Microsoft's New Software Makes You Speak In 26 Languages

Computer giant Microsoft has reportedly created a software dubbed the "Universal Translator" that can convert English language spoken to it into 26 different languages. Frank Soong and Rick Rashid -- from the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington -- created the software which can also speak in the user's own voice, the Daily Mail reported. The scientists hope that the software will one day allow visitors to foreign countries have conversations with other people, even though they do not speak the same language. Soong said his breakthrough could help language students and might also work with navigational devices. Hypothetically, it could be installed into a smart phone meaning tourists have a ready made translation device sitting in their pockets. "We will be able to do quite a few scenario applications. For a monolingual speaker travelling in a foreign country, we'll do speech recognition followed by translation, followed by the final text to speech output in a different language, but still in his own voice," Soong said. Soong and Rashid created the software with colleagues at the Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, the company's second-largest research lab. The device needs around one hour to get used to a person's voice, and then works by comparing the words that have been recorded with stock models for the target language

New Telecom Policy Likely by June: Economic Survey

The new telecom policy, which is expected to do away with roaming charges for subscribers will be announced by June, the Economic Survey said Thursday.

"The government is in the process of finalizing the new National Telecom Policy (NTP). Draft of the policy was circulated in 2011 for consultation with various stake holders. Views from these stake holders have been received and the same are under consideration," the survey said.

"NTP is likely to be in place by June 2012," it added.

The draft policy also proposes to implement one nation full mobile number portability (MNP) along with providing the telecom industry the status of an infrastructure sector, which will help ease credit flow to companies for funding rollout plans or expansion activities.

The draft has been approved by the telecom commission and the Department of Telecom (DoT) is in the process of seeking cabinet approval.

According to DoT secretary R. Chandrashekhar, the draft policy will be sent to the cabinet by March and the department expects to get the cabinet approval by April end.

According to data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), India has 903 million mobile connections as on Jan 31.

Google Search Will Answer Your Queries Now

Internet giant Google's "search" will now not only hunt down typed-in words but also answer questions like an encyclopaedia.

In a drastic makeover for the search engine, the option will no longer show only a list of blue links to varous websites, but will also be dotted with information that would answer people's questions, the Daily Mail reported. The new version of search will use what is called "semantic search" that attempts to understand the meaning of searches, rather than simply hunting for words.

Microsoft has a similar option with its Bing search engine, the second most-popular in the US. Google has "quietly" amassed information on 200 million items including people, places and products. The daily said that in 2010, Google acquired a database company called FreeBase, and expanded its storehouse from 12 million to 200 million today. Most searches rely on other sites -- and not Google itself -- to provide an answer. "We cross our fingers and hope there's a web page out there with the answer. The changes, however, was an ongoing process that could take years.

Cell Phone - The New Tool for Data Collection

Researchers can garner vast amounts of information bearing on pollution, epidemics, transportation, from cameras, audio recorders and other applications built into cell phones, cheaply and efficiently.

But how to get mobile users to cooperate? "We can 'soft control' users with gaming or social network incentives to drive them where we want them," said study co-author Fabian Bustamante of Northwestern University.

For example, a game might offer extra points if a player visits a certain location in the real world, or it might send a player to a certain location in a virtual scavenger hunt, according to a Northwestern statement.

To test soft control, researchers created Android games, including one called Ghost Hunter in which a player chases ghosts around his neighbourhood and "zaps" them through an augmented reality display on his phone.

In actuality, the player's zapping motion snaps a photo of the spot where the ghost is supposedly located, said Bustamante, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern.

In Ghost Hunter, researchers are able to manipulate where the ghosts are placed. Some are placed in frequently travelled areas, others are located in out-of-the-way, rarely photographed locations.

Participants were willing to travel well out of their regular paths to capture the ghosts helping researchers collect photos of Northwestern's Charles Deering Library from numerous angles and directions - a far broader range of data than the random sampling found on Flickr.

"Playing the game seemed to be a good enough vehicle to get people to go to these places," said John P. Rula, McCormick graduate student, who led the study.

If this technology were implemented on a larger scale, users would need to be notified that their data was being collected for research purposes, Bustamante said.

"Obviously users need to know where their data is going," he said, "and we take every measure to protect user privacy."

