1. Google rolls out a new, colorful app search results layout on mobile

Google has rolled out a new layout for showing app results on Android devices. The new layout

is available for app searches via Google's Chrome browser, and Google Now. To check the new

layout, one simply needs to make a generalized app search query, like video apps, audio apps,

racing games, etc.

If the new layout has been rolled out for the device used to make the search, the user will see

apps being listed in colorful grids. Although, as of now, Google also show a couple of apps on

random occasions as advertisement at the top before the grid view starts showing up. For each of

the apps, its name, icon, average rating and number of ratings are shown. Tapping on a particular

app box takes the user to its corresponding page on Google Play Store from where the app can be

downloaded. At first, Google shows only six apps related to the search query, but there is an icon

at the bottom, labeled as ‘More apps’. Tapping on it shows the rest of the apps, and the user can

keep scrolling down until he finds the target app. Users can also tap and hold on any of the app

boxes to get options like Open in New Tab, Copy Link Address and Save Link, but these are

available only if the search is made with Chrome.

The new layout looks like a move from Google to make apps easier to be discovered, and find

them on the Play Store. The search engine giant is known to make changes to its search results

across all the platforms from time to time. However, as per Android Police reports, the new grid

layout is rolling out only to Android devices as of now, and there is no word for its availability

on other platforms.

2. Nokia Agrees on 'Shanghai Bell' Joint Venture With China Huaxin

Finnish telecom equipment maker Nokia said it had agreed to create a Chinese joint venture

with Huaxin in a move that could pave the way for China's approval for Nokia's proposed

takeover ofAlcatel-Lucent.

The joint venture, to

be named Nokia

Shanghai Bell, will be

built upon a similar,

long-time joint

venture between

France's Alcatel-

Lucent and China

Huaxin, which is a

state-owned Chinese

investment company.

According to a memorandum of understanding, Nokia said it expects to hold 50 percent plus

one share in the new joint venture, with Huaxin holding the remaining shares.

China is the last major jurisdiction still to approve Nokia's EUR 15.6 billion (roughly Rs. 1,

16,427 crores)takeover of Alcatel.

"With this MoU now in place, we will... work closely with our new partners to make the case

for swift approval of the proposed combination," Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri said in a statement.

Nordea analyst Sami Sarkamies said the joint venture deal was a promising sign."If they have

agreed that with a state-backed partner, it likely means that there will be green light coming

for the whole (Alcatel) deal."

3. Qualcomm launches Snapdragon Smart Protect to help protect against malware

Qualcomm today announced Snapdragon Smart Protect. This new technology will be

featured by new Qualcomm chips – the first being the Snapdragon 820 – and will provide

advanced protection against zero-day malware threats. It's stated Snapdragon Smart Protect

will introduce improved privacy and mobile product security.

Smart Protect as part of the

Snapdragon processor solution will

complement signature-based anti-

malware services, identifying new

threats prior to signature updates.

Smart Protect will monitor apps

and services running to ensure that

no malicious activity is occurring.

The company will also provide

APIs for anti-malware app

providers to perform analysis.

"Snapdragon Smart Protect is also the first application to utilize Qualcomm Zeroth

technology, augmenting conventional anti-malware solutions by supporting on device real-

time malware detection, classification and cause analysis using an advanced cognitive

computing behavioral engine."

Security companies, including the likes of Avast, AVG and Lookout are working closely

with Qualcomm to ensure the new feature is compatible with existing commercial anti-

malware solutions, enhancing said apps and harden the protection against potential attacks.

Snapdragon Smart Protect is yet another feature added to Qualcomm's Haven security suite.

Improved protection is always welcomed. Look to see Snapdragon Smart Protect become

available in 2016 with the launch of the Snapdragon 820 processor.

4. T-Mobile cracking the whip on Unlimited 4G LTE data abusers

T-Mobile starting tomorrow will be going after thieves that are stealing as much as 2

terabytes of data from the company each month. The carrier’s unlimited plans offer 7GB of

high-speed data for tethering, but a handful of customers have found a way to bypass that cap

entirely.

T-Mobile says there are applications out there promising to hide a user’s tethering activities

from the carrier, giving customers free access to as much data as they want. However, the

telecommunications provider says it has developed technologies to go after these abusers.

The carrier is bent on not letting a few bad apples ruin the unlimited data plan for everybody.

John Legere in a blog post said that they “started this wireless revolution to change the

industry for good and to fight for consumers,” and that won’t be ruined by a few people

abusing the system.Starting today, these users will receive warnings from T-Mobile asking

them to stop. If they don’t listen to said warning, the abusers will permanently banned from

T-Mobile’s unlimited data plan and be put on a entry-level package.

