Photos of two Lumia smartphones leaked

Leaked photos of two new Windows Phone 8 devices from Nokia, the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820, hit the Web on Friday ahead of the handset maker'sNokia World event next week in New York.

Two high-resolution photos popped up on the@evleaks Twitter account around 7:30 a.m. ET, showcasing bright, slick phones which Nokia is expected to debut next Wednesday.

As The Verge first reported, the leaked photos likely display the "Phi" (Lumia 920) and "Arrow" (Lumia 820) devices (pictured below), both available in a number of colours.

The Lumia 920 phone will supposedly sport a 4.5-inch display, as well as a PureView camera, which has a 41-megapixel sensor and is meant to eliminate the visual noise found on most smartphone cameras. According to VentureBeat, Lumia 920 plans will be sold exclusively by AT&T.

The Lumia 820, comes in at least seven colors, has a 4.3-inch display, and will run on AT&T's and T-Mobile's networks, VentureBeat said.

The mysterious @evleaks has posted only 10 messages in four days, including eight photos of an unknown HTC Android tablet, and already has almost 700 followers in less than a week.

Nokia has a lot riding on its Windows Phone 8 offerings and its tight relationship with Microsoft. The beleaguered Finnish handset maker, once a market leader, has struggled to keep up with competitors like Apple and makers of various Android phones in recent years.

"Nokia bet everything on Windows, and if this doesn't succeed the next step might be having to do what's best for shareholders, and that might include selling off key assets or selling the whole company," Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley said in an interview with Reuters.

Windows Phone 8 isn't expected to drop until Oct. 29, VentureBeat pointed out, so if they are revealed next week, the Lumia handsets will still have to sit on the shelf for almost two months before Nokia starts selling them.

Lumia 920 with PureView

Lumia 820

Tunlr DNS: Watch Hulu, Pandora, Netflix and Others Without VPN

Many services based on the entertainment industry, viz. the music and movies, are geographically restricted because of licensing issues. The video streaming service Hulu, movies on demand service NetFlix and Internet radio service Pandora, for example, are available only within the United States. Similarly, BBC iPlayer and Channel 4 are only for the U.K. audience. But the global Internet population couldn’t be easily kept away from such treasures. Many Internet users are getting around the geo-location block using proxy, and VPN services in particular.

A large number of VPN providers have sprung up in a short period of time to meet demands. Unfortunately, they are all paid services and for students and for those without a regular paycheck, even $5 a month is expensive. Besides, they're are already paying for Internet connectivity. Free VPN services are available but they are always subject to abuse because of which they either become slow, restrictive or shut down entirely.



Recently, a new free service called Tunlr has emerged that allows users to access services blocked outside the United States. But Tunlr does not provide VPN service. It is a DNS unblocking service that uses a combination of a DNS server and a collection of proxies in various countries to go around the geographical block. The user simply change their DNS servers to those provided by Tunlr. After doing this, they are able to bypass the block and access Hulu, Netflix, Pandora and any of the supported services.

Unlike VPN, where the content is routed through the VPN servers, with Tunlr users are able to stream directly from the blocked service with no intermediary servers in between. Besides, Tunlr is free.

Tunlr can unblock the following services:

• US video streaming services: Netflix, Hulu, CBS, ABC, MTV, theWB, CW TV, Crackle, NBC, Fox, TV.com, PBS, Vevo, History, Lifetime TV,
• US audio streaming services: Pandora, Last.fm, Turntable.fm, Mog.com, iHeartRadio,
• Non-US services: BBC iPlayer (UK), Channel4 4oD (UK), iTV Player (UK), and Zattoo (Germany).

How Does Tunlr Work?

Tunlr uses two main components - a DNS server and a collection of proxies located in different countries. When your computer sends a DNS query for a blocked website, for example, hulu.com, instead Hulu’s real IP address, the Tunlr DNS server returns the IP addresses of a proxy server operated by Tunlr in the US.

When your connection is received by Tunlr’s proxy in the correct country, it is forwarded to the service provider e.g. Hulu. For Hulu, you appear to be in the correct country because it sees the IP address of the proxy server located in the US.

Once the IP address check is passed, and your connection established, Tunlr re-introduces your true IP address into the data stream so that the video content is streamed directly to your computer and not through Tunlr’s proxy server.

In order not to overwhelm their DNS servers with request, Tunlr strongly recommends that you switch to their DNS servers only when required to access the blocked services. You can do this easily using tools such as Public DNS Server Tool or DNS Changer. If you are using an alternative router firmware such as DD-WRT and Tomato, it is also possible to use Tunlr DNS for only the supported sites and use ISP’s for all other sites.

Unfortunately, many people are using their DNS servers in a permanent fashion, which forced Tunlr to introduce restrictive measures. Tunlr wrote in their blog.

Since too many users are using our DNS servers in a permanent fashion, we have to introduce some form of traffic shaping in order to make the permanent use of our DNS servers less attractive with the ultimate goal to keep Tunlr a free service. We’re going to implement artificial response delays and tighten the existing request rate-limiters on our DNS servers. This is going to slow down internet surfing a lot (!) for anyone who’s permanently using Tunlr’s DNS servers.

And from their FAQ:

We’re not aiming to provide a professional 24/7 service. Tunlr is up when it’s up, and is down when it’s down.

If you want to use Tunlr, please pay heed to their request otherwise you are going to kill an amazing free service.

3 Great Firefox 15 Features You Should Enable Right Now

Mozilla debuted Firefox 15 just a few days ago, and unlike most of the recent releases, version 15 includes some major changes. The most notable among them is an improvement in the way the browser uses and releases memory. Mozilla has been working to fix the memory leak problem that has been plaguing the browser for years, and although I won’t hold my breath, Firefox 15 is showing appreciable improvement. According to the organization, the developers have managed to patch Firefox 15 solving the most common add-on leaks. The best part is that add-on developers don't have to do anything as the fix applies to all add-ons.

While most changes are performance based, there are a few new features that users can benefit from during the day to day use of their browser. You won’t see them because they are disabled by default. And that’s for good reason – they are not ready for prime time as the developers feel there are still a few issues that needs to be ironed out before the new features can be released to the masses. If you are willing to accept the occasional hiccups that you might encounter on the way, here are 3 hidden features that you should enable in Firefox 15 right away.

Native PDF Viewer

Mozilla has been working on PDF rendering functionality since first introducing pdf.js a year ago. Initially available as a separate PDF Viewer add-on for the browser, pdf.js displays PDF files in HTML5 with JavaScript using Canvas and SVG APIs. The PDF viewer functionality is now built-in by default and its user interface was refreshed several times during the development stage.

How to Enable?
Go to about:config, search for "pdfjs.disabled". Double click on it to change the value to "false." Restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.

Click-to-play Plugins

Click-to-play plugins disable plugins by default, such as embedded Flash player, so videos in YouTube will not autoplay as soon as the page loads; you will have to click the Play button to load the Flash player. This is a good thing as it prevents any Flash content from auto playing.
Both Google Chrome and Opera has had a "click-to-play" plugins for more than a year now. Now Firefox has one as well.

How to Enable?
Go to about:config, search for "plugins.click_to_play". Double click on it to change the value to "true”. Restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.

Options in Tab

Taking a cue from Google Chrome, Mozilla developers have included an option in Firefox 15 that allows users to view the browser’s Options window in a tab instead of in a separate window. Peculiarly, only the Options window is affected by the change; the Downloads, Bookmarks and History still open in their own windows.

How to Enable?
Go to about:config, search for "browser.preferences.InContent". Double click on it to change the value to "true”. You don’t to restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.