Technology Effect

Portable communication devices are extremely popular but mobile technology has its limits as batteries are quickly exhausted. Scientists have spent years trying to develop alternatives to lithium ion batteries with much hope being placed on fuel cells. After many setbacks in development, a small firm from Silicon Valley is showing that fuel cells may indeed be the way forward. In contrast to conventional lithium ion batteries, fuel cells cannot store a charge, but they do offer many other advantages. Fuel cells are easier and cheaper to make and you don’t need a wall outlet to fill them up. Fuel cells use gases such as methanol or hydrogen to source their power and they are also a lot more environment-friendly than normal mobile batteries. Fuel cells generate electricity in a chemical reaction where hydrogen or methanol are combined with oxygen. Electrical energy is released during the process which can be used to power a device. Along with electronics companies such as...

Bangalore: A new vulnerability in the Windows operating system has been reported that allows hackers to use the flaw in the software to remotely access the computer. Microsoft said the computer can be controlled remotely if the user has logged in with administrative rights. Presently the software giant is investigating the matter and has set up a security advisory for the same. The flaw has been found in the graphics rendering engine in few versions of Windows. The current vulnerability affects versions of operating systems Windows XP , Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. However, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, the latest operating systems for PCs and servers respectively, are not affected. Microsoft has said there are no reports of any attacks stemming from the vulnerability yet and that the company is working toward fixing the situation. However there are no dates as to when the fix would be available.

Web browser Firefox garnered the highest market share in Europe in December, pushing Internet Explorer to the second spot, reveals a study. “Firefox overtook Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) to become the No.1 browser in Europe in December 2010... In December, Firefox took 38.11 per cent of European market share, compared to Internet Explorer’s 37.52 per cent,” website analytics firm StatCounter said on Tuesday. Once the most-used browser in many countries, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) is facing stiff competition, especially from Google’s Chrome. In March last year, European Union’s competition authorities and Microsoft had agreed to allow web users in the region to choose from many web browsers. “This is the first time that IE has been dethroned from the number one spot in a major territory. This appears to be happening because Google’s Chrome is stealing share from IE while Firefox is mainly maintaining its existing share,” StatCounter’s CEO Aodhan Cullen ...

Interacting online with people from throughout the world is a daily occurrence for millions of Internet users, yet most do it with little perspective on the virtual identity they are projecting. Now a multiplayer online game created by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology is offering insight to virtual community designers and members. Called "The Turing Game," its object is to differentiate imposters from players telling the truth. Games can cover aspects of gender, age, race, religion, nationality, native region or any other cultural marker of the users' choice. Differentiating imposters by the content and style of their online written communication will reveal insights into how various cultural markers affect a person's virtual identity, researchers said. "Rather than just studying identity online, why not create a way for everyone -- netizens and scholars alike -- to learn more about it through personal experience?" said Joshu...

PITTSBURGH--It takes constant vigilance to combat the viruses that persistently lurk in cyber space. While we all know our PCs are vulnerable to data loss, you might be surprised to find out so is your cell phone! A new technology could be the key to ferreting out electronic viruses forever. That fancy cell phone you use to surf the Web and check e-mail could be infected with a computer virus. "Our cell phones are becoming more and more sophisticated to look more and more like regular computers, and so they can also acquire viruses," says Adrian Perrig, an assistant professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. While most of us take steps to safeguard our PCs, cell phone viruses are so new you might not even know about them. Engineers at Carnegie Mellon University found a key to detecting even the most evasive electronic bugs. Perrig says, "Our technique is called SoftWare-based ATTestation, which allows an external host -- like the l...

  Bangalore: Samsung has announced that it is stopping all support for the Symbian operating system. The company had earlier in October revealed its plan of dropping the platform and now has confirmed so. It looks like that the Symbian platform is losing support from many avenues. The first blow to the operating system had come from Sony Ericsson when the company announced that it will stop producing Symbian based smartphones in future, and will switch over to Android platform for most of its products. The Symbian forum at the Samsung developers' lab has trashed any matter related to the Symbian OS. This means the platform will no more be used in Samsung products. The company's products are based on Android, Windows Phone 7 and Samsung's own Bada platforms.  With the markets going gaga over Android and iOS operating systems, the future of Symbian does look dull. LG had also made known its plan to drop the Symbian OS from its products, we are yet to get a con...

