Google to launch New Devices at Android Event "The Playground is Open"

Not to be upstaged by Microsoft's Windows 8 launch on the 26th and Apple's probably-the-iPad-mini event on the 23rd, Google has just sent out invitations for an Android-related announcement on Monday, October 29 at 10:00am ET. The invitation reads, simply, "The playground is open."

BitTorrent App- Now Download Torrents in Android

Nobody in the present modernized world will be unaware of the Torrents. You might have downloaded many stuff on your PC or Mac via Torrents.

Google Celebrates 14th Birthday & 25 Billion App Downloads

The internet Giant Google celebrates its 14th birth anniversary with an animated chocolate cake doodle on Google Homepage. The Doodle features the cake with 14 candles . Take a look at today's doodle by visiting google home page.

Yes you might have noticed that the Doodle is animated, which is first time for a birthday logo. On clicking the logo you can view all the features of Google.

There has always been a debate on Google's birthday as till the year 2005, Google celebrated its birthday on September 7, three days later when it filed for incorporation on September 4, 1998. However, in 2005 the search engine opted to celebrate its birthday on 27 September.


Google has two things to celebrate, one is Google turns 14 and other - Google marks 25 billion app downloads on Google Play Store.

Google was founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page with the objective to "organize the world's information and make it universally available and useful". Over the past years, Google has played a major role in the way we use internet. It's contribution to the web has been inappreciable and the company keeps updating the things happening around the world.

After the launch of Google Play Store 4 years before in 2008, they hit 25 billion downloads. Google Play Store was known as Android Market until March is now home to 6,75,000 apps and games for android platform.

"We look forward to the next 25 billion", the company said in a blog post.

To Celebrate the Milestone, Google is offering a five-day promotion so that the users can choose from a collection of apps from leading app developers like EA, Gameloft, Rovio, Full Fat, runtastic and their apps will be available for just 25 cents a piece. The featured apps with upto 75% discount (as of now) include Angry Birds Space Premium, The Cat in the Hat, Office Suite Pro 6 + (PDF + HD), Granny Smith, runtastic PRO, Asphalt 7: Heat, Ocean HD, Draw Something, Clouds & Sheep Premium, Tasks, Sudoku, Symphony of Eternity, NFL Licker 13 and Let's Create! Pottery.

The company is also promoting collections like "25 must-own movies", "25 albums that changed the world" and "25 banned books". All will be offered at discounts.

Apple on the other hand celebrated their 25 billion app downloads milestone this March by giving way $10,000 App Store Gift Card to the lucky user Chunli Fu of China, who downloaded the 25 billionth app from Apple iTunes App Store.

The Angry Bird Makers launch The Bad Piggies Today

Its time for the Bad Piggies to take revenge on the Angry Birds. The Mobile Gaming developer and the Angry Birds maker Rovio has launched its latest title - "BAD PIGGIES"  today (27 September 2012).

Planet of The Smartphone Apps

The ever growing popularity of Smartphones among the modern peoples and Apps which was considered a novelty few years ago are now an essential & integral part of their life. Presently there is an app for everything.

KLOUT Releases New iPhone App, takes Social Influence

KLOUT, the app that measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, YouTube, Google+ and other social apps is debuting its first mobile presence today with the launch of an iOS app. While Klout had a mobile website, this is the startup's first native mobile app.Klout has released an iPhone app and assures Android Users that an app for them will ultimately arrive.

Read It Later Gets a Make-Over & Changes Its Name to Pocket

Read It Later started back in 2007, just a month after the iPhone debuted, but before the arrival of the App Store, and long before the Kindle and the iPad. A handful of users signed up and supported the service, and together we learned what was possible with a “read later” button.

How to Make Money from Pinterest

In this Internet world as it develops more and more it seems as if a new Internet sensation explodes every single week. Well it has happened with the introduction of Pinterest to the Web. 

Before the Introduction of How to make money from Pinterest ? Pinterest has made a lot of news in the web world with its affliate programmes.

