Apple to kill off the 3GS

Apple has decided to kill off the iPhone 3GS and make its iPhone 4 the
entry level phone after the iPhone 5 comes out.
In the UK that will mean that the 8GB version of the iPhone 4 will be
your cheapest way into Jobs' Mob's walled garden of delights.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the iPhone 4 will probably be given
away with £20 per month contracts instead of the 3GS.

The iPhone 3GS is one of Apple's longest serving models. It hit the
shops in June 2009 and is still fairly common. It remained fairly
popular mostly because of technology problems with the iPhone 4
including the famous "will drop your call while you hold it to your
ear" feature and the requirement to have a rubber band wrapped around
it.

There will be an interesting bottle neck coming up for Apple after the
iPhone 5 comes out. It will be the first to sport a new mini-sim but
it will also have some plugs which will make a lot of old accessories
out of date.

It is still not clear if the iPhone 5 will run in the UK using full 4G
capabilities.
The new gear is expected to go on sale in the week of 21 September, so
if you want a cheap way into Apple land then you will have to buy a
3GS fairly soon.

Oracle told to pay Google a cool million

Oracle has been told to write a cheque to pay Google more than $1.3
million which is the cost of trolling the search engine for its use of
Java in Android.
Oracle sued Google in August 2010 alleging widespread infringement of
Java-related copyrights and patents in Android and hoped that the
judge would award it $6 billion.
However, Judge William Alsup of US District Court in Northern
California was a programmer and actually knew more than a lot of what
Oracle's lawyers did about coding. The case was thrown out and there
was a small matter of Google's legal costs to work out. Google said it
wasted $4 million in the case, but Alsup thinks that Oracle should pay
$1.13 million of that.
According to Groklaw, Alsup wrote in his court order that Oracle
recovered nothing after nearly two years of litigation and six weeks
of trial. Oracle initially alleged infringement of seven patents and
132 claims.
Each claim ultimately was either dismissed with prejudice or found to
be non-infringed by the jury. Oracle also lost on its primary
copyright claim for Java APIs.
Even as the company's patent allegations disintegrated, Oracle fell
back on an "overreaching" and "somewhat novel" theory of copyright
infringement to bolster its case, Alsup growled. In otherwords Oracle
continued to display trolling behavior even after it was clear it had
lost.
However Google did not get everything because many of the item-line
descriptions seemingly bill for 'intellectual effort' such as
organising, searching, and analysing the discovery documents," Alsup
wrote.
Apparently some of the cash Google wanted was for "meetings" which
everyone knows are a complete waste of time but people like managers
believe are vital.
Oracle is still trying to appeal the court case findings, but it is on
the back foot at the moment.

Microsoft Windows 8 is less user friendly

While Windows 8 appears to be  great touch-friendly tablet software, it is starting to look like it is as user-friendly as a Great White Shark to ordinary PC users.

Former Xerox PARC researcher Usability expert Raluca Budiu of the Nielsen Norman Group told Laptop magazine that the new OS is less user friendly than its predecessors.

She said that the design Vole used does not make sense for PCs and has the potential to confuse desktop users and slow them down.

While there are things that you can do more easily in Windows 8, such as share a news story through email or with friends on Facebook, these are not the sort of things people do most often on a PC.

It is looking like Windows 8 is optimised for content consumption rather than content production and multitasking. But content consumption is better done on tablets and phones while production and multitasking are still best suited for PCs.

Microsoft appears to have ignored that fact and gone entirely for consumer use.

She said that the learning curve for Windows 8 going to be steep, particularly after Windows 7. The duality of Desktop-Metro is likely to confuse at least some of the users.

The concept of giving priority to content is not suited for the larger non-touch screen of most PCs or laptops. Many apps waste a lot of space for huge images and give little space to text.

Hiding controls to give priority to content may make sense on mobile, where screen space is so limited, but is nuts on a large screen, especially if users have to work harder to access hidden features.

