Knowledge Sharing

International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

2012-10-17T22:02:00.000+05:30

The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty is celebrated every year on October 17 throughout the world. It was officially recognized by the United Nations, but the first commemoration of the event took place in Paris, France, in 1987 when 100,000 people gathered on the Human Rights and Liberties Plaza at the Trocadéro to honor victims of poverty, hunger, violence and fear. This call was made by Joseph Wresinski (1917–1988) founder of the International Movement ATD Fourth World.

Poverty in India is widespread, with the nation estimated to have a third of the world's poor. In 2011, World Bank stated, 32.7% of the total Indian people fall below the international poverty line of US$ 1.25 per day (PPP) while 68.7% live on less than US$ 2 per day.

Eradication is the reduction of an infectious disease's prevalence in the global host population to zero. It is sometimes confused with elimination, which describes either the reduction of an infectious disease's prevalence in a regional population to zero, or the reduction of the global prevalence to a negligible amount. Further confusion arises from the use of the term eradication to refer to the total removal of a given pathogen from an individual (also known as clearance of an infection), particularly in the context of HIV and certain other viruses where such cures are sought.

World Food Day

2012-10-17T21:51:00.002+05:30

World Food Day is celebrated every year around the world on 16 October in honor of the date of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 1945. The day is celebrated widely by many other organizations concerned with food security, including the World Food Programmers.

1981: Food comes first
1982: Food comes first
1983: Food security
1984: Women in agriculture
1985: Rural poverty
1986: Fishermen and fishing communities
1987: Small farmers
1988: Rural youth
1989: Food and the environment
1990: Food for the future
1991: Trees for life
1992: Food and nutrition
1993: Harvesting nature's diversity
1994: Water for life
1995: Food for all
1996: Fighting hunger and malnutrition
1997: Investing in food security
1998: Women feed the world
1999: Youth against hunger
2000: A millennium free from hunger
2001: Fight hunger to reduce poverty
2002: Water: source of food security
2003: Working together for an international alliance against hunger
2004: Biodiversity for food security
2005: Agriculture and intercultural dialogue
2006: Investing in agriculture for food security
2007: The right to food
2008: World food security: the challenges of climate change and bioenergy
2009: Achieving food security in times of crisis
2010: United against hunger
2011: Food prices - from crisis to stability
2012: Agricultural cooperatives – key to feeding the world

http://www.fao.org/getinvolved/worldfoodday/en/

http://www.worldfooddayusa.org/

Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

2012-10-15T22:47:00.001+05:30

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam usually referred to as Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, is an Indian scientist and administrator who served as the 11th President of India. Kalam was born and raised in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, studied physics at the St. Joseph's College, Tiruchirappalli, and aerospace engineering at the Madras Institute of Technology (MIT), Chennai.

Before his term as President, he worked as an aerospace engineer with Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Kalam is popularly known as the Missile Man of India for his work on the development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology. He played a pivotal organizational, technical and political role in India's Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998, the first since the original nuclear test by India in 1974. Some scientific experts have however called Kalam a man with no authority over nuclear physics but who just carried on the works of Homi J. Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai.

Kalam was elected the President of India in 2002, defeating Lakshmi Sahgal and was supported by both the Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, the major political parties of India. He is currently a visiting professor at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and Indian Institute of Management Indore, Chancellor of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology Thiruvananthapuram, a professor of Aerospace Engineering at Anna University (Chennai), JSS University (Mysore) and an adjunct/visiting faculty at many other academic and research institutions across India.

Kalam advocated plans to develop India into a developed nation by 2020 in his book India 2020. Books authored by him have received considerable demands in South Korea for the translated versions. He has received several prestigious awards, including the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour. Kalam is known for his motivational speeches and interaction with the student community in India. He launched his mission for the youth of the nation in 2011 called the What Can I Give Movement with a central theme to defeat corruption in India. Kalam was also criticized for inaction as a president on the pending mercy plea petitions, that delayed prosecution of the convicts.

http://www.abdulkalam.com/kalam/

http://www.abdulkalam.nic.in/quotes.html

http://www.youthpot.com/2011/05/words-for-youth-by-dr-p-j-abdul-kalam.html

BOOKS:

Turning Points: A journey through challenges by A. P. J Abdul Kalam; Harper Collins India, 2012.
Wings of Fire: An Autobiography by A. P. J Abdul Kalam, Arun Tiwari; Universities Press, 1999.
India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium by A. P. J Abdul Kalam, Y. S. Rajan; New York, 1998^.
Ignited Minds: Unleashing the Power Within India by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam; Viking, 2002.
The Luminous Sparks by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam; Punya Publishing Pvt Ltd, 2004.
Mission India by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Paintings by Manav Gupta; Penguin Books, 2005
Inspiring Thoughts by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam; Rajpal & Sons, 2007
Developments in Fluid Mechanics and Space Technology by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam and Roddam Narasimha; Indian Academy of Sciences, 1988

BIOGRAPHY:

Eternal Quest: Life and Times of Dr. Kalam by S. Chandra; Pentagon Publishers, 2002.
President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam by R. K. Pruthi; Anmol Publications, 2002.
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam: The Visionary of India by K. Bhushan, G. Katyal; A.P.H. Pub. Corp, 2002.
A Little Dream (documentary film) by P. Dhanapal; Minveli Media Works Private Limited, 2008.
The Kalam Effect: My Years with the President by P.M. Nair; Harper Collins, 2008.
My Days With Mahatma Abdul Kalam by Fr.A.K. George; Novel Corporation, 2009.

Global Handwashing Day

2012-10-15T22:26:00.000+05:30

Hand washing for hand hygiene is the act of cleaning the hands with or without the use of water or another liquid, or with the use of soap, for the purpose of removing soil, dirt, and/or microorganisms.

Medical hand hygiene pertains to the hygiene practices related to the administration of medicine and medical care that prevents or minimizes disease and the spreading of disease. The main medical purpose of washing hands is to cleanse the hands of pathogens (including bacteria or viruses) and chemicals which can cause personal harm or disease. This is especially important for people who handle food or work in the medical field, but it is also an important practice for the general public. People can become infected with respiratory illnesses such as influenza or the common cold, for example, if they don't wash their hands before touching their eyes, nose, or mouth. Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has stated: "It is well documented that one of the most important measures for preventing the spread of pathogens is effective hand washing." As a general rule, handwashing protects people poorly or not at all from droplet- and airborne diseases, such as measles, chickenpox, influenza, and tuberculosis. It protects best against diseases transmitted through fecal-oral routes (such as many forms of stomach flu) and direct physical contact (such as impetigo).

In addition to hand washing with soap and water, the use of alcohol gels is another form of killing some kinds of pathogens and healthful bacteria, but their effectiveness is disputed, and may lead to antibiotica-resistant bacterial strains.

In symbolic hand washing, using water only to wash hands is a part of ritual handwashing as a feature of many religions, including Bahá'í Faith, Hinduism, and tevilah and netilat yadayim in Judaism. Similar to these are the practices of Lavabo in Christianity, Wudu in Islam and Misogi in Shintō.

Global Handwashing Day (GHD) is a campaign to motivate and mobilize millions around the world to wash their hands with soap. It takes place on October 15 of each year. The campaign is dedicated to raising awareness of handwashing with soap as a key approach to disease prevention.

It was made at the annual World Water Week 2008, which was held in Stockholm from August 17 to 23 and initiated the Public Private Partnership for Handwashing (PPPHW). The Global Handwashing Day took place for the first time on October 15, 2008, the date appointed by UN General Assembly in accordance with year 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation.

The theme for Global Handwashing Day’s inaugural year was Focus on School Children. The members pledged to get the maximum number of school children handwashing with soap in more than 70 countries.

http://globalhandwashing.org/ghw-day

http://www.wikihow.com/Wash-Clothes-by-Hand

WHAT IS AUGMENTED REALITY?

2012-06-25T15:22:00.003+05:30

WHAT IS AUGMENTED REALITY?

“Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated sensory input, such as sound or graphics. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented), by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality.”

By contrast, virtual reality replaces the real world with a simulated one.

WHERE IT IS USED ?

Augmented reality has been put to use in a number of ﬁelds, Medical imaging, where doctors can access data about patients; Aviation, where tools show pilots important data about the landscape they are viewing; Training, in which technology provides students or technicians with necessary data about speciﬁc objects they are working with; Museums, where artifacts can be tagged with information such as the artifact’s historical context or where it was discovered. Academy, educators are beginning to provide students with deeper, more meaningful experiences by linking educational content with speciﬁc places and objects.

MARKETING STRATEGIES BY AUGMENTED REALITY

Augmented reality experimental marketing

AEON & Nestle-rio In collaboration with Dassault Systems, exploring the use of augmented reality inside transport vehicles & 3D animation movie.

Giza 3D experiential 3D allows new forms of interactivity, collaboration and innovation around archaeological data for the worlds of education, research and for the general public.

Augment events and conferences to help delegates

Engineering firm ABB wanted to create an immersive brand experience at one of its key trade shows with the aim of increasing dwell times and generating qualified new business leads.

Point of sale or in-store experiences that really stand out

Lego has implemented in-store kiosks that allow customers to hold a Lego product box up to a camera and see the item inside build itself into a virtual model of the product.

Bring customer service or product manuals to life

BMW uses augmented reality for training purposes. Engineers are equipped with eyewear that overlays virtual information specific to procedure used in the construction or repair of their automobiles.

Make augmented reality the “real life” gateway to online content

Coca Cola built a dedicated brand called “AVTR”to host experiences building up interest in the Avatar franchise and make a connection between the product and the film.

WHY IT IS SIGNIFICANT?

