Threelas

Breadcrumb Menu For Blogger Version 2

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 01:43:03 PDT

As we have explained earlier to you via breadcrumb menu for blogger version 1. That one of the requirements of the google webmasters (and SEO in general), the breadcrumb is a menu of the most favored by search engines. Because more systematic and hierarchy. If you have used the breadcrumb navigation of us (and we thank you), breadcrumb menu will be successful in the post with a label. If you apply more than one label on each of your posts, then the breadcrumb menu will only display the last label.

Of course it is very unpleasant and do not reflect the complete your post. To that end, we make improvements in this breadcrumb navigation widget, so it can display the entire label on your post. This is the second version, this version can make your posts very SEO friendly. All you have to do is simply to find the following code

<b:include data='top' name='status-message'/>

Then, put the following code before the code above.

<b:include data='posts' name='breadcrumb'/>

The next step, look for the following code

<b:includable id='main' var='top'>

Then put the code below before the code above

<b:includable id='breadcrumb' var='posts'>

<b:if cond='data:blog.homepageUrl == data:blog.url'>

<b:else/>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>

<a expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl' rel='tag'>Home</a> »

<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>

<b:if cond='data:post.labels'>

<b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>

<b:if cond='data:label.isLast == "true"'>

<b:else/>

<a expr:href='data:label.url' rel='tag'><data:label.name/></a>,

</b:if>

</b:loop>

<b:else/>

»No Label

</b:if>

» <span><data:post.title/></span>

</b:loop>

</span>

</p>

<b:else/>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "archive"'>

<a expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl'>Home</a> » Archives for <data:blog.pageName/>

</span>

</p>

<b:else/>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index"'>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageName == ""'>

<a expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl'>Home</a> » All Older Posts

<b:else/>

<a expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl'>Home</a> » List Of Posts On <data:blog.pageName/>

</b:if>

</span>

</p>

</b:if>

</b:includable>

The next step, place the following CSS code before]]></ b: skin>

.breadcrumbs {

padding:6px 6px 6px 2px;

margin: 0px 0px 13px 0px;

font-size:98%;

line-height: normal;

border-bottom:3px solid #e6e4e3;

}

If you want to design your own style breadcrumb menu, you can change the CSS code above.

Are Blogger Users Still Need Meta Description?

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 15:45:51 PDT

For webmasters, meta description is the key to success. Because meta description can determine the position of a web page on search results. Today, all search engines use the meta description (one of them) to determine the sequence of a web page on search results. Thus, the webmaster will try to create a meta description as well as possible.

The same thing also must be done by bloggers, if they want their blog pages are at the top of the search engines. The content of the description of a site should be clear, concise and not too long. Games of the keyword in the description is also a barometer of the success of web pages on the search results. Each page of a site is required to have different descriptions, so that search engines are able to distinguish between pages. If not, the search engines will read it as duplicate meta descriptions. And the search results for your site's pages will be no maximum. In general, meta descriptions are written as follows

Meta descriptions should be placed before the </head>. The question is, "Are blogger users still need meta description?". The answer is "yes". Then, "Are blogger users should put the meta description before </head> manually?". The answer is "no".

The blogger users no longer need to apply the meta description code in blogger xml template. Because blogger will automatically generate meta descriptions, if you have determined your blog description through the dashboard. All you have to do is as follows

1. Go to your blogger dashboard and click Settings. Then select Search Preference, you will see Description below Meta tags. Then fill in a description of your blog.

2. When you make a post, do not forget to give a description of post via Search Description. The content of this description will be the description for the posting.

This method is very beneficial, because it can avoid duplicate meta descriptions. For practice, try to go to your main page via a browser, such as Chrome or Mozilla. Right-click and select View page source (if using Chrome). Then you will see the meta description (if you have a description through the dashboard).

Drop Down Menu With Recent Posts Based On Labels For Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 10:17:57 PDT

Drop down menu with Recent Posts Based on Labels is a drop down menu that displays postings by certain labels. Drop down is very different from the drop down menu in general. Because it is dynamic, depending on your postings. Using the drop down menu, visitors will immediately get a list of postings of a label without having to roll down the web page. In addition, the drop down menu is SEO criteria. That is able to link a lot of your blog page.

As we have explained earlier on a post simple drop down menu with jquery, that we will discuss the drop down menu with recent posts by labels. And this is the topic in question. Experience has shown that sites with high pagerank always use a drop down menu with recent posts by labels. So that adds a lot of options to users on the site menu. This method is able to increase the time of the visit and the number of visits a site.

Unfortunately, to make it is very hard for some people, especially for people who did not master javascript. However, all that can be solved by us, threelas plugin. Yes, with threelas plugin you can create a menu like a high pagerank site. Before you apply this tutorial then our advice you need to learn about http://www.threelas.com/2012/05/recent-posts-widget-multifunction-for.html. And DO NOT EVER CHANGE THE CODE, LINK TO THREELAS, BECAUSE THREELAS PLUGIN IS A RESULT OF OUR WORK. WE GIVE FREE, THEN DO NOT APPLY TO CHEAT.

Setting Up Threelas Plugin

First you have to set it up recent posts widget multifunction-threelas plugin. Determine the number of posts, image size of postings, number of content to be displayed, the width of the plugin, the image position of the post, feed url. For example, we want to display all of the recent posts threelas.com, where the number of posts there are 3, the position of the image on the left, image size 50 x 50 pixels, the width of the plugin is 200px, the amount of content is 70, then the html code of the threelas plugin is

HTML

After you finish setting up threelas plugin, now is create the HTML for the drop down menu, the following is an example of the code

<ul id="navigation">
  <li>
  <a href="http://www.threelas.com" target="_blank">Home</a>
  </li>
  <li>
  <a href="http://www.threelas.com/search/label/Blogger%20SEO" target="_blank">Blogger SEO</a>
  <ul>
  <li>
  <div class='tl-recent' data-posts='3' data-width='200px' data-imgheight='50' data-imgwidth = '50' data-url="http://www.threelas.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Blogger%20SEO" data-content='80' data-imgfloat='left'></div>
  </li>
  </ul>
  </li>
  <li>
  <a href="http://www.threelas.com/search/label/Blogger%20Api" target="_blank">Blogger API</a>
  <ul>
  <li>
  <div class='tl-recent' data-posts='3' data-width='200px' data-imgheight='50' data-imgwidth = '50' data-url="http://www.threelas.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Blogger%20Api" data-content='80' data-imgfloat='left'></div>
  </li>
  </ul>
  </li>
  <li>
  <a href="http://www.threelas.com/search/label/Blogger%20and%20Widget" target="_blank">Blogger and Widget</a>
  <ul>
  <li>
  <div class='tl-recent' data-posts='3' data-width='200px' data-imgheight='50' data-imgwidth = '50' data-url="http://www.threelas.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Blogger%20and%20Widget" data-content='80' data-imgfloat='left'></div>
  </li>
  </ul>
  </li>
  </ul>
  <div style="clear:both;"></div>

CSS

Next, you should apply the following CSS code to decorate the drop down menu. You can also choose your own CSS style.

#navigation {
list-style: none outside none;
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;
}

#navigation li {
display: block;
float: left;
position: relative;
}

#navigation li a {
background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% #2C5463;
border-top: 1px solid #909090;
color: #FFFFFF;
margin-left: 1px;
padding: 5px 15px;
text-decoration: none;
white-space: nowrap;
}

#navigation li a:hover {
background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% #617F8A;
}

#navigation li a:hover img {
border: medium none;
text-decoration: none;
}

#navigation li ul li a {
background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;
border: medium none;
color: #000000;
margin-left: 0px;
padding: 1px;
white-space: normal;
}

#navigation li ul li a:hover {
background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% #FFFFFF;
color: blue;
}

#navigation li ul {
display: none;
list-style: none outside none;
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;
}

#navigation li:hover ul {
background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% #FFFFFF;
border-radius: 13px 13px 13px 13px;
border: 8px solid firebrick;
display: block;
margin-top: 4px;
position: absolute;
}

JAVASCRIPT

You are also required to put the following code before the </head>. Without javascript code below, then drop down menu tutorial will not run.

All you have to do is change the links menu in HTML, the number of the menu depends on you. To be more clear, look at the demo below. If anyone wants to questionable please comment or contact us.

Current Date Widget

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 15:46:21 PDT

This time we discuss the current date widget. This is not a calendar widget, but displays current date. If your blog about the news, then the current date widget is for you. This widget uses jquery as core, extremely accurate and lightweight. You can also change the style of the current date via CSS.

The beginning of this idea we get when we surfing on some news sites and blogs about the news. They have a display current date. Then when we did the surfing blogs of our friends who have a news topic, not all of our blog friends have a display current date.

How to use this widget is very simple, you just put the following code before the </body>. So you can put it through the Edit HTML or Layout (using HTML / Javascript Gadget).

Maybe not just this tutorial that you need, there are a lot of threelas.com tutorials that you can use on your blog. Among others

Selected recent posts, this tutorial is perfect for those of you who have a news topic. Because you can show recent posts by categories.
Basic Blogger JSON feed. If you want to learn about the blogger JSON feed, so can create a widget with its own style, then this tutorial is very useful.

