new online music recognition services in Twitter

It is reported today, Twitter will recently announce a new online music recognition services.  Today, they showed up a screen shot of this services without further details. Twitter will collect all the information of user's network, their past post, and history of listened songs and generate a list of songs that users might be interested. This services can also show up musics their friends are listening.
This news is not supervised since Twitter has bought an online music company  "We are Hunted". Twitter will make some moves by using it.

Number of Pc sold drop by 14%

It has been studied the number of personal computers sold in the first season in 2013. Statistically, it shows this number drops about 14% compare to the number of first season in 2012. This number was the largest drop in the past 20 years. People consider Windows 8 might be the reason why the sells decelerate. Users still don't like the new OS windows 8. If  a user wants the full functionality of Windows 8, he needs a touch screen, which will cost him more. Studied have shown that users don't prefer buy a touch screen with a more expensive price.

Google Play 4.0 released

Google Play 4.0 now is available for any users who has Android 2.2 or above to download.  Google play was planned to released on I/0 conference 2013, but surprisingly, Google announced it one year in advance. Another news came from Google is it deleted over thousands Android app for the past a few months. The number of app deleted reached the peak in February, about 60,000 apps was deleted.
The new Google Play provides users larger and nicer icons as well as a more user friendly user interface.

Google wants to buy whatsApp

It is reported that Google is approaching the final bidding for buying WhatsApp. It may cost Google 1 billion to let WhatsApp be part of it.  WhatsApp is the most popular mobile instant messengers, similar to Viber,Kik etc. It is one of the top paid app in over 100 countries and charges $1 for annual ad-free subscription.
Facebook made offer to WhatsApp last year, but it  didn't work out.
Google VS Facebook.

EA extends its field

It is reported that one of the largest Game company EA has recently announced an app that helps users to share pictures and musics on their social network.  This is free app is named as "Vue".  User's can use this app to find a match between their favorite picture and proper music that might taste the favor of that picture from "Rdio" and "Spotify".Although, this app is not what EA used to focus on. But, still it sounds like a pretty good app that helps users to wake up their pictures stored in the hard disk.

Facebook phone

Facebook will release its own designed smart phone and couple brand new Android apps on early Thursday's conference. This phone was designed with HTC. It will be equipped with Android OS. This smartphone will focus on user's social life such as finding shopping mall, restaurant and how to reach user's friends etc. Advisement is a critical components for Facebook's revenue. How Facebook is going to embedded in this smartphone, Let's see !

One month to go

April is coming soon, it will be my last month as an undergraduate student studying  in a university. Looking back those four and half years living in Canada, there are sorrow and happiness that will be remembered all my life. I will never regret to switch my major from Business to Computing Science then ultimately to Mathematics. It is a nice and long journey I have been through and realized what is indeed my enjoyable  things I would like to for the rest of life. I am happy to have learned Mathematics, it teaches me to distinguish between orders and chaos, to see this world differently and to know about God, the world creator.
God tells me to be nice to people, to be be patient  and to follow him. He always has a perfect plan for me, God is with me.

Facebook made 280 billion revenue in game

It is reported that game developers have helped Facebook made almost 280 billion dollars last year. Although games are not what Facebook is focusing on, but it stills hoping more and more game developers can develop games on its platform, in which to attract players to spend more times even money on it.
It is said that  there are more than 2.5 billion users per month will play games on Facebook. There are 20% of the users will install on desktop application to play games.
Facebook seems will more attention on its "game players".

Google Now - a better Siri

It is reported that Google has submitted their app Google now to the Apple. Users probably can download it from the App store in the near future. Google now is a artificial intelligent applications  that helps users to get right information at right time. Some now similar to the application Siri developed by the Apple. Many people think Google Now is better than Siri, since it has a tremendously huge database supported by the powerful Google search engine. 

Samsung is working on watch device

The latest news said that the Samsung, one of the Asia's biggest company has been preparing the watch product for a long time. “We are working very hard to get ready for it. We are preparing products for the future, and the watch is definitely one of them.”. This becomes interesting to see because it is said Apple has been working this type of watch product iWatch, and they probably going to release it later this year.  Samsung has been the rising star, because of the great smartphone they released The galaxy series.

Google reader will be closed

The news came last week said that Google will close its 8 online services : Google reader, Building Making, Cloud Connect, GUI builder, Search API (shopping). CalDAV API, and Google Voice App (BlackBerry) and Snapseed.
Google Reader helps users can collect online web contents according to users' preference, and export followed users and starred articles.
Google Reader was first launched in 2005 and will be closed on July 1st. Users can download all their personal information before that date.
Google officially announced "usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products."

Surface is in low selling rate

It is reported that there are only 100 million Surface RT and 400,000 Surface Pro have been sold since they are dropped to the market. This news is far away from what Microsoft was expected. However, during the same time, Apple have sold 20,290,000 iPads, which covers 51% of market sells. Huge difference in selling the tablet makes the department of Window in Microsoft feel more pressure. This is obviously not a good sign for them.

Not in good mood

I have been in sad mood these days.I feel the whole world is going against me e.g No good/bad news from any of the graduate school I 've applied, Zero!Nothing! It's even better to have some bad news coming, at least I don't need to be patience and be hoping something good will happen. School work makes me feel sick these days, I've having working on a project for like 3 days and I made some process, but my professor told me today that I was on a totally wrong track, therefore I have to start it over again. The horrible thing is that the project is due on Sunday. For less 24 hours, there is a paper due.  I just felt I am too stressed out.
Other things like, low grade in papers, power outage one nights, those are really making me disappointed.
I don't know what to do and where to go.

