Techupz: Latest technology news, latest gadget review, latest launches, latest science updates

I love Khan Academy's courses and app for a variety of reasons. Of all the services offering free educational courses, Khan Academy is always ahead of the curve with usability. The app has a fantastic modern look and has tens of thousands of videos, interactive examples, and more. Even if you aren't looking to learn (shame on you), give the app a try. It is especially great on iPad.

Download Khan Academy for iOS | Khan Acadmy for Android (Free)

2) WolframAlpha

You know how Google and Apple keep showing off Google Now and Siri? WolframAlpha leaves them in the dust when it comes to instant answers to various problems and questions. The amount of information delivered within the app is mind-blowing. When you're trying to learn something, you won't need to look up lots of encyclopaedias. Just ask WolframAlpha.

Download WolframAlpha for iOS | WolframAlpha for Android Rs. 190

3) Duolingo

Ever wanted to learn a new language and acted lazy about it? Remember thinking about signing up for a course and giving up? Duolingo is the best tool ever to learn a new language. It makes the experience fun and memorable with images and reminders. Once they add support for Japanese, you won't hear from me for a while.

Download Duolingo for iOS | Duolingo for Android (Free)

4) Star Walk 2

Star Walk 2 is the best app to study the stars above. No I'm not talking about horoscopes but constellations, planets, comets, and more. Star Walk 2 has an Apple Watch app as well that tells you various interesting times of the day and when it is best to view the stars. The real time gyroscope based motion tracking makes it an amazing app to use and learn. Just point your device to the sky with the app open and get ready.

Download Star Walk 2 for iOS | Star Walk 2 for Android Rs. 190

5) Coursera

Coursera as an app and a service really raises the bar for educational apps. There's something for everyone ranging from business to computer science and even gamification. It supports everything you'd expect and has some additional features like a nifty 10 second rewind feature, multiple language support for learning, offline downloads, and audio only mode. It is hard to find a single flaw with Coursera.

Download Coursera for iOS | Coursera for Android (Free)

6) iTunes U

Apple's iTunes U is a multi-purpose app. It lets you learn from tons of online universities and explore a variety of subjects and it is the one shop app needed to setup your classroom as a professor on iPad. iTunes U lets you keep track of homework, grades, and more. Apple has been doing great things in the education field for a long time. This is one of the highlights.

Download iTunes U for iOS (Free)

7) TED

The official TED app lets you view TED Talks across all subjects in multiple languages. These talks are from interesting people in every field, and the app lets you view them or download them for offline use. The app is updated regularly with content. Give it a shot today.

Download TED for iOS | TED for Android (Free)

8) Elevate - Brain Training

Just like how Duolingo changes the way you learn a language, Elevate will train your brain in ways you never could imagine. It is full of mini games and puzzle sections that test your mental strength. The app is designed well and also has an Apple Watch app if you want to train on an even smaller screen.

Download Elevate - Brain Training for iOS | Elevate - Brain Training for Android (Free)

9) Udemy

Udemy is a great service to enrol in a variety of courses. There are a few free sample courses but the bulk of the app is full of great paid courses. Instructors are consistently great with practical lessons and you can't really go wrong here. Still thinking about picking up that guitar?

Download Udemy and start strumming. Download Udemy for iOS | Udemy for Android (Free)

10) Lumosity

Just like Elevate, Lumosity aims to train you. In this case your memory and attention are called to the field. You create a custom training program suited to your needs and Lumosity games help you improve. The games are used in research and are fun as opposed to being monotonous. Lumosity also has an Apple Watch app.

Download Lumosity for iOS | Lumosity for Android (Free)

These apps are our top 10 picks for learning and education - what are your picks? Tell us via the comments.

Facebook, in a bid to gain user traction for its Messenger app, has rolled out a new feature called Photo Magic, which would let users share photos more easily than before. The app feature is currently limited to Australia and would later reach other regions. The feature would arrive in the US as well, as per Facebook messenger chief David Marcus.

China has restrictions on the content that can be made available to people within the country, and companies are required to monitor and censor the content it makes available, or else be blocked completely in the country, like Facebook and Twitter.

Rather than censoring each article that people have access to within Apple's new News app, it looks like Apple is seemly deactivating the app in China to fall in line with the censorship requirements.

A source "with direct knowledge of the situation" told The New York Times that Apple is blocking access to articles within the News app on iOS 9, which aggregates relevant news articles based on user interest and lets users save articles to read later.

The app is currently available in the US, but is also being tested in Australia and the UK right now.

Reddit user Larry Salibra noticed that the News app, which is linked to his US Apple account, was blocked when traveling to mainland China, though it still worked while in Hong Kong.

In a blog post, he explained that access to the app was based on which carrier his phone connected to, so when his phone connected to a Chinese network, the News app deactivated.

This is only happening in China, it seems, as if you travel to another country, the News app should work without any problems.

