Microsoft to add Outlook to its upcoming Windows RT tablets

Its looks like Microsoft will add its popular Outlook email application to more tablets running on a lightweight version of its Windows operating system as part of a free software update in 2013.

The Outlook 2013 app will be given to owners of Microsoft's Surface tablet and similar devices running Windows RT. That's a slimmed down version of Windows 8, a radical overhaul of the ubiquitous operating system used on most personal computers.
Microsoft is preparing to modify Windows 8 in response to consumer complaints about the redesigned system released in October 2012. The Redmond, Washington, company announced the addition of Outlook for Windows RT tablets Wednesday at a computer trade show in Taiwan.

A specific release date still hasn't been set for the upcoming update, called Windows 8.1. A preview version of Windows 8.1 will be available June 26 when Microsoft starts an annual programmers' conference in San Francisco.


Windows 8 includes touch screen controls and displays applications in a mosaic of interactive tiles as part of an attempt to expand the system on to tablets. The operating system also remains compatible with keyboards, computer mice and programs created for traditional PCs.
The dual format has confused and frustrated some long-time users, contributing to lukewarm sales for devices running on Windows 8 and Windows RT.


Windows RT's omission of Outlook was among the grievances. Outlook's absence was magnified by Microsoft's inclusion of other popular programs, such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, on the Surface tablet and other Windows RT devices. Unlike Windows 8 tablets, RT devices can run only programs specifically designed for it, so it hasn't been possible to buy Outlook separately.


Existing Window RT users will get Outlook for free as part of 2013 Windows upgrade.
The Outlook announcement came as Microsoft showcased previously announced features of Windows 8.1 at the Computex show in Taiwan. Tami Reller, chief financial and marketing officer of the company's Windows Division, said the 8.1 update took into account input from consumers on the Windows 8 system.


"Windows 8.1 furthers the bold vision of Windows 8 by responding to customer feedback and adding new features and functionality that advance the touch experience and mobile computing's potential," Reller said.


Antoine Leblond, corporate vice president of Windows Program Management, demonstrated the upgraded system, which included enhancements in areas including platform personalization and search. Although Microsoft isn't restoring the traditional start button on the lower left side of the screen, it is restoring a logo in that spot and will let users add favorite applications, such as Word and Excel, to a horizontal tool bar while working in Window's traditional desktop mode

India to have 348 million internet users by 2017: Cisco

India has the fastest internet traffic growth globally and is expected to have 348 million users by 2017, a study by networking giant Cisco   said. According to Cisco's Visuals Networking Index (VNI) forecast (2012-17), internet traffic in India will reach 2.5 exabytes per month in 2017, up from 393 petabytes per month in 2012. One exabyte equals 1 million terabytes. "In India, there will be 348 million internet usersin 2017, up from 138 million in 2012," the VNI forecast said. Globally, by 2017, internet users will swell to 3.6 billion, which will be more than 48 per cent of the world's projected population of 7.6 billion. In 2012, worldwide internet users stood at 2.3 billion against a population of 7.2 billion, it added. "The good news is that Internet traffic growth in India is the fastest globally," Cisco VP (Global Technology Policy) Robert Pepper said here.While there is a great willingness on the part of the government and the industry to drive broadband penetration and ensure Internet access, but still there is a lot to be done. As people, devices and data get connected, the possibilities it opens are immense, he added. On Internet traffic in India, VNI said, IP (Internet Protocol) traffic will grow 6-fold from 2012 to 2017 in India, a compound annual growth rate of 44 per cent. "In India, IP traffic will reach 2.8 exabytes per month in 2017, up from 454 petabytes per month in 2012," it added. Internet video users will skyrocket to 113 million (excluding mobile-only) in 2017 from 16 million in 2012, the index said. "In 2012, in India, non-PC accounted for 10 per cent of the IP traffic, but by 2017, the non-PC share will grow to 53 per cent," it added. Portable devices like smartphones and tablets will contribute 40 per cent to IP traffic in 2017 from 3 per cent in 2012. TV's share will be 10 per cent and machine-to-machine (M2M) modules will contribute 3 per cent, it added. The report expects mobile Internet traffic to record a healthy growth by 2017. "Indian mobile data traffic will grow 4 times faster than Indian fixed IP traffic from 2012 to 2017. Mobile was 3 per cent of total IP traffic in 2012, and will be 32 per cent of total IP traffic in 2017," it added. There will be 2 billion networked devices in 2017 in India, up from 1 billion in 2012, Cisco's VNI said.

