Android KitKat on the Nexus 5

Google launched its latest sweet-themed Androidoperating system just in time for Halloween: KitKat.

Right now, it's only available on the Nexus 5, which just went on sale in the Google Play store. Other Nexus device users will get it sometime in November, while other Android owners will get it whenever their carrier decides to upgrade them.

Google holds out the hope that KitKat is the one Android version that will rule them all; it has been designed for the slowest of smartphones as well as speed machines like the Nexus 5. So for all those users still struggling on Android 2.3 Gingerbread (that would be roughly a third of all Android users), the KitKat upgrade is a huge deal.

The interface is full of incremental improvements. Scrolling is faster; fonts look sharper. Emoji icons have been added to the keyboard. There are no more widgets to worry about. A translucent search bar sits at the top of each of your pages of apps. Fire up a game or open an e-book, and the UI goes away altogether.

Ubuntu Saucy Salamander is Here

The latest version of Ubuntu was released on October 17, 2013. This is version 3.10 and is also called as Saucy Salamander, which includes some major enhancements when compared to previous version. What’s fascinating about the launch is the inclusion of a stable version of Ubuntu Touch, an operating system developed by Ubuntu, which can be installed on any smartphone or tablet.

According to Community Manager for Ubuntu, Jono Bacon, the desktop version has many new options. Despite this, the stable version of Ubuntu Touch, which is created ​​primarily for manufacturers and developers, brings only basic applications like a browser, clock, climate indicator and a calculator, all created by members of Ubuntu community.

What’s new in Ubuntu 13.10?

Saucy Salamander brings some new options that are worth trying. Smart Scopes is one among these options, that delivers search results for any term in the Dash Search. This feature is also present in the previous version of Ubuntu, although only Amazon delivered results. Now, results are extended for many other services such as Reddit, Wikipedia, eBay, Foursquare or Grooveshark.

There are some changes in user-interface too, although these are minor and nothing unusual. Ubuntu 13.10 brings eighteen new wallpapers and updated versions of Files, Rhythmbox, and LibreOffice.

Ubuntu Touch OS for tablets and smartphones

You can install the Ubuntu Touch into a Galaxy Nexus or LG Nexus 4 following these directions, but be cautious of a few things: You must be very careful during the installation process, or your smartphone can be damaged. It does not have all the features that are provided in a retail phone and eventually this process will erase all data on the device which cannot be recovered by restoring Android.

Touch Ubuntu is stable but not fully complete ye, but with some patience, you can wait to try it a little later. The other devices that support Touch Ubuntu are Samsung Nexus 10 and ASUS Nexus 7. Currently, this OS is restricted to only these devices.

Although Ubuntu Touch is an inexperienced version, the interface allows you to completely handle gestures such as drag from the left, open an application launcher that allows changes anchored between the two applications (multi-tasking ), drag from the right shows a circle with applications that are open, or drag down from the top will show indicators and settings.

Google Web Designer : A New Invention from Google

Google has recently released an interesting tool called Google Web Designer, that can be used both by professional web designers as well as newbies. Available in beta, this application solves some of the most important problems of the web like compatibility on different devices. More than anything, Google Web Designer is a complete application that can be used to design a program that is up to date with market trends, user-friendly and easy to use.

About Google Web Designer

What exactly is Google Web Designer? This is a free executable program that can be downloaded from a website and permits working with form styles to HTML5 and interactive graphics which can be used on any type of device. Even if the user does not have the ability to create a complete website, this tool can be used to create interactive Google Ads rather than have us use Adobe Dreamweaver. We will have to download this program to prove this point.

The main strength that we have in Google Web Designer is compatibility. In fact, the items that we develop with this program may look good, irrespective of screen size or device it is used in. The idea is that we can develop items like HTML, CSS, JavaScript and XML that are universal and help people see the work regardless of the device or equipment they use to access a particular function. In short, the goal of Google Web Designer is to eliminate compatibility problems.

