Facebook set to buy Indian startup Little Eye Labs for $10-15 million: Report

 Facebook is reportedly set to acquire an Indian startup Little Eye Labs in a deal valued between $10 million and $15 million.

Bangalore-based Little Eye Labs's chief product is a tool that helps Android app developers to measure, analyze and optimize their apps. It helps visualize the app's behaviour and estimates the app's power, memory and network data consumption trends.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook's acquisition of the Indian startup would mean a lot for the one-and-a-half years old company, which also pitched to Twitter but the social networking giant offered a better deal.

The final deal is expected to be signed by mid-January following which most of the Little Eye Labs's founding team will move to Facebook's US headquarters, and work there as part of the mobile engineering team, the report added.

After iPad Air, Apple to launch iPad Pro: Reports

2014 seems to be the year that Apple will adopt big screens. While reports of bigger iPhones have been doing the rounds since early this year, latest reports say the iPad too is set to get bigger.

And Apple won't be done with just one model.According to a report by International Business Times Australia, the Cupertino-based company is working on a 12.9-inch iPad with high-resolution display. This model is said to combine the capabilities of the Macbook Air and Macbook Pro in a keyboard-less format.

Korea Times has also reported that Apple is working with one of its first-tier display suppliers to develop a 12.9-inch Retina display. This panel is being currently manufactured in Korea and features picture quality similar to that of UHD (ultra high definition) displays.

The upcoming model, currently being termed iPad Pro, will come with both 2K and 4K displays. While the former is expected to hit the market in April next year, the latter is slated to launch in October.

This falls in line with earlier rumors of Apple readying iPad with 12-inch screens next year. Last year, Apple launched the third-generation iPad in April and followed it up with the fourth-generation model in October. Then in February this year, it launched the 128GB variant of the fourth-generation, improving only the storage while retaining the rest of the configuration. Therefore, Apple launching more than one iPad model in a year will not be a surprise.

Samsung, LG to unveil 105-inch curved OLED TVs

Samsung and LG say their curved TVs will get bigger and sport the sharpness four times the regular HD television sets. The world's two largest TV makers said separately that they will announce ultra-HD TVs with curved screens that measure 105 inches diagonally.

The South Korean TV makers began selling curved TV sets earlier this year but they were made with advanced displayed called OLED measuring 55 inches. The upcoming premium TVs set to be unwrapped in Las Vegas next month will be made of LCD panels packing more than 11 million pixels. Samsung and LG kept mum on prices.

Asian TV makers are trying to excite shoppers with new display technology. But limited video content in ultra HD resolution and price tags will likely limit appeal.

BlackBerry enlists Foxconn as Q3 loss hits $4.4BN

The struggling mobile phone maker announced on Friday a third-quarter loss of $4.4 billion, a freefall from the loss of $965 million suffered in the previous quarter. Revenue also tumbled, nestling in at $1.2 billion from $1.6 billion in the prior quarter. BlackBerry managed to sell only 1.9 million smartphones last quarter, an ugly decline from the 3.7 million sold in the previous quarter.

The results showed an even more devasting downturn compared with last year's third quarter when BlackBerry took in a profit of $14 million on revenue of $2.72 billion and shipments of 6.9 million smartphones.

On a brighter note, BlackBerry said that more than 40 million users have registered the BBM apps for iOS and Android over the past 60 days. More than a dozen different Android vendors also plan to preload BBM on their devices.

As smartphone sales dwindle, BlackBerry is also relying more on its enterprise products. The company said that more than 30,000 BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 servers have been installed to date, up from 25,000 in September.

Nelson Mandela tops Google's 2013 searches

Topping Google's zeitgeist, aka "spirit of the times" for 2013, was the late Nelson Mandela. The former South African president was already high on the list of searches among Google users, but his passing on December 5 triggered a surge in interest about his life, according to Google.

Actors Paul Walker and Cory Monteith, were No. 2 and No. 4 on the list, respectively. Walker, famous for his role in "The Fast and the Furious" films, and Monteith, most recently known for his part on the "Glee" TV series, affected fans with their untimely deaths this year.

At No. 6, the Boston Marathon bombing in April was another tragedy that drove people to Google's search engine. At No. 10, North Korea earned a spot on Google's list in light of the sabre-rattling of leader Kim Jong Un. Dance craze the Harlem Shake shook up the ranks at No. 5, while the birth of the royal baby earned the No. 7 spot.

