700,000 Android devices now activated every day, Rubin reveals rising records

 

They're all about keeping it in the family over at Google, so it's no surprise that Andy Rubin took to Google+ to reveal that 700,000 Android devices are now being activated every day.

There was no messing about in his update, which simply read, "There are now over 700,000 Android devices activated every day."
He was then forced to clarify by nit-picking commenters, telling the cynics, "We count each device only once (ie, we don't count re-sold devices), and "activations" means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service."

Keep your wig on

In May 2011, the company revealed that 400,000 Android handsets were being switched on per day, leading to a colossal 200 million handsets in total in November 2011.
It's been a big year for Android in other ways too, with the release of Ice Cream Sandwich set to bring tablets and smartphones in line, although only the Samsung Galaxy Nexus has yet managed to launch with the frosty new OS.
Ice Cream Sandwich will be the one to watch in early 2012 as it hits the plethora of new tablets we're expecting to see at CES 2012 – can the illusive iPad 3 compete? We'll find out in Q1.

In the meantime, check out our video review of Android 4.0 below:

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Amazon Kindle review

The Amazon Kindle 4 (aka Kindle 4th Gen, Kindle Touchless or just plain Kindle) was announced as a sidenote to the colour Kindle Fire and touch-enabled Kindle Touch. But in many ways it was the most significant of the three, because of its extraordinary price.
The UK remains the poor cousin to the US in the world of dedicated ebook readers. While many are on the market, to be a real success they need the vertical integration of being linked with a book seller, both for usability and the subsidy to the initial purchase price.
A stand-alone reader needs to make a profit for the manufacturer from the retail price alone, while a book seller device can make its money from the books and so can afford to be priced cheaply. And Amazon as the biggest book store can subsidise its ereaders the most.
As a result we really only have Amazon's Kindle, missing out on other book seller-tied devices such as the Nook and Kobo.
Worse, we currently only have one of the new generation of Kindles, the others being restricted to the US (presumably for supply reasons). And to add salt to the trans-Atlantic wound, our new Kindle costs £89 compared to $79 (around £50) in the States.
But we do at least have one of the next-gen Amazon Kindles, and it's still very, very cheap. So how does it stack up?

Well, unlike the Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire, the plain Kindle is basically a cut down and repackaged version of last year's Kindle 3 - now renamed the Kindle Keyboard - rather than one with new technologies and features added.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, because the Kindle Keyboard was the best ebook reader on the market in terms of screen, book choice and price.
If you put the price of the US version out of mind, £89 really is cheap as chips for an ebook reader, especially one as accomplished as this.
As well as opening up ereaders to a new market, when the reader is priced this low you're less worried about taking it into environments where you might think twice about using expensive electronics, such as the bathroom or the beach. While not exactly disposable, it's not £500-worth of iPad to wreck either.
Amazon famously sells more books in Kindle ebook format than in print these days, and this price point is only going to accelerate that trend.

The key to any ebook reader is the screen, and the new Kindle shares the same 600 x 800, 16 greys E-Ink display as the previous generation Kindle Keyboard, and it remains marvelous.
Its matt screen surface is perfectly legible in the sort of direct sunshine that usually reduces glossy-screened LCD devices to pure glare.
However, it's not backlit, so you'll need the bedside light on at night.
Amazon claims its new Kindle's screen refreshes 10% faster than the last generation, but we couldn't see any obvious improvement.What has changed is the visual way the page changes - no longer does the page flick to all black before redrawing; now only the areas that need to change flicker and redraw, which looks much more elegant.

A full-page refresh happens every few pages. The lack of a full refresh degrades the text quality very slightly over time between refreshes - you can download a software update to return to the old refresh system if you find it noticeable.
The screen is the same, but the packaging is very different. The new Kindle measures just 166mm by 114mm, making it the smallest of the family and some 24mm shorter and 9mm narrower than the Kindle Keyboard, itself a slight device.

