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

Google Adds a Little Magic to Earth

http://www.ithinkcomputers.info/Images/google_earth.jpgCalling it “the next generation of realism” Google on Monday introduced the latest version of Google Earth, promising more seamless interactivity with Mother Earth and some unusual new features.

“In Google Earth 6, we’re taking realism in the virtual globe to the next level with a truly integrated Street View experience — and 3-D trees,” explained Google product manager Peter Birch on the company’s official blog. “We’ve also made it even easier to browse historical imagery.”

Though “all great new advances look like magic when they’re first released,” Brooklyn Law School Internet and telecommunications law professor Jonathan Askin told TechNewsWorld, “Google Earth 6 is indeed world-shaking, and disrupts a lot of traditional thinking about how we view the world.”

Part of that thinking involves paradigms about privacy and law enforcement, Askin explained.

“Google Earth 6 will be met with concerns, some logically justified,” he said. “Concerns include potential encroachment on individual privacy, and potential law enforcement and security risks that ensue by placing such powerful tools in the hands of all individuals, including those with nefarious intentions.”

Read the complete article on Technology News World
image source: http://www.ithinkcomputers.info

Nintendo Wii 2 to be unveiled at E3

Over the past couple of weeks speculation has been growing that Nintendo is about to announce a successor to the Wii console. It all started when a price drop for the Wii to $149.99 was predicted in May, a few weeks before E3 starts. Then a number of respected retailers actually dropped the Wii from $199.99 to $169.99. At the same time, rumors of a Wii 2 appeared with the new machine expected to outperform a PS3 while including a Blu-ray drive.

It seems the rumors were all too much for Nintendo not to respond, and they have now confirmed the successor to the Wii will be unveiled at E3. We also have it confirmed that the new machine will launch in 2012. It’s thought that launch will be after April next year as Nintendo did not list the machine in its financials for this year, which ends in April 2012.

Other than confirming the existence of this new machine, which may not even carry the Wii name for all we know, Nintendo hasn’t given any more details of what to expect. But E3 begins on June 7, meaning we only have six weeks to wait before we find out for sure.

Read more at Kotaku

5 monitors on a computer – Deus Ex human revolution

Working with a computer that has two monitors is so 2005… with AMD’s Eyefinity, you can pop in a single video card and connect up to five displays to a single computer. And now, if you have the right video card, you can also play Deus Ex: Human Revolution on all five of those monitors. That is, when the game is released in August.

Square Enix, the development company behind the game, let word fly this week that the PC version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution will have full DirectX 11 support, 3D support, and will work with AMD Eyefinity.

That means that gamers with high end multi-core systems and brand new DX11 graphics cards will be able to make use of all of that hardware and really experience the game. Even without DirectX 11, gamers who have dual or quad-core processors on their computers will be able to leverage them for higher framerates and faster overall game performance.

The real winners though are gamers with AMD graphics cards that support Eyefinity, or AMD’s next generation multi-display technology. Since the game fully supports Eyefinity, you can connect up to five monitors as your card can support to your system and the game will expand the field of view spread out across all of them. Developers went to great lengths to make sure they weren’t just tacking on the features to have a checkbox to mark on the packaging: the video here shows that you really can play the game with at least three displays and interact with and see objects on all of them.

Eyefinity really shines in games that can benefit from a broader field of view, like racing games and simulations. Not many first-person shooters have gone down this road, but if the video is to be believed, the end product will be impressive to see. If you have a graphics card that supports Eyefinity, you may get more than you anticipated when Deus Ex: Human Revolution when it hits store shelves this August.

via PC Gamer via Kotaku

Yet another snag in Airtel service

I had flown over to Hyderabad first time for the last weekend, Hyderabad is nice city just like my home town Lucknow and the last thing that I want to be without in an unknown city with a phone with data connection.

Being a big fan of GPS and how it has helped me find/locate places in the past, it becomes very difficult for me to keep calling people and asking how to reach where. At times the way told by people you meet en route are different. And that is where GPS comes in handy.

The moment I landed, I was surprised to see my cell phone without GPRS icon. I tried everything I could to get back on data.

Later in the day I called up 121 (Airtel customer care) just to be told, yet another time, that my connection is outside Hyderabad Connection so I should call up Mumbai. I did call up Mumbai and they tell me that I am in Hyderabad and my data is having issues so I should call 12118. I called up yet another time being optimistic but to my dismay they just hung up the call after understanding what I wanted to say. I was being told that the agent will call up the required support team and conference my call to that team which never happened.

Airtel better learn from some good service providers like Vodafone.

I know loosing a customer here and there will not hamper Airtel in any sense but O’ mightly Airtel thou might never know when the tipping point comes.

