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Japanese 'K' Computer Now Fastest In The World

2011-06-21T15:26:00.000+05:30

The world's most powerful computer is now in Japan.
According to The New York Times, the computer, called "K," is three times faster than the next fastest computer, a Chinese computer, Tianhe-1A, that previously held the highest spot.

K, built by Fujitsu, can make 8.2 quadrillion calculations each second. "K" stands for "Kei," meaning 10 quadrillion, or the number of calculations per second researchers hope K will one day be able to perform per second. K's abilities are the equivalent of linking one million desktop computers.
K is made out of 672 computer racks, with 68,544 computer processing units (CPUs) but the lab plans to raise that number to 800 racks, a move that will make the machine even speedier and more powerful.

Scientists expect that the computer will be used in fields including climate research and disaster prevention, as well as medicine. The machine is scheduled for deployment in 2012.

"Bringing together hundreds of thousands of components to quickly launch such a massive-scale computing system-which would have been nearly impossible using conventional technologies-requires an incredible level of reliability," wrote Michiyoshi Mazuka, Chairman of Fujitsu Limited in a press release. "I believe that this reliability is truly the pinnacle of Japanese manufacturing."

The U.S. has five of the world's ten most powerful computers, with a computer in Oak Ridge, Tennessee coming in third on the overall list.
Presentation Links
Wikipedia Link __ Click Here

Google Android : The New Revolutiion

2011-02-06T09:23:00.000+05:30

What Is Google Android?

Introduction:

Android is a Linux-based mobile phone operating system developed by Google. Android is unique because Google is actively developing the platform but giving it away for free to hardware manufacturers and phone carriers who want to use Android on their devices.

Beyond the Phone:

A modified version of Android is used in the Google TV, the Barnes & Noble Nook eReader, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and countless other devices. Parrot makes both a digital photo frame and a car stereo system powered by modified versions of Android.

Open Handset Alliance:

Google formed a group of hardware, software, and telecommunication companies called the Open Handset Alliance with the goal of contributing to Android development. Most members also have the goal of making money from Android, either by selling phones, phone service, or mobile applications.

Android Market:

Anyone can download the SDK (software development kit) and write applications for Android phones. Google doesn't screen developers or applications. These apps can be downloaded from the Android Market. If the app costs money, you pay for it using Google Checkout. T-Mobile also has an agreement to allow their phone customers to purchase some apps and have the fee added to their monthly phone bill.
Some devices do not include support for the Android Market and may use an alternative market.

Service Providers:

The iPhone has been very popular for AT&T, but unless you void your warranty to unlock it, you can only use an iPhone with AT&T. Android is an open platform, so many carriers can potentially offer Android-powered phones. That doesn't mean individual carriers won't lock the specific phone they sell you to their service, but every major carrier in the US offers an Android phone. Android is currently the fastest growing phone platform in the world.

Data Plan:

To use Android on a phone, you need a data plan on top of your voice plan. You can't even activate an Android phone without a data plan enabled. Some networks in the US offered tiered data service, and some offer unlimited plans.

Google Services:

Because Google developed Android, it comes with a lot of Google services installed right out of the box. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Maps, and Google Web search are all pre-installed, and Google is also the default Web page for the Web browser. However, because Android can be modified, carriers can choose to change this. Verizon Wireless, for instance, has modified some Android phones to use Bing as the default search engine.

Touchscreen:

Android supports a touch screen and is difficult to use without one. You can use a trackball for some navigation, but nearly everything is done through touch. Android also supports multi-touch gestures such as pinch-to-zoom in versions 2.1 (Eclair) and above.

Keyboard:

The initial release of Android required a separate keyboard. However, "Cupcake," (Android 1.5) and later editions have all supported an on-screen keyboard. That means you can use models like the Verizon Droid 2 that include a slide-out physical keyboard or the HTC EVO that rely entirely on the touch screen.

The Bottom Line:

Android is an exciting platform for consumers and developers. It is the philosophical opposite of the iPhone in many ways. Where the iPhone tries to create the best user experience by restricting hardware and software standards, Android tries to insure it by opening up as much of the operating system as possible. This is both good and bad. Fragmented versions of Android may provide a unique user experience, but they also mean fewer users per variation. That means it's harder to support for app developers, accessory makers, and technology writers (ahem). Because each Android upgrade must be modified for the specific hardware and user interface upgrades of each device, that also means it takes longer for modified Android phones to receive updates.
Fragmentation issues aside, Android is a robust platform that boasts some of the fastest and most amazing phones and tablets on the market.

Presentation Links

Click Here to download PPT in MS 2007

Seminar Report on Android Click Here to Download (Credits to Mr. Ganesh Waghmare)

For Wikipedia Link Click Here

Official Website www.android.com

Windows Azure Services Platform

2010-10-27T08:11:00.000+05:30

Microsoft Corp. intends its new Windows Azure Services Platform to be a serious cloud computing platform for a broad range of developers and scenarios, from lone developers starting up a new Web-based company on a shoestring to large teams of enterprise developers looking for high-performance, highly available and scalable Web sites, computing and storage. A few years out, Microsoft wants Azure to be seen as the preferred location for enterprise data, not as a business risk. It's off to a good start.

There's a tremendous amount of capability being presented in the Azure CTP (Community Technology Preview), and there's more to come. It goes beyond simple Web hosting to a flexible architecture designed to automatically enlist additional resources in response to demand. There are capabilities here that I haven't seen in competing cloud offerings -- for example, workflows. The Azure team has picked and chosen existing Microsoft technologies -- virtual servers, the .Net Framework, Internet Information Server (IIS), worker processes, databases, queues, enterprise service bus, workflows, authentication and so on -- and adapted them to the cloud.

One very promising note is how these services are tied together. The Microsoft of 10 years ago would have created proprietary interfaces to exclude its competitors from taking advantage of its technologies. The Azure team used open standards, such as REST, SOAP and Atom. This inclusive choice opens the Azure services to easy integration with almost any programming language and operating system.

Another promising note is how, while breaking new ground, the Azure team made the programming model familiar to developers who have worked with the .Net Framework. You don't have to learn a new programming language or integrated development environment (IDE) to work with Azure. If you know Visual Studio and C# or Visual Basic .Net, you're good to go now with relatively little effort. Using other .Net languages and tools is possible but not as well documented. Although using unmanaged code is not yet allowed, it will be in the future.

Presentation Links

Click Here To Read Wikipedia article on Windows Azure
Click Here To Download The PPT in MSOFFICE 2007
Click Here To read Whitepaper on Windows Azure

Official Site for Windows Azure Click Here

IE 9 beta launched , "Unlocking the beauty of the Web"

2010-09-30T12:53:00.001+05:30

Internet Explorer 9 Preview

Faster, simpler and with many interesting new features, the Internet Explorer 9 beta is a promising look at the next incarnation of Microsoft's flagship browser.
The interface has become even more cut down, following competitors like Chrome. By default there's no menu, no status bar, no Favourites bar (though as with IE8 these are all available if you need them), just an address bar and the most minimal of toolbars.
There is a useful internet addition when you open a new tab, though: the program now displays links to your "most popular sites", so you can relaunch a particular favourite with a click.
Elsewhere, tabs are now colour-coded to show you how they relate to each other (open one link in a new tab, for instance, and they'll both share the same colour). And you can now drag tabs out of IE to open them in a new browser window.
Performance is massively improved, too, thanks not least to hardware-accelerated graphics, and a new JavaScript engine optimised for multiple CPU cores. If you've ever tried a browser benchmark like SunSpider before then you'll probably have noticed that IE always lagged far, far behind - but not any more. IE9 is now marginally faster than Firefox 4 beta 6, and only a little behind Chrome 6, so in many cases you won't notice any speed difference between the browsers at all.
Microsoft have finally paid proper attention to downloads, giving IE its own download manager window. Now you can see everything you're downloading in one place, pause and restart a download if necessary, or locate and launch downloads at a click.
New support for Windows 7 allows you to pin a favourite website to your taskbar, where it looks just like any other pinned program. Click the icon later and it'll open in an IE window.
And you also get enhanced searching from the address bar, a simplified notification bar, extra information on add-ons that may be slowing you down, and more.