These findings were presented at the XIIIth Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (HotMobile).

5 Best Android Cloud Storage Apps

Smartphone market is dominated by Android phones which come with limited on-board storage. Many smartphone manufacturers are trying to remove this pain-point by providing online storage service powered by cloud servers. If you find yourself in a critical position when you have limited storage in your smartphone check out these top cloud servers based storage services which allows you to upload files, store files, share data, take backup, restore and access the files from any platform.

Box:

Box app one of the oldest app to offer free 5 GB online storage for life time, if use are signing-in as an Android user then you will be getting free 50GB storage for lifetime. This free app lets you view and access files from anywhere with a computer or mobile phone. Box also lets you share your data via a link in email or through instant messaging. The most amazing feature of this app is it lets you invite friends and workmates to join a specific folder where they can also upload files and you will get the notification regarding the updates made. This is the best choice if you share files often with your friends and workers.

Dropbox:

This simple app is the best one to provide the finest user experience of storing and downloading files online. The free version of the app lets you have 2GB of storage; an updated version is available in the Android market which lets you upload photos directly from the camera the moment you click. The user interface of this app is very simple to upload files and to view them offline. The app allows you to edit text documents and even comes with a passcode locking feature and is regarded as one of the best productivity app.

Ubuntu One:

Ubuntu One offers two options for Android users- Ubuntu One Files and Ubuntu One Music, both of these apps can be accessed with a single ID. Singing-in with Ubuntu One gives you 5GB of free storage. The app lets you upload photos, music, and data and allows you to share it using Blutooth, email and even social networking site with a link. The best feature in this app is, the Ubuntu One Music lets you store all your music for free and even give built-in music player to stream your music anywhere. These two simple looking apps do their best in the cloud storage and also has features like Auto-retry failed transfers, Avoid uploading duplicate files and Use WiFi Only.

SugarSync:

This app is quite similar to dropbox, but comes with some additional experience and features. It offers 5 GB of storage and comes with a Photo Optimisation option which lets you synchronize your photos the moment you click them and store them in your virtual folders. The app features music playback and also lets you upload multiple files at the same time. One major drawback of this app is it doesn't offer search option.

CX:

This funky looking app offers 10GB of free storage and is recommended to be registered through CX.com website rather than mobile interface as the app is still is in its development and updation stage. The app offers special option for public and private sharing which gives you a control on who sees your data. It also has a special photo optimization or resolution size options.

112 Indian Government Websites Hacked in 90 days

Hackers were able to access around 112 government websites in a period of just three months, revealed Sachin pilot, Minister of Communication and Information Technology.

The hacked websites belong to agencies in the government of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Kerala, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Sikkim, Manipur and also the agencies of Ministry of Finance, Health, Planning Commission and Human Resource Development.

Based on the analysis of web server logs, the agencies were requested by the government to strengthen their security measures. The counter measures to patch the exploited vulnerabilities were handed over to the agencies by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).

As reported by ZDnet, most of the state government’s websites are very poor in security. Many of them run on a single server. For example the websites of Rajasthan government. This will make them more vulnerable to attacks as, if a hacker can exploit any of this website, he can simultaneously access the related ones.

According to the press release, Government plans to implement the following steps to strengthen the security.

All the new Government websites and applications are to be audited with respect to cyber security prior to their hosting. The auditing of the websites and applications will be conducted on a regular basis after hosting.

National Informatics Centre (NIC) has been directed not to host web sites which are not audited with respect to cyber security.

National Informatics Centre (NIC) which hosts the government websites is continuously engaged in upgrading and improving the security posture of its hosting infrastructure.

All the Ministries/ Departments of Central Government and State Governments are implementing the Crisis Management Plan to counter cyber attacks and cyber terrorism.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) will issue alerts and advisories regarding latest cyber threats and countermeasures on regular basis.

The minister also added that the number of internet frauds involving Rupees one lakh and above has declined from 269 to 125 over a period of three years.

Windows 8 Beta: A Visual Tour

The release of Windows 8 operating system marks a new beginning for Microsoft as it will be the first touch centric OS released by the company, meant to satisfy both the traditional PC users and the new range of tablet users. The consumer preview which was released last week boast to have more than 100,000 changes from the developers preview which was released on September 2011.