In just two days CES 2011 will kick off in the Las Vegas Convention center. But what is CES?  Here is our guide to the International Consumer Electronics Show. CES is one of the largest  consumer electronics shows in the tech industry. Companies use CES as a yearly gathering point. Here these tech companies do business and talk to the press. They also show off their newest products and since the first show back in 1967, CES has seen the launch pad for most major technology innovations. Many of your favorite gadgets and entertainment devices where introduced to the public at CES. The Video recorder, the CD, Laserdisc and Blu-Ray Player were all unveiled first at CES shows, as were the original Xbox, the Nintendo Entertainment System and the game Tetris. That alone is but a small list of hundreds of gadgets and gizmos that first saw the light of day at CES. CES sets the tone of the technology industry for the entire year and truly is an exc...

Here comes another great product from AOC and they have recently announced their latest ultraportable tablet titled as “Breeze”. This gadget consists of 8-inch touchscreen display with the resolution support of 800 x 600 pixels. It has Rockchip processor technology and it comes with an internal memory of 4GB. Moreover the Breeze tablet has Google Android 2.1 OS and it sports a Wi-Fi 802.11b/g. In connectivity options it has USB 2.0 interface, a microSD card reader and it has a battery support up to 12-hours of audio playback time and 6-hours of video playback time. Consumers will get this device for $200 and its demo will be officially published at CES 2011.

In addition to the video demo we had posted of the Asus Eee Pad Slate, Transformer, and MeMO, we also have Asus announcing and demoing the Eee Pad Slider, a tablet with a sliding form factor and integrated keyboard to help you get some work done while on the go. The Asus Eee Pad Slider utilizes a dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 chupset and is powered by the Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system. As Asus has announced in its press release that Android 3.0 is Honeycomb, we’re assuming that 3.0 will be the final version designation for the Android OS that will be the first to be tablet-optimized. From the Asus press release: ASUS Eee Pad Slider Mobile users who want the best of both tablet and traditional notebook worlds will be well served by the Eee Pad Slider. This pad computer not only features a 10.1” IPS touch-screen for finger-friendly use, but also a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard for comfortable, use-anywhere typing. It is powered by the NVIDIA® Tegra™ 2, the world’s m...

During 2010 Apple stock has reached the highest value in history for a technology company, and has reached the second spot on the Standards and Poor Index, just below Exxon corporation. Microsoft has been relegated to third place. Apple capitalization has increased 73.59 percent in 2010 to an astonishing $302 Billion. What we can expect in 2011? I don’t believe Apple can keep up the gains. In the last quarter the stock value has increased 15 percent, same as other technology companies such as Google and Microsoft. Most likely Apple will start to lose value in the second quarter of the year. 2010 was a big year for the Cupertino company, the introduction of the iPad was a worldwide success, with no competition in sight. But the other players are not dormant now, a handful of tablets, mostly based on Google’s free Android OS, are now beginning to be available on the market, and the promised iPad2  has no release date yet. The latest iPhone had several flaws when was rel...

It was bound to happen: some of the folks who snagged Google’s developer notebook for Chrome OS have figured out how to install alternate operating systems including Windows and OS X. YouTube user Damis648 has installed OS X and he reports that while the OS is a bit sluggish most of the hardware is supported out of the box including the multitouch trackpad. You can check out his video after the break. Meanwhile, a member of the Something Awful Forums has posted details about running both Windows and OS X on the laptop. On Windows the 3G modem doesn’t work properly, and you’ll have just about 2GB of disk space after installing the OS. The biggest problem is that the Cr-48 laptop has an Intel Atom processor and GMA 3150 graphics — which don’t play that well with Adobe Flash or OS X in general — especially on a device with a high resolution display. Overall, you’re still probably best off running Chrome OS on the Cr-48, because that’s what it was designed to run — an...

For many Mac users Transmission is the BitTorrent client of choice. Unfortunately, managing Transmission’s BitTorrent downloads on the iPhone or iPad can only be done through a web-interface. This annoyance is now resolved thanks to iControlbits, the first and only native iPhone app for the Transmission client that apparently escaped the prying eye of Apple’s anti-torrent police. Ten years ago, when BitTorrent was first released to the public, most people were lucky to own one computer with a connection to the Internet. Today, many people own several interconnected ‘online’ devices including smartphones, laptops and NAS servers. To make BitTorrent downloads on one device accessible on others, all the major BitTorrent clients have developed web interfaces. These allow users to start, stop and pause downloads from wherever they are. Transmission , the favorite BitTorrent client of many Mac users, also has a web interface, albeit a limited one in the...

