Next week THQ is Auctioning off their Assessts, including The WWE License, What if GTA V developer Rockstar Games picked it up?. Here is a small fan-made video footage showing just a glimpse of how WWE 14 will look if develop by GTA V developer Rockstar Games.

THQ's assests are up for sale on Tuesday to the highest bidder, so we should find out by Wednesday if THQ will keep the license for WWE '14 or another company will be picking it up.
If THQ indeed decide to sell WWE franchise license, which studio should pick it up, Rockstar Games, EA Sports, Ubisoft or any other?. Let us know your views to us in the comment section below.
Enjoy the fan-made footage below:






Source: Gamepur

These are one of the many creative and beautiful tech accessories in the wild last week at the 2013 International CES conference in Las Vegas. hope you like it.

1. The Case Purse

2. Memorex Speaker

3. The Karl Case

4. Fashionable Stickers

Design and build
While we didn’t get a whole lot of time with the phone, what we had was good enough to formulate a solid first impression. Starting with the build and design, Nokia hasn’t deviated too much from the first-gen Lumias. The basic form factor remains pretty much the same as the 920 is carved out of a single block of polycarbonate. This unibody approach makes it durable as there’s less chance of anything snapping off if it falls. It is extremely well-built and sturdy in your hands, albeit a bit chunky. This extra bit of heft could be attributed to the image stabilisation used in the camera, so we guess there was no avoiding it. At 185g, it’s very much manageable in your hands, although it might get uncomfortable in your pocket. The size is not a big deal either.

The 4.5-inch IPS display is nothing short of amazing. Due to the high pixel per inch count (332ppi), it is ‘Retina-grade’ and images and text look sharp and vivid. The display is also super sensitive, more than usual, so even the slightest gestures are easily picked up. The buttons are all placed where they should be and are within reach of your thumb. It’s good that Nokia decided to place the power button on the side as placing it on top would have been uncomfortable.

  The phone is powered by a 1.5GHz Qualcomm SoC (MSM8960) which doesn’t do much for the UI but helps in image and video processing. The interface is smooth for the most part, but the stutter bug will pay you a visit occasionally. This could just be an issue with the pre-sale unit or WP8 itself; we’ll know for sure once the phone is officially launched here. The 920 does not have expandable storage, so you’ll have to make do with the 32GB onboard memory.


The Camera
Next, let’s dive straight into the one feature that everyone’s raving about – the PureView camera. This time, the PureView title refers to the optical image stabilisation onboard rather than the 41MP sensor. Nokia calls it floating lens technology, where the camera lens actually balances on a bunch of springs so it can compensate for user movement. That coupled with a large aperture value of f/2.0 and we’re looking at some pretty god low-light shots. Let’s head straight to the samples.


This was taken in the corner of our labs with very low ambient light. Even with the flash off, the Lumia 920 will fire it while focussing and then capture the image. The result is pretty remarkable as you can see, however, there was this minute blur that we simply couldn’t get rid of, no matter how steady our hands were.

Has huge potential
After spending about an hour with the handset, we must say that the Lumia 920 has huge potential when it launches in India next month. Nokia is still tight lipped about the pricing, but we'd guess it would be anything between Rs 35,000 to Rs 40,000. The device is built like a tank and the finish and choice of materials easily rivals the top dogs like the One X and even the iPhone 5. The hardware is all there and now all that’s left is for the software platform to mature, and fast. Apps are always going to be the deciding factor between platforms, which could offset the sales of the 920 in the start. But even without apps, the Lumia 920 is a good phone and has some powerful imaging capabilities. There are plenty of features in the 920 that we still need to put to the test once we get our hands on a retail unit, but for now, we feel that the Lumia 920 has potential for greatness.

Source: Tech2

At present Rockstar Games has only announced Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) for PS3 and Xbox 360. The firm is keeping quiet on PC version of most anticipated game of 2013 (GTA V). However this hasn't stopped one eager GTA series fan from rounding up 10 separate bits of evidence suggesting GTA V for PC will happen indeed sometime in near future.

