RIM offers 1 year free BBM service with purchase of Curve 9220 and Curve 9320

Research In Motion (RIM) which is still selling quite a few devices in India has launched a new offer for Diwali. With every purchase of the BlackBerry Curve 9220 or the BlackBerry Curve 9320 the user gets one year of free BBM service.

This offer will be available between November 9 and December 9. Now this seems like a good deal, but if you want that whole year of free BBM service then along with the new Curve device one will have to get a new Airtel or Vodafone connection. One year is a long time and that new number may be worth it after all.

Airtel subscribers have to message ‘BBM” to 543210 to activate the service on their new SIM. Vodafone users will get the service activated automatically within 48 hours of stating either of the devices with the new SIM.

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Must Buy 10-inch Tablet - Apple iPad 4G

It's spending season this fortnight, that time of the year when you're most likely to be splurging your money on a gadget. In this series, our crew of gadget-obsessed boffins pick the best deal in each category, from entry-level dual-SIMs to superphones, tablets, ultraportables and luxury laptops. We've spent plenty of time deliberating on our choices, saving you the trouble of poring through a sea of specs sheets, reviews and benchmarks. Today we're gonna tell you why we think the iPad 4G is the best tablet you can buy. Feel free to debate your choices and suggest alternatives in the comments below.

OverviewLaunched less than a month ago, the new iPad 4G no longer has the highest viewing resolution on a tablet - those bragging rights belong to the Nexus 10. However, the 4’th Generation iPad is the tablet we’d buy, for all the reasons we voted the iPad 2 as the ‘Must Have’ tablet last year, in addition to all the improvements made over two hardware revisions – the onboard cameras are improved, the A6X processor is at the top of the performance charts, with twice the graphics performance over the 3G Retina iPad.

Core specsOS: iOS 6
Display: 9.7" Retina Display 2048x1536 Resolution @264 ppi
Chipset: Dual Core A6x processor, 
GPU:  PowerVR SGX 554
Storage: 16/32/64GB options. 
RAM: 1GB
Camera: 5 MP iSight Camera, 1.3 MP front camera
Connectivity: LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, Lightning connector 
Battery:  42.5 Wh, 10 hours, 30 days idle.
Weight: 660g
Size: 9.5 x 7.31 x 0.37 in
Prices: 16GB Wi-Fi @$499/Rs. 30,500

Pros and Cons(+) 5-megapixel camera with 1080p video recording
(+) 2x graphics performance over the iPad 3.
(+) Has a larger ecosystem of apps at present

(-) No ports for expandable storage.
(-) Requires accessories to connect camera, do HDMI mirroring. 
(-) Lack of 4G in India might dampen interest for cellular option.

 
Verdict: Improved graphics performance makes this more than just a minor update over the third generation iPad. Most Apple stores are still sporting the old ‘new iPad’ and we’d stay clear of those, unless you have a bunch of accessories based on the old 30-pin connector and don't care much for gaming.

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'Aakash' maker among Forbes' 15 classroom revolutionaries

The man behind India's low-cost Aakash tablet and an Indian American professor are listed among Forbes 15 "classroom revolutionaries" who are using innovative technologies to reinvent education for students and teachers globally. Suneet Singh Tuli, the CEO of Datawind, the maker of Aakash, and Massachusettes Institute of Technology professor Anant Agarwal figure among the education innovators who are "harnessing a slew of disruptive technologies to change everything from the way we teach grade school math to how we train the next generation of teachers".

Tuli is the "mastermind" behind the world's cheapest tablet computer Aakash, "which has the potential to revolutionise educational access in the developing world", the US business magazine said.

Datawind has a backlog of "millions" of orders for the 35 dollar Aakash tablet. The publication quoted Tuli as saying that "I don't care about creating the iPad killer. I care about the 3 billion people who can afford this device".

Agarwal, 53, a professor of computer science at MIT is also the President of edX, the new combined online offerings of Harvard, MIT, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Texas. Over 400,000 are currently enrolled in the education programme.

"It is insane. We've created dramatic access to learning for students worldwide," says Agarwal who took the helm in May of teaching to the masses. "By reinventing online learning, we can dramatically improve what we do on campus."

"EdX continues to up the ante by increasing partners, classes (seven to dozens for spring 2013) and innovations, such as virtual laboratories," Forbes added.

Datawind had won the tender in 2010 to supply 100,000 Aakash tablets for a price of around $49 dollars per unit. A new version of the tablet PC, featuring one Ghz processor, four-hour battery time, capacitive screen and Android 4.0 operating system, is expected to be launched in India Sunday.