Augmented Reality is set to revolutionize the mobile user experience as did gesture and touch (multi-modal interaction) in mobile phones. This will redefine the mobile user experience for the next generation making mobile search invisible and reduce search effort for users.·

Augmented Reality, like multi-modal interaction (gestural interfaces) has a long history of usability research, analysis and experimentation and therefore has a solid history as an interface technique.·

Augmented Reality improves mobile usability by acting as the interface itself, requiring little interaction (this Interaction Design technique is known as Direct Manipulation). Imagine turning on your phone or pressing a button where the space, people, objects around you are “sensed” by your mobile device- giving you location based or context sensitive information on the fly·

Augmented Reality vs. Virtual Reality

Virtual reality involves the creation of a computer-generated world that a person can interact with in such a way that he or she believes that the virtual world is real. Usually this is achieved when the wearing of a helmet, courts the senses to immerse the user.
Augmented reality, however, is a meeting of virtual reality and real life, as a computer image melds with real-life images to create a composite for the user to interact with. The ultimate goal of augmented reality is the user's inability to distinguish the fabricated from the real.

HOW IT WORKS?

AR has been around for decades, but the rise of Smartphone - which bundle necessary sensors and software capabilities into a mobile platform - has given it critical mass. At its heart, all AR engines work in largely the same way. Using GPS, compass and gyroscope readings, they continually monitor your location, direction, and orientation in the real world. By comparing your location and directional position with a pre-built database of points of interest (PoI), they can calculate the distance to those PoIs and overlay them onto the image fed to the app by your Smartphone’s camera. Head-mounted Displays Just as monitors allow us to see text and graphics generated by computers, head-mounted displays (HMDs) will enable us to view graphics and text created by augmented-reality systems.

AR IN SMARTPHONE LIKE ANDROID

Whether you are astronomer, you are able to gaze up at the stars and identify constellations, stars and planets drip in geeky-cool. night sky and everything is identified in front of you in real time. Move your camera around, and the details will change with the direction you’re pointing at.

Layar is a mobile app for discovering information about the world around you. Using Augmented Reality (AR) technology, Layar displays digital information called“layers” into your Smartphone’s field of vision. With the introduction of Layar Vision, these layers can now recognize real-world objects and display digital AR experiences on top of them. Interact with the world around you by scanning images, such as magazines, restaurant menus and advertising posters with Layar Vision.

Color Blindness is a clever app that demonstrates vision from the perspective of someone who is color blind. Through the camera the view splits into a normal view and a color blind view, enabling you to compare and see how color blindness can affect people.

AugSatNav is an augmented reality navigation system which overlays WALKING directions upon a live camera feed of the path/road ahead. With AugSatNav there's no need to follow instructions or interpret maps - you can find your way by walking along the route highlighted by a bright white line

AR FUTURE

“I strongly believe AR is emerging as a new medium and it will come to play a large role in entertainment and information sharing…I’d like to see more work move beyond the single-viewer experience in AR and engage larger audiences in a simultaneous viewing and even collaborative interactive experience.”

Imagine walking into a party and noticing somebody you have met before but you cannot remember their name, augmented reality technology would be able to draw from your personal databases, for example Facebook and other social media networks, and provide you with that information.

TURNS YOUR SMARTPHONE INTO A VIRTUAL CONTROLLER

2012-06-25T15:22:00.000+05:30

TURNS YOUR SMARTPHONE INTO A VIRTUAL CONTROLLER

Do you like playing casual games on your computer?

Do you own an iPhone device?

Then how about forgetting about your keyboard and mouse and using your trusty old Smartphone as a controller for games?

If it sounds to good to be true, you should give Wander player a try. You can play 30 different games right on your computer (Windows or Mac) while using your Smartphone as a handy remote control, preventing the need to squat or sit uncomfortably while trying to use the keyboard and mouse.

HOW IT WORKS:

Users download a desktop app and a mobile app. The mobile app lists online games from around the web. Selecting a game from the mobile app menu opens it on the computer, and the two devices communicate over Wi-Fi. It’s not an easy technology to make work well. Both the user-interaction and performance required for games [as well as] the controllers and console that work across local environments are really difficult and take a while to get right.”

Setting up Wander Player:

Get wander player for your iPhone
Get wander player for your PC or Mac
Make sure your computer and your phone are on the same wifi
Watch them connect
Pick a game, and play it
Have fun

iPetals–Solar iPhone Charger Concept

2012-06-25T15:21:00.002+05:30

Solar charger employs solar energy to supply electricity to devices or charge batteries. They are generally portable.

New Sunflower Solar Portable Charger is a compact, stylish and Eco-friendly solar charger for use with Cellphones, iPhones, iPods and many other USB devices. Solar chargers can charge lead acid or Ni-Cd battery bank up to 48 V and hundreds of ampere-hours (up to 400 Ah) capacity. For such type of solar chargers, generally intelligent charge controllers are used. A series of solar cell array plates are installed separately and can be connected to battery bank.

Inspired by mother nature and constructed in the same broadleaf arrangement used by flowers to soak up sunlight, the 6 mini solar petals can be expanded to maximize sunlight absorption or folded together to easily fit into your pocket, hand bag or suitcase. Take advantage of solar energy, which is renewable and totally free, you can leave it under the sun and the internal battery will automatically gaining charges. You can also recharge the battery using conventional AC power or USB charging method.

Specifications

- Battery Type: Li-ion rechargeable battery
- Capacity: 1500 mAh
- Full charge time with AC: 4 hours
- Full charge time with sunlight: 10 to 12 hours
-Solar panel output: 195mA, 6 V
-Output Voltage: 5 V, 200 – 350 mA
-Charging time: 2 to 3 hours for small electronic devices
-Weight: 160 g
-Dimensions (folded): 123 (L) x 36 (W) x 40(H) mm

-Included Connectors Compatibility: Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Mini USB, Micro USB

-Charging time for the Lithium polymer battery inside using the solar panel: 6-8 hours

-Charging time for the Lithium polymer battery inside using USB charging cable: 3-4 hours

-Protection: charging current limited, discharging current limited, battery protection for over charge, over discharge, over current, short circuit.

How much time does a solar charger require to fully charger a cell phone?

The amount of time that it takes to fully charge a cell phone depends on the type of cell phone and the output capacity of the solar charger. To calculate the specific amount of time (in hours) it will take to charge a cell phone, use the following formula as a general rule of thumb: (Amperes per hour of the cell phone battery / Amperes per hour of the solar charger) + 10%. Example: Suppose the cell phone battery is 5 Watts/hour and the solar charger has an output capacity of 2 Watts/hour.

Step 1:
Convert all of the figures into the same units of measurement. In this case we need to calculate the number of Amperes/hour for both the cell phone battery and the solar charger, by doing the following (Watts/Volts = Amperes): Cell phone battery: 5 Watts /12 Volts = 0.417 Amperes Solar charger: 2 Watts /12 Volts = 0.167 Amperes

Step 2:
To determine the number of hours it will take the solar charger to charge the cell phone, divide the Amperes per hour of the cell phone battery by the Amperes per hour of the solar charger and add 10%: 0.417 Amperes (call phone battery) / 0.167Amperes (Solar charger) = 2.50 hours

10% of 2.50 is 0.25, so the total number of hours that it will take to charge the cell phone is 2.75 (equivalent to 2.5 + 0.25). From this example, it can be concluded that it will take about three hours of direct sunlight to fully charge a 5 Watt/hour cell phone battery.

SIRI : Exciting Feature of SmartPhone

2012-06-25T15:20:00.002+05:30

What is the most exciting feature in new iphone 4s?

SIRI, yes Siri is the main feature in iphone 4s to make it hit because AT&T Sold 200,000 iphone 4S In Just 12 Hours. And 4 million iphone 4s sold in just 2 days!!

SIRI (Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface)

It is an intelligent personal assistant and knowledge navigator which works as an application for Apple's iOS. The application uses a natural language user interface to answer questions, make recommendations, and perform actions by delegating requests to a set of web services. Apple claims that the software adapts to the user's individual preferences over time and personalizes results, and performing tasks such as finding recommendations for nearby restaurants, or getting directions.

Siri was originally introduced as an iOS application available in the App Store by Siri Inc. Siri Inc. was acquired by Apple on April 28, 2010. Siri Inc. had announced that their software would be available for BlackBerry and for Android-powered phones, but all development efforts for non-Apple platforms were cancelled after the acquisition by Apple.

Google's answer to Apple Siri.

Something that started out as a tongue-in-cheek reply to iphone’s Siri, IRIS has grown much bigger than being just a Siri clone.

Just ask IRIS what you want to know. Right from asking how to cope up with your breakup to movie recommendations and questions on science, culture, history etc.

IRIS is a pretty commendable achievement on its own. Since, Iris is still in its nascent stages of development, it is not as smart and as quick as Siri. In fact, it is more like a voice activated search engine than a personal Assistant. Iris is the perfect software for people who want to run a search on Google but are too lazy to type a cue.

Skyvi is another alternative for Android's Siri, a pocket assistant that answers your questions and helps you find directions and update your social networks.

Skyvi knows everything from Local Businesses to Celebrities! The most popular features that Skyvi includes are Find Establishments, Weather, Definitions & Trivia By Voice, getting directions, reminder when you're near a place, reminder of actions, telling jokes, accessing Social Networks Facebook and Twitter and asking random questions. With the random questions it's harder and it sometimes doesn't know what you mean so it's better to use it for the other features.

Virtual Assistant on Android

Is it a voice recognition application?

Is it an intelligent virtual assistant?

Is it a portal to the best mobile content?

Is it a fast and simple way to connect with the people who are an important part of your life?

The answer it’s a little bit of all that good stuff, wrapped into a tidy, convenient little package.