For example if you are in Windows 8′s desktop environment and want to launch a new desktop application, you must return to the tile-based Start screen to click a shortcut.

So getting rid of the start menu is probably the daftest thing as it means that you have to go through all sorts of rubbish to get your software running. 

Facebook green lights marketers to use whatever data they have

Mark Zuckerberg's inflated experiment in monetising data harvesting, Facebook, has taken another step down the rabbit hole. Now it will open up its database to marketers who can use personal information that they have accrued, such as phone numbers and email addresses, to find potential customers.

Facebook's clause is that the company must already have some of that personal data on their records, or, as AllThingsDigital puts it, Zuckerberg is enabling marketing departments to hunt down customers, present or prior, on the social network. Advertisers will be able to use the data to stalk people across the network as soon as next week.

This poses some niggling questions. Anyone with a telephone will understand that, even with opt-out services to hide your number from the public record, all it takes is for one unscrupulous marketer to get their hands on it and it becomes public domain for the cold callers and scammers.

Hidden in terms and conditions of countless email sign-ups or member sites are clauses that say they may pass over information to relevant third parties, with your consent, upon joining.

Sometimes this is as easy to do as accidentally leaving a box un-ticked on a sign-up form, others pass and sell data without an obvious record. To opt out of such services is the receiver's responsibility, not the sender's. 

Of course, Facebook has had its fair share of criticism flung its way, and it claims that advertisers must have the permission of their customers for using that data before they can go ahead and track them. The question lies in when consent is muddied or hidden. 

Army of the future: Soldiers will be able to run at Olympic speed and won’t need food or sleep with gene technology

Tomorrow's soldiers could be able to run at Olympic speeds and will be
able to go for days without food or sleep, if new research into gene
manipulation is successful.

According to the U.S. Army's plans for the future, their soldiers will
be able to carry huge weights, live off their fat stores for extended
periods and even regrow limbs blown apart by bombs.

The plans were revealed by novelist Simon Conway, who was granted
behind-the-scenes access to the Pentagon's high-tech Defence Advanced
Research Projects Agency.

With a budget of almost $2billion a year DARPA, established in 1958
after the USSR's first successful space mission shocked America, has a
goal of maintaining U.S. technological dominance on the battlefield.

Among it's many ambitious projects, the agency is working on an
exoskeleton that will allow soldiers to run faster and lift prodigious
weights. But its most controversial work involves genetic
modification.

DARPA is working on triggering genes that will make soldiers' bodies
able to convert fat into energy more efficiently so they are able to
go days without eating while in the warzone.

With plump soldiers able to go on deployment for days living just off
their own body fat, that would free up space in their kit bags
hitherto used for ration packs.

Mr Conway's new thriller, Rockcreek Park, is based on the premise that
a body with extraordinary qualities is discovered in Washington DC.

After his visit to DARPA, the former infantry officer told the Sunday
Express: 'It's all about improving the efficiency of energy creation
in the body.

'Soldiers would be able to run at Olympic speeds, carry large weights
and go without sleep and without food.'

Washington's military scientists are also hoping to work out how to
trigger cells to regrow limbs for soldiers maimed by enemy bombs and
landmines.

With well-documented cases already of young children regrowing fingers
severed in accidents, DARPA is throwing significant sums at research
to identify the physiological trigger and activate it in adults.

One area of success has been in shutting off the trigger of sleep. A
drug was tested on U.S. Army helicopter pilots that enabled them to
stay up longer than 40 hours, with their levels of concentration
actually improving after nearly two days without rest.

It is hoped to replace the amphetamine-based drugs that have
previously been used to keep servicemen alert during operations.

They had been found to affect decision making and had been blamed for
errors in judgement that had led to many so-called incidents of
friendly fire.

Professor Joel Garreau of Arizona University confirmed that DARPA was
experimenting with turning fat into energy. 'Finding that metabolic
switch would wipe out the £40billion diet industry in a heartbeat,' he
added.