First-ever 3G call and tweet from summit

It’s official, the world’s highest mountain has seen its first tweet and its first phone call thanks to a 3G network, a Samsung Galaxy S II, and a guy named Kenton Cool. That’s right, he’s so cool, he has the word in his name. The English mountaineer had climbed Everest eight times, however, Cool had never climbed the 29,029-foot mountain with a smartphone on his person before. Of course, and as you can see in the video below, this little stunt was sponsored by Samsung.

In a video from BBC News, Mr. Cool said he decided to make this his ninth climb because he wanted to prove that 3G radio worked at the highest place on earth.

http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/kenton_cool-580x330.pngBack in October of 2010, Ncell, a mobile operator in Nepal, installed the first 3G station at Everest’s base camp. The goal was to bring online services to the people of Nepal and the mountaineers who ordinarily have to carry around cumbersome satellite phones or nothing at all.

Cool tweeted from the summit, thanking both a weak 3G signal and Samsung’s Galaxy phone for giving him the change to make this small step forward for mankind.

The guy’s certainly good with his product placement. It’s just too bad that AT&T didn’t jump on-board so they could deliver the ultimate insult to Verizon in the form of the world’s best “Can you hear me now” commercial.

This article first appeared on Geek.com
Photo: Geek.com

Gartner’s top 10 technologies for 2011

Gartner on Tuesday outlined its top 10 technologies for 2011 that will give technology execs the most bang for their budgets. How many of these technologies will be a true hit?

Carl Claunch, an analyst at Gartner, said at the research firm’s Symposium conference in Orlando that things like sustainability, data center overhauls and virtualization were dropped. Here’s Gartner’s 2011 list, why those technologies were chosen and a few observations.

The new list:

source zdnet

Easiest way to download Youtube Videos

We have always wanted to download that youtube video that we liked. There are several online sites that allow us to download the youtube videos, but at times the links dont seem to be working.

Here is one sure shot way to downoad youtube videos with just one click.

First you need to dowload and install Internet download manager.

Restart your web browsers.

IDM is smart enough to integrate itself with IE and Firefox. It also works seamlessly with other browsers too.

Then you just need to open up that youtube video and click the Download this Video popup link of IDM as show in the picture. Select the desired location and you are done.

Top game consoles

    There’s nothing like the first time you bought/unwrapped one of the best video game consoles you ever owned. The new plastic smell. The feel of a brand new controller. The first hum of an unfamiliar start-up sequence. The experience of getting new video game consoles is a gamer’s nirvana. Let’s  look back and fondly remember all of the video game consoles that made us smile and/or cringe upon playing them. These are the Top 10 Video Game Consoles of all time.

Virtual Boy

    virtual boyWhy is one of the biggest flops in video game history on this list? One word: Risk. Nintendo took a huge risk in putting a VR-goggled, red tinted mess out on the shelves, but that is what the video game industry needs. We as gamers need companies to continually take risks so that innovation will come out of it and give us truly unique gaming experiences. Without the Virtual Boy video game console, we might have not gotten the Wii.

TurboGrafx 16

    TurboGrafx-16This video game console had cards instead of cartridges. It had no third party games. But the TurboGrafx 16 was fun as hell to play. Bonk’s Adventure was just a solid platformer with a good time-span. The TurboGrafx 16′s library included a game for everybody, whether you liked four on four wrestling video games or strategy video games. Military Madness gave the strategy game a new place to go. Splatterhouse was a milestone in the survival horror genre and World court Tennis is still the only tennis game to have a career mode that felt more like an RPG than a sports game. All in all, the TurboGrafx 16 is a barrel of good times if you can get a hold of one.

XBOX 360

    Xbox 360The XBOX 360 has XBOX Live, which is the best online community out of any console. It was the first console to be made with wireless controllers as the main controller. It’s powerful machinery-wise and also has one of the best game libraries of all time. If it wasn’t for the “Ring of Death” Fiasco, the XBOX 360 might have been at the top of the Best Video Game Consoles of All Time list.

Atari 2600

    atari2600The Atari 2600 is the granddaddy of home consoles. Some argue that Intellivision had far superior graphics and that is true, but the Atari 2600 made everyone want to have a gaming console. Playability aside, it turned the tide in gaming and helped usher in a new era for consumer video games.

Nintendo Wii

    nintendo_wii_whiteThe Nintendo Wii created feasible motion gaming, which is the next step in blurring the line between video games and reality. Looking back 50 years from now, the Wii may have been the starting point for Skynet’s robot uprising and inevitable takeover of humanity.

XBOX

    xboxThe original XBOX is on this list for one reason…community. XBOX was the first console to truly embrace the idea that gamers NEED other gamers, and it showed through XBOX Live. The XBOX with XBOX Live  made playing your buddy 1,000,000 times easier and made playing a complete stranger even possible. Plus, I still can’t get the four TV Halo LAN parties out of my head.

