Over to You, WHich Do you prefer: Plasm or LED or LCD?

LED, LCD PLASMA -  be the Judge

 

LED vs LCD vs plasma – as things stand

LED, LCD and plasma are the main types of TV available in stores, and they all have their own strengths and weaknesses that should be factored into your buying decision.
Of the, LED TVs are the most recent introduction and, as such, are generally a bit more expensive than comparable plasma and LCD models. For the money, though, you'll get a super thin and energy-efficient TV. Although, as with most modern flatscreen TVs, LED sets often suffer from poor sound.
Plasma TVs, meanwhile, offer arguably deeper and more detailed black areas on screen, but are hit by a higher energy consumption rate. LCD TVs are often the cheapest sets available, but they're now on the decline as LED technology comes to the fore.

Which LED or Plasma TV is best?

If you've already made up your mind on the technology and just want to find out which is LED TV and which Plasma TV came out top in our independent lab tests.

Find out which LED and plasma TVs topped our tests.
TVs	Picture quality	Sound quality	Ease of use	Score
BEST LED TV The top scorer from our test lab has ground breaking technology that delivers the best picture quality around. And if LED TVs with top scoring picture quality are becoming increasingly common, the five out of five this achieved got for sound quality is even more impressive. Sign up or login in to find out the name of this TV
BEST PLASMA TV The best picture quality we've ever seen on a plasma TV and silky sound quality make this our top scoring plasma TV. You'll also get 3D and with a built in camera you can use the useful smart TV features to make Skype calls. Sign up or login in to find out the name of this TV

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Want to know which TV is best for you? Take a look at all of our TV reviews.

LCD TVs: how do they work?

Liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs come to life when light from behind the screen is shone through a matrix of tiny, coloured liquid crystal cells. Signals control each cell, letting varying amounts of colour through to build up the picture.
LCD has, however, been eclipsed by LED as the most popular TV technology. You might still find LCD TVs available in smaller screen sizes at the budget end of the market, but most manufacturers are now focused on LED.

"LED, LCD and plasma are the main TV types, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses that should be factored into your buying decision."

 

LED TVs: how do they work?

LEDs (light-emitting diodes) have been around for decades, but their introduction into TV design is a fairly recent development.
LED televisions employ standard LCD technology but with one crucial difference – the handful of backlight lamps that traditionally illuminate the LCD screen are replaced by a larger number of tiny LEDs. This enables LED TVs to be much slimmer than their LCD counterparts.
Edge-lit LED vs back-lit LED - which is right for you? 
These are the two types of LED TV, although most sets nowadays are edge-lit LEDs.
Edge-lit models have LED lamps just around the edge of the screen, enabling them to super-slim. Early edge-lit models had problems with inconsistent lighting of the screen, and patchy colours. While you can still find a bad one, the technology behind edge-lit panels has improved significantly in recent years.
Back-lit models (also referred to as direct-lit) have LED lamps spread across the entire rear of the screen. They aren't as slim as edge-lit LEDs, but the consistency of lighting should be much better.
Dimming - backlit LED TVs were previously known for a technique called 'local dimming', which varies the backlight in different parts of the screen to give darker, richer blacks and brighter whites where needed. TV manufacturers have now found ways to incorporate similar technology into their edge-lit models, meaning you're not missing out by buying one - and they're usually cheaper.

Plasma TVs: how do they work?

Plasma TVs use completely different technology and principles to LCD and LED sets. A plasma display is an array of tiny gas cells sandwiched between two sheets of glass. Each cell acts like a mini fluorescent tube, emitting ultraviolet light which then strikes red, green and blue spots on the screen. These spots glow to build up the picture.
Plasma TVs: beloved by home cinema buffs
Home-cinema enthusiasts would claim that the best plasma TVs still boast better blacks and more natural colours than the market-leading LED TVs, making them a better choice if you want spectacular picture quality. However, in recent years the difference between LED and plasma is not so marked, while the poor energy efficiency of plasma TVs means they can be costly to run.
The big manufacturers, such as Panasonic, are now scaling back their plasma TV production (or stopping it entirely) in favour of LED and even newer screen types - so plasma is definitely on the decline.