Opera Mini 7 for Android Released

Opera Software released Opera Mini 7  for Android users. It can be downloaded from the Google Play Store (earlier known as Android Market). Opera Mini currently has nearly 162 million users all over the world. 

5 things to look for from Microsoft in 2012

It's not that 2011 was a particularly difficult year. The company posted record revenue for the fiscal year that ended June 30. And its 2-year-old PC operating system, Windows 7, hit 500 million copies sold, further embedding it as the most widely used operating system in the world. But 2011 had few big product launches at the company, Office 365 and Internet Explorer 9 notwithstanding.

Next year will be altogether different. Microsoft is prepping the big kahuna of its product arsenal,Windows 8. The company hasn't set a date, though most analysts expect the flagship operating system to debut before the end of the year, and perhaps in time for back-to-school shopping. From that product, much else from Redmond flows.

So here are five things to look for from Microsoft in 2012:

1. Windows 8 tablets

Windows 8 is one of the boldest bets Microsoft will make, radically changing the interface on the operating system to the company's tile-based Metro look, first used by Windows Phone 7 last year. The familiar desktop photo covered with application and file icons will be available to PC users who want it. But Microsoft is pushing the new touch-friendly interface to convince consumers to buy tablet computers that will run it.

It won't be an easy sell. Microsoft will be coming to the tablet market more than two years after Apple iPad launched and quickly became a commercial success. And this holiday season, Amazon debuted its Kindle Fire, which became the first non-Apple tablet to gain a meaningful foothold. Market analyst Forrester recently reported that consumer interest in Windows tablets is waning.

As the core of computing moves beyond the PC, Microsoft needs Windows 8 tablets to succeed. It's all the more pressing as PC growth sputters and the tablet computer market soars.

The market muscle of Microsoft and its partners will help propel Windows tablets at their debut. But unless Microsoft can convince developers to create tablet-specific apps that users can't live without, the devices will have a hard time making a dent in iPad's massive lead.

2. Xbox moves farther into live TV

Even in its earliest days, Microsoft's video game console business was pegged as a Trojan Horse to bring the company's technology from the office to the living room. But the brains behind Xbox knew they had to make a great gaming experience job No. 1. Now, leading the United States in console sales in 2011, Xbox is pushing in earnest beyond gaming.

Microsoft just brought the first hint of live TV to Xbox consoles with an updated look to its Xbox Live service earlier this month. In addition to introducing the Metro-style look to Xbox, it also let customers of Verizon's Fios cable television service choose from 26 different live TV channels--Comedy Central, HBO, and Nickelodeon. A handful of other partners are offering live programming through Xbox as well.

That's clearly just the start for Microsoft. The company is moving toward the goal of getting consumers to fire up their Xbox whenever they flip on their TVs, not just when they want to play a game. Next year will see more live television content come to Xbox Live. It's a foundation that Microsoft will build out as it readies the next version of the Xbox console, something a source on the Xbox team says will happen in 2013.

3. Windows Phone: We're No. 3

It may be a measure of the decade-long struggle to succeed in mobile telephony that, for Microsoft, a victory would be grabbing the third place spot in terms of smartphone market share for its Windows Phone software. While the company has wrestled to arrive at a winning formula, rivals Apple and Google have introduced mobile-phone operating systems that have seized business that Microsoft had hoped to grab.

Microsoft rebooted its phone effort at the end of last year, introducing a passel of new phones from partners running its brand new operating system, Windows Phone 7. The slick-looking software, refreshed in September with an update dubbed Mango, has won plaudits from reviewers for its animation and app integration.

While the technology is catching up with rivals, Windows Phone's market share hasn't. According to market research firm Gartner, just 1.5 percent of the smartphones worldwide run Microsoft's operating system. And rivals aren't standing still. Apple's new iPhone 4S has outsold every other mobile phone since its debut in October. And despite the market fragmentation of Google's Android, with different handset manufacturers running different versions of the mobile operating system, it continues to pull ahead in the marketplace.