Faster, simpler and with many interesting new features, the Internet Explorer 9 beta is a promising look at the next incarnation of Microsoft's flagship browser.
The interface has become even more cut down, following competitors like Chrome. By default there's no menu, no status bar, no Favourites bar (though as with IE8 these are all available if you need them), just an address bar and the most minimal of toolbars.
There is a useful internet addition when you open a new tab, though: the program now displays links to your "most popular sites", so you can relaunch a particular favourite with a click.
Elsewhere, tabs are now colour-coded to show you how they relate to each other (open one link in a new tab, for instance, and they'll both share the same colour). And you can now drag tabs out of IE to open them in a new browser window.
Performance is massively improved, too, thanks not least to hardware-accelerated graphics, and a new JavaScript engine optimised for multiple CPU cores. If you've ever tried a browser benchmark like SunSpider before then you'll probably have noticed that IE always lagged far, far behind - but not any more. IE9 is now marginally faster than Firefox 4 beta 6, and only a little behind Chrome 6, so in many cases you won't notice any speed difference between the browsers at all.
Microsoft have finally paid proper attention to downloads, giving IE its own download manager window. Now you can see everything you're downloading in one place, pause and restart a download if necessary, or locate and launch downloads at a click.
New support for Windows 7 allows you to pin a favourite website to your taskbar, where it looks just like any other pinned program. Click the icon later and it'll open in an IE window.
And you also get enhanced searching from the address bar, a simplified notification bar, extra information on add-ons that may be slowing you down, and more.

Presentation Links

Click Here to read complete review on Internet explorer 9 beta (from www.engadget.com by Joanna Stern)
Click Here to read Wikipedia Article
Click Here to read Gizmodo review (Includes technical comparison with other browsers)

Download IE - 9 beta (64bit - Windows 7 all) Click Here to Unlock the beauty of Web

Google Instant and then Youtube Instant !!!! Make it Fastest

2010-09-30T12:09:00.000+05:30

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.
The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.

Benefits

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.
Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.
Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

The instant version of Google was followed by YouTube Instant, Google Maps Instant, and the aptly named Google Images (Almost) Instant. Now, the newest entrant into the “instant” market is the iTunes Instant. But what makes iTunes Instant stand out from all its predecessors is that it was created by a 19 year old!

Presentation Links

Click Here to read the official site

Cloud Antivirus : The Rethinking Antivirus !!

2010-08-11T01:04:00.000+05:30

Guys This is aVsOnline's 50th post........Thanks for all supports and keep visiting to get updated

Now back to the topic , Cloud Antivirus is a new idea implemented by Panda Antivirus solutions .

What is Cloud Antivirus ?How Cloud Antivirus is different from traditional antivirus products?

Cloud Antivirus is a cloud based security solution that can be installed and managed from anywhere through a web console. Since it is a hosted service, it doesn’t require infrastructure investment. You typically have options to delegate your security management to expert service providers.
So it is essentially more about management of Antivirus in any organization that goes in the cloud. There will still be an Antivirus product installed in each PC and laptop you have. However you have options to control the updates, profiles and levels of security from a cloud based control panel. However the installed part on PC is a thin version of traditional antivirus product.

How the Cloud Antivirus is deployed?

Normally the Cloud Antivirus can be deployed in two ways. One in which the user clicks on an email which includes a link that will install the protection agent. The other way is where administrator can push the installation to workstations choosing workstations by name, IP address, IP range or by domain.

What are advantages of Cloud Antivirus?

Cloud Antivirus is service not software and so has follwoing advantages:
No installation required
Update without users intervention – always up to date
Access your account from anywhere
Reduces bandwidth consumption (as large number of workstations look for updates in traditional software)

What are Free Cloud Antivirus?

They are similar to other free anti virus but hosted in cloud. You get advantage of low footprint and up to date packages. An example of free cloud anti virus is Panda Cloud antivirus.

Presentation Links

Click here to read wikipedia article about Cloud antivirus
Click Here to read official documentation about Panda Cloud Antivirus (It contain more details which help you to create the report and PPT )
Click here to download PPT in MS WORD 2007 (This one is translated version of Spanish one that's why its in word format , for pictures and other details please download the original PPT by Clicking Here )

WordPress 2.9 released : Built-in image editor, Batch plugin update, Global undo/”trash” feature and more

2010-08-11T00:16:00.001+05:30

WordPress 2.9 has been released with some new features like Built-in image editor, Batch plugin update, Global undo/”trash” feature and more. Before WordPress team comes up with the new full version WordPress 3.0 this is a very welcome step as these features can not wait for the full version. Here is what is new in WordPress 2.9 (Read more about WordPress 2.9)
Global undo “trash” feature: If you are ever annoyed by that “Really Delete” messagefor a post or comment – not it will be no more as Global undo “trash” feature will allow you to bring it back from the Trash. Small improvement though but it is great for those who get a lot of comments.

WordPress team has planned many imrovements in media / image handling. One such improvement will be built-in image editor that allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images. So now no need to edit image outside before uploading to wordpress – just upload your image and and edit on the fly. This may make the copying of image more easier – but still it is a greate feature we want to have.
Annoyed by upgrading plugins one by one? No more hardwork as Batch plugin update and compatibility checking is now available with WordPress 2.9. With this one can update 10 plugins at once. More so there will be a new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress.
No need to copy the embed code of video from popular video sites – just the URL will do. Now you have easier video embeds where you can just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code – cool! This will work for popular vide share sites like YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv.

Improvements for theme developers in WordPress 2.9

There are many improvements done in WordPress 2.9 for WordPress theme developers. Some of them will have impact on the way one is planning to develop the themes. Here are some of those I like and why they will have a major impact:
Post Thubnails registration: Now themes can register “post thumbnails”. This feature will help attach an thumbnail image to the post, especially useful for magazine-style themes.
New commentmeta table: A new commentmeta table which allows arbitrary key/value pairs to be attached to comments is made available. This is similar to posts. Now this will help theme developers in a major way as they now can build themes which can be based on discussions or comments. A lot can now be done within the comment framework.
More flexibility is now available for User Registration and profiles which can now be extensible to allow you to collect things more easily, like a user’s Twitter account or any other fields you can imagine.

Presentation Links

Click Here to go to Word Press Official Site

EPIC browser – the first-ever web browser by India for India !!!

2010-07-26T00:22:00.000+05:30

Epic Browser : The first Anti virus Web Browser launched

Hidden Reflex, a Bangalore – based software startup has launched the first browser targeted at Indian audiences named EPIC. The browser created by a dedicated team of Indian engineers is built on the popular open – source Mozilla platform. Any internet user can now download the browser for free by logging on to the website www.epicbrowser.com.
The specialty of the browser is the sidebar feature which supports Indian content and includes the option to write and create documents in twelve regional Indian languages. Epic enables users to access the latest national and regional news from popular publications and television channels in its sidebar and also provides latest updates on stock markets, live cricket scores and local events in the city. Further, users can choose from 1500 + customized Indian themes and wallpapers provided in the browser ranging from national monuments to famous Bollywood movies.
The unique feature of EPIC is the free built –in antivirus, the first time ever for a browser in India. It would benefit Indian users to save money by performing regular virus scans on EPIC for free. Every file downloaded on EPIC would be automatically scanned. Further, the user would be given an option to manually scan the system or individual folders for any virus and any infections found would be healed completely.
During the launch Ms R Rajalakshmi, Director, STPI said “At STPI, we encourage small and start-up companies to use our infrastructure to build new and innovative applications. We must utilize the large talent pool available in India and develop our own innovative products. I hope to see more technologists catch up to the entrepreneurial spirit.”
According to Alok Bhardwaj, CEO and Founder of Hidden Reflex “We’re excited to introduce a uniquely Indian browsing experience that we hope will reach and resonate with every citizen in the country. As an organization, we foresee huge growth in internet usage in India considering the low current penetration. Our focus with Epic is making it easy enough to use for first time web users and still powerful enough to be essential for advanced users.”
Epic is the first browser to have built a suite of sidebar applications to improve multi-tasking and productivity. Pre-installed applications include communication apps for Facebook, Orkut, Gmail and more, entertainment apps such as a Picture-in-Picture Video Sidebar and Games, and utilities like File Backup, My Computer, a To-Do list, and Maps. Over 1500 user-installable applications are also available to the end user for free.

