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UK retailer Tesco will launch its own Android-based smartphone this year

May06
by on May 6, 2014 at 6:23 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Mobile, UK

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British supermarket giant Tesco says it is planning to launch its own smartphone before the end of this year, as it looks to build on the success it has seen with the Hudl tablet, which has sold over 550,000 units. Chief executive Philip Clarke told the BBC Radio 5 that a “Tesco phone” would launch before the end of the year. The company is also planning to introduce the Hudl 2, a follow-up to its original £119 tablet, in September. The BBC reports that, like Hudl, Tesco’s upcoming smartphone will be based on Android, with a specification that is “comparable to the Samsung…

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DrawQuest closes down after suffering a security breach

May06
by on May 6, 2014 at 5:18 am
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, drawquest

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DrawQuest, the iPad app that lets users channel their creativity through drawing, has been living on its last legs since early this year and now it has closed down with immediate effect after suffering a security breach. Founder Chris Poole, who also started 4Chan, first announced the closure of DrawQuest in January but there was later optimism that it would be able to continue running for users for “as long as possible,” despite its team all moving to new work. A hack on its Amazon-hosted servers has proved to be the final nail in its coffin, however. A blog post explains that it is unclear exactly what…

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Tencent buys 11% of mapping firm NavInfo for $187m, weeks after Alibaba’s AutoNavi deal

May06
by on May 6, 2014 at 2:34 am
Posted In: Alibaba, Around the Web, Asia, tencent

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Tencent is upping its battle with Alibaba, its closest rival in China’s Internet space, after securing a deal to buy an 11.3 percent stake in Chinese mapping service NavInfo for $187 million (1.17 billion yuan). NavInfo provides digital maps, a location-based vehicle network, dynamic traffic information and other services. It claims to be the fourth largest company of its kind worldwide. The deal — announced in a filing that was spotted by Bloomberg — is seemingly a response to Alibaba’s $1.5 billion deal to buy Autonavi, a larger rival to NavInfo, which was formally announced in April. It’s nearly one…

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Heroku cloud platform is down for some as it deploys new security patch

May06
by on May 6, 2014 at 12:21 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev, Insider

Cloud platform Heroku is currently experiencing issues that have taken the service offline for some. The service, which is similar to Amazon’s EC2, posted the following information about the issue at 11:03 PM UTC: We are deploying a new kernel with the included patch from the CVE. We don’t believe this to be exploitable on the Heroku platform, but protecting your code and data is our top priority, as a result we feel this is a proper precaution. Users may experience connection timeouts while we are deploying this fix, these timeouts should be minimal and limited in length. The platform…

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