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Bringing Technologies To Mobile Applications

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 14:10:00 +0530

Bringing Technologies To Mobile Applications

Editor’s note: GD (Ram) Ramkumar is a serial entrepreneur and computer scientist. He was founder and CTO of SnapTell (acquired by Amazon in 2009) and is now the Founder and CEO of Concept.io, a new mobile startup. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford.

I started as a mobile entrepreneur in the pre-iPhone era in 2006 as the founder of SnapTell, the first successful mobile app in the image recognition space. SnapTell was acquired by Amazon’s subsidiary A9 in 2009. In 2011, I left Amazon to join Charles River Ventures to start a new company, Concept.io, which launches later this year. I reflected on lessons learned before embarking on the new venture and wanted to share them with the community. This article shares lessons I learned and discusses mobile trends that have emerged since.

The Key Lesson: Choose a problem and frame it well

Our first product at SnapTell was a service that allowed consumers to send in a photo of a shelf tag in a store for comparison shopping. The service read text from the label using OCR, determined product and price, and returned product and price information to the user. The solution was slow and cumbersome. It only worked with high resolution images on high-end auto-focus camera phones. Only a few such camera phones existed in the market in those days, sold by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and HTC.

We learned quickly that this was not the right problem framing. We found that it is better and more intuitive to recognize a product cover instead of a shelf tag. Technology called ‘image matching’ was shown to work in research labs to compare a camera phone image to a set of thousands of images. We set out to create a scaled version that works for millions of images. This time the problem was well framed. Over the next year, our team worked hard to create a solution that emerged soon after the iPhone App Store launched in 2008. The resulting product was the first iPhone app that allowed users to search for media items visually using pictures. After SnapTell’s acquisition, the technology was deployed in Amazon’s mobile applications.

We set out to create a scaled version that works for millions of images. This time the problem was well framed. Over the next year, our team worked hard to create a solution that emerged soon after the iPhone App Store launched in 2008. The resulting product was the first iPhone app that allowed users to search for media items visually using pictures. After SnapTell’s acquisition, the technology was deployed in Amazon’s mobile applications.

I learned some lessons out of the experience.

   1. For a mobile app or product to turn into a sustainable business, it must support a daily use case that turns into a habit. Comparison shopping didn’t provide a frequent use-case for most consumers.
   2. Successful apps must create a “wow” experience and bond users emotionally. Having a great UX designer on board early is essential to a successful startup product.
   3. It is important to identify a problem and focus on creating a solution for the consumer, rather than build technology and look for applications.

Emerging Mobile App Opportunities

The mobile ecosystem today is dominated by the app marketplaces of iOS and Android. Many new opportunities exist on these platforms, particularly to build “always-on services.” Such services leverage strong API support in iOS and Android for sensors and wake-up mechanisms to serve the user contextually. Background location streams offer powerful semantic data. Background voice-over-IP and audio APIs support new use cases. Consumers that use such a service do not need to remember to launch the app. The service knows when it is useful and chimes in automatically.

The user goes about their daily life as they normally do. Mobile service apps of the future wake up and serve the user in context. For example, such services may (1) Let you know the dry cleaner is open and clothes are ready and available as you drive home; or (2) Tell you about traffic where you are headed for your commute; or (3) At a convenient time, let you know that a friend you wanted to speak to is available right now for a call. Early examples of always on services are the newly announced Google Now product, the iOS Reminders app and Highlight.. It’s still early days with many services to come in the future!

Advances in Mobile OS

New features and APIs on the mobile platforms often make room for innovative services. iOS 6 announced the ability for Siri to launch apps (with the promise of more to come), tighter integration of Facebook, more efficient access to Bluetooth, and support for Passbook, a ticket and payments organizer. As an example, apps will emerge that integrate with Passbook to facilitate smoother travel.

Conclusion

Despite our collective focus on technology and design, social science and human behavior remain critically important. Understanding consumer behavior and applying technology to serve users in context will be a theme for many mobile services to come. Creating a “wow experience” and a positive emotional response in the user is very important. Siri has been popular in part because it goes to great lengths to answer fun questions such as “what is the meaning of life?” Technology exists to serve humans, not vice versa, and this will play out in interesting ways as the mobile ecosystem continues to evolve.

iPad Mini Said To Look Like A Large 3G iPod Nano, Be As Thin As A 4G iPod Touch

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:15:00 +0530

iPad Mini Said To Look Like A Large 3G iPod Nano, Be As Thin As A 4G iPod Touch

Watch out for iPad mini rumors! They’re dropping left and right, and odds are, at least a few of them are going to be on target.

The latest state that the so-called iPad mini will be thinner than the Kindle Fire the overall thickness that of the iPod touch 4G. That would put the smaller iPad at 7.2mm, nearly 25% thinner than the new iPad. The device’s screen reportedly measures 7.85-inches although there doesn’t seem to be a consensus among reports concerning the device’s form factor and design. It might look a large iPod nano rather than a small iPad.

According to a report published by Japanese Mac site Macotakara, the prototype for the rumored iPad mini looks like a 3rd generation large iPod nano. This means the device likely still uses employs tapered sizes although perhaps in a different fashion. The report also states that a 3G model is planned, too, although it doesn’t state if 3G is included or optional like in the current iPad lineup.

This different design and capabilities would likely help Apple sell the iPad mini without cannibalizing the full size iPad’s sales. It’s within reason that the iPad mini will not use a Retina screen and use smaller storage options — maybe just 8GB. That said, expect Apple to use the dual-core A5X SoC to give the iPad mini as much computing horsepower as possible.

Reportedly Foxconn will start making the device in Brazil this September with the announcement and release coming prior to the holidays.