Quick View On Specifications

Epic Browser based on the popular browser platform Mozilla Firefox. A new entrant to highly competitive browser market leading by Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera.
* Epic Browser Includes 1500+ Indian Themes and Wallpapers
* First Browser with built-in Anti-Virus
* Faster Browsing and Speed, Specially tweaked for more speed
* Free 1500+ Apps include Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo Messenger, Cricinfo, Orkut, Linkedin, twitter apps and games
* Epic Browser supports many Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit etc
* Malicious website Warning and anti phishing protection
Built in Antivirus: Scan downloads automatically. Scan your system manually. Epic Kills any viruses it finds. Totally free.
Malicious Website warnings: We’ll warn you if you’re about to visit a web site known to host viruses or malware.
Anti-Phishing Protection: A big, bolded domain so you know if you’re at citibank.com or citiphishingsite.com.

Download Epic Browser from Here

Presentation Links

Click Here to go to Official Website Of EPIC Browser
Click Here to read more on Wikipedia
Since The Wikipedia article under review , you can read the same by clicking here

Adobe Flex 4.0 Released

2010-07-16T21:00:00.000+05:30

Adobe released Flex 4.0 (code named Gumbo) on March 22nd 2010 . The Flex 4 development environment is called Adobe Flash Builder, formerly known as Adobe Flex Builder.

Some themes that have been mentioned by Adobe and have been incorporated into Flex 4 are as follows:

    * Design in Mind: The framework has been designed for continuous collaboration between designers and developers.
    * Accelerated Development: Be able to take application development from conception to reality quickly.
    * Horizontal Platform Improvements: Compiler performance, language enhancements, BiDi components, enhanced text (Flex 4 includes the new Text Layout Framework ).
    * Full Support for Adobe Flash Player 10 and above.
    * Broadening Horizons: Finding ways to make a framework lighter, supporting more deployment runtimes, runtime MXML.
    * Simpler skinning than the previous versions.
    * Integration with Adobe Flash Catalyst.
    * Custom templates

What is Adobe Flex ?

As a web developer you've often found yourself wishing there was a way to make web applications that weren't limited to the heavy restrictions of HTML. You've used JavaScript to make your forms a little more intuitive with dynamic/context driven comboboxes, but to do anything more often requires heavy amounts of JavaScript and DHTML. Even if you are a pro at it, it's extremely time consuming to make workflow interactive and user friendly. More importantly, why would you want to be spending so much time on core UI functionality when you're getting paid to work on business logic and workflow.
Adobe/Macromedia Flex takes you to the next level of web application development with the concept of Rich Internet Applications (aka RIAs).

You may have seen applications developed natively in Flash itself and realized that it offers a much more robust experience for the user where productivity is bolstered by ease of use, streamlined workflow, and real time interactivity that is impossible to accomplish in HTML itself. However developing rich applications in Flash for those who are core developers is daunting and unintuitive. The Flash development tool is geared for designers, and developing on a timeline is a strange concept. Flex removes that barrier to entry by providing a programmatic way for developing these RIAs.
Rich Internet Applications
What is an RIA anyways? Well HTML applications are state-less. Application servers maintain state by using cookies and session variables to keep track of users, but all the logic is on the server. So while a user is looking at a page in their browser, the application is unable to do anything until the user commits an action that sends data from the page back to the server for processing. The code processes the data, and generates resulting HTML that the browser loads back in.

Presentation Links

Click Here to read cflex documentation on Adobe flex
Click Here for Wikipedia Link about Flex
PPT about Adobe flex 2.0 Click Here to download
PPT about Adobe flex 3.0 and framework Click Here to download

Firefox 4 Beta available now

2010-07-08T21:24:00.000+05:30

Mozilla have released the Beta version of its long awaited Firefox web browser updates and this time it’s a more substantial upgrade to the Firefox 4 release.
The Beta version is now available for anyone to download from the Mozilla website, but as the release is still in a Beta from then you should expect a few bugs and inconsistencies until Firefox is up and running properly.
Now, this is the initial Beta 1 test for the browser so there will probably be additional Beta testing in the future. In the official Mozilla Blog its states:
“Firefox 4 Beta 1 is now ready to download and test! This first version gives an early look at what’s planned for Firefox 4. Stay tuned, because there is more to come and we plan to release new beta versions every two to three weeks. Your feedback is essential to help shape the product which is why we’re launching now to hear from you early in our development process.”

Features wise the Firefox 4 update is a little more than just a facelift as it includes many new features such as:

New Add-Ons Manager: gives you more space to manage your Add-Ons, Themes and Plugins. Customizing your browser has never been easier!
HD Video: Watch hardware-accelerated, super-smooth, HD-quality HTML5 video on YouTube using the new WebM format.
Privacy improvements: Mozilla always puts privacy first, and this latest beta fixes flaws in some Web standards that could expose your browser history.
Crash Protection: Experience uninterrupted browsing (now available on all platforms) – when a plug-in crashes or freezes, you can resume browsing by simply refreshing the page.
Performance: We know that performance is important. In this version, we focused on improving responsiveness at start-up and during page loads. This is just the beginning for performance improvements in Firefox 4.

The Big thing to remember if you want to try out the latest version of Firefox is that it will be very buggy, and you should also expect that many of your favourite add-ons will have issues and maybe not work at all.
If you are unsure or heavily rely on stability and Add-Ons of Firefox on a day by day basis then we wouldn’t recommend running the Beta, but if like us you just want to have it first and see what’s going on… then go to www.mozilla.com/firefox/beta and get downloading.

Presentation Links

Click Here To Read Review about Firefox 4.0 (Can create a cool presentation from this review)
Click Here For Wikipedia Link

Low energy Bluetooth 4.0 specifications revealed

2010-07-08T21:14:00.000+05:30

The Bluetooth SIG has just announced that it has officially adopted the Bluetooth Core Specification Version 4.0. Low energy consumption is just one of the major improvements of v4.0 over the v3.0.
Having made that step, the Bluetooth SIG (short for Bluetooth Special Interest Group) is now ready to start qualifying all sorts of Bluetooth products to the version 4.0 specification and first devices with Bluetooth 4.0 support are expected to show up before this year ends.

The upcoming Bluetooth version will be optimized for low power battery operation which will help the technology to conquer new markets such as health care, fitness and sports where devices require low power and low cost wireless connectivity.
Lower power consumption will also allow the technology to be used in way smaller products than before such as tiny coin-cell battery powered devices and sensors. According to the Bluetooth SIG, thanks to the decreased demand for power, products will be able to run for years on standard coin-cell batteries.
The other improvements brought to Bluetooth by v4.0 include low cost, multi-vendor interoperability and enhanced range.

Presentation Links

Click Here to read more about Bluetooth 4.0
Bluetooth 4.0 PPT in MS OFFICE Click Here
Wikipedia Link Click Here
Bluetooth Technolgy behind 3.0 PDF , Click Here
Bluetooth Wireless Technology PPT in MS OFFICE , Click Here

NASA introduces free online 3D game - 'Moonbase Alpha' mission on Steam

2010-07-08T21:01:00.000+05:30

NASA has once again landed on the lunar surface with the goal of colonization, research, and further exploration. Shortly after the return to the Moon, NASA has established a small outpost on the south pole of the moon called Moonbase Alpha. Utilizing solar energy and regolith processing, the moonbase has become self-sufficient and plans for further expansion are underway.

