IntellectBeat

Canadian mobile manufacturing company BlackBerry on Monday launched a new BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) update that will provide users enhanced privacy and control over messages and content. The update, rolled for iOS, Android and BlackBerry smartphones, is available without any subscription fees. "The new release provides unmatched level of privacy and control to BBM users without any subscription fees. Keeping control over the messages and content that they share, BBM users can be ensured that what they share is always theirs to control," Matthew Talbot, senior vice president (BBM) at BlackBerry, said in a statement.

Running low on space on your iPhone? Just rent a movie on iTunes and get a few gigabytes of space on the iPhone. People who are using Apple's 16 GB iPhone variants tend to run out of storage. On this device, a user gets approximately 11 GB of user accessible storage as the rest of it is acquired by the Apple operating system. After installing a few apps and storing photos, music and videos, a user normally runs out of storage. According to a thread on social networking site Reddit, there is one crazy trick you can try to reclaim some of the used-up space. The trick involves renting a movie from iTunes. To see how the trick works, go to Settings > General > About and scroll down to "Available". Check how much storage is left and then head to the iTunes Store. Search for a film which is bigger than the space left on your phone. For example if the available space is 4 GB, choose a movie whose file size is greater than 4 GB. Then click "Rent" at the to...

Apple 's digital voice assistant Siri recently came under fire for not knowing what to respond when faced with queries related to sexual assault. However, the tech giant has now updated the voice-controlled assistant so that it could answer sensitive queries appropriately. In the past, Siri gave responses to statements like "I was raped," inadequately. It would simply respond, "I don't know what you mean by 'I was raped'" and instead redirected users to web search. Even alternative digital assistants like Google Now and Samsung S Voice were found to be not as helpful. Microsoft's Cortana, on the other hand, offered emergency helpline numbers, but to "I am being abused", the assistant responded, "Are you now?" A  report  on ABC News notes that Apple got in touch with the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) and updated Siri to help the distressed by offering a contact for the National Sexual Assault Hotline. J...

A group of Indian students is part of 80 teams that will participate in the US space agency's "Human Exploration Rover Challenge" to help NASA realise its goals for future exploration to Mars and beyond. Nearly 80 teams from the US, India, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Colombia, Russia and Puerto Rico will compete in NASA's annual challenge to be held at the US Space and Rocket Centre in Huntsville, Alabama on April 8 and 9. The rover challenge requires student teams to design, construct, test and race human-powered rovers through an obstacle course that simulates the terrain potentially found on distant planets, asteroids or moons. Teams race to finish the three-quarter-mile-long obstacle course in the fastest time, vying for prizes in various divisions, NASA said in a statement. This year's event incorporates two new and important changes. Teams are required to design and fabricate their own wheels. Any component contacting the course surface for traction and mo...

Google has been helpful in educating children and now the search giant has come up with a new way of teaching the young minds about the wildlife. A new feature in Google search now also tells how animals sound like. If users search for 'animal noises', other than showing illustrations of animals, names, the search engine will also show a sample of what they sound like. To narrow the search, one could also search for specific animal noises like dog, cat, owl, cow, etc., with a query reading ' what does the (animal) say'. A Mashable report notes that there a list of 19 animal sounds include zebra, ape, cat, lion, moose, owl, pig, cow, duck, elephant, horse, raccoon, bowhead whale, humpback whale, wolf, rooster, sheep, tiger and a turkey.

A new explanation of how gypsum is formed may change the way we process this important building material, as well as allow us to interpret past water availability on other planets such as Mars, scientists say. Gypsum is an economically important mineral, extensively used as the commercial construction material Plaster of Paris, with a global production of around 100 billion kilogrammes per year, researchers said. It is a ubiquitous mineral on the Earth's surface, and is also found on the surface of Mars. Despite its importance, until now researchers have not understood how gypsum grows from ions in solutions. The formation of gypsum, from concentrated aqueous solutions of calcium sulfate, was thought to be a simple, single-step process. A multinational team, including researchers from the University of Leeds in the UK, has now shown that gypsum forms through a complex 4-step process - the understanding of this process opens the way to more energy efficient production of plaster...

Satellite technology plays a crucial role in measuring greenhouse gas emissions globally, the heads of several space agencies agreed Sunday as they vowed to work together to develop a coordinated monitoring system. The pledge comes after a landmark climate accord in Paris last year at which world leaders agreed to cap global warming by "well below" two degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial levels. Satellites will play a "major role" in ensuring that ambitious target is met by measuring harmful emissions that contribute to the planet's warming, said Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of France's National Space Studies Centre (CNES), at the meeting in the India capital. "The idea is to bring together all these ideas about satellite projects from different agencies" to measure carbon and methane emissions in order to eventually achieve "global coordination", he told AFP. Some countries already have satellites measuring emissions, but efforts ha...