save your data from getting corrupted

In Windows 7
Click Start > Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Backup and Restore. Here, you are presented with two options 1 Make a full backup of the system: In the left pane, click Create new, full backup. 2 Customize the archival: Click Set up backup and then follow the wizard to configure what you want to make a copy of. After that first time, whenever you bring up Back and Restore, just click Back up now. To restore your data, double-click the backup file to start the process. Alternatively, open Backup and Restore > Restore my files. Browse through the backup and choose the files and folders you want to restore; select the destination and click Restore.

In Windows 8.1
Connect an external hard drive to your PC. Then, using your cursor, point to the upper right corner of the screen. In the 'charms' bar that appears, click on the Search option and type File History to access it. Enable the File History option and follow the instructions to select the folders you want to backup. You can restore files from earlier copies with the same utility.

Dropbox
This service gives you 2GB of free storage. If you suggest it to friends, you can earn up to 18GB of space. Dropbox also has software for Windows, Mac and Linux PCs, and apps for Android, BlackBerry, and iOS devices. To back up a file, place it in the local Dropbox folder on your PC and it will be pushed online, showing up on your smartphone as well.

Google Drive
Google Drive offers up to 15GB of free space which is shared across Gmail and Google+ services. While Drive is not ideal for multimedia file storage, it is perfect for documents, with support for over thirty formats that can be opened within the mobile app - available for Android and iOS - or the web browser.

Box 
With 10GB of storage space, you will have more than enough room for backing up personal and work-related documents. If you are not into taking your photographs public on Flickr and Picasa, you can store them on Box. Entire folders can be shared with friends and family, turning the backup process into an advantage. Just make sure you don't give write access to those with whom you share the folder. Besides mobile apps for Android and iOS devices, Box also works on Windows Phone.

SkyDrive
With SkyDrive, you get 7GB of free space and the ability to work on documents within a web browser or its app that's available for Android, iOS and Windows Phone. This service works well with photos too: it comes with a slideshow function and supports sharing on social networks.


Backing up with Windows
You can also use the built-in backup and restore utility in Windows. The best part is that you can schedule and automate the entire process with the help of a simple wizard.

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Samsung Galaxy Note III version coming to India leaked

 Samsung introduced the eight-core processor with its Galaxy S4 flagship smartphone, along with a quad-core version of the same device. These two variants were aimed at different markets, with India getting the model powered by the eight-core processor. And it seems that the company will follow the same strategy for its upcoming Galaxy Note IIIphablet too.

Tech news website SamMobile, which has a stellar record of Samsung leaks, has revealed the list of the countries that will be getting the two models. Markets like India, where 4GLTEnetworks are not available presently, will get the Galaxy Note III with eight-core CPU (model number SM-N9005). On the other hand, countries where 4GLTE networks are present will get the variant powered by the 2.3GHz quad-core processor (model number SM-N9000).

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How to turn off ads on Gmail

When Google introduced the new tabbed interface for Gmail, it also brought along some new ads under the Promotions tab. 

The ads look a bit too much like legitimate emails, which is problematic for many users. However, they're also limited to the Promotions tab, which makes it super easy to turn them off if you want to avoid confusion. Here's how: 

Click the Settings icon in the top right corner of the Gmail tab. 

Select "Configure Inbox." 

Deselect the "Promotions" tab and click Save. 

Of course, if you want to keep the Promotions tab, there's not much you can do. You can also disable the tabs entirely by unchecking everything except ""Primary"" on this same menu, if you prefer.

Source: Lifehacker.co.in

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How Amazon's cloud service is transforming computing

 Within a few years, Amazon.com's creative destruction of both traditional book publishing and retailing may be footnotes to the company's larger and more secretive goal: giving anyone on the planet access to an almost unimaginable amount of computing power.

Every day, a start-up called the Climate Corporation performs over 10,000 simulations of the next two years' weather for more than one million locations in the United States. It then combines that with data on root structure and soil porosity to write crop insurance for thousands of farmers.