Moonbase Alpha Game ScreenShot -- Repairing the Life Support System

In Moonbase Alpha, you assume the exciting role of an astronaut working to further human expansion and research. Returning from a research expedition, you witness a meteorite impact that cripples the life support capability of the settlement. With precious minutes ticking away, you and your team must repair and replace equipment in order to restore the oxygen production to the settlement.

Team coordination along with the proper use and allocation of your available resources (player controlled robots, rovers, repair tools, etc.) are key to your overall success. There are several ways in which you can successfully restore the life support system of the lunar base, but since you are scored on the time spent to complete the task, you have to work effectively as a team, learn from decisions made in previous gaming sessions, and make intelligence decisions in order to top the leaderboards.

Presentation Links

To Read more about Moonbase Alpha Click Here
Wikipedia Link Click Here

Samsung launches Bada OS

2010-06-18T21:59:00.002+05:30

What is bada ?

Samsung bada is a smart phone platform released in 2010. The word "bada" means "ocean" in Korean. Samsung Wave is the first bada-powered phone and will be seen on the market soon.
For developers, bada will bring a new blue ocean of mobile applications. For customers, they will have a wider choice of smart phones with cost-effective yet powerful bada-powered phones.

Vision of bada

The vision of bada is “Smartphone for Everyone”. bada’s main goal is not to compete with other existing smartphone platforms. Instead, bada will turn Samsung’s conventional customers into smartphone users by providing cost-effective smartphones. This means that bada will open and extend a new smartphone market, which does not exist in the current mobile market.Bada will create a new smartphone market, which will turn into a new blue ocean.

History of bada

Samsung bada has long history. Almost 10 years of history. It has been Samsung’s proprietary platform for a long time. During its long history, it has been deployed in many successful handsets. For example, Samsung "Star" is an example of recent successful phones, of which sales surpassed 10 million units, just six months after its release.

To make the proprietary platform smarter, we added exciting features such as multipoint-touch, 3D graphics, an enhanced UI, and of course, application downloads and installation, and so bada was born. Samsung bada is proven to be reliable with its history and also enhanced with its new features.

Business with bada

Samsung bada will help mobile developers to expand their application business. Our aim is to continue to release successful models. Over 220,000,000 customers bought Samsung handsets in 2009. Over 40,000,000 customers bought Samsung touch phones last year. Samsung bada will rapidly be adopted by such customers this year. In addition, the global distribution and coverage of Samsung mobile phones and Samsung Apps, the application store, will boost developers´ businesses. Samsung Apps will expand its service to 75 countries for bada in 2010.

No wonder. A new blue ocean is coming. We hope you are among the early birds in this new market.

Features of bada

Even though bada supports a wide range of devices, bada is powerful enough to turn your imagination into powerful applications. With high end devices such as Wave, bada fully utilizes the power of hardware for the ultimate application experience. Even with mid-range or cost-effective models, it also provides powerful features for better application experiences.

Features such as plenty of UI controls, Flash support, and sensor support help applications to be more interactive. Service-centric features such as in-app-purchasing, SNS integration, and push notification help applications to offer customers a richer, more interactive experience.

Ecosystem Support

To help customers and developers, bada provides well-made ecosystem support. Samsung bada provides an application store, developer support systems with useful information, and a developer-friendly certification process. Samsung bada is a promising platform for developers and customers. We hope you find a new blue ocean for your business with bada.

Presentation Links

Click Here to go to the official bada web site dedicated to technical information for bada.

Wikipedia Link __ Click Here

Overview in PDF for presentation Click Here

Yii PHP framework 1.1.2 is released

2010-05-17T21:15:00.000+05:30

Yii is a high-performance component-based PHP framework for developing large-scale Web applications. It enables maximum reusability in Web programming and can signiﬁcantly accelerate the development process. The name Yii (pronounced as Yee or [ji:]) stands for easy, eﬃcient and extensible.

What is Yii Best for?

Yii is a generic Web programming framework that can be used for developing virtually all sorts of Web applications. Because it is light-weighted and equipped with sophisticated caching solutions, it is especially suitable for developing high-traﬃc applications, such as portals, forums, content management systems (CMS), e-commerce systems, etc.

How is Yii Compared with Other Frameworks?

Like most PHP frameworks, Yii is an MVC framework. Yii excels over other PHP frameworks in that it is eﬃcient, feature-rich and clearly- documented. Yii is carefully designed from the beginning to ﬁt for serious Web application development. It is neither a byproduct of some pro ject nor a conglomerate of third-party work. It is the result of the authors’ rich experience of Web application development and the investigation and reﬂection of the most popular Web programming frameworks and applications.

The Yii framework is free software. It is released under the terms of the following BSD License.

Features

     * Added support for displaying call stack information in trace messages
    * Added index option to AR relations so that related ob jects can be indexed using the values of a speciﬁc column
    * Added support for using named scope with update and delete methods:
    * Added support for using named scope in the with option of relational rules
    * Added support for proﬁling SQL executions
    * Added support for logging additional context information
    * Added support for customizing a single URL rule by setting its urlFormat and case Sensitive options:
    * Added support for using a controller action to display application errors:

    * Version 1.0.5

    * Enhanced active record by supporting named scopes.
    * Enhanced active record by supporting lazy loading with dynamic query options.
    * Enhanced CUrlManager to support parameterizing the route part in URL rules.

Requirements

To run an Yii-powered Web application, you need a Web server supporting PHP 5.1.0 or higher.

For developers who want to use Yii, understanding ob ject-oriented programming (OOP)is very helpful, because Yii is a pure OOP framework.

What is Yii Best for?

Yii is a generic Web programming framework that can be used for developing virtually all sorts of Web applications. Because it is light-weighted and equipped with sophisticated

caching solutions, it is especially suitable for developing high-traﬃc applications, such as

portals, forums, content management systems (CMS), e-commerce systems, etc.

How is Yii Compared with Other Frameworks?

Like most PHP frameworks, Yii is an MVC framework. Yii excels over other PHP frameworks in that it is eﬃcient, feature-rich and clearly-documented. Yii is carefully designed from the beginning to ﬁt for serious Web application development. It is neither a byproduct of some pro ject nor a conglomerate of third-partywork. It is the result of the authors’ rich experience of Web application development and the investigation and reﬂection of the most popular Web programming frameworks and applications.

Installation

Installation of Yii mainly involves the following two steps:

    * Download Yii Framework from yiiframework.com.
    * Unpack the Yii release ﬁle to a Web-accessible directory.

About 1.1.2 Version

One of the main enhancements introduced in 1.1.2 is called gii, a highly customizable and extensible Web-based code generating platform. Using gii, one can quickly generate the code for his specific needs and in his favorite style via an intuitive Web interface. Other than gii, we also included 20 bug fixes and more than 20 minor enhancements, such as changing relations and validation rules on-the-fly for ActiveRecord, new jQuery-UI-based autocomplete, etc.

Presentation Links

To Read Complete Documentation Click Here
Click Here to download Seminar Report on Yii (Courtesy to techalone)

Windows Intune : Enterprise Options for Small Orgs

2010-05-13T22:21:00.002+05:30

Microsoft launched a limited public beta of a new Windows 7-based desktop PC security and management service for smaller organizations.The service, called "Window Intune," is being designed for organizations with between 25 and 500 PCs, which Microsoft defines as midmarket users. The current beta of the service will only be available to users in North American markets (United States, Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico), according to Sandrine Skinner, director for Windows Commercial.
A Microsoft FAQ explains that the service will only be available to the first 1,000 customers until May 16, 2010. Organizations interested in trying out Windows Intune can sign up for the beta at the Microsoft Online Services portal here. (Note: Microsoft has already ceased signing up new users of the Windows Intune beta, according to Microsoft's Intune blog.) During the trial period, users can manage only up to 20 PCs.