Flatscreen TV sound quality

While the picture quality of TVs has steadily improved over the last few years, sound quality on modern flatscreen TVs has failed to reach such heights. The desire for ever-slimmer televisions means there is physically less space to include a good set of built-in speakers.
We know from our testing that modern TVs just can’t match the old 'big box' CRT televisions for sound quality. However, improvements in speaker technology means the top-end models are slowly catching up.
If you want the best sound quality available there are various products available to buy; such as soundbars, sound plates and home cinema systems.

LED, LCD & plasma: how much do they cost to run?

Every television will consume electricity, but the TV types differ in terms how much they'll cost you to run. With comparably-sized LCD, LED and plasma TVs, the LED would be the most efficient and the plasma TV the most costly on your electricity bills.
We took a typical 42-inch TV from each type and calculated the average amount of energy used per year. The LED TV used 64 watts, the LCD set 107 watts and the plasma TV 195 watts. Putting that into money-terms, the LED would cost you £17 per year to run, with the LCD costing £28 and the plasma £50 - well over double the LED.

"LED TVs are typically energy efficient, while plasma sets will add the most to your electricity bills."

LED vs LCD vs Plasma: which should you buy?

Given the dwindling availability of LCD TVs and the ongoing demise of plasma TVs, most TV buyers will go for an LED set, and that’s no bad thing considering that they're getting a slim and energy-efficient television.
However, bear in mind that picture and sound quality on LED TVs varies hugely between brands and models. Be sure to check our LED TV Best Buys to ensure you make the right buying choice.

An OLED and 4K future?

New types of TVs are coming to challenge LED, LCD and plasma. The major manufacturers, such as Samsung and LG, are already producing the next-generation of television: OLED TVs and sets with 4K picture resolution.
OLED is a new screen type that promises to give you the best of LED and plasma in one. 4K, or ultra-high-definition (Ultra HD), is a new screen resolution that has four times the pixels of Full HD.
The big problem with both new types is the prohibitive cost - 4K TVs are now available for under £1,000, but OLED models are still into the many thousands. As the likes of Samsung, Panasonic, LG and Sony look to ramp up production, we should see a reduction in price for both OLED and 4K over the coming years.

Facebook - Concerned about your safety?

Facebook has created the ability for users to connect directly to the social network via anonymising "dark web" service Tor.

While it was already possible to access Facebook via Tor, the new set-up means all data is encrypted and Tor users are not mistaken for hacked accounts.
Users could access the site "without losing the cryptographic protections" of Tor, Facebook said.
It may appeal to people in places where the network is blocked.
China, Iran, North Korea and Cuba are among countries that have attempted to prevent access to the site.

So too have such countries attempted to block access to Tor itself. China in particular has attempted to implement measures to disrupt the network.
The creators of Tor have been engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with governments to keep the service accessible.
Stop tracking
Facebook is the first Silicon Valley giant to provide official support for Tor, a network built to allow people to visit web pages without being tracked and to publish sites whose contents would not show up in search engines.
Facebook's move would prove popular among those who wanted to stop their location and browsing habits from being tracked, said Dr Steven Murdoch, from University College London, who was consulted by Facebook for the project.
He explained users would still need to log-in, using real-name credentials, to access the site.
He told the BBC: "It's quite hard to use a social network completely anonymously, it somewhat defeats the point, unless you're just reading information.
"But just because you want to tell Facebook your name, doesn't mean they should be able to find out your location and your browsing habits."

Read the full story here

Internet Speed - Even the US is not spared of ISPs fraud

 

When it comes to Internet speeds, the U.S. lags behind much of the developed world.

