IntellectBeat

Smartphones, that have become so essential in our lives, are otherwise quite well designed pieces of technology, until you need to place them on a flat surface for easy viewing. Because smartphones don’t come with built-in kickstands, we need to invest in a phone stand or place the phone against another object, whenever there is a need to place the phone at an angle - say to watch a long video. The next time you need a phone holder, don’t reach for that water bottle (to rest your phone on) or log in to an e-commerce website. Just look around your house and you are sure to find things that can be converted into a handy stand for your phone - that too in less than a minute. A series of instructional GIFs below demonstrates how you can easily make phone stands out of everyday items. It's time to bring your old pair of sunglasses to some good use. And in case, if you have only one pair that you often use, you now know how to bring it to use when you're out with friends and s...

In a bid to help Hindi language users easily interact without the need for a separate app, Facebook has brought transliteration support to its Android app. If a user wants to write in Devanagari script, they had to resort to the use of English characters or Roman script, and if their device supports Devanagari then constantly swap between keyboard inputs to type in a different language. With the lightweight Hindi editor layered in the new version of the Facebook app, users write in Hindi seamlessly. The updated app gets a button added to the bar where users type updates or comments. The button automatically transliterates Roman characters to Hindi script. This is also helpful for those who know the language but don't know how to write it correctly. The app takes the characters typed in English and suggests similar Devanagari characters. It also remembers the suggestions most used by the user. The feature is available to all users in India. An iOS rollout is expected to follow ...

What do you do if you want to retain employees? Offer free lunches, boost the HR practices or bring in true motivation. But, if you are Google you might just build another startup to let employees pursue their own personal projects. The internet giant is reportedly building Area 120 - a startup incubator for some of its employees to work full time on their '20% projects' - the personal projects that the company allows in a fifth of their working hours. A  report  on Engadget notes that any employee who wants to pursue their own project without losing their current job at Google could do so provided it the business plan is accepted by Google. Although the company hasn't officially confirmed building such a work space for its ambitious employees, but such an initiative might help the company save important talent from being poached away by rivals.

Samsung has yet again upped the stakes on the flagship front of the smartphone wars. Its latest flagship, the Galaxy S7 packs in features that give it a headstart, when compared to opponents such as the iPhone 6s. Unveiled on the eve of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Galaxy S7 has quite a number of impressive features to its credit which again tilts the balance in favour of Samsung. The new S7, that is on sale from March, will rake in the numbers for quite a while before Apple can even think of making any amends with the iPhone 7 that isn't expected to make an appearance before September 2016. In a spec-to-spec and a feature-to-feature fight the list is long in which the S7 betters the 6s. Here are the top 7: 1. Camera The S7 takes the smartphone camera to an altogether new level. Galaxy S7 introduces the first Dual Pixel camera on a smartphone. The aperture in the S7 is f/1.7 compared to f/2.2 in the iPhone 6s. This means that S7 camera's aperture opens wid...

Snapchat has rolled out a new feature that allows users to face swap with photos from their camera roll. The new feature allows users to scan their own camera roll to find new faces for exchanges. That means that users can easily swap faces with friends thanks to the app's auto face detection feature, or take screenshots of photos to look more like Angelina Jolie-Pitt or Mickey Mouse. The app has also dropped its paid replay service which allowed users to pay for extra replays at 99 cents. From now on, videos and photos can be replayed for free but only once. These developments come with the latest update.

Renowned physicist and author Stephen Hawking recently spoke at length about black holes at the Harvard University, bringing a new dimension to the idea of these spatial configurations. Hawking has claimed that black holes neither store material absorbed by them nor any physical information about the object that created them. He said that these black holes could be portals to a parallel universe. By NASA's definition, a 'black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying. Because no light can get out, people can't see black holes.' Giving an alternative definition, Hawking said that the black holes aren’t the eternal prisons they were once thought to be and 'things can get out of a black hole, both from the outside and possibly though another universe,'  The Boston Globe reports. On the question about wh...