The Metro style, color filled user interface of the new OS successfully fills the gap between phone, tablet and PC’s, by allowing input from keyboard to touch. User experience of Windows Phone 7 influenced the interface design of windows 8 to a high extent.

The product, which is expected to ship later this year will support both ARM and x86

Inside The Launch

Microsoft had unveiled many functions including the improved multiple screen support and displayed a wide range of systems from hardware partners ranging from tablets to concept devices like an 82 inch monitor made of optically-bonded Gorilla Glass with subpixel depth. According to Michael Angiulo, corporate VP of Microsoft Windows planning,“the OSmakes you feel like you're actually moving each Windows tile by hand and this could become the next-generation TV experience.

Man behind the Scene

Steve Sinofsky, President of Microsoft's Windows division is the man who played the lead role in Windows 8 preview event. He is the driving force behind Windows 8 who is determined to make a new computer era with users as the first preference.

Windows 8 powerful Multitasking

Windows 8 brings a lot more to you on multitasking. You can simply resize a task window and lock it anywhere on the screen. Say it will allow you to have your message window alongside your YouTube window. The OS will itself shut down the apps which are no more used, but resume the previous status when you click it again

The Signature

The main ingredient of the new OS is the Windows 8 Metro interface, which allows you to do a lot of things ranging from a single touch for performing multiple functions. You can simply terminate an app by dragging it to the bottom of the screen and also move your widow sidewise by touching the edges with your mouse.

Pushing Windows 8 to Edge

Microsoft has played a lot around HTML 5 for providing the extreme to your web browsing. Noe the Company called “edge-to-edge browser experience will provide you with full screen display with browser controls and tabs appear only when you need them.

Windows 8 Built-In Services

Windows 8 multiple apps will work smoothly with Microsoft's built in services. It will allow the developers to take advantage of app to app services or app to OS services. Say, if you want to share a link from a website, just click the share button and the OS will pop up the share apps, which will easily help you with mailing or posting.

Office Made Easy

Microsoft had made Office apps easier with Windows 8. Now you can simply perform functions like copy and paste between office apps.

Search Anything

Windows 8 searches displays you the result from everywhere- within the system to the web. Say if you search for Harry Potter, it will display all the results from the images stored in your system to the game from Xbox live to a movie in Flixter.

Hardware Partners

Microsoft displayed a range of hardware partners at the launch event, including designs from System On Chip players like NVidia and Qualcomm. The hardware's will start up in the system quickly, some of them within 8 seconds. The apps will work even when the PC is in standby mode with Microsoft's "connected standby." A feature called "storage spaces" considers every storage as a single pool, disregarding type, size or technology.

All about Apps

With Microsoft's new app store, you will have a number of apps which are organized in a beautiful and efficient way ranging from music, video, social, food to entertainment apps. Microsoft showed many application partners like Amazon Kindle in the event and also hosted an app developer contest.

Could Pair Programming be Harmful?

The dilemma of whether lone developers work better than developer groups, is one that has plagued the field of software development for an age. “How do we get better at what we do?” is a question that constantly needs to be asked, and answered at least in some way.

A report on TechCrunch tried to answer that often asked question for the sake of all coding. Coding, according to the report, has always been considered to be a field that one could excel at when alone, and especially since a single excellent coder is universally considered to be worth more than a team of mediocre programmers. But the problem with this idea is that lone coders are anyway human, and if you depend on a one-man team, wrong decisions made by one person could mangle the whole company.

How do companies try to mitigate this risk?

Various companies have tried to come up with a work-around for this risk, and one of them includes the possibility of having a pair of coders at a single keyboard at all times. This strategy boils down to the fact that two minds are better than one, and if one person comes up with a flawed idea, or if one makes a mistake, the other could always try and discuss a way around it. A couple of companies that have tried this approach include Pivotal Labs based in San Francisco, as well as the Xtreme Labs at Toronto. The approach has also been advocated at Thought Works India, and by Naresh Jain, Director of Asia Operations and Agile Coach at Industrial Logic (a site that offers coaching in extreme programming).

Now although programmers working in pairs were found to be 15 percent slower than individual coders working on a project, the code they produced was found to have 15 percent lesser bugs, according to a report from The Economist, a new publication.

