Elon Musk Building Tesla Megafactory

If you ever wanted an electric car but the price just wasn't there, the car was simply to expensive for what it was offering. Lucky for you this shouldn't be a problem in a few years.

Elon Musk is expected to announce plans for building a megafactory that will build lithium-ion batteries used by electric cars like the Tesla Model S. Location of the factory will be in the United States but we still don't know in which state, somewhere in the south (Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada or Texas). The factory should be up and running by 2017.

At the moment Tesla Model S has a price of $70.000, but after the factory is build the price should go down to $35.000. Considering what the car is offering this should be a pretty good deal for anyone that is interested in a quality electric car.

Megafactory will have 6.500 workers which will definitely be a boost for US economy and a positive example how factories can still be build in the States.

Source pdf.

Sony Allegedly selling its PC business

PlayStation 4 was selling like crazy during this holiday season, but not all of the Sony departments are doing well at the moment. Their smartphone line Xperia isn't selling the way they would want to, although the reviews and the quality of the smartphones are great, but the sales results are simply not there. Sony PC department is also taking a beating at the market. In fact there have been rumors that there is a 70 percent chance that the company will bankrupt in the next 2 years.

According to the news service Nikkei from Japan, Sony is looking to sell their PC business for $492 million. From the company they have released a statement saying "continues to address various options", what ever that means. Some even go so far with saying that the sale news could come in the next few days. Doubt they will have a hard time finding a buyer, $492 million isn't such a high price compared to what the IT giants have been spending lately on purchase of other companies.

So what's next for the Japanese company. Their results in the entertainment are great so they will probably want to focus on that department. There have also been a lot of rumors lately about Sony making smartphones with Windows Phone operating system. This could be a solution for them considering their Android sales are low.

Source engadget.

Satya Nadella is the new CEO of Microsoft

After months of rumors and just about every important name in the IT industries mentioned for the role of the new CEO of Microsoft we finally have the official news that Satya Nadella is the new CEO for the Redmond based company.

Who is Satya Nadella? Well he is 46 years old, been working at Microsoft for 22 years. Before that he worked for Sun Microsystems and until this morning he was executive vice president of cloud and enterprise in Microsoft. Satya Nadella wasted no time and has already issued a letter to the employees.


“While we have seen great success, we are hungry to do more,” Nadella said. “Our industry does not respect tradition – it only respects innovation. This is a critical time for the industry and for Microsoft. Make no mistake, we are headed for greater places – as technology evolves and we evolve with and ahead of it. Our job is to ensure that Microsoft thrives in a mobile and cloud-first role.”

Strong words, lets hope he lives up to the challenge. Many fans of the Redmond IT giant are happy that the new CEO is an engineer, not an economist like the previous CEO Steve Ballmer. Satya Nadella is only the third CEO in the company history and honestly we wish him all the best at his new job.

Source technobuffalo.

10 Years of Facebook

Long age on fourth of February 2004 Mark Zuckerberg started a social network named Facebook. Today 10 years later, number of Facebook users is somewhere around the number of China's population. Currently the number one social network in the world.

Now there are many social network sites one can chose from if they want to interact with people on the internet. The most popular are Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and many others, but long ago when Facebook was just getting started there weren't many social networks. Myspace was popular back then, but those days have past.

Over the years there were many events following this social network. Yahoo offer that Mark Zuckerberg turned down when Facebook was just getting started. The law suit against him, where Zuckerberg was accused of stealing the idea while he was still at Harvard. They even got a movie about Facebook, you know you're popular when Holywood wants to put you on the big screen.

So what's next for Facebook, what are Mark Zuckerbergs plans for the future. Will this social network evolve and keep up with the new demands or will it share the fate of Myspace.

If you see a Smartphone it's Probably Android

If you are walking around somewhere and you see someone typing or talking on their smartphone, chances are that smartphone has an Android operating system. Sure there are places where Apple and there iOS are dominant, there are also places where people use mostly Windows Phone, but world wide Android is still the most used operating system on smartphones.