How Big Is Too Big? Samsung’s New Galaxy Note Said To Sport 5.5-Inch Screen

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:14:00 +0530

How Big Is Too Big? Samsung’s New Galaxy Note Said To Sport 5.5-Inch Screen

I don’t know too many people who would look at the Galaxy Note and its 5.3 inch display and say “y’know, it would be great if this thing was just a little bigger,” and I now I know why. As it turns out, those people live in Korea, work for Samsung, and may have decided just that.

According to their usual unnamed sources, Korea’s MK Business News reports that Samsung’s Galaxy Note 2 will sport an even larger 5.5-inch display when its unveiled at Germany’s IFA 2012 trade show in August.

Naturally, the display isn’t all they’re said to be upgrading here. The next-gen Galaxy Note is also rumored to pack an unspecified quad-core processor (most likely an Exynos 4 Quad), and a 12 or 13 megapixel camera around the back instead of the 8 megapixel shooter as seen in the original. To top it all off, it’s said to run on Google’s newly-revealed Jelly Bean version of Android, though it’s unclear at this point how the company will be tweaking their UI to account for Jelly Bean’s new features.

So how much of a handful is thing going to be? Well, while the display has been stretched out a bit, the device itself isn’t expected to be significantly larger than the current Galaxy Note. Frankly, this seems like both a blessing and a curse — users who can comfortably wrap their mitts around the original model should do just fine, but that slightly larger display may make one-handed operation even less feasible than before.

Now I’m all for pushing limits and whatnot, but this just begs an obvious question: how big is too big? Most tablet manufacturers are loath to dip below the 7-inch barrier, and if this report holds true then Samsung is eagerly chipping away at the other side of that limit. Samsung’s success with the Galaxy Note has also prompted companies like LG to take up the super-sized phone challenge, so it’s very possible that phone screen sizes haven’t topped out just yet.

Could Cloud Gaming Kill The Next-Generation Video Game Console?

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:13:00 +0530

Could Cloud Gaming Kill The Next-Generation Video Game Console?

The current generation of game consoles is getting a bit long in the tooth, but signs point to late 2013 as the earliest that a replacement for either the PlayStation or Xbox consoles will come online. But then something interesting happened this past week, which could change the way that console makers think about their hardware and software service: Sony bought cloud gaming company GaiKai for $380 million.

Sure, rumors abound about what hardware, chips, and specs these devices will have when or if they’re eventually released. All indications point to about the same type of hardware development we’ve seen in past consoles — including high-performance, next-gen CPUs and GPUs to power even more robust gameplay and graphics capabilities. But if I were Microsoft or Sony right now, I’m not sure I’d be betting on an ever-more powerful box to power its new game platforms. In fact, I’d take a contrarian approach and make as lean of a box as possible, and put all the processing power up in the cloud.

Sony’s purchase of GaiKai could be a harbinger of things to come. For those unfamiliar, GaiKai provides a cloud-based service for accessing more than 40 popular video games online, without the need for any sort of fancy hardware. Early reports pointed to the possibility of extending PlayStation games to other platforms where games could be made available — including mobile devices, tablets, and kiosks — creating a sort of “PlayStation Anywhere” type of service. But I think the impact that the acquisition could have on Sony’s next game console could be even more dramatic.

Dumb boxes, smart networks

Console makers historically have relied on the razor/razor blades approach to selling game systems: Put out the hardware at a loss and make money back over the longer term through the sale of games and licenses. In the old paradigm, where they invested heavily in the type of bleeding-edge hardware necessary to power gaming experiences their customers demanded, that meant putting a lot of investment upfront in powerful CPUs and GPUs and seeing the cost of devices go down over time as the manufacturing process hits scale and component costs decrease over time. Roughly speaking, that’s been the general trend.

But what if those companies didn’t need to have all the processing rendered in hardware and could instead move the real heavy lifting to the cloud? To be honest, moving gaming to the cloud isn’t necessarily that revolutionary, because there are companies doing it already. There’s GaiKai, of course, but there’s also OnLive, which offers up its own service for playing cloud-based games on your PC, mobile devices, and a $99 streaming box. Also, the company plans to add support for its service natively on some connected TVs and other devices.

It’s that $99 gaming box which appeals to me, though, and it could be a good model for Microsoft and Sony to think about, as they ponder their own new game consoles.

The problem with cloud-based gaming

That said, there are a few arguments against selling a dumb appliance with processing done in the network. The big one is that doing so would dramatically reduce hardware sales in the short term — but that ignores the fact that for the most part those boxes are sold at a loss. No one makes money off new hardware in the first several years it’s released, if ever. Providing a box with just-good-enough connectivity and graphics rendering capabilities, and making it available cheaply, would be a more profitable step and would drive a lot more volume than building some sort of high-powered God Box and selling it for $299.

The bigger problem with cloud-based gaming is that the infrastructure just might not be there yet to support it. Let’s face it, a lot of gamers — even those who subscribe to Xbox Live — are still stuck on DSL connections, which might not support the type of HD-quality graphics game providers would like to build.

More importantly, though, no one has shown that cloud-based gaming can be done at true scale. OnLive has several million subscribers, but its true reach pales in comparison to the number of Xbox Live gamers who sign in daily. Providing the type of computing power necessary to serve tens of millions of gamers all playing at once is a big problem. Despite the GaiKai acquisition, Microsoft might be better equipped to deal with it than Sony, as the software giant has already built a giant virtual computing platform in the cloud with Microsoft Azure. For Sony it would mean a huge investment just to get the infrastructure to support cloud gaming ready.

Finally, there’s the potential cost to consumers, as ISPs begin to roll out tiered broadband plans, which charge consumers more for excessive bandwidth usage. Since games would be streamed in HD, that means a huge amount of bandwidth per month for even somewhat casual gamers. And no one — not Sony or Microsoft — wants to roll out a service which is going to create huge cable bills for their best customers.