But unfortunately the problem is not solved there.

However, a report from the New York Times countered this notion with a report that stated research by psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist strongly suggested that people were more creative when they enjoyed privacy and freedom from interruption. The most amazingly creative people in a number of fields are often introverted. The theory supports the words of Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple—“If you’re that rare engineer who’s an inventor and also an artist, I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone.” His book iWoz explained the basis for his theory, stating “When you’re working for a large, structured company, there’s much less leeway to turn clever ideas into revolutionary new products or product features by yourself. You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team.”

The report from TechCrunch gave credit to the Hacker News report and commentary about office spaces which were designed to provide people the least possible privacy. According to the report, the spaces strove to erode people’s “fight or flight” instincts, and in the process, their creativity as well.

Now although coding is not a particularly creative process, it has one thing in common with more carpentry as well as with art—the requirement for mechanical skill upon which creative flourishes can be added.

So where does this take us?

Pair programming with a person who is different could lead to more original ideas, and especially when the combination is a dynamic pair, and group brainstorming could be even more effective, but only when everybody is different. In reality, a combination of solitary work, pair programming and group work could work, but this depends on your requirement, and insisting on 100 percent of any one type could be detrimental.

Google's Android is Now The Number One Mobile Browser

Finally after years of dominating the Mobile web browsing, Opera was thrown out of its space by none other than Google’s native Android browser.

The February month report on mobile web browsing from StatCounter shows Android finishing first covering 22.67 percent of the market by pushing Opera second with a 21.7 percent. iPhone native browser, which is gaining popularity finished third with 21.06 percent.

But according to a report on ZDNet, the Android’s browsers popularity can be compared to the same reason why Internet Explorer still rules PC’s. Both of them are built into popular devices. Android’s browser comes preloaded with all Android devices and these devices accounted for over 50 percent of all smartphone sales, up by 30 percent from the previous year.

Even though Opera come pre-loaded with certain devices like Samsung, their number is few and the rest have to download the software individually before using it.

But with Google’s plans on bringing the winner of PC browsers, Chrome to mobile devices (Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich), the share of Android and Opera may eventually fall in the market.

The report also showed that global internet usage share of mobile devices (excluding Tablets) doubled to 8.5 in January 2012 from 4.3, the previous year.

Samsung Unveils 'Galaxy Pocket' Smartphone

Samsung launched a compact sized budget Android smartphone – Galaxy Pocket. The device features 2.8 inch touchscreen with 240x320 pixels of resolution, is powered by 832 MHz single core processor and runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system.

The device is scheduled to hit the UK market later this year than to other countries. Much specification is not available, but it features 3 GB of internal memory, a microSD card slot for expanding memory, 2 MP rear camera and for connectivity it will have Wi-Fi, 3G, GPRS, Bluetooth, HSDPA and micro USB 2.0.

The Galaxy Pocket will be the company’s cheapest Android smartphone; the company has not yet revealed the price details. As of now the Galaxy Y is the company’s cheapest Android smartphone which costs around Rs.7500.

Recharge you Phone with your Breath!

Just breathe to give your device a new life! Sounds amusing, but this concept is soon going to be a reality as researchers have come up with a new device that uses the air from your lungs to charge your phone. Recharging the gadget with a spoon of water and with body movements were marvels in themselves and now you just have to breathe to juice your gadgets.

The new device is called ‘AIRE mask’, it uses the wind power generated by your breathe and converts it into electricity to recharge anything from an iPod to a smartphone. The whole kit comes with an electronic mask which has minute wind turbines to cover wind (breath) into electricity and a small cable to transfer the energy to the device.

It can be used indoors or outdoors, while you’re sleeping, walking, running or even reading a book. Besides saving energy and helping environmental preservation, it also encourages physical exercise.” Its energy is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Though many of our modern gadgets offer benefits, they tend to use a high amount of electrical energy. Harnessing energy from human activities and transforming it into electricity is possible and is a great solution.

Celebrated Women in Technology

The world celebrated women’s day last week. But in technology, Silicon Valley still remains largely a boys’ club except few women personalities who made their way up into great positions.

Here we list a few among the celebrated tech women.

