All posts by Utkarsh

Solution designer with Firstsource solutions. A post grad in Networks and IT Infrastructure. Technology enthusiast, blogger, webdesigner, Network security aspirant and in love with electronics and gadgets. This blog is an attempt to share what I find interesting... almost anything @Mtaram on twitter and
Computers, Security

Mac Defender Crashes Apple Security Myth

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Mac Defender is turning out to be somewhat of an epidemic that neither Apple, nor Mac users seem prepared for. The Mac malware has caught the Apple ecosystem off guard and threatens to shatter the reality distortion field that Apple thrives on.
Apple, and the Apple faithful would like to pretend that Mac malware doesn’t exist. But, thanks to some awesome investigative reporting by Ed Bott, Jacqui Cheng, and others, we know that AppleCare technicians are seeing an explosion of malware issues, and that Apple has specifically directed support technicians not to get involved.
Cheng points out that there is at least tacit acceptance by Apple that the possibility for malware exists because Apple actually sells multiple malware protection products. And, although Apple Store reps are quick to point out the superior security and lack of malware concerns on the Mac, internally Apple mandates the use of Norton malware protection.

via PCworld

Internet

Facebook now from any phone

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A new service started by Bharti Airtel will allow any mobile phone user to access Facebook for just a rupee a day. The beauty of this service is that it works on virtually any GSM mobile phone, even if it is not internet-enabled.

This new service makes use of USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) service, which is a protocol used by GSM to communicate with service provider s computers. Those who have had mobile phones for over a decade, may remember that USSD had been in use in the form of WAP-over-SMS to access mobile internet in phones not supporting any form of internet connectivity.

Due to the limitations of the technology, the interactivity is also limited to status updates, “friend” requests and posting text on walls. While Facebook is the dominant social networking website globally, it is still in second place in India behind Google’s Orkut, which is still in leading comfortably. But Facebook is fast gaining popularity and moves like these may only serve to its advantage.

Currently, only Bharti Airtel offers a service such as this, but we may soon find other GSM service providers follow suit.

Google

Google warns governments against facial recognition technology

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The executive chairman of Google has warned governments against facial recognition technology – saying it is ‘too creepy’ even for the search engine.

Eric Schmidt said that the technology has advanced rapidly in recent years and that it could be rolled out across the internet.

But the controversial technique has angered privacy campaigners who claim that it would be a further erosion of privacy and civil liberties.

Now Schmidt has dispelled any suggestions that internet giant Google would be the first company to employ the system.

But he warned that there were likely to be other organisations who might ‘cross the line’ and use facial recognition.

Speaking today at Google’s Big Tent conference on internet privacy, technology and society, in Hertfordshire, Schmidt said that the accuracy of such technology was ‘very concerning’.

Facial recognition would work by scanning in a photograph of somebody’s face in order to potentially reveal personal information about them.

Crime fighters argue that it could be used to trace suspects who have been recorded on CCTV. But civil liberties groups say it is an invasion of privacy.

Read more: here
Android

Say no to Low End Android Phones

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Having used a Samsung Galaxy  for about a month I can tell you that it is not worth buying. But you know what else isn’t worth buying? Low-end Android phones in general. Here are some reasons why you shouldn’t get one.

Poor performance

To differentiate these devices from their more expensive stablemates, manufacturers often provide them with underclocked CPUs and low memory. The problem is, these devices run the same OS and applications as the more expensive Android phones. The applications often aren’t optimized to run on such hardware and Android itself doesn’t work well when given anything less than a 1GHz CPU and at least 512MB of RAM. This leads to poor performance on these phones. Applications crash when you try to juggle too many things at a time. The browser crashes when you load a heavy page, the multimedia experience is poor because the hardware isn’t capable of opening high resolution images and videos. You cannot even install Flash player on them.

Having experienced this tragedy firsthand, let me tell you that it is not something you would want to pay for. I wouldn’t even bother calling these devices smartphones. Just because on paper these devices claim to do the same things as more powerful Android phones doesn’t mean they deliver in real life. Devices like these are what give Android a bad name, because when their device fails to work as advertised, people are likely to blame Android rather than the device for poor performance.

Small display

These phones often come with small displays with a pitiable QVGA resolution. To make the display seem large they are often stretched, which makes the pixels so large you can count them in your spare time. The quality of the panel itself isn’t great, with poor viewing angles, sunlight legibility issues and low response marring the experience.