Curiosity about new tech products also earned spots on the annual zeitgeist. Apple's iPhone 5S was at No. 3, and Samsung's Galaxy S4 came in at No. 8. Sony's PlayStation 4 took the No. 9 spot, probably to Microsoft's chagrin since the Xbox One failed to crack the top ten.

Dear Brazil, the NSA is watching you: Snowden

Edward Snowden has written an extensive open letter to the people of Brazil to discuss his findings and ultimately seek asylum.

In a broad letter published Tuesday by Brazil newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, Snowden asks Brazil for the second time to grant him asylum. "Today, if you carry a cell phone in Sao Paolo, the NSA can and does keep track of your location: they do this 5 billion times a day to people around the world. When someone in Florianopolis visits a website, the NSA keeps a record of when it happened and what you did there. If a mother in Porto Alegre calls her son to wish him luck on his university exam, NSA can keep that call log for five years or more. They even keep track of who is having an affair or looking at pornography, in case they need to damage their target's reputation.", he wrote.

Snowden has received asylum offers from several South American countries, including Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Venezuela. He has petitioned Brazil to grant him asylum previously, but has so far been unable to obtain it. His latest overture centers on a singular idea: attempt to show the ways the NSA is allegedly spying on Brazil's citizens.

Meta's $3,000 3D glasses look to an augmented reality future

High up in the hills of Portola Valley, Calif., west of Stanford University, a band of engineers and designers are creating the future. At least that is what they hope. For the last several months, Meta has been developing augmented reality, 3D glasses that combine the power of a laptop and smartphone in a pair of thick Ray-Bans and a small pocket computer.

CEO Meron Gribetz believes that physical laptops, phones, and tablets will soon no longer be necessary. In an augmented reality environment, the world of physical objects is rendered virtually, and those virtual objects, such as a phone, drawing program, or tabletop game, are controlled by your hands. Similar to the movie portrayals of computing in "Iron Man" and "Avatar," you can touch and move 3D holograms directly with your hands in 3D space.

Gribetz claims that within three to five years the capabilities of the 3D glasses can be shrunk into a contact lens and eventually inside the brain, implanted behind the optic nerve.For now, Meta's technology isn't ready to take on the world. The Meta 1 is expected to ship in February to more than 1,500 developers. It's bulky and more of a heads-up display than fashionable eyewear, and is tethered to a computer.
"The MetaPro will be $3,000, like the launch price of the MacBook Air. It will come down just as price of MacBook Air has."

No CEO news until next year: Microsoft

Sorry sports fans, but there won't be any news about the person who will replace Steve Ballmer as Microsoft's next chief executive until sometime early next year.

Board member John Thompson offered that update in a blog post he put out on Tuesday.
"As you would expect, as this group has narrowed, we've done deeper research and investigation, including with the full board. We're moving ahead well, and I expect we'll complete our work in the early part of 2014," Thompson wrote without getting any more specific.
"On Aug. 23, we announced that Steve Ballmer would be retiring from Microsoft within 12 months, and the Board of Directors was launching a search for a replacement, looking both externally and internally. Since then, we've been focused on finding the best possible person to lead the company. As we approach the end of the calendar year, there has been natural interest in getting an update on where we are in the process. I'm writing to share this with you here", he added.

Samsung unwraps game controller for Android phones

Android smartphone owners can add some gaming savvy to their device via a new controller from Samsung.

Dubbed the Game-pad, the steel-framed controller grasps your phone as you work the knobs and buttons to play your favorite games. The Game-pad can hold Android devices ranging in screen size from 4 inches to 6.3 inches, so it's geared more for phones but can certainly squeeze in a phablet.

The controller is compatible with any device of the right size running Android 4.1 or higher. But Samsung says it's also optimized for Galaxy devices outfitted with Android 4.3 or higher, such as the Galaxy S4 and S3 and the Note 3 and 2. That means the Game-pad can more easily pair with Galaxy devices via NFC and that it will give Galaxy owners quicker access to games via a Play button.

The Play button launches Samsung's Mobile Console app, which helps people browse and buy games supported by the GamePad. The 35 available games are "reasonably-priced," according to Samsung and include such titles as Need for Speed Most Wanted, Asphalt 8: Airborne, Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour, Virtua Tennis Challenge, and Prince of Persia: The Shadow and the Flame. More games are due in 2014.

For now, the GamePad is available only in some European countries.