Virginia Rometty

CEO, IBM

Marissa Mayer

VP Location and Local Services, Google

Mayer was the first female engineer hired at Google and one of their first 20 employees, joining the company in June 1999. She is significantly responsible for the success of the UIs of Google Search and Gmail, which made her the ideal candidate to control company’s main business – advertising. As the Vice President of location and local service now, she is responsible for generating the maximum revenue for the company.

Sheryl Sandberg

COO, Facebook

Sandberg might be the most experienced person in Facebook. Prior to joining Facebook, this Harvard topper in economics served as the vice president of global online sales and operations at Google and before that, she was the Chief of Staff for United States Department of Treasury.With her experience in the field, this highest paid employee of Facebook turned company into a $100 billion worth business.

t female CEO of IBM. She joined the company as a systems engineer more than 30 years ago andas a Senior VP of Global Business Service in 2002, she completely changed the direction of IBM by helping lead its $3.5 billion takeover of PricewaterhouseCoopers, a tedious task due to the size and difference in corporate culture of the company. She is also responsible for pushing the company into emerging markets like China and Brazil.

Shaherose Charania

Charania might have invented the most supporting platform for the women- Women 2.0, a global network and social platform for aspiring and current female founders of technology ventures. This expert of mobile and telephony startups is now running Founder Labs, a pre-idea incubator for mobile startups. Earlier she had worked in Ribbit, which was acquired by British Telecom and also at Jajah, later acquired by Telefonica.

Katie Jacobs Stanton

Head of International Strategy, Twitter

Katie was appointed as the head of international strategy at Twitter in beginning of 2010. Prior to that she was a prominent figure in Google where her work included Google Finance, Google Moderator and Open Social initiative. She was also a special advisor to the Office of Innovation at U.S. Department of State. She was behind Twitter’s revised censorship policy

Ursula Burns

Chairman and CEO, Xerox

Ursula is a perfect example for an American success story. She joined Xerox where she worked as an intern and build her way up in the ladder till she became the first Afro-American woman to head a Fortune 5oo company. Ursula presided over the $6.4 billion acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services,Xerox’s largest deal in history.

Caterina Fake

Cofounder, Flickr

Millions of people around the world will be thanking Flickr every time they upload an image into the website which save their space and manage their memories. But the credit goes to Caterina, who along with her then-husband Stewart Butterfield, invented the photo-sharing site, taking idea from their own business failure- Ludicorp a company which developed “Game Neverending”- a multiplayer online role playing game. Eventhough her first attempt went bankrupt, she made$35 million when Yahoo acquired Flickr in 2005. She recently launched Pinwheel, which lets you find and leave notes around the world.

Jessica Livingston

Cofounder, Y Combinator

Jessica, along with her husband Paul Graham and Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell launched Y Combinator, the popular three month boot camp for startups in Silicon Valley. Their programme had already launched more than 300 startups including Dropbox, Reddit and Airbnb and is processing a lot more.

5 Future-Techs that will Change the Gadget World

Technology is constantly changing; every now and then a new invention in this field is affecting the way we use these high-performing things around us. New technologies have always influenced the way we think, see and hear. As the technologies rise each and every day the look and feel of gadgets also changes as these devices implements most of the upcoming trends in technology, it brings along amazing ways to work, play and hangout. Check out some upcoming technologies that will change the face of all the gadgets around us.

1. Flexible displays

It’s an era of touchscreen devices, every smartphone or tablets out in the market come with a touchscreen. These entire touchscreen devices come with a flat display and carrying a 10 inch tablet with a flat touchscreen is sounds a bit messy.

Imaging how it will be if the gadget comes with flexible display, you can fold them or roll them to make it ultra-portable, isn’t it great? These displays will also be unbreakable because of its flexible nature.

2. Cameras that don't need focusing

Capturing an image without focusing sounds interesting; Lytro has done it in reality. The Lytro camera allows changing the focus of an image after capturing. The camera has a light field sensor that collects the color, intensity, and the direction of every light ray flowing into the camera and captures a picture in four dimensions which helps to refocus after capturing.

Some smartphone manufactures are already trying to introduce this technology for their forthcoming mobile devices. So you can look forward to click without focusing.

3. Waterproof coating on gadgets

Water is the biggest enemy of gadgets. Currently there are many waterproof gadgets but they are very expensive. A company called HzO has demonstrated a new WaterBlock technology using an iPhone by dunking it into water at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show at Las Vegas few months back.