Simple Drop Down Menu With Jquery

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 16:58:06 PDT

This tutorial, we discuss how to create a simple drop down menu with jquery. You can add the menu just with adding li tag, delete the menu just deleting li tag selected, change the style with CSS. Why are we posting this, because in the next tutorial we will give a tutorial about the drop down menu with recent posts based on labels.

To make the next tutorial easy to understand by visitors, we decided to give this tutorial first before we make tutorial for drop down menu with recent posts based on labels. The idea of this tutorial is come when we visit sites with high pagerank. They use jquery to perform drop down menu with recent posts based on labels. So, it is not false if you use the similar technique in your blog. But, before we discuss more, may be the following tutorials are good for you to developing your blog:

Multifunction plugin for blogger: this tutorial give a simple way how to make recent posts, related posts, selected posts, just with one plugin.
Slideshow related posts: this tutorial give dynamic slideshow for your related posts.
How to delete an action of Facebook Open Graph: if you want to make Facebook plugin with your own style. Then this tutorial very good for you.

Now, let we start this tutorial

HTML

This is code for HTML, if you want to add more menu just add li tag

<ul id="samplenav">
  <li><a href="http://www.threelas.com/" target="_blank">Home</a></li>
  <li><a href="javascript:void(0);" target="_blank">Blogger Tutorials > </a>
  <ul style="display: none; ">
  <li><a href="http://www.threelas.com/search/label/Blogger%20and%20Widget">Blogger and Widget</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://www.threelas.com/search/label/Blogger%20Api">Blogger API</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://www.threelas.com/search/label/Blogger%20SEO">Blogger SEO</a></li>
  </ul>
  <div class="clear"></div>
  </li>
</ul>
<div class="clear"></div>

CSS

The code below for styling the menu. If you want another style, just change the css code below with your own.

#samplenav {
list-style:none outside none;
margin:0;
padding:0
}

#samplenav li {
background:none repeat scroll 0 0 #7F7F86;
border:3px outset #7B7B7B;
border-radius:20px 20px 20px 20px;
display:block;
float:left;
position:relative;
width:auto;
z-index:500;
margin:0 1px
}

#samplenav li a {
display:block;
font-weight:700;
height:25px;
text-decoration:none;
text-align:center;
color:#333;
padding:8px 5px 0
}

#samplenav li a:hover {
color:#fff
}

#samplenav a.selected {
color:red
}

#samplenav ul {
list-style:none outside none;
position:absolute;
display:none;
left:0;
margin:4px 0 0 -1px;
padding:0
}

#samplenav ul li {
width:auto;
float:left;
margin:1px 0 0
}

#samplenav ul a {
display:block;
height:15px;
color:#FFF;
padding:8px 5px
}

#samplenav ul a:hover {
text-decoration:none
}

#samplenav li:hover {
background:#A52A2A
}

JQUERY

The code below is the key of drop down menu with jquery. If you are not too understand with jquery, then don't ever try to modify. You can learn more about jquery on jquery.com

$(document).ready(function () {

  $('#samplenav li').hover(
  function () {
  //show its submenu
  $('ul', this).stop().slideDown(200);

  },
  function () {
  //hide its submenu
  $('ul', this).stop().slideUp(250);
  }
  );

});

See the complete code and demo below

Why My Site Pagerank Down, Who Is At Fault?

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 21:37:13 PDT

Why pagerank of my site down? This question often arises when we're done surfing, visiting friends all over the world. In general, they complained of google algorithm to determine the pagerank of a site. Therefore, we write this post in order to be understood by the site owner.

In general, the pagerank of a site would go down if it's in violation webmaster quality guidelines. As in the general search engines, google also use the links to determine reputation. Links to a site subsequently analyzed to determine its ranking in search results. The number and quality of the links can be decisive pagerank.

Basically, Google will lower the pagerank of a site if the pages of a site devoted to the search engines, perform tricks to improve search engine rankings, participating in link schemes (read the article on http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356). Or use the programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc.. You might be able to read the webmaster quality guidelines in http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3, this article is very clear about how to behave on a site google. For example, we often see a site that is in the first position of the search results, but when opened, the site only displays listings sites such as search engines. We also often see on internet forums about improving the ranking of search results via the submit pages to social bookmarking sites, or get many backlinks for free (or paid) by using certain programs. In the forums, information resources have always said that the way that they offer are safe. Whereas in fact they have violated the rules of quality webmaster. So, do be reasonable on your site. Indicate the best quality of your website compared to your competitors.

Things we often encounter when visiting friends site is a spam, virus, trojan or other badware. They complained to google, about blocking the site due to badware. They are never used badware program. But if you look deeper, badware detection occurs is because you do a link exchange with a friend, while your friends site contains badware. Look specifically webmaster quality guidelines. Indeed, there is nothing wrong if you attach the links of sites your friends, but our advice is try to check the safety of the links through safe browser (https://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=www.threelas.com). Maybe the video below is very useful for you to understand PageRank

An interesting case is about advertising to your site, and generally occurs on sites that are handled by many people. Read the following article from Matt Cutts, about complaint from a newspaper websites downgraded from seven to three. This article makes a lesson for how we select the ads to display. Certain websites will try to do some tricks like giving the label "sponsored" or "partner link" or the like on the link. However, in reality it contains the url link to linkbuyer. They offered to sell the links on some web pages based on their pagerank. Of course this has been an unusual relationship between a high pagerank sites with low pagerank sites, which occur are paid link. Learn more in the paid link how google does not like link buying and selling on http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66736.

Indeed, an online business is legitimate and the right of every person. So it is not all paid links violate webmaster quality. Buying and selling links is a normal part of economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. These links are purchased for advertising should be designed it for advertising. Therefore, try to do the following

Adding rel=nofollow attribute on <a> tag
Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

Try to check the paid links that pass PageRank end up on your website: who put paid link, are any still up, check to see if one of your colleagues receive money from paid link without express payment. Remember, the nearest enemy could come from close relatives.

How To Delete An Action of Facebook With Jquery

noreply@blogger.com (Ibnu Syuhada) — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 10:51:15 PDT

From all the Facebook Javascript SDK, deleting an action is the easiest to learn. But it is the most difficult to implement. Fortunately, with jquery, we can reduce this difficulty. Basically, if you want to remove an action, what you have to do is

FB.api('/'+getIdArticle,'delete',function(response){
if(response){
$('#activities ul #'+getIdArticle).remove();
}
});

Where, getIDArticle is the ID of the action to delete. The biggest problem is, in removing an action you have to know the ID of the action appropriately. To reduce this problem, you can use the trick of my recommendation. That is, get a list of actions using the li tags. Where each li tag must contain the ID with the ID of the action. Consider the following example

<ul>
<li id = ‘idaction1’>action 1</li>
<li id = ‘idaction2’>action 2</li>
<li id = ‘idaction3’>action 3</li>
</ul>

From here, you can select an action to be removed properly. You can use remove() to remove an action from the list and attr('id') to get the ID of the action. So you need a good cooperation between the function of getting and deleting actions. Look at the following code example

FB.api('/me/news.reads?access_token='+token, 'get', function(response){
mehtml = '<ul>';
if(response.data.length == 0){
mehtml += '<li>You are have no activities right know, turn on social share.</li>';
}else{
if(response.data.length > 5) response.data.length = 5;
for(var i = 0; i < response.data.length; i++){
mehtml += '<li id="'+response.data[i].id+'">';
mehtml += "You had read " + '<a href="'+response.data[i].data.article.url+'" target="_blank">' + response.data[i].data.article.title + '</a>' + " on " + response.data[i].start_time;
mehtml += '<div id="'+response.data[i].id+'">delete</div>';
mehtml += '</li>';
}
}
mehtml += '</ul>';
$('#activities ul li').append(mehtml);
$('#activities ul li').hover(
function(){
$('ul', this).slideDown(100);
},
function(){
$('ul', this).slideUp(100);
}
);
var getIdArticle = "";
$('#activities ul li div').click(function(){
getIdArticle = $(this).attr('id');
FB.api('/'+getIdArticle,'delete',function(response){
if(response){
$('#activities ul #'+getIdArticle).remove();
}
});
});
});

If you use other type of action, you can implement similar step like above. But don't forget to always check JSON output of your action with Graph API Explorer (https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer).

NASA Voyage Set to Explore Link Between Sea Saltiness and Climate: Report From NASA

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 15:41:56 PDT

A NASA-sponsored expedition is set to sail to the North Atlantic's saltiest spot to get a detailed, 3-D picture of how salt content fluctuates in the ocean's upper layers and how these variations are related to shifts in rainfall patterns around the planet.

The research voyage is part of a multi-year mission, dubbed the Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study (SPURS), which will deploy multiple instruments in different regions of the ocean. The new data also will help calibrate the salinity measurements NASA's Aquarius instrument has been collecting from space since August 2011.

SPURS scientists aboard the research vessel Knorr leave Sept. 6 from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., and head toward a spot known as the Atlantic surface salinity maximum, located halfway between the Bahamas and the western coast of North Africa. The expedition also is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation.

The researchers will spend about three weeks on site deploying instruments and taking salinity, temperature and other measurements, before sailing to the Azores to complete the voyage on Oct. 9.