New gamers, new business models

At the same time, the potential for a low-cost game console that put processing in the cloud could open up the market for new customers, particularly at a sub-$100 price point. And rolling out with that strategy would allow Microsoft and Sony to create gaming services that wouldn’t necessarily be tied to a certain device, and instead could be accessed even without a piece of proprietary hardware.

Making gaming a streaming service rather than based on the physical purchase of games also opens up new potential business models. Xbox Live already has a membership fee attached, and subscription games — where you get the software for free but then pay a monthly fee to access the game online — are nothing new, particularly in the MMORPG world. But without the need for physical downloads or actual distribution of discs to consumers, subscriptions could become even more popular for cloud-powered games.

I’m just going out on a limb here, and I’m sure Microsoft and Sony already probably have their plans mostly hashed out for the next generation of hardware. I’m just saying, it doesn’t necessarily have to be high-powered or expensive, especially if they want to reach a broader audience at less cost, and sooner rather than later.

Heads UpThis Was Google’s Apple Moment

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:12:00 +0530

Heads Up! This Was Google’s Apple Moment

It looked like the X Games, but it was the most significant product launch of the decade so far. For the first time, Google did what Apple has done thrice, with the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Granted, Apple announces products that ship immediately, while Google merely allowed a few thousand I/O attendees to pre-order a beta version that wouldn’t ship until next year; but don’t let the mechanics distract you from the heart of the matter. Google Glass isn’t just a new product, it’s a whole new product category, and it has every chance of being every bit as revolutionary as Apple’s Big Three.

Of course, like every revolution, it brought the nattering nabobs of negativity out in force. “We struggle to imagine Google Glasses reconciled with normal life,” carps Gizmodo. That line’s going to sound as embarrassingly tone-deaf in five years as these hilarious quotes from iPhone naysayers do today. Wearable computing, in one form or another, is the future. How extraordinary is it going to be? Some people suggest it could actually save Research In Motion. Now that’s amazing.

But a company that took most of a year to build an email app for the PlayBook isn’t going to lead the way. This category is so new that Google’s fail-fast, permanent-beta, make-it-up-as-you-go ethos is really the only viable direction. And we’re only in its infancy; has anyone else noticed that those big thick glasses look a lot like Neurosky’s brainwave sensors? Thought-controlled heads-up displays, anyone?

Do I sound excited? Well, sure, yeah, I am–but I’m also kind of terrified.

You see, at first the skeptics almost seem to have a point. Google Glass is in no way a replacement for a phone. At least not yet. Of course, neither was the iPad, and that did pretty well, but who’s going to be the big initial market for Google Glass, beyond the die-hard early-adopter?

Well, there are a lot of possible applications. Travel, for instance; a heads-up display is a lot more convenient than a phone when you’re wandering a strange city, and being able to tether to your phone and actually share what you’re seeing with friends and family in real time would be terrific. Industrial uses. The elderly. Augmented-reality games. But you know who I think the first big market for Google Glass will be?

Law enforcement. Imagine a heads-up display that automatically parses every license plate and recognizes every face in sight, and tells the wearer about any outstanding warrants. Charles Stross has been predicting this for years: “Police in the UK are already experimenting with real time video recording of interactions with the public – I suspect that before long we’re going to see cops required to run lifelogging apps constantly when on duty, with the output locked down as evidence.” In places where the integrity of the police is questionable–which is to say, most of the world–this could help stamp out corruption, too.

Of course, this will lead to an enormous spike in the amount of video data in the world that needs to be tagged, categorized, sifted, and mined. If only there was a company out there that was really, really good at search…

Well, hey! Win-win-win, right? More efficient law enforcement, less corruption, lots of business for Google. So why am I scared? Because Google Glass is–probably both inadvertently and inescapably–a giant step towards the panopticon society I’ve been worrying about for some time. The future is here, and it’s awesome…and soon it will be watching you. Be concerned. Be very concerned.

Remember When Google Was A Search Engine?

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:11:00 +0530

Remember When Google Was A Search Engine?

The lineup of products announced at Google io last week was disorienting: JellyBean, Nexus 7, Nexus Q, Google Glass, an updated Google Maps, Google Now and so on. It was about as disorienting as reading and navigating through the entire Wikipedia entry for Google or getting stuck in that “YouTube” parody loop where you can’t find the thing you’re searching for because there are so many viral spoofs of it.

Search is so broken … Google, what happened to that problem? I thought you were ONIT.

It’s not exactly clear when Google ceased to be a search company. It became more like a company that wanted a finger in every pot in order to protect its future as a search company; Perhaps it was the early acquisition of Google Earth? Perhaps, but, if the marker only counts when viewed as a defensive measure, my guess would be the later acquisition of YouTube.

Anyways, what is clear after this Google io is that Google is now a hardware company, a social company and a mobile company; And it’s a company destined to be at war with other companies.

David Pogue put it well in his sprawling, and not entirely correct, analysis of what lies ahead for the search engine’s Tablet front, “Nexus phone, Nexus tablet, Nexus sphere thing; what is Google thinking, anyway? If it truly wants to emulate Apple, it should minimize confusion, not foster it.”

Some would argue that Google’s “spray and pray” product development philosophy is strategic, “Overall, Google has lost focus because it had too,” Josh Constine explained in a Branch chat on the subject, “The genesis of social and mobile means the Internet can’t be won with one product anymore, even search.”

“The problem is they never talk about context as to why they do those experiments so people don’t quite grok their long-term impact,” Om Malik defends the company’s product ambitions in that same thread, “Google Glass is a perfect example – looks like a toy but it is the future of information retrieval.”