The plans are just the latest seemingly madcap schemes dreamed up by
DARPA – which is known as the U.S. military's 'mad scientist' wing.

Earlier this year it emerged that the agency was funding research into
contact lens-mounted displays that could focus information from drones
and satellites directly into soldiers' eyeballs, and helmets that
could enable troops to communicate telepathically.

DARPA projects are often oddball technology, but it also has a history
of far-sighted technological leaps. It invented the first virtual
reality devices, and one of the precursors of the modern internet.

Source: Daily Mail

JPEG or PNG

you can save an image in PNG, JPEG, GIF and dozen other formats. I
have a detailed guide on choosing file formats for your images but if
you still feeling confused, this slightly exaggerated comic courtesy
Louis should help you pick the right file format.

Which File Format Should You Choose?
The help manual of a popular screen capture program offers the
following suggestions

GIF format is limited to 256 colors and is a lossless compression file
format, a common choice for use on the Web. GIF is a good choice for
storing line drawings, text, and iconic graphics at a small file size.

PNG format is a lossless compression file format, which makes it a
common choice for use on the Web. PNG is a good choice for storing
line drawings, text, and iconic graphics at a small file size.

JPG format is a lossy compressed file format. This makes it useful for
storing photographs at a smaller size than a BMP. JPG is a common
choice for use on the Web because it is compressed. For storing line
drawings, text, and iconic graphics at a smaller file size, GIF or PNG
are better choices because they are lossless.

George adds – "JPEGs are for photographs and realistic images. PNGs
are for line art, text-heavy images, and images with few colors. GIFs
are just fail."

Randall Munroe at xkcd and Matthew Inman at Oatmeal mostly use PNG for
their web comics while Hugh MacLeod at GapingVoid uses the JPEG file
format for his cartoons. Also note that the image illustration above
is in PNG format.

Microsoft Surface

Microsoft Surface – A Windows 8 Tablet
The Microsoft Hardware unit has so far limited itself to designing
keyboards, mice, and other computer accessories but this is probably
the first time that they have designed a consumer computer tablet
in-house. The build quality of existing Microsoft hardware is
top-notch and if the press photos are any indication, the new "Post
PC" device should be no different.

The details are too thin to compare this Windows 8 tablet with the
iPads and the Galaxy Tabs but few things stand out.

Unique features

The Surface tablet runs on Windows 8 and hence you should be able to
use any of your existing software on the tablet.

The included USB port will help you connect devices – like the
external hard drives, USB microphones, digital cameras, or USB modems
– without requiring "special" accessories. The touch cover (image)
doubles as a keyboard with a built-in track pad.

Pen Input for Handwriting

The tablet editions of previous versions of Windows had excellent
handwriting recognition capabilities. The Surface Tablet ships with a
pen and features "palm block" meaning when the pen tip is touching the
screen, it would ignore the touch of the palm and the fingers. Surface
could turn out to be a great writing device albeit less heavy.

Availability

Microsoft says that Surface would be made available around the same
time as Windows 8 so the release date is likely to be October or
November this year. The units will initially be sold only in the
Microsoft Stores in U.S. and there's no word on pricing yet.

Cotton t-shirts could soon charge electronic gadgets

Mechanical engineers are working on how to turn the material in a cotton T-shirt into a source of electrical power.

Xiaodong Li, from the University of South Carolina, envisions integration of the cell phone and just about every electronic gadget into our lives.

In fact, Li sees a future where electronics are part of our wardrobe.

"We wear fabric every day," Li said.

"One day our cotton T-shirts could have more functions; for example, a flexible energy storage device that could charge your cell phone or your iPad," he said.

Starting with a T-shirt from a local discount store, Li's team soaked it in a solution of fluoride, dried it and baked it at high temperature. They excluded oxygen in the oven to prevent the material from charring or simply combusting.

