Buying Android Phones

The rule of thumb when going for any gadget is: what do I need it for? The question should be increasingly asked, more so now, when the market has a huge variety of models with confusing permutations and combinations of specifications.

If you are using the phone merely to text and call, and if you hate GPRS, you don't need an Android, which is a smart phone (as different from the simple feature phone). Instead of worrying about Android or any other OS, you could look at the keypad or voice clarity or price or design. What make Android phones attractive are the applications. If you are an app freak, go for Android. And there are tens of thousands of them in the Android Market -- anything from breaking news and cricket scores to astrological forecasts and currency converters. There are also those that help you see stars and planets .

Unlocking iPhones

A year ago, George Hotz was a New Jersey suburb-dwelling teenager with a new iPhone, engineering talent, an anti-authoritarian streak and a lot of free time.

Two months later, he had successfully hacked the phone to work on T-Mobile in spite of the best efforts of Apple (nasdaq: AAPL– news – people ) and exclusive carrier AT&T (nyse: T – news – people ) to keep the handset locked to AT&T’s network.

After the 17-year-old posted detailed instructions of the feat on his blog, the media came calling and hackers declared him a hero. When Apple updated the phone’s software last winter to tether phones back to AT&T, Hotz cracked the code again.

Fast-forward a few months: Hotz is gainfully employed atGoogle (nasdaq: GOOG – news – people ), on leave from the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he was studying biotechnology. While he pronounces his hacking days are behind him, he still uses that first unlocked iPhone.

Visitors from around the world continue to frequent his blog, seeking technical help and urging him to unlock the iPhone 3G, “just for the challenge.”

Forbes.com talked to Hotz about his take on the new iPhone, whether or not he plans on hacking it, and what he’s doing at Google.

Forbes.com: What’s your opinion of the iPhone 3G?

Hotz: In a lot of ways, it’s a step backward from the original iPhone. I should be able to buy service from AT&T and a phone from Motorola, Apple [or] whomever I choose. That’s the beauty of a SIM card–you can pop it into any phone.

Think about buying a TV. You get the service separate. Cablevision doesn’t try to sell you a TV. With cars, you can do a down payment and pay a bit per month, but you can also buy the car in full. The iPhone doesn’t give you that option. In Europe, it’s a lot more straightforward.

So that’s your take on the business model, but what’s your impression of the phone?

I wonder what Apple was doing for a year. I know they added a GPS chip, 3G support, designed a new case. But it’s the same ARM11 Samsung chip, not the Intel Atom, like people wanted. And it still uses the same CPU and software.

In some aspects, that’s nice, because everything will work with older iPhones. Still, they could have put in a front-facing camera, the ability for video conferencing. Apple could have done everything everyone wants. But that’s probably what’s going to be in the next iPhone. They have to ration out the features.

The new iPhone’s hardware also looks more like that in other cellphones. The first iPhone didn’t. If you open up phones like the Samsung BlackJack or a Motorola phone, they look like they were laid out by cellphone engineers. They look cheap. If you open up the [first] iPhone, it looks like a PDA, like computer engineers worked on it. But the new phone is moving away from that.

How can you tell? Do you have an iPhone 3G?

No, no one sent one to me, but I have the firmware files. I can look through and see what the parts are.

Does that mean you won’t be upgrading?

I can’t buy one. I don’t want to pay $70 a month. And it won’t even work on T-Mobile’s 3G network, because it uses different [frequency] bands. I figured out you can get an unlocked iPhone with all that stuff for $480 [$200 for the phone, $35 for the activation fee, $175 for the contract early-termination fee, $70 for the first month of service], but it’s a hassle. You’d have to call to terminate the service, probably argue with people for an hour.

What’s your take on the App Store? People are calling it a game-changer.

