Technology

A recent study by Gartner found that Microsoft's Windows Phone mobile platform has now surpassed BlackBerry in smartphone market share. But there's hope yet for the Waterloo, Ontario-based firm: the company is rapidly preparing itself to take ... advantage of the 'connected' car revolution. It's expected that BlackBerry's mobile operating system, QNX, will be the key to connecting drivers' smartphones to their in-car infotainment systems. Inside the Car: QNX Eclipsing Windows QNX is slowly but steadily taking over as the dominant platform for connecting mobile devices to a vehicle. The reason: ... (view more)

Google's Android platform continues to establish its dominance over the growing smartphone market. And as sales of Android-based devices rise, Apple's market share is starting to decline. According to analyst firm Gartner, in the first quarter of ... 2013 Android smartphones accounted for 74.4 per cent of global sales. That means more than 150 million devices are now running the mobile operating system (OS). It also means that Android's share of the smartphone market has skyrocketed approximately 20 per cent since last year. (Source: zdnet.com ) Android Up, Apple Down Facing a reverse trend is ... (view more)

Samsung says it has made a key breakthrough in the journey to making ultra-fast 5G wireless technology available to consumers. But critics say such a wireless standard is a long way off and have questioned the firm's use of the term "5G". The new ... development from Samsung is called an adaptive array transceiver. It's designed to use very high frequencies, currently reserved for sending signals to and from satellites, for cellphone data. So far, it's proven difficult to use those frequencies for cellphone towers because poor weather conditions can compromise the signal. According to Samsung, ... (view more)

A team of researchers has developed a smartphone capable of folding and contorting when receiving a phone call, text message, email, or social media post. The device, which is being developed by researchers at Canada's Queen's University, is called ... 'MorePhone' and features a flexible plastic exterior. Internally, shape-memory alloy wires contract and bend based on electronic signals and are able to reform to the original shape of the device on command. Message and Caller-Specific Curls The technology also can be programmed to alter the phone in a way that suits the owner. In other words, ... (view more)

Nokia has launched a $20 cellphone that comes with no service commitments. The handset lacks many modern mobile tech features but lasts up to 35 days before requiring a recharge. Originally the Nokia 105 handset was designed for the developing ... world. However, the company is now expanding the device's release area to include Europe. The phone boasts 12.5 hours of talk time or 35 days on standby. It's also designed to prevent dust or liquids getting into the phone through the keypad, something that may be particularly useful in some remote areas. The rest of the phone is relatively basic, with ... (view more)

T-Mobile's "No Contract" deal is supposed to let a customer sever their relationship with the wireless carrier at any moment. However, Washington state officials have ordered the firm to offer refunds to people who didn't realize that quitting the ... contract would come with a fee. With most smartphone deals, the user only pays a portion of the cost of the handset, while the service provider picks up the rest of the tab. In return, the user is tied to a minimum service term (usually lasting two to three years), during which they must pay a steep early termination fee if they choose to cancel the ... (view more)

The Department of Transportation (DoT) is calling on automakers to disable technologies that allow someone to send text messages while driving. However, the DoT is only making recommendations and cannot yet force automotive firms to follow its ... advice. The new guidelines are based around electronic devices that are built directly into vehicles, such as GPS navigation devices and communications tools. The DoT has two main recommendations. The first is that such equipment should never force a driver to stop looking at the road for more than two seconds at a time to carry out an action. Officials ... (view more)

A team of PhD students from IT University of Copenhagen has developed new software that eliminates the need to physically touch a mobile device in order to perform simple tasks, like scrolling up and down a web page. Instead, the new technology uses ... eye movements to perform these same functions. The students initially pursued their idea -- which has since been branded "Eye Tribe" -- as a collaborative submission for their European StartupBootcamp accelerator program back in 2011. The team has since grown into a small startup company, including twelve full-time employees who continue to build ... (view more)

A team of researchers in Kyoto, Japan, claim to have developed software capable of reading dreams by analyzing brain activity. In a recent study, scientists from the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories connected three test subjects to an EEG ... (electroencephalogram) and had them sleep inside an MRI machine to measure their brain waves during the first few minutes of sleep. Researchers Build Brain Wave-Image Correlation Database The participants were then awakened and asked to identify the images seen in their dreams. This practice was repeated 200 times, during which researchers built a ... (view more)

In 2008, IBM's Roadrunner was crowned the fastest computer in the world. Just five years later it's being scrapped. Roadrunner is based at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where staff work on several projects, including the U.S. ... nuclear weapons program. The computer has some impressive specifications. To put things into context, a new desktop might have the equivalent of two or four processors, perhaps one terabyte (a thousand gigabytes) of hard drive space and four gigabytes of memory. Computer Performance Second-to-None Roadrunner has almost 20,000 different processors. It ... (view more)