ISP refers to the network provider of any country on the internet, it means 'Internet Service Provider' 
That's one of the conclusions from a new report by the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation, which looked at the cost and speed of Internet access in two dozen cities around the world.

Clocking in at the top of the list was Seoul, South Korea, where Internet users can get ultra-fast connections of roughly 1000 megabits per second for just $30 a month. The same speeds can be found in Hong Kong and Tokyo for $37 and $39 per month, respectively.
Related: Has Verizon's new tech site banned controversial topics?
For comparison's sake, the average U.S. connection speed stood at 9.8 megabits per second as of late last year, according to Akamai Technologies.
Residents of New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. can get 500-megabit connections thanks to Verizon, though they come at a cost of $300 a month.
There are a few cities in the U.S. where you can find 1000-megabit connections. Chattanooga, Tenn., and Lafayette, La. have community-owned fiber networks, and Google  has deployed a fiber network in Kansas City. High-speed Internet users in Chattanooga and Kansas City pay $70, while in Lafayette, it's $110.
The problem with fiber networks is that they're hugely expensive to install and maintain, requiring operators to lay new wiring underground and link it to individual homes. Many smaller countries with higher population density have faster average speeds than the United States.
"[E]specially in the U.S., many of the improved plans are at the higher speed tiers, which generally are the most expensive plans available," the report says. "The lower speed packages---which are often more affordable for the average consumer---have not seen as much of an improvement."
Google is exploring plans to bring high-speed fiber networks to a handful of other cities, and AT&T has also built them out in a few places, but it will be a long time before 1000-megabit speeds are an option for most Americans.

Atlas! The new World Trade Center

 The twin world trade center was destroyed in a terrorist attack by Osama Bin Laden about 14years ago, lives were lost and so were uncountable properties. It was a big loss to the United States and the pain is still free in some hearts. But America has proved to the whole world that they can always pick up their pieces and move ahead in whatever situation and that is what they have done. Few years after the twin world trade center was bombed, they built another one, although its not a twin tower this time, but its a magnificent building, a symbol of power, courage that portrays the Can-Do spirit of the United States. See the pictures below:

the new world trade center

The twin world trade center when it was bombed in 2001

the new world trade center

What Is NFC On Your Mobile Phone?

 

 

 

 

If you’ve looked at the hardware specifications for a top of the line handset at any point in the last few years, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen NFC listed on the spec sheet. But despite the age of NFC, it hasn’t yet become the norm for all smartphones. If you’re content with an older handset, or can’t quite justify springing for the latest top of the line model, you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. So here’s a rundown of what NFC is, how it works, and what it can be used for.

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NFC stands for “Near Field Communication” and, as the name implies, it enables short range communication between compatible devices. This requires at least one transmitting device, and another to receive the signal. A range of devices can use the NFC standard and can be considered either passive or active, depending on how the device works.
Passive NFC devices include tags, and other small transmitters, that can send information to other NFC devices without the need for a power source of their own. However, they don’t really process any information sent from other sources, and can’t connect to other passive components.  These often take the form of interactive signs on walls or advertisements.
Active devices are able to both send and receive data, and can communicate with each other as well as with passive devices. Smartphones are by far the most common implementation of active NFC devices, but public transport card readers and touch payment terminals are also good examples of the technology.

How it works

Just like Bluetooth and WiFi, and all manner of other wireless signals, NFC works on the principle of sending information over radio waves.  Near Field Communication is another standard for wireless data transitions, meaning that there are specifications which devices have to adhere to in order to communicate with each other properly. The technology used in NFC is based on older RFID (Radio-frequency identification) ideas, which uses electromagnetic induction in order to transmit information.
This marks the one major difference between NFC and Bluetooth/WiFi, as it can be used to induce electric currents within passive components as well as just send data. This means that passive devices don’t require their own power supply, and can instead be powered by the electromagnetic field produced by an active NFC component when it comes into range, but we’ll talk about that in greater detail some other time. Unfortunately, NFC technology does not command enough inductance to be used to charge our smartphones, but QI charging is based on the same principle

 

Forgot Your Blackberry Password?