Here is what GTA Forums user "S1LV3R_W0LF" said about his finding, "Ok first of all I wanna make clear that I know there are some threads about GTAV PC, and also there was a lot of topics about rumors. But the purpose of my thread is not to talk about rumors or to talk about if there is or not a version or to be transformed in another useless debate/ flame war with consoles.

These are all facts, that I mentioned before but that people miss, because they hardly read the whole threads and this time I'll post all the sources of these informations, instead of just listing them. So I think once and for all I should make this thread that originated a few articles on the Internet on websites I didn't even knew with the list I made but that many people questioned because there were no facts to support it, ok here we go:"

Check out HERE, a total of 10 Evidence which confirms that GTA V PC will indeed happen in near future.

Few of these evidence are pretty weak, but taking into consideration all the facts mention, this indeed makes a pretty compelling case.

Do you agree with all these evidence listed by "S1LV3R_W0LF"?. Let us know your views to us in the comment section below.

source: Gamepur

Fallout 4 details are FAKE, the reddit user (GNR_Informant) himself admitted. According to the recent update posted by the user on Reddit, he has not proof (about all the Fallout 4 details leaked) because it was all LIE.
Check out below what false details user GNR_Informant leaked about Fallout 4.

• First and foremost, the game will take place in Boston, and be kind of a direct sequel to Fallout 3 with a few groups returning.
  
  
• From what it sounds like, “The
  Institute” is pretty much the downtown DC or New Vegas of this game.
  Boston is going to be unlike anything we’ve seen in a Fallout game
  before, with buildings more on par with cyberpunk and retro-futurism.
• Androids play a big part in this
  game. The railroad from Fallout 3 is a faction. The enemies of the
  railroad is “the Plantation” — a group who force Androids to farm so
  that Humans can get food. The Institute is highly advanced and probably
  obtained or built their own GECK to start a farm.
• Due to complaints about using Super
  Mutants and the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 3 excessively and going
  against the lore too much, Bethesda has decided to avoid using these
  groups. Bethesda wants to make a new “race” (think Ghoul, Super Mutant)
  which will be central to Boston. Bethesda is currently looking at
  Lovecraftian fiction since Boston is around “Lovecraft Country”.
• Bethesda has no plans to reinvent
  the leveling up system to make it more like Skyrim and want to make
  Fallout 4 more distinct from Skyrim since of the complaints that
  Oblivion and Fallout 3 were too similar. Bethesda is thinking about
  introducing a system, similar to Skyrim, where your skills can level up
  if you perform certain tasks.

source: Gamepur 

Rockstar Games has released some brand new screenshots of the most awaited game of 2013, "Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V)". The game is schedule to arrive in Spring 2013 for PS3 and Xbox 360, PC port of the game is not yet officially announced.

                               
Trouble taps on your window again with this next chapter in the Grand Theft Auto universe, set in the city of Los Santos and its surrounding hills, countryside and beaches.
A bold new direction in open-world freedom, storytelling, mission-based gameplay and online multiplayer, Grand Theft Auto V focuses on the pursuit of the almighty dollar in a re-imagined, present-day Southern California.

Check out brand new screenshots below.

You’re bored at home asking “What should I do?” Meanwhile people nearby are shooting Instagrams of the fun events they’re at. Now is a free iOS app that uses Instagram’s API to sort through photos in real-time, organize those from the same time and place into events, and show you the events as a feed. Now harnesses the powerful Instagram API to help you discover parties, concerts, bar nights, and share them too.
French developer Ben Broca bootstrapped Now into existence last year, and it’s been gaining steam with its recent 2.0 update that made it accessible worldwide. Now employs an intelligent combination of programmatic photo processing and human curation to give users an accurate look at what’s going on around them.
                   
