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Google Similarity Disatnce : A Project Report

2011-12-19T05:02:00.003+05:30

Google Similarity Distance
-A Project Report

This project report includes a detailed analysis and implementation of the Google Similarity Distance algorithm given by R. Cilibrasi and P. Vitanyi in their research paper .

Further details about the project and the algorithm can be found here.

Follow the blog for more breakthrough and innovative technologies.

'Let It Snow' Google Easter Egg Will Frost Up Your Search Results

2011-12-19T04:19:00.006+05:30

When searchers type "let it snow" into Google, their wish is the search engine's command.

Google's newest Easter Egg drops a flurry of snowflakes over the results page and quickly frosts up the screen when you query "let it snow." You can wipe away the frost by using your curser as an ice scraper or pressing the "Defrost" button, which appears in place of the blue "Search" button.

It was hard to imagine what Google would come up with after "do a barrel roll," a search goodie discovered by Google users in November. Here's how the Easter Egg works: When you query Google with the phrase "do a barrel roll", a reference to the 1997 videogame "Star Fox 64," the whole search screen would flip over like a fighter pilot executing an in-flight barrel roll in the wild blue yonder.

Of course, Google is no stranger to whimsy. The company has changed its logo over 1,000 times to honor special events such as artists' birthdays and lunar eclipses. Now, fans of these Google Doodles can even get them printed on t-shirts, skateboards and other items at the brand-new Doodle Store.

While you can't get "let it snow" printed on a Google-branded mug, you can check out this new Easter Egg in the images (below), or head to Google.com to see it firsthand.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

UPDATE: Querying Google for "Hanukkah" will also reveal another holiday-themed surprise (below).

Check out the slideshow to see the coolest Google Easter Eggs ever.

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Harald Haas: Wireless Data From Every Lightbulb

2011-12-19T04:12:00.001+05:30

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In this special year-end collaboration,TED and The Huffington Post are excited to count down 18 great ideas of 2011, featuring the full TEDTalk with original blog posts that we think will shape 2012. Watch, engage and share these groundbreaking ideas as they are unveiled one-by-one, including never-seen-before TEDTalk premieres. Standby, the countdown is underway!

Watch the University of Edinburgh's Harald Haas discuss how future wireless data can be transmitted through lightbulbs.

When we use smartphones or tablet PCs to surf the internet, check emails, share pictures, engage in social networking, or store information in a cloud, we make use of wireless communications technology.

Traditionally, all the information we move around with these devices is transmitted using radio frequency spectrum. The more data we generate, the more radio frequency spectrum we need.

It is forecast that by the year 2015, we will transmit six exabytes -- six billion, billion bytes -- every month through wireless networks. This is a ten-fold increase on the amount of data we send now.

In order to meet this increased demand, we need either 10 times more radio frequency spectrum for commercial wireless networks, or we have to make the existing radio frequency spectrum 10 times more efficient.

The first is impossible -- most of the available radio frequency spectrum is already used. The second option is difficult to achieve, as existing wireless technology is very sophisticated, and it has been shown that further improvements are often offset by unmanageable complexity.

Therefore, we are heading to a saturation point in terms of how efficiently we can use the radio frequency spectrum. The only way out of this is to find new ways to transmit data wirelessly. Fortunately, the electromagnetic spectrum not only incorporates the radio frequency spectrum, but also includes the visible light spectrum, the best know transmitter of which is the sun.

In the past we used incandescent light bulbs in our homes and offices. This technology is more than 100-years-old and, as such, is hugely inefficient. In the past decade, there have been massive developments in the use of light emitting diodes (LEDs). Since LEDs are far more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs, they are at the heart of the latest generation of lights. In fact, research by my team at the University of Edinburgh has shown that, if all the world's incandescent light bulbs were replaced by LED, the energy saved would be equivalent to that produced by more than 100 nuclear power stations.

However, this is not the only advantage of LEDs. These lights are semiconductor devices similar to transistors, which are commonly found in devices such as TVs, laptops or smartphones. Like transistors, LEDs can be switched on and off very quickly.

We have harnessed this feature to develop novel techniques that enable ordinary LED light bulbs to wirelessly transmit data at speeds many times faster than WiFi routers. We have named the new technology Li-Fi (light fidelity) which we now commercialize via the university spin-out company VLC Ltd.

In our lab, under ambient light conditions, we are able to achieve data speeds of 130 megabits per second. If all light bulbs were able to do this, it would create a simple, energy-efficient solution to the lack of available radio frequency spectrum for future wireless broadband communication. The new Li-Fi technology utilizes existing infrastructures and as a result the installation costs are minimal, let alone the reduced cost of the technology as it does not require an antenna.

On top of this, there are other advantages to this technology. Light does not penetrate walls, and so internet signals cannot be intercepted outside the room in which they are transmitted, which enhances security. Light also travels through water, and so short-range underwater communication is possible. For instance, divers could share pictures, or remotely operated vehicles could exchange information.

Light is inherently safe and can be used in places where radio frequency communication is often deemed problematic, such as in aircraft cabins or hospitals. So visible light communication not only has the potential to solve the problem of lack of spectrum space, but can also enable novel applications.

In the not-too-distant future, a day in the life of an average person, whom we'll call Sally, could look like this:

When Sally switches on the light in the morning, she gets the latest news flashed on her smartphone. From the breakfast table she sends a few emails through the table light.
Sally gets into her car and drives to work. On the way, a cat crosses the street and she has to brake hard. Her LED backlights tell the car behind to slow down even before the driver has a chance to brake -- an accident is avoided.
Sally stops in front of a traffic light that operates using LEDs. While showing red, the traffic light is able to send a signal to switch off the engine in Sally's car, reducing CO2 emissions. The traffic light also communicates with the navigator inside the car, and helps Sally avoid a traffic jam ahead.
In the office, Sally's fast internet access is provided through the LED ceiling lights. She has internet access in all meeting rooms, but no-one on the street outside can intercept the signals.
After work she decides to go to an art gallery to pass the time until she meets Tom, her new boyfriend, for a date at a restaurant downtown. The LED spotlights in the gallery illuminate the pictures and provide information about them.
Sally leaves the art gallery and, on the way downtown, she passes some shops. LED lights in the shop windows broadcast offers. She buys a pair of shoes on sale.
The restaurant is in a large shopping mall. Sally's navigation system guides her there. Inside the mall, LED ceiling lights take over the task of guiding her to the restaurant.
Once inside the restaurant, LED table lights beam the menu card onto Sally's smart-phone. She enjoys her meal and leaves a recommendation on the restaurant's home page, using the connection from the same table light.
By the time Sally leaves the restaurant it is dark. She is in a good mood after her date. On the way back to her car, she leaves a little message at a street light, which acts as a local message board, saying "Sally loves Tom" -- just as in the past she might have carved the same into a tree.

Source : HuffingtonPost

Hands On: iTwin

2011-12-07T18:40:00.001+05:30

The USB Drive Reinvented - that’s the bold claim of iTwin, a USB dongle for Mac and PC which allows remote connection of two computers without the need for the usual network headaches. Plug one iTwin into your first computer at home, the second into the remote computer, share files and folders. Remote file sharing for the masses? Sounds too good to be true? Let’s find out.

Swap €99/$99 for your iTwin courtesy of Amazon or the company’s online store, and it’ll land on your doormat in a matter of days. As seen increasingly nowadays, iTwin’s packaging designers have spent far too much time in the Apple store, as the product’s branding (and indeed name) leans a little too heavily in the direction of Cupertino – black and white? Check? Heavy use ofMyriad Pro? Check. For a product that only recently announced support for OS X, then the brand design inspiration is a little cheeky.