How IRCTC can make tatkal bookings easier

Online travel ticketing in India has gotten mature and more Indians are making their travel plans online, says a latest research. Whether it is air tickets, bus tickets or rail tickets, people have begun to trust online booking systems like IRCTC, MakeMyTrip, RedBus and many others. In online travel, the Indian Railways has a significant contribution and IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation), a subsidiary of the Indian Railways, handles online ticketing among other things. However, unlike other e-ticketing sites, it has often faced consumer ire for sluggish and laggy performance.
 
Needless to say, the number of people accessing the IRCTC site is much higher than the others, especially during the two hours of tatkal or last minute bookings. The reason is simple – tatkal online booking window opens a day in advance before the date of your journey just for two hours, and all the tickets are sold within an hour. The site almost breaks down at 10 AM as it is unable to handle the load. The site has to handle 10.7 million (and growing, according to the comScore report for April 2013) unique visitors per month and it is capable of handling about 40-45,000 tatkal railway tickets during the 2-hour tatkal window. Needless to say, this isn’t enough. We are a huge population and the number of seats available could be small compared to the number of seats required (each ticket has four people trying to book it), but let’s not dwell on that. Technology cannot resolve this issue. However, the overload that the site suffers at 10 AM everyday can be resolved.
 
During the Union Budget this year, spruced e-ticketing and server capabilities were promised with an estimated budget of Rs 10 crore. The site was to be improved to handle 60-65,000 tickets with the help of servers upgraded to 64GB RAM. This would allow 80 lakh concurrent connections compared to the current 10 lakh. While all this sounds good, we think with the growing popularity and feasibility of online booking, the number of people opting for online booking will increase year by year. IRCTC can currently handle 2000 tatkal bookings per minute while the latest proposed improvement is around 7,200 tickets per minute. Now, it isn't clear what upgrades IRCTC has planned for its servers, but here are a few things that could help resolve the long waiting hours for IRCTC tatkal consumers and prepare other e-ticketing sites for future.

Role of servers and why they cannot handle the load
In general, e-ticketing has two main aspects – one part includes networking, interconnectivity and servers while the other part includes convenient billing system made available to consumers. While the technical aspect has to ensure that complete operation or process is smooth and swift, there should also be ample of easy payment options given to users. The server helps to form secure connection for each consumer who logs into the site. e-ticketing companies design these servers to handle a particular number of connections, but in the past couple of years, this number has been growing with each passing day. During the tatkal booking 2-hour window, the server has to handle multiple times the number of connections than it can manage. So, if you are disconnected, you have to wait until there is room for you, which is possible only if someone else gets disconnected. Moreover, a failure at one step means the person has to begin right from the start.
 

Raj Jadhav, VP Solutions Consulting, Tech-support and IT, D-Link, tell us that one also has to understand the Indian consumer behaviour as there are many people accessing the site just to check the rates, view the ticketing process or likewise; the server capability has been designed considering such bogus connections too. So while designing the server, it is important to consider these additional connections that your server will have to handle. He explains, “The machine won’t understand if you are there to genuinely buy the ticket or simply view the process or check rates. As soon as you log into the e-ticketing site, a secure connection is formed, genuine or not. So, if the site is capable of handling for instance 1 lakh connections then, maybe some percent of connections are not genuine but the site has to still maintain them.”

According to him, another aspect that should be considered is the kind of relationship these e-ticketing companies have with banks or telecom companies to provide the right communication infrastructure and banking response so that the transaction is completed on time. The system understands technicalities and it has certain wait time after which it will get disconnected.

Improving server infrastructure
Raj Jadhav says that e-ticketing companies like IRCTC can spruce up the server capability by deploying L4 to L7 (Layer 4 to Layer 7) infrastructure. This infrastructure allows to instantly add new servers. For instance, if a server experiences a surge in traffic, then immediately one will be able to add another server, which will take care of the extra load. With this system in place, the IT team manager can decide and share the load on multiple servers, i.e., server load balancing.

A job can be allocated per server; for instance, one server can handle only 300 tickets. If the server is overloaded, then one can add another server that can handle 200-300 transactions per minute. This is something that sites like Facbeook and Twitter are doing – the only difference is e-ticketing is done over a secure connection. This is one reason why we don’t see these sites complaining about overloaded servers. One should have the feasibility or capability to keep on adding servers. 