First Now uses Instagram’s API to suck in all the photos taken nearby and clumps them together by time and location. Now super users then read the photo captions, choose the best shots, and organize them into categorized and titled events. This lets Now determine that 20 people posting photos of a musician with the caption “Shuggie Otis” at West 16th and 9th Ave in New York is actually a concert for Shuggie Otis at the Highline Ballroom.
                           
Events with the most photos and likes bubble to the top of your feed. Click through one to check out all the photos shot there. You can also filter the Now feed to see only music, art, parties, food, outdoors, or other types of events. And if you’re feeling some wanderlust, you can drag the map to anywhere in the world and search to see what’s going on in Tokyo, Rio, or rural Slovakia.
Now also lets you share experiences with the app’s community and your social networks. Just select a nearby place, choose to include photos taken their by other people or insert your own, add a description, and post away. You can follow other Now’ers to keep up with their adventures.
In the future, Broca hopes Now can make sure you don’t miss cool things in your neighborhood. It’s considering notifications of especially popular events nearby, and it has an email newsletter highlighting top venues. A clear route to monetization that Broca is considering would let even promoters pay for sponsored placement in the Now feed.
                           
For the moment, though, Broca is just happy Instagram is so generous with its photos, “I think a lot of people underestimate the Instagram API. We were surprised at how powerful it is.” He says most apps built on it just recreate the Instagram experience on the web, and don’t actually do anything unique, but Now focuses on “the real-time photos API that gives you every photo in a geographic area. We use it in a smarter way to show you interesting information about those photos.”
Instagram itself is doing some innovative things with its data set, like beefing up its “trending tab”, adding a photo map, and creating galleries of popular hashtags. But Broca doesn’t think the company will ever get too serious about events, leaving room for Now.
And as for Instagram’s owner Facebook’s influence on the future of its sweet API? Broca simply says, “I hope they don’t change it too much.”

Source: TechCrunch

                             
iHome makes so many different audio products that even the PR people have a hard time keeping them straight. The new lineup introduced at CES is no exception, and here for your enjoyment are some highlights from my personal tour of the company’s 2013 products.

Lightning docks

The $150 iDL100 is a triple-charging stereo clock radio with dual Lightning docks—one an iPhone or iPod touch, the other for and iPad or iPad mini—plus a USB port to connect older iOS devices (or even a third Lightning-based product if you’ve got on). You can charge and play music from any of the devices—there’s even an auxiliary jack for playing from other hardware—and you can set multiple alarms to wake you to music or playlists from your devices or from the built-in FM radio.A step down is the $100 iDL45, which is basically the same product but with a single Lightning dock instead.

Bluetooth speakers

iHome’s $200 iBT44 is a follow-up to 2011’s iP4 boombox-styled dockable speaker. But this time around, it’s all about Bluetooth, which lets you wirelessly stream music from iOS, Android, or other Bluetooth-enabled hardware. (The dock slot is still there, but now just as a place to rest your weary portable device.) It runs on six D batteries or wall power, features a five-band EQ, and comes with a magnetic remote that gloms onto the metal front so you won’t lose it.

The iBT30 is a Bluetooth version of the company’s iW3 AirPlay speaker. Like the iW3, the iBT30 is a rechargeable speaker that sits atop it charging base. Stream your music to it wirelessly and then you can just pick it up and move it around the house until the battery runs out. It also includes an auxiliary jack for direct playback and a USB port to charge one of your devices.
The $80 iBT20 is a Bluetooth clock radio that also includes a USB charging port. It’s got an FM radio built-in with six presets, SRS TruBass for better sound, and a backup battery to make sure your alarm goes off even when your power goes out.

Headphones

The $100 iB85 are Bluetooth headphones with a built-in mic and on-ear remote control functions. They feature a padded headband and ear cushions, charge via a Micro-USB connection, and fold up for better portability (especially using the included travel pouch).