Open up the pack, and you’ll find a Getting Started guide and the iTwin itself. At first glance, it looks like someone has glued two USB drives together at the bottom. Indeed, that’s almost exactly what has happened – except for glue, read a proprietary connector that looks a little like a fat SATA connector. iTwin is in fact a pair of USB dongles that connect snugly during initial configuration, and then pull apart easily for remote use. One side stays connected to your local computer, the other connects to your mobile computer. That’s the principle.

Previous versions of the device shipped exclusively with Windows software, although since September, both Mac and PC users have been supported with a plug and play experience. Connect the iTwin to your computer, and the device’s software will install with minimal input required from the user. Our review unit arrived without the Mac software, however. If required, Mac users can download the OS X installer from the company’s website and install manually, if required. It’s a little clunky, with a two stage process required to install the software, plus an automatic download to ensure you’re running the latest version, but donate a few minutes and the device should install without incident.

Once installed, the iTwin may need to be disconnected and re-connected to restart the device, after which it can be configured.

You’ll be asked to set a name for your iTwin Pair, and importantly, a code with which you can disable the connection – handy if you lose one of the iTwin connectors when out and about. Registering the device with your email address will ensure the kill code is sent to you.

Using iTwin

Once configured, you’ll be presented a folder named iTwin Local Files, into which you place any file or folder that you wish to share remotely.

Detach one half of the iTwin, and connect it to your remote computer. It will automatically connect to your local computer and (after a short pause) present those files stored in the iTwin Local Files on your computer at home. No need for domain name setups, DNS configuration, port forwarding – it simply just works.

Any file you place into your respective iTwin folder whilst out on the road will then by synced back to your home computer.

File access speeds from that home computer are going to vary based on your internet connection speed at home, and of course, your remote network speed. Testing the connection over a (reasonably decent) 3G remote connection and a half meg uplink at home was not a great experience, in truth. That’s probably not the iTwin’s fault, but rather a product of the UK’s lousy Internet backbone (especially out in the villages).From plugging in the iTwin, it took about a minute for the file listing to be displayed, and about 50 seconds for a 6 Meg file to be transferred and opened. So, if you have a poor Internet connection (particularly the upload speed) then a cloud storage service like Dropbox may be a better option.

Over remote Wi-Fi however (for example, in a coffee shop or hotel guest network), iTwin works a treat – files were available within 5-10 seconds of plugging in and that same 6 Meg file was available in just 10 seconds. No quibbles on performance here.

Speeds aside, let’s be clear, the amazing this about iTwin is that it works without effort. It’s perfect for your non-geek friends and family who are looking for a remote file access solution – a couple of clicks to set up, then simply plug and play. For the security conscious, all data shared between the iTwin dongles is protected with 256-bit AES encryption, and where possible, compressed before transfer to optimise speeds. Each time the two halves of the iTwin are plugged into a computer, they create a shared random 256-bit AES key, which resides only on the two halves of the paired iTwin, and not on their host computers. Before allowing any data to be transferred, both halves of the iTwin are authenticated by iTwin’s own servers

Verdict

For those seeking a convenient, robust and fabulously easy remote access experience with a home computer, iTwin certainly fits the bill. Okay, there’s a cost for the device which needed be spent by the tech savvy, and performance varies depending on your home broadband speeds, but if you’ve never heard of the words “port forward” and you need a way to share and access files from home when you’re out and about, then you should definitely take a look.

Source: WeGotServed

When to buy an Android tablet and when to buy a Kindle Fire

2011-11-30T19:40:00.001+05:30

Summary: Should you get an Android tablet like the Galaxy Tab or, well, an Android-based tablet like the Kindle Fire? Read this article to find out.

I’ve been using my Kindle Fire more and more over the last week, and my wife recently got hers as well. I’m getting familiar with a machine that’s not half bad, but also not perfect.

Ever since I wrote those two articles, I’ve apparently become the go-to guy among my friends and neighbors for holiday tablet purchases. The “should I get an iPad or should I get a Kindle” question is easy, because they are such different devices.

The one that I’m asked even more, though, is whether to get an Android tablet like the Galaxy Tab or, well, an Android-based tablet like the Kindle Fire. The confusion is that since they’re both based on Android, what’s the right choice?

So, let’s clarify things a bit. The Kindle Fire is to Android like Mac OS X is to UNIX. The underlying OS for the Kindle Fire is Android (which, okay, is based on Linux, which itself is based on UNIX, sigh). But unless you hack your Kindle, you’ll never see a traditional Android user interface.

So, then, let’s get that over-with. You can buy a $199 Kindle Fire, hack it, and run a generic Android distribution on it, and it then becomes something of an Android tablet. But you have to want to do the hacking, have the time, have the technical chops, and not mind if you break stuff. Basically, if you want to tinker fer cheap, then the Kindle Fire might be fun.

Really, though, the question of Android vs. Kindle becomes more of what you want to use your tablet for and how much you want to spend. While the Kindle Fire is pretty inexpensive, it has some serious functional limitations. It doesn’t have Bluetooth, so an external keyboard is either unlikely or very hacky. It doesn’t have a camera. It has relatively little storage and RAM. And, unless you hack it, it doesn’t have access to the main Android app store.

A typical (if more expensive) Android tablet has all those things. So, if you want a tablet for general purpose use, if you want to take it on the road to write or edit video or photos, you’ll want something with more power than the Kindle. Essentially, if you want to produce content or have a general-purpose tablet, you’ll want an Android tablet, and not the Kindle.

If, on the other hand, you want a tablet to consume content, and especially if you’re very comfortable with the Amazon ecosystem like my wife and me, then you may want the Kindle Fire. In other words, if you want a backlit Kindle you can read in the dark, that’ll also do some other stuff, then buy the Kindle Fire.

We have an iPad. We don’t use it as much as most families, because I do most of my couch-reading on a large-screen HDTV. I’m also writing this on that screen. But my wife uses the iPad on the treadmill (she says it’s the perfect treadmill tablet), she uses it to watch knitting videos, and I use it to power my teleprompter during interviews so I can look straight at the person I’m interviewing, rather than at a monitor.

By contrast, I use the Kindle Fire in bed, to read and occasionally watch Netflix videos. I also, sometimes, use it to carry around and read appliance repair manuals PDFs in one hand, while holding a tool in the other, trying to get something or other working in our new house. The Kindle is light enough for easy one-handed use, which is great for reading repair manuals.

So, assuming you’re happily in the Android ecosystem (vs, say, the iOS world), get a Kindle Fire if you want a cheap consumption device, and get a real Android tablet if you want to do real work with Android.

Source: ZDnet

Samsung Galaxy S2 vs Samsung Galaxy Note vs Samsung Galaxy Nexus

2011-11-30T19:36:00.003+05:30

Samsung's built some incredibly good mobiles recently, making its Galaxy range of smart phones a massive player in the tech world. But of the Samsung Galaxy S2, theSamsung Galaxy Nexus and the Samsung Galaxy Note, which Galaxy is deserving of your cash? Let's meet the mobiles that will be vying for our adoration.

Samsung Galaxy S2

The Samsung Galaxy S2 is an absolute beast, and when it came out earlier this year it proved itself to be the best Android phone in the universe. While other phones have grown bigger since, at the time we were blown away by the 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, and dazzled by its 1.2GHz dual-core processor. But that was months ago! Does the S2 still look so fresh today?

Samsung Galaxy Note

On the off-chance you didn't think the Galaxy S2 was big enough, the Note will certainly sort you out. The display on this monster mobile measures a mammoth 5.3 inches, and it's something of an animal on the inside too, with a 1.4GHz dual-core processor running the show.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus has a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and a 5-megapixel camera, alongside a 4.65-inch display. That's fine, but what really sets this phone apart is that it's running Android 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, the newest version of Android. Does that make it worth picking up? Or will a meddlesome volume bug prevent it from finding glory?

