Sony to Finally Launch PlayStation 4 Console in China Next Week

Japanese electronics giant Sony will launch its PlayStation gaming console in China next week, it said after a more than two-month delay in officially selling its products to Chinese consumers.

The company originally planned to launch PlayStation 4 consoles in China on January 11, but abruptly announced a delay only three days beforehand, giving no reason for the change.

Instead it will start selling its flagship console, hand-held PlayStation Vita and software on March 20, a statement on the PlayStation China microblog said Tuesday.

China last year authorised the domestic sale of game consoles through its first free-trade zone (FTZ) in Shanghai, ending a ban imposed in 2000, although imports through unofficial channels have long been widely available.

The country's leaders impose strict control over content they deem to be obscene, violent or politically sensitive, and under the rules of the FTZ all games must still pass inspection by cultural authorities.

Sony rival Microsoft was the first foreign company to enter China's potentially lucrative game market and launched its Xbox One console in China in September.

Sony has said it would offer the PlayStation 4 in China for CNY 2,899 ($471, roughly Rs. 30,000) and the PlayStation Vita for CNY 1,299.

It will offer Chinese versions of games including "Dynasty Warriors 8" and "Final Fantasy", as well as titles from domestic developers.

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You Can’t Block Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook

It so happens that if you wish to block
Mark Zuckerberg from your Facebook
account, you cant.
You may have felt angry at Facebook for
various reasons like your fan page reach
has diminished or your pages get
unpublished and you may want to block the
account of the creator of Facebook, Mark
from your account, you’ll get an error
saying

Sorry! The blocking system is
overloaded Please wait a few
minutes and try again.

If you try to block him again after a few
minutes, you will get the same message.

It seems that Mark Zuckerberg , the
creator of Facebook and a man with around
31 million facebook followers is also one of
the most hated men on Facebook. The above
error message popups because of Facebooks
algorithm which kick in when too many
people try to block one user.


Facebook says, this is designed so as to
protect the voice of the people who raise
a campaign for a good cause, and people
who are not happy with the campaign try
to block the user. This is a general error
which is same for everyone and is
generated due to too many users trying
to block one user.
This was first noticed by a website Block
Zuck which seems to have been created
with sole purpose of testing this service.
After Block Zuck reported this peculiar
Facebook feature, Gizmodo spoke with the
website’s founder and learned that the
site was originally the base of operations
for a viral campaign to mass-block
Zuckerberg in protest of the social
network’s controversial user privacy
policies.


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OnePlus Says Entering New Product Category in April; OnePlus 2 Details Leak

OnePlus Co-Founder Carl Pei has revealed that his company is gearing up to enter a new product category next month. Additionally, more details about the OnePlus 2 smartphone have emerged.

Pei while talking to GSMArena at the sidelines of MWC 2015 added that the new product is neither a smartwatch nor a tablet leaving everyone to guess the next OnePlus product. Interestingly, Pei's announcement of a new product category ties-in with what he told NDTV Gadgets in December.

At the Indian launch of the OnePlus One, Pei told NDTV Gadgets, "For our first year, we've focused on just one product, the OnePlus One. Next year, we're looking into experimenting with different types of form factors and different types of products."

Unfortunately, there is no word what OnePlus has up its sleeves for the next month.

A new product category doesn't mean that OnePlus is not working on the successor of the One smartphone. Previously, Pei had confirmedthat the OnePlus 2 smartphone can be expected to be launched in Q2 or Q3 of 2015.

In other news, Business Insider reports citing a source familiar with the situation that OnePlus is revamping the design of the One smartphone for its successor.

It adds that the next OnePlus smartphone will sport a metal frame, which is likely to replace the polycarbonate build of the '2014 flagship killer' One smartphone.

The report goes on to claim that due to use of a metal frame, the pricing of the OnePlus 2 will be higher than that of the One which was launched in April last year at a starting price of $299 (unlocked and without contract) for the 16GB model. The sources however affirmed that the plans are yet to be finalised.

In January, the Chinese handset brand announced that it sold close to 1 million OnePlus One smartphones by the end of 2014. The company did not mention the exact numbers of the smartphone.

Nine Things You Need to Know About the HTC One M9

HTC One M9 was unveiled in Barcelona on Sunday, and while on the face of it, the smartphone is an evolution of the HTC One and the original HTC One, there are still plenty of new features to talk about.

Here are nine things you need to know about the brand new HTC One M9:

1) Camera
Perhaps the biggest change in the HTC One M9 is a move away from the UltraPixel rear camera that many had complained about. The HTC One M9 comes with a 20-megapixel rear camera so you can zoom and crop images all you want.

2) Sense 7.0
HTC's upgrade to the custom UI brings a new contextual awareness that aims to give you information as and when you need it. So you have a custom launcher widget that shows apps based on your location and bundles that give you news and restaurant recommendations based on the time of the day.

3) Price and availability
While the company is silent about the HTC One M9 price, we do know the phone will be available in markets around the world (including India) in the middle of this month.

4) Snapdragon inside
The HTC One M9 comes with an octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor inside alongside 3GB RAM and 32GB of inbuilt storage. Are you listening Apple?

5) UltraPixel front camera
While the UltraPixel may not have been great success as a rear camera, HTC is giving its low-light photography capabilities a chance to shine as the front camera in the HTC One M9.