These displays make everything from image/video playback to web browsing look lame. Also, because of their small size, text input is a nightmare. Try zooming out in Angry Birds and you’ll spend the next few minutes wondering where the birds went.

Poor choice of applications

Let’s face it, Android doesn’t have a huge variety of great apps to begin with. On top of that if you have an Android phone with QVGA display that number goes down even further. Many of the apps out there don’t have a QVGA version yet. Imagine your disappointment if you buy one if these phones for a particular app and then learn it is not available for that resolution.

Because of the lame hardware on these phones, even if you download an app it’s not necessary it will work well. Even Angry Birds, a 2D game with simple graphics, has a hard time running on these phones. This effectively leaves more complex 3D games out of the question.

Poor software support from manufacturers

If you buy a high-end Android phone today, there is a good chance that you will receive the next major software update. However, the same can’t be expected of low-end phones. These phones will often be sold with an outdated version of Android and 99% of the time they will never get a software update. Manufacturers usually spend their time and efforts on their more expensive models. Unless there is some major issue with the software they will not bother with the low-end Android phone.

These are the major reasons why I feel no one should buy these low-end Android phones. If you want a smartphone, it is always a good idea to save up and get a device with decent specs that would support both the OS and the applications. Do not be fooled by that Android logo on the back of these phones. This is not Android lite, this is Android lame. If you want a decent smartphone at a low price, go for Symbian. These are just attempts by the manufacturers to cash in on the Android hype. There is a good reason why they are so cheap. It’s because they trade performance for disappointment. Despite what they might promise, they aren’t good at anything, which is why you should avoid them like the plague.

Technology

Intel to Make Chips for Tablets and Phones

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http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/intel3.png

Intel announced a significant change to its product roadmap designed to boost the company’s efforts to get its chips into ultra-mobile devices of all shapes and sizes.

CEO Paul Otellini said Intel’s future processors for laptops and mainstream desktops would be designed with a power rating of 10 to 20 watts. That’s a major change from the 30- to 40-watt ratings of today’s second-generation Core processors. This isn’t the first time that Intel has made such a shift in its product roadmap–Otellini specifically cited the introduction of the Pentium processor and the Centrino mobile platform–but it is a significant one for Intel.

“We decided looking forward that our roadmap was inadequate, and we needed to change the center point,” Otellini said. “This shift that we are making today is as fundamental. We are aiming our center point for all of our design activities from the 30 to 40 watts to 15 or so watts.”

Intel will continue to have more powerful processors for high-end desktops, workstations and servers. Similarly, at the opposite end of the spectrum Atom will scale not only down to a few milliwatts, to get into smartphones, but also up to enable more powerful tablets, netbooks and other devices. The result, Otellini said, will be a product line that scales the entire continuum from phones to data centers with no gaps, at least in terms of power consumption.

These changes won’t get Intel into more tablets and smartphones overnight, though. Otellini said that Intel is “on target” with tablets–it had previously announced that 35 tablets designs were in the works-but confirmed that the first smartphones won’t arrive until the first half of 2012.

Internet, Search

Bing Facebook relation getting stronger

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Bing announced that it has integrated Facebook Likes within its regular search results, similar to a move that Google made with social “shares” from Twitter and other services last week.

Facebook Likes Previously Separated

In October, Bing added Facebook Likes to the bottom of its search results page. If you searched for something that one of your Facebook friends has liked on Facebook, Bing would display this after all of its “regular” results.

Facebook Likes Meet “Regular” Results

Bing has announced that Facebook Likes will be more tightly integrated.  Now, if the regular search results displayed are also liked by one of your Facebook friends, that will be shown.

Keep in mind, the search results themselves are not changing in order based on your Facebook data. Bing is simply marking up the results with your Facebook data.

Here is a screen shot of the Facebook likes directly in the Bing results. You can see it showing for the last result.

Google’s Similar Integration, But Without Facebook

Last week, Google made a similar move. However, rather than integrate Facebook Likes into regular results, Google is integrating whether something was shared on Twitter and some other social services. Shares can also impact the ranking of regular results, unlike the situation with Bing

 

General

Top 10 most popular tech companies

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SecondMarket, a firm that facilitates investments in private companies, released a report Tuesday that discloses which companies buyers are most interested in.

