Nokia is set to further research graphene, the recently discovered world’s most durable, thinnest and lightest material ever, and find revolutionary ways to boost the technologies and improve life across the globe. The corporation is one of the members of the Graphene Flagship Consortium, which includes 74 partners from the industrial and academic sectors—the group was chosen by the European Union for the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) program, which will be allocated 1 billion euros to be spent on researches over the next 10 years.
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The smartphones market welcomes a new product—yesterday, January 30, RIM launched “the re-designed, re-engineered, and re-invented BlackBerry platform” at the event, which was held in six cities—New York, Toronto, London, Paris, Dubai, and Johannesburg—at the same time. Along with the unveiling of the new platform and product, the tech giant has made another major announcement—the company’s name was changed from RIM to BlackBerry to build a stronger connection between the product and the manufacturer.
Björk’s Biophilia album, which was launched back in 2011 as the first-ever multimedia album with an array of iPhone and iPad apps, is about to get a second life on other platforms. The artist has created a project on the Kickstarter platform, asking the global community to support the development of the apps on the Android and Windows 8 operating systems to make it easier (and cheaper) to use it within the Biophilia Educational Program. The minimum donation is just £1, and the expected amount is at least £375,000 (the deadline is February 27).
Coca-Cola US is piloting vending machines, which accept payments made via a mobile device —the new initiative was launched through the company’s partnership with the Isis joint venture created by AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless. The iconic beverages giant is not the first one which provides its consumers with such an opportunity (for instance, Starbucks offered it in 2011), but it is still a great move for the company.
Samsung continues its smartphones war, but now the rival is not iPhone, but BlackBerry. While in the spot, which mocked the Apple phone fans, Samsung focused on entertainment, in the new BlackBerry-targeting video it highlights the benefits of its Galaxy Note II for business users. Of course, it’s not a coincidence that the new ad got revealed ahead of the launch of the long-awaited Blackberry 10 (BB10) operating system on January 30.
Facebook has announced Graph Search, which is designed to help users of the social network No.1 find information within the site. Facebook says it has over than 240 billion photos and more than a trillion connections, created by more than million of its users, and Graph Search is “a new way to navigate these connections and make them more useful.” The new tool, which was introduced on February 15, is now in beta and is available for a limited preview only in English.