According to Strategy Analytics last year in the world there were 1.7 billion smartphones sold and Android is on 81.3 percent of those devices. Apple operating system iOS takes up 13.4 percent of the market, which is still a great number considering they were making only one smartphone a year, and now two smartphones with their so called budget iPhone 5c. Windows Phone has doubled it's market share in one year and is now on 4.1 percent world wide, still a very low number, but it is expected to increase in 2014.

In the last quarter smartphone sales were up by 45 percent to a total number of 251 million units sold word wide. Not strange considering smartphone sales are always at their best during the holiday season. In 2014 it is expected that the smartphone market will increase by 5 percent.

Source strategy analytics.

Map of the Internet Like You Never Seen it Before

That's right there is a map of the network of all networks call the Internet, but it's not so much an actual map it's an artistic map. And the artist in question is Jay Simons. According to him this is just the 1.0 version because the network is too huge.

On the map you can see the 500 most popular sites, according to Alexa list. Most popular social networks, stuff about NSA surveillance and popularity of Internet world wide. Of course there are the giants of IT industry like Google, Microsoft, Apple and many others.

The artist Jay Simons put a lot of eye-candy in the map, along with a bunch of jokes regarding the Internet. We can expect more artworks like this one from Simons in the future. Internet is getting bigger by the day and things are not always the same, they tend to change really fast.

The entire map right here.

FBI vs Google Glass

Google Glass hasn't been released yet and there are already many controversies about this device. A man was arrested at the AMC theater in Columbus because he was wearing Google Glass while watching a movie. Movie in question was Jack Ryan, so basically a spy movie.

FBI arrested the man and draught him out of the theater and proceeded to question him for entire three hours. Charges were that he was using Google Glass Explorer edition to illegally record a movie. After investigating the device FBI found no evidence that the subject was using Google Glass to record the movie, instead he was using the device because he had problems with his eye dioptre, so basically he was using Google Glass for medical reasons.

After the hole incident and the proven innocents of the man in question, movie theater offered him two free movie tickets for composition. But that didn't do the trick and the man decided to get a lawyer and press charges.

Technology is changing the way we live our lives every day, so it's going to be interesting to see how wearable tech gadgets change some things we take for granted like going to the movies, and more important how will the law react and define what are the limitations and boundaries of the upcoming technology devices.

Source phandroid.

Netflix Plans for European Expansion

Netflix, the most popular internet streaming service is planing to expand their services across the European continent. Finally some whould say, what took them so long. So far their service in Europe is available only in Ireland and some Nordic countries.

Their first order of business according to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is to bring their services to Germany and France. But even that want be as soon as one would expect, the plan is somewhere before the end of 2014, since their is no official date it could be latter then that. Other countries weren't mentioned so far, just German and France.

Netflix is currently available in 41 countries, most of these are in Latin America. U.S. is where they have most of the subscribers. Across U.S. there are 88 homes with broadband internet connection, while across Europe there are 134 million homes with internet broadband connection. So their decision to expand to European market is well placed.

Among other things Netflix has been working hard on their original content series, which were a big reason for a huge increase in the number of subscribers. House of Cards is still their number one show, ti has received much praise from critics and fans. Hopefully there will be other great series from Netflix in the future.

Source wsj.

Microsoft with a Record Quarter Earnings

Microsoft had great financial results in Q2 of their fiscal year. Total revenue from the Redmond giant was $24.52 billion with the net profit of $6.56 billion. Results were even above what was predicted by Wall Street so the stock of Microsoft when up by 3 percent.

Basically they had increased sales in just about everything. Office packages for business users sales was up, which is not something strictly connected to the holiday season like for example the Xbox sales. In the last quarter the company has sold 7.4 million Xbox units, from that number 3.5 million is Xbox 360 and 3.9 million goes to the new console Xbox One. Even the revenue from the Surface tables has doubled to 893 million.

Microsoft is currently in transition period. Nokia devices department will soon be a part of Microsoft, and the company is looking to produce more of it's own hardware. Also their CEO Steve Ballmer is leaving and the new CEO will be announce in the next couple of days. This year should be interesting for the Redmond company.

Source Microsoft.