Except that when I casually ask a somewhat prominent Googler whether the company did indeed have some overarching plan to get to the “future of information retrieval,” as Om implies here, he said something to the sentiment of, “Oh, no, there’s no plan. The different factions just duke it out.” Mind you, this was just after io had finished.

Google Glass has great potential, but the problem is that there’s an acute lack of a grander vision at Google (did you see what I did with “vision” right here?). Despite Larry Page’s efforts to pare stuff down as a CEO, “More wood behind fewer arrows” doesn’t seem to be happening. As Internet comedian Aaron Levie put it,“Google is focused, on everything.”
“With all of these services, they’re trying to compete with nearly every startup and big company on the planet,” Levie said when I emailed him to elaborate on his initial tweet. “That’s going to be extremely tough, and not a recipe to do anything really well (see: Google Health, Wallet, Checkout, Latitude, Offers, etc.).” There’s this nagging suspicion that Page is driving without a map.

I guess Google fans (which, in a sense, I am) just hang onto the Google products we love while forgiving the company its trials and errors, of which there are many. We hang on to a perverse hope that there is some sort of conscious macro-vision for the company and everything will fall into place. This hope assumes that products like Google Buzz and iGoogle are just negligible colateral damage in the quest for truly visionary products like Google Glass (you see what I did just there with “visionary”?) .

To achieve this macro-vision, the acquisitions that indeed bolster the platform’s ability to protect itself from Apple, Google and Facebook’s advances, like YouTube, should be brought to the forefront of Google’s expansion efforts and be approached as a search problem.

Like, why do you think Google Hangouts are one of the most popular things on Google+? Because they play to one of the search engine’s strengths. So, it should be 1000% times easier to search for videos on YouTube then.

We Google fans are hanging on because we secretly believe that genius Google developments like Google Glass will eventually allow us to remember the name of that guy we barely recognize in the restaurant when it eludes us. Because gosh, we are so bad with names!

Is The Lumia 1001 Nokia’s First Windows Phone 8 Device?

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:10:00 +0530

Is The Lumia 1001 Nokia’s First Windows Phone 8 Device?

With Windows Phone 8's launch fast approaching, it not exactly a surprise to hear that Nokia is slaving away on some new hardware. The Nokia Lumia 910 — which some suspect is a Lumia 900 meant for T-Mobile USA — was recently spotted thanks to Nokia’s Remote Device Access service, but that’s not all the Finnish company seems to have in the works.

A new device called the Nokia Lumia 1001 was also detected by one of Nokia’s remotely-accessible phones, and its significant model number jump could mean it’s the company’s first Windows Phone 8 device. Or does it?

If you’ve never had the chance to play with Remote Device Access it allows users to connect to a whole host of Nokia hardware from within a browser window. It’s ostensibly meant for developers to test their applications and code on real (if distant) hardware, but it also provides an occasionally neat glimpse into what Nokia is working on. Take the Lumia 900 for instance — then referred to as the “Nokia 900 Windows Phone,” its existence was detected by a device being controlled remotely late last year.

It’s worth noting though that devices like the Lumia 910 and 1001 aren’t directly accessible to users — instead, they’re spotted when a user commands one of Nokia’s devices to search for other Bluetooth-enabled devices nearby.

I was initially able to spot the Lumia 1001 (see above) while I was poking around with a Nokia 500. Just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, I jumped into a different device (the Nokia N9, if you were curious) to see if the device in question was still hanging around.

At this point, there’s no way to discern any of the device’s particulars or even if it’s a real handset. Considering the sort of attention that the RDA service has been getting lately, it’s entirely possible that someone at Nokia has a sense of humor and changed one of the device’s names to “Nokia Lumia 1001? just to mess with all of us.

That being said, there’s little question that Nokia is working on some Windows Phone 8 hardware behind closed doors, in preparation for the platform’s launch later this year. Longtime readers may also remember that Nokia switched to a “larger-is-better” numerical naming scheme last year, with their most premium handsets getting high model numbers.

So far, Nokia’s Lumia 900 sits at the top of the heap, but with Windows Phone 8 barreling down the pipeline, it wouldn’t be surprise to see Nokia bump up their model numbers for their newest breed of Windows Phones. After all, the existing version of Windows Phone is being left behind in favor of a more powerful, unified platform — one would imagine they would use a much loftier model number to signify that transition, so

