Astronomers Discover Lowest Mass Exoplanet yet Orbiting a Sun like Star

Astronomers have announced that they had discovered the lowest mass exoplanet ever to be found orbiting a sun-like Star. The planet has the cryptic name GJ 504b. The planetorbits the star GJ504 at approximately 9 times the distance between the sun and Jupiter.

The star the planet orbits can be seen with the naked eye in the Virgo constellation. The planet is approximately 4 times the mass of Jupiter and has a temperature of about 460°F. The star the planet orbits is slightly hotter than the sun.

“If we could travel to this giant planet, we would see a world still glowing from the heat of its formation with a color reminiscent of a dark cherry blossom, a dull magenta. Our near-infrared camera reveals that its color is much more blue than other imaged planets, which may indicate that its atmosphere has fewer clouds,” said Michael McElwain, a member of the discovery team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

via Nature World News

Samsung to offer BBM in Samsung App store for all GALAXY Smartphone devices

Samsung has announced today that BBM will soon be available via Google Play and the Samsung App store for customers across Africa. While we've yet to hear much about an official release date for BBM on Android or iOS anywhere else, we've seen it pop up in the beta and expect it to arrive soon if all goes as planned. 

According to the release, BBM on Samsung devices will offer BBM chat, multi-person chats and BBM Groups to users in Africa. We can only assume that BBM will be available worldwide when it goes cross-platform, but we'll have to wait to hear more on that. This is the first announcement we've seen regarding BBM on other platforms and although it's specifically geared toward Africa, it's still a welcome sign that a release in other regions isn't too far off (hopefully)

No official release date given here aside from "available soon" but the countdown is on and fingers crossed that Android and iOS users will see BBM available in the coming weeks. 

Press Release

Samsung to offer BBM in Samsung App store for all GALAXY Smartphone devices

5^th August, 2013 – Today, Samsung has announced that the upcoming BBM™ app will be available in the Google Play and the Samsung App store soon and available to all Samsung GALAXY smartphone consumers across Africa.

Says George Ferreira, VP and COO of Samsung Electronics Africa: “At Samsung we are all about collaboration, innovation and driving consumer experience based on choice, value and customisation to suit every lifestyle. As such, bringing a top tier messaging service such as BBM is another way that we are expanding the catalogue of our messaging services and offering customers an amazing way to stay instantly connected with colleagues, friends and family.”

BBM will form part of Samsung Messaging Hub as a complementary addition to the current slate of propriety and third party messaging services that Samsung customers enjoy – all aimed at empowering consumers to connect with each other in better ways using text messaging. Offering BBM on GALAXY smartphones in Africa will give Samsung customers access to the BBM social network, including BBM chats, multi-person chats and and BBM Groups, which allows BBM customers to create groups of up to 30 people, as well as the ability to share photos and voice notes.

“It is important to strike a balance between developing high-tech smartphones that carry brands in to the future and creating a sustainable ecosystem that primarily supports the needs of consumers that use these devices. Value added services are considered a prerequisite in the fast-paced, challenging environment that exists today and as a result, we will continue to drive innovation through our smart hub functionalities to ensure our consumers have the choice which they desire,” concludes Ferreira.

“BBM provides one of the best and most robust mobile messaging experiences today. BBM has always set the standard for mobile instant messaging and we are thrilled to bring this experience to Samsung customers across Africa,” said Andrew Bocking, Executive Vice President BBM at BlackBerry. “BBM is loved by people who rely on fast, trusted messaging, along with the immediacy that our delivered and read statuses bring. Samsung customers will soon join the BBM nation in its love of the “D” and “R” notifications.”

The companies have also agreed to joint marketing efforts to showcase BBM for Android to customers and to mobile users across Africa.

At launch, the app will be available for download from the Samsung and Google Play Stores, at no cost.

YouTube Adds New “Play” Icon To Web Browser Tabs

It can be a pain to find the right browser when you have a bunch of tabs open. Just glancing at the tab bar doesn’t help. That’s where those icons on your browser tabs come in handy. They are called favicons. In order to make things easier, YouTube will now display a “play” icon in its tab whenever a video is playing.

This allows users to figure out in one glance which is YouTube. Spotify and Soundcloud already do this. The “play” icon is displayed alongside the favicon and will definitely make it a lot easier to locate the tab.

