Category Archives: Technology

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
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

 

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

Technology

Survery shows companies not ready for IPv6

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An online survey, carried out by Ipswitch Inc.’s Network Management Division, asked network professionals of various comapnies how ready their networks were to transition to the new IPv6 protocol. There was more than 600 respondents and the results were revealed at the Intertop 2011 conference in Las Vegas.

IPv6 is a next-generation IP protocol designed to replace IPv4. The number of available IPv4 addresses are running out and thus transition to IPv6 will soon become a requirement for enterprise networks. IPv6 enables expansion of IP addresses needed to accommodate the continuously growing number internet users and also provides security features for internet traffic.

Results showed that 88.0 % of business networks were not fully ready for the change, of which 66.1% of them saying that their networks were prepared not more than 20%, though the last blocks of IPv4 addresses have already been allocated.

Below is the full result of the survey:

• 0-20% – 66.1%
• 20-40% – 9.6%
• 40-60% – 6.5%
• 60-80% – 5.8%
• 80-100% – 12.0%

According to Kevin Gillis, vice president of product management and strategy at Ipswitch Inc.’s Network Management Division, though IPv6 provides better facilities, it also poses more challenges for IPv4 based networks. Thus the companies need to develop strategies to increase IPv6 readiness among enterprise networks and prevent any future disruption to mission-critical systems.

‘World IPv6 Day’ will be held on June 8, 2011, to accelerate IPv6 deployment. On this occasion several major websites like, Google, Facebook and Yahoo, will enable IPv6 on their main services for 24 hours.

Source: ContinuityCentral

Technology

Google Takes Office Space Battle To Microsoft

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http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2011/05/samsung-td-640x485-300x227.pngGoogle lifted the veil on its chrome laptop Wednesday and also launched a somewhat Quixotic initiative to dent Microsoft’s dominance in the enterprise with a program that provides software, laptops and support for $28 per month per user.

As Apple continues to make modest advances in the office now Google wants a piece of the action and is offering up an IT-displacing idea that seeks to emphasize peace of mind as much as it does price.

The idea is simple. Businesses spend a lot of money on IT support, hardware and software — the core of which is commodity computers running a flavor of Windows OS and Microsoft Office. They hold on to computers as long as they can both for reasons of cost and to simplify support, which generally is provided locally through the IT department.

Google’s alternative provides small, standardized laptops from Samsung and Acer running its Chrome OS, which debuted in December. The new Chromebooks, as Google dubbed them, are fully web-based — both programs and storage is “in the cloud.” Users have access to use a wide range of productivity software, like Google Docs, Salesforce CRM and photo editing software, with no installation or and upgrades automatically performed in the background. Google provides all support, including repair and replacements.

Google has made less ambitious plays for the enterprise before. It’s first attempt the paid version of Google Docs, has had some success with smaller businesses, but hasn’t turned into a significant revenue source for Google. And, given its Nexus One past, Google it isn’t exactly known for its customer service.

But diversification is seen as key for the search giant, since its core advertising products are still responsible for more than 90 percent of its revenue. So we see a push into the mobile space with Android — a direct blow at Apple’s smartphone and tablet business — and a challenge to Microsoft in its workplace wheelhouse.

Technology

Demystifying Hi Speed Thunderbolt Interface

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File:ThunderboltIO.jpgThunderbolt (originally codenamed Light Peak) is an interface for connecting peripheral devices to a computer via an expansion bus. Thunderbolt was developed by Intel and brought to market with technical collaboration from Apple Inc. It was introduced commercially on Apple’s updated MacBook Pro lineup on February 24, 2011, using the same port and connector as Mini DisplayPort.

Thunderbolt essentially combines PCI Express and DisplayPort into a new serial data interface that can be carried over longer and less costly cables. Because PCI Express is widely supported by device vendors and built into most of Intel’s modern chipsets, Thunderbolt can be added to existing products with relative ease. Thunderbolt driver chips fold the data from these two sources together, and split them back apart again for consumption within the devices. This makes the system backward compatible with existing DisplayPort hardware upstream of the driver.

Apple’s iMac 2011 showed that this compatibility is limited to the video output, as video input is incompatible with DisplayPort and mini-DisplayPort devices, and only allow Thunderbolt-equipped computers to send a video signal to 2011 iMac’s through Thunderbolt cables, exclusively, breaking compatibility with existing DisplayPort and mini-DisplayPort equipped computers.

The interface was originally designed to use flexible optical fiber cables, but a version using conventional copper wiring was also developed to furnish the desired 10 Gb/s bandwidth at lower cost. Intel’s implementation of the port adapter folds Thunderbolt and DisplayPort data together, allowing both to be carried over the same cable at the same time. A single Thunderbolt port supports hubs as well as a daisy chain of up to seven Thunderbolt devices; up to two of these devices may be high-resolution displays using DisplayPort. Apple sells existing DisplayPort adapters for DVI, dual-link DVI, HDMI, and VGA output from the Thunderbolt port, showing broad compatibility.