Apple controls whether you’re allowed to be a developer. If they don’t like what you’re doing, they can take away your certificate and say your apps won’t go on anyone’s phones. I don’t like control. There’s cool stuff on there, though. I was playing [Sega's iPhone game] “Super Monkey Ball” this morning. The existence of the App Store brings a certain level of legitimacy. Companies are involved that have resources. It’s not just guys in their basements working on it.

That seems like a strange statement from someone who used to work in his bedroom.

Exactly. I can’t write quality apps. My earlier ones were hacks. My attitude was, “If it helps you out, good. If not, it’s not my problem. Don’t call or e-mail me for tech support.” I assumed a certain level of knowledge.

So you won’t be writing any applications for the App Store?

I bought a nice Mac Pro to play with the Apple development environment. But I’m not a software developer. I’m more interested in the internals. I never much liked polishing my code and making it pretty. And would Apple really give me a developer’s key? “Hi, my name’s George Hotz” … probably not.

Will you try to unlock the new iPhone?

When I did the first one, I had just graduated from high school. The only thing on my agenda was partying. Now I work at Google, I go in from 9 to 5 and am tired by the time I get home. I don’t have the same kind of time or the same drive. The [first] iPhone was a huge launch, an entirely new environment to play around in. That’s not the case this time.

One thing does interest me about the new iPhone. I haven’t seen the amplifier chip yet. If it’s an S-Gold 3 [from iPhone chip maker Infineon], it’s possible that by changing sections of the firmware, the phone would work on Verizon. The EDGE chip set wasn’t flexible enough, but the S-Gold 3 chip set supports both GSM [the cellular technology AT&T uses] and CDMA [that which Verizon uses].

What are you doing at Google?

I’m an intern on Google’s Street View team. We drive around and take street-level pictures. I probably shouldn’t say anything else. I’ve been there since April. I’m taking a break from school.

Are you tired of the iPhone and being associated with it?

I am sort of sick of it. I haven’t really touched the iPhone since February. But I know a lot about it and feel it’s a waste if I don’t do anything on the new one.

So you will be working on the new iPhone?

I bought a URL, yiphone.org, and put a Web page up. If the community doesn’t come through with an easy solution for the iPhone 3G, keep your eye on yiphone.org.

Do you ever worry that your work will get you in trouble legally?

Nope. Companies don’t sue kids in their basements. It wouldn’t justify your legal fees even if you took everything I own.

What else are you working on? You have a project you call a universal radio.

Within five years, I believe we will have a universal device the size of a cellphone that can do everything. So many things are in radio spectrum already: TV, traditional radio, car systems like OnStar, garage-door openers, Bluetooth, wi-fi, cellular technology, GPS. I think they could all be in one universal chip with very fast links between the technologies. Why should I carry a Google work badge around? You should just have an RFID transmitter in your cellphone that you can wave by the door.

You could build it now, but the power consumption is high, the software isn’t clean enough, the processors aren’t fast enough yet.

Would that be a business venture? So far, you’ve given away your work for free.

If I’d written something like ZiPhone [a program that jailbreaks iPhones], I would have half a million dollars by now. I’ll make money some day.

Source: www.forbes.com

Chrome secrets: Dig into Google’s new browser

Google’s Chrome is a stripped-down, no-nonsense browser, and unlike Firefox, it doesn’t have an array of add-ons available to change its behavior. So at first glance, you might think there’s not a lot you can do to hack Chrome or bend it to your will.

Think that and you’d be wrong. In fact, there are plenty of secrets hidden beneath Chrome’s shiny surface. Whether you want to do something as simple as reload the past 10 tabs you’ve closed or something fancier like force Chrome to use a different theme, peer into the mysteries of the Chrome “about:” page, or power up Chrome with “bookmarklets,” we’ve got help for you.

Firefox fans will be disappointed by Chrome’s lack of add-ons. Chome is still in early beta, so there’s a possibility that add-ons will be in the browser’s future. But even now, there are ways you can use add-ons to Chrome, via bookmarklets.

