Xpertfeed

Can anyone stop Xiaomi while it ups the ante in India? Summary:  With rock-bottom prices for phones that have superior specs in their class to begin with, Xiaomi is redefining what value for money means in India. The Redmi 1S and the Redmi Note (Image: Xiaomi) Having fought one particularly ferocious border war in 1962, and tangled over numerous other border incidents in just this decade alone, Indian-Chinese relationships are never less than testy at any given time. Given that China is Pakistan's ally, while India is host to the Dalai Lama, head of the Tibetan government in exile, which set up shop in the Indian mountain town of Dharamshala in the state of Himachal Pradesh in the 1950s, there is no love lost between these neighbours. Plus, China is forever trying to expand and exert its influence in India's backyard in areas like Burma and Sri Lanka, which drives India bananas. While both nations will dictate much of what the world buys and sells, thanks to th...

Microsoft pulls OneDrive for Business update Summary:  There is no timeline for re-release and no explanation of the problem. This was a non-security update. Microsoft also updated CHAT features in Outlook.com along with this update. Microsoft has  pulled a non-security update  for OneDrive for Business that it released on Tuesday. A notice in  the update's KB article  says "We are investigating an issue that is affecting the September 2014 update for Microsoft OneDrive for Business. Therefore, we have removed the update from availability for now. We apologize for any inconvenience that this might cause." There is no indication of the nature of the issue, nor any suggestion that users should uninstall the update. The consumer version of OneDrive is unaffected. The update itself included "stability and performance improvements" for the OneDrive for Business client program for Windows. The KB article describes an error message for a bug the update fixes...

Intel releases first Core M processors for business-class convertible PCs Summary:  It's taken longer than expected, but Intel has finally officially released the first CPUs using its Broadwell architecture. The new processors enable the holy grail of mobile computing: full PC power in a completely fanless package. After more than a year of frustrating delays, Intel has finally unveiled its first CPUs using the new Broadwell architecture. Broadwell, which succeeds the current Haswell family, uses a 14-nanometer manufacturing process that has given Intel’s engineers fits. The new CPU family was originally slated to debut in 2013, but was pushed back repeatedly after manufacturing problems. Those issues, which affected production yields, have finally been ironed out, and the new products are finally ready to ship. Today’s product announcements are just the first in what will eventually be a wave of CPUs using the Broadwell architecture. The Core M process...

Half a million sales expected for Firefox OS phones in India: Intex Summary:  The maker of a new $33 smartphone billed as India's cheapest says it aims to sell half a million in the next three months in what it called a 'new era' for the market. Indian mobile phone maker Intex has teamed up with California-based Mozilla — the non-profit organisation behind the Firefox open-source web browser — to create a cheaper alternative to Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy line of smartphones. Intex  handset, which went on sale this week, is aimed at first-time smartphone buyers, and is the cheapest yet to hit the market. "We're moving into a new era in smartphones", Intex spokesperson. "This is a user-friendly handset that can help people onto smartphones and onto the internet. "We have big expectations that this phone will find a large market, and we are expecting 500,000 sales in the first three months." The company is initi...

Most popular open-source cloud projects of 2014 Summary:  OpenStack leads, but the still wet-behind-the-ears Docker is gaining fast.      At  CloudOpen , a  Linux Foundation  tradeshow held in conjunction with  LinuxCon , the Foundation announced that an online survey of open-source cloud professionals found  OpenStack to be the most popular overall project . Most popular open-source cloud projects That wasn't surprising. Although OpenStack is only four years old, the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud project is very popular with support from such industry giants HP, Red Hat, and VMware. What was somewhat surprising was that number two was Docker, the just-over-a-year old container technology. It's no news that Docker is hotter than hot, but to go from nowhere to the second most popular project in 12 months? That's amazing and speaks to its rockstar rise in popularity. Behind those two, you'll fin...

Microsoft weighs new names for its TechEd conference successor Summary:  Microsoft is surveying select users and partners about what it should name its unified IT pro show slated for next year. Here are the names said to be on the short list. Microsoft is surveying select customers and partners about what it should name its new catch-all conference that is replacing TechEd and a number of other product-specific shows. According to some of those surveyed, Microsoft's short list of names under consideration for the new show include: Microsoft officials announced in July that the company is consolidating its TechEd, Microsoft Management Summit, SharePoint, Lync and Exchange conferences into a single, new unified tech conference that will be held in Chicago. The new IT-Pro-focused event is slated for the week of May 4, 2015. Microsoft Current Microsoft Co: Microsoft Forsee (not sure if that's a typo) Microsoft 4C Microsoft GO Microsoft Tomorrow M...

ownCloud 7 pulls in users and open source developers Summary:  ownCloud, the open source private cloud for small to medium sized businesses, pulls in great developer support with its latest release. Sure you could join everyone else and put your data on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud, or you could use the latest ownCloud 7 to run your own private cloud. ownCloud makes it easy to run your own private cloud using any storage your company is already using. There's an enormous range of cloud options, but the newly released  ownCloud 7 Community Edition  is a great one for small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) that value their privacy.  What  ownCloud  brings to the table is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud. In the company's own words, ownCloud gives users a "a 'Dropbox-like' experience while complementing the security and privacy on the back end." The program also comes with mobile web browser support, Android an...

Can a Surface Pro 3 with docking station replace your desktop PC? Summary: In its ads, Microsoft says the Surface Pro 3 is "the tablet that can replace your laptop." With the addition of a new docking station, the Surface Pro has its eye on your desktop PC, too. In its ads for the Surface Pro 3, Microsoft calls the latest release of its flagship Windows device “the tablet that can replace your laptop.”With the help of a new Surface add-on, that same hybrid device can now replace your desktop as well. I received an early production model of the Surface Pro Docking Station, which is available for preorder now and shipping later this month. For $190, it allows a Surface Pro 3 owner to snap the lightweight tablet into a frame that holds it firmly in place, transforming it into a full-fledged (albeit compact) Windows desktop in seconds. You can use that configuration as is, adding only an external keyboard and mouse. But...

A Farewell for Orkut S ervice Summary:  One of the first social networks around, Orkut was most loved by Indians & Brazilians by statistics. Now, Google is pulling the plug on it. A kind of nut? An obscure race of extra terrestrials in one of the forgettable, recent Star Wars movies. An Eastern European small car!  Depending on where you are in the world, these may well be your guesses to the meaning of the word that suddenly proliferated news channels a few days ago, especially in India. Orkut, as you may know, is none of the above but the name of one of the world's first online social networks of significance. The reason it made headlines is because of its decision to shut shop. Or rather, a decision made by its parent, which happens to be one of the world's biggest internet companies. Google has decided to do a 'Kevorkian' on its child which admittedly has been on life support for many years now.  The company plans to pull the plug on it on Septembe...

India's Chargebee takes the sting out of billing hassles for a competiting service Summary:  Chargebee is yet another company whose origins can be traced to indignant comments on a Hacker news post about a subscription rate hike — in this case, at billing infrastructure leader Chargify — which inspired the founders to jump-start a competing service. Name:  Chargebee Cloud Segment:  SaaS Type of App:  Billing and Subscription Management Founders/Management:  KP Saravan, S Rajaraman S and T Thiyagarajan T, S Krishnamoorthy Co-founded by former employees of Zoho, one of India’s first stars in the CRM and cloud space, Chargebee’s business model seems to have arrived at the right time in a world where almost everything seems to require a subscription, from online television to digital newspapers and magazines. Yet for companies who dole out these subscriptions, managing things like billing can be a distracting affair, especially if you ca...