Interest was determined by how many investors on the platform listed each company on their “watch lists.” When SecondMarket investors and potential investors add a company to these lists, they get relevant articles about them in their SecondMarket profile newsfeeds. It’s somewhat analogous to “liking” a Page on Facebook.

Just like in December, when SecondMarket released a similar report, Facebook takes the cake again. This shouldn’t be a surprise, as the social network is reported to be eyeing an IPO in 2012 that could value the company at as much as $100 billion.

LinkedIn, which has its IPO set for Thursday, fell from second to fourth on the list as Groupon jumped from sixth to third. Groupon is also facing a handsome payday, anticipating a valuation as high as $15 billion when it goes public.

Twitter, on the other hand, managed to sneak into the second slot on the most-watched list with no payday in sight.

SecondMarket also listed “rising stars,” companies that had the highest quarter-on-quarter increase in wish list appearances. Among them are Foursquare, Dropbox, Spotify, Skype and Gilt Groupe.

Not all of these companies necessarily have shares available on SecondMarket’s platform. The ones that do are largely sold by ex-employees, who accounted for 86% of completed transactions in Q1 of 2011. In contrast, founders accounted for just 2%; it was the first quarter any have sold shares on the platform in the past 12 months.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, AlexKalina

Gadgets

Lockitron – Lock unlock from any where in the world

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http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/lockitron_app.jpgLockitron, a product of Gerhardt and Roberton’s Apigy Inc., works with most doors. Once configured, users can electronically unlock doors using any type of phone from anywhere in the world. The process takes less than half a second on average.

“The idea is to replace keys entirely,” says Gerhardt, “so [Lockitron would work] everywhere from your home to your car to your gym locker.”

Customers pay a flat fee of $295 and receive a Lockitron Deadbolt kit that includes a wireless deadbolt, a base station with USB remote control, installation instructions and accompanying cables.

To lock and unlock configured doors, a Lockitron user need only fire-up Lockitron on his or her mobile device (it works on the web, too), select the door in the question and hit the unlock or lock icon. Administrative users can manage privileges and grant permanent or temporary access to whomever they’d like. Text message access can be setup through Lockitron’s premium service.

The startup’s remote door unlock feature literally works anywhere in the world, so long as you have an internet connection.

The product is still considered beta, but Gerhardt and Robertson have piloted an early version of the system with select customers, including Mashable, for more than nine months now. The lengthy private beta period gave the team time to develop support for most doors and make the system accessible to anyone on any device.

“Where we were nine to 12 months ago was really like a project you’d see on Hack a Day, a one-off, really cool thing for someone really techie to set up in their house,” says Robertson. “If we want to start shipping this out beyond purely early adopters, we have to build the infrastructure that we have now. … We really had to get everything up to speed for it to work. We finally reached that point.”

Computers, Technology

DNA-Based Computing Could Replace Silicon

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http://nerd-alert.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/09_DNACOMPUTER.jpg“DNA is the future of computing,” Jian-Jun Shu tells PhysOrg. And why not? Silicon is slow by comparison, computes in a binary system, creates waste heat, and is not particularly easy on the environment. DNA-based computing can perform better than silicon in several respects, Shu says, and he and a few of his students at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore have set out to prove it.

The general idea: the human body performs computations all of the time, and does so far faster than even the fastest silicon-based supercomputer. Moreover, it does so in a parallel fashion, working with more breadth, speed, and agility than the ones and zeros of silicon computation. For massive parallel problems, artificial intelligence problems, and combinatorial problems, DNA-based computing could be far more efficient.

How does it work? Shu and company are just starting to scratch the surface of what DNA computing could do, he admits, but in the lab he and his students have manipulated strands of DNA to do all kinds of things. They have fused strands together, broken them apart, snipped them, and otherwise affected them to a certain goal or end like storing information in DNA molecules that can be later retrieved for computational purposes.

The operations right now are simple: addition or subtraction mainly, nothing as complex as what silicon computers can do on their worst days. The potential for that equation to be flipped is there, but first there are several obstacles that need to be overcome. For one, there is no real interface for DNA-based computing through which humans can interact with and display data. There also exists no equivalent to the CPU–something that can facilitate these complex operations without human interference.

But that will change, Shu says, with increases in technology and more time in the lab. Just don’t expect to be computing with nucleotides anytime in the near term.

via PhysOrg