Design

The Galaxy Nexus boasts a rounded display, adorned with black gloss and kept looking minimal by a lack of physical buttons. Instead you control the Nexus using three on-screen buttons. It's reasonably slim at 8.9mm thick and it's impressively light at 135g, but we're not blown away by the back plate, which is grey with a textured finished. The bulging spot where the camera pokes out is a little funny-looking too.

The Note is a tad classier, with a curved back and a camera that's flush to the casing. It's 9.7mm slim and 178g, which makes it portable on paper, but you'll likely struggle to fit the Note in your hands, let alone your pocket. There's a serious design no-no going on here too -- Samsung's hidden a cheeky stylus in the bottom of the Note, which is useful for jotting down notes or sketching bowls of fruit, but will almost certainly get lost.

The Samsung Galaxy S2 looks as good as it did when we first snatched it out of its box earlier in the year. It's under 9mm thin and weighs 115g, making it lighter than its Galaxy rivals. The 4.3-inch screen still makes a striking impression, and while some have complained that the case feels rather plasticky, we think the phone itself feels sturdy. It looks and feels fantastic -- we're throwing this one the S2's way.

Design winner: Samsung Galaxy S2

Hardware

The Galaxy S2 blew our tiny minds when it first arrived on the scene, thanks to a dual-core 1.2GHz processor that proved brilliant for apps, games and playing video. The screen was similarly amazing, liquifying our ocular bulbs with the brightness pumped out by its 4.3-inch Super Amoled Plus display.

Almost impossibly, Samsung also squeezed an 8-megapixel camera into the S2's slender chassis, making it an all-around hardware powerhouse.

For a month or so, anyway -- then other smart phones equalled the S2's hardware chops. The Galaxy Nexus goes further than the S2, with a 4.65-inch display that as well as being bigger, boasts a stonkingly high 1,280x720 pixel resolution.

Everything on this panel comes out looking crystal clear, so get ready to be impressed when you fire up a video or web page, and a 1.2GHz dual-core processor keeps everything running smoothly.

But the Galaxy Nexus has a slight hardware downside -- its camera has a meagre 5-megapixel resolution. We were impressed by the stills and video it managed to produce though, so it's not worth writing the Nexus off completely on that front. The Nexus has a 16GB capacity, and you can't expand that using a microSD card.

The Galaxy Note is an absolute hardware monster. Around the back you'll find an 8-megapixel camera, and underneath the bonnet hums an alarmingly potent 1.4GHz dual-core processor that outpaced the Galaxy S2 in our benchmark tests. Using the phone is like sailing through a sea of silk, with apps opening at lightning speed.

The display on offer here is absolutely ginormous at 5.3 inches. In fact, we wouldn't blame you at all if you dismissed the Galaxy Note for being simply too massive. The screen resolution is a touch higher than the Galaxy Nexus' at 1,280x800 pixels, but because the screen is so much bigger it has a lower dpi (dots per inch). It still looks crisp, clear and really colourful though.

Brimming with speedy components and with a screen big enough to eat your dinner off of, the Galaxy Note dominates when it comes to hardware.

Hardware winner: Samsung Galaxy Note

Software

While all three of these phones are running Android, one of them is different. For while the S2 and the Note are powered by version 2.3 of Google's mobile operating system (also known as Gingerbread), the Galaxy Nexus is more advanced, and arrives running Android 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich.

That improved operating system brings visual refinements, and navigating through the phone is handled by three on-screen buttons, rather than any physical keys. Tapping one of those virtual buttons brings up a new multi-tasking menu, which stacks all the apps you've got running up the screen. Also new are folder refinements, and the ability to unlock your phone with your face.

The other major strength of the Galaxy Nexus is that it's running a vanilla version of Android, whereas the Note and S2 are both running a Samsung-tweaked edition of Android. The benefit of using a version that Samsung hasn't fiddled with is that when updates for Android arrive, you'll get them quicker because you don't have to wait for Samsung to squeeze its custom skin over that new version.

That's not to mention the fact that both the S2 and the Note come with loads of Samsung-installed bloatware apps you almost certainly won't want, and would rather delete as soon as possible.

But right now there's a serious problem with the Galaxy Nexus. A bug means that the phone spontaneously drops volume, meaning you miss speech during phone calls, and can miss texts or other notifications in the meantime.

We've been thoroughly testing the Nexus, and it seems that the bug rears its ugly head when you're connected over a 900MHz 2G connection. Networks in the UK that operate on that frequency include Vodafone and O2, as well as Tesco Mobile, giffgaff, Asda Mobile and BT Mobile.

For an analysis of the bug, read our tests. Google has told us a fix is incoming, so hopefully the issue will be resolved soon, at which point the Galaxy Nexus will definitely be winning in the software category. In the meantime though, we're going to call this one a draw between the Galaxy S2 and the Note.

Software winner: Samsung Galaxy S2 and Samsung Galaxy Note (draw)

Tiebreak

It's a tie! So we're going to have to decide between the Samsung Galaxy S2 and the Note.

We weren't impressed by the Note's battery life -- that massive screen appears to guzzle juice, and we got less than 12 hours of use from a full charge, even with moderate use. The S2, meanwhile, is decent when it comes to battery life. No smart phone is great when it comes to surviving away from the mains, but based on our tests the S2 should at least last you a full day's use.

The other issue is that the enormous dimensions won't suit everyone. Most people will probably prefer a smart phone that will fit easily into your pockets or handbag. Size isn't everything, y'know.

Overall winner: Samsung Galaxy S2

Source: Crave Cnet

iPhone and Surface: The moment Apple and Microsoft diverged

2011-11-30T19:36:00.001+05:30

By Jason Hiner

Jason Hiner is the Editor in Chief of TechRepublic. He writes about the products, people, and ideas that are revolutionizing business with technology.

In June 2007, both Apple and Microsoft were poised to reinvent computing. Only one of them delivered, and it changed the destiny of both companies.

When the news broke recently about Microsoft launching an $8,400 version of its multitouch tabletop, the Microsoft Surface, I couldn’t help but shake my head and remember how much promise the Surface had when it was first unveiled over four years ago at the D5 Conference.

That was the same D5 Conference where Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs made their historic joint appearance (right). But, in retrospect, the Jobs-Gates interview wasn’t the only historic thing about D5. If there was a single moment where the destinies of Microsoft and Apple diverged, it was D5.

Nearly all of the buzz of D5 was centered around two products: 1.) The Microsoft Surface, which Steve Ballmer unveiled to the public on the opening day of the event, and 2.) The iPhone, which Apple had announced earlier in the year and which was about to go on sale a month later.

There was a sense that these two products were ushering in a new era in computing where multitouch devices would finally displace the old keyboard and mouse as the easiest and most common way for the masses to interact with computers. That optimism would later get tempered among technophiles — especially when tablets launched a few years later — but, at the time, multitouch had the tech world dreaming big dreams.

Tech enthusiasts were already anticipating that Apple would eventually bring the iPhone’s touchscreen interface to the iPod and to an Apple tablet (there were already rumors). Of course, Apple did both — the iPod Touch and the iPad — and they turned into wildly popular products. Some even suggested that Apple would turn Macs into touchscreen devices. That never happened, but with oversized trackpads, Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion,” and a full array of new touch gestures, Apple has taken some baby steps toward bringing multitouch to the traditional computer.

It may be difficult to believe today, but at the time of D5 it was generally expected that Microsoft would take the Surface and run with it to build a line of multitouch products to revolutionize desktop computing. It looked like the two big computing giants who had done battle at the birth of the PC were about to go head-to-head again to take the PC to whole new level

For Microsoft’s part, while the tech world was jazzed about the Surface, the excitement wasn’t about the Surface itself, but the fact that Microsoft was working to embed computers into natural surfaces so that the future of the PC might soon break out of the model of dedicated machines sitting on top of a traditional desk.

