V. I. K. I.

Chinese tech giant Xiaomi has unveiled its first foldable electric bike. Dubbed QiCycle, the smart cycle is part of the company's Mi Ecosystem. It's priced at $455 and will be available for pre-order in China, starting today. The smart cycle flaunts a lightweight aluminium frame and weighs 13.5kg. The QiCycle comes with a longitudinal folding design. This means that the main beam is not folded and also ensures easy storage after folding. The bike comes equipped with the TMM torque sensing technology. It senses the amount of effort put in by the rider on the pedal and provides appropriate power for a comfortable ride. The bike uses a 250W-36V high-speed motor, enabling easy rides even on steep slopes. Having a maximum speed of 20km/h, the cycle has a smart meter which allows you to set different riding speeds. The electric cycle incorporates an intelligent motion data monitoring feature that keeps track of speed, mileage, dynamic power and calories burnt while riding. All...

The diminutive space rock will play "leap frog" with Earth for hundreds of years, sometimes speeding ahead of our planet and occasionally falling behind, NASA said. "The asteroid's loops around Earth drift a little ahead or behind from year to year, but when they drift too far forward or backward, Earth's gravity is just strong enough to reverse the drift and hold onto the asteroid so that it never wanders farther away than about 100 times the distance of the moon," Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies, said in a statement. "The same effect also prevents the asteroid from approaching much closer than about 38 times the distance of the moon. In effect, this small asteroid is caught in a little dance with Earth." The asteroid, named 2016 HO3, was discovered in April 2016 by an asteroid-hunting telescope in Hawaii, and scientists think it's anywhere from 120 feet to 300 feet in length.  The aster...

What’s new in DP4? Developers will be happy to note that they can now publish apps that use API level 24 to Google Play in the alpha, beta and production release channel. Moreover, DP4 includes the final APIs (level 24) for Android N. Alongside Dev Preview 4, the final API 24 SDK is provided to be used with Android Studio 2.1.2 and higher, and there are DP4 system images for the emulator as well. You can find the downloads below: Device Download Nexus 5X “bullhead” bullhead-npd56n-factory-996cac57.tgz MD5: 5aadba91f60de00d58dc6198ef5cc3ba SHA-1: 996cac575d83bde573315290da8f52cecc4127d2 Nexus 6 “shamu” shamu-npd56n-factory-7936bf75.tgz MD5: b7ed0db569f3bc2d6655fe8d8cea0e13 SHA-1: 7936bf75e6bfb771bd14485211a319b246311b96 Nexus 6P “angler” angler-npd56n-factory-1ce5ccad.tgz MD5: f296eccaed4e2526d6435df8cf0e8df1 SHA-1: 1ce5ccad8a3eae143e0ecd9c7afbb1be2f1d41cc Nexus 9 “volantis” volantis-npd56n-factory-8b9f997e.tgz MD5: 111c2fe5777dd6aae71fb8ef35dda9d3 SHA-1: 8b9f997ea39fdaf50552...

Apple's hardware is now routinely leaked months before it can be launched, but its software is all done in-house and so most of what was announced at WWDC 2016 came as a pleasant surprise. The company unveiled significant improvements to the design and functionality of its four major platforms, iOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS, in a two-hour-long keynote marking the beginning of its annual developers' conference in San Francisco. While more details will certainly emerge over the next few days, here are our 10 favourite features from the presentation. 1) iMessage as a platform iMessage isn't the first chat app to integrate stickers and reactions, but taken as a whole, the new features look like a lot of fun. Users can send heartbeats and haptic signals, text or images scribbled by hand, and of course stickers. Emojis are larger and easier to insert. Apps let you do things like gather group orders and submit them to a restaurant, or even send money through third-party transac...

