Lenovo Launches Fleet of New ‘Ivy Bridge’ ThinkPads and IdeaPads

A fleet of Lenovo ThinkPads and IdeaPads will apparently hit the markets next month, with the company revealing in an official statement on Tuesday that its new assortment of business-friendly ThinkPad laptops, IdeaPad Ultrabooks, and IdeaPad multimedia laptops is scheduled for release in June.

While the CES event in January provided a glimpse of almost the entire lineup of Lenovo's refreshed laptops - but for the ThinkPad X1 Carbon -, the pricing and other details about the devices has now been officially disclosed by the company.

Twitter's weekly email highlights 'most relevant' tweets and stories

Within months of its acquisition of a startup called Summify, which chiefly collected news from the users' different social networks and compiled it in daily emails, popular microblogging service Twitter has now started sending a weekly email digest which comprises the "most relevant" tweets and stories shared by people they follow.

Dish’s Auto Hop is an attack on NBC’s eco-system: Ted Harbert

Dish Network Corp.'s new commercial-skipping technology "Auto Hop" is an attack on the broadcasters' eco-system, NBC Broadcasting Chairman Ted Harbert said.

The Auto Hop automatically removes ads or commercials from recorded prime-time programs from the four big broadcast networks, viz. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. Broadcasters are concerned that such devices could hurt their advertisement revenues very hard.

Announcing NBC's prime-time schedule for 2012-13 at the company's conference call, Harbert said, "I think this is an attack on our eco-system. I'm not for it."

Microsoft making efforts to increase Bing’s market share to challenge Google

Microsoft recently announced a revamped design for its search engine "Bing", apparently to expand its market share to challenge the world's most popular search engine Google.

According to market research firm ComScore, Microsoft's Bing accounted for just 15.3 per cent share of the US market in March, considerably down from Google's 66.4 per cent.

In March last year, Bing's market share was 13.9 per cent as compared with Google's 65.7 per cent.

Figures show that Microsoft's Bing has been gaining popularity since its launch in June 2009, but it lags far behind Google.

Eat eggs to stay fit

A new research has suggested that eggs in breakfast will help manage weight better as compared to cereals for people who are overweight.

The American Egg Board has funded the study and it was found that the hunger was reduced by consuming eggs and hormones that make you feel fuller also get a boost.

Two groups were made and one group was given eggs in breakfast and another was given cereal and lunch followed after three hours. This was done to test their hunger.

T-Mobile’s performance boosts Deutsche Telekom’s earnings

Bonn-based telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom has reported first-quarter earnings that beat their analysts’ estimates, thanks to better-than-expected performance by its US subsidiary T-Mobile.

Deutsche Telekom’s revenue slipped 1.1 per cent to 14.43 billion euros, but earnings were at 4.48 billion euros ($5.8 billion), higher than analysts’ average projection of 4.4 billion euros.

Net earnings halved to 238 million euros, mainly due to a charge of nearly 500 million euros related to job cuts.

Sprint’s Tri-Fi Mobile Hotspot: at a glance

Sprint’s recently unveiled Sierra Wireless Tri-Fi Mobile Hotspot is versatile device that can convert LTE, WiMAX and 3G networks into a WiFi signal.

The 3600mAh battery-equipped handy gadget offers up to eight hours of connectivity for users’ web-hungry devices, such as tablets and laptops.

It allows 3G and 4G Sprint customers share their Internet connectivity for a maximum of eight WiFi-enabled devices.

The portable device provides on-the-move small business and individuals who work remotely with reliable mobile broadband.

Samsung takes entertainment to the cloud with mSpot acquisition

Samsung revealed in a Wednesday announcement that it is acquiring mobile cloud content service provider mSpot --- a move which underscores that the users of newly-introduced Samsung mobile devices will soon be able to use a pre-installed mSpot app for accessing their music and video stored in the cloud.

Despite the fact that the financial terms of Samsung’s acquisition of mSpot – which will now be organized as Samsung’s wholly owned subsidiary – have not been officially disclosed, it is being speculated that the deal was apparently under $10 million.

Apple's OS X Mountain Lion reportedly on early-release track

A Tuesday report on the popular AppleInsider blog, citing an unidentified ‘inside’ source, has revealed that it appears highly likely that Apple’s OS X Mountain Lion is on an early-release track.

The AppleInsider speculation that Apple’s launch of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion may probably come earlier than anticipated is largely based on the information shared by the unnamed source; and is somewhat substantiated by the significant hints found within the release dates of three developer previews related to the forthcoming operating system.

HSBC increases PPI bill by another £290 million

Banking giant HSBC yesterday set aside another £290 million to settle its share of the mis-selling payment protection insurance (PPI) scandal.

The additional expense inflated the bank’s total PPI provision to around £750 million, but Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver still said that he doubted that it would be the final provision.

Speaking on the topic, Gulliver said, “I honestly can't say this will be the final provision. There remains a degree of uncertainty about the eventual costs of redress for this matter.”

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