There's little doubt that Windows Phone share will grow, if only because of the marketing push Microsoft and partners, particularly Nokia, will make, coupled with the tiny toehold it currently has. But it's most likely to grab customers from Research In Motion's foundering Blackberry business rather than established Apple and Google customers.

4. Patent litigation aggressor

The ground Microsoft hasn't been able to take away from Android in the marketplace may well be covered by the revenue it's able to generate through the threat of litigation. The software giant has persuaded several handset makers--including HTC, Wistron, and Compal-- to pay it a vig for each Android device they sell to settle allegations that the mobile operating system violates Microsoft's patents.

The Android device makers that don't pay? Microsoft's taking them to court. Two high profile cases will move toward resolution next year-- Microsoft's suit against Barnes & Noble, whose Nook e-reader runs Android, and a separate suit against Motorola. (Google is in the process of acquiring Motorola Mobility.)

The tactic has proven so successful that in 2011, Microsoft started collecting fees from companies that make devices running Google's Chrome operating system as well, including Acer and ViewSonic. Expect Microsoft to continue to press device makers that use its rival's technology. Likewise, count on those manufacturers, particularly the smaller ones, to pay up rather than face Microsoft in the courthouse.

5. Growing search through social

Like the mobile-phone business, Microsoft has bounced from one strategy to the next in a bid to be more relevant in Internet search. It's re-branded its search engine a few times, added key partners, and cycled through senior executives, and still significantly trails market leader Google.

There's one Microsoft partnership that could start to pay off in 2012, and it's not the deal to handle search queries from Yahoo. It's Microsoft's deal with Facebook. In May, Microsoft began including recommendations from Facebook friends into its Bing search engine, creating customized results by elevating the ones that receive a "like" from someone in the searcher's Facebook network. So when someone is looking for a Thai restaurant in Seattle, for example, a spot that earned a like from a Facebook friend will rise in that person's particular search rankings.

Google is on to the same formula too, creating its Google+ social network to infuse its search results with customized answers to Web surfer queries. But in social networking, Facebook remains king. Using Facebook "likes" are just the first step. Microsoft clearly plans to add more social signals to Bing in 2012. And while that won't topple Google, it does offer the opportunity to grab a large slice of the search business by providing more relevant results.

Mozilla speeds up Firefox 9.0 with a lion interface

Though Mozilla's Firefox has been overshadowed of late by competition from Web behemoth Google's Google Chrome browser, you can hardly say the totally non-profit and of course completely free software developer is sitting still. With a new technology called "Type Inference," Mozilla has sped up JavaScript performance in its New Firefox 9 Web browser by over 35 percent, as demonstrated by several industry standard benchmark tests.

The new release of Firefox, which was announced today on the Mozilla Blog, also adds better support for Apple's latest desktop interface, Mac OS X Lion, including support for two-finger swipe gestures and a more Lion-like interface design.

Firefox 9 throws many features for Web site developers too. Their sites can now deliver large amounts of data to the browser using its support for "chunking XHR requests, allowing Web sites to display content as it’s downloaded instead of waiting for the entire download to complete," the post in the blog said. Developers can also use JavaScript to query the user's Do Not Track preference, while the release provides improved support for CSS (especially for text overflow conditions), HTML5, and MathML.


In preliminary testing, the new browser version posted speed gains on the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, Mozilla's own Kraken benchmark, and Google's V8 benchmark. The improvements amounted to 9 percent, 32 percent, and 36 percent, respectively.

With this release, Mozilla has also updated Firefox for Android. New for the mobile browser is tablet optimization for landscape and portrait orientation. Thumbnails now appear alongside the screen for each open tab, and swiping is supported. Users can also add site bookmarks to their Android home screen for app-like access.

A new Action Bar menu lets Android users access Firefox Preferences, Add-ons, and downloads. It also sports back, forward and bookmark buttons, according to the blog post.