This technology uses nanotech (nano-scale film barrier) waterproof coating which repels water for the gadgets. This nano-scale film barrier will be applied inside the smartphone during the manufacturing process and is all set to make the gadgets shake hands with their old enemy.

4. Fuel cell batteries

The battery technology never advanced in the same speed as all other gadget technology did, this is the main reason why all those high-end devices runs out of juice in a very short span. Think of a time when smartphone runs a year with a single charge, sounds impossible, but it is possible using fuel cell batteries: a chemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen. Comparing with lithium-ion or alkaline batteries it generates electricity for much longer period.

5. Wireless charging

This technology has already stepped in to the market. Recently LG has introduced a wireless charger for smartphones. The chargers have built-in electric coils which powers smartphone using the magnetic fields.

You just have to place the gadget on an electric coiled wireless charger (inductive mat) and they starts charging the device.

How do GPS Satellites Know Where They Are?

Our Global Positioning System (GPS) tells us exactly where we are, down to a few metres, but how do satellites that make up the GPS themselves know where they are?

They have to rely on a network of sites that serve as "You Are Here" signs planted throughout the planet. The catch is, the sites don't sit still because the planet is moving all the time, yet modern measurements require more and more accuracy in pinpointing where "here" is.

Accordingly, NASA is helping to lead an international effort to upgrade the four systems that supply this crucial location information. NASA's initiative is run by Goddard Space Flight Centre, Greenbelt, US, where the next generation of two of these systems is being developed and built.

"In practical terms, we can't determine a location today and expect it to be good enough tomorrow-and especially not next year," says Herbert Frey, who heads the Planetary Geodynamics Lab at Goddard.

And Goddard, in partnership with NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., is bringing all four systems together in a state-of-the-art ground station, according to a NASA statement.

"NASA and its sister agencies around the world are making major investments in new stations or upgrading existing stations to provide a network that will benefit the global community for years to come," says John LaBrecque, Earth Surface and Interior Program Officer at NASA Headquarters.

Measuring such properties of Earth is the realm of geodesy, a time-honoured science that dates back to the Greek scholar Eratosthenes, who achieved a surprisingly accurate estimate of the distance around the Earth by using basic geometry

Bell Lab's 7 Great Inventions that Changed the World

We now live in a world dominated by innovative companies and technologies, and on the top list of inventions, stand the Bell Laboratories which played a major role in shaping the world of today. They were the pioneers in almost everything, from programming languages to cellular telephones.

Studying about Bell lab will make you realize about how the world’s longstanding innovative edge actually came out as John Gertner reported in NewYork Times, “America’s history of innovation trace back to Bell Laboratories, the onetime research and development organization of country’s formerly monopolistic telephone company AT&T.”

Here we list some of the greatest innovations from Bell Laboratories which changed the world.

Transistor

Transistor, the fundamental building block of all the modern day electronic devices was born in Bell Labs in 1947. It was developed as a replacement for inefficient and bulky vacuum tubes and mechanical relays. It created a new era of technical accomplishments from computers to space vehicles

UNIX Operating System and C Programming language

UNIX, which made the internet practical and which is the backbone for today’s many operating systems was developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs.

The C language, which brought expressiveness and efficiency to the programming languages was developed by Dennis Ritchie between 1969 and 1973 at the Bell Laboratories. The descendants of C language are now the most widely used programming languages in the world.

Lasers

The first scientific paper on LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) was published by two Bell Laboratory scientists Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow. It later opened a new scientific field which is wide spread among many applications ranging from medical applications to the tiny device inside your DVD player.

Communication Satellite

The first orbiting communication satellite was built by Bell labs in 1962. The Telstar 1 was the first satellite to have ability to receive signal, amplify it and send it back to anywhere on earth, which first allowed the telephone calls to travel around the world. In 1947, Bell Labs invented the cellular technology, which later made the world “wireless.”

Solar Cells

Bell Labs in1954 created the first device that actually used Sun’s rays to create electricity. It was the precursor for many of the solar powered devices that we see now.