Vlingo for Android combines fast and accurate voice to text technology with the intelligence to listen to what you say, and quickly connect you with people, businesses and activities so that you can get things done while on the go.

The InCar feature, available on all Vlingo-supported devices, is the first and only completely hands free InCar solution that allows you to send and receive messages, make calls, and get directions while keeping two hands on the wheel, and two eyes on the road. InCar requires 2.2 and a Bluetooth or wired headset in order to function as designed.

Similarly, we have some other SIRI like apps …

Speaktoit Assistant

Google Voice Actions

AIVC

S3 : Inspired By Nature

2012-06-25T10:31:00.001+05:30

Samsung Galaxy S3 software and apps

The Galaxy S3 comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich by default - Android 4.0.4 to be precise. There's now a longer home button to go with the new OS. As we would expect that we’ll get Samsung's TouchWiz overlay, with a totally new and decluttered look.

It has been inspired by nature with this release as you can see here, there's plenty of water rippling around. J

Samsung has also reworked the voice control on the Galaxy S3 - called Smart Voice. There's also something called Smart Alert which will vibrate when you pick up your phone to let you know you've got mail (or a text, or a call).

Samsung Galaxy S3 processor

The S3 introduces a new chip called the Exynos 4 Quad. The new 32nm 1.4GHz quad-core SoC is based on ARM's Cortex-A9 design which consumes 20 per cent less power. The multitasking performance is demonstrated by a feature called Pop Up Play, that enables you to carry on doing tasks in a corner of the screen while watching a video at the same time.

"The quad-core processor offers phenomenal multitasking abilities surpassing any single or dual application processor. Since all the cores must share a single battery, the power management and efficiency in the limited battery capacity are indispensable for mobile computing devices,"

"Given the diverse functionalities consumers are demanding from their mobile devices today, the Exynos 4 Quad meets those high-performance needs while keeping power consumption very low."

Samsung Galaxy S3 screen

The Galaxy S3 takes super AMOLED to a new level with a 4.8-inch HD 1,280 x 720 screens that makes an i-phone’s retina display look tiny. It's half an inch bigger than the previous S2's 4.3-inch, 800 x 480 screen and has to be seen to be believed - the colors are superb.

Samsung Galaxy S3 storage and memory

The S3 comes in 16, 32 and 64GB versions - the latter will impress those who have been waiting for a high-capacity Android handset. Both feature 1GB of RAM. There's also a microSD slot in the side of both. Like HTC, Samsung has partnered with Dropbox - you get 50GB to store your stuff.

Samsung Galaxy S3 camera

The Samsung Galaxy S3 boasts an 8 Megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging, touch focus functionality, face/smile detection, image stabilization and 1080p video capture. That isn't a huge advance on earlier handsets though and we'd expect Samsung will get some user criticism over it. The front camera is a 1.2MP 720p unit.

Samsung reckons you'll get great low light shots from the main camera, while there's also been a real boost to the speed of taking an image - you can take three per second in manual mode or six per second in burst mode. As you'd expect, the S3 is capable of full 1080p HD video playback.

Samsung Galaxy S3 connectivity

As you'd expect, the S3 incorporates 3G/HSDPA and HSPA+ at speeds up to 21Mbps where supported. It's got every band of Wi-Fi covered too and can handle 802.11a/b/g/n with DLNA content sharing and Wi-Fi Direct. You also get the new and more power efficient Bluetooth 4.0. The S3 can also use MHL to output to a monitor via its micro USB port.

Samsung Galaxy S3 sensors

The S3 features GPS/A-GPS, a built-in gyroscope, digital compass, plus screen-flipping accelerometer, proximity as well as a barometer.

Samsung Galaxy S3: Dimensions

Like the Galaxy S2, the new S3 is a neatly designed, beautiful-looking handset that measures 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6mm compared to the S2's 125.3 x 66.1 x 8.49mm. Yes, note the size has gone up across all the dimensions. The S3 weighs in at a respectable 133g compared to the S2's 116g which, if you've held one, you'll have thought was very light indeed.

Like the S2, the S3 continues with a lightweight plastic design and, while it won't appeal to all, it's only 7g lighter than the iPhone 4S. It's a lot curvier than the S2, more like the Galaxy Nexus.

For more information :

http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxys3/index.html

http://versusio.com/en/samsung-galaxy-s3-vs-apple-iphone-4s-64gb

2012-06-25T10:14:00.001+05:30

Requirements Tools Survey

(From http://www.volere.co.uk/tools.htm )

Requirements Tools

Tool Name: CaseComplete version 2.5

Company Name: Serlio Software

Contact detail URL: http://www.serlio.com/casecomplete/

Case Complete is a tool to help you author, manage and share use cases and requirements. Whether you are part of a diverse team or working solo, an expert author or a novice, Case Complete will help you write use cases and requirements faster and easier, that have excellent compliance with use case standards.
Once you have written your use cases and requirements, Case Complete lets you leverage this valuable data by integrating it with other phases of the software development lifecycle: generate test plans, project plans and UML models directly from Case Complete.

Tool Name: Catalyze

Company Name: SteelTrace

Contact detail URL: http://www.steeltrace.com//

The Catalyze Suite of products provides a pragmatic approach for organizations to quickly and easily capture business and system requirements with a 40% per project ROI with little training or deployment expenditure necessary.
Unlike traditional RM tools, Catalyze takes a more structured view of requirements breaking them into Functional (in the form of a use case like storyboard structure of main flow, alternative flows etc.) and Non-functional requirements (qualities and constraints). Catalyze automatically generates graphical flows directly form text and maintains text and graphics in lockstep.
Catalyze Professional is the single user version while Catalyze Enterprise is the multi-user variant. SteelTrace offers native integrations from Catalyze into leading UML modeling tools Rational Rose and Borland Together Solo and Control Center. The integrations are bi-directional with UML Use Case and Activity diagrams being automatically generated. Comprehensive test documentation is also automatically generated from the same project. Customizable MS Word profiles allow the same Catalyze project generate to multiple document formats that are round-trippable back to the Catalyze project.
Catalyze Enterprise is designed for teams who are collaborating on requirements gathering and capture by updating and sharing a project. Catalyze Enterprise supports multiple loading of repository projects, a requirement level locking mechanism, the ability to go 'offline' and the ability for users to reconcile offline changes back into the master project. Catalyze Enterprise also lets multiple users simultaneously work on a project or project package. Catalyze Enterprise provides all the functionality of Catalyze Professional, including the UML integrations.
Catalyze Enterprise uses a client-server approach and stores projects in an industry standard SQL database (out of box support for MySQL & Oracle 9i). It allows text search across all database projects (including unloaded projects) meaning that information sharing becomes reality in the enterprise.
Catalyze is tightly integrated with tools from the following leading vendors in the UML/MDA modeling space; Compuware (Optima1J Integration), IBM (Rational Rose Integration) and Borland (Together Integration).
These integrations enable Catalyze projects to be opened in the appropriate UML modeling tool. This means that once the requirements are captured in Catalyze, the technical team can immediately see the requirements expressed as technical UML thus allowing them to build exactly what is required. This ensures that all the information and business logic is carried over, increasing the probability that the requirements will be met.
There is a fully functional download at: http://www.steeltrace.com/download_enterprise_evaluate.asp

Tool Name: ClearSpecs Composer

Company Name: LiveSpecs Software

Contact detail URL: http://www.livespecs.com/

ClearSpecs Composer enables requirements developers to communicate the features, functions, and specifications of a product or system with greater clarity, so that product developers can fully understand, build, and test the intended product or system. It includes a requirements-savvy word processor that offers a balance between the high cost, complexity, and rigidity of a full-blown requirements management solution, and the inaccuracy of a natural language requirements document generated by a standard word processor.
ClearSpecs main features include:

Support for the ClearSpecs Specification Techniques: Application glossaries, action contracts, use cases and user acceptance test specs
Active Templates: Help users easily create and update application glossaries, action contracts, use cases, and manual test procedures
Specification Analyzer: Automatically analyzes both detailed specs (use cases, test procedures, action contracts) and your current specs and identifies both actual and potential problems.
Usage Simulator: Traces paths through use cases and action contracts so that you can picture usage scenarios and determine outcomes when users interact with your product or system.
Web-based Information Sharing: Requirements are developed on the desktop, but can be shared with colleagues through HTML on an Intranet, or via email attachments in Word or PDF format.
Data Sharing with other tools: Ability to share data with requirements management systems, UML modelers, test managers, and automatic test designers.

