iPhone 4S possibly to hit India by November 24

It seems Apple is trying to shed its tag of using India as a dumping ground for its products. With the iPad 2 launching rather quickly in India, this time around it seems that the iPhone 4S will launch a month and 10 days after it was made available in the US. According to a report by BGR.in, their sources have revealed that the latest iPhone will be announced by Aircel and Airtel on November 24th which is falling on a Thursday. They go on to claim that the phone will be made available from midnight on the 25th of November which is a Friday. Apple tends to stick to the tradition of having product launches on Fridays, so in all likelihood it will be the same here as well.

Apart from the date of availability, the website also reveals the tentative pricing of the iPhone 4S as well as the 8GB version of the iPhone 4. Their sources have informed them that the iPhone 4 8GB will sell for around Rs. 30,000 while the highest capacity iPhone 4S would sell in the region of Rs. 50,000. This is some seriously high pricing but it is not confirmed yet and apparently carriers are working out plans so hopefully these handsets will be available at a cheaper rate.

BGR is usually quite spot on regarding Apple related information and if this turns out to be true, one should start saving from now itself if they want to pick up the 'best iPhone ever.'

SourcE: http://tech2.in.com/news/smartphones/iphone-4s-possibly-to-hit-india-by-november-24/252622

Samsung Galaxy Note

Samsung Electronics unveiled its 5.3-inch smartphone Galaxy Note in London on Thursday. The size makes it a kind of halfway house between a phone and a tablet PC.

The phone was originally to be released in the U.S. first, but Samsung changed its mind.

Its 5.3-inch screen makes it easier for users to make notes or watch videos than the 3-4-inch screens of normal smartphones. It is equipped with a dual-core 1.4GHz processor and Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system, is 9.65 mm thick and weighs 178 g.

With a stylus pen, users can make notes or touch the screen with greater precision and sensitivity.

After the launch in London, the Galaxy Note will be released in Korea and abroad, Samsung said in a press release, but the exact dates have not been decided.

More @ http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/10/28/2011102801144.html

Bomb found on Advani's yatra near Madurai; he continues tour

A bomb was found on the route for LK Advani yatra in TN. The pipe bomb was found under a bridge at palambati, 30km away from madurai, where advani launched phase 2 of his yatra, the first phase of his tour which covered parts of bihar and up ended before diwali.

Police sources the bomb has been removed and the rest of Mr Advani route has been checked carefully

Read more @ http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/bomb-found-on-advanis-yatra-route-outside-madurai-144682

Nokia unveils Windows phones, competition for Apple, Samsung??

okia chief executive Stephen Elop said beleaguered company was seeing a 'new dawn' as it launched its first range of Windows handsets marking its intent to fight back against Apple's iPhone and rivals using Google's Android's operating system, and regain market share in the crucial battle for smartphone sales.

"Today marks the rebirth of Nokiaa¦We are signalling our intent, right now, right here to be the leaders in smartphone design and craftsmanship," Elop said. He was speaking at NokiaWorld 2011 event in London. The two Windows phone - Nokia Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 - will be available in India by the year-end and is priced at 420 euros (about 29,000) and 270 euros (about 19,000), respectively.

"World is ready for something new. Lumia is light ... Lumia is the first real Windows Phone," Elop declared to the 3,000 strong London audience.

He also unveiled enhanced basic phones called Asha - "hope" in Hindi - aimed at emerging markets of India, Africa and Latin America, and having web surfing capabilities similar to that of smartphones.

"The line is blurring between smartphones and mobile devices. There's multiple customisable home screens, very similar to a lot of smartphones," Elop said.

The handset maker said the 'Asha' range of phones would help it target the "next one billion" consumers to get online as only about 30% of the world's population had access to the internet.

"Our research suggests the next billion is a really young crowd. They see technology as a way to upgrade their life, despite affordability constraints they are extremely savvy phone users. For those people today we are producing 12 phones per second, one million phones per day, 365 million phones per year," he added.

The Nokia Asha series of four handsets - 300, 303, 200 and 201 - is priced between 60 euros ( 4,100) and 115 euros ( 8,000) and will begin shipping between the year-end and early 2012, Elop added.

Analysts that the Asha range of basic phones could have a bigger impact on the company in the short-term as 60% of its business comes from non-smartphones. Interestingly, Nokia has dumped rival browsers in its basic handsets and has installed its own browser that it claims can compress web commands by 90% speeding up internet access on 2G networks.

The Nokia chief executive said the company had made rapid progress post February 2011 when it had announced that it was abandoning its Symbian operating system for its smartphones and opting for Microsoft's Windows platform.

More @ http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/nokia-unveils-windows-phones-aims-to-beat-apple-samsung/articleshow/10514368.cms

"Wife-sharing" haunts Indian villages as girls decline

When Munni arrived in this fertile, sugarcane-growing region of north India as a young bride years ago, little did she imagine she would be forced into having sex and bearing children with her husband's two brothers who had failed to find wives.