It may be time to upgrade that old head unit in your automobile. If you own an iPhone, then you’re in luck because Oxygen Audio will be releasing an actual head unit labeled the “O’Car” that fits any version of the iPhone flawlessly. It will be bluetooth compatible enabling voice calls and ever other aspect of you’re car’s stereo functions. Using GPS and accessing Pandora to stream internet radio will have never been easier. Yes, you’re iPhone will charge while embedded into the head unit and therefore relieve of your current car phone charger. O’Car’s built in Radio Data System will allow to you listen to all the local radio stations you love. It really is the best of both worlds. This is the first fully-integrated head unit ever released for the iPhone and we expect it to do very well. If you still like that old head unit, then maybe the O’Dock would be a better match for you. No head unit installation is needed and you will still have all the functionality of the O’...

As you may know Internet Explorer 9 supports desktop integration using pinning. You can learn about pinning from various resources: great article on MSDN , my Windows Summit presentation , Scott’s blog here and of course great demos on ietestdrive.com . Pinning allows web applications to be integrated with Windows and therefore providing user experience such as taskbar integration, jump lists and thumbnail bar button on the task bar preview. One piece of information missing thus far is how to take advantage of pinned sites directly from Adobe Flash. Taking advantage of pinned sites from Adobe Flash control entails integration of JavaScript pinning APIs implemented by IE9 with ActionScript. Since pinning is only available in IE9, the following will only work when Flash control is hosted in a web page running in IE9. The topic of integrating JavaScript APIs with ActionScript is documented in this kb article. Lets see how we can apply this to IE9 site pinning. To demonstrate ...

Riviera has recently unveiled a new mobile phone named Riviera R12. Riviera R12 mobile phone is comprised of a lot of interesting features including QVGA 65K color CSTN display screen with 176 x 220 pixel of screen resolution and 128 MB internal memory. Pre-installed with WAP and Opera mini browser this Riviera R12 mobile phone also comes embedded with 128 MB internal memory. This Riviera R12 mobile phone also poses MP3, WAV, MIDI audio support and 3GP video player support. Riviera R12 Mobile Phone Features QVGA 65K color CSTN display screen 176 x 220 pixel of screen resolution Dual SIM (GSM+GSM) GSM 900 / 1800 Mhz | GSM 900 / 1800 Mhz network support Qwerty keypad with trackball navigation 1.3 mega pixels camera 1280 x 1024 pixels of resolution Digital zoom Inbuilt WAP and Opera mini browser Bluetooth, GPRS connectivity MP3, MP4 player Micro SD / T-Flash memory card slot 3GP video player support Inbuilt games 128 MB internal memory Up to 2 GB of ex...

As we know there is no official client of Facebook is available for iPad. So it allows other developers to create own Facebook apps for iPad, just like “Friendly for Facebook” app for iPad. This app is the most popular facebook app for iPad. Another facebook app was released for iPad last week. The name of this new app is Facepad. Now this Facepad app for iPad has been updated to version 1.0.1. This updated version comes with new sign out icon and fixes iOS 3.2 crash on startup. Using this app you can browse Facebook on you iPad and view multiple profiles as stackable, and scrollable pages. Facepad 1.0.1 includes a dedicated photo browser, embedded video player, swipe based navigation and quick links to news Feed, Profile, Friends etc. Facepad is the 15th most popular app on the iTunes App Store. This app allows you to view multiple profiles and check them within few seconds. When this app was released, during the first 12 hours of its release it gets more than million ad...

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) has announced the availability of two new drives under CinemaStar family. Known as the CinemaStar C5K750 and 5K2000, both hard disk drives are optimized for the growing digital video recorder (DVR), IPTV set-top-box (STB), video surveillance and emerging hard drive-embedded TV markets. The 2.5-inch CinemaStar C5K750 is Hitachi’s first CE drives in the market with Advanced Format, which increases the physical sector size on hard drives from 512 bytes to 4096 (4K) bytes. It is currently available in 750GB, 640GB and 500GB of storage spaces. Available in 1.5TB and 2TB of storage capacities, the 3.5-inch CinemaStar 5K2000 family comes equipped with the CoolSpin technology to deliver a greater level of power efficiency and quiet operation for energy-conscious, environmentally-friendly computers. The CinemaStar C5K750 and 5K2000 families are now shipping to customers worldwide.

  3D TVs are becoming increasingly common, but not everybody that owns a 3D TV may own a 3D-capable Blu-ray player or similar devices. There are other ways to get 3D content on your new electronic distraction, of course. VUDU has confirmed that 3D movies will begin to stream next week and will be available in various resolutions. The good news is that they will apparently require the same minimum amount of bandwidth as 2D streams. The disappointing thing is that there doesn’t seem to be any mention of prices and available titles, but considering next week is just around the corner, we should find out pretty soon.