The surfaces of the resulting fibres in the fabric were shown by infrared spectroscopy to have been converted from cellulose to activated carbon. Yet the material retained flexibility and could be folded without breaking.

"We will soon see roll-up cell phones and laptop computers on the market," Li said. But a flexible energy storage device is needed to make this possible," he said.

The once-cotton T-shirt proved to be a repository for electricity. By using small swatches of the fabric as an electrode, the researchers showed that the flexible material, which Li's team terms activated carbon textile, acts as a capacitor.

Capacitors are components of nearly every electronic device on the market, and they have the ability to store electrical charge.

Moreover, Li reports that activated carbon textile acts like double-layer capacitors, which are also called a supercapacitors because they can have particularly high energy storage densities.

But Li and Bao took the material even further than that. They then coated the individual fibres in the activated carbon textile with 'nanoflowers' of manganese oxide.

Just a nanometer thick, this layer of manganese oxide greatly enhanced the electrode performance of the fabric.

"This created a stable, high-performing supercapacitor," Li said.

This hybrid fabric, in which the activated carbon textile fibres are coated with nanostructured manganese oxide, improved the energy storage capability beyond the activated carbon textile alone.

The hybrid supercapacitors were resilient even after thousands of charge-discharge cycles, performance didn't diminish more than 5 percent.

"By stacking these supercapacitors up, we should be able to charge portable electronic devices such as cell phones," Li added.

The study has been published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Future Inventions

UNDER SEA RESORT

L Bruce Jones is a submarine inventor who designs and sells private luxury submarines.

Following in the footsteps of his rocket scientist father, and his grandfather who invented self-elevating jack-up rigs and created the world's first containerized shipping company; Bruce has invented the world's first undersea resort.

Accessible by two elevators from the surface, the resort is being built on the seabed surrounding a private Fiji island in the South Pacific.

The underwater facilities will include 24 luxury state rooms, a restaurant and bar, library, conference room, wedding chapel, underwater spa, and the ultra-luxury Nautilus Suite with stunning undersea views.

How to Turn an Everyday MacBook Air Into a Professional-Grade Powerhouse

Replace Your MacBook Air's Guts Note: Apple stated to us that
replacing the stock drive in a MacBook Air is a warranty violation.
OWC disputes this, saying that the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act protects
consumers who undertake parts replacements of this type. Greg Maxson
Since I travel constantly for work, swapping my bulky MacBook Pro for
a half-the-weight MacBook Air changed my life. Ultra-thin laptops like
the Air—not to mention phones, tablets and iPods—come equipped with
solid-state, or flash, memory, which writes data on tiny transistors
rather than bulky spinning disks like conventional hard drives.

Flash-drive speed varies widely, and the Air's stock drive, though
zippier than a regular hard drive, isn't the quickest, so it's not
optimal for jobs such as pro-level video or photo editing. When I
learned that memory manufacturer Other World Computing had begun
selling gum-stick-size flash drives, I decided (against Apple's
wishes) to replace my stock drive and conduct some performance tests.
It turns out that the company's drives are, as promised, very fast. I
found that its 240-gigabyte 6G model runs about 35 percent faster than
the Air's stock drive [see findings at bottom of post]. There's also a
3G, which is nearly as fast as the 6G and is available in a
480-gigabyte version that dwarfs the Air's 256-gigabyte capacity,
allowing me to store my entire music collection.

Changing the drive is easy. It requires little more work than
unscrewing the laptop's back panel. But it isn't cheap—right now the
480-gigabyte drive costs about as much as a new Air. That's a level of
storage available only with a much heavier (and more expensive)
MacBook Pro, though, and the prices should quickly drop. OWC also
sells an enclosure ($70; MacSales) that lets users repurpose the
original drive as an external storage device.