Mobile Could Be What Makes Private Social Networks Succeed

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:08:00 +0530

Mobile Could Be What Makes Private Social Networks Succeed

Photos, location, professional networking, or all your real-life friends… Instagram, Foursquare, LinkedIn and Facebook lead social networking today because they’ve found existing the types of networks to connect users around.
Now a new generation of startups has been showing up in recent months, trying to nail another type of networking that so far has yielded no big success: small, very personal networks. Like you how use texts with your closest friends.
These companies are looking pretty healthy — almost too healthy, if you look at some of their valuations versus their user numbers — and it’s because of how they’re using mobile.
Path is the market leader here, even if the overall market is small today. Having relaunched last fall as mobile-only network for close friends that provides a cool spinny menu feature for actions like photos and check-ins, the company has shown enough progress that it was able to raise $30 million at a $250 million valuation. It reportedly had around three million users as of the April funding, with a half a million people on it multiple times per day.
So, not that big. But it’s quality engagement, particularly for a mobile non-gaming app.
Pair, which launched last month, may have finally nailed a social network for the monogamous. As of its marquee-investor funding round last week, it had 220,000 downloads (not bad for an app that is the opposite of viral). United Kingdom-based Cupple and Korea’s Between have already offered similar apps, with both claiming larger user numbers.
High-quality smartphones seem to have set this new class of apps off: great photo and video recorders make the content you share higher quality, and location and other device features help you easily show your friends what you’re up to every day. Designed properly, these mobile features can provide the intimacy that a previous generation of privacy-themed sites didn’t do on the web.
Some top examples ended up as small acquisitions. Drop.io focused on files, and sold to Facebook in a talent acquisition, The Fridge went to Google, and a variety of others gradually faded away.
But it’s easy to see a bubble in this set of niches. They’re all small by many measures. Facebook is at more than 900 million people. Instagram is somewhere around 50 million. Networks designed for as few people as possible naturally grow slower. So while Facebook is making money with relatively low-performing ads because it has so many users, that same possibility is further off for these apps.
The photo filters on Path are one example of an alternative revenue stream, but one suspects this won’t be how the company ends up making its investors money. And yet, there is a world of possibilities. It’s easy to see deals targeted at anniversaries or happy hours be valuable to users. Or mini-games that come with virtual currencies built in.
Will Facebook or other more mature networks compete directly? So far, the market leader has messed around occasionally with list features, but has avoided creating specialized networks. Its mobile app is bloated, it doesn’t pull together social and mobile features in a way that can compete against the mobile-first apps. But it already has a great asset in this contest: Messenger. The Beluga-derived mobile messaging app that keeps getting quality upgrades.
All in all, the quality of the apps and the growth they’re seeing suggests that 2012 could be the year that private sharing networks finally came of age.

Google’s ‘Project Glass’ Augmented Reality Glasses Are Real And In Testing

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:06:00 +0530

Google’s ‘Project Glass’ Augmented Reality Glasses Are Real And In Testing

After weeks of speculation and rumors, Google has officially pulled back the curtain on what they have come to call Project Glass — a pair of augmented reality glasses that seek to provide users real-time information right in front of their eyes.
“We think technology should work for you — to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t,” wrote Babak Parviz, Steve Lee, and Sebastian Thrun, three Google employees who are part of the Google X skunkworks. “We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input.”
Something tells me that they won’t be hurting for feedback.
To call these things glasses may be a bit of a stretch — early rumors noted that glasses bore a striking resemblance to a pair of Oakley Thumps, but the demo images on Project Glass’s Google+ page (one of which can be seen above) don’t look a thing like them. Rather, they appear to be constructed of a solid metal band that runs across the brow line, with a small heads-up display mounted on the right side.
The New York Times‘ Nick Bilton, who broke the Project Glass story today, went on to say that the prototype model seen in the images is just one of the potential designs currently in testing. Among others, one of the potential designs for Project Glass is (thankfully) meant to be attached to a person’s existing pair of glasses.
These demo designs are far more stylish than the original reports made it out to be, but really — who cares about that right now? A brief demo video (below) highlights some of the functionality that the Project Glass specs aspire to provide: the protagonist of the video goes about his daily life aided by the glasses, which displays a circle-based UI that provides real time information like and weather and transit when needed. Further applications include the ability to send messages using your voice, instructing the glasses to take a picture, and displaying the location of nearby friends.
This is terribly, terribly cool stuff, but I’d caution users to take the images and video with a grain of salt for now — not because I don’t think Google will eventually make good on them, but because they represent just one direction that the project could go in. According to Wired, Project Glass is still more of a concept than an actual product, and won’t see an official release for a very long time.
It’s also worth noting that as downright magical as these things could be, there’s still very little insight into how they would actually work. Bilton’s early write-up notes that the glasses will be capable of establishing a 3G or 4G wireless connection, but how exactly Google will shoehorn those components (just to name a few) into a comfortable headset is still up the air.

Motorola Atrix HD Photos

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:05:00 +0530

Motorola Atrix HD Photos

Having Ice Cream Sandwich and 4.5 Inch Touchscreen Motorola Atrix HD Photos.

Vodafone 845 Photos

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:04:00 +0530

Vodafone 845 Photos

Android Phone of 2010 Vodafone 845 Photos

The 9 Flavors Of Windows 8 Show The Key Difference Between Microsoft And Apple

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:03:00 +0530

The 9 Flavors Of Windows 8 Show The Key Difference Between Microsoft And Apple

For better or worse, it seems as if Windows 8 will be available in nine separate editions. That’s up three flavors from Windows 7. The unofficial news comes from a registry key found within the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. If this key is to be believed, Windows 8 will be available in the six editions of Windows 7 with the addition of Windows 8 Professional Plus, Enterprise Evaluation, and ARM edition. That makes nine Windows 8 versions in all — seven more editions than Apple’s OS X.
The difference is important. It speaks to the approach these to companies have toward OS sales. Microsoft, the still massively dominant player in desktop computing, has a version for nearly every environment ranging from OEM netbooks to massive enterprise environments. The difference between the versions often involves additional (or missing) applications, networking support and security features. On the other hand, Apple puts all their goodies in one basket and sells only one consumer desktop option. There’s always OS X server, too, which Apple branded as the “Server For Everyone”.