Amazon's (Nasdaq: AMZN) new, slimmed-down Kindle devices are notable for several things, not the least of which are the upgra des to their experimental WebKit browser. The Kindle E-Reader df The third-generation Kindle reader from Amazon is now the company's bestselling product in its history, passing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, book seven in the wildly popular series. While Amazon won't reveal sales figures for the electronic reader, the company claims even those who own LCD tablets are purchasing the Kindle. "They report preferring the Kindle for reading because it weighs less, eliminates battery anxiety with its month-long battery life and has the advanced paper-like Pearl e-ink display that reduces eye-strain, doesn't interfere with sleep patterns at bedtime and works outside in direct sunlight," said CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement on the Amazon site Tuesday. Tablets such as Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPad have eaten into the Kind...

Google has approached several magazine publishers, including Time Warner's Time Inc unit for creating a digital newsstand, in a move to become the dominant distributor of newspapers and magazines for tablet computers and other mobile devices, says a media report. "Google is trying to drum up publishers' support for a new Google-operated digital newsstand for users of devices that run its Android software," the 'Wall Street Journal' reported. With the effort, Google is stepping the battle with Apple, which already sells digital versions of many major magazines and newspapers through its iTunes store. The digital newsstand would provide a way for media companies to sell versions of their publications designed for tablet PCs and smartphones based on Google's Android operating system, the report said. Google has discussed the venture with publishers including Time Warner's Time Inc unit, Code Nast and Hearst Corp, the report said citing sou...

Google’s foray into internet television is not going quite as planned. Google plans to rework the software for Google TV before more manufacturers bring devices to market with the programming installed, reported U.S. media recently. That’s after critics savaged the first take of the system. Google TV is designed to operate on special televisions or set-top boxes. Japanese company Sony and Swiss computer peripherals manufacturer Logitech are already using the technology. The goal of Google TV is to meld television and the internet. Viewers would be able to access Google’s Chrome browser directly from their television. Hundreds of TV channels would similarly be accessible and searchable on TVs and online. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, companies like Toshiba, LG and Sharp were prepared to present the first devices with the Google TV option. But Google has now asked them to hold off while it reworks the programme, reported the  New York Times ...

Microsoft is working on a new Windows system for mobile devices like tablet computers, according to reports. The system would focus on devices using energy-saving chips designed by the British company ARM. Many of ARM’s chips are currently used in both the iPad and iPhone from Apple. Now Windows will reportedly offer versions of its Windows CE and Windows Phone 7 systems that run on ARM chips. Its standard Desktop Windows system will be designed for x-86 architecture chips from Intel and AMD. Microsoft head Steve Ballmer is expected to present the new systems in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The new systems should support chips from both ARM, Intel and AMD. Quallcomm, Texas Instruments and Samsung all produce chips with ARM designs. Microsoft competitor Apple currently dominates the tablet computer market, selling 7.5 million of its iPads between its debut in April and the end of September. Market researcher Strategy Analytics estimates that Ap...

Bangalore: The romance with tablet PCs is reaching new heights this year. The first glimpse of it can be seen at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to be held at Las Vegas from January 6 to January 9, 2011. A prime technology trade show, the CES is a prominent platform to showcase new gadgets and products by companies hoping to grab the consumer eyeballs. This year, many tech companies are up with a tablet of theirs at the CES, hoping to give competition to the iPad, which has ruled the tablet roost since its launch. We round up some of the major companies that are set to display tablet PCs in the mega event.  1. Motorola will showcase the first Android Honeycomb run tablet called the Motorola Droid Xoom at the CES. Powered by an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, the Droid Xoom tablet features a 5MP rear camera and a front facing 2MP camera. The tablet ships with 32GB of flash storage memory and is expected to have a seven or ten inch touchscreen display. 2. HP is mulling ...

Chennai: India should develop technologies that are both innovative and affordable, harness the young talent pool, encourage participation in research and increase industry-academia interaction -- these were the unanimous views of a panel at the 98th Indian Science Congress here Monday. Kickstarting a panel discussion, Planning Commission member K. Kasturirangan said: "India is transforming from a poor economy to a stable middle economy. By 2025, the GDP is expected to be $10 trillion and the per capita GDP $7,000." He said the 12th and 13th five year plan periods were important in this context. "There should be a linkage between academia, research institutes and industry. The research activities should be of societal relevance," he said. Kasturirangan wondered whether defence research should be confined only to government institutes or could the private sector be asked to participate. According to him the, 15,000 crore domestic medical equipment s...