Midmarket organizations typically lack personnel or may have one IT generalist on staff tasked with managing desktops, network applications and servers, according to Skinner. They tend to have the same IT needs as larger organizations, yet they have smaller budgets, she added.
"They aspire to have access to enterprise-class solutions, but they don't have the means to do so, both financially and in terms of head count," Skinner explained in a phone interview.
The new service offers resources typically available to larger organizations that have signed on to Microsoft's multiyear volume licensing agreements. However, with Windows Intune, Microsoft will offer these resources on a monthly-fee basis. The pricing and licensing details for the service have not yet been fully worked out, according to Skinner. She expected that Microsoft would begin to offer the Windows Intune service about a year after the beta's release.
The service is different from Microsoft's volume licensing offerings in that it specifically pairs the Windows 7 operating system with online management tools, Skinner explained. However, it does include some of the benefits typically derived by Microsoft's Enterprise Agreement volume licensing customers.
Subscribers to the Windows Intune service will have upgrade rights to the Windows 7 Enterprise edition, which is usually only available through Microsoft's volume licensing agreements. Skinner said that midmarket organizations are typically interested in security tools like BitLocker and BitLocker to Go, which are only available as part of the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows 7.
In addition, subscribers will get access to the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), a set of six software tools for on-premises use (they aren't delivered as services via Microsoft's datacenter). In the past, the sort of organizations that had access to MDOP were typically large institutions that purchased Microsoft's volume licensing and signed Microsoft's Enterprise Agreements and Software Assurance options. Finally, Windows Intune comes with a service, hosted by Microsoft, that helps IT personnel manage, update and secure individual PCs.
The management service provides screens that IT personnel can use to drill down into the details of PCs located in an organization, even if they are remotely located. This service superficially resembles Microsoft's now defunct consumer OneCare offering, which offered simplified security and management for home PCs. Microsoft eventually replaced OneCare with its free Microsoft Security Essentials antimalware scanning service for consumers.


Figure 1 : Windows Intune management screen.

The management interface is through "Microsoft System Center Online Desktop Manager" technology. It's part of Microsoft's cloud-based service but is not offered as a separate product by Microsoft. Users just have to figure out their policies to configure the management service, Skinner said.

Microsoft's FAQ explains that Windows Intune uses the same security engine found in Microsoft Forefront Endpoint Protection. Forefront is Microsoft's security suite for enterprise users.
Windows Intune uses Microsoft Update and Windows Update as underlying technologies for the management service, Skinner said. The same team that codes Microsoft's System Center management offerings worked on the Windows Intune project, she added. Microsoft's FAQ shows that Windows Intune will have some management features offered through Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 and Microsoft System Center Essentials products.

Presentation Links

Official Site Of Microsoft Intune Clilck Here

Apache Hadoop

2010-05-13T07:41:00.000+05:30

Computing in its purest form, has changed hands multiple times. First, from near the beginning mainframes were predicted to be the future of computing. Indeed mainframes and large scale machines were built and used, and in some circumstances are used similarly today. The trend, however, turned from bigger and more expensive, to smaller and more affordable commodity PCs and servers.

Most of our data is stored on local networks with servers that may be clustered and sharing storage. This approach has had time to be developed into stable architecture, and provide decent redundancy when deployed right. A newer emerging technology, cloud computing, has shown up demanding attention and quickly is changing the direction of the technology landscape. Whether it is Google’s unique and scalable Google File System, or Amazon’s robust Amazon S3 cloud storage model, it is clear that cloud computing has arrived with much to be gleaned from.

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualizes resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the “cloud” that supports them.

Need for large data processing

We live in the data age. It’s not easy to measure the total volume of data stored electronically, but an IDC estimate put the size of the “digital universe” at 0.18 zettabytes in 2006, and is forecasting a tenfold growth by 2011 to 1.8 zettabytes.
Some of the large data processing needed areas include:-

• The New York Stock Exchange generates about one terabyte of new trade data per day.
• Facebook hosts approximately 10 billion photos, taking up one petabyte of storage.
• Ancestry.com, the genealogy site, stores around 2.5 petabytes of data.
• The Internet Archive stores around 2 petabytes of data, and is growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month.
• The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, will produce about 15 petabytes of data per year.

The problem is that while the storage capacities of hard drives have increased massively over the years, access speeds—the rate at which data can be read from drives have not kept up. One typical drive from 1990 could store 1370 MB of data and had a transfer speed of 4.4 MB/s,§ so we could read all the data from a full drive in around five minutes. Almost 20 years later one terabyte drives are the norm, but the transfer speed is around 100 MB/s, so it takes more than two and a half hours to read all the data off the disk. This is a long time to read all data on a single drive—and writing is even slower. The obvious way to reduce the time is to read from multiple disks at once. Imagine if we had 100 drives, each holding one hundredth of the data. Working in parallel, we could read the data in under two minutes.This shows the significance of distributed computing.

Presentation Links

Wikipedia Link Click Here to Read

Official Site Of Apache Hadoop Click Here

Click Here To Download PPT in MS Powerpoint

Click Here to Download Report on Hadoop (Credits to Techalone.com)

Google Buzz , Googles Answer To twitter ?

2010-05-13T07:19:00.000+05:30

After upgrading its highly popular orkut to compete with Facebook, google is changing its gmail to coupe with the highly popular twitter. Google is a undeniable presence in the world of internet and buzz is their new product.Working directly inside Gmail, it can pull content from Twitter, from Flickr, and from various other popular social sites from across the web. Social services supported are Flickr, Twitter, Picasa Web, YouTube, Blogger and any feed connected to your Google profile (like your blog). By this move google can gather the social networking market from all over the world to google.

The features of buzz as said from the google head quarters are

Friends are added automatically who you have emailed on Gmail.
It combines sources like Picasa and Twitter into a single feed, and it also includes full-sized photo browsing.
Public and private sharing so that you can decide who and what to see.
Inbox integration. Buzz features emails that update dynamically with all Buzz thread content.
Recommended Buzz -puts friend-of-friend content into your stream, even if you’re not acquainted.

It can be seen as combination of facebook and twitter .It has the private aspects of facebook and the public aspects of twitter ie we can publish our updates as public or private. In twitter and facebooks we cannot get the updates of friends of friends. In buzz they suggest a recommended buzz, by this feature we can get good buzz even if it is not from our friends. Buzz will also try to find boring buzz and automatically collapse bad buzz.

Presentation Links

Google Buzz Wikipedia Click Here

Official Google Buzz Site Click Here

Adam, the 'iPad killer' made in India

2010-03-03T21:27:00.000+05:30

Apple's iPad was, it's fair to say, awaited with the kind of breathless anticipation usually reserved by nubile nymphets for rakish rockers. But even as consumers rave about it, the technoscenti are already looking ahead ─ to a product that could make the iPad seem outdated, and, what's more, is completely Made in India.

India is, of course, regarded as a software superpower but hasn't really made waves in IT hardware so far. That could soon change, thanks to the Adam tablet PC of Hyderabad-based Notion Ink. Adam has generated enormous buzz on tech websites and gadget blogs ever since an early prototype was first demonstrated at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show), the world's largest consumer tech trade show in January this year. Today, the final product minus the custom user-interface will be showcased at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where the finest minds of geekdom will be congregating to check it out. But first, we persuaded the company to show it to us at the BVRIT Innovation Centre in Hyderabad, where they are based.

Never heard of Notion Ink? Its founders are six IITans and an MBA grad. With an average age of 24, they believe India has what it takes to compete with the most innovative tech companies in the world. “We knew that Indian engineers and designers were doing most of the innovative work at Microsoft, Intel, and Apple. We just needed to take the first step," says co-founder Rohan Shravan.

“Current PC technology is like a Hummer on a city road,” quips Rohit Rathi, the youngest of the group at 23, and, along with Shravan, one of four co-founders from IIT Kharagpur. Two are from IIT Delhi while Sachin Ralhan, the eldest at 25, is a childhood friend of Shravan and Rathi and an MBA from IIPM. Apart from Ralhan and Rathi, the other five are all aged 24.

What's so different about their tech? Three years in the making, the Adam tablet is the first device in the world to integrate two breakthrough power saving components - nVidia’s Tegra 2 chip and a PixelQi screen. Together, they help it achieve twice the battery life and performance of the iPad.