The $20 iB10 sport earhooks with “cord cruncher” cable designed for active (read: exercising) audio lovers. These are fairly standard earbud with sport hooks to keep them from falling off while running and the like. The neat (or gimmicky, depending on your point of view) feature is the retracting, sheathed cable that prevents tangles and limits cable length for when you, say, have your player in an arm band.

source – letlearn

Samsung’s Windows RT tablet, the Ativ Tab, will not be sold in the U.S. Mike Abary, head of Samsung’s PC and tablet business in the U.S., told CNET at CES that his company shelved the release because its retail partners do not see enough demand. (Abary did not specify if the Ativ Tab will be launched in non-U.S. markets).
The Ativ Tab is powered by Qualcomm chips, and the announcement comes, rather unfortunately, just days after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, with an Ativ Tab on hand, joined Qualcomm Chief Executive Paul Jacobs during his CES keynote address to extol their partnership.
Abary also said that the amount of investment it would take to educate consumers about the benefits of Windows RT was another factor. As he told CNET:

There wasn’t really a very clear positioning of what Windows RT meant in the marketplace, what it stood for relative to Windows 8, that was being done in an effective manner to the consumer. When we did some tests and studies on how we could go to market with a Windows RT device, we determined there was a lot of heavy lifting we still needed to do to educate the customer on what Windows RT was. And that heavy lifting was going to require pretty heavy investment. When we added those two things up, the investments necessary to educate the consumer on the difference between RT and Windows 8, plus the modest feedback that we got regarding how successful could this be at retail from our retail partners, we decided maybe we ought to wait.

This is another step back for Windows RT, which is floundering in the face of competition from Windows 8 and Android tablets, and may be dealt a further blow once Intel Atom Bay Trail tablets are released later this year. Abary said, however, that Samsung may reconsider Windows RT devices if a strong enough market develops.

 You are not who you think you are. Your personality and identity is significantly more malleable than you realize. With a few simple tricks, you can exploit your brain's innate functionality to change just about anything about yourself. Here's how.

You Are Not Necessarily the Person You Think You Are

You are not who you are, but rather the product of many influences. The saying "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" exists for a reason: the longer you've been the person you think you are, the harder it becomes to change. The thing is, you can dramatically change who you are. It's actually not so much that it's difficult to change, but that you've developed patterns and habits that make it easier to do things the way you do them. Trying something in a new way can feel very awkward, it will be generally less efficient by virtue of being something new to you, and it often lacks excitement for you when it involves giving up the comfort associated with your way.
That's not to say you aren't born with some inherent abilities, but most of what you consider part of your identity is a product of influence. While we don't know the exact ratio of nature to nurture, there is undoubtedly a combination of both that makes us who we are. We have a tendency to think that change is difficult, but it's really just a matter of changing your influence. You're probably familiar with Stockholm syndrome-the term used to describe how hostage victims tend to develop positive feelings towards their captors. Stockholm syndrome isn't a kind of brainwashing by the captor; instead, the victim adapts to the poor situation he or she is in. If most people can adapt to something as awful as being kidnapped, most people can adapt to smaller positive changes in their own lives. You can even make enormous changes if you're willing to put in the work and you provide yourself with the proper influences. We're going to look at how to do that on high and low levels, from priming your brain to manipulating your own emotions, and also look at how your environment and the people you know shape your life.
Most of these methods won't make you feel comfortable, and, at times, they may sound a bit crazy, but it is possible to "hack" your own brain. Here are just a few ways to do it.

