The report says that Apple has allegedly ordered for screens which measure at least 4 inches diagonally. No other details about Apple’s upcoming smartphone have been revealed, and Apple has declined to comment.

Among the smartphones which have screens as large as 4 inches include Samsung Galaxy S3 (with a 4.8 inch screen) and HTC’s 1X with 4.7 inches. Both are android phones.

Will Apple follow up increase in iPhone screen size with similar modifications on iPad? Only time can tell.

Panasonic, the global leader in innovation and technology, today announced its new range of SMART VIERA flat panel televisions centered on five pillars of- quality picture, networking, easy operation, design and eco-friendliness. These models ranging from 24 to 55 inches are priced between Rs. 13,990 to Rs. 3, 20,000. With the latest series of smart VIERA TVs, home theatre systems and DVD players launched today, Panasonic further strengthens its product portfolio and aims at bringing new entertainment experiences for customers’ right into their living room.

With select VIERA Connect models, Panasonic also introduced a new range of smart applications which allow consumers to interact with their Smart VIERA TVs:

1. Swipe & Share lets the consumers share private contents via VIERA remote App. Now one can enjoy photos, music and movies on VIERA and Smartphone anytime and can even display the same web pages on VIERA and smart phone with ease

2. Browse & Share app enables the browser to support HTML5 pages, so that consumers can browse the internet much like a PC. Unlike a PC, though the large screen allows the whole family or a group of friends to comfortably view a wide variety of content

3. Watch & Chat app enables you to stay in touch with your friends through Twitter or Facebook timeline which gets displayed on the side screen while watching TV. Now the sports fan can watch live games while upping the excitement by chatting with friends as the game unfolds. One can either use their smart phone or a Bluetooth compatible keyboard as a remote control for writing text

Besides 3D content and internet connectivity, Smart VIERA comes with a bundle of features for a unique television viewing experience like super High Speed 1,600Hz Backlight Scanning for LED TVs, high efficiency LED backlight to reduce power consumption, wide viewing angle – IPS LED Panel etc.

Announcing the launch, Mr. Daizo Ito, President, Panasonic India stated, “India has been one of the most important countries and potential growth area, owing to the vibrant energy and high potential in the country and Panasonic continues to bring latest innovation in technology and solutions customized to consumer lifestyles here. We are also reaching out to the deeper pockets with our wide range of products through widened distribution and channel network. With the new range of flat panel televisions and home theatre systems, Panasonic is reiterating its commitment to the Indian market.”

Talking about the new marketing strategy for Viera flat panels, Mr. Manish Sharma, Managing Director, Consumer Product Division, Panasonic India said, “Panasonic is betting on flat panel televisions that bring in over 40 per cent of revenue and our range LED, LCD & Plasma TVs branded as SMART VIERA is the first engine growth driver for Panasonic’s business. Primarily targeted at the tech savvy generation of consumer, we will be making an investment of Rs. 210 crores towards marketing and promotions for this segment this year.” He further added, “With the latest introduction in existing line-up of SMART VIERA, we are aiming to capture 15% market share in flat panel category in India this year.”

Gracing the occasion, Panasonic Viera brand ambassador and leading Bollywood actor, Ranbir Kapoor said, “Proud to be associated with Panasonic for the fourth consecutive year, I have always enjoyed being part of the VIERA brand as this campaign delivers a message that I personally believe in. I am really thrilled about the new VIERA Connect apps that enable you to stay in touch with your friends while watching TV. It is a pleasure to endorse the brand which connects with the sentiments of people and understands the ever evolving requirements of consumers.”

Panasonic Smart VIERA range of TV’s equipped with futuristic technologies such as IPTV applications enable consumers to connect with the entire world in the smartest possible manner. It lets you save electricity and conserve the environment, without any hassle. The new models combine eco sensibility with superior product performance and enhanced networking functionality in a slim profile and extremely attractive design.

At Panasonic, designers and engineers constantly endeavor to ensure that each evolution of product is better than its previous version by following stringent process to develop products that are more energy efficient and long lasting.

NTT DoCoMo has announced that the company will offer cloud services for DoCoMo smartphone and tablet users under the new “docomo cloud” brand name.