New York: Not allowed to use Facebook at work? That may change in near future as Facebook at Work - designed specifically for communicating with colleagues - comes along.

The tool has been in beta since January, but the pilot programme is ending, and the company is likely to launch a freemium version of the interoffice network by the end of the year, Re/code reported project head Julien Codorniou as saying.

Facebook has been using a version of Facebook at Work internally for years. 

More than 100 companies are using Facebook at Work as part of the beta. Many of those companies are just now starting to expand the product internally. 

Heineken, a leading lager beer company, for example, has been testing the product with just 40 of its top executives, but plans to expand Facebook at Work to all 550 US employees by the end of September. 

Linio, a Latin American e-commerce company, is expanding the product internally from 200 to 2,000 employees by the end of the month.

Facebook may cash in on the "familiarity". "If somebody comes into the company, they know how to use this tool from day one. So training cost is zero. That’s important,” Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite, which is part of the beta group, was quoted as saying.

Facebook will need to convince employers that green-lighting Facebook use among the staff won’t result in a loss of productivity.

"It is unrealistic that organisations try to lock people out of social. It is like telling people that they can’t have their own personal phone,” Holmes noted.

Facebook vice president for mobile and global access policy Kevin Martin at the India Economic Convention 2015 said that the social-networking giant was planning to launch a special Wi-Fi service in India which would aid in subsidising the cost of accessing internet.

We are all very much aware about the new much talked about iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus which was launched recently in the United States.

While the new iPhone comes with a much similar design, it also boasts a couple of few features which are said to be new in the Apple lineage.

However, many of the such new features in iPhone 6S and 6S Plus have apparently been seen already in many smartphones earlier.

Here is a list of 5 such features which actually look to have been borrowed from others.

1. 3D Touch

3D Touch is something that Apple is boasting about a lot recently which allows users to perform different actions based on the pressure of their touch on the display screen. Suppose, for example, if you touch a little deeper, an advanced menu would open up and if you simply tap lightly on the screen, the app itself would open up. While this feature is in the talks for quite a time now, we recently saw a similar force based touch feature on the Huawei Mate S which was launched at IFA 2015.

2. Live Photo

iPhone 6S comes with a new camera trick where in the smartphone camera actually captures a little before and after you click on the 'Capture' button. This means that it looks more like an animated image or to express it in more simpler words, the output may be much like a GIF image. However, if you recall, the feature has been always there on Microsoft's Lumia phones as 'Living Image'. Also, the feature has been long known in HTC smartphones as HTC Zoe which captures 3.6 seconds snippets and 20 photos with 6 frames per second.

3. 4K Video Recording

4K video recording is as we all know the latest trends that's catching up with smartphone owners and definitely, iPhone 6S is not the first smartphone capable of recording in 4K. However, iPhone 6S and 6S Plus are the first devices to have this feature in an Apple lineage. But, if we look at a couple of flagship Android phones like Sony Xperia Z3 andLG G3 supported this feature as early as 2014. Also, the recently launched Sony Xperia Z5 Premium supports 4K video recording.

4. Retina Flash

While new Apple iPhones come with 5 MP front camera for better selfies, they do lack in a front flash. However, with the iPhone 6S, Apple has come up with a solution to snap selfies at dark by making screen three times brighter. This acts much like a flash while clicking a selfie. After the photo is taken, the display brightness comes back to normal. This is what Apple calls as Retina Flash. However, this is not a new feature. There have been many apps for Android smartphones like Front Flash which work in almost similar way - setting the screen brightness to maximum and capturing the selfie.

5. Aerospace Grade Aluminium

Why iPhone 6S and 6S Plus are said to be made using a new 7000 series of Aluminium material that is aerospace industry graded. However, this is not the first time the aerospace-grade aluminium is being in a smartphone. Many companies have been using this for quite a while now, especially the Chinese companies like CoolPad. The recent Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge flagship phones are known to have used the aerospace-grade aluminium material.

Twitter is invading the privacy of its users by reading their private messages, according to a new lawsuit.

The tools the site uses to redirect links mean that it is effectively reading and altering messages sent by its users, according to a lawsuit brought by Californian Wilford Raney.

When a user sends a message in a direct message, Twitter automatically recognises it and redirects it into a short link. Even though that link will appear as if it is going to the actual website (shortening a link for this website to ind.pn, for instance) it will first redirect a users’ browser to go to its own website, and then sends them on to the requested page.

"Before Twitter delivers the message to the intended recipient, Twitter intercepts and accesses the contents of the message. The moment the consumer clicks Send, Twitter's service will open, scan, and potentially alter the contents of the message," Raney argues in his filing. Twitter gather information on what links people are sharing and where they are going, according to the suit.

“Twitter benefits immensely from replacinguser hyperlinks with its own,” Raney writes in his suit. “For instance, Twitter increases its perceived value to third-party websites and would-be advertisers” since they will know what addresses users are heading to. “The end result is that Twitter can negotiate better advertising rates.”