Let’s just hope these new efforts will stop the abusers.

5. Intel’s new 5×5: Tiny form factor, socketed CPU

For years, mini-ITX has been the smallest mainstream system form factor that enthusiasts

could reasonably buy. Intel wants to change that with its new 5×5 initiative, and it’s offering

the new platform with socketed CPUs rather than relying solely on soldered parts. This could

prove a potent selling point, since soldered systems are often less attractive to customers who

want the option to upgrade the integrated CPU.

Despite the 5×5 name, the board is more like 5.5 by 5.8 inches (HW), but it packs a number

of features. The board is capable of handling up to 65W TDP chips, with two SO-DIMM

slots for memory, M.2 support for storage, and both wired and wireless networking options.

The 5×5 can also use an external DC power supply. Intel says the mounting holes are

“standard,” which implies that they conform to existing hardware mounts, but we haven’t

seen hardware yet to verify exactly which cases will be able to mount a 5×5 board.

Socket support, higher TDPs improve value proposition

If you consider Intel’s 5×5 in the context of Skylake’s increased graphics performance, the

offering makes more sense. Intel’s GPU performance has been growing substantially faster

than its CPU performance, but that’s not much of a benefit in a soldered system without PCI-

Express slots. With Skylake, Intel is continuing to push the graphics envelope — and

socketed systems theoretically offer lower-end gamers the ability to buy a CPU today and

upgrade later to a higher-performance GPU.

The reason that gain is theoretical, however, is that Intel doesn’t exactly have a great track

record when it comes to supporting multiple generations of processor on the same platform.

It’s not clear yet if current Skylake motherboards will support Kaby Lake, the 14nm refresh

now scheduled for 2016. A solution like this would be more exciting if we knew that Intel

would offer multiple products with improved graphics performance integrated into each core

— especially if those parts would fit into a 65W TDP.

The 5×5 probably won’t revolutionize small system design — Intel NUCs and the existing

mini-ITX standard fill the low-power market fairly well — but the ability to upgrade to a

faster socketed processor in the miniature form factor could sell some living room computer

enthusiasts on Skylake as a Steam Box processor. Intel claims that the smallest system form

factors will fit into 0.85L worth of volume, which should let it slip inconspicuously into a

living room or entertainment system.

6. Chrome will automatically block Flash ads starting September 1

Google has set a date on when Chrome will begin automatically blocking flash ads and

refusing to allow non-critical content to play by default. On September 1st, Chrome will no

longer offer to play “non-essential” content. Instead, users will have to right-click on a plugin

and choose to “Run this Plugin” by hand. Google claims that this is a move to protect battery

life and improve device security, but there’s another, simpler reason: It also stands to make

Google more money.

If you’re already a Google AdWords customer, you don’t necessarily have to change

anything you’re doing. According to Google, it already converts most Flash ads to HTML5

automatically. Users of the AdWords platform are encouraged to manually confirm that their

ads make the jump and to adjust accordingly. If you aren’t on Google’s AdWords platform,

however, you’re going to have to either convert your ads for HTML5 or move to Google’s

services.

Google is far from the only company moving

away from Flash; Amazon has also announced

it will no longer accept Flash ads beginning on

September 1. The difference, however, is that

Amazon’s policies govern ads displayed on

Amazon.com, not ads running over its own

advertising network. For Google, this kind of

move gives it the ability to kill several birds

with a single stone. Flash has long been

maligned for its battery-hogging tendencies, ability to slow even modern multi-core systems

to a crawl, and security flaws. Killing support for the platform, therefore, is arguably great

for security and performance.

Few people will argue about a dearth of autoplaying ads on websites, either. Given the

number of security breaches that continue to plague the service, there’s little doubt that Flash

deserves to die an unlamented death. Among the proposed epitaphs: “You loved it more than

RealPlayer.”

What’ll be interesting is if Chrome continues to automatically play videos from services like

Facebook, and if we see an uptick in AdWords revenue as a result of this. If you don’t have

the time or inclination to rework your ads for HTML5, after all, you may have to move to

Google’s platform to continue serving what you have. This shift could draw additional

scrutiny from the European Union’s regulators, who recently announced they would

investigate Google for anti-competitive activity, including activity related to its advertising

and shopping networks. In a response yesterday, Google blasted the suit as being without

merit — a common tactic among pretty much every company the EU has investigated,

including Microsoft and Intel.