Another start-up, called Cue, scans up to 500 million e-mails, Facebook updates and corporate documents to create a service that can outline the biography of a given person you meet, warn you to be home to receive a package or text a lunch guest that you are running late.

Each of these start-ups carries out computing tasks that a decade ago would have been impossible without a major investment in computers. Both of these companies, however, own little besides a few desktop computers. They and thousands of other companies now rent data storage and computer server time from Amazon, through its Amazon Web Services division, for what they say is a fraction of the cost of owning and running their own computers.

Cloud computing has been around for years, but it is now powering all kinds of new businesses around the globe, quickly and with less capital.

Instagram, a 12-person photo-sharing company that was sold to Facebook for an estimated $1 billion just 19 months after it opened, skipped the expenses and bother of setting up its own computer servers.

Amazon's efforts are just the start of a global competition among computing giants. In June, Google fully introduced a service similar to AWS. Microsoft is also in the business with its offering, Windows Azure.

If only for competitive reasons, Amazon does not say much about AWS. However, it is estimated to bring in about $1 billion to Amazon. Its three giant computer regional centres in the United States, in Virginia, Oregon and California, each consist of multiple buildings with thousands of servers.

There are others in Japan, Ireland, Singapore and Brazil. And the pace of its expansion has quickened. It opened four of those regions in 2011 and is believed to be building a similar number now. Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, is interested in setting up cloud-computing installations for other governments.

According to an executive with knowledge of Amazon's operation who was not authorised to speak publicly, just one of the 10 data centres in Amazon's Eastern United States region has more servers dedicated to cloud computing than does Rackspace, a public cloud company serving 180,000 businesses with more than 80,000 servers.

Eventually, however, Jassy said, "we believe at the highest level that AWS can be at least as big as our other businesses." Amazon recorded nearly $50 billion in revenue last year. Jassy thinks AWS is probably less than 10 percent of its eventual size.

The lower cost of computing, along with overnight deployment of machines, drives the business. Germany's Spiegel TV paid AWS to make digital copies of 20,000 programmes. It cost less than Spiegel would have paid for the electricity powering its own servers.

GoodData, based in San Francisco, analyses data from 6,000 companies on AWS to find things like sales leads. "Before, each company needed at least five people to do this work," said Roman Stanek, GoodData's chief executive. "That is 30,000 people. I do it with 180. I don't know what all those other people will do now, but this isn't work they can do anymore. It's a winner-takes-all consolidation."

All that data running through Amazon's cloud also has value. People leave bits of data about themselves that others then analyse. At any given time on AWS, there are about one million uses of a powerful database, called Elastic MapReduce, that is used to make predictions. Some suggest a new movie or video game to play, while others log behavior for advertising, credit history or suggestions about whom to date. (Companies have to permit their data to be analysed, and Amazon says it applies the same security standards it uses on its retail site.)

The efficiency of this hyper-aware environment is already remaking jobs for many and will most likely dislocate more. "You can now test a product against millions of users for just a few thousand dollars, or start a company with just one or two people," said Graham Spencer, a partner at Google Ventures, which invests in data-heavy start-ups that rely on such cheap computing. "It's a huge change for Silicon Valley."

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Google to help Indian businesses create mobile sites

 Internet giant Google has launched a new initiative to help businesses reach out to over 70 million mobile internet users in the country.

Under the 'Let's talk Mo' initiative', Google will help businesses create mobile sites for free, Google said in its official blogpost.

According to Nielsen Informate Insights for smartphone users 2012 study, Indian smartphone users are spending over 157 minutes daily on the mobile web (89 per cent of them are searching for information).

The user-experience is, however, not optimised for the mobile screens as most Indian websites are still designed for the PC experience, it added.

"That's why starting today, Google is giving Indian businesses two options. One, create a mobile optimised site for free and second test how user friendly is your existing mobile site," Google India Country Head Marketing Nikhil Rungta said.

Businesses will be able to see how their sites look on a smartphone using the GoMoMeter tool and get personalised recommendations for creating a more user-friendly experience.

The site also provides information on current mobile trends, best practices, case studies and various other resources to help businesses develop a successful mobile presence.

