Virgin Media’s investing £3 billion to bring broadband to 4 million more homes
While Virgin Media has consistently beat BT’s broadband speeds, the cable supplier’s growth has been hampered by availability. BT’s copper and fibre networks blanket most of the UK, whereas Virgin Media’s coverage remains limited to specific towns and cities. In August, it said it would connect 100,000 more London homes as part of its biggest ever expansion, but it appears that was just the start. Today, with help from its parent company Liberty Global, Virgin Media announced that it will invest £3 billion to bring its services to 4 million more British homes and businesses.
It’s all part of “Project Lightning,” a new initiative that aims to bring Virgin Media’s 152MB broadband to customers for the first time. It’ll boost the company’s footprint by roughly a third, ensuring almost 17 million Brits can choose to install its services by 2020. For those who have already subscribed, Liberty Global also intends to begin trialling DOCSIS 3.1, the next-generation of cable networking, across Europe later this year, meaning that speeds could reach 10Gb in the future. With Sky, BT and TalkTalk all investing heavily in quad-play packages, which include broadband, phone, TV and mobile, Virgin Media can’t afford to be left behind by its competition. Today’s announcement shows it’s ready to spend big to grow its customer base, using technology that none of its rivals can piggyback on.
Filed under: Household, Internet
Source: Virgin Media
A closer look at the keyboard on Windows 10 Preview for phones
We’ve been busy playing with Windows 10 preview for phone in the past few hours. Only a few devices are currently supported, so many eager fans still have to wait. One of the new things in the preview that I wanted to check out was the keyboard. It includes a precision pointing stick, voice dictation, and a new shortcut to emoticons. Want to see the new keyboard in action? Watch our hands-on video.
Instant for Android lets you track your smartphone addiction levels
Instant for Android is an all-in-one tracking app that monitors your daily device usage, as well as fitness data and device unlock count. Want to know how many minutes you’ve spent on Facebook? Instant’s app usage tab gives you an overview of time spent on each app.
Olympus’ new lens camera can be (incredibly) upgraded
This is no DSLR. It’s not even a bridge camera. This is actually Olympus’ recently announced Air lens camera, tricked out to a (some would say excessive) degree. While the accessories on show here were only for internal testing, we admit we’d like to do some external testing with it. Alongside the DSLR-esque handle and controls (the Air camera handles any micro four-thirds lens), what you see on top is Olympus’ eagle-eye viewfinder that projects a laser bullseye on your long-range target of choice. That also explains the telephoto lens which is attached to what was, originally, a petite camera upgrade for your smartphone. Naturally some extra framework is necessary simply to support all that attached glass. Check its ridiculous backside — where your smartphone would sit — right after the break.
Filed under: Cameras
Some popular third-party BlackBerry 10 apps need to improve their security
As BlackBerry users, we’ve become accustomed to a certain level of comfort when it comes to installing apps and not worrying about what’s going on behind the scenes security wise. The BlackBerry 10 OS allows us to adjust permissions on native apps on the fly, and if we see something happening we don’t like, we can usually shut it down or disable it.
But at the same time, that comfort in security can often have bad results, as well as we’re likely to think just a little bit less about what’s going on deep within some of the apps we install. A new report coming from Lloyd Summers over at File Archive Haven is a stark reminder to not forget about these things.
File Archive Haven has put together a test of 12 applications in an effort to dig deeper into web security for those apps and while some popular apps came out unscathed, some weren’t so lucky and showed plenty of room for improvement in the security area.
The Battle of Waterloo: An outsiders view of BlackBerry’s hometown
Over the years, there has been several articles that have taken a look at Waterloo from many different angles and almost all of them include BlackBerry in some way. They kind of have to, given the company’s history in the area and over at Fusion they’ve posted up a new article dubbed ‘The life, death, and rebirth of BlackBerry’s hometown’.
It’s an interesting look at Waterloo with the writer, Kevin Roose, setting out to find out ‘what the decline of BlackBerry has done to the community surrounding it’ only to find out the Kitchener-Waterloo region is thriving and not the ghost town some outsiders think it might be.
Fleksy Keyboard “shares the love” with a free theme and 2 new extensions in version 5.2 update
Fleksy Keyboard, one of our favorite keyboards for Android, is receiving a sweet update to version 5.2 today. The folks at Fleksy are adding two new themes to their keyboard, and will also give users a free theme on Valentine’s Day. We’re assuming users can pick whichever theme they want on the 14th, and given their current selection, it might be a difficult choice to make. There are a few Material Design themes to choose from, as well as an awesome Chameleon theme that will change colors depending on which app you’re using at the time.
Fleksy is also including two new extensions on both Android and iOS applications. If you’re not familiar with extensions, they’re little add-on features that bring a more customizable experience to your keyboard. So far, extensions include a GIF keyboard, a numbers row and a handy launcher extension that lets you jump into your favorite apps right from your keyboard. The first new extension is the Heart Keypops extension, which gives users the ability to make each keypress pop with a colorful heart. While it’s not the most functional, it does add a bit of style to your typing experience. The second extension, and the most functional out of the two, is called Hotkeys. This will give you seven different “open” key spaces, allowing you to customize them with any anything you want. If you have a favorite emoji, an email address you don’t want to constantly type out or a common phrase, just add it to one of the blank keys.
Also included in the version 5.2 update is automatic language pack updates, as long as you’re connected to a Wifi network. Your shortcuts will now sync with the cloud, and the “Themes” tab should be much quicker after the update.
If you have yet to try Fleksy Keyboard, now is a great time to do so. If you’d like to try before you buy, you can download the 30-day free trial of Fleksy by following this link. Otherwise, head to the link below to grab the keyboard from Google Play.
ShopBlackBerry drops pricing on the BlackBerry Z30
Update – And just like that, pricing has returned back to normal. If you missed out this time, keep watching for next time. Seems they randomly like to drop prices and we don’t often know how long it will last.
Are you still looking to get your hands on a BlackBerry Z30 but haven’t yet pulled the trigger? If so, now might be a great time to do so as ShopBlackBerry has dropped the pricing for an unknown amount of time. Americans can grab the device in white or black for only $224 while Canadians can pick one up in white or black for only $274. Each device comes carrier unlocked, so you won’t have to worry about being locked to any one carrier. Just keep in mind, these are GSM devices and will not work on Verizon or Sprint. You can head on over to ShopBlackBerry to place your orders right now.
Source: ShopBlackBerry
Qualcomm confirms it will pay $975 million to settle antitrust dispute with China
Qualcomm has now confirmed a previous report from this morning that it has entered into a settlement with the government of China’s National Development and Reform Commission to settle an antitrust dispute. The amount of the settlement will be 6.088 billion Chinese Yuan Renminbi, or about $975 million.
Leaked BlackBerry OS 10.3.1.2267 autoloaders now available for download
If you follow OS leak news, then chances are you already have this OS loaded and can move on about your business. However, if you’re not as familiar with loading OS leaks or decided that the process of loading OS 10.3.1.2267 without the help of autoloaders was just too much hassle then this is the post for you.
AIVAnet 