“The chip provides an edge over the iPad with its ability to play full high definition videos and Flash on the web browser. It can offer the performance of a computer with the power consumption of a cellphone,” explains Shravan.

Adam’s 10-inch screen integrates many innovations first used in the $100 OLPC (one laptop per child) project. Unlike traditional screens, PixelQI screen has a dual mode, and can be read in bright sunlight like an e-reader. With the backlight off, the company claims that it can increase battery life between charges by a factor of five.

What about the pricing? The company has not yet taken a decision on this crucial aspect, but is clear that Adam will definitely be competitive vis-a-vis Apple's iPad. It expects to start retail sales, at first in the USA, from July onwards.

Notion Ink worked with National Institute of Design’s R&D development campus in Bangalore to build a unique touch interface that runs on Google’s Android mobile operating system. As a startup, it faced many obstacles in filing patents and finding the right engineering talent. “India doesn’t have people working on Android. And the companies that have, charge Rs 1 lakh per resource per month,” says Rohan. “So we came up with a social solution - We opted to train engineers ourselves.”

The company trained and then recruited over 50 engineers at BVRIT in Bachupally, Hyderabad. “We got the infrastructure at their Innovation Center, and the students as well. We knew the technology in and out and started training them. Within two months it started paying off, and we started developing the professional applications for the product we wanted to design.”

The company is working on an application store platform of its own, where users can find a wide variety of content. “It will offer everything from apps, books, video, audio, to magazines, newspapers and comics,” says co-founder Rajat Sahni.

The company sees more and more users reading newspapers on e-readers and tablets in the near future, and has designed a lightweight product that adapts well to this purpose. They showed us a version of how a digital magazine would look on the Adam. “We’ve taken design inspiration from a 400-year tradition - the user interface of magazines!” chuckles Shravan.

The men behind Adam

Rohan Shravan- IIT- KGP (2008)
Rohit Rathi - IIT- KGP (2008)
Sachin Ralhan – IIPM
Mohit Gupta - IIT- KGP (2008)
Anirudh Gupta –IIT Delhi (2007)
Rajat Sahni – IIT Delhi (2007)
Devanshu Agrawal - IIT- KGP (2008)

Presentation Links

For More Reading Click here __NOTION LINK OFFICIAL SITE
Click Here to Read Technolik .com review

AirStash - The World's First Wireless Flash Drive

2010-01-30T20:12:00.002+05:30

Although it has not been released yet at the time of writing this article, we caught wind of a new little gadget that will allow you to share media files such as photos, music, and movies wireless.

Once your media has been uploaded through a USB port in your PC, your AirStash can be accessed wireless using your iPhone or iPod Touch, which means you can surf for files on your AirStash without having to plug it into your iPhone or iPod Touch. The AirStash will apparently also be able to connect wirelessly with more than one device at a time.

Unveiling of the AirStash will take place at CES 2010, which takes place from 7-10 January 2010 at the Las Vegas Convention Center/Las Vegas Hilton in the United States of America. CES is produced by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), and this year will feature over 300 new exhibitors in addition to the 2,500 exhibitors - all unveiling their latest technology innovations.

Presentation Links

Read More from engadget Click here

Make PPT from Airstash Official Site Click Here

Microsoft Releases Silverlight 3

2009-11-10T08:09:00.000+05:30

Here is an update for Silverlight, Allready published in this blog (Moonlight and Silverlight plug-in).
Microsoft has always been interested in developing the Silverlight for the last two years now but recently Microsoft released the latest version Silverlight 3.

What Is Silverlight?
Silverlight is a plug-in for delivering media experiences and interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight enables companies to design, develop, and deliver powerful applications and experiences for the web.
It works same as Adobe Flash and with Mac OS, Windows, Linux, and devices.
Silverlight was first introduced in 2007, the second version of which was released in September 2008 but the new and improved version Silverlight 3 was released in July 2009 with the feature called Smooth Streaming.
The free and 4MB tool will help you experience high-definition video playback right on your desktop.

Presentation Links

Click Here for Silverlight in Wikipedia

HTML 5 -- The Future of the Web ?

2009-09-24T20:52:00.002+05:30

Some have embraced it, some have discarded it as too far in the future, and some have abandoned a misused friend in favor of an old flame in preparation. Whatever side of the debate you’re on, you’ve most likely heard all the blogging chatter surrounding the “new hotness” that is HTML5. It’s everywhere, it’s coming, and you want to know everything you can before it’s old news.

Things like jQuery plugins, formatting techniques, and design trends change very quickly throughout the Web community. And for the most part we’ve all accepted that some of the things we learn today can be obsolete tomorrow, but that’s the nature of our industry.

When looking for some stability, we can usually turn to the code itself as it tends to stay unchanged for a long time (relatively speaking). So when something comes along and changes our code, it’s a big deal; and there are going to be some growing pains we’ll have to work through. Luckily, rumor has it, that we have one less change to worry about.

In this article, I’m hoping to give you some tips and insight into HTML5 to help ease the inevitable pain that comes with transitioning to a slightly different syntax.

This specification evolves HTML and its related APIs to ease the authoring of Web-based applications. Additions include context menus, a direct-mode graphics canvas, a full duplex client-server communication channel, more semantics, audio and video, various features for offline Web applications, sandboxed iframes, and scoped styling. Heavy emphasis is placed on keeping the language backwards compatible with existing legacy user agents and on keeping user agents backwards compatible with existing legacy documents.

Presentation Links

Download PPT in MS OFFICE __ Click Here

Wikipedia Link __ Click Here

Click Here to Read all about HTML 5

Sony 3D Television To Be Released In 2010 - A New Form Of Entertainment?

2009-09-19T20:10:00.002+05:30

3D TV has been a promise stretching back into the 1950s, known as the Golden Age of 3D, when Disney, Paramount and Universal all had 3D film offerings and at the time felt the technology was the way of the future for video content. What killed that vision was the eye strain and headaches that usually resulted from an evening of viewing a 3D movie.

Fast forward a few technology cycles later, and 3D has come around again. For the past few years we've been seeing fledgling attempts at 3D TV from various manufacturers, but it seems like 2009 is the year all the majors are debuting versions of their own 3D technologies. We had a chance to get our oculars on Sony's working prototype and found the tech to be getting surprisingly close to prime time.

We're still not totally sold on 3D as the true next step of video content, but the clarity and depth of the trailers we saw were rather impressive. Gone are the ghosting and trail effects we've seen in the recent past, and the footage is no longer afflicted with errant afterimages and shadow outlines prominent especially during high motion sequences. The 3D content we saw on Sony's set was crystal clear and immersive.

We can't say we were entirely free of adverse effects after about 8 minutes of viewing. However, it's hard to say how much the 3D content versus a long couple of days of trade show coverage on little sleep was to blame. It definitely seems that the 3D trend is in full swing with Sony, Samsung, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic and Philips all showing off 3D displays on the show floor this year; many of them claim the technology will be in consumer homes as early as next year.

Presentation Links

Click Here to download PPt in pdf

Click Here to download 3D TV tools pdf

Data Warehousing with Oracle Database 11g Release 2

2009-09-19T06:45:00.005+05:30

As business operations become more complex, the demand f or change in IT increases accordingly,complete with associated risks that must be mitigated. Today's IT profes sionals are being asked to manage more information, and deliver that information to their users, with ever increasing quality of service, in a timely manner. And, in today's economic climate, IT is additionally tasked with reducing budgets and deriving greater value out of its existing investments.

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 provides the foundation for IT to successfully deliver more information with higher quality of service, reduce the risk of

change within IT, and make more efficient use of their IT budgets. By deploying Oracle Database 11g Release 2 as their data management foundation, organizations can utilize the full power of the world's leading database to:

Reduce server costs by a factor of 5
Reduce storage requirements by a factor of 12
Improve mission critical systems performance by a factor of 10
Increase DBA productivity by a factor of 2
Eliminate idle redundancy in the data center, and
Simplify their overall IT software portfolio.