Super Nintendo

    super nintendoFirst off, Super Nintendo had the first controller with more than three action buttons. CRAZINESS! But the SNES was also the easiest system to get lost in. When you started playing Super Mario World, you knew you were hooked. A Cape? 128 levels? Four different colors of Yoshis? You thought you’d never get enough of it. But you had to, because that Link to the Past cartridge had been staring at you from the EB shelves since it got there.

Nintendo 64

    Nintendo-64-ConsoleThe N64 was the first console to TRULY capture the moniker “Next-Gen”. Mario Kart 64, Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time… No one had ever seen anything like it before and the system seemed to be capable of unexplainable power, perhaps to end world hunger and any sort of suffering or plight. Plus it had four controller slots built in. Go Play some Goldeneye if you don’t believe me.

Playstation 3

    playstation3py6The PS3 is this high on the list because, at the time of this post, it is the most powerful and magnificent home console ever produced. Not only does it have a built-in Blur-Ray Player but it has a game library with some exclusive titles that have changed.

Nintendo-NESIf you are a gamer, you need no explanation. For you others, the NES is just simple and classic. Super Mario Bros., DuckHunt, RBI baseball, Castlevania, Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Mike Tyson’s Punch-out, Excitebike… The NES had the games that made gamers want to game.

Fraud Prevention Trends in 2011

http://www.tctinvestigations.com/images1/fraud-prevention-services.jpgWith the exponential rise in internet usage online transactions are also increasing; and so is the number of online frauds increasing. Thus the companies not only have to prevent online frauds, but also they have to protect the customer privacy.

According to ThreatMetrix, California based provider of cloud-based fraud prevention solutions, there has been a shift in fraud detection. The shift has been from cookie based identification to utilizing device identification, i.e., detecting returning visitors based on attributes of the device. Also the rules have been improved to use the information to detect spoofed devices and IP addresses as well as sniff out botnets.

Some other trends and predictions in fraud prevention as shared by ThreatMetrix are given as below:

1. Less Reliance on Cookies and Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

As the consumers are becoming more aware of the online frauds these days, they concerned with online privacy. Many of them block or delete cookies themselves or using security software. Hence many fraud prevention solutions are becoming ineffective. Thus there is this shift towards cookieless device identification and device fingerprinting in preventing fraudulent transactions today.

 

2. New Classes of Devices Become Commodities for Fraudsters.

The users use new devices like Smartphone and tablets in which they can hide their IP address and thus eliminate the possibility of detecting the source of transactions.

 

3. Use of Fraud Prevention Solutions Across the Entire Value Chain.

Today’s fraudsters are very smart and hence the threat across the entire value chain in e-commerce continues to persist. Thus the use of fraud prevention software has become very important for the online brands.

 

4. Rise of Online Services and Digital Goods Encouraging Fraud Automation.

The real time online transactions have increased considerably which is now the hot target of online fraud automation and the fraudster can easily automate fraudulent transactions.

 

“Every business that transacts on the Internet needs better automated fraud prevention that doesn’t rely on cookies or personal identifiable information,” said Faulkner. “2011 is the year that technologies like device fingerprinting and collective fraud intelligence in the cloud become mainstream tools for web security and fraud professionals. When fighting a collective problem you need a collective solution.”

 

Source: http://www.securityweek.com/fraud-prevention-trends-2011
image: http://techinvestigations.com

Video Chat on Your Android Phone

Sometimes, the expressions on a person’s face can mean much more than what they say. To help you stay in touch with your friends and family, we’re launching Google Talk with video and voice chat for Android phones.

You can now video or voice chat with your friends, family and colleagues right from your Android phone, whether they’re on their compatible Android tablet or phone, or using Gmail with Google Talk on their computer. You can make calls over a 3G or 4G data network (if your carrier supports it) or over Wi-Fi.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/7jH80k5fCl1glUJdCsYhwCX3sfPvRLZ48zrhQgKUCChjPcikn_XWkCIUax1kOkOLVnh7trqsff16xrHDK7FH24s_kLTvXNCciDwLpWCvRREvn5IBO58Yj2y7aERWZKB3 http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TBgzkIC2F8Y/Tay_PNN5WMI/AAAAAAAAHMQ/vcxANDifEf0/s400/talk_videochat_update.png

In your Google Talk friends list, a video or voice chat button will appear next to your contacts and you can simply touch the button to connect with them. Any text chats from the person you’re talking with will be overlaid on your phone’s screen so you can read them without having to leave the video. And, if you need to check something else, the video pauses automatically so you can go back to your phone’s home screen or another app. The audio will keep going even though the video has paused. Check out how this works:

Google Talk with video and voice chat will gradually roll out to Nexus S devices in the next few weeks as part of the Android 2.3.4 over-the-air update and will launch on other Android 2.3+ devices in the future.