Bookmarklets are little pieces of JavaScript that you can store as a bookmark, and when clicked upon, they run as a kind of miniprogram. They don’t include a full set of features and interactivity, as do Firefox add-ons or Internet Explorer’s ActiveX controls; think of them as one-trick ponies that accomplish a single task.

Because Chrome is in beta, not every bookmarklet will necessarily work with it. But there have been a number of bookmarklets written specifically for Chrome, and other bookmarklets work just fine with it.

To add a bookmarklet to Chrome, first display Chrome’s bookmarks bar, which appears just below the Omnibox. (Pressing Ctrl+B toggles the bookmarks bar on and off.) Once you do that, when you get to a page with a bookmarklet link, drag the link to the Chrome bookmarks bar. Once it’s there, to run the bookmarklet, click on it.

The Blogote blog has a list of bookmarklets that are supposed to work with Chrome. You can drag the bookmarklets to Chrome’s bookmarks bar from there.

For example, the “Adblock+” bookmarklet is useful for those who want to surf without a lot of flashing, noisy ads. While it won’t block all ads, it can block third-party iFrames as well as ads with Java, Flash and music. After you’ve installed it, when you’re on a page whose ads you want to block, click the bookmarklet, and it does its work.

For bookmarklets designed to work with many browsers, not just Chrome, head to the CyberNotes page on CyberNet. Unfortunately, although the site has icons to show whether each bookmarklet works with Firefox, IE or Opera, there’s not yet a Chrome icon. So if you see a bookmarklet that looks interesting, just grab it and see if it works.

I’m a fan of the “View site’s cookies” bookmarklet, which displays all of the cookies placed on your PC by the site you’re currently visiting. The screenshot to the right shows both bookmarklets in action.

You can also do a Google search for bookmarklets and try each of them out with Chrome. Note that not all will work, and even those that have supposedly been tested with Chrome might not work with the latest version of the browser. (For example, I couldn’t get the Gmail This bookmarklet to work. It’s supposed to mail the current page via Gmail, but it didn’t work in my Chrome installation.)

Reload closed tabs

At first blush, Chrome appears to have one very serious shortcoming — it doesn’t seem to be able to reload tabs that you’ve closed, something that both Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 8 can do. But there are in fact several ways to reload closed tabs.

If you want to reload the last tab you’ve closed, press Ctrl-Shift-T, and Chrome will open it for you. Want to open the tab you closed before that? Press Ctrl-Shift-T again. You can do this for up to the last 10 tabs you closed.

You can also use the New Tab page to reopen a tab you closed fairly recently. When you open a new tab, you get a page showing thumbnails of your nine most-visited sites, plus blue search and bookmarks boxes on the right. If you closed any tabs within the past few minutes, you’ll also see a yellow box containing your three most recently closed tabs, which lets you skip directly to the site you want.

Finally, there’s a setting that lets you start up Chrome displaying all the tabs that were open when you last closed it down. Click the Tools icon, choose Options, and on the Basics tab, select “Restore the pages that were open last,” then click Close.

From now on, when you open Chrome, the browser will launch and reload all the tabs that were open when you closed it.

The future of electric car

Given that Nissan has already enjoyed success with the Nissan Leaf, it makes sense to delve into the luxury market, which is exactly what the Japanese automaker intends to do with the Infiniti LE. Based off the same platform as the Nissan Leaf, the Infiniti LE is making the leap from concept to reality and will lead the luxury nameplate’s charge into burgeoning EV marketplace.

While the Infiniti LE can be lazily described as a derivation of its pioneering all-electric sibling — since both cars do share the same platform, 106.3-inch wheelbase, and a more powerful 134 horsepower version of the Leaf’s electric drivetrain — the LE is a different, and more refined, beast altogether.  For starters, it’s a  more stylized car, featuring strong flowing lines while forgoing any real semblance of an EV. And unlike the Leaf’s polarizing five-door hatchback design, the LE is a four-door sedan.