“The view is that every horizontal and vertical surface will have a projector,” said Gates at D5. “Your desk can be a surface that you can sit and manipulate things.” In other words, the desk itself would become the computer instead of the computer sitting on top of it.

Unfortunately, that vision turned out to be too abstract and expensive to implement. The Surface itself barely trickled its way into the market, mostly in a few casinos in Las Vegas (until the recent news about broader availability). Microsoft never translated the Surface’s technology to its core product lines. The company’s one big multitouch project turned out to be the HP TouchSmart line of touchscreen appliances, which no one ever really figured out what to do with.

Microsoft would later bring multitouch devices like the Zune and Windows Phone 7 to market, but these were essentially “me too” products that followed in the footsteps of Apple’s devices. Microsoft completely missed its big opportunity to take the PC market by storm with multitouch.

In the meantime, Apple has sold over 250 million iOS devices — iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad — and overtaken Microsoft as the world’s most valuable technology company.

Although the divergence between Apple and Microsoft began at D5 in June 2007, when both companies had a promising multitouch future, it took years for the events to play themselves out. It wasn’t until three years later on May 26, 2010 when Apple ($222 billion) passed Microsoft ($219 billion) in market value (a.k.a. market capitalization) that the tech world did a double-take and realized that Apple’s decade-long comeback was no fluke. It had turned the tables on its old nemesis.

To put this in perspective, when Gates and Jobs shared the stage at D5, Microsoft was worth about $300 billion and Apple was worth about $100. As I write this article (November 21, 2011), Microsoft is valued at $210 billion and Apple is worth $343 billion. Take a look at the chart below, which shows the market value of Microsoft and Apple, from June 2007 to September 2011. (I recorded the market cap in three-month increments based on the stock price on the first day of the month.)

Some of you will say that the stock market is not necessarily a fair indicator of the value of the two companies. After all, the stock market is a future indicator. It is totally based on how the public feels about the future of a company. Fair enough, then let’s look at the quarterly revenue of the two companies.

What we find is a similar story. In June 2007, Microsoft was making about $14 billion per quarter while Apple was making $5 billion per quarter. In Q3 2010 — the quarter after Apple passed Microsoft in market cap — Apple also passed Microsoft in quarterly revenue with $20 billion for the quarter compared to Microsoft’s $16 billion. The disparity has only increased since then. In the most recent quarter, Q3 2011, Microsoft made $17 billion and Apple made $28 billion. In the chart below I’ve compiled quarterly revenue for the two companies for every quarter since Q2 2007 when Jobs and Gates did their thing at D5.

All that said and even with tablets eating away at the PC business, I don’t think things are totally hopeless for Microsoft in terms of innovating in multitouch. Its vision of touch-based surfaces was simply an idea that was ahead of its time, and there’s evidence that there are still people inside Microsoft thinking about and working on this stuff.

But, the company still desperately needs a product leader. My ZDNet colleague Ed Bott and others seem to think Windows chief Steve Sinofsky is that guy, but I’m not convinced yet that Sinofsky is a breakthrough innovator. I haven’t seen anything in Windows 8 that makes me think it will change the way people use computers for the better. I still think Microsoft’s biggest opportunity is to grab leadership in PC-smartphone convergence, even though I doubt the company will have the courage to do it since it would mean potentially cannibalizing some short-term Windows sales. But, if Microsoft doesn’t make that kind of bold move, it certainly won’t be in the same league as Apple again, at least not any time soon.

Source: TechRepublic

London Conference on CyberSpace: The Biggest Cyber Attacks Of All Time

2011-11-03T20:12:00.001+05:30

By Ewan Palmer

Ministers, tech executives and internet activists from around the world have gathered in London for a Conference on Cyberspace, to discuss how to tackle security threats and crime on the Internet without stifling economic opportunities or freedom of speech.

Representatives of 60 nations gather to discuss how to tackle the rising levels of cybercrime amid reports of recent hack attacks on a US satellite, allegedly by the Chinese, and claims today that at least 48 chemical and defence companies were victims of a coordinated cyber attack that has also been traced to China, according to a new report from security firm Symantec Corp.

We take a look at some of the other high-profile hacks and hackers down the years, with some having achieving a mixture of fame and felony charges, while some have become web legends.

Titan Rain

Titan Rain was the code name given by the FBI for a series of infiltrations into US military security, including NASAand Lockheed Martin - the world's largest weapons maker. Titan Rain was discovered by Shawn Carpenter, a Sandia National Laboratories employee in 2004, with many other military targets thought to be have been hit. The hack not only gained information to very sensitive material, it also left behind many backdoors and 'zombify' machines, meaning that any future hack could be now achieved easier. Known to be one of the biggest hacks of all time, it is believed that the original hack originated from China.

Mafiaboy

Michael Calce become famous for his alias Mafiaboy when he took down Yahoo!, the world's dominate search engine at the time in 2000, for a whole hour. He was 15 at the time. As well as this, Mafiaboy also attacked other companies like Amazon, CNN and Ebay. According to industry experts, the total amount of damage caused by Mafiaboy's attacks reached around $1.2 billion. Due to his age, he only ended up with a sentence of eight months open custody, restricted use of the internet and a minor fine.

Sony PlayStaion Network

Earlier in the year, the news broke that the user IDs and passwords of over 77 million Sony PlayStation users had been stolen. This was followed by another attack on the network where information including the home addresses and credit card details were released online. Thought to be the work of LulzSec, it is estimated that the total damage of the hacks may range from $1 billion to $2 billion, making it one of the costliest hacks ever seen.

Epsilon

While not an instantly recognisable name, the hack into Epsilon is one of the worst data breaches in corporate history with a cost that could have reached $4 billion. Epsilon provide marketing and email marketing to many large organisations, seven of which appeared in the top 10 of the Fortune 100 list. The Dallas-based company send over 40 billion emails a year to more than 2,500 companies and it is estimated that it is in possession of around 250 million email addresses, with the true extent of the damage that occurred when these were compromised difficult to fully grasp.

Morris Worm

Robert Tappan Morris is credited for creating the first ever internet worm, albeit by complete accident. Morris created the Morris Worm as when he tried to find out the true size of the internet. But instead, he created a program that quickly spread over the vast spans of the global network and caused substantial damage, indluding at least 6000 computers becoming completely unusable after being affected. He became the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and was sentenced to three years of probation.

Adrian lamo

Lamo has gained a reputation as one of the most renowned hackers in history after some high-profile hacks into networks such as Microsoft and the New York Times. What makes Limo's attacks different to many others is that there was never any malice in his attacks. Instead he'd mainly just leave clues around the place on how these huge corporations could improve their security and pointed out to them any existing vulnerabilities. He gained the nickname "homeless hacker" after it was revealed that Lamo never used his own computer for these attacks, but instead preferred to use public access points such as cafes and libraries.

Mydoom Virus

First arriving in January 2004, the Mydoom virus is thought to have caused the most amount of damage by any virus ever- estimated at $39 billion so far. A computer worm that affected Windows Microsoft, the Mydoom is the fastest-spreading virus ever seen and resurfaced as recent as 2009 as more attacks affected South Korea and the US. Its creators still remain a mystery but the first emails containing it emerged from Russia.

The Original Logic Bomb

The CIA used the Logic Bomb - a piece of code that changes the workings of a system completely - to dangerous effect in 1982. Without sending a missile or any other explosive device, the US blew up a Siberian gas pipeline which was described by an air force secretary as "the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space." While there have been reports that this may be a hoax, the idea that cyber-attacks could be used in this way changed the world of the internet and cyber-hacking forever.

Georgian cyber attacks launched by Russian crime gangs

In 2008 cyber attacks, which coincided with the Russian military's invasion of Georgia in August 2008, were carried out by two separate groups. The attacks were significant because they made it almost impossible for citizens and officials alike to communicate about what was happening on the ground during the military operation.