Flexible booking timings
A little flexibility in the tatkal booking timings can also help. For instance, there can be a 1-hour tatkal window for trains leaving before 2 AM, while another 1-hour window for trains leaving after 2 PM. This way the concentration of the load will be distributed over two hours.

Cloud server comes to the rescue
In case of IRCTC, overcrowded servers are the biggest challenge they are facing. Amazon may sell 13.5 million items worldwide on a record-breaking day, while Indian Railways consistently sells more than 1 lakh tickets everyday. Another possible issue could be all their servers are concentrated in one region. For instance, a person from western India is booking the ticket, but the main server is in Delhi - this could also cause delays. The key solution these days is cloud computing. If they have cloud computing infrastructure in place, then Delhi customers can connect to Delhi servers and Mumbai customers can connect to the western server, wherever it is placed.
 

On deploying cloud, another convenient factor is if the Delhi server is overloaded, then you can move transactions to the server in the nearest region and this will help proportion the load. Every networking device has its limitations, but there is a mechanism to share the load on multiple devices.  

Rather than deploying third-party cloud services, it is more convenient to build their own, and Railways can afford to have their own cloud. Managing cloud servers is simpler and one person can remotely take care of it. This is something employed by giants like Yahoo and Google too. There won't be any downtime and the L4 to L7 design will further add to the convenience. The cloud company also helps manage the security. Moreover, one doesn’t have to worry about the type or amount of RAM needed to upgrade.

Developing nations like China had been facing similar e-ticketing issues, but have resolved them efficiently. The Indian Railways has grand plans for IRCTC – claiming to make the site capable of booking 7,200 e-tickets per minute, in the current fiscal. This would mean 5200 additional tickets will be booked per minute. The estimated cost by Railways for this is said to be 100 crores, which is ten times the 10 crore budget announced during the Union Budget 2013. In a nutshell, we require a scaleable operation, as simply adding more resources may just not help. Building a scaleable application along with a good architectural solution could help IRCTC perform efficiently for the next couple of years. We'd like to point out that we tried contacting IRCTC for this story and about the status of improvements promised in the budget, but received no response.

Gmail update for Android starts rolling out

It’s been a while when Google announced its new version of Gmail for Desktop, Android & iOS. They said the roll-out would be slow & it could take some time to receive the update, but Google has already started to rolling out updates for some users.

The new version of Gmail V4.5 features the new Inbox, Side navigation bar as well as category wise features like Promotion, Social, Updates, etc.

Follow the below link to see the new look of Gmail in action
Meet Gmail's New Inbox

Intel unveils Haswell microprocessors

Intel has unveiled its new microprocessors named Haswell. The first batch Intel unveiled also includes quad-core processors for laptops and desktops named Z87 and Q87, respectively. Intel claims that graphics for the Haswell-based chips will be twice as good as the graphics for last year’s Ivy Bridge chips.

While Intel took the wraps off the chips based on its fourth-generation Core microarchitecture, previously code-named Haswell. Today’s first batch of microprocessors include quad-core processors for laptops and desktops.

The world’s biggest chip maker has been teasing the chips for a year, as they features the biggest leap in battery power savings that PCs have ever seen in one generation to the next. The chips feature 50 percent better active battery life and 20 times better idle battery life. Graphics for the Haswell-based chips will be twice as good as the graphics for last year’s Ivy Bridge chips.

Intel is taking the wraps off of five Core i7 laptop processors today and 12 quad-core Core i7 and Core i5 desktop chips today. More information will be released on Tuesday at the Computex trade show in Taiwan.

The chips promise to boost the sagging PC market, which is now expected to fall 7.8 percent in sales in 2013, according to IDC. Last week, IDC revised its forecast downward from a previous 1.3 percent estimated drop.

Computer makers are taking the Haswell chips and doing interesting designs with them. The laptop chips will be used in devices that double as laptops with detachable keyboards. Once you take the keyboard off, the machine becomes a Windows 8 touchscreen tablet.

On the desktop side, HP has unveiled its HP Envy Rove 20 all-in-one computer, which has a detachable 20-inch touchscreen. You can lay the touchscreen flat on a table and use it as a tabletop computer for board games in the kitchen. The screen has its own batteries that can last for three hours.

Intel promises that such creative approaches to design will proliferate throughout the year, thanks to the capabilities that Haswell brings. The new laptops with Haswell promise to be a lot thinner.