"My husband and his parents said I had to share myself with his brothers," said the woman in her mid-40s, dressed in a yellow sari, sitting in a village community centre in Baghpat district in Uttar Pradesh.

"They took me whenever they wanted -- day or night. When I resisted, they beat me with anything at hand," said Munni, who had managed to leave her home after three months only on the pretext of visiting a doctor.

"Sometimes they threw me out and made me sleep outside or they poured kerosene over me and burned me."

Such cases are rarely reported to police because women in these communities are seldom allowed outside the home unaccompanied, and the crimes carry deep stigma for the victims. So there may be many more women like Munni in the mud-hut villages of the area.

Munni, who has three sons from her husband and his brothers, has not filed a police complaint either.

Social workers say decades of aborting female babies in a deeply patriarchal culture has led to a decline in the population of women in some parts of India, like Baghpat, and in turn has resulted in rising incidents of rape, human trafficking and the emergence of "wife-sharing" amongst brothers.

Aid workers say the practice of female foeticide has flourished among several communities across the country because of a traditional preference for sons, who are seen as old-age security.

"We are already seeing the terrible impacts of falling numbers of females in some communities," saysBhagyashri Dengle, executive director of children's charity Plan India.

"We have to take this as a warning sign and we have to do something about it or we'll have a situation where women will constantly be at risk of kidnap, rape and much, much worse."

Read More>>>

RA.One review

Cast: Shahrukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Arjun Rampal, Armaan Verma, Shahana Goswami, Tom Wu

Directed by Anubhav Sinha

Rating: Not even One

Science fiction is an oxymoron. And when this genre is sprinkled with moronic humour and logic takes a beating from hell, you know you've punched your tickets for 'RA.One'. With metallic blue and red costumes right out of Falguni Pathak's  wardrobe, this out-of-console experience offers laughs, dances and androids touching humans in more ways than considered socially acceptable. Insert coin to read more.

The film sweeps us into a video game fantasy where anything is possible (with a 175-crore-budget , it better be). Game developer, Shekhar Subramanium (Shahrukh Khan) wants to earn his son, Prateek's (Armaan Verma) love and respect. And the only thing that gives Prateek joy is to see his joystick twiddling to spell doom for the most vicious video game super-villain ever. So daddy makes a baddie just like that and calls it RA.One (Arjun Rampal). The game also has a not-so-indestructible superhero called G.One (an emotionally challenged Shahrukh). Please read the box carefully for the 25 permutation-combinations in which RA.One and G.One can kill each other (something to do with the heart being in the body and not in the pocket or anywhere else during combat).

Anyway, it gets nasty as our virtual warriors tear out of the game, 'Terminator 2'-style. Also, thanks to some goofy programming, RA.One is hell-bent on killing Prateek. Naturally, G.One has to do the rescuing and being an android, do it without getting teary-eyed or romantic with Prateek's mum, Sonia (Kareena Kapoor). But who said robots can't ham or chant prophetic life-changing verses coded by its master? No.One!

Humour based on linguistic stereotypes may have worked in 'Zabaan Sambhalke ' but now it hardly earns a chuckle. This is assuming the average audience intellect dictates that Tamilians don't always say 'Aiyoo' or pronounce 'keys' as 'kiss'. And even if they do, no amount of laughter track can make this seem funny. No.Fun!

'RA.One' does what no other Sci-Fi movie has done before: it mocks itself. So, the superhero who is manually stopping trains in one scene, is also burning his crotch or sneezing out metallic wires in another. No respect.

Shahrukh's robotic expressions will remind you of his 'My Name is Khan' role, as he confuses machines with differently-abled humans. Kareena's character covers the entire gamut of expressions but isn't memorable or mentionable enough to be regarded. Arjun Rampal has bagged his dream role: an android with mechanical expressions who allows his body to do the talking. Good job, Arjun Rampal's body!.

More @ Yahoo

Apple Announces iPhone 4S

Apple has unveiled the iPhone 4S, the next version of its popular smartphone.

It will be available for pre-order on Oct. 7 and available to purchase on Oct. 14. And like previous versions of the iPhone, the iPhone 4S will retail for $199 for a 16 GB model and $299 for a 32 GB model.

The new iPhone looks much like the iPhone 4, confirming previous reports. It comes with upgraded internals, including the new Apple A5 chip and 1 GB of RAM. Apple VP Phil Schiller revealed that it will be the first iPhone with a dual-core processor and dual-core graphics. It is "up to seven times faster" than the previous iPhone, he announced.

The device also contains a new antenna system that allows it to switch between two antennas for better sound quality and download speeds. The theoretical max of the iPhone 4S is a whopping 14.4 Mbps down, a vast increase from the iPhone 4′s theoretical max of 5.8 up and 7.2 down.