The long awakened sleeping dragon that we all know as China (when China sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold) is certainly on a warpath to be number 1, and it won’t be long before the world’s most populous nation would also end up as the world’s largest economy. Having said that, here we are with another potential first from China, where the Sky City, being a pre-fab skyscraper, is tipped to also pick up the gong of being the world’s tallest structure. Not only that, it is also said to be completed in record time, too.

We are talking about a total scheduled build time of just seven months for the Sky City, and if you were to break it down, it would approximately be 13 feet per day, which is an incredibly ambitious goal by any means. Of course, this is a whole lot safer and more sane compared to the initial plan of completing the structure in 90 days. Just how safe do you think you would be if you were to be in Sky City? Very safe actually, as it boasts of the ability to resist a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, which we do hope that the $928 million building will never have to be put to the test.

Now here we are with word that there is a new version of the Opera mobile web browser for the Android mobile operating system, where it is tipped to be the first version to do away with Opera’s Presto rendering engine while making full use of Google’s Chromium foundation. If you were to put it differently, then it would be this way – you should not run into any issues when it comes to opening up web pages as well as web apps which were specially designed for use in Chrome or majority of the other Webkit browsers.

Opera’s Webkit-based browser for Android has been made available as a public beta for a few months already, where it is now graduated from beta status and is more than ready to be used among the masses. Bear in mind that Opera will not be a Chrome clone, as this particular mobile browser also comes with its very own user interface, an article discovery service, alongside optional data compression so that users are able to save bandwidth. The Opera browser is available for those who are running devices which have Android 2.3 Gingerbread and later. [Press Release]

Do any of you remember the Yotaphone? This is a dual display smartphone that runs on the Android operating system, and at CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas, Yota devices, the company behind the Yotaphone (Captain Obvious is calling in this time around, informing you that one can tell by the name of the device) has announced a spanking new peripheral for road warriors, calling it the Yota Ruby. The Yota Ruby is a sleek LTE hotspot that comes with a tiny e-ink screen to keep up with the times, where it does seem to have taken a design page out of Apple’s playbook, while ditching aluminum in place of white plastic.

The e-ink display and a two-way power switch are located at the top, where sliding the latter to the left will enable the Ruby to behave like a secure hotspot, while sliding it to the right, and it ends up as a public access point. The e-ink display itself shows off the battery and signal status, in addition to the number of connected devices and a smiley icon that confirms public mode. At the bottom edge would be a trick flap which doubles up as both a micro-USB socket and a USB Type A plug, depending on how one positions it. Pretty neat idea, no? As for the micro-SIM slot, it remains hidden right behind, The Yota Ruby supports quad-band EDGE, plus HSPA+ and LTE for the European market at this point in time, with a battery life of approximately 16 hours of non-stop use.

It seems that Samsung is definitely not going to rest on its laurels, which is why someone with an eagle eye has spotted the trappings of a spanking new Galaxy Note device. Of course, nothing is official just yet, but we have already seen its footprints, so to speak, in AnTuTu benchmarks. The upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (unless the South Korean conglomerate is going to call it totally something else, of course), has been listed as the N7200 (considering how the Galaxy Note 2 used to be listed as the N7100, this pretty much keeps in touch with reality and history) and has appeared in several different results, too.

Chances are, the model which is most likely to be the up and coming Galaxy Note 3 would be the one listed right at the top (GT-N7200), where it ran on a version of Android which was never released yet, that is, Android 4.3, on a CPU that has been clocked at 1.6GHz. Not only that, this so happens to be the same clockspeed as the Exynos 5 Octa which is found in the I9500 Galaxy S4 handset. While the Galaxy Note 3 picked up a lower score compared to the Galaxy S4 in AnTuTu, you ought to take note that the software is probably not polished and finished just yet, so chances are the final deal is going to be a whole lot smoother and faster.

The explosion of Internet connectivity across a range of mobile devices have definitely led to more and more user input in online sites as well as apps. Take TripAdvisor for example – most of us these days, before going for a holiday would check out wherever we are going to stay using TripAdvisor as word of mouth works wonders. Hence, traffic updates on your mobile device might come from the navigational company itself, but is it really that accurate? For those of you who have given crowd-sourced traffic and navigation app Waze a go before, you will be pleased to hear that Waze has finally arrived at the Windows Phone Store.