Intel’s new chips include the quad-core laptop M-series, with three new processors. It is also launching the H-series with three new processors. The laptop chips include the Core i7-4800MQ and the Core i7 4900MQ chips. Those chips consume 47 watts of power and operate at 2.7 gigahertz and 2.8 gigahertz. They can be overclocked (or run faster than recommended speeds) up to 3.7 gigahertz and 3.8 gigahertz.

At the top of the heap is the Core i7 4930MX at 57 watts and 3 gigahertz. Intel says the Core i4770K can run StarCraft II: The Heart of the Swarm at 62 frames per second.

The H-series mobile processors includes the Core i7-4850HQ, which has a base frequency of 2.3GHz scaling to 3.5GHz. The Core i7-4950HQ has a frequency of 2.4GHz scaling to 3.6GHz. The chips draw 47 watts of power and have the high-end Iris Graphics. Intel said it would release six new H chips this year.

The quad-core desktop chips run from 3 gigahertz to 3.9 gigahertz, and consume between 35 to 84 watts of power. The fastest chip is the Core i7-4770K chip, which consumes 84 watts of power and runs at 3.6 gigahertz, and you can overclock that to 3.9 gigahertz.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Active and Zoom specifications leak online

While the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini was announced on Thursday, two other variants sharing the Galaxy S4 prefix are also expected to launch soon.
A new report by Hi-Tech.mail.ru reveals purported specifications of the camera focused Galaxy S4 Zoom and the ruggedized Galaxy S4 Active smartphone. According to the site, the Galaxy S4 Zoom will feature a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 540x960 pixels. It will be powered by a 1.6GHz dual-core processor and offer 8GB of internal storage expandable via microSD card. The phone is expected to sport a 16-megapixel rear camera with 10x optical zoom and a 1.9-megapixel front facing camera. The phone is said to come with Bluetooth 4.0LE, Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n, A-GPS connectivity options and a 1900mAh battery.

The ruggedized version of the Galaxy S4, the Galaxy S4 Active, which is expected to be a water and dust resistant phone, is likely to feature a 5-inch full-HD super AMOLED display. It would be powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor and Adreno 320 graphics processor. The phone is expected to have 2GB of RAM and run Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, the latest iteration of the OS. The phone will offer 16GB internal storage expandable via microSD card and is expected to come with a 2600mAh battery. The Galaxy S4 Active will come with Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, and NFC connectivity options in addition to an IR blaster just like the Galaxy S4.

While the Galaxy S4 active is expected to come with 4G LTE connectivity, the Galaxy S4 Zoom is not likely to support it, as per the report.

Samsung will unveil new Android based Galaxy devices and Windows/ Windows Phone 8 based Ativ devices at an event in London on June 20. There's a lot of speculation that the company would announce these Galaxy S4 variants at the event but we can't be sure until the actual announcement takes place.

The Galaxy S4 Active has already made appearances through leaked pictures and a video and the rumoured specifications somewhat match the specifications mentioned in this report barring the processor which one of the source had suggested to be a dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus.

HTC T6 leaked specifications reveal 5.9-inch full-HD display, 3300mAh battery

Just a few days ago there were news reports regarding HTC developing a phablet device, which has been codenamed T6. The specifications of this device have now been leaked online
The specifications of this phablet have been leaked by the twitter user @evleaks. It is noteworthy that he was also the source who tipped the codename of the phablet.

As per the news report by TheUnlocker.com via @evleaks, HTC T6 will allegedly come with a 5.9-inch full-HD display. The phablet will be powered by 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor along with 2GB of RAM. The internal storage available on the phablet will be 16GB and will support external microSD card to further increase the available storage.

The report also suggests that HTC T6 will come with a 3,300mAh battery, which is the largest battery capacity offered by a HTC device till date. The phablet is also touted to come with front dual Boomsound speakers with dedicated audio processor. Just like the HTC One, the HTC T6 will come with an Ultrapixel camera along with LED flash. There will also be a 2.1-megapxiel rear camera on-board.

From the specification it appears that this phablet from HTC will be competing head on with the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy Note III. Just like the Galaxy Note devices, HTC too will be providing pen-based input along with this device.

The news report suggests that HTC T6 will ship with Android Key Lime out of the box. However, Google is touted to launch the next version of Android in the third or fourth quarter of this year while @eveleaks is suggesting a summer release for this phablet. HTC will also be layering this phablet with the latest version of Sense UI.

Furthermore, it is being pegged that HTC will be packing in fingerprint reader on the back of the HTC T6. The phablet is also expected to come with a protective-case-cum-backup-battery jacket, which will provide a 1250 mAH battery in addition to the 3,300 mAh battery.