Sven Jaschan

In 2004, 18-year-old Jaschan released the infamous Sasser computer worm, which went onto affect tens of millions of computers world-wide. It was reported that around 70 per cent of infected computers in the first half of 2004 were as a result of Jaschan's worm. It reached its highest level of destruction when it disabled the Delta Air Lines computer system, causing the cancellation of several flights.

Source: International Business Times

Reliance 4G Tablet For Rs. 5000!

2011-11-02T16:16:00.003+05:30

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) is apparently in talks with DataWind – a Canada based company and Aakash, the world’s current cheapest tablet maker to bring world’s cheapest 4G tablet to Indians. The estimated price of this new 4G tablet would be between Rs. 4000 – Rs. 5000 (~$100).

“We have had preliminary talks with Reliance Industries. It is possible to embed a TD-LTE (long-term evolution) chipset in the tablet for 4G coverage. To begin, this December we’ll launch a GPRS-enabled tablet at an MRP of Rs 2,999 with some Indian operators. Once 4G services are launch we’ll have a product in that space too,” said Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of DataWind confirming the same in a report by Business Standard (Technology).

However, Reliance Industries spokesperson has declined to comment over it.

If the companies are successful in launching the tablet at ‘that’ price, it would be a quarter of the price of tablets being offered by global electronics giants. We’ve a solid reason to believe that Indians would see 4G in India because Reliance is already getting ready to launch 4G services in India by 2012 by the second quarter.

If released, the next 4G tablet is expected to create enough storms in the upcoming 4G market with specially the low-cost devices. The company’s target is also very clear with its low-cost strategy. According to Tuli, the company wants to offer tablets at less than half their competitors’ (HTC, Dell, Motorola mainly) prices in the competitive landscape.

At the same time, having a partner like DataWind that promises tad cheap 4G tablets is actually a very big boost for RIL. If Reliance offers its 4G tablet at the price promised, India could leapfrog all the consumer devices ever produced to access the Internet and land straight up on tablets.

Priced at Rs. 2,999, Aakash which was recently developed by DataWind has recently been unveiled by Human Resources Development Minister Mr. Kapil Sibal in the capital.

Source:TruthDive

Why a $35 Tablet Would Never Succeed in the U.S.

2011-11-02T16:15:00.002+05:30

How unfair! India is getting its long-promised $35 tablet, yet we are spending $500 for an iPad.

I have to admit that I am dazzled by the media coverage of the launch of the Aakash, the world's cheapest tablet. It will cost $50 per unit for the Indian government, $60 in retail and possibly as little as $35 once the volume increases. When we are able to contain our jealousy, however, it's easy to see that this tablet is neither a discounted iPad nor a product that could succeed in the Western hemisphere, despite its impressively low price.

More than a year ago, when it was announced that India would be developing a $35 tablet, many of us were quick to question the ability to take such a device from an idea to a commercial product. In the end, we all know what happened to the OLPC, which was supposed to sell for $100 but finally sold for $190. The Aakash took a similar path, as the retail price of the device is now almost twice as high as the original target price.

The Aakash tablet is designed by Canada-based Datawind and comes with a 7-inch 800x480 pixel display, 256 MB of RAM, 2 GB of NAND flash storage and a 366 MHz Connexant processor. There is also an SD expansion slot with two versions. One has Wi-Fi only, whereas the more expensive $60 version has SIM card-based GPRS cellular connectivity.Datawind said that the total price of the base model is $38, but it is actually $50 when additional fees such as local taxes and a replacement warranty are included. The Indian government apparently guaranteed a purchase volume of eight to ten million units by March 31, 2012. The first 100,000 units will be built within the next six weeks in a factory in Hyderabad.

Higher-priced versions of the tablet will be coming to the U.S. in the future. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Would you buy a $35 or... Let's be realistic. Would you buy a $60 tablet that features the specs mentioned above? You may buy one, but I doubt that you would enjoy using it beyond the first few minutes. I need to expand on that.

Without having touched it, I am convinced that the Aakash is one of the best-designed computers I have seen in a long time – at least since Intel's bug-free computer. (That computer was offered in the early 2000s and was designed for rural Africa with features to keep insects out of the case. In addition, it could be connected to a car battery.) The Aakash tablet is a computer with a strong regional and cultural focus that caters exactly to the needs of a very specific group of people.

India has a population of about 1.14 billion people. The latest telecommunication data I could find from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India indicate that 81 million of them, or 7 percent of the population, access the Internet today via wired or wireless devices. Only 9.45 million, or 0.8 percent of the population, have access to a broadband connection to the Internet. If only 7 percent of the Indian population access the Internet today (actually, the data go back to 2009), then we can conclude that Internet access is still a rarity in India. In comparison, 74.1 percent of people living in the United States access the Internet today and about 37 percent browse via a broadband connection, according to Nielsen.

It is clear that Internet access works differently in the U.S. than it does in India, and India will need, at least for now, different means to provide its population access to the Internet than does the United States. Let's go a little further by looking at wired versus wireless telecommunications in India.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India states that there were only 36.2 million wired phone connections in India in 2009. Keep in mind, there are 1.14 billion people – and only 3 percent have a wired telephone. The reason is the extent of rural areas in India, which has given the country a good reason to focus on wireless communications. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, there are currently 635.5 million active cell phone subscribers in India, which translates to a market penetration of 54 percent. People in India are used to paying way too much for their ability to communicate wirelessly (much more than we think we are paying for our communications). A typical smartphone in India costs about as much as it does in the U.S. – about $600 without a contract. However, the average income per capita in India is just $1,039 per year, which means that advanced communications via a mobile computer that is more than just a feature phone will require people in India to invest more than half of their annual income into such a device. Would you be willing to do that here in the U.S., considering that our current average income is $46,381 per capita?

There is a real need in India for a basic, low cost Internet device that may also serve as a cell phone – one such as the Aakash. An expenditure of $60 is about 6 percent of the annual per capita income in India, which is far more acceptable. It is comparable to about $2,800 here in the U.S. It isn’t cheap, but it’s better than $25,000.

In India, the Aakash almost certainly has a bright future. It perfectly fills a need and provides an affordable way to communicate and access information on the Internet.

In the U.S., it is a different story. You can imagine the first reviews with complaints about a terrible display, lack of storage space, slow processor and cheap materials. We have different expectations, and while it may be cool to own a $35 or $50 tablet initially, it has an older version of Android where you will need a vastly more capable device to run the applications in which you may be interested. There are no such expectations in India. You can't miss what you don't know, and you will be happy with it if it enables you to do more than you could before. The Aakash will enable millions of people in India to access the Internet – people who could not have previously afforded Internet browsing. Also, imagine the new ways of wireless communication it may facilitate.

A $35 or $50 tablet is what India needs today. In the U.S. this tablet would definitely fail.

By Wolfgang Gruener

Source: Tom sGuide

Why India's Cheap Tablet May Not Work Out

2011-11-02T16:14:00.002+05:30

The cheapest mobile handset doesn't compromise on the basics: calls, SMS, battery life. Nor does the Tata Nano. The Aakash does
-Prasanto K Roy

When India's "$35 tablet" finally launched in October, it surprised skeptics. I was among them: I hadn't thought it would ship.

Even at $60, it's the cheapest tablet in the world. I saw an early unit, but it was factory-finished and boxed...suggesting that they will ship production units. That's no guarantee of volume and real cost, but it was impressive.

The tablet, light and nicely hand-held, is built to a price. The 7" LCD is overlaid with a resistive touchscreen, so everything from the standby-unlock Android swipe to menus and apps usage was iffy. The battery lasted just over two hours on a charge.