Tool Name: Cradle Version 5.2

Company Name: 3SL (Structured Software Systems Ltd)

Contact detail URL: http://www.threesl.com/

Cradle is a multi-user, multi-project, systems engineering environment that spans the entire systems and software development lifecycle. Building on an infinitely scalable, arbitrarily extensible, distributed and web-enabled repository, Cradle provides a suite of tools that integrate all project phases, activities and deliverables within a single, configuration managed, access controlled framework. You can tailor this framework to your projects, combining desktop tools such as Word and Excel, with your specialist engineering and project management tools and corporate PDM / EDM solution into a seamlessly managed whole that can be distributed site-wide, company-wide or project-wide using web and non-web technologies.
Cradle can be used as a web portal to all project information, as an integrated systems engineering environment or you can use just one of its component point tools. Cradle is modular, with tools built around a central Project Data Management module that provides powerful infrastructure capabilities.
Cradle provides a requirements capture facility that scans customer statements and extracts requirements, assumptions and/or domain knowledge, creating cross references back to the original document. When new versions of such documents are registered, Cradle finds the differences and provides an impact assessment. Cradle is fully integrated with Word, Excel and PDF, as well as other text formats.
Business, operating, user, system and derived requirements can be captured and evolved. Support tools identify duplication, omission and ambiguity, and conduct coverage analyses. Interactive Non Functional Requirement Graphs (NFRGs) and Hierarchy Diagrams graphically illustrate the linkage within and to/from requirements sets.
Requirements can be linked to a wide variety of UML, use case, functional, behavioral, dynamic and architectural models, grouped within multiple model domains. Requirements can be allocated to use cases, functions, business processes, operational sequences, which in turn can be allocated to functions, classes etc within components of equipments in multiple candidate architectures. Performance assessment and budget aggregation and apportionment within and across these architectures are fully supported, together with the means to develop these models to hardware and software, including the generation and reverse engineering of source code.
All project activities are defined within a project schema that identifies project phases, data types and rules, and links and rules. The Cradle multi-user, infinite-capacity, repository can manage any volume of any data, allowing requirements (and other item types) to contain text, figures, tables, graphics, audio and data of any type. Database items can link to data in external objects, URLs and data held in external databases, including corporate PDM / EDM solutions.
Cradle provides a user-definable metrics capability, to monitor and manage the evolving requirements sets, and data of all other types.
Cradle is fully web-based, providing RO and RW web access from customizable web front-ends. All tools support hierarchy and editable tables with user definable queries, views and forms. Web publishing to HTML, XML and SVG is provided.

Tool Name: Domino Web Access

Company Name: Lotus Software from IBM

Contact detail URL: http://www.lotus.com/

Product URL: http://www.lotus.com/products/product1.nsf/wdocs/webaccesshome

Lotus Domino Web Access is the flexible, high-function Web browser-based client option to use the reliable, security-rich messaging and collaboration capabilities of IBM Lotus Domino server, online and offline. A member of the IBM Workplace family, Lotus Domino Web Access leverages the latest Web browser technologies to offer capabilities designed to help companies increase employee productivity, facilitate decision making, and improve business responsiveness. Lotus Domino Web Access is available in two offerings: Lotus Domino Web Access for Messaging (access to messaging functions) and Lotus Domino Web Access for Collaboration (both messaging and applications).

Tool Name: DOORS

Company Name: Telelogic AB

Company URL: http://www.telelogic.com/

Product URL: http://www.telelogic.com/corp/products/doors/

DOORS (Dynamic Object Oriented Requirements System) is an Information Management and Traceability (IMT) tool. Requirements are handled within DOORS as discrete objects. Each requirement can be tagged with an unlimited number of attributes allowing easy selection of subsets of requirements for specialist tasks. DOORS includes an on-line change proposal and review system that lets users submit proposed changes to requirements, including a justification. DOORS offers unlimited links between all objects in a project for full multi-level traceability. Impact and traceability reports as well as reports identifying missing links are all available across all levels or phases of a project life cycle. Verification matrices can be produced directly or output in any of the supported formats including RTF for MS-Word, Interleaf and FrameMaker. The DOORS Extension Language (DXL) is a high level C-like language that provides access to virtually all DOORS functions for user extensions and customization. DOORS includes the following functionality:

Control of data model for process management allows user to manage the relationship between data fully including its direction, type and even whether a relationship is allowed.
Improved security control through the use of passwords, and timeouts which "lock up" DOORS after a specified period of inactivity.
New templates to make document generation easier have been added to the DOORS template library. New templates include ISO 12207, ISO 6592 and IEEE software standards.

The DOORS family of sulutions include the following:

DOORS: Requirements Management for co-located teams
DOORS XT: Requirements Management for global enterprises
DOORS/Analyst: Requirements modeling within Requirements Management
DOORSnet: Web access to Requirements Management

Tool Name: EasyRM Version 1.06

Company Name: Cybernetic Intelligence GmbH

Product URL: http://www.easy-rm.ch/

EasyRM requirement manager is a component-based CASE tool targeting initial stages of project life cycle, when the project framework has been established, project requirements are gathered and synchronized and glossaries of project-specific terms and phrases are compiled. EasyRM provides users with the following facilities:

Creation, description, modification and progress tracking of project requirements.
Classification of requirements, including the ability to have several independent classifications of the same requirement set.
Specification of relationships between requirements, including requirement decompositions, dependencies, correlations, conflicts, etc.
Maintenance of semantic links from requirements to glossary terms and phrases used in requirement specifications
Maintenance of traceability links from requirements to information sources where these requirements have originated.

The individual areas of the EasyRM architecture are briefly described below:

EasyRM Core: The EasyRM Core consists of those components which are mandatory in any working EasyRM configuration.
EasyRM Tools: A modeless editor of a currently open requirements database (or its subset). The modeless nature of EasyRM tools allows several EasyRM tools to be active at the same time.
EasyRM Report Generators: A modal component which, when activated, creates a presentation of the currently active database (or its subset) in a human-readable form.
EasyRM Add-Ons: A modal tool which automates complex database maintenance/access/modification tasks.
EasyRM Editors: A modeless extension which supports storage of documents in a particular format directly in EasyRM databases as local documents and allows user to edit local documents stored in this format.
EasyRM Import Filters: Allow EasyRM to read information from files belonging to other applications (e.g. CSV, MS Excel, MS Access, etc.).
EasyRM Export Filters: Allow exporting information from EasyRM to third-party programs.

Tool Name: Focal Point

Company Name: Telelogic AB

Contact URL: http://www.telelogic.com/

Product URL: http://www.telelogic.com/campaigns/focalpoint/index.cfm

Telelogic Focal Point is the most comprehensive decision making solution on the market for Portfolio Management and Product Management. The only fully Web-based decision support system, Focal Point enables organizations to accurately determine, manage and monitor the best product or project portfolio based on business objectives, customer needs, costs and available resources.
Bringing together unique Â‘what-ifÂ’ scenario analysis capabilities and visualization techniques, this decision making software improves Product Management and Portfolio Management by enhancing stakeholder collaboration, prioritization, decision making, competitor intelligence, scenario planning, information visualization, portfolio optimization, customer profiling and other business intelligence activities.
Focal Point is already helping major product development and IT organizations like AstraZeneca, ABB, and Sony Ericsson to optimize their business and product decision making.
The Focal Point Platform enables companies to:

Identify customers and customer requirements;
Map similarities and differences in customer requirements;
Let customers value and prioritize their requirements;
Map similarities and differences in customer prioritization;
Integrate customers in the Focal Point solution to suggest and follow-up on requirements;
Structure requirements dynamically and visualize them through in different ways;
Define requirement attributes;
Manage interdependent requirements;
Observe changes in the requirements;
Role-based user management;
Manage access to information based on role;
Cost estimate requirements;
Analyze requirements statistics;
Model requirements based on the competence required to satisfy them;
Connect requirements to customers, markets, competitors and gaps;
Automate requirement calculations in Excel type environments;
Define and produce reports based on the customers own templates;
Examine requirements with built in check lists;
Measure requirement flow to locate obstacles in the process;
Automate the identification of requirement similarities;
Automate the identification of requirement interdependency;
Co-operate and communicate with product management, customers, developers and users regarding requirements;
Integrate requirements management with portfolio management, market segmentation, prioritization and release planning;
Prioritize requirements and product contents.

Focal Point's rich set of capabilities to improve decision making include:

Project portfolio management and optimization
Product management decision support
Risk management
Customer Management and collaboration
Competitor intelligence
Prioritization methods to find the core value
Information visualization
Integration with Telelogic DOORS to link business decisions about products, projects or features to detailed engineering requirements

Tool Name: Foresight Version 5.3.1

Company Name: Foresight Systems Inc.

Contact detail URL: http://www.foresightsystems-mands.com/

Foresight is an integrated modeling and simulation tool suite that provides a complete environment for system design space exploration. The Foresight tool suite includes the following capabilities:

A graphical model editor allows rapid capture of designer's intent for data flow diagrams (DFDs), state transition diagrams (STDs), mini-specifications Mini-Specs.
Comments and annotation text/graphics can also be included to facilitate model documentation.
A robust and proven modeling language with semantically rich constructs for use within data flow diagrams, state transition diagrams, and Mini-Specs. (Mini-Specs are short procedural code components.)
Libraries of common model building blocks that can be used in data flow diagrams to facilitate model development.
A data dictionary and static analyzer ensure correct connection and enforce syntactic rules.
A high performance discrete event simulator for model execution.
A model debugger allows rapid, interactive debugging and analysis of models.
A data visualization tool allows for post-simulation data analysis. Data can also be output in common textual forms for input into spreadsheets or other analysis tools.
A model compiler allows for compilation of models into stand-alone executables which can be used by non-Foresight users for trade studies.
Capture requirements via links to tools such as DOORS.
Link to lower level tools, such as MATLAB and tools for SOC Co-Simulation.

The Foresight Design Suite also includes the following:

Foresight Co-Design: All of the above capabilities of Foresight plus co-simulation with Mentor Graphics Seamless CVE and ModelSim. Mixed level analysis enables detailed HW and SW models to be run with the full system model.
FS/CoderC: Automatic generation of C++ code from your Foresight system models. Can be used to create: fast, batch simulations of your models and standalone prototypes of your system.
FS/RQIF: Requirements traceability interfaces to third-party requirements management tools
FS/Bridgeway: Cosimulation backplane and SDK, for linking other simulations or applications to the Foresight simulations over TCP/IP.

Tool Name: Gatherspace

Company Name: Gatherspace

Contact detail URL: http://www.gatherspace.com/

Gatherspace.com is a powerful, yet simple online requirements management and use case tool for centralizing, modeling and sharing software requirements.