Priming Your Brain

Priming is a ridiculously simple technique because all it involves is talking to yourself. On the dull end of the spectrum, it's similar to self-affirmation. On the crazier end of the spectrum, it bears some similarities with neuro-linguistic programming. Priming your brain involves reciting a given set of words that are designed to alter your mindset. It is not brainwashing and it cannot make you do anything you don't want to do. What it can accomplish, however, is putting you into a state of mind that will be more useful to you with a given situation or task.
Before we get into the specifics of how to prime your brain, let's talk about how and why it works. If you were to say the word mustard out loud, and then you were to see a portion of the word later, you'd be reminded of mustard. For example, if you were to say "I must have this" you might be reminded of mustard because of the word must. If you were hungry and liked mustard, you may even want some. It's the same phenomenon that compels you to buy a particular brand of shampoo that you saw on television even if you 1) don't remember seeing the commercial, and 2) couldn't care less what kind of shampoo you use. This is essentially how priming works, and it's all thanks to your memory.
While you're not going to remember everything you say, that doesn't mean what you say is gone forever. While everything stored in your recent memory may not be immediately accessible, all you really need to bring something up is a trigger word. This is conceptually similar to using acronyms as a memory tool (e.g. Roy G. Biv) but isn't designed to help you actually remember anything. Instead, the goal is to place common words that, when apart, have no real specific value, but when together, have an associative value that make you think of happy things, sad things, specific people, or ambition. If any of those common words come up again later in the day, you'll immediately associate that word with the associative value of the group. Here's an example:

• drive
• do
• go
• make
• objective
• important
• create
• commitment
• purpose
• enthusiasm
• eager
• motivation

This is a list of words synonymous with or related to ambition. It's designed to be read aloud to put you in a more ambitious mindset, focusing your thoughts and priming your brain to react ambitiously when these words, or portions of these words, come up later in your day.
Another exercise involves taking a shorter list of priming words and making a sentence with it. Here's an example:

• the
• smiled
• looked
• girl
• and

These words can form the sentence "the girl looked and smiled," which should bring to mind pleasant associations for most people. Constructing sentences out of word lists (which you can create yourself) can help put you in the right mindset.
These two methods can be used to prime your brain. They are not magic tricks that will instantly make you feel happy, ambitious, or whatever, but they can help to provide you with the mindset you need to better accomplish your daily tasks.
For more reading on priming, and a look at some really interesting studies, don't forget to check out the references for this article.

Using Your Emotions

If you've ever found yourself making out-of-character decisions based on your emotional state—such as binging on ice cream after a breakup—you know how easily your feelings can overtake your actions. Rather than letting your emotions lead you towards poor judgment and irrational behavior, however, you can learn to compensate for different emotional states and to fabricate emotions to alter your mood. In order to do that you need to, simply put, get in touch with your feelings. The idea isn't so much to cry into a pillow about your wasted childhood, but understand what you're feeling when you're feeling it, what the root cause is, and what you can do about it. We're going to take a look at how you can dissect your emotional state to use it to your advantage, and also look at how you can fabricate emotion to change how you're feeling.

Take an Acting Class

You can't really control your emotions if you don't understand them, and one of the best ways to understand them is to take an acting class. To some this may sound fun, and to others this may sound like hell. Love it or hate it, acting lessons are one of the best ways to explore how and why you feel certain things. Your goal should be to find a class that will make you uncomfortable every time you go. In my experience, any class teaching the Meisner technique is very effective if you put a lot of effort into the exercises. It can be slow, tedious, and uncomfortable, but it's capable of bringing out emotion you might not realize you had.

Make Yourself Uncomfortable

Your emotions aren't in full force if you're not really doing anything, so you need to put yourself in uncomfortable situations in order to bring them out. This doesn't mean you should make yourself feel horrible, but that you should go out and do things that you might resist because you're worried about the downsides. Meeting new people is something that makes most people uncomfortable, and it's a great place to start, especially if it's a first date. Try new things that scare you. If you notice you're glued to the couch and don't want to get up, do the opposite. Spend time with people you don't like. Go to a movie you're sure you'll hate. Your experiences won't always be pleasant, but they should incite emotion that you can later analyze and better understand.