Finally, the Android version of Firefox 9 lets sites access the mobile device's camera and supports HTML5 Form Validation, "which automatically validates Web site form fields like numbers, emails and URLs without developers needing to write a custom code or use a third-party library."

It's anyone's guess as to whether Firefox will be able to stem the onslaught from Google, but it clearly won't be for lack of constant improvements from the Mozilla team. You can try out Firefox 9 for yourself and into enter into life of high speed Web, by heading to the Firefox download page. The New Version are available for Windows 7, Vista, and Windows XP; Mac OS X and Linux in dozens of languages.

The Social Media Tools that you'll Love

The time has come to publish the top Social Media Tools of 2011. The end of the 2011 is arriving and We’re about to unveil the Top 20 new Social Media Tools of 2011 after having served up tools twenty through to six over the last two weeks.

It wasn’t easy narrowing down the tools that would occupy the top spots but we got there after much deliberation and discussion.

So, without further wasting your time here are the top 20 new social media tools of 2011.

1. BufferApp.com 

 

It is now time to crown our most useful tool of 2011. BufferApp works by scheduling content you find online and adding into your Twitter or Facebook stream. It then publishes the tweets at regular intervals without flooding your followers. Pure genius.

2. AppMakr.com 

Talk about doing what it says on the tin! AppMakr helps you make free apps for the iPhone. Seriously cool.

3. YouTube.com/create 

YouTube has been ramping up is creation tools in 2011 and the animation tools located at YouTube.com/create are a great example. GoAnimate is a great example allowing you to make animated videos in less than 10 minutes!

4. Wanderfly.com 

This is a personalised recommendations engine that helps you discover new and exciting experiences based on your budget and interests. And, it integrates with Facebook to bring all of your social preferences together. This is a great example of niche recommendations portal and what Google+ is aiming to achieve on a wider scale.

5. MyNewsDesk.com 

This ‘news exchange’ startup out of Stockholm has become one of the most talked about social media tools of 2011 thanks to its robust analytics system and easy-to-use interface. Try it now if you haven’t already.

6. Contax.io 

You may have stumbled across MyTweeple in the past (a Twitter specific contact management system) but in 2011 it evolved into Contax.io and also added Facebook functionality, giving you a central place to manage your fans and followers. It really is a beautiful thing.

7. Pokki.com 

Here’s another wonderful tool that you may not have heard about in 2011 but you probably should have. Pokki helps you create web apps for your desktop, giving you easy access to your favourite sites without having to open up a web browser. The Gmail desktop app is especially sweet.

8. Zooshia.com 

One of the more silent tools of year 2011, Zooshia allows you to create your own widgets for blogs and websites. You can create a ‘Zoosh’ of your Facebook or Twitter feeds or from a combination of sources. Best of all, embedding the code after you’ve tailored your widget is incredibly easy.

9. SocialBakers.com 

Another great analytics tool that has leaped into prominence in 2011 is SocialBakers.com. The site features every imaginable social media statistic you’ll ever need and is especially robust when it comes to geographic and demographic breakdowns for Facebook. A Superb stuff.

10. PRINT social media performance analysis service 

While this was only launched a month or so ago, its potential in helping brands and organisations make insight-led decisions about social media strategy is plain to see. Your PRINT score is a combination of your social media channel and attribute performance and is based upon data measured against your pre-defined competitor set. It’s a really useful enterprise tool.

 

11. Knowem.com 

This is primarily a social media username checking tool but is also a great place to start when identifying online communities relevant to a subject / topic. Simply visit the networks tab and scroll through the categories to discover new places to be active and / or monitor.

12. PeopleBrowsr.com And Kred.ly 

PeopleBrowsr is a social media analytics tool which includes 1,000 days of Twitter data at your disposal. Kred, from the same team, is an influence measurement tool that is provides a very transparent analysis of user activity. Both of these tool combined can make your life a helluva lot easier.

13. GroupHigh.com 

If you haven’t tried GroupHigh yet, the next sentence might encourage you to do so. Ready? GroupHigh.com is the best blogger outreach research and engagement tool on the planet. The latest update (version three) makes it even easier for you to discover the most relevant blogs by keyword, style and receptiveness. Brilliant.