In addition, Google Web Designer encompasses a functionality similar to one we find in Adobe Dreamweaver. It allows the user to work strictly on the design, and also gives a provision to work directly with the code to create the mandatory modifications. It is essential to note that with Google Web Designer it is possible to work with the code, and not use any additional software for this job. As for the visual editor, it searches Google and removes the need to work with HTML5 and CSS3, thus making people focused on creating a visual experience.

Google Web Designer is provided with lots of functionalities. Thus, users can find two completely different modes of animation, one quick mode which helps to build animations scene by scene and an advanced mode which provides several 3D capabilities. The user can create 3D content through CSS3. Similar to Dreamweaver, it has different display panels for example, you can choose to see the code or design or can have a combination of both in the same window.

Wearable Gadgets from Samsung!

Samsung takes the biggest leap into wearable gadgets this September. Indeed every technogeek has been waiting for it. The industry has already taken a shift towards wearable technologies with the announcements made by Samsung’s major competitor – Apple Inc.

Google Glass is the first commercially available wearable gadget that was released by the market leader, a few months back. Though it enjoyed a spectacular release with a lot of hype, the product did not catch up with expectations. Perhaps expectations were just too high. Google Glass has been labelled premature by evaluators and the public who were lucky enough to use it. This was primarily because limited “real-life” testing was carried out on the device. The gadget failed to perform in multiple scenarios and users found it embarrassing having to chant the command “Glass” each time they wanted to access a piece of information.

The concerns mentioned above drew a route map for Samsung’s journey towards wearable devices. Although Samsung team had less promotions compared to Google, they have worked hard to understand the requirements and mindsets of users.

The product release happened in a place that resembled a mix of a cathedral and a circus tent, in Berlin, Germany.

Samsung has tried to focus on the usability aspect rather than putting in extra effort to make it ornamental. The device has been named as “Samsung Gear”. It comes in the form of a wrist watch with a cute 320 x 320 1.64 inch Super AMOLED display. This screen is mounted on a wrist strap, making it a portable/wearable Galaxy smartphone.

All similar devices in the market concentrate on three main aspects:

·         Portability

·         Size

·         Battery backup

Samsung has put in sincere efforts to come up with the best possible solutions by optimizing the battery and the processor, ensuring a seamless usability experience to its users. However, Samsung Gear is yet to travel many miles before it can ensure complete satisfaction to overambitious users. Sources say that Samsung has been investing a lot on research and development around this domain and has a clear vision for all future releases and activities. This is a silent assurance for all who expect wonderful new products from the company. In the long run we can expect the term “Mobile” to be replaced by “Wearable” as more and more devices  transform themselves into wearable gadgets.

Samsung is now going through a “market study” phase. The release of these devices initially would evaluate the level of acceptance from users. The Samsung team will be able to customize them for the next release, based on reviews and feedback they gather. The same strategy was adopted even during the release of Galaxy series smartphones.

Smart watches and wearables leave a good margin of hope as they introduce functionalities that involve health and vital statistics measurement sensors. Such features in future wearables will offer a much healthier and happier life. This future is not far away.

8 Great Hidden Features in iOS7

1. Clock Icon

Go ahead and look at your clock app icon. Take a closer look. It's an actual clock with a working second hand. A nice little touch from Apple.

2. Text Timestamps

If you slide text messages to the left, you can see the timestamp for all of them — not just the most recent.

3. The Level

By opening up the Compass app and swiping your finger across it, a new digital "level" feature is revealed. You'll never have a crooked painting on the wall again.

4. Night Mode for Maps

If you're driving late at night, the glow of your iPhone screen can be nearly blinding as you try to use the Apple Maps app. Now, the platform displays a darker interface at certain times. This is less distracting and easier on the eyes when navigating at night.