The company plans to launch, Mail-Hon’yaku-Concier, an app that automatically translates text messages, such as e-mails and social networking messages, between Japanese and English/Chinese/Korean and uses cloud-based mobile interpretation technologies that DoCoMo is currently developing, next month. It will be compatible with select DoCoMo smartphones and tablets running on Android™ 2.2 or higher.

Further, DoCoMo’s popular voice command-based app Shabette-Concier will be enhanced to provide answers to inquiries on a wide range of topics. The current app enables smartphone features to be operated by voice (Japanese only) and is compatible with select DoCoMo smartphones and tablets running on Android 2.2 or higher.

In August, the company will launch the new Photo Collection service that lets users store up to 5 GB of photos and videos free of charge for an unlimited amount of time. The service allows content to be uploaded, downloaded and viewed via PCs, smartphones and tablets, and links to external services like Evernote, Eye-Fi and HighlightCam for easy browsing and sorting of data saved on these services.

DoCoMo’s dmarket portal for smartphone and tablet apps and content will also be enhanced, to allow subscribers to purchase content from DoCoMo’s Video Store, Music Store, Book Store and Anime Store for no extra charge on multiple devices.

Japan’s smartphone market is growing at a rapid pace. According to a latest research conducted by comScore with 4,000 Japanese mobile subscribers, this year, 19.3 million people in Japan own smartphones. Android ranks 1st with the smartphone market share share of 61.4 percent, while Apple ranked second with the smartphone market of Android’s share of the smartphone market reached 61.4 percent, while Apple ranked second with 34.2 percent.

Question and answer site Quora has just raised $50 million in a new funding that values the company at $400 million.

The new investment was lead by Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist who was an early investor in Facebook and Zynga, and joined by Benchmark Capital, Matrix Partners, Northbridge Venture Partners and Quora co-founder Adam D’Angelo who put $20 million of his own money into the company.

Thiel’s involvement is seen as a vote of confidence in the 3-year-old Quora, which has failed to retain the interest of social media users.

“He has a good eye for macro trends. It does feel good to have someone who has shown a pretty good track record and pretty good taste validating our directions,” said Quora co-founder Charlie Cheever, about Thiel’s participation in the funding round.

Quora plans to expand its team, scale up technically and introduce new changes to the site.

“We are going to continue making Quora the best place for people to share knowledge, and do our best to grow it into one of the most important products on the internet for everyone. There are many challenges in getting high-quality knowledge about everything onto the web. We need to design a great product to help everyone to easily share their knowledge with the world, to look up and learn from the knowledge that others have shared, and to give us signals about the quality of everything they read. We need to build and improve our systems that use all of these signals to automatically figure out which content is the most interesting, appropriate, and relevant to each person and show them only that,” added Adam D’Angelo in a post on the site.

Productivity – it’s a topic discussed among small and large business owners alike. How can we get the most out of employees, business owners ask themselves.How can we get more done in less time, employees want to know.

Simply Business went on a mission to answer these questions the best way it knew how – by turning to industry leaders. It conducted extensive research to find the best productivity resources out there in a new productivity series aimed at helping people get better at getting stuff done.

It interviewed industry experts on insider tips in addition to creating five guides for beating different time suckers: collaboration, workload, travel, meetings, and email.

These guides curate articles, tools, and videos on different productivity killers, such as the never-ending back and forth during project collaboration among telecommuters and the influx of emails that take you off task. Hopefully this will help you get on top of your game in order to get back to what matters to you most.

Click image to open interactive version.

Author’s Note:This post is by Adria Saracino. Adria is a marketer and blogger. When not consulting on business strategy, you can find her writing about style on her personal fashion blog.

Participate in this survey on Social media landscape by Simplify360, a social media management infrastructure platform, that enables organizations to effectively implement social media concepts in to core business functions and get a free report worth $250. Both client companies and agencies are invited to take part in this study.
Some of these topics that would be covered by the survey include:

1. Relative usage of various digital channels such as email, search marketing and online advertising
2. Budgets and investment plans
3. Measurement and return on investment
4. Staffing, skills and resourcing
5. Trends of Social Media Services
6. Top Services for Social Media
7. Effectiveness of current Social Media Practices

The deadline for the completion of the survey is June 15, 2012. All the answers submitted by the participants will be treated as strictly confidential.

Please click the button given below to start your survey.

Popular iPhone magazine app Flipboard has just announced the launch of a new audio feature on its app, that lets users listening to music or radio programmes , while they are flipping through content, including feeds from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr, on Flipboard.