These differences are even more apparent when considering their price. OS X costs $29.99 and Server is only $49.99. Windows 7 Starter and Basic isn’t sold directly to consumers but they can still be found online for less than $100. The Microsoft Store lists Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate from $199, $299, and $319, respectively (upgrade prices are a bit less).
Navigating the different versions of Windows is a hassle. The operating system can cost nearly as much as new computer. Plus, if a consumer was going to spend hundreds of dollars for the OS, they’re forced to either spend even more money or live with missing features. Windows is heavily pirated for a reason.
Apple on the other hand shoehorns everything into one version and makes it available for a relatively low price. Why? Apple is a hardware company that happens to also sell software. Apple makes money when they ship hardware, not software. Apple just needs its software to keep users happy and interested in coming back for more hardware, not pay the company’s light bill.
As a software company, Microsoft doesn’t have this luxury. Redmond must make money off software like Windows and Office. This is their bread and butter. However, prior to Windows 7, Microsoft had trouble encouraging enterprises to upgrade to the latest version of Windows — Windows XP SP3 is just that good, like Windows 2000 before it. Windows Vista was a bust just short of the disaster of Windows ME. Microsoft hit it out of the park with Windows 7, though, and is going to have a hard time convincing enterprise customers to upgrade to Windows 8.
Windows 7 was nearly an instant hit. It hit 4 percent of the total desktop market share just three weeks after its release. Microsoft moved more than 100 million copies in six months, making it the company’s fastest selling operating system ever. As of January 2012, it’s estimated that Microsoft sold more than 525 million copies of Windows — a feat partly accomplished by the six separate versions of the OS.
There isn’t a winner here. Microsoft and Apple have different approaches and goals in regards to their desktop operating systems. It’s easy to stand on a soapbox and yell at Redmond, “You’re doing it wrong! No one wants to spend $300 on an OS!” But that fact is Microsoft seems to know what they’re doing and have the numbers to back it up. Likewise, Apple is on a tear lately, pushing out new revisions of OS X every year as the Mac’s market share increases. That said, Microsoft has a lot more riding on the success of Windows 8 than Apple does on Mountain Lion.
Windows 8 will be released later this year and will finally push Microsoft into the so-called post-PC world. It has a tough game ahead. Windows 8 needs to curb OS X’s explosive growth and kill the iPad. Like Windows 7 before it, Microsoft is letting consumers try out a final beta copy prior to its release.Windows 8 needs to be more than a home run; it needs to be a World Series game 7 walk-off grand slam against team Apple.?

Microsoft knew that Windows Phone 7 have short life

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Sat, 7 Jul 2012 12:41:00 +0530

Microsoft knew that Windows Phone 7 have short life

The Windows Phone was known to be a very fluid mobile system, with tight integration with social networks and also for rapid updates released by Microsoft and the manufacturers. Upgrading to Windows Phone 8, however, was still a mystery: no one knew if the current smartphones would receive the news. No one except Microsoft itself.

During the event for developers Windows Phone Summit, Microsoft finally revealed that the devices Windows Phone 7 not receive upgrade to Apollo because the new system resources were not exploited by current hardware. It would make sense to release a system with support for memory cards and dual-core processors are the smartphones sold today have only single-core processors and no internal storage expandability.

According to Greg Sullivan, senior product manager of Windows Phone, Microsoft knew from the beginning that devices with Windows Phone 7 would not receive major upgrade, but the company decided to leave this information secret and not told ahead of time users .

"For normal people, the idea of ??recompiling a kernel does not seem a great way to spend an afternoon, but some of us are special. The idea is that the updates are very important only to a small group of passionate and influential users. The overwhelming majority of users of Android makes no updates - often because the manufacturers do not give that opportunity, and even when they are, users do not update, "he said.

Core shared between Windows and Windows Phone 8 8.
The development of the Apollo was done in parallel with the Mango and some features of the new system were ready even before the launch of the first Windows phone, so the short life of the system was already planned. Sullivan said that the unification of the core Windows Phone with Windows kernel has always been the company's plans. So why Microsoft decided to launch a new system with a lifetime so short? "For us it was important to establish a new approach to user experience and begin to create an ecosystem for developers," said the executive.

There are still doubts about the future of Windows Phone: So far, Microsoft has just announced that the new home screen will arrive via Windows Phone 7.8. We do not know if the technology Nokia maps, integrating with VoIP services or Internet Explorer 10 will be available to current users. In addition, you can not run applications in WP7 WP8, which can cause major frustrations. It is practically a new operating system.

Microsoft leaves the impression that the current Windows Phone users were just guinea pigs for an unfinished system. The technologies do not last forever and Windows Phone is still a great system, but knowing that all units will be stagnant in the current version 7.8 makes me very disappointed - and who spent all their savings in a Windows Phone 7.5 or stuck to a contract two years with U.S. carriers must be even more frustrated.

Sitting is one of the worst positions for the body to maintain.

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Sat, 7 Jul 2012 12:41:00 +0530

Sitting is one of the worst positions for the body to maintain. After just 20 minutes hunched over in a chair, blood pools in the legs and immense pressure builds on the spine. Now, imagine the effects of sedentary workdays long term. For employees at startups and tech companies, our jobs are desk-bound (that is, until treadmill desks are affordable in bulk). So, it’s a good thing that expert’s tips to prevent serious injury are rather simple — take frequent breaks and stand as often as possible.

Prolonged sitting causes discomfort, numbness and spine misalignment. Holding the body upright also increases tension in major muscles and joints. All that means stationary time at work can lead to cardiovascular disease (because of less blood flow), tightened hip flexors, shortened hamstrings, pinched nerves and many physical injuries in the long run.
Sitting Too Much Is Highly Dangerous For Health - A Report

Why Is Sitting So Unnatural?

New York City chiropractor Dr. Jan Lefkowitz treats pinched nerves, spilled discs, carpal tunnel, back pain and stiff necks full time. His Body in Balance chiropractic office resides in the corporate heart of Midtown NYC. The majority of his clients work 50 to 80 hours weekly. Body pain, herniated discs, nerve problems and painful joints are direct results of long office hours, says Dr. Lefkowitz. When you’re sitting, the spine is under a lot of pressure. Our bodies were made to stand, so maintaining the seated position is physically stressful.

“The weight is distributed in a standing position,” says Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., a health psychologist at Stanford University and a leading expert in neck and back pain.