The thing is, Waze for the Windows Phone platform is right now undergoing a private beta test, so even if you happen to have the platform on your smartphone, you are unable to download it at the moment. Israeli based Waze actually kicked off on Windows Mobile, but did not follow Microsoft to Windows Phone 7. It has been quite popular on iOS and Android where 40 million users assist other Waze members to locate the best route in order to avoid traffic jams, know where all the speed traps are, as well as the cheapest gas stations.

There is something about rugged smartphones, where you know for sure that it is capable of taking in the different knocks that a smartphone tends to go through in its lifetime. Of course, there are some of us who so happen to be more of a butterfingers than others, and we have successfully (to my dismay) drowned some of these handsets in the past either due to negligence or carelessness. The recently announced Sony Xperia ZR (which will not make its way to certain countries) is said to be available from the end of June onwards.

Wherever it is going to be launched, the Sony Xperia ZR is said to cost approximately €400, although there is also word that there the new Xperia ZR will roll out in the Netherlands for approximately €479 in July. Folks living in Belgium as well as the Nordic countries ought to have the smartphone at about the same time. Sony too, wants you to win an Xperia ZR on Facebook. You will be able to enter this competition by May 27th, where all you need to do is to answer a question, and talk about how the Xperia ZR will “play a role at your perfect pool party.” So far, the Terms and Conditions of the contest do point to the Xperia ZR having an approximate value of €400.

If you thought Pebble watch was a fantastic little gadget that saw the light of day courtesy of crowd-funding, the Agent smartwatch will surely make you stop in your tracks. Dubbed as the World’s Smartest Watch, designed and developed by Secret Labs in conjunction with House of Horology, this watch connects via Bluetooth to iPhone 4S or higher, Android 2.3 or higher firmware running devices, and Windows Phone 8. It also features wireless charging.

Read full post →Agent Smartwatch With Dual Processors A Good Pebble Rival

We all know IBM Watson is the insanely popular and expensive supercomputer that beat two former winners of Jeopardy. IBM and its various partners will now be using the system as a customer service agent. The feature is called “Ask Watson,” it will be programmed to answer questions through a variety of mediums including but not limited to smartphone apps, email, web chats and SMS. This feature is also likely to be hooked up with voice recognition as well by some partners, which will definitely make it infinitely more powerful than Siri. IBM’s partners include Nielsen, IHS, Royal Bank of Canada, ANZ Bank etc.

Watson will be powering the customer service systems of these partners, who will all develop their own branding and interface. These “Ask Watson” enabled apps are expected to released in the next few months, though at first they’re likely to be internally tested. The fact remains though, this will actually be the first time many people will get to query the great IBM Watson. Wouldn’t it be amazingly cool to be able to ask a supercomputer questions?

Approximately two weeks from now, Apple will unveil iOS 7 at WWDC 2013, due to take place on the 10th of June. A lot has been rumored about the upcoming iOS platform update, today’s rumor hints at possible integration of Vimeo and Flicker in iOS 7. In the past we’ve seen Apple slowly but deeply integrated Twitter and Facebook in to its mobile platform. The integration will reportedly be similar to that of Facebook and Twitter, third party apps will be able to access these services as well.

This doesn’t seem like a far-fetched idea. OS X already has both of these services integrated, it’s not like Apple would be going in to uncharted waters. Users will reportedly be able to upload photos directly to Flickr and Vimeo, though it is also said that since the integration isn’t fully ready, there’s a possibility it might come as a firmware update in the future. From a user’s point of view, do you think you will gain any benefit from having these two services integrated in to iOS 7? As always, Apple has not commented on this rumor. We’ll know for sure come June 10th.

Microsoft finally unveiled its next-generation Xbox, called the Xbox One, earlier today and although they didn’t disclose as much information as rival Sony did when they announced their PlayStation 4, at least they showed what the console will look like. Within its one-hour presentation, Microsoft covered some information we feel future Xbox One owners will certainly want to know.

Read full post →Xbox One: All The Official Details