Built for the developer, the business analyst, the project manager, and the owner, you will easily and quickly build and share your requirements database and produce meaningful reports. It's key features are:

This is a non-installable software where 100% of the functionality is online
The site allows the organization of features, requirements and use cases, and provides real useable artifacts with the help of a "To Do" list
The site evolves based on the needs of the users
The tool is free and will remain so in the foreseeable future

Tool Name: IBM Rational RequisitePro v2003.06.15

Company Name: IBM Rational Software

Company URL: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/rational/

Product URL: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/awdtools/reqpro/

The IBM Rational RequisitePro solution is a requirements and use case management tool for project teams who want to improve the communication of project goals, enhance collaborative development, reduce project risk and increase the quality of applications before deployment. Highlights include:

Uses advanced integration with Microsoft Word to provide a familiar environment for activities such as requirements definition and organization
Incorporates a powerful database infrastructure with real-time Word document synchronization to facilitate requirements organization, integration and analysis
Enables detailed attribute customization and filtering to maximize informative value of each requirement
Provides detailed traceability views that display parent/child relationships and show requirements that may be affected by upstream or downstream change.
Performs project-to-project comparisons using exportable XML-based project baselines
Integrates with multiple tools in the IBM Software Development Platform to improve accessibility and communication of requirements

Tool Name: iRise

Company Name: IRise

Contact detail URL: http://www.irise.com/

iRise is the world’s first solution used by business people to quickly assemble a working preview of business systems. iRise simulations let business people, end users and developers interact with critical business systems before development. The visual representation of the application looks and behaves like the real thing, including data interactions and business logic, so everyone literally gets on the same page. iRise simulations are interactive, unambiguous blueprints for what to build, eliminating expensive change orders, bringing projects to market on time and ensuring the final result will be adopted by end users. The iRise family of products includes:

iRise Studio - iRise Studio is a powerful, easy-to- use application definition solution used by business experts to quickly assemble functionally rich simulations of Web-based applications in a matter of hours. iRise Studio is used for new custom applications, portals, enhancements to existing systems and Web-based front-ends to packaged software. Business people can quickly lay out the page flow of simulations and create high fidelity pages that precisely mimic not only the look and feel of the final application, but the business logic and data interactions as well.
iRise iDoc - Stakeholders can have fun with application simulations that encourage dialog, drive consensus and quickly iterate to specifications that act as visual blueprints for what to build. Business analysts publish simulations as interactive definition documents, or iDocs, then present them to stakeholders for review. Rather than pages and pages of text and screen shots, stakeholders now have an interactive, functionally rich preview of how the final application will look and behave. They can test drive the simulation as if it were the real thing. Walkthrough notes help guide the review process and feedback comments can be sent to the business analyst with the click of a button.
iRise Reader - Using iRise Reader, anyone anywhere in the world can interact with a functionally rich iRise 5 simulation by opening a self-contained iDoc. The iRise Reader client software, which includes a sample iDoc, is available for free via https://irise-reader.subscribenet.com/control/irir/signup

Tool Name: IRqA (Integral Requisite Analyzer)

Company Name: TCP Sistemas e Ingenieria

Contact detail URL: http://www.irqaonline.com/

IRqA is a state-of-the-art Requirements Engineering (RE) tool, focused on information exploitation. It is specifically designed to provide an integral support to the complete Requirements Engineering process:

Requirements Capture and Management
Requirements Analysis
System Specification
Specification Validation (system specification vs requirements)
Acceptance Tests definition
Requirements Organization & Classification

In IRqA the specification cycle is supported via standard models and the tool provides a powerful set of modeling capabilities:

Problem Domain Models (UML class diagrams and entity-relationship diagrams)
Use Case diagrams
Context diagrams and DFDs
State diagrams
Graphical representation of the Requirements Engineering process deployed in the organization or in the specific project

IRqA allows to easily see and create traceability links between specification elements such as different types of requirements, requirements and use cases, acceptance tests, etc.

Tool Name: MockupScreens v1.41

Company Name: MockupScreens

Contact detail URL: http://mockupscreens.com

Igor Jese has released new version of MockupScreens, a rapid screen prototyping tool which enables you to quickly and easily create screen mockups of your application and organize them in scenarios. MockupScreens main design goals are ease of use and productivity. New version is available for free download.
With MockupScreens you can create screens, add screen elements (buttons, text fields, grids, etc) and populate them with data, and finally organize screens in scenarios and export them to images. In addition to common screen elements (buttons, fields, lists, etc) you can define multiple elements at once (e.g. textfield with label, etc). Mockups purposefully avoid the possibility to be mistaken for the real application screens. MockupScreens productivity features include intuitive interface, consistent keyboard shortcuts, context sensitive help, creating new screens from existing ones and changing the type of screen elements at will.
Evaluation copy and screenshots are available on the web site. Registration key is available on demand.

Tool Name: MooD Transformation Toolset

Company Name: The Salamander Organization

Contact detail URL: http://www.tsorg.com/

Ongoing close co-operation with customers and partners has enabled the development of the MooD Transformation Toolset so that the technologies address the real challenges in the process of business transformation today and in the future.
At its core, the software creates and manages a visual and configurable model of the business. The model gives a common language across the business to shape new solutions and support change - all initiatives are able to reference and build upon a common base and shared view of the business - all stored in a single underpinning repository.
Making the business model live: Activation - a Salamander patented technology - enables the business designs to become the 'live' system by connecting the design components with their real world counterparts (e.g. knowledge, data, systems). Not only is the business model the common reference point for business developments and change - improving and communicating how it works, it is now an active part of running and governing the business on a day-today basis.
Along with the Business Integration Engine - based on industry standards (XML and Web Services), this enables the business models to be used as the integrating force for related initiatives across a business.

Tool Name: Notes 7

Company Name: Lotus Software from IBM

Company URL: http://www.lotus.com/

Product URL: http://www.lotus.com/products/product4.nsf/wdocs/noteshomepage

Notes is not a requirements tool as such, but is very effective place to store requirements specifications. Set up a new Notes database for each specification, and give access to all the stakeholders. Use DocLinks to link to documents that have some relation to your specification - interview notes, meeting minutes. Attach the function point counts to the requirements, then link each of them to the appropriate design documents. Release 5 now includes a bookmark bar that creates quick links to frequently needed information and support for a universal Internet mailbox - whether they're on a Lotus Domino server or hosted by an Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Tool Name: Objectiver

Company Name: Cediti

Contact URL: http://www.objectiver.com/

Objectiver has been designed by RE practitioners to enable real requirements engineering. The tool relies on Kaos, a goal driven methodology and enables users to have a global overview on the system and a systematic link between all the models representing the system. Analysts have the possibility to draw diagrams and to define concepts (like goals, requirements, agent, entities, events, relationships, actions,...) and relationships over those concepts (like refinement, conflict, operationalisation, responsibility, capability, performance, specialization, causes and so on). Diagrams can be explained with text documents including references to concepts elicited in the diagrams. All these pieces of information can then be put together to generate a requirements document compliant with predefined standards. Key advantages of Objectiver are the following:

it enables analysts to elicit and specify requirements in a systematic way,
it produces well structured, self-contained, motivated, easily understandable, standard requirements documents,
it provides highly effective way to communicate about the requirements,
it ensures traceability from requirements to goals and from high-level, coarse-grained behavioral specifications to requirements.

Objectiver is also very easy to understand and can be used by anyone, because it is packaged with a web generation tool that permits to share your processes, goals, and so on with all the employees to the organization. Its main features are:

Automatic generation of RFQ/RFP
Goal driven requirements analysis
Multiple views on documents with easy navigation
Completeness and consistency checks
Traceability inside models, source, output documents
Queries

Tool Name: OSRMT Open Source Requirements Management Tool

Website and open source community: http://www.osrmt.com

Primary author and contact: Aron Smith

OSRMT, an acronym for Open Source Requirements Management Tool, has forms for each 'artifact' - features, requirements, design items, source code and test cases. Each group of artifacts can be arranged in a tree hierarchy, sorted, searched, filtered and reported upon. Artifacts themselves also have subcomponents - so within a form you can fill out a small table/list of items - details to the artifact such as data dictionary elements, use case actions, test case steps etc.
All the 'reference' data that drives the application is stored in the database allowing for a high level of cusotmization. Administrators can define their own type of artifacts and customize every form layout to meet the specific needs - add/remove controls, change order, made fields required, change the labeling, customize the drop down lists of values for status, priority, category and more.
OSRMT is at version 1.1 and while there is currently no support for round trip updates with source documents - you can store (attach) documents to any artifact and create links to files or URLs. All artifact changes file away a historic version of the artifact and the administrator can baseline all artifacts for the selected product.
Traceability is handled in a couple of ways - you can select an artifact and browse for the dependent counterpart - or the easier method is to simply drag one artifact on top of another to create the dependency. Dependencies are powerful if kept current and accurate. If you need to change a component - bit it a bug in the source file, requirement, design or feature - you can use OSRMT to trace up and down the impact on the system - highlighting which test cases must be used to validate the change. Version 1.1 even comes with a rudimentary impact graph based upon the traceability.
Import/export is from and to XML so converting spreadsheets or other data sources is quite feasible. You can build your own reports - although you need to learn Jasper reports to add them to the application. Of course you can take your favourite reporting tool and plug it into the OSRMT database - of which many are supported - Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, MS Access. Since the application professes to use clean SQL, JDBC, connection ooling and external configuration files - adding another database is simply creating the schema, adding the jdbc driver and away you go.
The application is written using Swing, JBoss J2EE although there are community discussions around adding a web browser client or configuring the application to run over the internet. All and all being only 2 months old there is a lot of promise behind OSRMT.