14. Quixey.com 

This is a search engine for apps (Android, Mac, Chrome, Facebook, web and more) which takes the pain away from those endless searches for apps via general search engines. Bookmark this one!

15. Unilyzer.com 

If you are responsible for measuring how well your social media channels are performing, then this is the analytics hub for you. Simply plug all of your details in (Twitter account, YouTube channel, Google analytics etc) and Unilyzer will give you all of your data on one screen.

16. Lubith.com 

WordPress theme generation tool which is easy-to-use and will save you time (and money!)

17. Conversocial.com 

Conversocial helps brands manage customer service on a large scale across Twitter and Facebook.

18. FBsearch.us 

Powered by the Facebook Open Graph API, FBsearch.us helps users search across posts, photos, people, pages, groups and events without the need to login or have a Facebook account.

19. Panabee.com 

A domain name checker with a twist, helping you brainstorm new ideas based on URL availablity.

20. SiteTrail.com 

An easy and free way to track the performance of competitor websites with similar topics etc. And most viewed sites are all available in this SiteTrail.com

The Best High-Tech Holiday Gifts

Many of you might be really thinking of buying a high tech gift for your friends and family. Many of your minds will be popping out with a extremely large number of Gadgets.

Here's look at the best of what will make the people on your shopping list smile in this holiday season. In order to make your last minute shopping a bit easier, I'm going to give you a couple recommendations.

Apple iPad 2

Ranging in price from $499 USD to $829 USD, depending on the storage and communications options you choose, the iPad has established itself as the clear leader in this category. This is the gadget that all tablet lovers are going to want this Holiday, as it plays music, movies, TV shows, runs applications, and is a great eReader too. So if you’re budget is up to it, this iOS powered iDevice will be a sure winner for your loved ones. It's more expensive than any but there's just nothing else like it.

Price Starts @ $499 Shop the Apple Store


Apple iPhone 4S

  

Ranging from $99 USD to $399 USD, Apple’s iPhone 4/4S is the most popular smartphone in the US, and likely around the world.  Siri, available only on the 4S, will remake the way users interface with their iPhones, and is perhaps the biggest draw for new and existing iPhone customers alike. Order now at the latest  as many carriers, as well as Apple.com reported lengthy lead times and delivery dates that are quickly nearing the end of December. 

Price Starts @ $99 Shop now at Apple Store 

Kindle Fire 

One of the biggest battles this festive and holiday season is between the Kindle Fire And the Nook Tablet. I have only used Kindle Fire & I suggest that Kindle Fire is the best e-reader worth your money. Don't buy it expecting a fully realized tablet experience - the hardware is a bit slower and it's missing features like the Bluetooth Connectivity - But then too I say its The Best e-reader ever made in the world. It can also run a set of Android Applications including Angry Birds, Words with Friends, Netflix and Hulu Plus.

Price Starts @ $199  Shop at Amazon eStore

Droid RAZR

 If Apple’s smartphone isn’t your cup of tea or is outside your budget, the Droid RAZR, available on Verizon Wireless in the US, also represents head-turning technology within the Android ecosystem. While a little more expensive than the entry level iPhone, at $299.99 USD, it sports “advanced artificial intelligence,” learning the user’s work habits, and speeding up those tasks it knows you’re going to perform most often. Yes then It would be a wonderful experience to try a RAZR. 

Price starts @ $299.99  

Peel Smart Remote 

This stylish, pear-shaped universal remote control sits near your entertainment center and syncs with an iPhone, iPad or even iPod Touch, allowing you to control your Television, Cable Box, DVD player or Set Top Boxes like a Roku.It basically turns your iOS devices into a Remote controller that can control your whole gadgets. The app is a great visual guide that shows programs in photographic tiles. Want to watch "Sherlock Holmes" ? Just click on  it.