7. AMD unveils Radeon R9 Nano: HBM and Fury X in a 6-inch GPU

When AMD announced the Fury family of GPUs at E3 back in June, it promised that its new

graphics hardware would ship in multiple high-end flavors. We’ve already covered the

launch of the water-cooled, 7.5-inch Fury X and the larger, air-cooled Fury, but today’s

announcement covers what was arguably the most interesting card of all — the six-inch

Radeon R9 Nano. (The GPU was initially referred to as the AMD Radeon R9 Fury Nano, but

AMD’s marketing folks realized that’s a bit of a mouthful).

AMD has set a high bar for the Nano, with some aggressive performance claims and a tight

power envelope. Now that the company is formally revealing the card, let’s take a look at its

specs and capabilities.

Positioning and specifications

The Fury Nano is aimed at customers who want an extremely small graphics card but aren’t

willing to sacrifice performance. At six inches long, it’s exactly the size of a standard PCIe

x16 port — AMD executives told us at E3 that they could’ve made the board even smaller, if

not for that limitation. Size isn’t the only feature of the card, however. According to AMD,

the Nano has a TDP of just 175W. The GPU’s power configuration confirms that; the Nano

has a single eight-pin PCIe connector, compared to two eight-pin connectors on the standard

Fury X.

The Radeon Nano in a

mini-ITX system.

Given its aggressive TDP

target, one might expect

AMD to have aggressively

trimmed core counts and

other features of the R9

Nano compared to the full

Fury X. That’s not,

however, what the

company chose to do.

Specs on the Radeon R9 Nano are shown below:

The R9 Nano is a full Fury X, only on a smaller PCB. The TDP difference between this card

and its higher-power sibling can be explained by two things. First, AMD is using a lower

core clock speed for the GPU. While the Nano is capable of bursting up to 1GHz in certain

scenarios, we expect its real-world clock to be in the 850-880MHz range. This can vary by

application, however, and we don’t have final silicon in-hand yet, so treat this as a ballpark.

You might not think that trimming a relatively modest 200-250MHz off the GPU core clock

could slash power consumption by nearly 50%, but there’s reason to believe AMD’s figures.

Generally speaking, power consumption in modern semiconductors rises as the square or

cube of the voltage increase and in direct proportion to frequency. Since higher voltages are

required for higher frequencies, this means that increasing the clock speed by a small amount

can create a much larger increase in power consumption. AMD’s FX-9590 (5GHz Turbo) has

a 220W TDP, compared to the FX-8350’s (4.2GHz Turbo) 120W TDP. A 19% increase in

frequency requires an 1.83x increase in maximum dissipation. Intel CPUs suffer from similar

trends, though the absolute figures are smaller, as we’ve previously covered.

The other reason that AMD can hit these power targets has to do with GPU binning. Any

time AMD, Intel, or Nvidia builds a processor, they test the batch to determine which chips

can operate at which frequency and voltage settings. While AMD didn’t specifically

comment on its binning practices with Nano, it’s a safe bet that the company is reserving the

very best of its Fiji GPUs for this product line.

8. Google app connects Android SMART WATCH to iPhone

Google is introducing an application that will connect Android smartwatches with Apple's

iPhone, escalating the rivals' battle to strap their technology on people's wrists.

The move thrusts Google on to Apple's turf in an attempt to boost the lackluster sales of

watches running on its Android Wear software. The program uniting the devices running on

different operating systems is being released Monday in Apple's app store.

Until now, Android watches only worked with smartphones powered by Android software,

just as the Apple Watch is designed to be tethered exclusively to the iPhone.

9. iOS 9, Apple's next major iOS update, coming in fall 2015

iOS 9 is Apple's newest operating system for iOS devices like the iPhone and the

iPad, introduced at the Worldwide Developers Conference on June 8. iOS 9 builds on the

content introduced with iOS 7 and iOS 8, bringing subtle design changes, refined features,

improved functionality, and performance enhancements.

iOS 9's biggest focus is on intelligence and proactivity, allowing iOS devices to learn user

habits and act on that information, opening up apps before we need them, making

recommendations on places we might like, and guiding us through our daily lives to make

sure we're where we need to be at the right time.

Siri is at the heart of the changes, and the personal assistant is now able to create contextual

reminders and search through photos and videos in new ways. Swiping left from the home

screen also brings up a new screen that houses "Siri Suggestions," putting favorite contacts

and apps right at your fingertips, along with nearby restaurant and location information and

important news.

Deeper search capabilities can bring up results like sports scores, videos, and content from

third-party apps, and you can even do simple conversions and calculations using the search

tools on your iPhone or iPad.

