Housing Board Rejects Mark Zuckerberg's Plans of Building Neighbourhood Compound

An advisory board recommended a California city refuse Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plans to demolish and rebuild four homes around his property because of privacy concerns, saying it won't support the building of a "compound."

Zuckerberg bought the Palo Alto homes in 2013 for $30 million after learning that a developer planned to build a neighbouring house tall enough to have a view of his master bedroom, the Mercury News reported.

New protective coating may make smartphones waterproof: Scientists

Scientists have developed a new spray-on protective coating with a remarkable ability to repel water that may be used to waterproof smartphones, prevent ice from forming on aircraft or protect boat hulls from corroding.

"The surface is a layer of nanoparticles, which water slides off as if it is on a hot barbecue," said PhD student William Wong from The Australian National University (ANU).

Amazon launches low-cost tablet with Alexa assistant

Washington (AFP) - US online giant Amazon announced Thursday a new small-format tablet that includes its digital assistant Alexa.

The eight-inch (20-centimeter) display Fire HD tablet will start at $89 for US customers, making it one of the least expensive on the market.

"We believe in a different approach to tablets -- providing premium products at non-premium prices -- and customers love it," said Kevin Keith, manager for Fire Tablets.

Rovio Launches Learn English With Angry Birds Game For Smartphones

Following its success as a web service, "Learn English with Angry Birds" is now launching as a smartphone app for Apple and Android.

The app, a partnership between Rovio and papagei.com offers 45 interactive video courses, grammar exercises, a vocabulary coach, plus help with pronunciation. The videos also come with subtitles in 10 different languages to help even beginners get to grips as quickly as possible.

12-Year Old Shahan Ali Mohsin Becomes First Indian To Win Asian Karting Championship

Highlights

Shahan is the first Indian ever to win the karting championshipShahan faced tough competition from rivals Hayden and AmerShahan will now compete in the National Rotax Max Karting Championship

12-year-old Shahan Ali Mohsin secured a splendid win in the Asian Karting Championship, becoming the first Indian of all ages to do so. The championship was held at the Sepang Circuit in Malaysia and the young driver managed to fend off tough competition coming from rival Hayden Haikal and Amer Harris to take home the title.

Moto E3 is launching on Sept 19 in India

Motorola's Moto E3 is finally coming to India. According to a report byAndroid Headlines, Lenovo will hold an event on September 19, where it will launch the budget smartphone. The phone was first announced in July this year. It is expected to be priced at around Rs 7,000 in India.

The Moto E3 comes with a 5-inch display with 720p resolution. The phone is powered by a MediaTek quad-core processor running at a speed of 1.2GHz. 

The Moto E3 comes in two memory variants. The cheaper of the two comes with 1GB RAM and 8GB internal storage, while the other has 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage. Both the variants support expandable storage up to 32GB using a microSD card.

If nothing else, StikBox is a good way to hide the fact that you own a selfie stick

What if I told you that you could hide the shame of carrying around a selfie stick, protect your smartphone and have a free kickstand all in one go? How much would you pay for such a luxury? $10,000? $100,000? $8 million? Try around $40, American.

The StikBox is actually a pretty solid idea that seems to work fairly well. It’s a plastic iPhone/Samsung handset that features a slatted metal back. Pull the metal up, rotate it around and extend it into one long rod — BOOM… selfie stick.

Instagram Stories gets ‘Pinch to Zoom’ feature on iOS app

NEW DELHI: Facebook's Instagram has announced a new feature called 'Pinch to Zoom' that would arrive as a part of an update 'in the coming weeks' on Android. The feature has already started rolling out to Instagram for iOS as a part of the v9.2 update.

"Today we're bringing ZOOM to Instagram on iOS! Pinch to Zoom on photos & videos in feed, on profiles and on Explore," announced Instagram on its Twitter handle.

According to Instagram, 'Pinch to Zoom', as the name suggests, will let users pinch-to-zoom on images and videos that are posted by others on their Instagram feed and the ones that show up in the 'Explore' section of the app. It works on profiles as well. When zooming a media file on Instagram, a lightbox effect takes place and the image pops out of the original frame.

Android users are more honest, humble than iPhone users, claims study

LONDON: Believe it or not but Android smartphone users have greater levels of honesty and humility, agreeableness and openness personality traits but are seen as less extroverted than Apple iPhone users, an interesting study has revealed.

This may be because iPhone users thought it was more important to have a high-status phone than Android users.

The team from University of Lincoln also found that women were twice more likely to own an iPhone than an Android device.

"This study provides new insights into personality differences between different types of smartphone users. Smartphone choice is the most basic level of smartphone personalisation, and even this can tell us a lot about the user," explained Heather Shaw from University of Lincoln's school of psychology.