Tool Name: Poseidon for UML Version 3.2.1

Company Name: Gentleware

Contact detail URL: http://www.gentleware.com/index.php

Poseidon for UML is a popular, fully-fledged UML CASE tool. It evolved from the open-source project ArgoUML and has turned it into a world-class modelling tool. Today, it has the fastest growing user community and is famous for its superior usability. Poseidon for UML is delivered in several editions to meet the needs of different users:

Community Edition - Perfect for students, beginners, and other non-commercial users, this free edition is the ideal introduction to UML, complete with Java forward engineering.
Standard Edition - Aimed at analysts, this edition makes quick and easy work of designing and documenting models with Java reverse engineering, UMLdoc, and plug-in extensions.
Professional Edition - Developers will find a full suite of powerful features such as an Eclipse integration, Java roundtrip engineering, and code generation for many other languages.
Enterprise Edition - Teams of developers can use real-time collaboration functions and versioning coupled with standalone Java roundtrip engineering to develop software across the room or across the globe.
Embedded Enterprise Edition - Embedded system developers can use the team capabilities of the enterprise edition with c and c++ generation specifically designed for embedded systems, along with Java reverse engineering.

Tool Name: QFD/Capture Version 4

Company Name: International TechneGroup Incorporated (ITI)

Contact detail URL: http://www.qfdcapture.com/

This approaches requirements from the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) view. There are two varieties of this product: professional and network edition. They supply predefined project templates with predefined calculations and linkages for many of the most common approaches to QFD. Relationships can be defined in alternative ways, using direct input into a spreadsheet or generate relationship tree diagrams showing measures for each requirement in a graphical tree and branch format. Requirements are linked across as project; changes in one area are reflected throughout the project. The network version of QFD/Capture can be installed on a server and accessed by a number of users simultaneously.

Tool Name: RDD-100 Version 4.1.2

Company Name: Holagent Corporation

Contact detail URL: http://www.holagent.com/

RDD-100 is a Requirements Driven Development (RDD) software suite that uses several mechanisms to aid the user in analyzing and identifying requirements. These include a parser tool that can be defined and developed to help the user identify single or compound requirements. RD-100 allows the user to categorize requirements in a specific manner, the rules for this categorization can be captured and automated. RDD-100 captures and traces requirements using its Element Relationship Attribute (ERA) repository, where each source document, and the text for each requirement, is stored as a separate element. Graphical hierarchies show how individual pieces of data relate to each other and trace back to their sources. The tool can extract requirements from ASCII form documents. RD-100 also provides the user the capability to interactively manipulate and input data through a variety of diagrams including Behavior Diagrams, Hierarchical Views, Functional Flow Diagrams, N2 charts, IDEF0 and Data Flow Diagrams

Tool Name: RDD.COM Version 1.2

Company Name: Holagent Corporation

Contact detail URL: http://www.holagent.com/

RDD.COM is used for complex hardware and information systems design and re-engineering. It provides collaborating teams with the ability to engineer and manage requirements with integrated static and dynamic behavior models. Using RDD.COM throughout the lifecycle, a team can capture, record, and report progress on the development of the requirements. The status of the requirements, assumptions, analyses, issues, decisions, and risk assessments associated with a requirement can be ascertained. RDD.COM provides engineers with a repository in which data and model baselines can be stored, accessed, and compared throughout the lifecycle. Using these baselines, users can:

Capture source requirements
Elicit requirements and use models to clarify expectations
Establish feasibility of alternatives based on resource and cost constraints
Rigorously define and engineer requirements
Analyze effects of system failures
Define and design the behavior of system interfaces
Refine behavior into discrete processes allocate behavior to architectural alternatives
Compare and contrast model and data baselines throughout the entire lifecycle
Re-use sets of engineering data and models
Refine engineering design with increasing levels of detail
Support process-specific engineering environment through an open Public API

Tool Name: Requirements Assistant(TM)

Company Name: Sunny Hills Consultancy BV

Contact detail URL: http://www.requirementsassistant.nl/

Requirements Assistant(TM) is a tool that analyzes requirements, written in a natural language. It detects incompleteness, inconsistency, vagueness, ambiguity in sentences, in paragraphs, and in a set of requirements.

Tool Name: Serena Dimensions RM

Company Name: Serena Software ,Inc.

Contact detail URL: http://www.serena.com/

Product URL: http://www.serena.com/Products/dimensions/dimensions-requirements.html

An essential component of Serena Dimensions 10, Dimensions RM ensures that project teams effectively collect and refine project requirements. Dimensions RM allows enterprises to effectively manage change in requirements during the project lifecycle. Dimensions RM automates requirements management throughout the development lifecycle, making it easy to:

Gather and logically link associated requirements
Collaborate on requirements definitions
Baseline requirements for project milestones
Understand the impact of requirement changes
Link requirements to development projects
Report on requirements definition, baselines, change impact, and traceability

Tool Name: Reconcile Version 2.0

Company Name: Compuware Corporation

Company URL: http://www.compuware.com/

Reconcile is a requirements management tool that uses the MS Word architecture. Reconcile requires minimal initial resource investment and full integration with popular development and testing tools minimizes learning curves and switching tasks. This requirements management tool provides a flexible and easy-to-use requirements model. Pre-defined requirement types are available and easily modified by project or across multiple projects. Reconcile offers a web interface to allow sharing of any Reconcile report across the Internet or an Intranet, using its own integrated reporting and publishing tools. In addition the following functionality is provided:

Track the source of each requirement, including its priority and status.
Correlate open defect issues to users original requirements.
Issues and defects identified during testing or development can be immediately associated with the requirement that is affected, allowing team members to assess the impact.
Testing requirements generated in Reconcile can be used to automatically generate or update a QADirector automated test suite.

Tool Name: Reqtify version 2.1

Company Name: TNI-Software

Company URL: http://www.tni-software.com/

Product URL: http://users.reqtify.tni-software.com/?p=home

Reqtify is a requirements monitoring tool. It takes the formalized requirements produced by the requirements activity and monitors their implementation throughout the rest of the project's lifecycle. Reqtify effectively manages requirements traceability and impact analysis across the project's entire lifecycle, enabling quality development in both hardware and software projects. New features in Reqtify 2.1 include:

Features for collaborative work
Graphical view : zoom, moves and resizing of documents are now allowed
Powerful analysis of multiple word documents
Improvement of the Reports Generation & Customization capabilities
Improvements of the Doors interface
Improvements of the Rhapsody interface

Tool Name: RMTrak

Company Name: RBC Product Development

Company URL: http://www.rbccorp.com/

Product URL: http://www.rmtrak.com/

RMTrak is a requirements management tool that uses a document centric approach that allows users to update the requirements independently from the tool. RMTrak makes use of the MS Word environment to track changes made to requirements, and the facility to designate a requirement manually by visually marking the text within MS Word. RMTrak provides multiple views (matrix, tree, allocation) to allow the user to access the requirements visually. The tool includes basic requirements traceability analysis tools, like the ability to view childless requirements and orphans within an included report. Key features include:

Easy To Use - Proposal teams, program managers, or development team members can learn RMTrak and be up and running in less than one day. There is no formal training required, and RMTrak provides an extensive tutorial and context-sensitive online help files.
Work In Microsoft Word - RMTrak lets you use the familiar and powerful Microsoft Word application to format and edit your documents. You can begin by using existing Microsoft Word documents or by creating new ones.
Document-centric Approach - RMTrak's document-centric approach significantly reduces, and in most cases eliminates, the time many other tools require for typing requirements into the application's database. RMTrak allows you to use your existing documents from various formats supported by Microsoft Word.
Requirements Imports - RMTrak allows you to import data from other requirements management tools.
Server or Workstation - RMTrak can be easily installed on a server for use by multiple individuals or on a stand-alone workstation. With RMTrak, documents don't need to be kept in a central location; however, if more than one person will be viewing the documents, it is recommended that you organize them somewhere on a server that everyone can access.
Low-Cost Implementation - RMTrak's individual seat license is inexpensive, and limited support is free. Additionally, since RMTrak is so easy to use, there's no need for expensive training, which can take up your valuable team members' time as they struggle to learn a difficult tool.
Data Capturing - RMTrak lets you establish a simple requirements management process to capture, organize, and manage entire projects—from concept development to final production.
Attributes Assignment - RMTrak lets you organize and trace requirement details to ensure the proper resources are committed to the project during the requirements development phase. You can establish information relationships between multiple documents, assign attributes to the information, such as task assignment, priority and status, and change these over time to reflect changes in your project. You can link high-level business requirements to more detailed design requirements.
Change Management (Traceability)- RMTrak lets you stay in control of schedules, resources, and deliverables. RMTrak can manage the impact that changes have on your project objectives, and RMTrak can enable team members to understand their responsibilities and the impact of changing requirements on their project. RMTrak lets you trace changes to see how each requirement's changes affect multiple other requirements. This is the key to successful project management.
Flexible Reporting - RMTrak keeps track of your requirements and avoids unnecessary and costly revisions. RMTrak lets you rapidly locate specific information using keyword searches. You can use any of the default reports, including Orphan, Childless, Unallocated, Suspect, Closure and Requirements Summary, and Change reports, or have RBC Product You can use hyperlinks to navigate between your reports and requirements documents.
Tag Filter - Thanks to RMTrak's tag filter, it's easy to list requirements of different projects within the same document, and yet not have them be confused in reports and views. RMTrak's tag filter allows each project to only recognize document tags that were intended for it, ignoring any tags intended for another project. This lets you use a requirements management document for more than one project without hassle or confusion.
SQL Database Queries - RMTrak lets you generate views using SQL queries, in addition to its other views, so you can easily retrieve and view any desired information from the project's database.
Easy Database Recreation - RMTrak's document-centric approach makes rebuilding databases simple. In the unlikely event that a database becomes missing or corrupt, you need only to create a new project in RMTrak then re-import the project's documents.
Flexibility - You can create any type of document, with any format, any structure, and any purpose, and RMTrak can still track the requirements listed in the document. To RMTrak, it doesn't matter if the requirements are presented in tables, bulleted lists, or just mentioned somewhere in a paragraph.
Customization - RMTrak is completely customizable. Unlike many other collaborative requirements management tools, RMTrak lets you configure how you tag and format your documents, how it recognizes tags, how it retrieves the document's number and revision, and more.