5. Closing Multiple Apps

You can close multiple apps at once! Here's how: double click the home button to reveal open webpages and platforms. You can then swipe up to three apps at the same time by using three fingers and dragging them upwards.

6. Siri Controls Settings

You can use Siri to set alarms and reminders on previous iOS versions, but now you can lean on her to navigate settings too. For example, by saying "Open Settings," Siri will open the Settings folder. By asking Siri to "Turn Off Wi-Fi," she'll gladly oblige without you having to lift a finger. You can also tell her to make calls and play voicemail messages too.

7. Block Calls

If you're getting harassing calls, you can now put a stop to it. Visit Settings > Phone > Blocked to add numbers you want to restrict.

8. Apps Near Me

The Apple App Store has a new "Near Me" feature, which shows apps that are popular near your current location. So if you live in New York City, it will highlight handy apps such as NYC Subway KICKMap and Way2ride taxi, which lets you pay for cab rides via the app.

GOOGLE HUMMINGBIRD ALGORITHM

Google revealed a new search algorithm named Hummingbird. Designed to be more precise and provide faster query results, the algorithm is based on semantic search, focusing on user intent versus individual search terms.

Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query – the whole sentence or conversation or meaning – is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few words.

Hummingbird is a definite expansion of Google’s semantic capability evident at the search interface level that reveals, significantly, two things,” “First, Google has increased its ability to deal with complex search queries which means that it also has got better at indexing entities in Web documents. Second, it has got a lot better at relationally linking search queries and Web documents which means that its Knowledge Graph must be considerably enriched.”

Gesture Control Software

PointGrab Ltd. is a leading provider of advanced Hand Gesture Recognition Software (HGRS) using 
a standard 2D camera, which can accurately and reliably track human hands individually for up to 5 
meters. The PointGrab HGRS solution is ideal for use with a wide range of PCs including Desktops, Laptops, Notebooks, and All-in-Ones (AIOs).

PointGrab Advantages

·         Intuitive & Powerful Innovation: Allows use of intuitive hand gestures to remotely control a wide range of devices and platforms.

·         Lower in Cost (than competing hardware solutions): A software-only solution, requires only a standard 2D camera.

·         Short Time-to-Market: Rapid, simple integration into a wide range of PC models.

·         Easy to Integrate: No dedicated hardware or industrial design changes are required.

·         Easy Development for 3rd Parties: A convenient SDK allows application developers to easily integrate hand gestures into their apps.

·         Flexible: Supports a wide range of applications and enables both predefined and customized gesture support.

·         Reliable: Works in a wide range of lighting and background conditions. Can be combined with IR LED to work in completely dark rooms.

iPhone 5s vs iPhone 5:What’s New ?

iPhone 5s vs iPhone 5:What’s New

After months of leaks and rumors, the iPhone 5s is finally real.Packing a fingerprint sensor, improved camera, and A7 processor, the revamped smartphone is a significant improvement over the 2012 iPhone 5.

Design

The iPhone 5s looks largely similar to its predecessor, with a few small tweaks. The home button has eschewed the square logo in its center, and is now simply a circular ring that utilizes the device’s new fingerprint scanning technology. The iPhone 5s retains the 2.31 x 4.87 x 0.3-inch, 3.95-ounce build of the original iPhone 5. Probably the biggest change to the design is that while the original iPhone 5 launched in Black/Slate and White/Silver, the 5S will be available in Silver, Space Gray and a Champagne Gold.

Specification

The biggest upgrade to the iPhone 5s is the phone’s A7 processor, which Apple says has a 40 times faster CPU than the original iPhone. Apple claims the 64-bit mobile processor is the first of its kind and will have twice the graphics performance of the iPhone 5.

The iPhone 5s has the same 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi support as the iPhone 5. However, the new model is designed to deliver 10 hours of talk time on 3G, 10 hours of Web browsing on Wi-Fi and LTE (8 hours on 3G), 10 hours of video playback and 40 hours of music listening. The 5 only offered 8 hours of 3G talk time and 8 hours of LTE Web browsing.