The LE ups its game over the Leaf by incorporating a 100 kW motor (the Leaf features an 80 kW motor) cranking out 240 lb-ft of immediately available to the front wheels. Nissan predicts the LE’s 34-kilowatt will feature a total driving range of 100 miles, although we imagine that will be under “optimal” conditions with typical road driving netting less than that.

But perhaps one of the most intriguing differences between the LE and Leaf will be the former’s wireless charging system. According to Nissan, the company is strongly considering implementing a wireless inducting charging system in the production model that would allow owners to charge their LE wirelessly over a charging pad embedded in the floor of a garage or parking space.

The Infiniti LE is expected to go into production in 2014, with no firm pricing or availability details available at this time.

The future of Robots

Engineers built humanoid robots that can recognize objects by color by processing information from a camera mounted on the robot's head. The robots are programmed to play soccer, with the intention of creating a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots able to compete against a championship human team by 2050. They have also designed tiny robots to mimic the communicative "waggle dance" of bees.

They're big ... they're strong ... they're fast! Your favorite big screen robots may become a reality.A world of robots may seem like something out of a movie, but it could be closer to reality than you think. Engineers have created robotic soccer players, bees and even a spider that will send chills up your spine just like the real thing.

Powered by a small battery on her back, humanoid robot Lola is a soccer champion.

"The idea of the robot is that it can walk, it can see things because it has a video camera on top," Raul Rojas, Ph.D., professor of artificial intelligence at Freie University in Berlin, Germany, told Ivanhoe.

Using the camera mounted on her head, Lola recognizes objects by color. The information from the camera is then processed in this microchip, which activates different motors.

"And using this camera it can locate objects on the floor for example a red ball, go after the ball and try to score a goal," Dr. Rojas said. A robot with a few tricks up her sleeve.

German engineers have also created a bee robot. Covered with wax so it's not stung by others, it mimics the 'waggle' dance -- a figure eight pattern for communicating the location of food and water.

"Later what we want to prove is that the robot can send the bees in any decided direction using the waggle dance," Dr. Rojas said.

Robots like this could one day become high-tech surveillance tools that secretly fly and record data ... and a robot you probably won't want to see walking around anytime soon? The spider-bot.

ABOUT ROBOTICS: Robots are made of roughly the same components as human beings: a body structure with moveable joints; a muscle system outfitted with motors and actuators to move that body structure; a sensory system to collect information from the surrounding environment; a power source to activate the body; and a computer "brain" system to process sensory information and tell the muscles what to do. 

Robots are manmade machines intended to replicate human and animal behavior. Roboticists can combine these basic elements with other technological innovations to create some very complex robotic systems. There are plenty of robots doing manual work on factory assembly lines, but while those machines can manipulate objects, they do the same thing, along the same path, every time. Other robots are designed to play soccer, or to drive vehicles without human input.

ABOUT A.I.: Robots and computer networks are always evolving intelligent consciousness in popular science fiction. But while modern scientists have made great strides in building computers that can mimic logical thought, they still haven't cracked the code of human emotion and consciousness. There are two prevailing schools of thought on artificial intelligence. Proponents of "strong AI" consider that all human thought can be broken down into a set of mathematical operations. They expect that they will one day be able to replicate the human mind and create a robot capable of both thinking and feeling, with a sense of self -- the stuff of classic science fiction. Think of the robot Number Five from the 80s movie Short Circuit, who suddenly realized, frightened, that he could be "disassembled" by the scientists who made him. "Weak AI" proponents expect that human thought and emotion can only be simulated by computers. A computer might seem intelligent, but it is not aware of what it is doing, with no sense of self or consciousness.

Social Networking Set To Overtake Gaming On iOS And Android

Games have historically taken larger usage on mobile. The app revolution has changed the way software is distributed and used among consumers.  With a perfect storm of digital distribution, free content and powerful touch screen devices, the success of mobile apps has disrupted industries from telecommunications and games to music and news.

