Saudi prince buys chunk of Twitter

Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has taken a $300 million stake in Twitter through his Kingdom Holding Company investment firm.

With Twitter valued at around $8 billion in total, the investment represents a 3.75 percent stake. The prince says tha the deal is the culmination of several months of negotiations.

Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal 

"Our investment in Twitter reaffirms our ability in identifying suitable opportunities to invest in promising, high-growth businesses with a global impact," he says.

Prince Alwaleed is no stranger to tech and media investment. He's the second-largest investor in Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, with a seven percent stake, and also has holdings in Citigroup and Apple.

He's also got a strong presence in the Middle Eastern media and entertainment world, with a 29.9 percent holding in the Saudi Research and Marketing Group (SRMG). He's also recently announced plans to launch a privately owned news channel, Alarab.

Last year, News Corporation took an initial 9.09 percent stake in  Alwaleed's film, TV and music business, Rotana Media Group, with an option to increase this to 18.18 percent over the course of 18 months.

Saudi Arabia is one of Twitter's fastest-growing markets. According to the UK-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, the number of Twitter users in the country grew by 240 during 2010, with the number of tweets rising by 440 percent - four and a half times higher than the international average.

"We believe that social media will fundamentally change the media industry landscape in the coming years.Twitter will capture and monetize this positive trend," says Ahmed Halawani, executive director of private equity and international investments for Kingdom Holding Company.

In August, investment firm DST Global, which also owns stakes in Zynga and Groupon, took a $400 million stake in Twitter.

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World's smallest frogs found in New Guinea

A researcher has discovered the world’s smallest frogs in southeastern New Guinea during his fieldwork.

The discovery by Fred Kraus from Bishop Museum, Honolulu, also makes them the world’s smallest tetrapods (non-fish vertebrates).

The frogs belong to the genus Paedophryne, all of whose species are extremely small, with adults of the two new species - named Paedophryne dekot and Paedophryne verrucosa - only 8-9 mm in length. 

Previous research had led to the discovery of Paedophryne by Kraus in 2002 from nearby areas in New Guinea, but the genus was not formally described until last year (Kraus 2010, also in Zookeys).

The two species described earlier were larger, attaining sizes of 10-11 mm, but the genus still represents the most miniaturized group of tetrapods in the world.

“Miniaturization occurs in many frog genera around the world, but New Guineaseems particularly well represented, with species in seven genera exhibiting the phenomenon,” Kraus said.

“Although most frog genera have only a few diminutive representatives mixed among larger relatives, Paedophryne is unique in that all species are minute,” he added.

The four known species all inhabit small ranges in the mountains of southeastern New Guineaor adjacent, offshore islands. Their closest relatives remain unclear.

The members of this genus have reduced digit sizes that would not allow them to climb well; all inhabit leaf litter, and their reduced digits may be a corollary of a reduced body size required for inhabiting leaf litter and moss.

The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys. 

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iPad 3 with retina display 'coming in February 2012'!!!

Apple is reportedly planning to launch a next-generation iPad, called an iPad 3, as early as February 2012.

According to report by Business Insider and PCMag, Citi analyst Richard Gardner revealed that the device would be similar to the iPad 2, but includes Apple''s high-resolution retina display technology found on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S by doubling the iPad 3''s screen resolution.

Design of Apple iPad 3

Gardner reportedly said that “several sources” told him that Apple could launch the iPad 3 in February, which would put its debut ahead of the first two generations of Apple''s tablet.

The first iPad hit stores in April 2010 after being unveiled the month before, and the iPad 2 was unveiled and released in March 2011, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

The analyst also said that “there do not appear to be any significant technical hurdles remaining” to prevent the launch of a high-resolution iPad, which contradicts previous reports that fitting such a dense screen into an Apple tablet was one of the reasons Apple iPad 2 maintained the 1024 x 768 resolution of the first iPad.

According to the report, Gardneralso estimated that Apple would sell about 12 million to 13 million iPads in the final three months of this year.

The major sales competitor to Apple''s iPad is widely considered the Amazon Kindle Fire in the US, which boasts much lower specs than iPads and Eee Pads. 

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Now Mobile phone can drive your car!!! If you don't trust read the full article!!!!

Science and technology has brought lots of changes in our daily life and technology had already been part of every human kind. On this regard, two researchers from china  An Jiaxuan and an unnamed friend,had made the mobile application for Nokia C7 which was helpful to control the driving of car. That application helps to drive the car with out driver seating on driver's seat.

  The experiment for this application was successful and according to news.com Nokia had already given green signal to application. Two researchers from china have prepared this application in just twenty days and according to them now this application is only applicable for Nokia C7 and BMW car. But days are not far, when this application can be applicable in every mobile set with Bluetooth and all types of car. Now you can imagine driving the car with out seating in the driver's seat and can park your car giving command from your cell phone. Just wait and watch this application to come in every cell phone and car!!!

Watch the Video in Youtube

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You Can Read emails on your contact lenses soon!!! Don't trust Read it!!!

Imagine reading emails and text messages on your contact lenses which are linked to internet. It may sound a bit utopian, but scientists claim that your imagination could soon turn into a reality.

In fact, the futuristic technology has taken a step nearer, thanks to an international team which claims to have developed a prototype lens that could potentially provide the wearer with hands-free information updates.

The scientists from Washington University in the US and Aalto University in Finland have constructed a computerized contact lens and demonstrated its safety by testing it on live eyes, and there were no signs of adverse side effects.

At the moment, the contact lens device contains only a single pixel, but the team sees this as a "proof-of-concept" for producing lenses with multiple pixels which, in their hundreds, could be used to display short emails and text messages right before one's eyes.

The scientists said the device could overlay computer -generated visual information on to the real world and be of use in gaming devices and navigation systems. It could also be linked to the user's body to provide up-to-date information on glucose levels, which could prove medically important.

The contact lens created by the scientists consist of an antenna to harvest power sent out by an external source, as well as an integrated circuit to store this energy and then transfer it to a transparent sapphire chip containing a single blue LED, a daily reported.

One major problem the researchers had to overcome was the fact that the human eye, with its minimum focal distance of several centimetres, cannot resolve objects on a contact lens. Any information projected on to the lens would probably appear blurry.

To combat this, the scientists incorporated a set of Fresnel lenses into the device; these are much thinner and flatter than conventional bulky lenses, and were used to focus the projected image on to the retina.

The findings have been published in the 'Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering'.

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