Inside, the (factory-made, multilayer SMT) board is neat. The Conexant system-on-chip, 366 MHz Arm processor built in, is flanked by two Hynix memory modules (256 MB DDR2 SDRAM and 2 GB NAND flash). Local flavor includes the government-committee-mandated twin USB ports (overkill), adding to a micro-SD card slot. (The screws wouldn't go back into the plastic afterward: the threads slipped.)

Anyway, it works. "Built to a price" .. is no surprise.

So why do I remain a skeptic?

First, because the ecosystem isn't there: apps, content, training and support, power at every school desk (given the 2-3 hour battery).

Two, neither the small 7" handheld format nor the low battery backup lend themselves to serious student use.

Three, the iPad has set the benchmark of usability and battery life...and nothing else, at any price, seems to sell. The gap will grow.

Four, a tech product has to sustain on merit, not just through government commitment--which blocks rapid evolution and improvement.

Five, bulk educational purchases should also be on merit, based on the question: is this the best use of a million dollars?

A few days after the launch, BBC News asked me for a short review. I was critical. Three points emerged from the global reaction to my review. One, that if it did what I said, it was impressive at $60--"so where can we buy one?". Two, they said I should encourage indigenous efforts, and kill the stereotype that emerging-economy products were inferior. Three, that I should not compare "your country's Tata Nano to a Mercedes". (I cite only the criticism; I got appreciation as well.)

I liked the Nano analogy. Here's the difference. A Tata Nano doesn't compromise on the basics: the ability to take you from A to B safely and reliably, consuming the least fuel. Hygiene 101 for a small car.

A cheap $25 Nokia mobile handset does not compromise on the basics: the ability to make a call, send messages, and run a day or two on a charge.

The Akash does compromise on the basics expected of a tablet: easy and fluid use; battery life; apps support, ruggedness.

It will probably improve with version two. As with the Tata Nano, it will be difficult to hold the price (say, if the touchscreen tech is upgraded). Yet, a $99 price point for a usable product is better than a forced $35 mandate.

Its future, however, really depends on the content-apps ecosystem, and how well the Aakash can align to the school curriculum (or vice versa).

Which is why it would have made more sense to source an e-reader like the Kindle, or the (sort of Indian) Wink: the content is all there, in the form of PDFs of every single coursebook out there: and the battery life is great.

Source: PcQuest

The low-tech path to Aakash

2011-10-29T01:25:00.002+05:30

Buroshiva Dasgupta examines the education corrections that India needs

WE INDIANS often tend to reach among the world’s ‘only’ or world’s ‘best’ in our ambitions, and then usually cut a sorry figure. Now we have come up with the world’s ‘cheapest’ – a touchscreen tablet, Aakash, which costs Rs 2,999 (around $60). The aim is to revolutionise education by endowing each child with a computer. We have such programmes around the world, but the revolution is yet to come. We know the fate of the simputer – and other such applications – which have disappeared because they could not keep up with the times. And we also know the Indian education scene where we still have schools with no blackboards, leave alone computers.

True, India has jumped stages in satellite technology and telecommunication and it can, if it genuinely wants to, jump the blackboard stage in education infrastructure and directly enter the modern age. We know the success of the ‘Hole in the Wall’ experiment in the Mumbai slums where children learn to use computers on their own without guidance. The success of the ‘minimally invasive education’ partly inspired the movie Slumdog Millionaire but the Indian education experiment is no Bombay Talkies or Hollywood movie.

Aakash will first be distributed among college students and then the schools. It finally also aspires to enter the rural areas. But why cannot it be reversed – and reach the masses first? Aakash is supposed to remove the digital divide. If we go back to the history of the introduction of English in India, we know how the British government accepted the Macaulay report – which deliberately created a divide in education – and not the Adams’ report which promoted the rural education system (lokshiksha) to reach the masses. So now we have an education superstructure, thanks to Macaulay, without a proper foundation. Should Aakash continue to encourage the existing divide in education or, as professed by the government, help revolutionise the change?

So Aakash should start with the villages. We need not worry how the students will learn to use them. Let us have faith in our future generations – experiments have shown they can learn on their own – give them the toys. It is fun and simple enough to operate. The real obstacle is the connectivity. China may not be free with information, but the internet access in the country has grown phenomenally. But not so in India. Why? We still deprive access and talk of removing the digital divide. We cannot get away by saying they cannot afford it. If the tablet can be made affordable, so can the internet connectivity. In the remote Sunderbans, where there are villages with no electricity yet, every household has a mobile phone – such is the intense desire of the people there to be in touch with the mainstream. And they can afford it from their measly earnings. They travel miles to get their mobiles charged. The mobile phone saved lives during the cyclone Aila. The private phone manufacturers rivalled with each other and made the gadget affordable and placed the towers in almost inaccessible areas to reach out to their customers. Why cannot this happen with the internet? Or the wifi or the cloud?

The Indianisation of the tablet Aakash endows it with an USB port to suit the local conditions. It’s a welcome innovation though it might be argued it goes against the sleekness of its design. Steve Jobs’s newest iPad for example has its connectivity in the cloud. The makers of Aakash say that they are trying to procure internet connections for the users at Rs 99 a month. But connectivity (as the Sunderbans example proves) is becoming an essential commodity more than even electricity. A policy is needed here so that the private vendors compete and make it affordable in the remotest villages – just like the mobile phone. Even the manufacture of Aakash should not be left to a single vendor.

The success of Aakash will depend on the spread of connectivity. We don’t have to burn coal to give connectivity. It’s cheaper than supplying electricity. And today, the technology is to supply it without towers.

BUT WHAT about the software? What do we teach? Old wine in new bottles? We have language barriers; we have different education systems colliding with each other. The 3D modules for education can break the language barrier; but they have to be interesting – not repeat the dull gyaan-jyoti variety models. The distance education modules of the universities are undergoing technological changes. The V-sat transmissions are being replaced by the cheaper transmissions through the internet. But the internet has to be much faster – too much buffering time will only distract the student and destroy the essence of education – to improve concentrated work. The children are more tech-savvy. The dead weight of teachers who are slow learners, let us admit, will have to be eliminated from this revolution. Let the hardware – the technological infrastructure – reach the children first; they will learn faster than their teachers.

We should not get into a bind, for example what a state like West Bengal has got itself in, where all the education development money goes to pay the salaries of the teachers. You ask for computers; the authorities say they have no money. It is common knowledge that none of the universities of India come anywhere near the first hundred universities of the world, primarily for lack of quality research. Let more funds be allocated for a central pool of education researchers (which is not meant to be mere salaries but) who will create the new education software – something which will hold the child’s attention and not bore them to death.

We need more experiments, research – and funds – for this vital role of developing knowledge capsules for all subjects, which is simple, attractive and yet up-todate. We can then disseminate them – to the last mile – through connectivity and the tablet in place. Aakash will touch ground zero only then. Good that it is cheap; competition will make it cheaper. But the education software it is supposed to provide has to be value-added. And that has to come cheap too. We dread the prospect of privatising education – and justifiably too. But the competition of the private corporate world possibly needs to touch education too – to overcome its slumber. Can technology – in the form of Aakash and connectivity – do it? The quality of education capsules can be made competitive.

Buroshiva Dasgupta is a senior journalist based in Kolkata.
(buroshiva@gmail.com)

Source :Tehelka

Low-cost Aakash tablet to hit U.S. store shelves at $60

2011-10-29T01:24:00.003+05:30

India’s homebrewed low-cost Aakash tablet along with DataWind is now going places. This Android tablet will soon hit store shelves in the US and retail for $60 (Rs. 2,999). Moreover,VentureBeat gave a sneak peek into the device which has been flown to the U.S. by Vivek Wadhwa, a columnist from Washington Post. When pitted against the iPad, probably its price tag is the only savior. However, Chikodi Chima who has reviewed it for VentureBeat calls it a cheap but powerful device among other things like ‘jugaad’ (a local lingo we are familiar with).