Price Starts @ $ 79  Shop at Peel Store online

 

Apple MacBook Air

As the only non-iOS/Android powered product in this gift guide, the Apple MacBook Air is both a Windows as well as a Mac based computer. The entry level model comes with 2GB of RAM and a 64GB SSD. This ultra-thin, SSD equipped ultra-notebook ranges in price from $999 to $1599 USD, and may be a bit on the pricy side. However, as current models don’t have DVD drives or Ethernet ports, you’ll need to remember to buy the external SuperDrive as well as the appropriate adapter not only for your desktop monitor, but its Ethernet adapter as well; and this will push the entry level price up by $137 USD.  You may also want to invest in a USB hub or two. Despite all this, however, the Air is proving very popular with consumers and enterprise users alike.

Price Starts @ $999

Pop Phone

This retro handset plugs into your smartphone, allowing you to talk using an old fashioned receiver. It's for all those who like and dislike that receiver. The phone can stay in your pocket or handbag. It's a trendy, sleek and stylish accessory popping up on the streets of New York And Los Angeles. Celebrities like Lenny Kravitz and Jamie Lee have been spotted with the Pop Phone. It comes in more than Ten beautiful and trendy colors. It's a fun gimmick but it's also being touted as a way to limit the amount or quantity of radiation entering and harming the body.

Price Starts @ $ 30

Asus Transformer Prime

The $499.99 USD Asus Transformer Prime is technically a tablet, but with its $149.99 Transformer Dock, it instantly becomes a powerful, light weight ultra-notebook, capable of satisfying most of the needs for a computing device in this category.  The best thing about this device is its ability to function as both a tablet and keyboard-based computer.  While the device currently runs Android’s Honeycomb 3.2, its sure to get an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich, ensuring that the device will provide a number of years of usability at roughly half the price of Apple’s MacBook Air.

Price Starts @ $ 499.99 

Driinn mobile phone holder 

If you're looking for an easy stocking stuffer, this clever phone holder makes the process of charging a smartphone a bit neater. It comes in a ton of colors and is available everywhere. Just do some searching online.

Price Starts @ $ 10 

Microsoft reveals details of its Windows Store

Microsoft's Windows Store is set to launch in February 2012

Details of the Windows Store have been released by Microsoft.

The service will allow users to buy applications online for Windows 8-based PCs, desktops, laptops and tablets when the system launches next year.

Microsoft is offering best-selling developers a bigger share of sales than rivals' stores. Users will also be able to use some apps on a trial basis.

Experts say the move hastens the death of boxed software sold via retailers.

Traditionally most software has been purchased from High Street stores or downloaded directly from developers' websites.

However, Valve's Steam videogames service, Apple's App Store, Google's Android Market and the Blackberry App World have helped create a shift towards one-stop software stores.

Microsoft already runs a Windows Phone Marketplace where it sells third-party software.

In February 2012 it will extend that model to other devices to coincide with the beta release of the next version of its operating software.

Microsoft says the store will be global, enabling developers to sell their apps in 231 markets and in more than 100 languages.

Sales split

Developers can offer their software for free, but otherwise the minimum price is $1.49 (95p), which is higher than the 99 cents minimum found on most other stores.

The firm also distinguishes itself by offering software writers 80% of the revenue from app sales and in-app purchases using its payment process, if their app earns more than $25,000.

Below that threshold it offers the same 70% split offered by Apple and Google.

Microsoft will also allow developers to use their own transaction platforms for in-app sales, helping them keep track of subscribers. The software firm will not take a share of earnings if this is the case.

By comparison Apple insists all in-app purchases should go through its systems and it will not share information on its subscribers unless they give their permission.

This has frustrated many newspaper and magazine publishers and led to the Financial Times' mobile app being dropped from Apple's store.

'Predictable'

Microsoft also boasts of a "transparent approval process"."We want to increase predictability and eliminate any capriciousness in app certification," Ted Dworkin, partner program manager for the store wrote.

Microsoft promises to publish a set of clear, updated policies and is offering software to help developers see how far their app has progressed along its approval process.