Flipboard has partnered with SoundCloud, National Public Radio and PRI (Public Radio International), to bring out this new feature.

“Our content guide is now chock-full of some of the best sounds we could find. We’ve launched new partnerships with NPR and PRI and scoured SoundCloud’s massive community of sound creators to bring you some of our favorites—artists like Snoop Dogg and Diplo; music labels like Atlantic Records and Ninja Tune; podcasts from The New Yorker and Slate; and segments from shows like Radiolab and Science Friday,” writes the Flipboard team on the company blog.

To use this new feature, tap on the red ribbon and explore the new Audio category; or you could connect to SoundCloud in the Accounts area. A music note will appear in the bottom left corner of Flipboard, when you press play. You can tap the note anytime to change your listening experience.

In addition to the new audio feature, Flipboard also announced that the app is now accessible to visually impaired users. If Apple’s VoiceOver features are turned on in the settings of an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch, the gestures to control Flipboard change and everything on a page is read out aloud.

LinkedIn has just unveiled a new mobile app for the Windows Phone.
For the Windows phone users, the new app makes it easy to access the LinkedIn network on-the-go. You can now find and connect with millions of professionals worldwide, get real-time updates of information from your professional connections, read news related to your industry, join different professional groups, search for jobs, and follow your favorite companies’ LinkedIn pages.

Announcing the new app, Tomer Cohen, Mobile Product Manager, at LinkedIn, said, “We’ve been working hard to make this new LinkedIn app best-in-class in the Windows Phone marketplace. We took advantage of the unique and beautiful Windows Phone metro style design while ensuring users would have easy and quick access to all the relevant professional information they’ve come to rely on from LinkedIn.”

LinkedIn further adds that the Windows Phone app offers even more functionality than its iOS and Android siblings.

Just last month, LinkedIn launched an iPad app that takes features such as multi-touch navigation and retina display, giving users a whole new experience of networking on LinkedIn.

Go ahead and check out the new LinkedIn Windows app here.

The new research pane lets you tap into Google Search directly from the Google documents, and brings the web’s wealth of information to you as you’re writing documents.

You can access the research pane from the tools menu by right clicking on a selected word about which you need more info, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+R on Windows or Cmd+Alt+R on Mac. From the research pane, you can search for whatever info you need to help you write your document and make it more informative. You can start a search by typing into the search bar, and then you can narrow your search to specific types of results maps, quotes, images etc. by using the drop-down menu in the search bar.

Follow the instructions below to explore different search results in your document.

Web results

Using the web results category, you can find a number of websites related to your search. Select Preview to see a preview of the website. Click on the site link at the top of the preview pane to open the page in a separate window. Select Insert link to add a link to the website into the body of your document, and select Cite to create a footnote citation of this web result within the body of your document.

Images

Narrow your search results to only images by selecting “Images” from the drop-down menu in the search bar.

Quotations

Narrow your search results to only quotations by selecting “Quotes” from the drop-down menu in the search bar. Click Insert to add it to your document with a footnote citation.

Places

When conducting a search for a geographic location, your search results may include a map. You can edit this map by selecting Edit and then zooming in/out or dragging the map. Once you have the exact map image you’d like to include in your document, click Insert.

To cater to India’s growing mobile Internet users, India’s free online classified site OLX.in, has just launched an iPad and iPhone app for its site. The site already has a mobile app for Android, Windows, Blackberry and Nokia mobile operating systems.

iPad users can download the OLX App from the Apple Store for free and use the site to sell and buy products such as mobiles, household appliances, vehicles, furniture, with ease and convenience.

“India is poised to become a large mobile internet market with smartphones and tablets driving the next wave of growth in Internet consumption. OLX.in is already having apps on all smartphone operating systems and the launch of the iPad app is a demonstration of our focus on providing Indian internet users the best classifieds experience anytime and anywhere,” said Amarjit Batra, Country Manager, OLX India.

Posting a classified ad through the app is free and takes just few minutes. One needs to just upload a photo of the product, enter the title and description, select the product category and fill in contact details. The new app for iPad is compliant with the iPad’s retina display which adds great clarity to the images of products posted on OLX. Even searching is more convenient and relevant as buyers can search for ads in a particular location using GPS, and locate all the ads around them on a map. Users just need to download one app and it would work on both devices.