To date, no category of apps has been more successful than Games, directly disrupting the traditional gaming industry.

But, now a sign that something fundamental is changing on the iOS and Android platforms, mobile analytics provider Flurry has found that consumers are spending as much time in social networking apps as they are in mobile games.

The last time that Flurry took a look back in January, it found that half of app sessions were spent in games while 30 percent was spent in social networking apps.

“We take the rise in Social Networking apps as a signal of maturation for the platform,” wrote Flurry’s vice president of marketing Peter Farago. “As game demand may be hitting its saturation point, consumers are also discovering other apps, namely Social Networking.”

You can actually visually see the changes on the charts compared to a year ago. Today apps like Viddy, Socialcam and Instagram are in the Top 5 free in the U.S. on iOS. These are all apps for sharing content like videos and friends. A year ago, these would have probably been mostly games.

There are probably several forces at work in addition to the ones that Flurry describes. 1) The platforms are mature and other app categories are starting to develop. 2) Apple has cracked down on more unscrupulous forms of user acquisition, which benefited developers who had the cash to spend on marketing. Pre-revenue apps like Instagram can’t really justify spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in marketing dollars. 3) Twitter and Facebook are starting to emerge as effective ways of distributing mobile apps. If you search Twitter for “Viddy” or OMGPOP’s “#drawsomething,” you’ll see that there are several tweets per minute about both apps.

Flurry also found that the time spent is affecting the revenue that apps in both categories earn. For the first time, advertising revenue for social networking apps in Flurry’s ad network AppCircle, surpassed that of ad revenue for games. The thing you have to consider, though, is that gaming apps are more dependent on in-app purchases of virtual currency. If you look on iOS’ top grossing charts, it’s still virtually all games in the Top 25.

The rise of Social Networking apps also signals the end of the era of gaming dominance within mobile apps.  While the free-to-play business model performs extremely well, enabled by in-app-purchases, it does so primarily for simulation games, a sub-genre of the total games category.  As long as the total iOS and Android installed base grows, all categories will continue to grow naturally.

Neuro Chip that can communicate with brain

The University of Calgary, Faculty of Medicine scientists who proved it is possible to cultivate a network of brain cells that reconnect on a silicon chip—or the brain on a microchip—have developed new technology that monitors brain cell activity at a resolution never achieved before.

Developed with the National Research Council Canada (NRC), the new silicon chips are also simpler to use, which will help future understanding of how brain cells work under normal conditions and permit drug discoveries for a variety of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

“This technical breakthrough means we can track subtle changes in brain activity at the level of ion channels and synaptic potentials, which are also the most suitable target sites for drug development in neurodegenerative diseases and neuropsychological disorders,” says Syed, professor and head of the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, member of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute and advisor to the Vice President Research on Biomedical Engineering Initiative of the U of C.The new technology from the lab of Naweed Syed, in collaboration with the NRC, is published online this month in the journal, Biomedical Devices.

The new neurochips are also automated, meaning that anyone can learn to place individual brain cells on them. Previously it took years of training to learn how to record ion channel activity from brain cells, and it was only possible to monitor one or two cells simultaneously. Now, larger networks of cells can be placed on a chip and observed in minute detail, allowing the analysis of several brain cells networking and performing automatic, large-scale drug screening for various brain dysfunctions.

This new technology has the potential to help scientists in a variety of fields and on a variety of research projects. Gerald Zamponi, professor and head of the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, and member of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, says, “This technology can likely be scaled up such that it will become a novel tool for medium throughput drug screening, in addition to its usefulness for basic biomedical research”.

Google Builds Artificial Brain

The Google X laboratory has invented some pretty cool stuff: refrigerators that can order groceries when your food runs low, elevators that can perhaps reach outer space, self-driving cars. So it’s no surprise that their most recent design is the most advanced, highest functioning, most awesome invention ever… a computer that likes watching YouTube cats?