Keep Track of How You Feel

Like an abbreviated diary, every time you have an emotional reaction to something, write it down. You don't need much detail, but just a sentence or two noting the emotion you're experiencing and the (possible) cause. For example, I get extremely irritable when I'm hungry. I will lose my temper far more easily when I'm hungry, so whenever I notice myself thinking irrational (and sometimes hateful) things, I always remind myself that I'm just hungry, I'll eat in a minute, and the "asshole" who accidentally missed the garbage can and didn't notice is mostly a result of my frustrated stomach. Until I started to pay attention, I never really noticed that I was a jerk whenever I was hungry. Instead, I just thought I was a jerk. This is a simple example, but the point is this: pay attention to how you feel and the other issues currently present, and you'll find it much easier to manage your negative emotions.

Emote in Front of the Mirror

Fabricating emotion is difficult. Once you understand your emotions you'll find it a bit easier, but it helps to be able to recall how it feels, physically, to emote. We all know how to smile, for example, but you can probably count more fake smiles in family photographs than you can real ones. If you don't know how to create an authentic smile (also known as the Duchenne smile), it will be very obvious to everyone around you.
The easiest way to learn to fake expressions is to practice them in the mirror. You can try them out to see what you look like and you'll immediately know if they're passable or not. You'll also note that it feels physically different to create an authentic-looking emotion than it does to create a fake-looking emotion. For example, an authentic smile shows more in the eyes than it does in your mouth. When someone smiles a true smile, their eyes wrinkle (creating "crows feet") because a new musicle—the orbicularis oculi muscle—is used. You'll come to remember this feeling and be able to replicate it away from the mirror after a little practice.
It's not necessarily easy to emote in front of the mirror, but that's not as hard as you think. If your goal is simply to learn to smile better, you'll get there if you just stare at yourself for awhile. Eventually it will get so ridiculous that you'll have to laugh. If you're less patient, you can try to make yourself laugh by making strange faces or just being ridiculous. If you're comfortable, have a friend over to help. For other emotions, you simply need to find a source of that emotion and bring it into play in front of the mirror. If you've employed any of the previously discussed techniques, you may already have a reserve. Alternatively, watch a movie that makes you laugh or cry and do it by the mirror. (Yes, this is absolutely a strange thing to do, but it'll work.) If you're interested in anger, you should have no problem getting there by just complaining to yourself or to a friend on the phone.
Emoting in front of the mirror is going to be strange and awkward at first, but after a few tries you'll get the hang of it and be able to create authentic expressions on demand. These expressions do surface from genuine emotion, so repeating them can actually make you feel happier/sadder/angrier/etc. through repetition. If you need to change your mood and your mindset, the ability to fake it ‘til you make it is very, very useful.

Consider Your Health

Anything you do is much easier if you're healthy—and that goes for mental as well as physical health. These methods won't be terribly helpful if you're seriously depressed. If you're not sleeping, eating well, and/or getting a reasonable amount of physical activity in each day, you're going to find them difficult as well. You can do pretty much everything better if you take care of your mind and your body, so don't look at anything you've read here as a panacea for the problems in your life. Everything here assumes that you take reasonably good care of yourself and generally start your day in a good place. If you're not feeling good on most days, you need to take care of those problems before you decide to start playing mind tricks with yourself. Always be healthy first.

Amazon has launched AutoRip, a service that gives customers free MP3 versions of CDs they've purchased anytime since 1998.
Even better, customers who purchase a new CD will receive their digital copy before the actual, physical CD arrives at their doorstep.
"What would you say if you bought music CDs from a company 15 years ago, and then 15 years later that company licensed the rights from the record companies to give you the MP3 versions of those CDs ... and then to top it off, did that for you automatically and for free? Well, starting today, it's available to all of our customers – past, present, and future – at no cost," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO.
AutoRip currently has some 50,000 albums in its database, with more on the way. The quality of the ripped MP3 CDs is 256 Kbps.
Users will be able to play their music through a web-based player as well as any Cloud Player compatible device, including Android and iOS devices, Kindle Fire, Roku, Samsung Smart TVs and Sonos.
The service is now live, and users should be able to see a notification in their Cloud Player that AutoRip is operational.