Fibre Optic cable

Bell labs built the first fibre optic cable system, which subsequently enabled the world to transfer millions of Giga bytes of data at lightening speeds

Digital Transmission and Digital Signal Processing

Bell labs pioneered digital transmission with the first digitally multiplexed transmission of voice signals in 1962. It also built the first single chip digital signal processor (DSP) in 1979 which is the core of today’s multimedia revolution.

Mozilla Building an Extreme Alternative to Android and iOS

For people who want to run all the applications under one roof- the web, Mozilla is building a new platform, exclusively based on the industry standard HTML5.

Mozilla will release the first open web device in association with Telefonica, the third largest carrier in the world.

The product will be based on Mozilla’s Boot to Gecko project, which focuses on making HTML5 as the standard platform for mobile devices.

“In a joint press conference, Telefonica revealed their intention to work with us to deliver the very first open Web devices in 2012. These devices, architected entirely on the Web and built based on an HTML5 stack with powerful Web APIs will mean significant advances in speed and cost reduction for mobile devices in the future,” Mozilla said in a post.

Many other companies including Deutsche Telekom, Adobe and Qualcomm are supporting Mozilla in building the open web platform. The company will also preview the open web apps and Mozilla marketplace this week, which will enable the creation and distribution of applications powered by HTML5, JavaScript and CSS, the open web standards.

Google is currently the leading developer of open source mobile operating system, the Android. HP also recently announced its plans on releasing WebOS as an open source platform. But with it’s completely web based platform for mobile, Mozilla is planning to do something bigger than what it did to computer with its Firefox.

Why Hasn't Facebook Dumped PHP Yet?

So it is common knowledge that Facebook started out with PHP. Sure, PHP is one of the world's most popular programming languages, but it is old. So why hasn't the world’s most popular social network switched languages to adopt Python or something more versatile?

Although it would be a pain to change everything from scratch, the most inevitable urge is to at least ask how the 845 million-strong network put up with the language for so long anyway.

Yishan Sparklepants Wong, a Facebook engineer who worked at the company from December 2005 (the company was founded in February 2004) and March 2010 answered the question on Quora, a website that allows you to ask questions and get connected to content.

According to Wong, “The reason Facebook hasn't migrated away from PHP is because it has incumbent inertia (it's what's there) and Facebook's engineers have managed to work around many of its flaws through a combination of patches at all levels of the stack and excellent internal discipline via code convention and style”.

He says that the worst aspects of the language are coded around and avoided, while coding style is rigidly maintained by means of a strict culture of code-review by one’s peers. "The preferred strategy”, he wrote, “is to write new components in a de-coupled manner using a better language of choice (C++, python, Erlang, Java, etc); this is easily facilitated by Facebook's early development of thrift, an efficient multi-language RPC framework”.

The overall effect boils down to the overall codebase slowly evolving away from depending heavily on PHP, and components written in PHP being tightly-controlled, by veteran members of the staff in disciplined ways.

In any case, the overall rule seems to be “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”, and it seems to work well for Facebook.

Is BSNL Tablet a Retort to Aakash?

Aakash, the world’s cheapest tablet is beginning to face heat with its competitors (such as Ubislate and tablets from companies like HCL) slowly contending for the same Indian marketplace.

The Indian Government’s aim to launch a fully indigenous tablet has seen the launch of Aakash 2, but BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited—the government telecom company) associated with Pantel (an Indian company based in Noida) to produce tablets with better specs than the Aakash tablet. Pantel’s cheapest tablet (named Penta Tpad IS 701r) is priced within the margin of 500 rupees more than Aakash, thus proving to a worthy competitor in terms of cost—it comes at Rs 3,499.

BSNL has also joined with the Indian company to bring out two other tablets at higher cost—the Penta Tpad_ws704c is priced at Rs 10,999 and Penta Tpad WS802C is priced at Rs 12,500. They come with added features such as a SIM slot for 3G/2G connectivity, and GPS.

The delivery of the tablets is said to be made available after March 5, and the tablets will be available in retail stores and BSNL according to a report on Yahoo News.
Virendra Singh, the managing director of Pantel Technologies told The Mobile Indian “We have received more than one lakh pre booking orders over phone and online for the three tablets which we have launched in association with BSNL.” He also added that Pantel got an order for two lakh tablets from Sahara India apart from consumer-ordered devices.