 

 

 

Your BlackBerry device password can't be recovered or changed if you don't enter your current password correctly. For security reasons, the only way that you can reset your password without knowing your current password is to delete all of your device data. You can do this by entering an incorrect device password multiple times.

Research In Motion recommends that you regularly create and save a backup file on your computer.

 

And Finally, The Google Inbox App Is Here!

 

 

 GOOGLE INBOX APP

 

 

If you are a Google fan then you definitely need to have this App. But it is not available for download on the internet right now but Google will email it to you on request. All you need to do is to send the Google Inbox team a mail to get the App. You can reach them at inbox@google.com, be the first to use the much awaited inbox App!

 

Android OS Maybe Hacked?

A flaw in Android's GUI framework let university researchers hack

into applications with up to 92 percent success rate.

They tested apps from Gmail, H&R Block , Newegg, WebMD , Chase

Bank, Hotels.com and Amazon.

"Changes in the shared memory side channel allow an attacker to

infer if there is an activity transition going on in the foreground,"

researcher Zhiyun Qian, an assistant professor at the University of

California at Riverside, told LinuxInsider.

"This is a design choice by modern OSes ... . The same attack may

work as well [on other mobile OSes]," he added.

Details of the Flaw

When a new screen or window is shown, the GUI framework

allocates a fixed amount of memory in the shared memory register

that's proportional to the size of the screen, Qian said. This memory

is allocated inside the app process and shared with a separate

window compositor process.

Shared memory is commonly adopted by window managers to

receive window changes or updates from running applications. This

gives rise to the side channel.

When a user downloads a malicious app, the shared memory lets

attackers steal information such as login credentials, and obtain

sensitive camera images such as photos of personal checks sent

through banking apps.

Existing attacks can be enhanced in stealth and effectiveness by

providing the target UI states; further, user behavior can be

inferred by tracking UI state changes.

How the Attack Works

The researchers first built a UI state machine based on UI state

signatures constructed online.

In real time, they inferred UI states -- called "activities" in Android

-- from an unprivileged background app.

They then exploited the designed functionality that allows UI

preemption, commonly used by alarm or reminder apps on Android,

to break the GUI integrity.

"This is akin to a combination of other well-known flaws such as the

Trojan Horse approach," Al Hilwa, a program director at IDC, told

LinuxInsider.

Trojan Horses capture user data with a decoy UI before error

messages are put out, and the real app is brought up once the data

is stolen. However, in the researchers' attack, "the real app is used

but another app is capturing the data, then throwing out an error

message," Hilwa said.

The findings put paid to the common notion that downloaded apps

cannot interfere with each other.

The Killing Fields

The researchers achieved success rates for their attacks of 92

percent for the Gmail and H&R Block apps; 86 percent for Newegg's

app; 85 percent for the WebMD app; and 83 percent for the Chase

Bank and Hotels.com apps.

They had the lowest success rate -- 48 percent -- with the Amazon

app, because it allows an activity to transition to almost any other

activity, making tracking difficult.

"We will shut down the vulnerability on Android first, followed by

iOS," James Wu, CTO and COO of Newegg North America, told

LinuxInsider. He expects these fixes to be in place by next week.

"At this time, there is no indication that any H&R Block client data

has been compromised as a result of this vulnerability," said

company spokesperson Gene King.

"H&R Block takes privacy and security very seriously, and we are in

contact with appropriate parties to address these reports," he told

LinuxInsider.

The researchers had not yet notified Google of the flaw, UCR's Qian

said.

On Responsibility and Defense

As for fixing the flaw, Newegg's Wu said, "everyone is responsible

-- the OS makers, app developers and phone users."

The researchers "did a good job at pointing out and educating

everyone about a possible vulnerability," he continued. "Now it is up

to all of us to do something about it."