That’s not the case with sitting. McGonigal explains, “When you sit, you distort the natural curve of the spine, which means your back muscles have to do something to hold your back in shape because you’re no longer using the natural curves of the spine to lift yourself up against gravity.”

Around 80% of Americans will experience chronic pain in their lifetime as a result, she says. Desk work is putting a huge mental and physical stress on our bodies. Bad posture makes the sitting disease even worse. Slipped discs is a direct result.

How to Prevent Back and Neck Injuries ?

Good posture when sitting maintains the three natural curves of a healthy spine. The neck is forward, the upper back has an outward curve and the lower back is inward. Elbows are at the sides of the body and shoulders are relaxed — holding shoulders upright for a long time will strain the area.

“The main point is avoid slouching, you have to sit up straight and sit all the way back in your chair,” Lefkowitz says. “The chair should be tucked in close to desk. And, you need lumbar (lower back) support.”

Inexpensive remedies are available. Either roll up a thick sweater or use a small pillow behind your back to allow your lower back to curve inward. Aim to insert it in between the small of your back and the chair. Another recommendation to avoid pulling muscles or causing pain is simply standing every 20 minutes or so. It’s the most important thing desk workers can do to give the body a break from a long held position.

“That will push the blood out of your legs and will prevent ligaments from getting strained,” Lefkowitz says. “It starts to stretch out your ligaments.”

Simple stretches at your desk such as twisting, turning the head from side-to-side and chin tucks upward towards the ceiling will also help.

How Much Online Data Is Created Every Minute ?

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Sat, 7 Jul 2012 12:39:00 +0530

How Much Online Data Is Created Every Minute ?

Business intelligence company DOMO paired up with Column Five Media to create this infographic, which shows just how much data is generated every minute.

Next time you run a Google search, think about the fact that it’s just one of 2 million that Google will receive in that minute. In the same amount of time, Facebook users post 684,478 pieces of content. Crazier still, online shoppers spend an average of $272,070 every minute. That’s over $391 million every day — quite the chunk of change.

Check out the stats below to learn the amount of data created across all of your favorite platforms. Google+ is noticeably missing from the bunch, but we’re kind of happy about that. It might be kind of embarrassing.

NASA’s Supercomputer Gets 14% Faster

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Sat, 7 Jul 2012 12:38:00 +0530

NASA’s Supercomputer Gets 14% Faster

NASA’s super smart computer Pleiades just became a whole lot more powerful. In order to keep up with the demands of scientists and engineers working for NASA, the computer’s performance was enhanced by 14% earlier this month.

In a news release on NASA’s website, it states the computer can now complete “1.24 petaflops — or a quadrillion calculations per second.”

“To put this enormous number into perspective, if everyone in the world did one calculation per second for eight hours a day, it would take about 370 days to complete what this supercomputer can calculate in 60 seconds,” the release says.

The computer is one of the smartest supercomputers in the world. It is used by 1,200 NASA researchers for a variety of projects, including processing large amounts of star data captured by the Kepler spacecraft and researching how solar flares impact technology on earth.

Pleiades was also used “for generating the ‘Bolshoi’ cosmological simulation — the largest simulation of its kind to date — to help explain how galaxies and the large-scale structure of the universe have evolved over billions of years.”

Pleiades is located at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility at Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., just 40 miles south of San Francisco. It was installed in 2008 and since that time has received eight major upgrades.

The Pleiades is also the name of a star cluster in the constellation Taurus also referred to as the Seven Sisters and M45.

Google finds 9,500 new malicious websites per day

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Sat, 7 Jul 2012 12:37:00 +0530

Google finds 9,500 new malicious websites per day

The number of sites that distribute malware is increasing rapidly. Google's robots crawl pages and responsible for maintaining the search index updated 9500 discover new malicious websites per day. The announcement was made in online security blog Google celebrating five years of the campaign Safe Browsing, which aims to protect users from dangerous Web sites.

A member of the Google Security Team, Niels Provos, stresses that the technology that identifies dangerous sites is present not only in the search engine results, but also in popular browsers, like Chrome, Firefox and Safari, protecting about 600 million users worldwide. The Google browser also has a security alert for downloads, which is displayed 300,000 times a day for unsuspecting users.

With the help of robots, the company found 9,500 new malicious websites. Remember, however, that this number includes both sites that are specifically designed to attack users and Web sites that had invaded systems and codes changed to spread malware. The number of pages affected is so great that, of all searches done on Google every day, about 12 to 14 million results show the classic warning "This site may be compromised."

Google says it is working to keep the web safe and put your hands on to reduce the spread of malicious code. Administrators of websites registered in Webmaster Tools, for example, receive notifications when Google robot found something wrong. In addition, thousands of Google send alerts to providers per day and treatment facilities of incidents such as CERT.br.

The company also makes clear that the platform of the Safe Browsing is fully open for other companies to keep their users safe and provides a complete documentation about the details of the operation of the API. Currently, Google works hard to keep safe Chrome extensions and applications for Android.

The statement released by Google clearly shows that the Brazilians are among the biggest victims of phishing. Worse, many malicious sites are also hosted on servers in Brazil. For novice users, it's basic recommendation so widespread in the mainstream media ever suspicious of links, even supposedly sent by friends. Owners of sites, it is important to keep your systems updated with the latest patches.

Google Nexus 7 Photos

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Sat, 7 Jul 2012 12:36:00 +0530

Google Nexus 7 Photos

New Tablet of 7 Inch Google Nexus 7 Photos.

First photo of the Firefox OS is published

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Sat, 7 Jul 2012 12:35:00 +0530

First photo of the Firefox OS is published

Announced this week, the OS Firefox is Mozilla's bet in the world of mobile and was derived from Gecko to boot, the system completely done with web standards. Using only standard web, many people wonder what will be the interface and what features it should offer. Probably to appease those curious, an evangelist for the Mozilla released the first photo of the system running on a device.