They will return with new data to aid in understanding one of the most worrisome effects of climate change -- the acceleration of Earth's water cycle. As global temperatures go up, evaporation increases, altering the frequency, strength, and distribution of rainfall around the planet, with far-reaching implications for life on Earth.

"What if the drought in the U.S. Midwest became permanent? To understand whether that could happen we must understand the water cycle and how it will change as the climate continues to warm," said Raymond Schmitt, a physical oceanographer at Woods Hole and principal investigator for SPURS. "Getting that right is going to involve understanding the ocean, because the ocean is the source of most of the water."

Oceanographers believe the ocean retains a better record of changes in precipitation than land, and translates these changes into variations in the salt concentration of its surface waters. Scientists studying the salinity records of the past 50 years say they already see the footprint of an increase in the speed of the water cycle. The places in the ocean where evaporation has increased and rain has become scarcer have turned saltier over time, while the spots that now receive more rain have become fresher. This acceleration ultimately may exacerbate droughts and floods around the planet. Some climate models, however, predict less dramatic changes in the global water cycle.

"With SPURS we hope to find out why these climate models do not track our observations of changing salinities," said Eric Lindstrom, physical oceanography program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We will investigate to what extent the observed salinity trends are a signature of a change in evaporation and precipitation over the ocean versus the ocean's own processes, such as the mixing of salty surface waters with deeper and fresher waters or the sideways transport of salt."

To learn more about what drives salinity, the SPURS researchers will deploy an array of instruments and platforms, including autonomous gliders, sensor-laden buoys and unmanned underwater vehicles. Some will be collected before the research vessel heads to the Azores, but others will remain in place for a year or more, providing scientists with data on seasonal variations of salinity.

Some of the devices used during SPURS to explore the Atlantic's saltiest spot will focus on the outer edges of the study area, traveling for hundreds of miles and studying the broadest salinity features. Other instruments will explore smaller areas nested inside the research site, focusing on smaller fluxes of salt in the waters. The suite of ocean instruments will complement data from NASA's salinity-sensing instrument aboard the Aquarius/SAC-D (Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas-D) observatory, and be integrated into real-time computer models that will help guide researchers to the most interesting phenomena in the cruise area.

"We'll be able to look at lots of different scales of salinity variability in the ocean, some of which can be seen from space, from a sensor like Aquarius," said David Fratantoni, a physical oceanographer with Woods Hole and a member of the SPURS expedition. "But we're also trying to see variations in the ocean that can't be resolved by current satellite technology."

The 2012 SPURS measurements in the North Atlantic will help scientists understand the behavior of other high-salinity regions around the world. A second SPURS expedition in 2015 will investigate low-salinity regions where there is a high input of fresh water, such as the mouth of a large river or the rainy belts near the equator.

This article had edited by authors of threelas
Source: NASA
Breafing Material: NASA BREAFING
See Full Slideshow Report: http://www.flickr.com//photos/nasahqphoto/sets/72157631415418516/show/

Long Life Smarthphone DROID RAZR HD and MAXX HD From Motorola

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 15:13:11 PDT

Motorola offers a new product that is touted can last up to a day with just one charge. DROID RAZR HD and DROID RAZR MAXX HD smarthphone promoted by Motorola as a highly energy efficient. You can watch movies, photos, magazines, websites shine in HD performance. All that you can do a full day with just one battery charge.

Not only that, the DROID RAZR is able to provide the best performance when you watch the YOUTUBE, Google Play, or a GPS (free).
Slightly different from the DROID RAZR HD is only able to last all day (24 hours), the DROID RAZR MAXX HD can last up to 32 hours (based on an average user profile that includes both usage and standby. Actual battery performance will vary and depends on signal strength, network configuration, features selected, and voice, data and other application usage patterns). That means you can watch up to 10 hours of your favorite HD videos; drive from NYC to DC and back using a complete 8 hours of voice-guided GPS; or chat away with 21.5 hours’ worth of talk time. So, you do not have to worry about the battery running out quickly.

These products has a large screen but still suitable for your palm. The size is about 4 inches. By this size, you can not only have fun with the movie, but also have fun with your friends on social networks. GooglePlus hangout at social networking with quality performance you can also get this product.

Use iPhone To Control Your HVAC System, Make Your Family is Happy

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 09:23:32 PDT

Forgot to turn off Heating, Ventilation, or Air Conditioning system, or HVAC, as you remember it all when you're on vacation with the family. It will create the holiday atmosphere to be unpleasant. You will soon return home, and then on the way, wives and your children scold you, they feel not happy. Of course this does not want to happen to you. However, you need not worry anymore, now you can check it with your iPhone.

If you use the HVAC controller of Synco™ 700, Synco™ living, Albatros™, Sigmagyr®, you do not need to return immediately to the house just to make sure the condition of your HVAC. By using HomeControl application on the iPhone, you can turn off, control the HVAC equipment from outside the home.

Developed by the Siemens Building Technologies Division, HomeControl is a new iPhone app that allows owners of Synco 700, Synco living, Albatros and Sigmagyr HVAC controllers to access their system from any location. This lets users view important information about the operating status of their system and, if needed, adjust setpoints or change the occupancy status. Users can then enforce energy-efficient operations at any time and from any location with an Internet connection.

Designed for ease of use, the app's user interface functions as an intuitive remote control for heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems. This allows users, for instance, to turn on the heat in their vacation home while en route or to ensure that all settings have been switched back to protection and energy-saving mode while traveling back home. For lighting and shading control (blinds), HomeControl supports scenarios which can be selected at the touch of a button. The app also displays system notifications. For example, if the settings are energy-inefficient or malfunctions occur, HomeControl displays a message and gives the user the opportunity to respond immediately.

Not only that, you can access more broadly the HVAC system through a web browser. So you have plenty of opportunities to check and adjust the the HVAC system of any region.

HomeControl includes device-specific configuration templates ("Favorites" pages) that allow the app to be put into service quickly and easily. Additional tools are not needed.

HomeControl runs on any iPhone or iPad with iOS 4.3 or later and is available now as a free download in the Apple App Store under http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/homecontrol-for-room-automation/id491359175??mt=8

For a while HomeControl application is available in English, German, Italian, French, Dutch, and Spanish. And HomeControl requires the Synco OZW772 web server or the web server LPB OZW672 with firmware V4.0 or higher.

For more information about this product, you can access it via www.siemens.com / app-homecontrol

Less Aggressive of Tasmanian Devils Is A Key To Save From Extinction

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 15:27:14 PDT

Tasmanian Devils (credit: boingboing.net)

To save the Tasmanian devil species from extinction due to diseases of the Devil Facial tumor disease (DFTD), the animal must act less aggressively. DFDT is an insidious disease that is transmitted through the bite. The study was published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Animal Ecology found that the less often a devil gets bitten, the more likely it is to become infected with the cancer.

According to lead author Dr Rodrigo Hamede of the University of Tasmania: “Our results – that Tasmanian devils with fewer bites are more likely to develop DFTD – were very surprising and counter-intuitive. In most infectious diseases there are so-called super-spreaders, a few individuals responsible for most of the transmission. But we found the more aggressive Tasmanian devils, rather than being super-spreaders, are super-receivers.”

To find out whether biting frequency predicted acquiring DFTD, Dr Hamede and his colleagues set up dozens of devil traps at two sites for 10-day periods every three months between 2006 and 2010. They then recorded the pattern of injuries in the devils, and identified any tumours. One of the sites – West Pencil Pine – was selected because devils there seem to be less badly hit by the disease.

They made three discoveries: the level of bites was similar at both sites; Tasmanian devils with fewer bites were significantly more likely to develop DFTD; and most tumours occurred in devils' mouths. “This means that more aggressive devils do not get bitten as often, but they bite the tumours of the less aggressive devils and become infected,” explains Dr Hamede.

Because there is no treatment for, or vaccine against, DFTD, the findings and the next stage of the research have important implications for saving the species from extinction. “Our next step is fascinating. First we need to explore the genetic differences that might be lessening the impact of DFTD in the West Pencil Pine devil population. Second, we need more detailed data on devil behaviour to define 'shy' or 'bold' types. We could then use this information to develop a management strategy to reduce the spread of the disease by boosting natural selection of less aggressive, and therefore more resilient, devils.”

Understanding how infectious diseases spread is key to controlling them, but studying disease transmission in wild animals is often very difficult. And in DFTD, which is spread by biting, ecologists also need a better understanding of devil behaviour. Tasmanian devils are solitary yet social animals. They do not live in groups but meet each other often, either during mating, establishing social hierarchies or when feeding around carcasses - all occasions when they bite each other.

This article had edited by authors of threelas

Source: AlphaGalileo

Publication: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2656.2012.02025.x

Watch Your Favorite Movies and TV Shows From Crackle of Nokia Lumia For Free

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 12:29:52 PDT

You're relaxed, waiting for someone, or are watching, maybe you do not want to go from where you sit. What if at that time you watch quality movies, favorite movies or TV shows from your seat for free.

By using the Crackle in Nokia Lumia you should not have too bored waiting for someone or make you relaxed "really relaxed".