                      
China's ZTE has teamed up with an unnamed European carrier to build a smartphone based on Firefox OS, Bloomberg reports. The companies plan to launch the device in Europe this year.
According to CEO of ZTE’s U.S. unit Cheng Lixin, the company might also launch a Firefox OS-based device in the U.S. in 2013.
“We closely monitor the ecosystem and how it evolves. If that is ready and if consumer studies support that data, then we may launch one in U.S. also this year,” Cheng said.
He did not disclose any additional details about the device's specifications or pricing.
Vice president of products at Mozilla Jay Sullivan confirmed the company is working with ZTE, as well as Qualcomm and TCL on Firefox OS-based devices.
Mozilla had announced Firefox OS in July 2012 as a fully open alternative to Android, promising first devices would arrive in 2013. It seems they'll be on schedule, though the road ahead is long and hard, especially since Android and iOS are quickly overtaking market share from smaller competitors.
Image credit: Mozilla

                      


On a hopeful evening in August 2012, a roomful of NASA employees held their breath as they watched a rover named Curiosity attempt a landing that was no short of a miracle. After what they dubbed the "seven minutes of terror," the control room erupted with emotion as Curiosity's wheels safely touched the surface of Mars.
Curiosity rover will drive around the Gale Crater in a mission to determine if Mars could ever support microbial life. This information will serve as the foundation for possible manned missions to the Red Planet.
Curiosity — who has assumed a female personality on NASA's social networks — is different from the any other rover to ever land on Mars. For starters, Curiosity is 10 feet long, 7 feet tall and five times heavier than her predecessors Spirit and Opportunity, twin rovers that NASA launched in 2003. To put it in more tangible terms, Curiosity is about the same size as a Mini Cooper at 1,928 pounds.
No space is wasted on the $2.5 billion Curiosity rover. She is packed with a cutting-edge scientific payload that allows her to explore Mars like a human would. Here is a rundown of just some of the hardware that the rover uses on the mysterious Red Planet.

How Curiosity Snaps Photos of the Red Planet

If you've kept up with the latest news about Curiosity's findings, you have probably seen the incredible, high-res images she has beamed from the Red Planet. The rover uses 17 different types of cameras to snap these images — in both black and white and color — and high-definition video.
The first camera the rover used was her Mars Decent Imager (MARDI), which was turned on as she completed her white-knuckle descent onto the Red Planet. The 2-megapixel wide-angle camera recorded a full-color, HD video of that landing so that we can relive those seven minutes whenever we want.
Next up on the rover is the Mars Hand Lens Imager, which captures extremely close-up images of things like soil, rocks and ice. Mounted on Curiosity's arm, this camera is so advanced that it can reveal details of materials that are smaller than the width of a human hair. Curiosity has also used this camera to snap incredible self portraits.
Built at about human-eye level, Curiosity's Mars Science Laboratory Mast Camera takes color photos and video of the rover's surroundings. Essentially, this camera sees what she "sees" — the Red Planet terrain or materials collected with the rover's arm, for example. This camera can take incredible 360-degree panoramic views of Mars by stitching together images slowly taken in a rotating circle.

The Tools Curiosity Uses to 'Do the Science'