Presentation Links

Click here to get official review from ORACLE in pdf

Click here to download PPT in MS 2007

Wolfram Alpha : For a Better Search

2009-08-29T07:27:00.005+05:30

Wolfram Alpha (also written as WolframAlpha and Wolfram|Alpha) is an answer engine developed by Wolfram Research. It is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine might. It was announced in March 2009 by Stephen Wolfram, and was released to the public on May 15, 2009.

A Computational Knowledge Engine for the Web

In a nutshell, Wolfram and his team have built what he calls a “computational knowledge engine” for the Web. OK, so what does that really mean? Basically it means that you can ask it factual questions and it computes answers for you.

It doesn’t simply return documents that (might) contain the answers, like Google does, and it isn’t just a giant database of knowledge, like the Wikipedia. It doesn’t simply parse natural language and then use that to retrieve documents, like Powerset, for example. Instead, Wolfram Alpha actually computes the answers to a wide range of questions — like questions that have factual answers such as “What country is Timbuktu in?” or “How many protons are in a hydrogen atom?” or “What is the average rainfall in Seattle?”

Think about that for a minute. It computes the answers. Wolfram Alpha doesn’t simply contain huge amounts of manually entered pairs of questions and answers, nor does it search for answers in a database of facts. Instead, it understands and then computes answers to certain kinds of questions.

How Does it Work?

Wolfram Alpha is a system for computing the answers to questions. To accomplish this it uses built-in models of fields of knowledge, complete with data and algorithms, that represent real-world knowledge.

For example, it contains formal models of much of what we know about science — massive amounts of data about various physical laws and properties, as well as data about the physical world.Based on this you can ask it scientific questions and it can compute the answers for you. Even if it has not been programmed explicity to answer each question you might ask it.

But science is just one of the domains it knows about — it also knows about technology, geography, weather, cooking, business, travel, people, music, and more.

It also has a natural language interface for asking it questions. This interface allows you to ask questions in plain language, or even in various forms of abbreviated notation, and then provides detailed answers.The vision seems to be to create a system wich can do for formal knowledge (all the formally definable systems, heuristics, algorithms, rules, methods, theorems, and facts in the world) what search engines have done for informal knowledge (all the text and documents in various forms of media).

Building Blocks for Knowledge Computing

Wolfram Alpha is almost more of an engineering accomplishment than a scientific one — Wolfram has broken down the set of factual questions we might ask, and the computational models and data necessary for answering them, into basic building blocks — a kind of basic language for knowledge computing if you will. Then, with these building blocks in hand his system is able to compute with them — to break down questions into the basic building blocks and computations necessary to answer them, and then to actually build up computations and compute the answers on the fly.

Wolfram’s team manually entered, and in some cases automatically pulled in, masses of raw factual data about various fields of knowledge, plus models and algorithms for doing computations with the data. By building all of this in a modular fashion on top of the Mathematica engine, they have built a system that is able to actually do computations over vast data sets representing real-world knowledge. More importantly, it enables anyone to easily construct their own computations — simply by asking questions.

The scientific and philosophical underpinnings of Wolfram Alpha are similar to those of the cellular automata systems he describes in his book, “A New Kind of Science” (NKS). Just as with cellular automata (such as the famous “Game of Life” algorithm that many have seen on screensavers), a set of simple rules and data can be used to generate surprisingly diverse, even lifelike patterns. One of the observations of NKS is that incredibly rich, even unpredictable patterns, can be generated from tiny sets of simple rules and data, when they are applied to their own output over and over again.

In fact, cellular automata, by using just a few simple repetitive rules, can compute anything any computer or computer program can compute, in theory at least. But actually using such systems to build real computers or useful programs (such as Web browsers) has never been practical because they are so low-level it would not be efficient (it would be like trying to build a giant computer, starting from the atomic level).

The simplicity and elegance of cellular automata proves that anything that may be computed — and potentially anything that may exist in nature — can be generated from very simple building blocks and rules that interact locally with one another. There is no top-down control, there is no overarching model. Instead, from a bunch of low-level parts that interact only with other nearby parts, complex global behaviors emerge that, for example, can simulate physical systems such as fluid flow, optics, population dynamics in nature, voting behaviors, and perhaps even the very nature of space-time. This is the main point of the NKS book in fact, and Wolfram draws numerous examples from nature and cellular automata to make his case.

But with all its focus on recombining simple bits of information and simple rules, cellular automata is not a reductionist approach to science — in fact, it is much more focused on synthesizing complex emergent behaviors from simple elements than in reducing complexity back to simple units. The highly synthetic philosophy behind NKS is the paradigm shift at the basis of Wolfram Alpha’s approach too. It is a system that is very much “bottom-up” in orientation.

Wolfram has created a set of building blocks for working with formal knowledge to generate useful computations, and in turn, by putting these computations together you can answer even more sophisticated questions and so on. It’s a system for synthesizing sophisticated computations from simple computations. Of course anyone who understands computer programming will recognize this as the very essence of good software design. But the key is that instead of forcing users to write programs to do this in Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha enables them to simply ask questions in natural language questions and then automatically assembles the programs to compute the answers they need.

This is not to say that Wolfram Alpha IS a cellular automata itself — but rather that it is similarly based on fundamental rules and data that are recombined to form highly sophisticated structures. The knowledge and intelligence it contains are extremely modularized and can be used to synthesize answers to factual questions nobody has asked yet. The questions are broken down to their basic parts and then simple reasoning takes places, and answers are computed on the vast knowledge base in the system. It appears the system can make inferences and do some basic reasoning across what it knows — it is not purely reductionist in that respect; it is generative, it can synthesize new knowledge, if asked to.

Wolfram Alpha perhaps represents what may be a new approach to creating an “intelligent machine” that does away with much of the manual labor of explicitly building top-down expert systems about fields of knowledge (the traditional AI approach, such as that taken by the Cyc project), while simultaneously avoiding the complexities of trying to do anything reasonable with the messy distributed knowledge on the Web (the open-standards Semantic Web approach). It’s simpler than top down AI and easier than the original vision of Semantic Web.

Generally if someone had proposed doing this to me, I would have said it was not practical. But Wolfram seems to have figured out a way to do it. The proof is that he’s done it. It works. I’ve seen it myself.

Presentation Links

Click Here to download PowerPoint presentation in MS OFFICE 07

Click Here for Wikipedia Link

Click Here to Tech Crunch Review On Wolfram

USB 3.0 Speeds Up Performance on External Devices

2009-08-13T20:23:00.001+05:30

The USB connector has been one of the greatest success stories in the history of computing, with more than 2 billion USB-connected devices sold to date. But in an age of terabyte hard drives, the once-cool throughput of 480 megabits per second that a USB 2.0 device can realistically provide just doesn't cut it any longer.

What is it? USB 3.0 (aka "SuperSpeed USB") promises to increase performance by a factor of 10, pushing the theoretical maximum throughput of the connector all the way up to 4.8 gigabits per second, or processing roughly the equivalent of an entire CD-R disc every second. USB 3.0 devices will use a slightly different connector, but USB 3.0 ports are expected to be backward-compatible with current USB plugs, and vice versa. USB 3.0 should also greatly enhance the power efficiency of USB devices, while increasing the juice (nearly one full amp, up from 0.1 amps) available to them. That means faster charging times for your iPod--and probably even more bizarre USB-connected gear like the toy rocket launchers and beverage coolers that have been festooning people's desks.

When is it coming? The USB 3.0 spec is nearly finished, with consumer gear now predicted to come in 2010. Meanwhile, a host of competing high-speed plugs--DisplayPort, eSATA, and HDMI--will soon become commonplace on PCs, driven largely by the onset of high-def video. Even FireWire is looking at an imminent upgrade of up to 3.2 gbps performance. The port proliferation may make for a baffling landscape on the back of a new PC, but you will at least have plenty of high-performance options for hooking up peripherals.