Crackle is a video streaming service supported by Sony for free to Nokia Lumia. You can see PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, BIG DADDY, JOE DIRT, LAYER CAKE, MR. Deeds, PANIC ROOM, SWAT, Snatch and hundreds of others, with no cut, full length, free of charge.

Initial use, you need to sign up for an account Crackle or can use your Facebook account to sign up as an alternative. When the app starts, you swipe through a series of screens: featured, movies, shows and watchlists. Watchlists is where you can save films or shows that you want to watch later and there are also recommendations and celebrity watchlists.

Tapping on any film/show gives takes you to the overview page. From here you read an overview and description about it and press the ‘play’ icon on the film’s poster to watch it.

From this screen you can also pin the film/show to your home screen, add it to your watchlist, or share it on social networks, email or SMS.

Crackle has a large back catalogue so you might find it useful to find a film by looking at the most popular category, recently added or by genre. To do this you only need to select the ‘filter’ icon at the bottom of the screen.

There are a couple of other things you may want to keep in mind. The app does work over a 3G connection but obviously you need to be aware of data usage. For the best experience I would always recommend using WiFi if at all possible.

Furthermore, within Crackle’s settings you can set parental controls so that children are not watching films that they shouldn’t be.

Those precautions aside, Crackle is a, er, cracking app that brings a world of entertainment to your Nokia Lumia. (Nokia, red: threelas)

Study Reveal Pesticides Endanger Bats, EU Issues Must Changed

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 11:40:10 PDT

PETER STAHLSCHMIDT (uni-koblenz-landau.de)

Enrichment efforts on agriculture and plantation turned out fruitful danger in Germany. Pesticides are used in Germany is very threatening bats as a group of animals that are protected. Imagine 10 of 19 species of bats native Germany already in the list of endangered animals, this means more than half the population of bats.

Therefore it is worrying that bats are not included in the EU-wide authorization procedures for plant protection products. A study by the University of Koblenz-Landau revealed that pesticide contamination of their diet can lead to long-term effects in bats.

Before the EU issues a pesticide approval, it will undergo a regulatory risk assessment required by law. Using various scenarios, the risks for different organisms from acute to long-term effects such as impatcs on reproduction are estimated. To date it is assessed whether new pesticides harm birds and mammals, but so far bats are not mentioned in the current relevant guideline for risk assessment in the EU.

Studies have already indicated that bats are particularly sensitive to pesticides. The threatened animals are still ignored in the risk assessment procedure, even after the amendment of the applicable regulations in 2009, since there is a lack of data according to Dr. Carsten Brühl and Peter Stahlschmidt from the Institute for Environmental Sciences at Landau. "Most studies on bats were carried out in protected areas or in forests" explains Stahlschmidt. So far it was not investigated whether bats forage for food in the agricultural landscape at all although more than half the area of Germany is used for agriculture. In a previous study, the researchers were able to detect 14 bat species on intensively managed agricultural land.

In their current study, the Landauer ecotoxicologists took a closer look on the diet of bats in a fruit-tree plantation. After spraying the commercial pesticide active ingredient fenoxycarb, which inhibits the growth of insects, the scientists measured the remaining chemical residues on flies, moths and spiders for two weeks. The highest residues were recorded on leaf dwelling insects and spiders, lower contamination was found for flying insects. Based on this data, they calculated different scenarios of the current risk assessment procedure. In the calculated best-case scenario, where the animals find their food also in unpolluted areas, long-term effects of one of the six used bat species in the calculation could not be ruled out, in the worst case scenario 3 bat species were affected. Hardest hit were so called gleaners, bats that collect insects and spiders from the leaves of the fruit trees.

The actual risk could be even higher than calculated, suspects Stahlschmidt. Because there are no sensitivity data for bats, the formulas in the risk assessment process use the toxicity data of the house mouse and add a safety factor of 5. "The bat, however, because of ecological characteristics such as a long lifetime and only one offspring is a very sensitive organism," says Stahlschmidt. Therefore, it is even likely that a difference in sensitivity between the house mouse and the bat could exceed 5. This could mean that even those species that prefer the less contaminated flying insects are at an unacceptable risk.

Something needs to change urgently if the endangered flying mammals should be effectively protected. "The responsible authorities must take action," says Stahlschmidt. "The current approval process for pesticides should be extended to bats and further research on the sensitivity of this mammalian group to pesticides is immediately needed" the researcher closes.

This article had edited by authors of threelas
Source: AlphaGalileo
Publication: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/etc.1834/abstract

How To Update An Action Of Facebook Open Graph

noreply@blogger.com (Ibnu Syuhada) — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 23:40:39 PDT

Basically, if we want to update an action, it is very easy. However, the question "why do we need to update an action? '. An action generated by the built-in action of the Facebook Open Graph can only be published once. We can not publish the same action for the second time. In fact, sometimes visitors often arrive at the same page for some time. This usually happens on the blog tutorial. Consider the following code to update an action

function setUpdateAction(token){
FB.api('/'+IDAction+'?access_token='+token,'post',function(response){
console.log(response);
});
}

Where, IDAcion is the ID of an action. When viewed from above code, updating the action is very easy. However, the difficulty is how do we know the action ID of an article that has been published to the right? The answer to this question is easy. Let us take an example, suppose you are reading an article from threelas, while the article you've read before. In this situation, you can not publish action read of the article. An error message will be generated from the JSON output action read

User is already associated to the article object on a unique action type Read. Original Action ID: 3475653621349

Through this error message we can update an action read of the article. Here is an example of an easy way to update the action read.

Yes, we split the sentence error into a matrix of 1 x 18 (matrix column). Then we take the matrix components to 18. The matrix component is an ID of action read of a particular article.

Neil Amstrong Had Rest In Peace Forever

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 22:46:50 PDT

Neil Armstrong had rest in peace forever. Man who became a key witness of the landing on the moon, also bringing the facts about the moon to rest forever. Why not, since landing on the moon, many conflicting statements and pro continues to run until today. Nevertheless, what has been done by Neil Armstrong has opened a new chapter of human technology in space flight.

Neil Armstrong once said, "That is one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind," spoken on July 20, 1969, as he became the first person ever to step onto another planetary body, instantly became a part of history.

"Neil Armstrong was a hero not just of his time, but of all time," President Barack Obama said via Twitter. "Thank you, Neil, for showing us the power of one small step."

Armstrong is survived by his wife, two sons, a stepson, a stepdaughter, 10 grandchildren, and a brother and sister.

Fact About Neil Amstrong (Adopted from NASA)

Neil A. Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, on August 5, 1930. He began his NASA career in Ohio.

After serving as a naval aviator from 1949 to 1952, Armstrong joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1955. His first assignment was with the NACA Lewis Research Center (now NASA Glenn) in Cleveland. Over the next 17 years, he was an engineer, test pilot, astronaut and administrator for NACA and its successor agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

As a research pilot at NASA’s Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., he was a project pilot on many pioneering high speed aircraft, including the well known, 4000-mph X-15. He has flown over 200 different models of aircraft, including jets, rockets, helicopters and gliders.

Armstrong transferred to astronaut status in 1962. He was assigned as command pilot for the Gemini 8 mission. Gemini 8 was launched on March 16, 1966, and Armstrong performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space.

As spacecraft commander for Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing mission, Armstrong gained the distinction of being the first man to land a craft on the moon and first to step on its surface.

Armstrong subsequently held the position of Deputy Associate Administrator for Aeronautics, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. In this position, he was responsible for the coordination and management of overall NASA research and technology work related to aeronautics.

He was Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati between 1971-1979. During the years 1982-1992, Armstrong was chairman of Computing Technologies for Aviation, Inc., Charlottesville, Va.

He received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Purdue University and a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Southern California. He holds honorary doctorates from a number of universities.

Armstrong is a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and the Royal Aeronautical Society; Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the International Astronautics Federation.

He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco. He served as a member of the National Commission on Space (1985-1986), as Vice-Chairman of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (1986), and as Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee for the Peace Corps (1971-1973).

Armstrong has been decorated by 17 countries. He is the recipient of many special honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom; the Congressional Space Medal of Honor; the Explorers Club Medal; the Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy; the NASA Distinguished Service Medal; the Harmon International Aviation Trophy; the Royal Geographic Society’s Gold Medal; the Federation Aeronautique Internationale’s Gold Space Medal; the American Astronautical Society Flight Achievement Award; the Robert J. Collier Trophy; the AIAA Astronautics Award; the Octave Chanute Award; and the John J. Montgomery Award.

In addition to his many professional accomplishments, Neil Armstrong was a loving and devoted husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend. He is survived by his wife, his two sons, a step son and step daughter, 10 grandchildren, and a brother and a sister.

Statement From President Barack Obama (White House)

Michelle and I were deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Neil Armstrong.

Neil was among the greatest of American heroes - not just of his time, but of all time. When he and his fellow crew members lifted off aboard Apollo 11 in 1969, they carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation. They set out to show the world that the American spirit can see beyond what seems unimaginable - that with enough drive and ingenuity, anything is possible. And when Neil stepped foot on the surface of the moon for the first time, he delivered a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten.

Today, Neil's spirit of discovery lives on in all the men and women who have devoted their lives to exploring the unknown - including those who are ensuring that we reach higher and go further in space. That legacy will endure - sparked by a man who taught us the enormous power of one small step.