Many of the built-in apps have been

improved. Notes includes new checklists and

sketching features, Maps now offers transit

directions, Mail allows for file attachments,

and there's anew "News" app that learns

your interests and delivers relevant content

you might like to read. Apple Pay is being

improved with the addition of store credit

cards and loyalty cards, leading "Passbook" to

be renamed to "Wallet" in iOS 9.

The iPad's gotten some major feature

additions in iOS 9, like split-screen multitasking that lets two apps be used at once and a

picture-in-picture function that lets you watch a video while doing something else on the

tablet. The keyboard on the iPad has deeper functionality with the addition of a new toolbar,

and on both the iPhone and the iPad, there's a new two-finger swipe gesture that makes it

easier to select content, cut, paste, and move the cursor on the screen.

Other changes include a new system wide San Francisco font, wireless Car Play support,

an optional iCloud Drive app, built-in two factor authentication and optional longer

passwords for better security.

Along with these features, iOS 9 features significant under-the-hood performance

improvements. Battery optimizations provide an additional hour of battery use under typical

conditions, and a new Low Power Mode further extends battery life up to three hours.

With app thinning and size improvements, many app install sizes are smaller and Apple's

own iOS updates will take up much less space, so iPhone and iPad owners with only 16GB

of space will be able to install iOS 9. iOS 9 will also run on all devices capable of running

iOS 8, including the iPhone 4s and the iPad 2.

10. We’re making our in-house legal software—Matter Center for Office 365—available broadly

Over the past two years, Microsoft’s legal department set out to create an internal tool that

didn’t exist—a way to organize its legal matters and collaborate on documents within the

familiar Office 365 tools attorneys use most. So last year our Legal & Corporate Affairs

Group (LCA) shared its vision for an Office 365 Add-in that would do just that. Since then,

LCA has worked to turn this concept into Matter Center for Office 365, an Office 365 Add-in

currently in use internally at Microsoft, and is becoming available to legal professionals at

law firms and in-house departments of all sizes.

In fact, we have already

shipped Matter Center to IT

solutions providers who

specialize in serving the legal

community. These Microsoft

partners are now offering

Matter Center on a limited

basis, and will begin offering it broadly in the coming weeks. These partners include Epona,

Handshake Software, LawPoint365, Perficient, Ubiquity Wave, Project Leadership

Associates and the PayneGroup. Microsoft Services will also offer for-fee consulting and

support services for Matter Center beginning in September. And finally, we’ll be making

Matter Center available broadly through GitHub this calendar year.

Once installed, Matter Center allows people to create or view legal matters right from

Outlook; tie Word, Excel, OneNote and other files to those matters; and securely collaborate

with other legal professionals inside or outside their organizations. There are a few benefits

that make Matter Center stand out:

Access anytime, anywhere—Like Office 365, Matter Center is available across PCs, tablets

and phones, across Windows, Apple and Android devices, and allows you to access matters

and documents either online or offline using OneDrive for Business.

Real-time collaboration—Using the automatic version control feature of Office 365, you can

simultaneously edit documents with multiple people inside or outside your organization.

Intuitive search and data visualization—You can easily search, preview and find matters and

related documents across all cases directly within Outlook and Word. Power BI can be

configured to visualize your matter data.

Pinning and tagging—you can track or pin frequently used matters and documents and

connect to Delve to provide personalized experiences about who on your team is working on

them.

Compliance with security

standards—Matter Center

allows you to control who

can access, review or edit a

document and provides all the

same enterprise-grade

security, management and

administrative controls as

Office 365.

Better flexibility and

control—By offering Matter

Center through an open

GitHub repository, customers

and partners can build or

extend the solution to meet specific customer needs faster.

As part of developing Matter Center, LCA conducted a preview program with nearly 200 law

firms, partners and others in the legal industry, as well as our in-house counsel. As a result of

the feedback we received during the preview, we have improved the solution over the last

year. And LCA currently has early pilot customers including Olswang; Orrick, Herrington &

Sutcliffe; Ragen Swan; and Shook, Hardy & Bacon.

LCA is committed to continued investments in this modern, world-class collaboration

solution. And as we make Matter Center available to our customers and partners, we are also

rolling out the latest version to more than 1,200 Microsoft legal professionals globally. This

is only the beginning. You can expect additional capabilities and features to be delivered

over time.

Visit the Matter Center website for more information on the solution and how you or your

organization can start using Matter Center.

Running Matter Center in the cloud will require Office 365 and Azure subscriptions. Matter

Center has been designed to support multiple deployment configurations as well, whether on-

premises or hybrid cloud. You can find additional information on Matter Center capabilities,

case studies from partner law firms, and a complete list of partners making Matter Center

available here.