Design-wise the single grey and rounded corners are replaced with a tri-tone set of greys with much sharper corners. The plastic on the back has a slightly coated feel to aid grip, but not as rubberised as the Keyboard.
The buttons are simplified. Obviously there's no QWERTY keyboard, and just four buttons flank the central four-way-plus-select rocker. The buttons are Back, Home, Menu and a key to call up the on-screen keyboard. Forward and back ìpaddlesî sit either side of the screen, and on the base a simple power button replaces the slider seen in previous generations.

The net effect is of a reader the size of a very slim paperback volume of poetry, which sits in the palm of one hand - if you have fairly large hands. The reduction in weight to just 170g means you can hold this all day. The page turn buttons are narrower, so you need to hold the new Amazon Kindle slightly differently, but we didn't find this a problem.
One change on the back is the addition of two small metal contact pads, presumably to power accessories such as a light.
Inside the Amazon Kindle, the memory has been reduced from 4GB to 2GB, half of which is available for ebooks. That's still a huge amount of space, especially now you can keep any ebooks you're not currently reading ìin the cloudî on Amazon's servers, and just restore them in seconds. Amazon reckons you can fit 1,400 books on the device, but we didn't buy quite 1,400 books to check this.

Also reduced is the battery capacity, but the device should still last a month on a single charge. No charger is included with the Amazon Kindle, just a USB cable. But because the Kindle uses a micro USB connector, you probably have half a dozen compatible chargers lying around already.
The Amazon Kindle is Wi-Fi only - if you want 3G internet connectivity you'll need to buy the £149 Kindle Keyboard, or wait for the Kindle Touch to make it to the UK. 3G is handy, but for most users we suspect Wi-Fi access will be perfectly sufficient. The Wi-Fi chip is one area that has had an upgrade, with access via 802.11n as well as a and g wireless internet.

To keep costs and size down, all of the audio features on the Kindle Keyboard have been removed, so there are no speakers or headphone jacks, there's no read aloud feature and there's no MP3 player.
Most other software features of the Amazon Kindle are the same as the other members of the family, but the lack of a hard keyboard means that only the most masochistic of users will use some of them, such as adding annotations.

Similarly, the experimental web browser is still there, but while slow screen refresh and 16-greys display made it unpleasant to use on the Keyboard, with URLs taking minutes to type it's virtually unusable here. You might take the time to laboriously set up a webmail account, we suppose.
The on-screen keyboard isn't great, the lack of buttons for Shift or to change to numeric input and the tiny pad making tapping out even usernames and passwords a real effort. Fortunately, aside from searching the Kindle Store, once the device is set up you won't have much need for it.
The Amazon Kindle comes with version 4.0 of its operating system - the Kindle Keyboard runs 3.3. There are few differences, but one that the lack of a physical keyboard enables is the ability to switch languages, which could be useful for multi-lingual readers. A new set of screen savers are added, which are slightly more contemporary in feel.

As with previous versions, you can send your own PDF and text documents to the Amazon Kindle via email or a direct USB connection. There's still no direct support for the ePub format, though, requiring another conversion stage. This is starting to look a little churlish on Amazon's part. Surely it should encourage users of ePub-based ereaders to convert?
A significant feature, not just of this device but of the whole Kindle service, is its ability to share ebooks between readers running on pretty much every technology there is - PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry - you can read the same books, and it remembers where you got up to on another device. This means you always have your books with you, even when the Kindle itself is at home.

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Lenovo IdeaPad U300S review

The wait for the flurry of Intel ultrabooks is over, and the Lenovo IdeaPad U300S is among the latest super thin and light Windows laptops to come to the fore.
It joins the likes of the Toshiba Portege Z830, Toshiba Satellite Z830, Asus Zenbook UX31 and Acer Aspire S3 in the ultrabook range, a new kind of laptop category that is critically important for the future of the entire market.
Ultrabooks are super-thin, light, sleek and powerful laptops that aim to emulate Apple's recent gains with the Apple MacBook Air, and finally give consumers a reason to invest in PCs again.