Tool Name: RMI (Requirements Management Interface) Version 1.0.4

Company Name: MathWorks

Company URL: http://www.mathworks.com/

Product URL: http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk_r13/help/toolbox/reqmgt/reqmgt.html

MathWorks's Requirements Management Interface allows users to coordinate, track, and implement changes in the design specifications throughout the development cycle. Users can access requirements stored in formal requirements management systems, such as DOORS, or in Microsoft Word, Excel, or HTML-formatted documents, and implement the requirements in MATLAB. RMI provides a graphical user interface called the Navigator that displays a tree-structured directory of all the blocks and subsystems in the users current model. Users use the Navigator to access requirements and their corresponding implementations. The latest version now works with the latest DOORS release, DOORS 5.2, as well as all earlier DOORS versions.

Tool Name: Scenario Plus version 2.1.1

Contact detail URL: http://www.scenarioplus.org.uk/

Scenario Plus generates and models goals, captures, verifies, animates and plays back scenarios. Designed for use by stakeholders who want to describe their requirements to software developers. Scenario Plus is comprised of a set of add-on tools to enable DOORS to be used for scenario-based requirements elicitation and analysis. Scenario plus is also capable of generating test scripts.
The Templates for Documents & Spreadsheets define simple document patterns in different formats (including Word and Excel) to support mission, stakeholder and non-functional requirement analysis on projects.
The Use Case toolkit for DOORS provides a complete set of add-on tools for scenario- based requirements elicitation and analysis with UML Use Cases.
The Diagrams toolkit for DOORS provides editors for a range of systems engineering diagrams. All the diagrams permit full traceability to requirements.
The Extensions toolkit for DOORS provides tools to build project support structures such as Templates, Project Dictionaries, and annotatable World Maps.

Tool Name: SHORE version 2.0

Company Name: SD&M (Software Design and Management) AG

Product URL: http://www.openshore.org/

SHORE (Semantic Hypertext Object REpository) is a hypertext repository that provides a consistent view of content from a diverse set of tools, like other repositories, text documents, program source code etc. Requirements documents (or the content of repositories) are converted to XHTML and enhanced with specific markup, which denotes the relationship between objects defined by the various documents. The converted requirements documents can then be accessed in a variety of ways, including using browsers, using queries on the content of SHORE's object structure by creating report documents from SHORE or simply by dumping the content into text files for further processing. The documents, objects, and relationships are specified using SHORE's own simple meta model specification language which can be used to answer questions like which requirements have been derived from a specific use case? Which test cases check a specific requirement? Which use cases and requirements would be affected if a specific class were changed?
SHORE is developed as an open source project and was initially made available by sd&m under the Common Public License. Applications of SHORE are source code repositories for software development or reengineering projects or in general tools for knowledge management.

Tool Name: Simunicator

Company Name: Simunication Inc.

Contact detail URL: http://www.simunication.com/

Simunicator is a tool for rapidly building high fidelity prototypes and simulations to identify needs and requirements. It is an affordable, powerful, and easy-to-use requirements definition tool. It has functionality for capturing feedback and ensuring creation of simulations in a collaborative way. It is very flexible so can be used with any process including Waterfall, Agile, RUP, etc. and will add value to the process to ensure that projects begin with correct and validated requirements. Simunicator incorporates the following features:

Web Based — Simunicator is completely web based, requiring only a browser to build or view simulations. Customers need not install any special software to view the simulations. Deployment and maintenance is much easier.
Use Case Driven — Users can begin by defining use cases (or scenarios) then adding behavior and user interfaces. Use case actions can be connected to buttons and links to create functional simulations.
WYSIWYG User Interface — Simunicator user interfaces are configured using an in-browser HTML WYSIWYG editor. Users can work in HTML or use the editor to help. Users can plug in their own current widgets, HTML, Java Script and style sheets (CSS). Apache's Velocity syntax is supported in the web pages.
Templates — A selection of templates for horizontal, vertical, tree, tabbed and dynamic template navigations is provided. Users can create reusable templates so whenever a new project is started they can view what the simulation will look like using different templates.
Database Access — A simulation database is provided for quick creation of tables that can be plugged into the simulations. Having data appear in the reports and forms makes a powerful presentation for users who are trying to test drive the simulation.
Logic and Rules — Business logic and rules can be added using scripting so users are not limited to the buttons and clicks in a typical tool GUI. The Beanshell scripting language used is very similar to conventional scripting syntax.
Simple but Powerful — Users can create simulations in minutes to start the communication flowing, then if required build very powerful simulations which access databases, validate users, build PDFs and much more.

Tool Name: Software through Pictures (StP) Version 8.3.1

Company Name: Aonix

Contact detail URL: http://www.aonix.com/

Product URL: http://www.aonix.com/stp.html

StP consists of several tools that link all phases of the project lifecycle including requirements specifications, analysis and design through to application deployment and maintenance. Amongst the family of tools is the Validator/Req tool which models requirements in UML notation. Validator/Req supports automated syntax and semantic checking to make sure the rules of the modeling language are not violated. Validator/Req also checks the entered requirements information for logical and operational correctness. Also included is the StP/UML tool which is a graphical UML based OO modeling environment which automates requirements discovery, analysis, design, and implementation of object-oriented applications. It includes nine graphical editors one of which is the Use-Case editor which allows the user to perform high-level analysis with usage models to identify requirements. Additional features include the ability to generate test cases, testability reports, and requirements-to-test-case traceability matrices. The latest version includes the following new functionality:

Complete UML version 1.3 support
Scalable to dozens or even hundreds of simultaneous users without the need to partition models
Unique additional support for Safety Critical models and real-time, allowing developers to use StP at the highest levels of criticality as well as for conventional projects
Support for Structured Analysis and reverse engineering

Tool Name: Telelogic DOORS

Company Name: Telelogic

Contact detail URL: http://www.telelogic.com/products/doors/index.cfm

Telelogic DOORS®, the market- and technology-leading family of solutions for requirements definition and requirements management, improves quality by optimizing communication and collaboration, and by promoting compliance and verification through the following capabilities:

Intuitive interfaces that encourage all stakeholders, including business users, to actively participate in the requirements process
Scalability for any project, regardless of size or number of users
A flexible, up-to-date, easy-to-use requirements traceability matrix
The most comprehensive support for recording, structuring, managing, and analyzing requirements and their traceability
Unparalleled integration with Telelogic's other solutions and third-party tools to increase requirements visibility and to drive their traceability throughout the development lifecycle

Tool Name: Statestep

Company Name: Statestep

Contact detail URL: http://statestep.com

Statestep is designed to ensure that no unusual scenarios are overlooked in the requirements phase.
A unique user interface makes it possible to systematically consider vast numbers of combinations of circumstances. In its most powerful mode of use, Statestep supports modeling system behaviour as a finite state machine - in a simple form that is immediately understood by all reviewers and allows for easy annotation with informal comments or notes.
Whether used in a specialized or a more general way, Statestep provides continuous interactive feedback on the consistency and completeness of the specification being edited.
Template-based code generation is also available.

Tool Name: TcSE (Teamcenter Systems Engineering) Version 7.0

Company Name: UGS

Contact detail URL: http://www.ugs.com/products/teamcenter/sol_prod/requirements

TCSE is a requirements management tool that includes both Requirements Management and System Architect licenses. The Systems Architect solution gives the people responsible for planning the integrated mechanical, electrical and software product design a powerful tool to create and communicate requirements. The Requirements Management solution delivers product requirements to all of the entitled users who participate in your product lifecycle. Teamcenter brings your customers directly into your extended enterprise and reflects their concerns from the start of your product lifecycle to its conclusion. Version 7 of TcSE includes the following new features:

An intuitive user interface that looks and acts a lot like Windows Explorer and Outlook.
Microsoft Office integrations allow users to interact with requirements information directly from their desktop
Document importing and exporting for requirements capture and generation.
Multi-user group environment that enables users to view and work on requirement concurrently in a controlled way.
Linking and tracing mechanisms like a summary requirement to a specific paragraph in the source document from which is was extracted
Versioning/variant feature that supports a complete requirements-based configuration management capability
Activators enable development teams to capture, automate and enforce processes.
Security protections allow administrators to control user access, information access, and modification privileges.

Tool Name: Truereq PLM Software version 1.1

Company Name: Truereq Inc.

URL: http://www.truereq.com/

Truereq is an ASP-based requirements management tool for collaborative Product Lifecycle Management. Using Truereq, you can manage your product development process in a centralized workspace shared by all your team members. Truereq's integrated toolkit helps you focus on making better products, more quickly, efficiently, and at a dramatically reduced cost.
Competitive Advantage

Affordable ASP & Enterprise Solutions
Integrates with Existing Processes, Methodologies and Tools
Collaboration, Workflow and Data Aggregation

The TRUEreq environment provides a centralized repository for information and a forum for communication. It is an easy to use set of tools and a bi-directional XML platform that integrates with existing solutions. TRUEreq allows for insight into and control of the product development process to help make better, quicker decisions yielding successful products.