OS vendors could eliminate the shared memory side channel, Qian

suggested, although that could impact backward compatibility. Or

they could redesign the GUI framework to avoid frequently

allocating and deallocating memory, instead preallocating double

the size of the memory. That approach would increase memory

consumption, though.

There are "not always perfect solutions," Qian admitted, noting that

each imposes its own penalties.

Richard Adhikari has written about high-tech for leading industry

publications since the 1990s and wonders where it's all leading to.

Will implanted RFID chips in humans be the Mark of the Beast? Will

nanotech solve our coming food crisis? Does Sturgeon's Law still

hold true? You can connect with Richard on Google+ .

Internet Explorer 11 - Re-Designed For Our Browing Pleasure

Browsing with it few years back was  very frustrating, snail-slowed. Properly formatting web pages was a luxury Internet couldn't afford  and load was a nightmare. But all that has gone now, Internet Explorer 11 is one of the best web browsers right now.

Personally, I can't think of a better web browser to compare to it ( except the notable exception of Google chrome). It now loads with lightning speed, all its security challenges have been fixed many thanks to Microsoft programmers Internet Explorer team.

below is a list of all the new features for your browsing delight. Enjoy and tell QHN what you think about the all new Internet Explorer 11.

Internet Explorer 11 and Windows 8.1 let users, developers, and IT professionals experience the state-of-the-art immersive and desktop browsers, enabling the creation and use of next generation web apps, games, and media. Internet Explorer 11 continues our vision of allowing users to experience the web in a fast, fluid and seamless way that is perfect for touch. New and updated features include:

• Faster web browsing. Allows network requests to prioritize content, connecting users to information faster than ever before. Plus, with the new SPDY/3 support, Internet Explorer 11 Preview can provide faster and more efficient browsing, even over slow networks.
• Fast and fluid navigation. Back swipe feels instant with smarter web page caching, and with prefetch and prerender, many forward navigations (like getting to search results) feel instant as well.
• Rich, hyper-fast 2D and 3D experiences. Supports the emerging Web Graphics Library (WebGL) standards, lighting up games and other interactive content, while still maintaining security, reliability, and performance. In addition, the interactive content in Internet Explorer 11 is now hardware-accelerated for DirectX 9 and later, including a software fallback option.
• Great on all your screens, large and small. Supports gyroscope input and display orientation lock, making Internet Explorer 11 great for tablets. And, with side-by-side browsing, multi-monitor support, and high pixels per inch (PPI) scaling, Internet Explorer 11 is also great for large screens.
• Improved compatibility. Internet Explorer 11 improves compatibility with web standards, other browsers, and real-world websites. There's updated support for popular web standards and changes that prevent older websites from displaying incorrectly.

Features for users

Internet Explorer 11 lets users interact with the next generation of web apps, games, and media, through these key features:

• Perfect for touch. Includes enhanced support for consumers using touch-based devices, including touch-based drag-and-drop, hover, and active link highlighting. Grouping together the navigation and tabs provides better control, with support for up to 100 open tabs per window.
• Pinned sites. Enhances pinned sites to support Live Tiles, letting your content update dynamically and creating a more personalized Startscreen. Using Live Tiles with Internet Explorer 11 blurs the line, creating an active and seamless experience between apps and web apps.
• Seamless integration. Internet Explorer 11 seamlessly integrates with Windows 8.1, enabling new ways to experience websites, including being able to use the Search charm to accelerate web searches.
• Syncing across devices. Syncs your open Internet Explorer 11 tabs across multiple devices, so that when you open Internet Explorer on another device, you see the same tabs. You also have the option to sync your browsing history and typed URLs, favorites/bookmarks, user-configured settings, and passwords.
• Click to call. Automatically changes phone numbers into clickable links for apps that work with phone numbers, such as Skype.