6 Best Web Browsers

Selecting a web browser is a difficult task for many especially when there are many sophisticated ones around, each offering lightning speeds, high security and many add-ons.

In order to find the best browser, ComputerWorld tested the latest versions of six widely used desktop and laptop browsers on speed, safety, extra features and extension benchmarks. The results were interesting with a surprise third place winner RocketMelt 0.9, which is almost new and comes integrated with Facebook.

Here are the rankings of six browsers.

#6 Apple Safari 5.1.2

Safari came in the last position

Safari is a simple and adequate browser with solid security features. It didn’t score well on speed benchmarks but performed well with Windows machines. Organizing Safari without iCloud is troublesome. With the integration of browser sandboxing in Apple’s new Lion OS, the safari now has more security tools and features. It also came last in HTML5 testing.

Good: Solid security Network, Fastest mobile synchronizing while using iOS devices

Bad: Slow in loading pages built with HTML5 and JavaScript

#5 Opera 11.61

Opera came in fifth position.

If you are looking for speed, this is the best browser for you. The beautiful feature in opera is “widgets”- light applications from games to RSS feeds, which runs on your desktop as separate programmes. The browser also has another tool called Opera Turbo, which compress the web pages to few bytes and enable easy browsing for users with slow internet connection. On the other hand, it is not much customizable and the interface takes a little time to getting used to.

Good: Quick loading, unique browsing experience with widgets.

Bad: Low in security options, not HTML5 friendly.

#4: Internet Explorer 9

IE9 won the fourth position.

The browser from Microsoft was always lagging behind its rivals. But with the introduction of new features including the ability to block sites from collecting data on your browsing habits and the new Application Reputation app, which scans and warns about the downloads for malicious files, the browser finally overcome some of its rivals. It also has inbuilt cross-site scripting protection, which blocks scripts from suspicious websites. It came second in the HTML5 benchmark test, but finished last in processing JavaScript.

Good: Security features, faster HTML5 processing

Bad: Tab management, no themes and automated bookmark sync.

#3: Facebook RockMelt 0.9

RockMelt, the not so popular browser surprisingly finished third.

It looks similar to chrome as it is built on Google’s chromium framework. The browser is completely integrated with Facebook and has many features to make the social-fans happy. A strip located on the browser will display your Facebook friend’s icons and their availability to chat. Within the browser, you can also choose apps for different websites that notify you of a newly posted comment. By signing in through Facebook, your bookmarks and settings are automatically synchronized through the Facebook account among computers and iOS devices that use RockMelt app, as the browser collects your browsing habits. It processed HTML5 faster than Chrome but many extensions that work on Chrome didn’t function in RockMelt.

Good: Automatic sync among computers, Make “Facebooking” easy, JavaScript and pages load smoothly.

Bad: Facebook sign-in required to use the complete features of this browser, little number of add-ons and extensions.

#2: Mozilla Firefox 10

The most Versatile browser, finished second.

Firefox is a feature-filled browser and with the new version, it became more beautiful, with a simplified interface, which can be customized in many ways. The big advantage of Firefox is the thousands of add-ons, but with the addition of more add-ons, the browser tends to perform slowly. It finished first in HTML5 tests and third in loading JavaScripts. But it was little slower in loading web pages.

It will work with any security software and has a good pop-up filter, malware protection and support private browsing. The best feature is it will allow you to collect tabs into manageable groups like work, home etc which will come handy in many situations.

Good: Thousands of add-ons, excellent HTML5 performance

Bad: Slow page loading, too many add-ons slow down the browser.

#1: Google Chrome 17

Chrome turned out to be the overall best in browsers.

Chrome won the first place with its superb performance, ease of use, vast number of add-ons and extensions. It came first in the JavaScript and speed tests and it has many features other browsers lack. Its tabs are run as separate processes, so if one crash, it won’t affect the rest of the browser. It can translate any language into an understandable form with the help of Google Translate and is one of the most secured browsers as it is sandboxed. It can be customized in many ways with a number of themes, apps and extensions and unlike other browsers, you don’t have to restart Chrome after installing each apps. The main thing Chrome lacks is an integrated RSS reader.

Good: Fast loading, lets you close the broken or crashed pages without restarting browser, secured

Bad: Plain design, no integrated RSS reader