Low cost Akash tablet retails in U.S.

Offering a taste Froyo 2.2, this 7-incher comes with Unisurfer Web browser, support for Wi-Fi, resistive screen, 2GB memory expandable up to 32GB and more. The Indian government has bought 100,000 Aakash tablet units from DataWind. By the end of next year, about 10 million to 12 million devices are likely to be distributed to students in India. At a government subsidized price, it will be made available for $35 (Rs. 1,750) to students. This also makes it the cheapest Android tablet till date.

-Naina Khedekar

Source : Link

Hands On: India’s $35 Aakash Android tablet lands in America

2011-10-27T01:03:00.003+05:30

For more information or booking of the Aakash Tablet, log on to www.aakashstore.in

The Indian government thinks the $35 Aakash Android tablet has the power to change the world. After testing one out, we’d tend to agree.

An Aakash tablet was brought to the VentureBeat office on Tuesday by Vivek Wadhwa, a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkley and Duke. Wadhwa, who is researching the Indian education system, and is a columnist with the Washington Post, was given the tablet by Kapil Sibal, the Indian minister of human resources and development, who has been the driving force behind the tablet project. The device (whose name means “Sky” in Hindi) was produced entirely in India — a point of pride for the Indian government.

Aakash Tablet - Main Screen

The 7-inch Android-based device will be distributed at a government subsidized price of $35, making it the world’s cheapest Android device. The general retail price will be $60, which is still remarkably cheap for such a powerful device. A contract between the Indian government and Canadian development partner DataWind, should put between 10 and 12 million devices in the hands of students across India by the end of 2012, according to Computer World.

Aakash stats at-a-glance

Screen: 7-inches; 800-by-400 pixels; Resistive touchscreen

Operating system: Android 2.2, Froyo

Processor: 366 MHz Connexant; HD Video co-processor (both with graphics accelerators)

Memory: 256MB RAM (internal); 2GB Flash (external)

Storage: 2GB card included, expandable up to 32GB

Ports: Two USB 2.0; 3.5mm audio out jack; 3.5mm audio in jack (No built-in speakers)

Connectivity: GPRS; Wi-Fi 802.11 a,b,g

Power: Up to 180 minutes on battery; AC adapter, 200-240 volt

Weight: 350 grams

We tested the Aakash, surfing the web, using apps, typing text documents, plugging in peripherals and playing Bollywood videos. Here’s our exclusive first look at what a $35 tablet can really do. (See a video of the Aakash in action at the end of the article.)

Hands on with the Aakash

Jugaad is an Indian word which means “to make-do.” The Aakash tablet is a Jugaad in a very high tech way. The components inside the Aakash tablet are cheap, and easily sourced. For example, the Aakash tablet has a headphone jack and an audio-in jack, but no external speakers — an obvious cost-savings measure. However, with the addition of cheap headphones, and an equally cheap microphone, the owner can make calls on Skype and has the potential to communicate with people around the world.

Aakash Tablet - Rear View

The screen is pressure sensitive (also called resistive touch) and responds somewhat slowly to gestures. It’s definitely not as dazzling as the high-end tablets familiar to Western audiences, such as the capacitive touchscreen iPad, or even the HP Touchpad.

The Aakash is running Android 2.2, Froyo, with the UniSurfer browser installed. Made by DataWind, UniSurfer is supposed to make webpages process faster, probably to compensate for the slower processor and connection speeds. However, while browsing the Internet and testing out apps, we couldn’t help but notice that the reaction time seemed very slow. Scrolling, for example, is a swipe-and-wait affair. However, the speed is going to be quite sufficient for someone who has never in his or her life had a smartphone or computer. It’s all relative after all. Compared with the iPhone 4s, the iPhone 3G is a “slow” smartphone, only because speedier alternatives are available. Even in a context where the market is full of smart devices, like in the U.S., speed helps us make decisions incrementally faster, but rarely are these issues of genuine consequence.

And given how slow navigating the user interface is, watching videos on the device was incredibly impressive. We used YouTube to watch a clip from a Bollywood film, and the video came through fast and clear, with no hiccups.

The Aakash has both GPRS and Wi-Fi capabilities. Its battery power is limited to 180 minutes of use on a full charge, but it comes with an AC adapter. What’s important isn’t that the tablet can run off of the battery for long periods of time, but that it will still be able to work and surf the net when the power goes out.

Aakash Tablet - Startup Screen Android

Weighing in at less than double a handheld smartphone (350 grams), the device itself feels a bit like a toy. A goofy plastic cover protects the screen, slowing down the touch response considerably. It might remind you of the conference call controller in a corporate boardroom. Though its design is minimalistic, absent are any Apple-like design flourishes that might evoke the word “magic.”

Unlike the XO, the low-cost laptop produced by One Laptop Per Child for the world’s poorest children, with help from Frog Design, the Aakash tablet is not going to win any beauty pageants. This is certainly one of its strengths. A big problem with the XO is it was seen as relatively arcane technologically by the time it was actually available.

What makes the Aakash tablet different is that its creators didn’t strive for perfection. Instead, the emphasis was on getting the product into the market quickly so it could be adopted, tinkered with, and improved over time. As Wadhwa said, “to get the cost down, you have to make some compromises.”

The unmistakable impression we all got from using the Aakash tablet was that it is built for performance. Every design choice that might seem like a negative reveals three, four, five — or more — net benefits.

Why does it have two USB ports? So you can plug in a keyboard, of course, and still have a free slot for an external hard drive, or some other device. What about that screen cover that seems like it’s made from laminating material? If the tablet is meant for educational use, it’s probably going to have to contend with some pretty rough handling, dirt, dust and moisture. Better that it should withstand damage than look the extra bit nicer.

Seeing the tablet’s potential

The Aakash Tablet is an example of a “leapfrog technology,” a concept where the latest innovations jump directly into areas where legacy technologies never penetrated. Tens of millions of people throughout India who never had access to a landline phone now walk around with cell phones in their pocket. Many of those likely to use or own the the Aakash Tablet will never have used a desktop computer, and it’s possible they never will.

Aakash Tablet - USB Ports

Now imagine the educational potential of the world’s lowest-cost tablet being unleashed to hundreds of millions of Indians eager to join the world economy. At the heart of the Aakash tablet is an HD video co-processor that will connect viewers to one of the largest educational libraries ever assembled: YouTube. When the Aakash tablet reaches villages across India, an entire generation will have instant access to rich educational content such as the Khan Academy, and anything else their hearts desire.

And with the Aakash tablet in hand, students across India will be free to do what their global counterparts do — or should do — with their computers. There are the educational basics such as creating documents and spreadsheets, and browsing the web for research materials. But as with anything, young people will probably spend a fair amount of time playing games online and chatting with their friends.

India’s history with affordable tech

India, which has a population of nearly 1.2 billion and is home to 40 percent of the world’s poor, has experience paring down high-end technology and making it affordable and accessible.

A similarly transformative Indian-created product is the Tata Nano car, a revolution in automobile design built to give mobility to millions of low-t0-mid-income Indians. When it came out in 2009, the Tata Nano was heralded as the world’s cheapest car. But while the Tata Nano is ultimately a destructive force — adding drivers to the congested roads and vehicle exhaust into the air — the Aakash tablet will be used to educate hundreds of millions of children.

The Hole in the Wall initiative is another example. It put a computer kiosk in several rural villages throughout India, giving thousands of children and adults their first access to a computer and the Internet. The organizers compared it to the village well, where the community could come together to exchange knowledge and learn from each other. In this case, however, the well was connected to the world’s deepest reservoir of knowledge, the Internet.