AppMobi Now Support With AppUp Ultrabook, Learn How To Use It

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 10:36:36 PDT

Intel has announced a new compatible devices and Ultrabook AppUp. Now, those devices are compatible with AppMobi, and learn how to use it from the video.

With over 50,000 active developers creating mobile and desktop apps using HTML5, appMobi is the market leader in HTML5 tools and services. appMobi’s technology allows mobile app developers to support HTML5 and native app platforms with just one code base, and to deploy and service their apps on multiple platforms, including the Open Web.

appMobi provides development tools and services that complete HTML5 as a mobile platform, bringing it on par with iOS and Android as a fully capable mobile platform. appMobi’s post-deployment cloud services include user authentication, in-app payments, rich media push messaging, user analytics and live app updates.

So you can use the AppMobi SDK and tool to test your app across multiple devices and see it running on an virtual device.

You can test various features like accelerometer and screen rotation. Once you are happy with the app experience for each device, including an Ultrabook, you can package your app for various stores including AppUp. Once done you can take you file and run it through the Intel AppUp encapsulator to create the MSI needed by AppUp.

See the video below from Bob Duffy how to test and package your app for AppUp. Bob Duffy is Intel Ultrabook Community Manager & Senior Social Media Strategist. (Intel, red: threelas)

How To Publish An Action Of Facebook Open Graph

noreply@blogger.com (Ibnu Syuhada) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 10:38:24 PDT

Publish an action of Open Graph Facebook is not difficult. You just change the method of parameters of FB.api with 'POST'. Consider the following code snippet

function setPublishAction(token){

FB.api('/me/[YOUR_APP_NAMESPACE]:cook?recipe=’+window.location.href+’access_token=’+token,'post',function(response){

console.log('Post was successful! Action ID: ' + response.id);

});

}

The above example can also be applied to all the action-object pair of non built-in. However, if you apply the Read - Article as action-object pair built in, then the number of additional rules should be applied. The rules are:

Action Read be published if your blog visitors have read your articles more than 10 seconds.
Your blog visitors should be aware that they have given permission for your application to publish an action to the Facebook Timeline.

If you do not follow the above rules, then Facebook will not approve your application for use by your visitors. We can solve the first problem by applying the Javascript, while the second problem can be solved with Jquery. You also have to put the publish function in FB.getLoginStatus and FB.login. Consider the following code example

<head prefix='og: http://ogp.me/ns# fb: http://ogp.me/ns/fb# article: http://ogp.me/ns/article#'> <title>OG Tutorial App</title>

</head>

<body>

$(document).ready(function(){
window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
FB.init({
appId : 'Your-App-Id',
status : true,
cookie : true,
xfbml : true,
oauth : true,
});
FB.getLoginStatus(function(response) {
if (response.status === 'connected') {
// the user is logged in and has authenticated your
// app, and response.authResponse supplies
// the user's ID, a valid access token, a signed
// request, and the time the access token
// and signed request each expire
var uid = response.authResponse.userID;
var accessToken = response.authResponse.accessToken;
$('#loginfb').css('display','none');
$('#logoutfb').css('display','block');
//function below to solve the first rule
var ib,nu,ya = document.cookie.split(";");
for(var i = 0; i < ya.length; i++){
ib = ya[i].substr(0,ya[i].indexOf("="));
nu = ya[i].substr(ya[i].indexOf("=")+1);
ib = ib.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g,"");
if(ib == "ibnu"){
nu = unescape(nu);
break;
}
}
if(nu == "true"){
$(".socialcase strong").html("Off");
$(".socialcase strong").css('color','#FF0000');
}else{
$(".socialcase strong").html("On");
$(".socialcase strong").css('color','#00FF7F');
//function below to solve the second rule
var tanggal = new Date();
var detik = tanggal.getSeconds();
if(detik > 13){
setPublishAction(accessToken);
}
}
controluser(nu);
getlogout(accessToken);

} else if (response.status === 'not_authorized') {
// the user is logged in to Facebook,
// but has not authenticated your app
$('#loginfb').css('display','block');
$('#logoutfb').css('display','none');
} else {
// the user isn't logged in to Facebook.
$('#loginfb').css('display','block');
$('#logoutfb').css('display','none');
}
});

$('#loginfb').click(function(){
FB.login(function(response) {
if (response.authResponse) {
console.log('Welcome! Fetching your information.... ');
var accessToken = response.authResponse.accessToken;
//function below to solve the first rule
var ib,nu,ya = document.cookie.split(";");
for(var i = 0; i < ya.length; i++){
ib = ya[i].substr(0,ya[i].indexOf("="));
nu = ya[i].substr(ya[i].indexOf("=")+1);
ib = ib.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g,"");
if(ib == "ibnu"){
nu = unescape(nu);
break;
}
}
if(nu == "true"){
$(".socialcase strong").html("Off");
$(".socialcase strong").css('color','#FF0000');
}else{
$(".socialcase strong").html("On");
$(".socialcase strong").css('color','#00FF7F');
//function below to solve the second rule
var tanggal = new Date();
var detik = tanggal.getSeconds();
if(detik > 13){
setPublishAction(accessToken);
}
}
controluser(nu);
getlogout(accessToken);

} else {
console.log('User cancelled login or did not fully authorize.');
}
},{scope: 'email,user_likes,publish_stream'});
});
function controluser(stat){
$("#social").click(function () {
var statusf = $(".socialcase strong").html();
if(statusf == "On"){
document.cookie = "ibnu = true;domain=www.threelas.com;path=/";
$(".socialcase strong").html("Off");
$(".socialcase strong").css('color','#FF0000');
}else{
document.cookie = "ibnu = false;domain=www.threelas.com;path=/";
$(".socialcase strong").html("On");
$(".socialcase strong").css('color','#00FF7F');
}
});
}

function getlogout(token){
$('#logoutfb').click(function(){
FB.logout(function(response){
window.location = 'http://www.threelas.com/';
});
});
}
function setPublishAction(token){
FB.api('/me/news.reads?article='+window.location.href, 'post',function(response){
console.log('Post was successful! Action ID: ' + response.id);
});
}
};

// Load the SDK Asynchronously
(function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1&appId=Your-App-Id";
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));
});
</script>

<button id=”loginfb”>Login</button>

<button id=”logoutfb”>Logout</button>

<div id = "social">Social share : <span class="socialcase"><strong></strong></span></div>

<div id=”output”>Result</div>

</body>

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 18, 2012
Because to many people ask to us why login and logout button doesn't work? Because on this post we focus with publsih an action. If you want to know how to activate the login and logout button, please read http://www.threelas.com/2012/07/how-to-make-facebook-login-button.html. We make this because to make every body easy to learn.

Twitter App In Nokia Belle, Help You To Still Interact

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 11:35:27 PDT

Keep interacting with fans, friends, families, business people, even if you're on the move certainly is you need. Twitter, as one of the best social network in the world, allowing millions of people to connect, is a wonderful tool to keep interacting. However, when you're not anywhere near with your computer or laptop, then it would be prohibitive. Nevertheless, Nokia Belle may be one solution to social interaction. Nokia Belle has many Twitter applications are very useful for you to keep interacting.

The following are Twitter applications available in Nokia Belle:

Tweetian (Free)

Tweetian is a feature-rich Twitter app for Symbian and MeeGo Harmattan, developed using Qt/QML. With the intense use of Qt Quick Component, Tweetian comes with a fluid & native UI.

Features:

- Swiping left & right in the home page to quickly access your timeline, mentions & DMs

- Autofill for @mentions and #hashtags when composing tweet

- View tweet location & conversation

- Tweet translation

- TwitLonger & Pocket integration

- Image upload & integrated image viewer from multiple services

Gravity (£8.00)

Gravity is a full-featured Twitter Client with a gorgeous, highly praised user interface. It supports multiple Twitter accounts, image uploading to MobyPicture, TwitPic, TwitGoo or Posterous, multiple Twitter Searches, Twitter Trends, Groups, Audio Alerts, Auto-Connect and many more.

Nearby Tweets (Free)

Get tweets around your location or anywhere from the world. Current location will be identified using GPS or cell tower or based on your input. Once tweets are loaded there are lots of functionalities. Eg: Filter jobs around your location by setting a filter (Jobs), Click on a user to know more about him/her, Click on " More " to display all the tweets from the user etc.

Tweeties: Best Twitter client (£4.00)

Tweeties is a full-featured Twitter Client with:

Simple and clean UI style

Optimized keyboard (for English only)

Beautiful graphics

Considerate drop down list

Designed direct message UI

"in-reply-to" feature.

(red: threelas)

MegaFon Using Intel Inside® In its First Smartphone

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 09:34:19 PDT

Russia began to using high-performance smartphone with Intel Inside for the first time. Smartphone devices known as "The MegaFon Mint" can be obtained through retail stores of MefaFon, and online starting August 22 this year. Intel Corporation in cooperation with MegaFon agreed to use Intel's Smartphone Reference Device as a base smartphone.