I prey to god that tomorrow will be getting better.

iWatch is being developing

It is reported that Apple was developing its new product: iWatch There are about 100 developers in the group responsible for the product. People predicted that iWatch is able to do what iPhone and iPad do including phone call, map and even a run keeper. Besides, it is said that the biggest problem for their developing team is the life of the battery. So fat, it can only last about 2 days. They expect to extend it 4 or 5 days.
Let's see what it can do probably probably on December.

ipad mini outsell iPad

iPad mini has been released for about half year,it has overtake the iPad in sales this year. There is fact we can not ignore that the time Chinese buyers were able to but iPad Mini  was set on December, two months later than American and European buyers. The number will become more incredible if we count that part.

It is analyzed by medias that now consumers are more prefer to have smaller screen with cheaper price.

Apple expect to sell 55 million iPad minis and 33 million iPads this year. 

Mozilla released Firefox OS

Mozilla has just announced at MSC 2013 annual conference event that they will launch their self-developed platform Firefox OS sometime in the 2nd half of this year.
Firefox OS was developed through the HTML 5. This means that any developer who is familiar with web programming in HTML 5 can write app for it.
It is reported that Mozilla will first launch their equipment in Asia, East Europe and Latin America.

Google I/O conference in May

The annual Google I/O conference for developers will be opened for the registration on Wednesday, March 13 at 7:00 a.m PT.
The price of  the ticket is $900 for general attendees and $300 for academic attendees.
Google always announced the lasted product in this conference. For example, in 2012 they announced Android 4.1 Jellybean. Someone predicted that they will announced Google Glasses this year on the conference.
The sweet part is that Google gave away valuable staff to attendees. Last year, they gave away a Nexus 7 tablet. Therefore, the ticket looks like a pretty good investment.
Yeah, Look forward to going there.!

Skype took over in 2012

It is reported that Skype's voice and video communication has increased by 44% to 167 million minutes in 2012. Many carriers feel huge mounting pressure.  Not only Skype, but also Google(Gtalk),WeChat, Viber, Nimbuzz have also become popular among thousands of users. Facebook also joins the market. It adds voice calling application to its messenger application. Now users will have many choices to set up their social  communication. It can be predicated it will become more competitive in this market  in the future

Facebook was hacked

Facebook said on Friday, it had become a target of a series of attack by  an unknown hacker group.
Facebook said , they were 'sophisticated attack', since they have found clues in their employees' laptops or mobile devices. Twitter first said over 250,000 users' information have been compromised, but Facebook denied.

Surface Pro is coming soon

Microsoft has announced that their new product Surface Pro will released on Feb 9th in U.S and Canada.
Surface Pro runs on a Intel chop chip and it is equipped with full features of Window 8 Operation system. However, tech writers give it negative evaluation after early review. Briefly speaking, It's too heavy to carry around. Its battery life is only 4 hours not even half of any Mac pro or iPad. There are only around 23G hardware storage for the freest model.  Customers has to spend extra $120 on the fancy keyboard. Not worth buying it. I would like buy a similar Mac Pro with cheaper price.

128G ipad

Apple have announced that they are going to release a new ipad with 128 gigabytes of storage capacity, twice as much as any previous model. Everything else is the same as what have put in the 4th generation.
The question is "Do we need that many gigabytes ?".
128G approximately equal 100 DVD-quality movies, 30 Blue-ray disks, 30,000 songs or 40,000 photos.
Potentially, this product is targeted for users who are using large amount of data. e,g architects, doctors or audio engineers.
That' s all I know. You can buy it on Feb 5th. $799 (with Wi-Fi only), $929 (Wi-Fi and cellular).
I won't but it. 16G it's more than enough

New tools from Facebook

In the middle of January,Facebook had introduced its new tool: Graph Search. Mark Zuckerberg said it will be one of the critical component for Facebook's future plan. They will invest quite a lot effort on it. They hope Graph Search will become its 3rd main function on the web (News feed, Time line, Graph Search). Graph Search provides probably everything user find on the web including LinkedIn, Yelp, Foursquare, Match or similar search engine like Google does. Let's see what they can do on it !

RIM's future plan

BlackBerry 10  is coming to be released. Unexpected changes may occur after BlackBerry 10 is released. The CEO of RIM Thorsten Heins said recently, they are evaluating company's future developing plan. It 's possible that they sell their hardware department and the authorization of software.The main task now is prepare for releasing BlackBerry 10.  RIM hopes they can earn part of customers from iPhone and Google.

1st show next week for

Jobs, an coming biographical firm based on the true story of Steve Jobs, one of the greatest entrepreneur in the 20th century, the co-founder ,president, and CEO of Apple Inc. This films shows the transformation from an enthusiastic college guy to a life thinker, ultimately he changed the way people see this world. Now,Apple Inc one of the most successful electronics producer and seller is leading our world to a brand new stage.

Facebook Phones

Facebook will be holding a pres conference on Wednesday next week at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. People expect Facebook will public their new product called "Facebook Phone" which is more likely a Facebook operation systems working on the smart phones rather than a brand new phone.Although, Facebook said they don't want to build their own phones ,  no one knows exactly what it is since the company keep it under the ground. Either it is a phone or an operation system , people will consider it puts into competition with Google and Apple.

This blog created by Yiwen(Rate) Yuan is used for CMPT 376W only. If there is any concern or issue, please contact my SFU email  address :yya69@sfu.ca.
Here is my plan for this  blog during the semester : I would like to post weekly IT news I read most recently and what I think of it. Topics include:  New Tech knowledge, computers, smart phones, IT business, games etc. My main source of news are Internet, newspapers,magazine or academic papers.  You are welcomed to have any discussion with me if any one of my post interests you.