It should come in very handy for those with many tabs open.

Source Ubergizmo

CyanogenMod Announces 11 More Devices Ready For Android 4.3 Support

CyanogenMod has this week announced the addition of 11 more devices to its roster ready for Android 4.3 support and offers users a more clean and pure Android installation when compared to malt of the Android versions released by manufacturers and providers.

CyanogenMod has listed 11 devices that have joined its roster of supported devices that include Motorola Droid Razr and the Atrix as well as two Barnes and Noble Nook tablets and the Samsung Galaxy S4 to name just a few in their Google+ announcement posts.

CyanogenMod full list:

Barnes & Noble Nook HD (hummingbird)
Barnes & Noble Nook HD+ (ovation)
Motorola Atrix HD (mb886)
Motorola Photon Q – GSM (xt897)
Motorola Photon Q – CDMA (xt897c)
Motorola Droid Razr M (xt907)
Motorola Razr HD – GSM (xt925)
Motorola Droid Razr HD – CDMA (xt926) – These builds may work for the Droid Razr MAXX HD but you’ll have to check it yourself.
Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G (apexqtmo)
Samsung Galaxy S4 – C Spire (jfltecsp)
Samsung Verizon Galaxy Note 10.1 LTE (i925)

For more information jump over to the CyanogenMod Google+ 1, 2  posts  for details.

Source: Android Community : Androidheadlines

iPad 5 Case Appears On Video

Earlier today we saw a video of the new iPhone 5C case, and now we have another video from the guys over at Mac Otakara showing the casing for the new iPad 5.

The new iPad 5 is expected to be thinner than the existing model, the casing apparently measure 340mm by 168mm by 7.9mm, this is slightly smaller than the current iPad.

As yet we do not have any details on what updates the new iPad 5 will get, we suspect the device will feature the same Retina Display and will get an updated processor and more RAM.

As soon as we get some more information on the new iPad 5, including some details on when it will be available we will let you guys know.

Source Phone Arena

Xbox One Graphics Performance Boosted By 6.62 Percent Confirms Microsoft

Over the weekend the Major Nelson podcast has confirmed that the new next-generation Microsoft’s Xbox One games console has received a graphics speed increase of 6.62 percent.

The new speed increase has been provide via a release of the final processor that will be equipped win the new Xbox One that now will ship with a 853MHz clock-speed up from its previous 800MHz.

Leaked comments from corporate vice president Marc Whitten were published online about the news and was published by the GameSpot website but was quickly pulled. Whitten explain in the leaked comments:

“Since E3, an example is that we’ve dropped in what we internally call our mono driver. It’s our graphics driver that really is 100 percent optimised for the Xbox One hardware. You start with the base [DirectX] driver, and then you take out all parts that don’t look like Xbox One and you add in everything that really optimises that experience. Almost all of our content partners have really picked it up now, and I think it’s made a really nice improvement,”

“This is the time where we’ve gone from the theory of how the hardware works – what do we think the yield is going to look like, what is the thermal envelope, how do things come together – to really having them in our hands. That’s the time where you start tweaking the knobs. Either your theory was right dead on, or you were a little too conservative, or you were a little too aggressive. It’s actually been really good news for us, and an example of that is we’ve tweaked up the clock speed on our GPU from 800MHz to 853MHz.”

The increase has now been coifed by the Major Nelson website and can be heard in the latest official Major Nelson podcast.

Source: Eurogamer : Major Nelson

iPhone 5C Case Appears On Video

Apple is expected to launch the new iPhone 5C with the iPhone 5S and iOS 7 in September. We have already seen a number of photos of the casing on the new iPhone 5C, and now we get a better look at the devices casing in a video.

The video below was posted online by the guys from Mac Otakara and it gives us a quick look at the rear case from the iPhone 5C and also the front glass of the device.

The iPhone 5C is rumored to feature similar hardware specifications to the iPhone 5, last week we saw a leaked camera module for the handset which is apparent,y an 8 megapixel camera that is very similar to the iPhone 5 version.

We are expecting Apple to make the new iPhone 5C and the iPhone 5S official some time in September, the device is rumored to come in a range of bright colors.