Apple has been criticised for not always being clear about its decisions, despite having published guidelines in October last year.

Google, by contrast, allows any submitted app to be published, and then removes software if users complain that it is malicious or it otherwise breaches the firm's terms and conditions. Analysts say this laissez-faire approach has allowed poor quality apps to get through.

Ultrabooks

Microsoft says its platform will also support time-based and feature-based trials allowing customers to try out software before committing to an in-app purchase without the need to reload a separate version of the code.

Analysts say the move is timely bearing in mind the growing popularity of ultrabooks - portable laptops that do not have built in CD/DVD-drives.

"The death knell for boxed software was sounded some time ago but this is another nail in the coffin," said Patrick O'Brien, principal analyst at Verdict Research.

"Software is increasingly being downloaded over the internet instead of via CD-Roms. But in this particular case it will be particularly useful in drawing consumers who want the reassurance of a big name like Microsoft and might have felt uncomfortable handing their credit card details to a small third party developer."

Five NEW Android 4.0 tablets to debut at CES 2012

Coby Electronics has revealed that five new Android 4.0 tablets will launch at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this coming January

The scramble to take the new flavor of Google's Android operating system for a test drive has been pretty intense since the source code was released in the middle of last month. The first commercial hardware products running on Ice Cream Sandwich, though, will not hit the shelves until early in the new year. One of the first to break cover was Acer's Iconia A200 tablet, which is now going to have some company. New York's Coby Electronics will be launching five new Android 4.0 tablets at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this coming January.

ARM Cortex A8

Unfortunately, Coby has revealed very little about its new batch of capacitive multi-touch tablets but here's what we can tell you. The five tablets will be available in 7-, 8-, 9-, 9.7-, and 10-inch form factors and will all be powered by an ARM Cortex A8 processor running at 1GHz, supported by 1GB of system memory. It's unclear how much onboard storage will be included (existing Coby tablets have settled on 4 GB) but there will be microSD expansion available.

Also up for speculation at this point is whether the new tablets will be additions to the range or replacements for older models, which currently run on Android 2.2 or 2.3. There will be built-in Wi-Fi and an HDMI out port supporting 1080p output but beyond those few details, Coby is remaining tight-lipped.

The company has hinted that the new Android 4.0 tablets will be easy on the wallet but hasn't revealed exactly how budget-friendly they'll be when they are made available during Q1 2012. We will keep you posted.

Adobe warns of Virus Attacks on Windows

Hackers are exploiting a previously unknown flaw in Reader to attack computers running Windows, Adobe said.

A patch for the critical vulnerability in Reader and Acrobat is expected by next week, the company said in a blog post.

The vulnerability, which is being exploited in "limited, targeted attacks in the wild against Adobe Reader 9.x on Windows," could allow an attacker to take control of the system, Adobe said.

Adobe is finalizing a fix and expects to release an update for Reader and Acrobat 9.x for Windows no later than the week of December 12, according to an Adobe advisory.

"Because Adobe Reader X Protected Mode and Adobe Acrobat X Protected View would prevent an exploit of this kind from executing, we are currently planning to address this issue in Adobe Reader X and Acrobat X for Windows with the next quarterly security update for Adobe Reader and Acrobat, currently scheduled for January 10, 2012," the company said. "We are planning to address this issue in Adobe Reader and Acrobat X and earlier versions for Macintosh as part of the next quarterly update scheduled for January 10, 2012. An update to address this issue in Adobe Reader 9.x for UNIX is planned for January 10, 2012."

The issue does not affect Adobe Reader for Android and Adobe Flash Player.

Adobe's advisory credited Lockheed Martin and members of the Defense Security Information Exchange with reporting the issue. Lockheed spokeswoman Jennifer Whitlow told Reuters that the problem was identified through the company's normal monitoring activities but that the company had not been penetrated in the attempted attack. The defense contractor was targeted in an attack earlier this year believed to be related to a breach at SecurID token maker RSA.