Like the standard iPhone 5, the 5s will have a 4-inch, 1136 x 640-pixel Retina Display screen.

New Features

The iPhone family now has its first fingerprint sensor with the 5s’ Touch ID technology. This new feature takes a high-res image of your fingerprint with a laser cut sapphire crystal, which allows the phone to store a detailed fingerprint image that can be read from multiple angles. Touch ID will be used to unlock the iPhone 5s, and can be used for confirming App Store purchases for those who’d rather not type their password in repeatedly.

With the iPhone 5s’s new M7 motion coprocessor (something the iPhone 5 didn’t have), the handset can keep track of users’ motions more accurately than ever without overloading the CPU.  The new coprocessor will allow for improved fitness apps, as the chip measures user movement even when the phone is in sleep mode.

ADROID 4.4 KITKAT

PREPARE FOR A SWEET NEW TREAT

Android is the operating system that powers over 1 billion smartphones and tablets. Since these devices make our lives so sweet, each Android version is named after a dessert: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Jelly Bean. As everybody finds it difficult to stay away from chocolate we decided to name the next version of Android after one of our favorite chocolate treats, Kitkat.

To make this release even sweeter, Kit Kat is giving you the chance to win a Nexus 7 or Google Play credit. Just look for specially branded Kit Kat candy bars featuring the Android robot in a store near you.

Google says that "it's our goal with Android KitKat to make an amazing Android experience available for everybody." That's certainly a bit vague, but the statement does line up with earlier rumors that suggested Google plans to use its next Android release in smartwatches, gaming consoles, low-cost smartphones, and even laptops.

Samsung Youm Flexible Display

Samsung announced at their CES keynote that they’re working on a flexible OLED display  technology called Youm.

They say that the Youm has much better colors and contrast compared to other displays out there, and all in a super thin, flexible form factor.

The flexible display is, of course, bendable, and it allows you to see what’s on the screen from any angle. The prototype shown even had a screen that stretched above the device, so that you can see notifications and content even when the device is laid on a flat surface. The display will allow various other manufacturers to make bendable, rollable, and foldable displays.

Samsung demonstrated the Youm concept in a promotional video, where a guy pulls out a device that folds like a wallet. The device doubles as a phone and a tablet. The same video also shows the guy literally rolling out a tablet.

Of course Youm is still a prototype, so we’re not sure when we’ll see it launch in the market. It’ll be amazing to see this type of display featured on various Android devices, and we know that Android developers will take full advantage of the new display technology.

BLINK: A Rendering Engine For The Chromium Project

Blink is a web browser engine developed by Google and Opera Software ASA as part of the Chromium project, first announced in April 2013. It is a fork of the WebCore component of  WebKit and is used in Chrome , Opera  and other Chromium based browsers.

WebKit is a lightweight yet powerful rendering engine that emerged out of KHTML in 2001. Its flexibility, performance and thoughtful design made it the obvious choice for Chromium's rendering engine back when we started. Thanks to the hard work by all in the community, WebKit has thrived and kept pace with the web platform’s growing capabilities since then.

However, Chromium uses a different multi-process architecture than other WebKit-based browsers, and supporting multiple architectures over the years has led to increasing complexity for both the WebKit and Chromium projects. This has slowed down the collective pace of innovation - so today, we are introducing Blink, a new open source rendering engine based on WebKit.

This was not an easy decision.The introduction of a new rendering engine can have significant implications for the web. Having multiple rendering engines—similar to having multiple browsers—will spur innovation and over time improve the health of the entire open web ecosystem.

In the short term, Blink will bring little change for web developers. The bulk of the initial work will focus on internal architectural improvements and a simplification of the codebase. For example, we anticipate that we’ll be able to remove 7 build systems and delete more than 7,000 files—comprising more than 4.5 million lines—right off the bat. Over the long term a healthier codebase leads to more stability and fewer bugs.

