications instead of the vast grab-bag of products and services available at Amazon.com. Unless or until Amazon can match the elegance of its new iPad-friendly ebook store with its cloud-based reading experience, though, the Web app won’t become a true page-turner.

Facebook Launches Messaging App for iPhone & Android

Facebook has unveiled Facebook Messenger, an Android and iPhone app dedicated to sending messages and texts through the world’s largest social network.
 

The mobile app, which is now available in the Android Marketplace and iOS App Store, is the direct result of its March acquisition of group messaging app Beluga. Facebook Messenger is the first mobile application the company has developed and released outside of its official Facebook app.

“It’s a mobile app about real-time communication. All messages are sent and received in real time no refreshing required.The app, much like Beluga, is simple and straightforward. Once users log into Messenger with their Facebook credentials, they’re taken to a screen with all of their recent Facebook chats and messages. Users can jump into any of their past conversations or create a new one. Messages can either be sent via Facebook Messenger or via SMS. 

Users can also send photos to their friends with the app. It also lets you give message threads a name, for easier organization.One of the key elements of Messenger is its alert system. Users can choose to receive alerts for new messages, or they can turn them off. They can also delay alerts for an hour or until 8:00 a.m. the next day. The alert settings can be tailored for individual message threads or for all messages through Messenger.

Facebook admits its official mobile app will eventually have all of Messenger’s functionality, but the company believes that having an app dedicated to quick messaging on the Facebook platform is something that will benefit its millions of mobile users. And it could give other group messaging apps like GroupMe a run for their money.

Hurrey !!! Now HTTPS Is Everywhere

The Web is an insecure place and getting more insecure all the time. The latest threat, the Firesheep add-in for Firefox, is particularly dangerous because it is exceedingly simple to use. Someone with absolutely no hacking experience can grab your private login information to sites such as Facebook and Amazon, and then log in as you and do anything they want, as if they were you. The free Firefox add-in HTTPS Everywhere helps protect against that threat and other privacy invaders by effectively encrypting information when you visit certain Web sites.

A collaboration between the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Tor Project (which employs a network and free software to help protect people's privacy), HTTPS Everywhere ensures that when you visit certain sites, all of your communications are encrypted and secure.

To use it, all you need to do is install it. Once you do that, HTTPS Everywhere does its work invisibly. Among the sites it works on are Facebook, Twitter, Google Search, Wikipedia, Paypal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and others. It works only when the sites themselves use the HTTPS protocol, and works only on a group of specific sites. So it won't protect you everywhere. And it won't protect you when you use other Internet services, such as an instant messaging client, or use client-based email such as Outlook.

For a more comprehensive security tool, you'll want to use a Virtual Private Network, such as the free Hotspot Shield, or the for-pay AlwaysVPN. But for quick-and-easy free protection at popular Web sites, HTTPS Everywhere is a great choice.

Note: This link automatically installs the file from the developer's site into your Firefox browser.

To download for free click here  : http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_download/fid,157688-order,4/download.html