6) Design and finish
With the M9, HTC continues its lead in the industrial design department. The company stressed the finish of the HTC One M9 is inspired by luxury watches, and it shows in the end result. The HTC One M9 will be available in four colours: Gold on Silver, Gold on Gold, Gold on Pink, and our personal favourite, the Gunmetal Grey.

7) Dolby on your phone
The HTC One M9 comes with BoomSound including Dolby Audio Surround that offers a surround sound experience via the built-in speakers as well as bundled headphones. 

8) HTC Connect
The HTC One M9 also comes with HTC Connect that lets the phone transmit audio to multiple sources over Bluetooth, DLNA, Miracast, Qualcomm's AllPlay, and BlackFire. You can even combine multiple sources into a single group. Do the three-finger swipe up in any app to quickly send the currently playing music to any of these groups. 

9) Accessories
The HTC One M9 comes with a new range of HTC Dot View II cases that look brighter a Dot Message that let you see custom messages through the case in addition to the usual information like time, call notifications etc. The One M9 also comes with new clear back cases as well as an active case that's IP68 certified and offers protection from a 2-metre drop. HTC also showed us an active headset that's IP57 certified.

Disclosure: The correspondent attended a pre-MWC briefing in Barcelona at HTC's expense.

SanDisk Unveils 200GB microSDXC Card, USB Drive With Type-C Connector

Pushing the boundaries of portable storage, SanDisk has unveiled a new microSDXC memory card with an astonishing 200GB capacity. This is particularly impressive because SandDisk has continued to push more and more gigabytes onto a storage medium that is the size of the average human fingernail.

It's interesting to note that despite paying the cost of an average smartphone ($400) for the SanDisk 200GB Ultra microSDXC UHS-1 Premium Edition card, users may not actually be able to use it with anything just yet. Most devices that support microSD are rated to support up to 128GB cards for the time being, including the just unveiledHTC One M9. The new Samsung Galaxy S6 does not even support expandable storage, departing from Samsung's typical strategy of flagship phones supporting microSD cards. SanDisk rates the card speed at 90MB/s, which means that it will take in excess of 30 minutes to actually fill it up with data.

Also launched by SanDisk is a new 32GB dual-USB drive with a reversible Type-C USB 3.1 connector, and one USB 3.0 connector. Again, here isn't anything you can actually connect the Dual USB Drive to, with Type-C compatible phones and tablets expected to launch in the coming months. Whenever they do, this card will keep you ready though, and in the meantime, you can always use the regular USB plug to connect it to the vast majority of computers available in the market.

Neither of these products are actually launching just yet, with SanDisk just content to showcase the fact that it's ready with the next generation of products. Both will be available in the coming months, with the Type-C USB drive also expecting storage capacities higher than 32GB.

SanDisk has also revealed a new 128GB version of its popular iXpand Flash Drive range, designed to quickly transfer pictures and video from iOS devices to Mac computers or PCs. There are also updates to the iXpand Sync app, which now supports Apple's Touch ID fingerprint sensor on the new iPhones and iPads. The new 128GB capacity costs $150 (roughly Rs. 9,300) and is already retailing via Sandisk.com.

For full coverage of the Mobile World Congress from Barcelona, visit our page

Gmail banned in government offices

NEW DELHI: The government will be monitoring online activities of bureaucrats on official computers, block content which it feels is adversely affecting the productivity of the babus and also have a right to delete e-mails or internet history on such computers after intimating the user.

The measures are a part of twin notifications issued by the Narendra Modi government on February 18 by which the use of private e-mail networks like Gmail and Yahoo has now also been officially banned for all government use.

Notifying an 'E-mail Policy of Government of India' and 'Policy on use of Information Technology resources of Government of India', the Modi government has now stipulated that only the e-mail services provided by NIC shall be used for official communication.

"The e-mail services provided by other service providers shall not be used for any official communication," the notification says. These notified policies will cover all central government employees, employees of those state governments/UTs which use email services of the Centre and those states that choose to adopt this in future. The step was in the offing for long given the government's concern over foreign servers of Gmail and Yahoo and instances of US snooping.

The notified policies stipulate measures to ensure secure and proper access to and usage of government's IT resources and "prevent their misuse" by users (officials).

"Misuse of these resources can result in unwanted risk and liabilities for the government," the policy says. The measures hence stipulated are: "NIC may block content which, in the opinion of the organization concerned, is inappropriate, or may adversely affect the productivity of the users."

Other measures spelt out in the notification are that NIC may monitor online activities on the government network, subject to SOPs as the organization may lay down, and the power with NIC to "access, review, copy or delete" any kind of electronic communication such as files, e-mails and internet history, for "security-related reasons" under due intimation to the user.

The policy has also stipulated the terms of access to social media sites from government networks, saying users will always use "high security settings" on such sites, not post "offensive, threatening, defamatory, bullying, racist, hateful, harassing, obscene or sexist" material on Twitter or Facebook and not make any comment or post any such material that would "cause damage to the organization's reputation."

The policy has specified that besides NIC, there would not be any other e-mail service under Government of India and says auto save of password or its sharing in the government e-mail service is not permitted.

"All organizations, except those exempted under clause 14 of this policy, should migrate their e-mail services to the centralized deployment of the NIC for security reasons and uniform policy enforcement," the notification says. An exception has been made for organizations dealing with national security who have their independent mail servers.

"They can continue to operate the same provided the e-mail servers are hosted in India. However, in interest of uniform policy enforcement and security, it is recommended that these organizations should consider migrating to the core service of NIC," the notified policy says.



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