"The dedicated website (http://www.letstalkmo.com/in/d/) will provide all the tools and resources that businesses need to have a presence on the mobile platform," Rungta said.

With more and more people using their mobile phones to explore the web, it makes sense for businesses to have a website optimised for mobile sooner than later, he added. 

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Cloud computing: How tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon store the world's data

Mike Krieger, the co-founder of Instagram, gave a talk in San Francisco. What he must have known, though his audience didn't, was that in less than 24 hours, Mark Zuckerberg would announce that he was buying Instagram for a billion dollars.

Given that he was about to become A Very Rich Man, Krieger hid his excitement well. The talk called "Scaling Instagram" was a long and technical one about the challenges of growing the popular photo app. One of the final slides (number 176 of 185) had just two words: "Unprecedented Times". The next one said: "2 backend engineers can scale a system to 30+ million users." On the eve of the Facebook deal, Instagram had bumped up that total to five engineers.

If this doesn't sound quite as remarkable as it should, it's because we are now inured to Silicon Valley startup stories originating in garages with a couple of geeks, who end up making millions - or a billion. Look at this 'growth' in a different way then: it's as if Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the first Apple computer and within a day or two of building that first prototype, were able to ship several thousand models to customers.

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WhatsApp: 10 billion messages exchanged in a day

WhatsApp, the popular messaging app for various smartphones, has achieved a new record with a total ten billion messages sent and received in one day.

People behind the app disclosed the news this week on Twitter.

"New daily record: 4B inbound, 6B outbound = 10b total messages a day!"," its creators tweeted.

WhatsApp, which is called 'text message killer' offers different features such as the ability to share photos, videos and audio notes, The Telegraph reports.

People download the app, scan their address book to see which friends are already signed up and invite others to join WhatsApp via a message sent through the service.

According to a report by The Next Web, the American company says it is not an " SMS killer". 

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Latest Java software exposes PCs to hackers: Experts

Computer security firms are urgingPC users to disable Java software in their browsers, saying the widely installed, free software from Oracle opens machines to hacker attacks and there is no way to defend against them.

The warnings, which began emerging over the weekend from Rapid7, AlienVault and other cyber security firms, are likely to unnerve a PC community scrambling to fend off growing security threats from hackers, viruses andmalware.

Researchers have identified code that attacks machines by exploiting a newly discovered flaw in the latest version of Java. Once in, a second piece of software called "Poison Ivy" is released that lets hackers gain control of the infected computer, said Jaime Blasco, a research manager with AlienVault Labs.

Several security firms advised users to immediately disable Java software -- installed in some form on the vast majority of personal computers around the world -- in their internet browsers. Oracle says that Java sits on 97 per cent of enterprise desktops.

"If exploited, the attacker will be able to perform any action the victim can perform on the victim's machine," said Tod Beardsley, an engineering manager with Rapid7's Metasploit division.

Computers can get infected without their users' knowledge simply by a visit to any website that has been compromised by hackers, said Joshua Drake, a senior research scientist with the security firm Accuvant.

Java is a computer language that enables programmers to write one set of code to run on virtually any type of machine. It is widely used on the internet so that Web developers can make their sites accessible from multiple browsers running on Microsoft Windows PCs or Macs fromApple.

An Oracle spokeswoman said she could not immediately comment on the matter.

Security experts recommended that users not enable Java for universal use on their browsers. Instead, they said it was safest to allow use of Java browser plug-ins on a case-by-case basis when prompted for permission by trusted programs such as GoToMeeting, a Web-based collaboration tool from Citrix Systems. 

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Now, a robot that will understand emotions

A robot being developed in Finland will be capable of recognising human emotions and understanding speech and gestures.

Being created at the University of Oulu in Finland, the technology could prove beneficial in nursing homes and in the fields of security and logistics, reported goodnewsfinland.com.

Research groups working on the project, led by Matti Pietikäinen and Juha Roning, have developed the new technology in speech animation, navigation and what is described as machine vision.