ADD A NEW DRIVE TO THE MACBOOK AIR

Difficulty: Easy
Time: 10 minutes

Step 1: Clone the stock drive onto the OWC drive with a tool such as
SuperDuper, available for free.

Step 2: Turn off the Air. Remove the 10 screws holding the back panel
on using the supplied screwdrivers.

Step 3: Lift the battery connector to detach it. Remove the single
screw holding the drive in place.

Step 4: Pull the drive out of its slot and insert a new one. Reassemble.

Step 5: Turn on the laptop to confirm that the new drive is
functioning properly.

PERFORMANCE COMPARISON

Stock drive
Geekbench score: 3,176
Opening a 348MB Photoshop file: 17.6 seconds
Importing a 739MB file into iMovie: 1:30.2 seconds

6G OWC drive
Geekbench score: 5,516
Opening a 348MB Photoshop file: 11.5 seconds
Importing a 739MB file into iMovie: 1:21.6 seconds

Online Video Tutorials

There are variety of websites which provides online tutorials .But they may hefty fees from you.
Below i am providing a website which provides videos on every branch of engineering .
Programming tutorials are also there .You can even download the videos for free.It is the best source of learning. If you live in a remote area then the videos are very helpful as it may not be possible to seek some professional. The website contain videos from all subjects.
The following are the list of websites from which videos can be downloaded

1. http://www.nptel.iitm.ac.in/
2.http://freevideolectures.com/

Electronic Pills - Collecting Data Inside The Body

After years of investment and development, wireless devices contained in swallowable capsules are now reaching the market.

Companies such as SmartPill based in Buffalo, New York and Israel-based Given Imaging (PillCam) market capsules the size of vitamin tablets.

These pills contain sensors or tiny cameras that collect information as they travel through the gastrointestinal tract before being excreted from the body a day or two later.

These new electronic inventions transmit information such as acidity, pressure and temperature levels or images of the esophagus and intestine to your doctor's computer for analysis.

Doctors often use invasive methods such as catheters, endoscopic instruments or radioisotopes for collecting information about the digestive tract. So device companies have been developing easier, less intrusive ways, to gather information.

Digestive diseases and disorders can include symptoms such as acid reflux, bloating, heartburn, abdominal pain, constipation, difficulty swallowing or loss of appetite.
"One of the main challenges is determining just what is happening in the stomach and intestines." says Dr. Anish A. Sheth, Director of the Gastrointestinal Motility Program at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
Doctors can inspect the colon and peer into the stomach using endoscopic instruments. But some areas cannot be easily viewed, and finding out how muscles are working can be difficult.
Electronic pills are being used to measure muscle contraction, ease of passage and other factors to reveal information unavailable in the past.

Sources: givenimaging.com smartpillcorp.com

Google Car

Image flying to Las Vegas and embarking from your plane at the airport. While waiting to pickup your luggage, you telephone for a cab. Then, you collect your luggage, step outside and your car arrives. But there is no one driving it.
A voice from the car greets you as the trunk opens. The car politely asks you to place your luggage in the trunk.
The back door opens and the car asks you to get in and fasten your seat belt. "Where would you like to go?" asks the car. You respond with the hotel name. "We'll be there in 15 minutes," says the car as it moves away from the curb and drives itself to your destination.
Welcome to the Las Vegas of the future.
Nevada has become the first state to approve driveless cars by accepting an application for the Google car to drive on it's roads.
Bruce Breslow of the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, also revealed a special license plate for driveless cars.
The plate will display an infinity symbol, which according to Breslow is a symbol that best represents this futuristic technology.
Nevada defines driverless cars as using "artificial intelligence, sensors and global positioning system coordinates to drive itself without the active intervention of a human operator."
Owners of a Google car or similar driveless cars will need to obtain a special driver license and comply with specific regulations. For example, the cars must be equipped with smart boxes and owners will be responsible for how the car functions.
California, Hawaii and Florida are also considering similar legislation for driverless cars.
Source: dmvnv.com

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”.