Microsoft is buying the professional social network LinkedIn for $26.2 billion (£18.5bn), the two companies have announced. The news, announced on Monday afternoon, instantly sent LinkedIn's share price soaring by 50 percent. The deal will represent one of the biggest in Microsoft's history. Microsoft said LinkedIn boss Jeff Weiner would stay in charge and report to Satya Nadella. “The LinkedIn team has grown a fantastic business centered on connecting the world’s professionals,” Nadella said. “Together we can accelerate the growth of LinkedIn, as well as Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics as we seek to empower every person and organization on the planet.”

The new Wallet 2.0 app is broken into two areas: Credit or debit card Loyalty or membership card When first launched Wallet will check your Microsoft Account for any credit cards already linked (e.g. for the Store) and import those for Tap to Pay. All of this is optional, of course, and interestingly Lumia 950 even utilized Windows Hello for my account authentication, which was a nice touch. Regarding the loyalty card area, users can pick from a list of companies and either scan the card or enter it manually. A barcode is then generated for easy scanning and users can pin those individual cards to their Start screen for quick access. If a business is not listed, users can create their own barcode by entering in the information for the card. I expect this list to grow and since Wallet 2.0 is just an app Microsoft can make easy additions and fixes whenever they want. Does it work? So, the million dollar question is does it work? As a sacrifice, or rather, experiment I wen...

The globally recognised standard for developer excellence. Demonstrate your expertise at planning the designing and implementing of Universal Windows Platform apps that offer a compelling user experience, leverage other services and devices, and use best coding practices to enhance maintainability. (New to IT? Learn about MTA certification for new entrants.) Earning an MCSD: Universal Windows Platform certification will qualify you for such jobs as software developer and quality engineer. 1 Title - Programming in C#         Optional training - Take course 483         Required exam - Take exam 483         Certification earned -  MCSD: Universal Windows Platform logo 2 Title - Universal Windows Platform – App Architecture and UX/UI         Optional Training - Not yet available         Required Exam - Take exam 354         Certification earne...

If you've ever noticed tiny worm-like shapes or transparent blobs in your field of vision - you know, those things that mysteriously disappear as soon as you try to focus in on them, then reappear right when you give up and start looking at something else - don't worry, you're not crazy, and you don't have parasites in your eyeballs.  What you have is floaters, and while that name invokes  certain other things  we won't mention, there's nothing gross about them. (Just FYI if you get the  other  kind of floaters in there...  hello, pinkeye .) Technically known as muscae volitantes, which in Latin translates to "flying flies", these annoying optical illusions are created inside your eyeball under very specific circumstances.  As the TED -Ed video above explains , floaters are tiny objects that get inside your eyeball and cast shadows on your retina - the light-sensitive tissue at the back of your eye. They're not foreign materials,...

Adobe is currently working on a  Windows 10 UWP version of its Experience Design CC that is scheduled for release sometime in 2016. The reveal was made by Adobe's Andrew Shorten on his  Twitter feed . He later confirmed it would be a UWP app, which means that it should be available for Windows 10 Mobile  as well as Windows 10 on the PC and tablets. The Adobe Experience Design CC app has been made so that developers can quickly design and prototype websites and mobile apps. It's currently available for OS X users. Hopefully, we won't have to wait too long before its Windows 10 launch.

Google already dominates the market for mobile operating systems. Soon, its dominance could extend to the desktop, as well. At Google I/O earlier this month, Alphabet's subsidiary announced that its Google Play app store would be coming to Chromebooks later this year. That should make ChromeOS, Google's desktop operating system, far more compelling. Chromebook demandhas grown impressively in recent years, but the operating system, which is heavily restricted, remains behind the market leader, Microsoft's Windows. The ability to run Android apps could help Google's inexpensive laptops make gains. The problem with ChromeOS Compared to Windows PCs, Chromebooks have many advantages. They require almost no maintenance -- patches and updates are installed in the background, and they're impervious to traditional forms of malware. ChromeOS is a lightweight operating system that runs well on minimal hardware. But ChromeOS is essentially just Google's Chrome bro...