The photo clearly shows a Samsung Galaxy S II with Rob Hawkes, Mozilla evangelist, which is guarantees to unlock screen Firefox OS. The image, published on Twitpic, shows that the system is slightly different from 2 Boot Gecko when he first appeared in the Mobile World Congress this year. She has also revealed that the system has the option to release or quick access to the camera - as long as the hardware of the phone has this option.

By the way, speaking of models that should run the system, it is unlikely that we will see a Galaxy S II with the addition of Firefox OS images to test Mozilla. The only manufacturers who support the project so far are Alcatel and ZTE and Mozilla has ensured that the focus will be even low-end smartphones.

But we can dream of a day that you can download and install the system in our Android devices currently.

Facebook has acquired Face.com

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Sat, 7 Jul 2012 12:28:00 +0530

Facebook has acquired Face.com for an undisclosed amount, the Israeli start up announced Monday. The terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed.

Face.com powers facial recognition software that third-party developers can incorporate freely into their own apps. It also has two Facebook apps of its own: Photo Finder, which helps people find untagged pictures of themselves as well as their friends, and Photo Tagger, which helps people quickly assign tags to group photos.

In a post on Face.com’s corporate blog, CEO Gil Hirsch indicated that he and his team would be focused on building out Facebook’s mobile products.

“Like our friends at Facebook, we think that mobile is a critical part of people’s lives as they both create and consume content, and share content with their social graph. By working with Facebook directly, and joining their team, we’ll have more opportunities to build amazing products that will be employed by consumers -– that’s all we’ve ever wanted to do,” Hirsch wrote.

Hirsch did not say whether Face.com would soon redirect to Facebook.com. Facebook could not be reached for further information by press time.

Multiple reports that Facebook was in talks to acquire Face.com for “tens of millions” of dollars emerged last month. This is the first major acquisition Facebook has made since going public in May. There’s still no word whether Facebook is also still planning to acquire browser maker Opera.

Google Search Engine Computer Storage [Google - Larry Page]

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 16:53:00 +0530

Google Search Engine Computer Storage [Google - Larry Page]

The development of the Google algorithms was carried on on a variety of Computers, mainly provided by the NSF-DARPA-NASA-funded Digital Library project at Stanford. Click to see the equipment in its laboratory setting on the basement floor of Gates Information Sciences. Crawling the web to obtain its link structure required an enormous amount of storage in comparison with typical student projects at that time. We show here the original storage assembly, containing 10 4 Gigabyte disk drives, giving 40 Gbytes total.

Microsoft says tablets will outsell desktop PCs next year

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 15:07:00 +0530

Microsoft says tablets will outsell desktop PCs next year

During a keynote speech at Microsoft’s annual TechEd conference in Europe, head of Windows Web Services Antoine Leblond predicted that tablets will outsell desktop systems in 2013. This may come as a surprise to many considering Microsoft currently owns zero percent of the tablet market share but as Leblond pointed out during his speech, 60 percent of PCs sold today are laptops, a sign that people are steadily moving away from the anchored desktop platform.

Of course, the Microsoft rep didn’t specifically say that their offering alone would outsell desktops, but even still, it’s a pretty bold statement. Neowin points out that Microsoft seems to believe that the introduction of Windows 8 and Windows RT for tablets will make their vision a reality, both through their own branded offerings and third party devices.

Microsoft unveiled their Surface tablets earlier this month during a media event in Los Angeles. The units were generally well-received by media but some key factors like battery life and suggested retail price still remain unknown at this time.

Leblond spent some of his time elaborating more on Windows 8, pointing out that it is an old and new bet for Microsoft. He said that Windows 7 was rooted in the last generational change for Windows which occurred with Windows 95. Windows 8 is described as the next generational change, although he was quick to point out that it was still Windows.

“You don't have to compromise. It works equally well in a managed or an unmanaged environment, or a mixed environment,” Leblond said. “You don't have to choose between the device you want [and the corporate device] you're given.”

The company also used the keynote to demonstrate various apps designed for the European market, including a Vodafone Metro app.

World's first social streaming media player Google reveals Nexus Q

noreply@blogger.com (TAMIL REPOSITORY) — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 15:04:00 +0530

World's first social streaming media player Google reveals Nexus Q

Before executives took the stage at Google’s I/O Conference for a keynote earlier today, the company revealed a new media streaming device called the Nexus Q. Described on the Google Play product page as the first social streaming media player, the orb-shaped unit is able to stream music, HD movies, TV shows and YouTube videos to your home theater system or stereo system using Google Play.

The device is controlled by your Android phone or tablet but content is pulled directly from the cloud. Google believes that music is often best enjoyed with friends, so to differentiate itself from similar streaming media offerings and drive that point home, Google infused Nexus Q with social capabilities.

The company describes it as a cloud-connected jukebox where everyone brings their own music to the party. Nexus Q allows friends to create a single playlist that everyone has access to. Anyone in the group can move songs up or down on the playlist or even play a new track instantly before the previous tune is finished.

The device itself is essentially a small Android-powered computer with a dual-core OMAP4460 processor running Ice Cream Sandwich and 16GB of onboard storage. Rear panel connectivity options include an optical audio port, Ethernet jack, micro-HDMI port and a micro-USB port. Additionally, an internal 25-watt amplifier is able to power a set of speakers without the need of a stereo receiver should you feel so inclined.

Google expects to ship the Nexus Q in the next few weeks at a price of $299. As PC World points out, this is three times as much as an Apple TV but there are a lot more features built in to justify the price.