Among the other education innovators on the list is Salman Khan, the Bangladeshi-American founder of Khan Academy, the revolutionary online education platform.

Khan Academy has grown from one-man working alone in a walk-in-closet 24-months ago into a 38-employee organisation, but Salman Khan's offbeat educational videos remain at the heart of the organization. He has personally recorded more than 3,000 of them and they have been downloaded 180 million times.

"The numbers get really crazy when you look at the impact per dollar. We have a $7 million operating budget, and we are reaching, over the course of a year, about 10 million students in a meaningful way", says the 36 year old MIT and Harvard alumnus. -IANS Photo: REUTERS/Parivartan Sharma

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Next Unit of Computing: Intel's mini-PC ready for December release

Intel has designed a custom form factor motherboard that it is calling Next Unit of Computing (NUC), and these are expected to go on sale early in December through Amazon and Newegg. Intel will bundle the NUC with a 4" x 4" x 2" chassis, and the line will debut with two models that differ in the ports they provide. The first lot will be based around the dual-core Core i3 3217U, Intel QS77 Express chipset, and Intel HD 4000 graphics accelerator.

The motherboard has HDMI and USB 3.0 ports, one half-height and one full-height mini-PCIe slot, and two DDR3 SO-DIMM slots. The DC3217IYE model will have two HDMI ports, and one Gigabit Ethernet port; whereas the DC3217BY has just one HDMI port, and sports a Thunderbolt port in lieu of Gigabit Ethernet. Intel expects these two NUCs to retail for $300 - $320, when they release in December.

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Wikipedia adds HTML5 video player

Wikipedia, the world's largest online encyclopedia, has launched a new project enabling registered users to post videos, according to the portal's press service.

"A new video player has been enabled on Wikipedia and its sister sites, and it comes with the promise of bringing free educational videos to more people, on more devices, in more languages," Wikimedia Foundation said Friday.

Wikipedia articles have remained largely text-based until now. The video upload project, carried out in cooperation with open-source video start-up Kaltura and the Google search engine, was launched in 2008. But it was delayed due to numerous technical problems.

The new HTML5 player is a result of a combined effort between Wikipedia, Google and Kaltura. Wikipedia, which sees 25 million unique daily visitors to its English section alone, currently hosts only about 15,000 videos. The videos were added either via the older Ogg Theora player that has been in use since 2007 or as part of testing the new player, based on HTML5. -IANS

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Indiagames is giving away games for free this week

The mother of all mobile sales is here this Diwali. Indiagames is giving away one free title everyday from 10th to the 17th of November. A lot of the games going free are cricket games like IPL T20 Fever, World Cup Cricket Fever and a few normal games like Godzilla Monster Mayhem and Quarrel Deluxe. So here's the dates for when which game goes free. All of these are available on iPod, iPhone and iPad.

10-Nov: WorldCup Cricket Fever Deluxe 

11-Nov: IPL T20Fever Deluxe 

12-Nov: Cricket WorldCup Fever Deluxe 

13-Nov: IPL Cricket Fever Deluxe 

14-Nov: Quarrel Deluxe   

15-Nov: Godzilla- Monster Mayhem 

16-Nov: Cricket T20 Fever 

17-Nov: Aus vs Eng Test Series Deluxe

Source

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Western Digital release high-performance 1TB VelociRaptor

Western Digital has released a new generation of VelociRaptor hard-drives in 1TB, 500GB, and 250GB capacities. These hard drives are designed to handle large and dynamic files that are typically used by media editors. To that end, they spin at 10,000RPM, use the 6GB/s SATA channel, and come with 64MB cache. To keep the hard-drives from quickly heating up at peak speeds, Western Digital ships them with IcePack enclosure, which is a 3.5-inch mounting frame with built-in heat sink. Furthermore, the drives are optimized to function in vibration prone, multi-drive setup. Western Digital is shipping these VelociRaptor drives with suggested retail price of Rs.15,499 for 1TB, Rs.9,299 for 500GB, and Rs.6,199 for 250GB, plus taxes.

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Rumor: Xbox Surface tablet

The Verge reports fresh rumors on a 7-inch, gaming grade tablet that is currently under development at Microsoft. These rumors speculate that the device is being developed independent of the platform, and that an unannounced SoC from Intel, or a custom ARM processor with high-speed RAM is being considered for the final build.

Just like the Xbox, the tablet will run a custom version of Windows operating system. Messengers and other tablet specific apps are also being under developed; however, the focus for the tablet is on gaming. Microsoft is allegedly developing the device behind closed doors at its offices in Silicon Valley, under its Interactive Entertainment Business division. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft has declined to comment on these rumors.

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