WATERPROOF SMARTPHONE

Sony Teases New Waterproof Smartphone, Coming September 4

Sony has announced a new unnamed smartphone with a titillating video, showing us very little in terms of specifications but revealing the launch date: September 4.

The video, titled "The best of Sony is about to get even better," shows a presumably high-end smartphone that can be submerged underwater.

The rumored name for the device is Xperia Z1, and it's said to have a 5-megapixel screen, a Snapdragon 800 processor and a 21-megapixel camera with 4K shooting capabilities, but none of that has been officially confirmed at this point.

For comparison, the also-waterproof Xperia Z Ultra has that same processor, a 6.4-inch screen, but only an 8-megapixel shooter.

PROJECT LOON-Balloon Powered Internet

What is Project Loon ?

Project Loon is a study and development project being developed by Google with the mission of providing Internet access to rural and remote areas.

Technology

The balloons will drift through the stratosphere—which is about twice as high as commercial planes fly—to deliver 3G service to off-the-grid areas. They are carried around the Earth by winds and they can be steered by rising or descending to an altitude with winds moving in the desired direction. People connect to the balloon network using a special Internet antenna attached to their building. The signal bounces from balloon to balloon, then to the global Internet back on Earth.

Google launched 30 balloons so far around Canterbury, New Zealand, as part of an effort to build a global ring of balloon-borne Internet relay points in the stratosphere. Depending on the success of the project, Google had decided to carry Project Loon to different nations and looks like India might be one of the lucky ones.

A decade ago, the European Union founded the CAPANINA project to deliver broadband from high-altitude platforms in the stratosphere. Back in 2005, it successfully produced broadband wireless access at distances of up to 37 miles (60 kilometers) from a free-floating balloon in the stratosphere over northern Sweden.

Tim Tozer, an expert on wireless, satellite, and HAP communications at the University of York in Great Britain, was part of that effort. He spoke with National Geographic about the current state of the science—and the promising future beyond Google's balloons.

                                                

HOW LOON WORKS

Project Loon balloons travel around 20 km above the Earth’s surface in the stratosphere. Winds in the stratosphere are generally steady and slow-moving at between 5 and 20 mph, and each layer of wind varies in direction and magnitude. Project Loon uses software algorithms to determine where its balloons need to go, then moves each one into a layer of wind blowing in the right direction. By moving with the wind, the balloons can be arranged to form one large communications network.Project Loon is able to take advantage of the steady stratospheric winds, and remain well above weather events, wildlife and airplanes.    
                                                   

 

HOW IS LOON DESIGNED

The balloon envelope is the name for the inflatable part of the balloon. The balloons are made of polyethylene plastic. They are approximately 15 meters in diameter and the entire apparatus is about 12 meters tall. Each balloon is powered via solar panels. They are specially constructed for use in superpressure balloons, which are longer-lasting than weather balloons because they can withstand higher pressure from the air inside when the balloons reach float altitude. A parachute attached to the top of the envelope allows for a controlled descent and landing whenever a balloon is ready to be taken out of service.

The balloons will float along the winds in the stratosphere, approximately 20km above the surface. At such a distance, they cannot be seen with the naked eye. Each balloon is equipped with transceivers to communicate with nearby balloons and with a regional ground station and the specialized antenna Google developed to receive the signal. The balloons provide the equivalent of 3G service using the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz ISM bands in an area that’s roughly 40 kilometers in diameter. They also communicate with each other to maintain the positioning necessary to form a functioning network.The company adds that the balloons are designed to stay aloft for “100+ days.”

While the project is still in pilot phase and the chances of it coming to India are still isolated, it would definitely be favourable to most Indians. India being a developing nation still needs to reach out to rural areas and educate them about the internet. With Project Loon, rural areas will not just get internet but can even learn more about surfing.