Google announces Android 4.4 KitKat

Google is calling the next iteration of its Android OS KitKat. The new OS was earlier called Key Lime Pie, but Google finally decided upon KitKat, the famous chocolate brand from Nestle. If you think that this is a sweet financial deal for the two companies, then you'd be wrong. Google told BBC that it had come up with the idea and that neither side was paying the other. John Lagerling, director of Android global partnerships, told the BBC, "This is not a money-changing-hands kind of deal."

Simon Myers, a partner at the consultancy Prophet has said in the BBC report, "If your brand is hooked up with another, you inevitably become associated with that other brand, for good or ill."

50 million KitKat chocolate bars in 19 countries will have the Android branding. Buyers of the chocolate bar will have a chance to win a Nexus 7 tablet along with Google Play gift cards.

The Android OS expected to launch after Jelly Bean was called Key Lime Pie internally in Google’s offices. Mr Lagerling said, "We realized that very few people actually know the taste of a key lime pie." KitKat on the other hand is a popular snack in many counties.

A Google spokesperson explained to The Verge that the new Android version's name was inspired by the Engineering Head Hiroshi Lockheimer's love of KitKat bars. 

Google has named the Android OS after sweets in an alphabetical order for quite some time. In 2008 Android 1.0 was launched without a name. In 2009 we saw Android 1.1 without a name too. Then came Android 1.5 Cupcake, Android 1.6 Donut and Android 2.0 Éclair. In 2010 we saw the launch of Android 2.2 Froyo and Android 2.3 Gingerbread. 2011 saw the launch of Android 3.0 Honeycomb and then came the OS that unified Android for the tablet and smartphone, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Last year, in 2012 we saw Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. We are still waiting to hear a launch date for the next Android OS, Android 4.4 KitKat.

Microsoft to buy Nokia's handset biz for $7.2 billion

Helsinki: Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia will sell its mobile phone unit to US group Microsoft for 5.44 billion euros ($7.17 billion), it said on Tuesday.

Nokia will grant Microsoft a 10-year non-exclusive licence to its patents and will itself focus on network infrastructure and services, which it called "the best path forward for Nokia and its shareholders."

The company also announced the immediate departure of chief executive Stephen Elop. He will be replaced in the interim by Risto Siilasmaa, Nokia's chairman of the board.

Nokia was long the global leader in making mobile phones but has been overtaken by rivals Samsung and Apple as it struggled to establish winning business models and mobile devices.

The transaction announced on Tuesday is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2014, pending approval by Nokia shareholders and regulatory authorities.

Some 32,000 Nokia employees are expected to transfer to Microsoft, including approximately 4,700 people in Finland, the company said.

The operations affected by the transfer generated approximately 14.9 billion euros in 2012, or almost 50 percent of Nokia's net sales, the company said.

Of the total purchase price of 5.44 billion euros, 3.79 billion relates to the purchase of Nokia's Devices & Services business, and 1.65 billion relates to the mutual patent agreement and future option.

Last month, Nokia finalised the purchase of German engineering giant Siemens' 50 percent stake in Nokia Siemens Networks for 1.7 billion euros.

NSN, which is specialised in high-speed mobile broadband, was set up as a joint venture between the two companies in 2007, a partnership that expired in April. The unit has posted stronger earnings than Nokia's mobile phone business.

NSN posted a net profit of 8.0 million euros in the second quarter of this year, compared to Nokia's net loss of 227 million euros in the same period.

GOLDEN QUESTIONS ASKED IN INTERVIEWS...

Are You Preparing for an interview??

I hope you must be at some point of time. So today I am going to post some of the important questions which are generally asked during an interview by the interviewer. Preparing these questions in advance will probably let you impress the interviewer and get the job.

Golden Interview Questions:-

1. Tell me about yourself

2. Tell me about your family background OR How has your family background
shaped your personality?

3. What are your strengths? OR What kind of person are you according to
your friends?

4. What are your weaknesses? What have you done to overcome them?

5. How can you contribute to the job?

6. What are your goals in life? OR What are your long-term or short-term
professional and personal goals?

7. Where do you see yourself 10 years from now in your professional life? In
your personal life?

8. Tell me some of your recent goals and what you did to achieve them.

9. How would you describe your ideal job? OR What kind of job would you like
to take up? OR What is your dream job?

10. Why should we select you? OR What makes you better that other
candidates so as to be selected over others?

11. Why did you specialize in this discipline?

12. Why do you want to join our Company?

13. Why do you want to do this type of job (Sales and marketing, R&D,
Production, Operations, Quality Assurance etc.)

14. Would you like to pursue higher studies? If yes, why and when?

15. What have been your greatest challenges in life till now? What made them
so? How did you face them?

16. Who is your role model? Why?

17. What are your interests /hobbies? How do you spend your free time? What
is it you like to do most and why?

18. Do you have any question?

Indian cities less NO2 polluted than other major global counterparts

 

 Washington: NASA scientists have used satellite observations to measure air pollution's dependence on population in four of the planet's major air pollution regions: the United States, Europe, China and India.

They found that the pollution-population relationship varies by region. For example, a city of 1 million people in Europe experiences six times higher nitrogen dioxide pollution than an equally populated city of 1 million people in India, according to the research led by Lok Lamsal, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Lamsal said that energy usage patterns and per capita emissions differ greatly between India and Europe and despite large populations, Indian cities seem cleaner in terms of NO2 pollution than the study's other regions. 

The variation is a reflection of regional differences such as industrial development, per capita emissions and geography.

Previously, researchers have measured the relationship between population and several urban characteristics, like infrastructure, employment and innovation.

Lamsal said that they showed that the relationship is also applicable to pollution and measurement of that relationship is potentially useful for developing future inventories and formulating air pollution control policies.

The researchers focused on nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, a common pollutant from the burning of fossil fuels. The gas is a precursor to the formation of near-ground ozone, which can cause respiratory problems and is a problem in many major metropolitan areas.

NO2 is also unhealthy to breathe in high concentrations. One feature of the gas, however, is that it's a good proxy for urban air quality.

Lamsal and colleagues studied data collected by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA's Aura satellite, which measures NO2 throughout the atmosphere in the afternoon around the world.

Next they used an air quality computer model to derive from the satellite data the annual mean concentration of the gas near the ground in some of the Northern Hemisphere's major polluting regions, excluding hotspots such as power plants that could skew the urban relationship. By overlaying pollution concentration with population density data, the researchers could examine the relationship.

Results across the different regions showed divergent NO2 surface concentrations in urban areas of 1 million people: 0.98 parts per billion (U.S.), 1.33 ppb (Europe), 0.68 ppb (China) and 0.23 ppb (India). The same regions saw various degrees of pollution increases in cities with population of 10 million people: 2.55 ppb (U.S.), 3.86 ppb (Europe), 3.13 ppb (China) and 0.53 ppb (India).

The contribution to air pollution from surface-level NO2 in each region more than doubled when cities increased in population from 1 million to 10 million people, although in China the increase was much larger, by about a factor of five.

Even though larger cities are typically more energy efficient with lower per-capita emissions, more people still translates to more pollution. But the study reveals some noteworthy regional differences.

The study has been published in Environmental Science and Technology.

The researchers said that further investigation is needed in order to clarify the causes behind the regional differences.