BBM app to be on other platforms other than Blackberry

Yes, it sounds too good to be true, but pinging would no longer be exclusive to BlackBerry smartphones. This is not because of some technological breakthrough, nor is it due to any government regulation; the makers, formerly called Research in Motion, now BlackBerry, have decided to make the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) a multi-platform application.

BlackBerry said it would initially offer texts, photo messages and group sharing functions on devices running Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS operating systems from “the summer”, adding that it planned to roll out screen sharing, voice and video calls - all without charge - later in the year.

The move could prove disruptive to Skype, Whatsapp and other rivals.

The company added that for the app to work iPhone users would need at least iOS 6 and Android users the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Google’s software. There was no mention of Windows Phone, the software which runs the Nokia Lumia series and some HTC phones.

According to a BBC report, the BlackBerry chief executive, Thorsten Heins, revealed the surprise news at the end of his presentation at the firm’s annual developers conference in Orlando, Florida, early last week.

I just hope RIM know what they are doing!

Forget passwords - you could soon be unlocking your phone by wrinkling your nose or sticking out your tongue

Google has filed a patent that could let users unlock their smartphones and tablets using facial expressions rather than typing in passwords. 

The latest Google Android devices already have a built-in Face Unlock feature that uses facial recognition to unlock their handsets, but this patent would take the technology a step further adding additional 'liveness' features. 

When Google launched Face Unlock in 2011, as part of Android Ice Cream Sandwich, it was criticised by security experts because it could be bypassed by holding static photos up to the phone or tablet's camera.

In the update to Android Jelly Bean in July 2012, Google added a 'liveness' check in an attempt to prevent these static images being used to gain access to devices. 

This meant a user would have to blink while using Face Unlock to prove they were alive.

However, even this could be bypassed using clever photo editing tricks.

According to Google's latest U.S patent, the new system would require users to pull a specific, predeterminded facial expression.

If a patent filed by Google is approved, it could mean users would be able to unlock their smartphones by pulling faces such as frowning, smiling, poking out their tongue, wrinkling their nose, blinking and so on. The technology would compare the facial expression pulled with a previously captured photo and if the expressions matched, the user would be allowed access to their device

iSmell: Japanese firm reveals the first 'smelliphone' add-on that lets you send scents to friends

The first prototype of what's been dubbed the 'smelliphone' has been shown off by Japanese firm ChatPerf.

In a video on DigInfoTV, ChatPerf demonstrates the Scentee device, which can be attached to smartphones and used to send smells to friends.

The company claim it can also be used to create atmospheric scents while playing games or watching films, for example.

ChatPerf PR Manager Aki Yamaji said: 'Suppose you want to send a message to a friend via a social network, maybe because you know your friend it tired.

'You can use [the Scentee] to send a relaxing scent along with your message.

The Scentee device from Japanese firm ChatPerf can be attached to Apple phones and used to send smells to friends with text messages, for example. It can also be used to release atmospheric smells while playing games, such as gunpowder scents when playing shooting games. ChatPerf is hoping to launch the device and various scent tanks by September

The battery that could charge a mobile phone in less than ONE SECOND

Smart phones are more sophisticated than ever, yet the batteries that power them have remained relatively archaic – until now.

Scientists at the University of Illinois have managed to develop the most powerful microbatteries ever created, making them almost 1000 times stronger than existing lithium batteries and paving the way for smartphones that could be charged in just one second.

The new microbatteries offer both power and energy, and by tweaking the structure slightly, the researchers can fine tune them so there is a better compromise between power and energy scale.

The batteries are rechargeable and can charge 1,000 times faster than competing technologies.

Technology: Farmer Controls Cow Milking with Smartphone

A farm in Dubuque County, Iowa, is showing how improvements in technology are helping to make dairy farming more efficient.

Mark and Karen Hosch of Round Hollow Farm live on their 400-acre dairy farm. In early December 2012, they made a significant technological investment by transitioning their dairy to robotic milking. The many years of hunching to milk the cows was eased by the help of two Lely Astronaut robots. One robot can handle 60 cows a day, and each robot costs about $200,000.

Multiple cameras monitor each robot. This process allows the cows to operate on their own schedule, and not solely when the farmer is available. It also helps the farmer spend fewer hours milking and more time supervising the dairy.

Mark Hosch can even use his smartphone to track cows, watch live video feeds, and he is alerted with any problems that arise.

“The robot will call me with a voice and tell me what the problem is, and I can check to see which one is shut down or in a cage,” Mark Hosch said.

Technology: Microsoft threatened as smartphones and tablets rise

Microsoft faces a slide into irrelevance in the next four years unless it can make progress in the smartphone and tablet markets, because the PC market will continue shrinking, warns the research group Gartner.

It says a huge and disruptive shift is underway, in which more and more people will use a tablet as their main computing device, researchers say.That will also see shipments of Android devices dwarf those of Windows PCs and phones by 2017. Microsoft-powered device shipments will almost be at parity with those of Apple iPhones and iPads - the latter a situation not seen since the 1980s.

In a new forecast published on Thursday morning, Gartner says that by 2015 shipments of tablets will outstrip those of conventional PCs such as desktops and notebooks, as Android and Apple's iOS become increasingly dominant in the overall operating system picture. Android in particular will be installed on more than a billion devices shipped in 2014, says Carolina Milanesi, the analyst who led the research.

For Microsoft, income from Windows and Office licences are key to its revenues: per-PC Windows licences generate about 50% of its profits, and Office licences almost all the rest.But while it dominates the PC market, it is a distant third in the smartphone and tablet markets. Latest figures suggest that Windows Phone, its smartphone OS, shipped on about 3% of devices in fourth quarter of 2012, compared to 20% for Apple's iPhone and over 70% for Android - of which 50% connected to Google's servers and 20% were "white box" Android phones in China which do not use Google services.

"Android is going to get to volumes that are three times those of Windows," says Milanesi. "From a consumer perspective, the question becomes: what software do you want to have to get the widest reach on your devices? BlackBerry may say that its QNX software [used as the basis of BB10 on its new phones] can go into cars and phones, but Android is already in fridges. That's the challenge."