Curiosity's suite of instruments, called Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), analyzes material the rover collects using her arm. All of these tools are used to complete her ultimate mission of assessing carbon-based molecules — the building blocks of life — on the alien planet.
For this instrument, Curiosity will deliver powdered samples to one of two funnels on her "back" and then to small cups for processing inside the rover's "body." The entire box is about the size of a microwave oven and weighs about 88 pounds.
For studying Mars' atmosphere, Curiosity has a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrometer and a tunable laser spectrometer with combined capabilities to identify a wide range of organic compounds and determine the ratios of different isotopes of key elements. To identify materials in rocks and soils, Curiosity uses an on-board an X-ray diffraction and fluorescence instrument called CheMin.
The rover uses an instrument named ChemCam to vaporize thin layers of material from Martian rocks or soil targets up to 23 feet away. It took eight years for the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory and France's national space and research agencies to build the ChemCam. And Curiosity didn't waste anytime before firing it. Using 30 pulses of laser for 10 seconds, Curiosity blasted her first fist-sized rock called "Coronation" in August.
The rover first used SAM in early November. NASA released the initial results of those findings at the first of December. Despite a rumor that turned out to be a major misunderstanding, those first soil samples did not contain an "earth-shaking" discovery. However, the data did show that Martian soil is a complex makeup of water, sulfur and chlorine-containing substances.

Karbonn has been making news recently with its dual-core Android-based smartphones and the A21 is the latest entrant in its Android smartphone line-up. The recent advertisements state that the phone can do two jobs at a single given time, which is true to quite an extent given that it is equipped with a dual-core processor. Well, let's find out if the phone is really smart enough.




Design and build
The A21 from Karbonn has a great design and an aesthetically appealing exterior. The dual-tone black and white body makes it look a class apart and trust us, it does not feel like any of the cheap phones. Though the handset looks classy, the chassis is made from a strong and durable plastic with a semi-matte and glossy finish. It can get pretty ugly looking after a bad fall or if it is not properly handled. The edges especially are glossy and the white rear panel can get smudged with dirty hands pretty fast. The front panel features four capacitive buttons for Home, Menu, Back and Search along with a large 4.5-inch LCD display. Towards the top is the earpiece and a front camera, and next to it is a translucent window that hides the proximity and light sensors. The rear panel sports a camera and an LED flash towards the top and a speaker grill on the bottom. The volume rocker is placed on the right while the power and audio jack are seen on the top. The right side has the micro USB interface. Overall, the design looks impressive and does sport a good look for a phone priced in the the Rs 10,000 bracket (approximate price in the local market). Lastly, the rear panel opens up to the battery compartment where you can see the two SIM slots and a hot-swappable microSD card bay.











Features and performance 
The A21 from Karbonn’s Duple series of smartphones features a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor clocked at 1.2GHz. As per our benchmarking utilities, we found the processor running on a maximum 1.15GHz—so either the processor is underclocked for stability or the speed of the processor is rounded-off to 1.2GHz for the spec sheet. Coupled with the processor is an Adreno 203 graphics processor and 512MB of RAM. Here again, as per the benchmarking apps, the information passed out about the RAM is that 386MB is in use by the operating system itself and the rest is available for user apps. This amount of memory does not feel sufficient enough for a dual-core based hardware but is good enough for casual and basic operations. The internal storage provided is 4GB, which can be extended using a microSD card. The display is a large 4.5-inch LCD with a resolution of 480 x 800, but all our tests reveal a resolution of 540 x 960 pixels. A 5MP camera with an LED flash is provided on the rear and a 1.3MP camera for video calling is available on the front panel.



The A21 features dual SIM support, of which one is capable of 3G while the other is 2G. So you have an option of using one SIM for the Internet channel while the other can be used for voice calls. The Internet can also be connected using the Wi-Fi b/g/n interface. Other connectivity options are Bluetooth and a micro USB PC interface. A-GPS onboard can be used for your navigation purposes. Lastly, a 1800 mAh battery completes the phone’s specification section.

On the performance front, we did find the phone faster than most single-core processor based Android phone in the market. However, after using it for a while with a few apps and games, we did find it getting a bit sluggish thanks to the insufficient memory provided for the user apps, which runs out in no time if you use memory-heavy apps including a live-wallpaper. Casual free games downloaded from the Play store would suffice, but keep away from high-definition and GPU heavy games as they could get sluggish in no time and you will lose out on battery life in no time.


Source: Tech2