MegaFon is a Russian telecommunication service provider. Established in May 2002, MegaFon has become the first operator with a network covering all regions of Russia. The Company and its subsidiaries have licenses to operate in all of the Russian regions and in Tajikistan. With over 64 million active subscribers, MegaFon manages the most sophisticated and technologically advanced digital and fixed line network in the country. MegaFon was the first in Russia to launch 3G for commercial operations and is currently in the number one position among all operators in the provision of mobile Internet, and in the number two position as to the number of active subscribers in Russia. In 2012, MegaFon became one of the first operators to launch a 4G network in the LTE standard in Russia.

In the "The Mint MegaFon", there are Intel tools, such as the Intel® Atom™ processor Z2460 with Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology and HSPA + Intel® XMM™ 6260 platform. So it can speed up the process of downloading the data and improve the user experience fast and responsive. However, it still can maintain the battery up to 5 hours of 3G browsing, 45 hours of audio playback and 8 hours of talk time with a single charge.

"Russia's customers acknowledge MegaFon as a valued telco provider and a great national retailer for handsets, smartphones, tablets and other self-branded innovative hi-tech devices," said Mikhail Dubin, MegaFon vice president. "MegaFon client devices and telco service have always meant the best quality and sustainability at reasonable prices. We consider the MegaFon Mint a real technology breakthrough. It is a highly attractive device, and I'm sure end customers will value it."

The MegaFon Mint features a sleek, matte black casing and a 4.03-inch high-resolution LCD touchscreen for crisp text and vibrant images. The device's 1.6 GHz Intel® Atom™ Processor, 400 MHz graphics clock and support for full 1080p HD video provide users with an immersive gaming and video experience. The Mint also comes equipped with an 8-megapixel camera delivering advanced imaging capabilities that includes burst mode to take 10 pictures in under a second. Intel and MegaFon worked closely to customize the Android*-based smartphone that includes a host of MegaFon applications and services.

"Our engagement with MegaFon is a step forward in accelerating the adoption of Intel® architecture across new mobile market segments and geographies," said Christopher McGuire, general manager of reference devices for Intel's Mobile and Communications Group. "We look forward to our continued collaboration with MegaFon and to bringing consumers in Russia new device experiences enabled by Intel technology."

Said Dmitri Konash, Intel regional manager in Russia and CIS countries: "We are extremely pleased to bring this new product to market together with MegaFon. We look forward to our long-term cooperation to provide Russian consumers with great products that offer a unique experience." (Intel, red: threelas)

New Chip To Diagnose Diseases From Intel And Stanford

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 17:49:51 PDT

Researchers at Intel and Stanford University School of Medicine have been studying the new chip aimed to diagnose diseases and analyze protein interactions. The complete, they have synthesize and study a grid-like array of short pieces of a disease-associated protein on silicon chips normally used in computer microprocessors. They used this chip, which was created through a process used to make semiconductors, to identify patients with a particularly severe form of the autoimmune disease lupus.

Although the new technology is focused on research applications, it has the potential to eventually improve diagnoses of a multitude of diseases, as well as to determine more quickly what drugs may be most effective for a particular patient. It may also speed drug development by enabling researchers to better understand how proteins interact in the body.

“When I see patients in the clinic right now, I may know they have arthritis, but I don’t know which of the 20 or 30 types of the disease they have,” said associate professor of medicine Paul (P.J.) Utz, MD, noting that existing methods can take days or even weeks to answer such questions. “Now we can measure thousands of protein interactions at a time, integrate this information to diagnose the disease and even determine how severe it may be. We may soon be able to do this routinely while the patient is still in the physician’s office.”

Utz is a co-senior author of the research, published online Aug. 19 in Nature Medicine. Postdoctoral scholar Chih Long Liu, PhD, and Madoo Varma, PhD, director and head of life science research operations and business strategy for Intel’s Integrated Biosystems Laboratory, are the other senior authors. Graduate student Jordan Price is the first author. The research was funded in part by Intel Corp., and Intel scientists created the protein array on the silicon chips for the Stanford researchers to study.

Within each of our cells, proteins enter into and disband physical relationships in dizzying succession — outdoing even our most-freewheeling Facebook friends. This intricate dance forms the machinery responsible for driving cell growth, sparking immune reactions and even causing disease. But understanding the microscopic minutiae of their fleeting attractions (why exactly is protein X hooking up with protein Y?), and the subsequent biological repercussions, has been difficult and time-consuming.

To better understand these interactions, researchers at Intel synthesized short segments of biological proteins, called peptides, on silicon wafers. To do so, they turned to the same process used to make semiconductors, employing a method using sequential steps of light exposure and chemical reactions called photolithography. The Stanford researchers then used the chip, which they’ve termed an Intel array, to analyze thousands of protein interactions simultaneously to diagnose disease, assess therapies and even design more-effective drugs.

The researchers hope to eventually embed an integrated semiconductor circuit within the microprocessor-ready silicon chip to create a sort of minicomputer that could take the guesswork and decision-making out of many clinical processes. It could perhaps spell out patient-specific diagnoses with letters of the alphabet, or identify which potential treatments are most likely to be effective.

The technology described in the study echoes that of DNA microarrays, in which thousands of unique nucleotide sequences are dotted on a glass slide in a grid-like pattern to identify patterns of gene expression in cells and tissues. Prior to the collaboration with Intel, Utz and his colleagues were using a similar technique for peptides — affixing them in defined patterns to glass or other substrates and then washing them with solutions of cellular or blood-borne proteins. A binding event between a protein in the solution, such as an antibody, and its slide-bound partner is indicated by a fluorescent signal, which is developed through a meticulous and lengthy series of detection steps.

About four years ago, however, researchers at Intel approached Utz and his colleagues with the idea of using silicon as a microarray platform to synthesize the peptides directly on the chip, rather than making the peptides separately and spotting them on the array using a robot.

“Honestly, we thought it wouldn’t work,” said Utz. But it did, and it had several advantages. For one thing, silicon is much less sticky to proteins than glass. As a result, researchers can skip some experimental steps meant to block random binding of peptides to the substrate. Silicon also allows the researchers to arrange the individual peptides more closely together, using the space much more efficiently. Finally, unlike glass, silicon alone does not fluoresce, making signal detection easier.

There’s also the promise of devising new, faster detection methods on the more-versatile silicon chip.

“If we couple these Intel arrays with an electronic detection method, for example, we could have real-time sensing over a period of minutes,” said Utz.

In the study, the researchers tested whether their array could help categorize patients with lupus — an autoimmune disease in which patients make antibodies that attack a type of protein in their cells called a histone (in addition to other proteins).

“Lupus is highly variable, and in some cases is quite severe,” said Utz. “About half of patients are likely to require more intensive therapy. We wanted to see whether we could identify these patients with our arrays.”

Using the new silicon chips, the researchers were able to identify patients with lupus who expressed high levels of antibodies against a particular histone called 2B. They then confirmed that these patients were precisely the ones struggling with a more severe form of the disease.

“Companies developing therapies to block the pathway responsible for this binding are now accepting patients with lupus for clinical trials without knowing which subset of disease they are in,” said Utz. “This method could potentially be used to identify only those patients likely to benefit, and aid in the identification of effective drugs.”

To make the discovery, the researchers made a microarray using the last 21 amino acids of histone 2B. Histones keep DNA packaged tightly within a cell’s nucleus; binding of various proteins to the exposed end of the histone selectively grants or excludes access to the packed genes. The global importance of the binding events, and the fact that autoimmune diseases like lupus arise when the body makes antibodies against the histone’s end, led the researcher to choose it for their first test of the technology.

In making the array, they synthesized every possible overlapping sequence of every length from the short string of amino acids: 1-21 (the full-length sequence) to 17-20 (four amino acids) to 2-20 (19 amino acids) and all other possible variations. Three of the amino acids are also sometimes modified to carry extra chemical groups that can enhance or impede protein binding. Including every possible length and combination of modified and unmodified amino acids gave nearly 9,000 unique peptide dots on the array. They then washed the chip with solutions of antibodies known to bind the sequence.

The pattern of binding showed that one antibody could recognize and bind to a sequence composed of only two amino acids of the original 21. Another required at least four amino acids, one of them modified, for binding. Analyzing the binding of solutions of other antibodies in each case delineated specific binding regions, or epitopes, within the original short sequence.

Understanding the binding at such levels of detail will allow researchers to tinker with drugs meant to disrupt, enhance or mimic biological reactions within our cells to create better therapies, or to understand how and why natural processes sometimes go awry.

The researchers are now exploring the use of the technique to help design influenza vaccines that elicit a strong immune response, as well as ways to incorporate the three-dimensional folding involved in most protein interactions.

This article had edited by authors of threelas

Source: Stanford University School of Medicine and Intel

Nokia Prime Place For Help Small or Medium Business

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 17:10:24 PDT

For you are a small or medium business, a favorable news coming from Nokia. A tool called Nokia Prime Place can help you relieve your current company budget to promote business. Nokia Prime Place helping your businesses on the map and attract customers for free.

Nokia Prime Place enables business owners to add their business listing free of charge to Nokia Maps on web and mobile, share opening hours, website and contact details, and add lots of images to show what their business or service is all about, and why you can’t miss to visit! This provides Nokia customers with lots of unique businesses that can be discovered, wherever you are, and helps you to be a local anywhere.