Presentation Links

Click Here to download The PPT in MSOFFICE 07

Wikipedia Link Click Here

Memristor: A Groundbreaking New Circuit

2009-08-13T19:44:00.004+05:30

Photograph: Courtesy of HP

Since the dawn of electronics, we've had only three types of circuit components--resistors, inductors, and capacitors. But in 1971, UC Berkeley researcher Leon Chua theorized the possibility of a fourth type of component, one that would be able to measure the flow of electric current: the memristor. Now, just 37 years later, Hewlett-Packard has built one.

What is it? As its name implies, the memristor can "remember" how much current has passed through it. And by alternating the amount of current that passes through it, a memristor can also become a one-element circuit component with unique properties. Most notably, it can save its electronic state even when the current is turned off, making it a great candidate to replace today's flash memory.

Memristors will theoretically be cheaper and far faster than flash memory, and allow far greater memory densities. They could also replace RAM chips as we know them, so that, after you turn off your computer, it will remember exactly what it was doing when you turn it back on, and return to work instantly. This lowering of cost and consolidating of components may lead to affordable, solid-state computers that fit in your pocket and run many times faster than today's PCs.
Someday the memristor could spawn a whole new type of computer, thanks to its ability to remember a range of electrical states rather than the simplistic "on" and "off" states that today's digital processors recognize. By working with a dynamic range of data states in an analog mode, memristor-based computers could be capable of far more complex tasks than just shuttling ones and zeroes around.
When is it coming? Researchers say that no real barrier prevents implementing the memristor in circuitry immediately. But it's up to the business side to push products through to commercial reality. Memristors made to replace flash memory (at a lower cost and lower power consumption) will likely appear first; HP's goal is to offer them by 2012. Beyond that, memristors will likely replace both DRAM and hard disks in the 2014-to-2016 time frame. As for memristor-based analog computers, that step may take 20-plus years.

Presentation Links

Click here to download PPT in MS OFFICE 07

Wikipedia Link Click here

Conficker (Downadup) This Time More Intelligent

2009-08-08T07:00:00.005+05:30

Conficker, the worm that exploded into prominence in January when it infected millions of machines, exploiting an already-patched bug in Windows that Microsoft had thought dire enough to fix outside its usual update schedule. The worm hijacked a large number of PCs - estimates ranged as high as 12 million at one point - and then assembled them into a massive botnet able to spread malware, plant fake antivirus software or distribute huge amounts of spam.

It all started in late-October of 2008, we began to receive reports of targeted attacks taking advantage of an as-yet unknown vulnerability in Window’s remote procedure call (RPC) service. Microsoft quickly released an out-of-band security patch (MS08-067), going so far as to classify the update as “critical” for some operating systems—the highest designation for a Microsoft Security Bulletin.

It didn’t take long for malware authors to utilize this vulnerability in their malicious code. In early November, W32.Kernelbot.A and W32.Wecorlappeared, demonstrating limited success in exploiting MS08-067. Still much of the talk at the time focused on the potential havoc that could be caused by this vulnerability, as opposed to damage caused by these threats.

It wasn’t until late November that W32.Downadup appeared (also called Conficker by some news agencies and antivirus vendors). This threat achieved modest propagation success, partly due to its borrowing from the work of the Metasploit Project, which had been actively developing more reliable proof-of-concept methods to take advantage of the vulnerability.

This was one thing that set the Downadup worm apart from its counterparts of the last few years its technical versatility. These secondary tricks weren’t new; there were just so many of them. It scanned the network for vulnerable hosts, but didn’t flood it with traffic, selectively querying various computers in an attempt at masking its traffic instead. It attempted to brute force commonly used network passwords. It took advantage of Universal Plug and Play to pass through routers and gateways. And when the network proved too secure, it used a rather clever AutoPlay trick to get users to execute it from removable drives.

The threat even protected itself from takeover. Transferred payload files were encrypted, as well as digitally signed, and only the Downadup authors had the key. A “hot patching” routine for MS08-067 prevented further exploitation by other attackers or threats. The threat’s authors went to great lengths to prevent buffer overflow exploitation of their own code. No one was going to hijack this worm’s network of potential bots.

But the hidden danger behind all of this was the potential payload Downadup contained the ability to update itself or receive additional files for execution. Again, not a new technique, but in this case the threat was generating a list of 250 new domains to connect to every day. Any one of these domains could potentially contain an update that, if downloaded, would allow the threat to perform further malicious actions. What sort of actions? Anything the authors wanted really. Not only that, but the threat contained its own peer-to-peer (P2P) updating mechanism, allowing one infected computer to update another. Blocking access to the domains might protect you from one vector, but blocking a P2P update is a different matter.

Infection rates began to decline in mid-February, as news of the threat spread and network administrators that had not applied MS08-067 scrambled to protect their networks. This could be in part due to the fact that, with propagation success, the threat garnered a significant amount of attention. The domains meant to update the threat were being closely watched by security vendors, researchers, and the media. This attention isn’t surprising given the threat’s complexity and the way it has utilized so many time-tested malicious code tricks, reinventing a few along the way. There is no doubt that Downadup has been the hot topic for 2009.

Presentation Links

Click Here to download the PPT in MS OFFICE 07

Wikipedia Link Click Here

New Robot With Artificial Skin To Improve Human Communication

2009-07-29T21:11:00.001+05:30

Work is beginning on a robot with artificial skin which is being developed as part of a project involving researchers at the University of Hertfordshire so that it can be used in their work investigating how robots can help children with autism to learn about social interaction.Kaspar.Credit: Image courtesy of University of Hertfordshire

Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn and her team at the University’s School of Computer Science are part of a European consortium, which is working on the three-year Roboskin project to develop a robot with skin and embedded tactile sensors.

According to the researchers, this is the first time that this approach has been used in work with children with autism.

The researchers will work on Kaspar (http://kaspar.feis.herts.ac.uk/), a child-sized humanoid robot developed by the Adaptive Systems research group at the University. The robot is currently being used by Dr. Ben Robins and his colleagues to encourage social interaction skills in children with autism. They will cover Kaspar with robotic skin and Dr Daniel Polani will develop new sensor technologies which can provide tactile feedback from areas of the robot’s body. The goal is to make the robot able to respond to different styles of how the children play with Kaspar in order to help the children to develop ‘socially appropriate’ playful interaction (e.g. not too aggressive) when interacting with the robot and other people.

“Children with autism have problems with touch, often with either touching or being touched,” said Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn. “The idea is to put skin on the robot as touch is a very important part of social development and communication and the tactile sensors will allow the robot to detect different types of touch and it can then encourage or discourage different approaches.”

Roboskin is being co-ordinated by Professor Giorgio Cannata of Università di Genova (Italy). Other partners in the consortium are: Università di Genova, Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne, Italian Institute of Technology, University of Wales at Newport and Università di Cagliari.

LTE Technology

2009-07-28T20:03:00.005+05:30

LTE (Long Term Evolution) is the last step toward the 4th generation of radio technologies designed to increase the capacity and speed of mobile telephone networks. Where the current generation of mobile telecommunication networks are collectively known as 3G, LTE is marketed as and called 4G, although technically it is 3.9G. Most major mobile carriers in the United States and several worldwide carriers have announced plans to convert their networks to LTE beginning in 2009. LTE is a set of enhancements to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) which will be introduced in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 8. Much of 3GPP Release 8 will focus on adopting 4G mobile communications technology, including an all-IP flat networking architecture.

LTE Advanced is a mobile communication standard. It is currently being standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) as a major enhancement of 3GPP Long Term Evolution. LTE (Long Term Evolution) standardization has come to a mature state by now where changes in the specification are limited to corrections and bug fixes. LTE mobile communication systems are expected to be deployed from 2010 onwards as a natural evolution of Global system for mobile communications (GSM) and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS).

Presentation Links

Click here to download Motorola White Paper (Presentation Paper with Abstract) on LTE

Click on the link to download ppt shot (1) and ppt shot (2)

Wikipedia Links Click Here (LTE 3GPP)
Click Here (LTE Advanced)