The shortening tool thus reads through messages but “never obtains (or seeks) its users’ consent”, the suit says. It is for that reason that Raney is bringing the case, he says, encouraging others to join in with the proceedings.

Twitter said in a statement that the claims “are meritless” and that it intends to “fight them”.

Courtesy :INDEPENDENT.co.uk

Tell us how many times you desperately wished for a dislike button on Facebook so that you could let people know how do you feel really? But since Facebook provides you a like button only, you had to resort to silent treatment only to deal with all your discomforts.

But Facebook apparently has changed its mind….

“People have asked about the ‘Dislike’ button for many years … and today is a special day, because today is the day that I actually get to say we are working on it and are very close to shipping a test of it,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today during a public question and answer session, according to CNBC.

But if you are thinking Facebook is close to fulfill your wish, then you might be disappointed a bit. As Zuckerberg clarified that Facebook will build the button in such a way that makes it a tool to “express empathy and solidarity” and not a tool to ”vent out annoyance”- which is obviously not possible right now with the Facebook’s ubiquitous Like button, especially if the something particularly sad is shared over the post.

Facebook does not wish to turn the social networking site into a voting forum, where people can approve and disapprove people’s posts directly.

Courtesy : CIOL 

You can buy a lot of things on Amazon.com and now a 'Bellini' will be one of them.

Amazon's OS 5 'Bellini' was introduced Thursday morning along with a major upgrade of the company's Amazon Fire product line.

The tech company said 'Bellini' is meant to be the best entertainment experience on any tablet, inspired by the high-quality layout style of magazines.

The company also launched new tablets, a new Fire TV and Fire TV Stick.

Source: Amazon Inc.

Amazon Free Time kids edition.

The upgraded Fire HD tablet is two times more durable than the latest iPad Air, the company said, with a 7.7mm width, and 128 GB of expandable storage via microSD. The tablet comes in 8-inch and 10.1-inch models, priced at $149.99 and $229.99, respectively. These tablets will also be the first to have Amazon Underground—Amazon's version of an app store—built in.

Amazon also introduced a lower-cost Fire tablet—retailing for $49.99—and an all-new Fire Kids Edition featuring a year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, a kid-proof case, and a two-year guarantee for a preorder-only price of $99.99.

Source: Amazon Inc.

Amazon TV with remote and controller.

Along with the updated tablets, the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV stick also received upgrades.

Updates on the Fire TV mainly include access to more 4K Ultra HD content, surround sound audio from Dolby and what the company claims to be 75 percent more processing power. It preorders at $99.99.

There's also the updated Fire TV Stick with Voice Remote (which allows for voice searching) for $49.99 as well as Amazon's all-new Fire TV Gaming Edition for $139.99. The new gaming edition comes with a new controller, 32GB microSD card, and two included games.

Amazon said depending on the product, they'll begin shipping as early as Sept. 30 until Oct. 22.

Courtesy : CNBC

Courtesy : PC

Courtesy : BBC

They found that trying to unlock the phone or tablet with an abnormally long password caused the lock screen to crash in certain conditions.

The flaw was limited to Android Lollipop, the most recent version of the mobile operating system.

Google issued a patch for its Nexus devices on Wednesday.

About 21% of Android users run affected versions of the operating system.

After crashing the lock screen, the researchers were able to access the phone's data and apps.

The vulnerability could not be exploited if people had chosen a lock pattern or Pin code instead of a password.

While Google is rolling out its fix for Nexus, other phone manufacturers are responsible for distributing the software to their own handsets.


On releasing the patch, Google said it had not yet detected anybody exploiting the flaw.

Video calling and messaging platform Skype has started to roll out its own version of emojis for its applications across Windows, Mac, Android and iOS. This new feature called Mojibrings in short moments from film segments from your movies and TV shows in a GIF form, which can be sent as messages to your friends.

Skype has collaborated with famous movie studios such as Universal Studios, Disney Muppets, BBC among others for its Moji collection. According to Skype, the first Moji release will have content from movies such as Despicable Me, Jurassic Park, The Muppets and so on.

To send a Moji, you need to open the emoticon picker or tap on the J button. You can then browse through sections such as movies, TV shows or expressions and preview the Moji before sharing it with your friends.

The GIFs will also be accompanied by a link to the TV show or movie which can then bepurchased or rented from the Windows Store. The details and links will be visible only after the person you’ve sent the Moji to has played the clip.

It is strange to not see Windows Phone 8 OS on the list of platforms supporting Moji. Maybe Windows will add in support directly on Windows 10 Mobile OS which is expected to come out in October. According to a Microsoft representative quoted by VentureBeat, “Windows Phone continues to be an important investment for Microsoft, we plan on releasing Skype Mojis to this platform in the future.”