To achieve machine vision, the researchers use a regular video camera and a Kinect depth camera. Microphones installed on the robot enable it to recognise the direction and speech`s volume.

The control system receives, via sensors, raw data and time data, as well as emotional states as interpreted by the machine vision. The robot compares the emotional state with emotional states and interactive models it has previously been programmed to recognise.
The robot, on the basis of the data, communicates with the user by making a movement or sound. It can also be taught to recognise humans and remember earlier interactive situations.

The project is part of the Academy of Finland`s MOTIVE research programme.

It involves international cooperation, among others, with universities in China.

Social robots are expected to become a regular feature in homes in the future.

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Angry Birds Space on a mission to Mars

Pigs and birds will explore the Martian terrain and shed light on NASA’s missions to the Red Planet in the latest update to the game Angry Birds Space.

Rovio Entertainment, creator of Angry Birds, announced the update Thursday, complete with a cast of agency rovers and landers.

Earlier this year, millions of gamers were introduced to concepts of microgravity in Angry Birds Space, which was supported through a partnership with NASA and includes links to a variety of education information.

“Rovio is teaching huge new audiences about NASA’s missions to Mars thanks to this collaboration,” said David Weaver, associate administrator for communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“It’s a great way to introduce both kids and adults to the wonders of the planet in a fun and entertaining way,” he added.

NASA participated with Rovio on Angry Birds Space under a Space Act Agreement to share the excitement of space with the Angry Birds community, educate players about agency projects and programs, and collaboratively create interactive informational experiences for the public.

The game will include links to NASA web content about Mars exploration and NASA missions that are represented in the game.

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Use cloud storage to boost your computer's capacity

Filled up the space on your mobile phone or tablet? As long as you have working internet on both ends, you can access your home computer's hard drive from anywhere.

Get All the Storage You Need by Creating Your Own Cloud

With faster internet connections, digital storage need not be confined to your local device. That's the idea behind cloud storage -keeping your data and multimedia files in one place

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IT companies hiring youngsters to lead emerging technologies areas like social media, analytics, cloud computing

IT companies looking at emerging technologies like social media, mobility, analytics and cloud computing(SMAC) are turning to younger people to lead these areas.

The younger professionals tend to be more tuned to these technologies and more easily adapt to them.

"The candidates we find for these positions are in their mid to late thirties and come with 11-12 years of industry experience," says Prasad

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How virus to charge your cellphone

 Scientists claim to have developed a unique technique to harness electricity from a bacteria eating virus to power your mobile phones.

The virus possesses a property known as piezoelectricity, which means it can translate mechanical energy into electrical energy, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

Researchers believe the discovery could pave way for mobile phones that can be charged while you walk and replace the toxic

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Apple planning Google Glass rival?

Software giant Apple has been awarded a patent for a wearable display device by the US Patent and Trademark Office, that sounds similar to Google's Project Glass.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin unveiled the company's computer glasses and announced that participants in Google I/O conference could purchase a prototype of the project that will arrive early next year for 1,500 dollars.

However, the new Apple patent indicates Apple

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7 biggest IT companies in India

The fiscal year 2011-12 was one of the toughest for the Indian IT, says Dataquest magazine's annual survey of Indian IT sector. And unlike 2008-09, this time it was the domestic market which played the spoilsport. 

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Hurry up...'Apple iPhone 5 pre-orders start September 12'

Steve Jobs spent the last few days of his life working on the iPhone 5

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New technology can print high resolution images without ink

 A team of scientists including one of Indian-origin have created the highest possible resolution 

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How a virus to power cellphone?

In Londan Scientists claim to have developed a unique technique to harness electricity from a bacteria eating virus to power your mobile phones. A team at the University of California,

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Why developers prefer Apple iOS over Android

Smartphones running Google's Android operating system outsell iPhones more than two to one. And yet, even as Google's system has gobbled up market share, Apple has held onto one

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Smartphone app allows people to report crime anonymously

A new smartphone app will enable people to snap photos of suspected criminal activity or make a voice recording describing what they've seen and submit them to the authorities anonymously,

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