To round up your business page, Nokia will automatically pull in reviews from partners like Qype and TripAdvisor. This gives your business additional credibility.

A number of features that you can use, among others:

Account Management – This feature for users roles (owner, admin, manager) in order to address the need of businesses with a larger number of locations to manage access rights.
Facebook publishing – Businesses can now publish posts about their business(s) to their FB wall or existing FB pages, directly from the Prime Place dashboard.
Secure place verification – To ensure that no-one else claims your business listing on your behalf, Nokia offer a versatile and secure verification system. Businesses can choose between postcard, phone verification and credit card verification in most countries.
Bing Adcenter – You can create ads to promote your business as extra boost.

For now, Nokia Prime Place only support on 20 countries and 11 languages. (Nokia, red: threelas)

InSight As A New Mission Of NASA To Learn Mars Interior

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 16:39:30 PDT

In order to understand more deeply the interior of Mars for comparison with Earth, how the planet formed and evolved, NASA will send a new mission called InSight. This mission will be delivered in 2016.

"The exploration of Mars is a top priority for NASA, and the selection of InSight ensures we will continue to unlock the mysteries of the Red Planet and lay the groundwork for a future human mission there," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "The recent successful landing of the Curiosity rover has galvanized public interest in space exploration and today's announcement makes clear there are more exciting Mars missions to come."

InSight will be led by W. Bruce Banerdt at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. InSight's science team includes U.S. and international co-investigators from universities, industry and government agencies. The French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, or CNES, and the German Aerospace Center, or DLR, are contributing instruments to InSight, which is scheduled to land on Mars in September 2016 to begin its two-year scientific mission.

InSight is the 12th selection in NASA's series of Discovery-class missions. Created in 1992, the Discovery Program sponsors frequent, cost-capped solar system exploration missions with highly focused scientific goals. NASA requested Discovery mission proposals in June 2010 and received 28. InSight was one of three proposed missions selected in May 2011 for funding to conduct preliminary design studies and analyses. The other two proposals were for missions to a comet and Saturn's moon Titan.

InSight builds on spacecraft technology used in NASA's highly successful Phoenix lander mission, which was launched to the Red Planet in 2007 and determined water existed near the surface in the Martian polar regions. By incorporating proven systems in the mission, the InSight team demonstrated that the mission concept was low-risk and could stay within the cost-constrained budget of Discovery missions. The cost of the mission, excluding the launch vehicle and related services, is capped at $425 million in 2010 dollars.

"Our Discovery Program enables scientists to use innovative approaches to answering fundamental questions about our solar system in the lowest cost mission category," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. "InSight will get to the 'core' of the nature of the interior and structure of Mars, well below the observations we've been able to make from orbit or the surface."

InSight will carry four instruments. JPL will provide an onboard geodetic instrument to determine the planet's rotation axis and a robotic arm and two cameras used to deploy and monitor instruments on the Martian surface. CNES is leading an international consortium that is building an instrument to measure seismic waves traveling through the planet's interior. The German Aerospace Center is building a subsurface heat probe to measure the flow of heat from the interior.

This article had edited by authors of threelas

Source: NASA

Recovering Baltic Cod is Lacking Food

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 01:29:56 PDT

Thin cod from the Baltic. The body weight and nutritional condition of cod in Bornholm Basin in the Baltic has drastically declined: Photo: Bastian Huwer

A recent study by an international group of authors led by DTU Aqua shows that despite the still relatively low total cod abundance in the eastern Baltic Sea compared to historical levels, the cod abundance in the Bornholm Basin in the southern Baltic is currently the highest recorded in this area since the 1970s. This is because most of the stock is concentrated in this limited area, which is currently the only area where hydrographic conditions support the survival of cod eggs.

Yet, while the numbers of cod are increasing, the biomass of sprat and herring, a major prey for adult cod, is at a historic low in the main distribution area of cod. Consequently, the cod are having a hard time finding enough to eat.

“Adult cod prey largely on sprat and herring and the majority of this prey is currently found in northern areas of the Baltic Sea, out of reach for cod. In line with the low availability of prey, the body weight and nutritional condition of cod in Bornholm Basin has drastically declined,” explains Margit Eero, researcher at DTU Aqua and lead author of the study “Spatial management of marine resources can enhance the recovery of predators and avoid local depletion of forage fish” published in Conservation Letters.

The combination of an increasing cod stock and a lack of prey has resulted in locally high predation mortality of forage fish and in cannibalism of cod, show the international group of researchers behind the new study.

Spatially explicit management

The eastern Baltic cod is one of the first examples of partial recovery of a heavily exploited demersal fish stock in North Atlantic waters in recent decades. The unexpected density dependent effects which have become apparent in the core distribution area of the stock illustrate that novel management measures, taking into account spatial distribution of the stocks, are increasingly needed to support the recovery of predator species in ecosystems, which in fact may not be any longer structured to sustain large cod stocks, conclude the authors.

“The Baltic Sea is currently chosen as a pilot case by EU for taking into account biological interactions in the new fisheries management plans under development in the European Commission. We hope that our study can contribute to this process and that the experiences from the Baltic Sea can serve as a basis for similar developments elsewhere,” says Margit Eero, DTU Aqua.

This article had edited by authors of threelas

Source: DTU

Publication: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-263X.2012.00266.x

Understanding Future Superconducting Via Charge Density Waves

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 05:16:29 PDT

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research have discovered charge density waves in ceramic yttrium and neodymium barium cuprates. They form above the temperature at which the material becomes superconducting and thus loses its electrical resistance, slightly distorting the crystal lattice, as indicated in a layer of the crystal lattice by the irregular distances between the atoms (blue spheres). The superconductivity competes with the charge density waves, and it is probably down to a coincidence that superconductivity prevails at a certain temperature. © Daniel Pröpper/MPI for Solid State Research

Later in the future, electric power crisis is expected to be tackled by the superconducting material. When that happens, the power source that comes from offshore wind farms can be used on a large scale. Even the wind farm from the Sahara desert could be exploited on a large scale by other countries, including Europe, like Germany. Superconducting cables are expected to reduce energy loss in the long term.

Superconducting cables could prevent this if cooling them does not consume more energy than they help to save. Bernhard Keimer and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart want to identify materials that deserve the name high-temperature superconductor both in practical terms and also in terms of our usual perception of temperature. To do this they first have to understand how superconductivity works in these materials and how it can be influenced; these materials are known as high-temperature superconductors, even though they lose their resistance at temperatures which make a Siberian winter seem almost mild.

According to one of their discoveries we can probably consider ourselves lucky that high-temperature superconductivity - a property which remains promising despite its present disadvantages - exists at all. “It is obviously down to a fortunate coincidence,” says Bernhard Keimer, Director at the Stuttgart Max Planck Institute. This is at least suggested by the observations of the international team that includes not only Bernhard Keimer and his colleagues, but also scientists at the Politecnico di Milano, the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility Grenoble, the University of British Columbia in Canada and further research institutions.

The researchers discovered that the superconductivity in one type of copper oxide ceramic competes with a state in which a charge density wave forms. Physicists have known about such charge density waves for decades from two-dimensional materials such as the niobium selenides, for example. Here, the conduction electrons do not distribute uniformly across the crystal like in a metal. On the contrary, they form a regular pattern of regions in which they concentrate to a greater or lesser extent.

“We did not expect the charge density waves in the superconducting cuprates, because they destroy the superconductivity,” says Bernhard Keimer. Instead of concentrating at regular intervals to a greater or lesser extent, the electrons in superconductors join up to form Cooper pairs which can slip through a crystal with zero resistance. Accordingly, the researchers observed the charge patterns only above the transition temperature, the temperature at which the material becomes superconducting.

The regions where charge density waves formed initially expanded as the researchers cooled the material down to the transition temperature, however. As soon as they reached the transition temperature at minus 213 degrees Celsius, the charge density waves suddenly disappeared and superconductivity prevailed. “Superconductivity only just prevailed in this competition,” explains Bernhard Keimer. “If the advantages were distributed slightly differently, there would possibly be no superconductivity at all.”

The team of researchers tracked down the charge density waves by scanning yttrium and neodymium barium cuprates of the composition (Y,Nd)Ba2Cu3O6+x with the aid of resonant X-ray diffraction. This provided them with exclusive information on the electrons which found it hard to decide whether they wanted to form a wave or look for a partner so that, together, they could slip more easily through their crystal. The physicists in Bernhard Keimer’s group are now going to perform these measurements on other high-temperature superconductors as well. They want to find out whether all these materials are in electronic competition.

In addition, the researchers want to take account of the conflict between the two electronic states in their theoretical model of superconductivity. “We can already compute the transition temperature of a material quite well with this model, but still end up slightly too high,” says Bernhard Keimer. “The competition with the charge density wave explains this discrepancy so that our predictions should become more accurate in the future.”

Charge density waves possibly also explain an observation which his team made recently in a different project. A high-temperature superconductor was also instrumental here. It also was composed of yttrium, barium and copper oxide and is described by the formula YBa2Cu3O7, or YBCO for short. The researchers now combined this ceramic with a magnetic material comprising lanthanum, calcium and manganese oxide, which obeys the formula La2/3Ca1/3MnO3 (or LCMO). They stacked up the two substances to form a superlattice, a sandwich of layers only a few nanometres thick, and they had a clear aim in doing this.