Features for IT professionals

Internet Explorer 11 supports the needs of enterprises, helping to reduce deployment, management, and support costs, through these key features:

• Enhanced Protected Mode (EPM) and AppContainer turned on by default. Prevents pages from reading or writing to the protected parts of the operating system in both the immersive and desktop environments. For more information, see Enhanced Protected Mode (EPM) on desktop IE.
• Adobe Flash included in the platform. Adobe Flash is available out-of-the-box for Windows 8.1 Preview. It can run on both Internet Explorer and Internet Explorer for the desktop, with management happening through Automatic Updates and Group Policy, so you can use one update mechanism for all of Internet Explorer.
• New Group Policy settings. Introduces these new Group Policy settings, while still supporting all of the previous Group Policy settings back to Internet Explorer 9.
  • Turn off Page Prediction
  • Turn on the swiping motion for Internet Explorer for the desktop
  • Allow Microsoft services to provide more relevant and personalized search results
  • Turn off phone number detection
  • Allow Internet Explorer to use the SPDY/3 network protocol
• Do Not Track (DNT) exceptions. Enhances user privacy by not allowing websites to track users, by default. Internet Explorer 11 lets websites ask for an exception from the user based on the DNT exceptions API, which if granted, creates an exception that allows headers to be sent to the website to allow tracking. This relationship allows users to develop a trusted relationship with the site, regarding privacy.

Features for developers

Internet Explorer 11 is optimized to support all of the popular web standards, to offer premier security, and to provide new and updated developer tools that'll help you code across browsers and web-based apps, using these key features:

• Modern web standards. Internet Explorer 11 supports more web-based standards than ever before, including:
  • WebGL
  • Canvas 2D L2 extensions
  • Full screen API
  • Encrypted media extensions
  • Media source extensions
  • CSS flexible box layout module
  • Mutation observers like DOM4 and 5.3
  With these new standards you can use the same markup language across the multiple browsers that are available
• New F12 Developer Tools. These tools have all been completely rebuilt. You can use them to debug code, solve display issues, improve performance, and increase the stability of your webpages. All of the tools have a cleaner user interface, improved functionality, and an easier and faster overall workflow, including the new Responsiveness, Memory, and Emulation tools.
• Perfect for touch. Internet Explorer 11 introduces the msZoomTo method for animated scrolling effects, even more finely-tuned controls for panning and zooming on sites or in Windows Store apps, and several updates to Pointer Events.
• Improved HTML5 video. Internet Explorer 11 also takes HTML5 video to new levels with support for new and emerging standards-based features in the areas of adaptive streaming, content protection, and captioning.

Windows Azura - Micrososft Taking Care Of Your Cloud

Windows Azure is Microsoft's operating system for cloud computing. As with other technologies for cloud computing, Windows Azure is intended to simplify IT management and minimize up-front and ongoing expenses. With Windows Azure, Businesses and Individuals don't need to keep buying and storing softwares on their systems or bother with the task of updating applications and desktop based programs as Microsoft will manage all that for both Business users and Individual  users alike.

 

 

Windows Azure is not the 'Cloud' itself, it is just an Operating System like Windows XP, 7, 8, or Windows 10. But while Windows XP, 7, 8, or Windows 10 run on your desktop computers or laptops at home or in your office, Windows Azure runs on the Cloud. (QHN will provide you with comprehensive info on what the 'Cloud' is at your request)

image credit: blogs.msdn.com

 

Goodbye to Nokia?

It was in 2013 that Microsoft bought  the Finland Mobile Phone giant, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2bn (£4.6bn). Nokia has suffered a major setback on patronage largely due to the more recent Android phones with other mobile phone hardware companies like Samsung, techno etc taking the lead in the mobile phone industry.

Very little improvement has been recorded ever since Microsoft bought the company last year, QHN can now confirm that Microsoft is planning to finally drop the "Nokia" from the Nokia phones in favor of it's own phone(s) - Windows Phone.

What do you think about the name change or name 'drop' as some would prefer it?