And next month, the first Aakash tablets will go on sale throughout India, and millions of children will be able to join the tablet revolution that is transforming education, communication and entertainment across the world.

Source: October 26, 2011 | Chikodi Chima

Google Similarity Distance

2011-10-10T04:01:00.002+05:30

The Google Similarity Distance is a concept given by Rudi Cilibrasi and Paul Vitanyi which calculates the similarity between any number of given queries.

Google | Most Powerful Search Engine

This method relies on the World Wide Web and a powerful search engine such as Google to find out the similarity metric between terms. The similarity is based upon the principle of frequency of occurrence of a term in the search results of a search engine on the Internet.

By using the derived formula for Normalized Google Distance(NGD), given below, one can find the similarity between terms (0 for identical and 1 for unrelated).

max(log(f[x]),log(f[y])) - log(f[xy])

NGD = ------------------------------------

log(N) - min(log(f[x]),log(f[y]))

x - Query 1
y - Query 2
f[x] - Search Results Count of [Query 1]
f[y] - Search Results Count of [Query 2]
f[xy] - Search Results Count of [Query 1,Query2]

N - Total no. of pages searched by the search engine

This NGD when calculated can be used to draw a similarity graph of queries.

Google Similarity Distance is useful in Automated Machine Learning, Pattern Recognition, Clustering of Unknown Objects, etc.

Source : The Google Similarity Distance - IEEE
For full content : The Google Similarity Distance - PASCAL EPrints

Search Keywords: Google, Google Similarity Distance, Normalised Google Distance, Automated Machine Learning

Aakash - The Revolutionary Tablet

2011-10-10T03:01:00.000+05:30

Aakash is the name of the new super cool and the cheapest tablet ever developed in India. At just a cost of $35, Aakash is powered with an Android Operating System v2.2 with high end performance. The Tablet supports multiple file formats with easy access to World Wide Web.

The tablet will be produced in collaboration of Ministry of Human Resource and Development, Government of India and Data Wind , A UK based company. It will come by the end of the next month with a price of $60 for the general public and for $35 for students.

Whether it will prove to be a boon for the struggling Indian Education System is still an unanswered question.

For more info log on to http://aakashstore.blogspot.com/

Search Keywords: Aakash, DataWind, Tablet, Cheapest Tablet, Android, Ubislate

2010-03-21T03:38:00.003+05:30

The LXD (the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers) electrify the TED2010 stage with an emerging global street-dance culture, revved up by the Internet. In a preview of Jon Chu’s upcoming Web series, this astonishing troupe show off their superpowers.

The LXD: Dance adventurers

The LXD (the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers) are building an interactive web series that represents the next evolution of dance.

Why you should listen to them:

Imagine two rival factions -- one good, one evil -- squaring off in an epic battle ... an epic dance battle. Welcome to The LXD, a new online adventure in which heroes and villains combat each other with dance superpowers. With stunning choreography, dancers float over the ground like marionettes or crush the laws of physics beneath their feet when they perform breathtaking aerial maneuvers and transcendental step sequences.

The series hopes to do more than follow the dance-battle zeitgeist that rules today’s TV ratings. In addition to live performances, The LXD reveals dance superheroes on both sides of the screen—viewers can learn dance moves from instructional videos, and even become part of the story by participating in the web community. The LXD is written and directed by Jon Chu, a veteran of dance productions, including the box office sensation Step Up 2: The Streets and the Internet phenomenon, The Biggest Online Dance Battle.

"No special effects. No wires. Real people. Real powers. "

John Chu

Online Dance Adventure

2010-03-21T03:35:00.000+05:30

LXD "Moments" Trailer from Jon M. Chu on Vimeo.

Making Sense of Mountains of Data A new tool explores large sets of data--and might help organize the Web.

2010-03-06T01:18:00.004+05:30

"How do you take a big collection of things and make sense out of it?" asks Gary Flake, founder and director of Microsoft Live Labs, a division of the software giant that designs experimental Web tools. The problem is becoming more common, even for the average user, because the Web makes huge quantities of information readily available.

Image crunching: Pivot is designed to help users tease out patterns as they sort through large amounts of data. The tool can be used to filter and organize images based on accompanying textual information.
Credit: Microsoft Live Labs

Image crunching: Pivot is designed to help users tease out patterns as they sort through large amounts of data. The tool can be used to filter and organize images based on accompanying textual information.
Credit: Microsoft Live Labs

Flake's lab's answer to this question is Pivot, a tool released to the public earlier this month in conjunction with a demonstration Flake gave at the TED conference in Long Beach, CA.
Pivot presents data in the form of a collection of images accompanied by textual data. Sorting through data collated from Wikipedia, for example, means creating thumbnail images to accompany that information. The user can zoom into this collage of images to see individual pieces of data more closely, or zoom out to see items grouped according to various criteria. Though other tools can be used to organize data in various configurations, Flake hopes that Pivot's simple and intuitive graphical interface will help insights about the data to pop out visually.

The power of Pivot, Flake says, lies in its consistent user interface, which is designed to make it easy for users to tease out the patterns in a large set of data. "You can interact with the data in a way that's not quite browsing and not quite searching," he says.

The technology at the core of Pivot is Microsoft's Seadragon, software designed for manipulating large quantities of visual information. It allows commodity hardware to rapidly move through vast collections of graphics, zooming in seamlessly without having to wait for information to load, and zooming out to view hundreds or thousands of images at once. A tool as visually rich as Pivot wouldn't have been possible even five years ago, Flake says, because most users' computers wouldn't have been able to process the graphics.

The team at Live Labs has made several sample collections that users can view, but the intention is for users to make their own collections. To do this, they need to convert their images to the Deep Zoom format used by Seadragon, and annotate them using a format based on the Web standard Extensible Markup Language (XML). The team has released an add-in for Microsoft Excel, called the Pivot Collection Tool, that lets users do this without requiring knowledge of XML.

Collections: The Pivot Collection Tool for Excel lets users build their own data collections for Pivot without needing to understand XML.

Pivot can also be used to browse the Web and to view and organize Web pages. Flake says he foresees the Pivot interface being integrated with features such as search. Pivot might, he says, provide users a better way to sort through search results--instead of seeing the 10 top search results on a page, they could sort though thousands of results visually. "We are really taking a step back from the Web and trying to see it as a physical Web," Flake says.

Pivot turned heads at TED. Roger McNamee, managing director and cofounder of the venture capital firm Elevation Partners, described the technology as "the brightest star" among a collection of impressive demos.

"Pivot's clever user interface enables new forms of related and serendipitous search that I expect to transform the way I relate to the Web," he says. "After several boring years, the 'search wars' may get interesting again."

Martin Wattenberg, who developed the IBM data visualization program Many Eyes with his colleague Fernanda Viegas, says the Pivot team is tackling one of the big unsolved problems of dealing with modern data by building an interface that pulls together different types of media, including text and images.

Wattenberg says the goal is to provide more sophisticated mathematical techniques for sorting through data. "What is the standard deviation of a collection of images?" he says. "That question doesn't even make sense."

The key for all visualization tools, says Wattenberg, is to integrate them well with the rest of the Web. It would be useful to have open standards to let different software interoperate, he says, and to allow users to embed visualizations into their own Web pages. "We need to make visualization ubiquitous and seamless," he says. "Like everything else in computing, we want to have it anytime, anywhere."

Credit: Microsoft Live Labs

Google - AT ITS BEST !!!

2010-02-05T23:32:00.001+05:30

Mail Goggles

2010-02-05T23:18:00.004+05:30

New in Labs: Stop sending mail you later regret

Originally Posted by Jon Perlow, Gmail engineer

Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?

By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you're most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it's active in the General settings.

Hopefully Mail Goggles will prevent many of you out there from sending messages you wish you hadn't. Like that late night memo -- I mean mission statement -- to the entire firm