Okay, it’s a bit more advanced than that. Several years ago, Google scientists began creating a neural network for machine learning. The technique Google X employed for this project is called the “deep learning,” a method defined by its massive scale. In layman’s terms, they connected 16,000 computer processors and let the network they created roam free on the Internet so as to simulate a human brain learning.

Stanford University computer scientist Andrew Y. Ng, led the Google team in feeding the neural network 10 million random digital images from YouTube videos. The machine was not “supervised,” i.e. it was not told what a cat is or what features a cat has; it simply looked at the data randomly fed to it. Ng found that there was a small part of the computer’s “brain” that taught itself to recognize felines.

So Google may have created a machine that can teach itself. But what Ng and his team have done is not as new as you may think. Over the years, as the scale of software simulations has grown, machine learning systems have advanced; last year, Microsoft scientists suggested that the “deep learning” technique could be used to build computer systems to understand human speech. This Google X machine is the cream of the crop—twice as accurate as any other machine before it. However, “it is worth noting that our network is still tiny compared to the human visual cortex,” the researchers wrote, “which is a million times larger in terms of the number of neurons and synapses.”

After “viewing” random pictures from random YouTube videos, the neural network created a digital image of a cat based on its “memory” of the shapes it saw in the images. The cat the computer created is not any specific cat, but what the computer imagines to be a cat. Plato had his Forms, and now Google has its computer-generated cat image.

How to excel in Exams?

Exam is the word which the most school going and college going students fear. Some fear is so intense that it hurts sentiments of students and students goes in shock and tries to end life.

What is Exam?

Exam is a simple paper which contains 10-15 questions of which you have to write answer.  An exam does not tell that what you are in good and bad. It may happen that the questions which you have read had not come in an exam that is why you failed or got less marks in Exams. Remember an exam does not define your career it’s your choice and your liking that chooses career.

Why do student fear of giving Exams?

The first thought that comes in the mind of students is that they think that what will happen if they fail in EXAM. Failure is just a healthy part of success. 

No one counts how many times you fail success matters and the efforts that you are taking to cope up with your failures. I assure you that you must know at least one person who has failed in some kind of exams but now he is a happy person enjoying life. Every person has their own greatest failure in life.

You should have an Ambition in your life. The ambition should be always in your mind .Just follow the steps required to reach that ambition.

Most students if they fail in exams also fear that what will their parents say and what about their image in society

Always keep in mind that no one cares about your problems except your parents and sometimes your boyfriend or girl friend. So image in society does not bother you much. Mouth is meant to speak but not to make rude comments or abuse anybody. Just enjoy what people say .

Don’t get into conflict with them .Avoid company of such students who are lazy, does not respect your opinion and they are always in a mood of de motivating someone.

Convincing the parents is the toughest part for many students .Just tells them i will improve next time. I will be better next time .If they are not listening just wait for few time to pass and show them your results.

Remember you have to do it. You should develop burning desire to achieve your ambition .Just search different paths how you can achieve your Aims. At one time you will be at the top of the world.

Limiting self belief is also the important problem why a student’s fails. You may have noticed that you are failing in same subjects again and again and you even not know what the problem is. The problem is limited self image.  In your past you may have failed in that subject .This bad experience is responsible for your activities in future .Past is past concentrate on your present and future.

The problem must be that you hate that subject and that’s why you are failing in exams. It’s a natural tendency of human being they don’t do the things that they don’t like. So change this belief of yourself. Consider yourself as an intelligent student think like him/her. Never lose hope .Suppose you don’t like maths always chant mantras like I love maths I like algebra I like calculus and you can even try writing these on a piece of paper .This will help  to change yourself belief of yourself

Starting forming images in your mind about yourself, your future and your ambition . If the images are negative edit the image as you want to be in future.  See yourself as a successful student .Practice self image practice daily. It will help to break your limiting beliefs.

So everyone from today start thinking about their ambition and how to achieve it.

Cheers and Enjoy your life to fullest and don’t ever take your mind away from what you want.