Tool Name: VeroTrace

Company Name: Verocel

Contact detail URL: http://www.verocel.com/verotrace.htm

VeroTrace is a requirements traceability management tool for managing system requirements, software requirements, high and low-level requirements. It can also associate various artefacts such as source code, design components, test procedures, functional test results, coverage results, and all review filenames that support all requirements.
VeroTrace is also a life cycle traceability management tool that allows you to produce, manage, and deliver all the data that supports software certification/approval. VeroTrace combines requirements; CM configured artifacts; and all reviews with auto-generated HTML traceability information creating what is, essentially, a local website that hyperlinks all life cycle traceability data. In fact, VeroTrace first generates the traceability information entirely as XML files. Its traceability generation procedures then convert all the XML traceability files to HTML files using XSL stylesheets so the traceability can be viewed with any browser.

Tool Name: Visual Information Portal (VIP) Version

Company Name: Future Tech Systems, Inc.

Contact detail URL: http://www.future-tech.com/

Product URL: http://www.future-tech.com/prod01.htm

Envision VIP provides a fully extensible database for housing each piece of a document. This includes phrases or words that a user uses in a document. Envision automatically keeps track of all key terms (e.g. requirements and system elements) and all references to them. Envision VIP provides a completely customizable reporting facility that provides unlimited ways of viewing and building information such as indexes or glossaries. In addition, it provides a custom query facility that produces Excel type spreadsheet reports, a data repository browser facility, and a repository toolbox. Now you can synergistically model your enterprise with the ENVISION Visual Information Portal (VIP). Accurately modeling these complex domains is crucial to shaping a viable re-engineering agenda.
Intuitive models allow you to quickly capture your "current state" metrics as a baseline against which future changes can be evaluated. These "live" dynamic visual models support on-going strategic planning and control within the organization. They can also be used to provide multimedia training, executive information systems, project planning, development, and beyond.
ENVISION from Future Tech Systems is widely used by business consultants and analysts in major organizations for:

Documentation of processes, services, systems and organizations
Enterprise resource planning and control
Documentation management and control
Process improvement
Graphical executive information systems
Systems analysis and design
Data modeling
Network modeling
Model based training

Tool Name: XTie-RT (Cross Tie Requirements Tracer) Version 3.1.02

Company Name: Teledyne Brown Engineering

Contact detail URL : http://www.tbe.com/

Product URL : http://www.tbe.com/products/software/xtie/

XTie-RT is a client-server based application that manages requirements. Amongst other things like functional analysis, risk analysis, and testing it provides automatic parsing of requirements using the user-defined keywords that meet the keyword specification. XTie-RT is built on a proprietary database which supports a point and click query mechanism. Up to 128 simultaneous users operating on multiple projects are allowed. It can be configured to support a functional or OO project based methodology. Traceability functions include support for normal parent/child links to manage requirements and support for peer links between items in the database and general documents to provide an audit trail showing compliance to quality standards or contractual conditions.
This work is copyright ?1995 - 2005 Atlantic Systems Guild, but may be adapted for your internal use provided copyright is acknowledged. Please let us know what you are using it for.

NFC : Future of communication

2012-06-25T10:13:00.001+05:30

WHAT IS NFC ?

Near field communication (NFC) is a set of standards for smart phones and similar devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity, usually no more than a few centimeters. Present and anticipated applications include contactless transactions, data exchange, and simplified setup of more complex communications such as Wi-Fi. Communication is also possible between an NFC device and an unpowered NFC chip, called a "tag" It builts on RFID Systems

NFC allows you to share small payloads of data between an NFC tag and an Android-powered device, or between two Android-powered devices. Tags can range in complexity. Simple tags offer just read and write semantics, sometimes with one-time-programmable areas to make the card read-only. More complex tags offer math operations, and have cryptographic hardware to authenticate access to a sector. The most sophisticated tags contain operating environments, allowing complex interactions with code executing on the tag. The data stored in the tag can also be written in a variety of formats, but many of the Android framework APIs are based around a NFC Forum standard called NDEF.

WHAT IS NDEF ?

NDEF : NFC Data Exchange Format

There are two major uses cases when working with NDEF data and Android:

Reading NDEF data from an NFC tag

Beaming NDEF messages from one device to another with Android Beam™

Reading NDEF data from an NFC tag is handled with the tag dispatch system, which analyzes discovered NFC tags, appropriately categorizes the data, and starts an application that is interested in the categorized data. An application that wants to handle the scanned NFC tag can declare an intent filter and request to handle the data.

WHAT IS Android Beam™ ?

The Android Beam™ feature allows a device to push an NDEF message onto another device by physically tapping the devices together. This interaction provides an easier way to send data than other wireless technologies like Bluetooth, because with NFC, no manual device discovery or pairing is required. The connection is automatically started when two devices come into range. Android Beam is available through a set of NFC APIs, so any application can transmit information between devices. For example, the Contacts, Browser, and YouTube applications use Android Beam to share contacts, web pages, and videos with other devices.

HOW NFC WORKS ?

NFC works using magnetic induction: a reader emits a small electric current, which creates a magnetic field that in turn bridges the physical space between the devices. That field is received by a similar coil in the client device, where it is turned back into electrical impulses to communicate data such as identification number, status information, or any other information. So-called 'passive' NFC tags use the energy from the reader to encode their response, while 'active' or 'peer-to-peer' tags have their own power source and respond to the reader using their own electromagnetic fields.

Like RFID, NFC works in the 13.56MHz radiofrequency spectrum, using less than 15mA of power to communicate data over distances that are usually far less than 20cm. Tags typically store between 96 and 512 bytes of data and transfer data using at speeds of 106Kb/s, 212Kb/s, 424Kb/s or 848Kb/s – enough to move small pieces of information virtually instantaneously, as is essential in high-volume transport applications.

WHERE NFC CAN BE USED ?

- As an RFID Tag Scanner-reading information embedded in form of RFID tags in media such as posters, billboards, brochures, leaflets, menus and other similar promotional or informative material.

- As a Debit/Credit Card Substitute

- For Data Exchange

- For Bluetooth Pairing or WiFi Authentication

FUTURE OF NFC

- Personal Payments-NFC will enable you to give your daughter her pocket money simply by touching your smartphone to hers,

- Keyless Security-Your NFC-enabled mobile device will act as the key to the locks on your car, your safe and your house.

- National, International and Corporate Identification-NFC-enabled devices will be used to store to replace your social security/national identity card, drivers license, employer card and passport, with added security measures in form of biometric scanning.

OHA : Open Handset Alliance

2012-06-25T09:40:00.003+05:30

Mobile operators

Software companies

Commercialization companies

Semiconductor companies

Handset manufacturers

Building a better phone for consumers

The Open Handset Alliance™ is a group of mobile and technology leaders who share this vision for changing the mobile experience for consumers. Android is open source; it can be liberally extended to incorporate new cutting edge technologies as they emerge. The platform will continue to evolve as the developer community works together to build innovative mobile applications.

Innovating in the open
Each member of the Open Handset Alliance is strongly committed to greater openness in the mobile ecosystem. Increased openness will enable everyone in our industry to innovate more rapidly and respond better to consumers’ demands.
Making the vision a reality
Android is not just a blueprint for the faraway future, but a complete platform that will give mobile operators, handset manufacturers, and developers everything they need to build innovative devices, software and services. OHA members are committed to commercially deploy handsets and services using the Android Platform.

Breaking down application boundaries

Android breaks down the barriers to building new and innovative applications. For example, a developer can combine information from the web with data on an individual’s mobile phone — such as the user’s contacts, calendar, or geographic location — to provide a more relevant user experience. With Android, a developer can build an application that enables users to view the location of their friends and be alerted when they are in the vicinity giving them a chance to connect.

Fast & easy application development

Android provides access to a wide range of useful libraries and tools that can be used to build rich applications. For example, Android enables developers to obtain the location of the device, and allows devices to communicate with one another enabling rich peer–to–peer social applications. In addition, Android includes a full set of tools that have been built from the ground up alongside the platform providing developers with high productivity and deep insight into their applications.

iPhone 5: What's in In-Cell Display Technology?

2012-06-25T09:40:00.001+05:30

Apple might be upgrading the display technology in the iPhone 5 (or iPhone 6, or “new iPhone,” or whatever they end up calling it). The new iPhone, would be getting in-cell touch-screen technology that would enable Apple to make the next iPhone thinner and lighter than the iPhone 4S (which is already thicker than many Android-based Smartphone’s.)

The current iPhone’s screen consists of three layers – glass, a touch sensor, and the LCD display. The use of in-cell technology would merge the touch sensor and LCD into a single layer, saving roughly half a millimeter in thickness.

Apple will shave off another half millimeter of thickness by making the battery wider (and therefore thinner). Furthermore, the glass rear panel on the iPhone 4S will be replaced with metal – possibly liquid-metal? – saving another half millimeter.

Apple will be reducing the next iPhone’s thickness by about 1.5 millimeters. While that doesn’t sound like much, it becomes a bit more significant when you realize that the iPhone 4S is only 9.3 millimeters thick.

There are several reasons for Apple to make a move like this. For one thing, Apple has shown a strong preference for making successive generations of iOS devices thinner and lighter. Though the addition of 4G LTE made that impossible with the new iPad, the switch to in-cell touch-screens could be enough to allow it in the new iPhone.

For another, the iPhone’s competitors have all shown the same tendency. Android phones are routinely getting thinner and thinner. With the bulk of the competition now down into the 7-8 millimeter range, the iPhone is one of the thicker Smartphone’s on the market.

The use of in-cell touch-screen tech would allow Apple to streamline the iPhone production process. The number of items required at the time the display components are bonded together would drop from six to three, and the steps in display production would drop from eight to five. The switch to in-cell technology has the potential to reduce the production costs for the new iPhone by as much as 20%. Whether those savings in production cost will be passed on to the consumer (as a reduced sticker price) or the carriers (as reduced subsidies) are uncertain.