The Lenovo IdeaPad U300S is the last in the current line of ultrabooks to hit the shelves, and with a host of new models rumoured to be released at CES 2012 in January, it needs to offer a potent mix of power, great looks and competitive price to stand out among the early salvos from Acer, Asus and Toshiba.
However, our first impressions are underwhelming.
Lenovo hasn't obsessed over aesthetics, and this laptop is no Apple MacBook Air clone. It seems chunky next to the wafer-thin Asus Zenbook, which features a wedge-shaped design that tapers off to a thin, blade-like point.
The Lenovo IdeaPad U300S retains its 16mm thickness across the chassis, giving it the impression of being squat.
The body is aluminium, and weighs 1.4kg, the same as the Acer Aspire S3, but much heavier than the Toshiba Portege Z830 and the Toshiba Satellite Z830-10U. If you're looking for an ultrabook that will turn heads, you will most likely look elsewhere, but can the Lenovo IdeaPad U300S impress with power?

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HTC Radar Review

The HTC Radar is the latest smartphone to run Windows Phone 7.5, following on from the HTC Titan. With a smooth unibody design, HD video recording and 5MP camera, will it be enough to make Windows Phone a success?
If HTC was at school right now, you can't help feeling it'd be getting an A for effort. The Taiwanese manufacturer is certainly churning out handsets like nobody's business.
For the last few years, it's been concentrating mainly on Android - but now Windows Phone 7.5 Mango is here, it's going for gold. Probably much to the annoyance of Nokia, which adopted WP as its main operating system months ago, but is still being pipped to the post by HTC when it comes to getting handsets on the shelves.
Little brother of the HTC Titan and the second handset from HTC to run Windows Phone 7.5 (or Mango to its friends), the HTC Radar is a solid little handset. It's crafted from a single piece of metal and has enough weight at 137g to make it feel like it means business without giving your biceps a workout.

To look at it, the dull aluminium fascia, the size (120.5mm x 61.5mm x 10.9mm) and even the slight dip at the bottom immediately puts us in mind of a Google Nexus One (which HTC manufactured almost two years ago). But, obviously, there's no trackball here, with the HTC Radar relying on the compulsory three Windows Phone 7.5 soft keys on the front.

The back holds that 5MP camera, LED light and speaker, while there's very little around the edges to write home about. There's a power and headphone jack up top, micro USB slot on the left and volume rocker and camera button on the right.

To open the HTC Radar, you slide the bottom down to reveal a little section that invites you to insert a SIM card. Strangely, the HTC Radar seems to restart if you do this - even though you're not interrupting the power supply.

There's no space for a microSD card because HTC has, just like it did for the Titan, decided to stifle this handset, enabling you to only use the onboard memory. With 8GB storage (just 6.54GB of which is available to the user, once the operating system has taken its share), it really does beggar belief.

For those who like their photos, music and videos in one place, it makes the HTC Radar instantly less attractive compared to the various crop of Android devices out there such as the stunning Samsung Galaxy S2 and, of course, the iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S.

Another handicap is the lack of removable battery. You can't access it at all, and although there always seems to be someone about in the office who you can nick an iPhone charger off, there are likely to be fewer carrying around micro USB cables. So, as an HTC Radar owner, that task may fall at your feet.

If we were to pit the HTC Radar against other handsets on the market right now, we'd have to say we think it's up there with the BlackBerry Curve 9360 in terms of its professional abilities. The memory is on a par with Apple's most basic offering, the iPhone 3GS, while we can't help thinking that (apart from the colour), the HTC Radar looks identical to the Android-toting HTC Rhyme, which it certainly matches up against for the majority of its internal workings.
You can buy one SIM-free for around £340, which isn't too bad a price - it's certainly much cheaper than its big brother, the Titan, which is nearer the £500 mark. You can pick one up for free on contract, providing you're willing to part with around £25 a month and sign the next two years of your life away.

It also appears to be available in two colours - all publicity shots show the handset in white. However, our review unit was grey and black, and although sites such as Carphone Warehouse show the white version on their page, they also state that it's only on their systems in grey. It may very well depend on where in the world you purchase it.