“In the meantime we assume that the Cooper pairs in high-temperature superconductors form due to magnetic interactions,” explains Bernhard Keimer. “If this is the case, superconductivity should be affected by magnetism in order to increase the transition temperature.” The special form of magnetism in the LCMO may not be suitable for this, however, because this material is ferromagnetic, i.e. the magnetic moments of the individual atoms all align in one direction, as in iron. And this form of magnetism breaks up the Cooper pairs, thus harming the superconductivity, and decreases the transition temperature. This material is good for investigating how the transition temperature reacts to the magnetism, however, and for the detailed basis for its effect.

And indeed the researchers observed what they had expected: in a sandwich with LCMO, the transition temperature of the YBCO decreased, and the decrease was greater the thinner the researchers made the YBCO layers in comparison to the LCMO. Bernhard Keimer and his colleagues now wanted to find out more details of the interactions between the different layers. They specifically wanted to determine how the electronic processes in a layer - the superconductivity on the one hand, and the magnetism on the other - affect the vibrations of the atoms in this layer. Physicists call the interaction electron-phonon coupling, where phonon stands for vibration.

An illustrative description of the mechanism is that the electrons act like springs between the atoms. The state the electrons adopt affects the springiness of the springs and thus their ability to couple vibrations. The electron-phonon coupling is the basis of a few useful material properties. They include the ability of some materials to convert a temperature difference into a voltage, and also conventional superconductivity, where it is the vibrations of the crystal lattice and not the magnetism that bonds the Cooper pairs together. The researchers have investigated the electron-phonon coupling by observing selected vibrations with a Raman spectrometer as they cooled the material sandwich until magnetic order appeared in the LCMO and superconductivity in the YBCO.

According to the measurements made by the researchers in Stuttgart, one vibration of the copper oxide group in the YBCO layer changed its frequency when the superconductivity set in at the transition temperature. One vibration of the manganese oxide group in the LCMO layer reacted in the same way when the ferromagnetic order formed in the material. “This didn’t really surprise us,” said Bernhard Keimer. “But we didn’t expect that the superconductivity would also affect the vibration of the manganese oxide.”

The electron-phonon coupling therefore also makes itself felt across material boundaries, and this occurs not only right on the boundary between the two substances, but in the whole LCMO layer. This is unexpected, because the vibrations deep in the two layers at least are usually as independent as two children playing on adjacent swings. The Stuttgart-based researchers cannot yet completely explain their observations, but they already have some ideas and meanwhile also indications of what could cause the long-range electron-phonon coupling.

One condition for the cross-boundary coupling is that, right on the boundary, the copper and manganese atoms are bound very strongly to each other via an oxygen atom in each case. This bond acts like a rubber band between two swings. Moreover, the copper and manganese atoms can oscillate with the same frequency so that a vibration of the copper atoms can easily drag along the manganese atoms. Just as two children can only swing with the same rhythm if their swings have the same length, i.e. they swing with the same frequency. And assuming that their two swings are connected to each other with a strong rubber band: one child can only pull the other along if both are sitting on swings of the same length.

After all, one child in such a swing tandem requires powerful pushers in order for the other one to swing along. In the same way, the YBCO-LCMO superlattice requires a strong trigger in order for the manganese atoms to react to the vibration of the copper atoms. If this trigger comes from the electrons, more precisely from the nascent superconductivity, the electron-phonon coupling must be strong. The YBCO-LCMO sandwich fulfils this condition as well. “The fact that the effect remains noticeable in the whole LCMO layer as well is possibly again caused by the charge density waves in the YBCO,” explains Bernhard Keimer. “In our current experiments we have also already found indications that the sandwich structure stabilises this competing order.”

The long-range electron-phonon coupling in the LCMO-YBCO superlattice is not helpful in driving up the temperature at which the high-temperature superconductor loses its resistance. “But it gives us the opportunity to influence other properties such as thermoelectricity or conventional superconductivity,” explains Bernhard Keimer. And it increases the understanding of how magnetic and superconducting materials influence each other. This in turn brings the researchers in Stuttgart further towards their ultimate goal: to develop superconductors that can transport electricity in an energy efficient way from wind farms and solar parks to the consumer.

This article had edited by authors of threelas

Source: Max Planck Gesellschaft

Publication: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nmat3378

Why People Often Overconfidence?

noreply@blogger.com (Putri Arisnawati) — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 22:00:05 PDT

Over-confident attitude that is really quite alarming. Because, those who have too much confidence do not realize it. Imagine 94% of the professors felt he had been working at above average. Of course it is not possible, even in statistics. Or perhaps from among the workers, they feel more talented, better. Or maybe a leader, you feel more socially adept. Without realizing it, they've done a lot of disadvantages. Then, why they often do attitude of overconfidence?

Over-confident attitude that was triggered by the allure of social status. Over-confident attitude that was triggered by allure of social status. Social status is an honor, excellence, and the influence of a person against another person. Within work groups, for example, higher status individuals tend to be more admired, listened to, and have more sway over the group’s discussions and decisions. These “alphas” of the group have more clout and prestige than other members.

This statement was delivered by Haas School Associate Professor Cameron Anderson. He co-authored a new study, “A Status-Enhancement Account of Overconfidence,” with Sebastien Brion, assistant professor of managing people in organizations, IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Haas School colleagues Don Moore, associate professor of management, and Jessica A. Kennedy, now a post-doctoral fellow at the Wharton School of Business. The study will be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (forthcoming).

Anderson says these research findings are important because they help shed light on a longstanding puzzle: why overconfidence is so common, in spite of its risks. His findings suggest that falsely believing one is better than others has profound social benefits for the individual.

“Our studies found that overconfidence helped people attain social status. People who believed they were better than others, even when they weren’t, were given a higher place in the social ladder. And the motive to attain higher social status thus spurred overconfidence,” says Anderson, the Lorraine Tyson Mitchell Chair in Leadership and Communication II at the Haas School.

Moreover, these findings suggest one reason why in organizational settings, incompetent people are so often promoted over their more competent peers. “In organizations, people are very easily swayed by others’ confidence even when that confidence is unjustified,” says Anderson. “Displays of confidence are given an inordinate amount of weight.”

The studies suggest that organizations would benefit from taking individuals’ confidence with a grain of salt. Yes, confidence can be a sign of a person’s actual abilities, but it is often not a very good sign. Many individuals are confident in their abilities even though they lack true skills or competence.

The authors conducted six experiments to measure why people become overconfident and how overconfidence equates to a rise in social stature. For example:

In Study 2, the researchers examined 242 MBA students in their project teams and asked them to look over a list of historical names, historical events, and books and poems, and then to identify which ones they knew or recognized. Terms included Maximilien Robespierre, Lusitania, Wounded Knee, Pygmalion, and Doctor Faustus. Unbeknownst to the participants, some of the names were made up. These so-called “foils” included Bonnie Prince Lorenzo, Queen Shaddock, Galileo Lovano, Murphy’s Last Ride, and Windemere Wild. The researchers deemed those who picked the most foils the most overly confident because they believed they were more knowledgeable than they actually were. In a survey at the end of the semester, those same overly confident individuals (who said they had recognized the most foils) achieved the highest social status within their groups.

It is important to note that group members did not think of their high status peers as overconfident, but simply that they were terrific. “This overconfidence did not come across as narcissistic,” explains Anderson. “The most overconfident people were considered the most beloved.”

Study 4 sought to discover the types of behaviors that make overconfident people appear to be so wonderful (even when they were not). Behaviors such as body language, vocal tone, rates of participation were captured on video as groups worked together in a laboratory setting. These videos revealed that overconfident individuals spoke more often, spoke with a confident vocal tone, provided more information and answers, and acted calmly and relaxed as they worked with their peers. In fact, overconfident individuals were more convincing in their displays of ability than individuals who were actually highly competent.

“These big participators were not obnoxious, they didn’t say, ‘I’m really good at this.’ Instead, their behavior was much more subtle. They simply participated more and exhibited more comfort with the task – even though they were no more competent than anyone else,” says Anderson.

Two final studies found that it is the “desire” for status that encourages people to be more overconfident. For example, in Study 6, participants read one of two stories and were asked to imagine themselves as the protagonist in the story. The first story was a simple, bland narrative of losing then finding one’s keys. The second story asked the reader to imagine him/herself getting a new job with a prestigious company. The job had many opportunities to obtain higher status, including a promotion, a bonus, and a fast track to the top. Those participants who read the new job scenario rated their desire for status much higher than those who read the story of the lost keys.

After they were finished reading, participants were asked to rate themselves on a number of competencies such as critical thinking skills, intelligence, and the ability to work in teams. Those who had read the new job story (which stimulated their desire for status) rated their skills and talent much higher than did the first group. Their desire for status amplified their overconfidence.

De-emphasizing the natural tendency toward overconfidence may prove difficult but Prof. Anderson hopes this research will give people the incentive to look for more objective indices of ability and merit in others, instead of overvaluing unsubstantiated confidence.

This article had edited by authors of threelas

Source: Newswise

Paper: http://haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/papers/anderson/status%20enhancement%20account%20of%20overconfidence.pdf