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Toshiba Dynabook WT301/D to debut next month

While Google’s Android platform seems to be rather loud when it comes to the tablet segment, Japan appears to have got a Windows 7 OS powered, 10.1-inch Toshiba Dynabook WT301/D just recently. The tab is expected to arrive early next year, but there is no word on its availability date in other parts of the world.
As TechCrunch mentions, it is specifically designed to suit the needs of business professionals. A 10.1-inch TFT LED backlit multi-touch display graces the front panel of the slab. This touchscreen is capable of projecting pictures in 1366 x 768 pixel resolutions. Besides a 1.3MP snapper which can be employed to capture still shots as well as record videos, the tablet is equipped with another 0.3MP camera that allows video conferencing.
On the performance front, the Toshiba tablet is said to draw power from a next generation Atom processor, though further details regarding this CPU have not been revealed. It operates with the help of the 32-bit Windows 7 Professional OS and is deployed with Microsoft Home and Business 2010 suite. In addition to 2GB of memory, the slate offers a generous 64GB hoarding space as it is integrated with a solid state drive.

Its Bluetooth 3.0 + HS and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi functionalities let users communicate with other compatible devices and offer wireless web access, respectively. The input and output connectivity options are inclusive of a USB port and a micro HDMI connector to facilitate USB tethering and displaying digital content on big screen HDTVs.
The Windows 7 based Toshiba Dynabook WT301/D release date and price information is foggy at best.

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Tech tip: Auto restart if Mac freezes

Although MAC OS X is one of the most stable operating systems available, depending on usage and heating issues, you might see your Mac stuck at a screen with no response from keyboard or mouse (system freeze).

The only way out is to reboot manually using the power key.

A simpler way around it is to go to System Preferences > Energy Saver and check on the box that reads "Restart automatically if the computer freezes".

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.Net Custom Themes And Controls [SOURCE]

Most of you should be common with this post as this is 3. time i post it :/
But this time i have done a loot, i sweer!
I will also give you a tutorial on how to use the controls and the forms!

New things in this version:
* New Form (BlackCapForm2)
- The system buttons can be fully removed, not only disabled (Set visible to false)
- Extra text (Under the form tittle) (If the value of this is empty, the tittle will apear normal)
- The FormBorderStyle don't have to stay at None, if changed your form will do some changes
- Automaticly sets the padding
- Both old and new form supports icons

* New Button (BcButton)
- Got all its colors in propertyes, that means that you can change the way it looks
- Have a glow animation at mouse hover

* BcDigitalDisplay
- Now also supports "-" chars

* GdiControls, CustomForm
- The forms is no longer just a skinned ContainerControl you put over your orginal form, it's a skinned form. This both runs a loot
faster, and is easyer to use.
- Added Visible property in the GdiControls Class, if sat to false the CustomForm will not draw it or raise its events
- Added opening and closing animations to the CustomForm class (Fading in and out and shrink/grow into/from center)

Fixed things:
* Source code
- Renamed the controls and gave them english names
- Think i translated all public propertyes and events to english, if not, please tell me! Also tell me about wrong words and typos if any
- Removed the "Farger" class and declares pigments in each control instead
- Added a function to fix opasity in the GdiMethods class

* Old Form (BlackCapForm1)
- Fixed systembuttons disabled color
- Fixed that the maximize button still worked while disabled

* GroupBox
- Fixed the laggs while resizing it

Removed:
- CalculatorNumericUpDown (Some honest guy told me he hated it..) (Will propertly fix it later :) )

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IMAGES:



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TUTORIAL:

1. Create a new Windows Form Application


2. Chose add extisting item...


3. Select all the files in the BlackCap Controlz folder


4. Click "Show all files"


5. Open the designer file of your form


6. This should be your designer code


7. Change the inheirts to BlackCapForm1 or 2


8. Build your application!


9. Go to Form1 just to make sure everything worked


10. F5! Congratz, you now have a cool BlackCapForm ^^
All the controls should be at the top of your toolbox by now

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You can download the project from here: http://filesmelt.com/dl/BlackCap_Controlz1.zip

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