This is Why Facebook Should Launch its Browser

Bangalore: Facebook has plenty of reasons to worry! Google Chrome is improving day by day and is bound to be the number one browser sometime in next 12 months. Adding to this, the number of Google+ users has crossed 170 million and rising.

The recent Statcounter report on browsers showed a 30.9 percentage Chrome usage compared to the 34.8 covered by internet explorer, which is leading the market from a decade. Chrome just achieved this in a matter of three years and is bound to dominate the browser market within no time.

But how is this connected to Facebook, which is essentially a social network and not a desktop software company? Well, the answer lies in Google’s ambitious plans with its social network Google+

Google is planning to become the “Voltron” of the web space- i.e. to become the ultimate power train combining its small but strong parts (Gmail, Android, Chrome, Google search and so on). Google+ will be the “spine” of the structure, integrating these products.

Since Google+ is not designed as a standalone product, it can be integrated into any of Google’s products, especially Chrome. Think about it a moment, in a single update, Google could turn Chrome into its own version of Rockmelt! From the next day, Chrome would be a social browser that puts Google+ in front of users before they even type Facebook.com in the address bar.

Do you think Google will never do it? Well, there are already many extensions released that integrate Google+ into Chrome. So it will be just a matter of decision for Google.

What is the role of Facebook?

Facebook may be the king of web now and Google+ hasn’t been able to do anything till now. But don’t forget that browser is still the valley that people should walk through to access the websites. So if Google keep Google+ as a luring fruit in the valley, many will taste it or at least try to touch it, by which it may finally end the dominance of Facebook.

Facebook can fight back by integrating themselves into its investor’s browser, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. But considering the evolution of IE, it will be better for Facebook to build a cool, enchanting browser of its own and use its massive reach of social network to promote it. This may put Google in the defensive. The only question is whether Facebook will take up the battle before it’s too late.

5 Things You Did Not Know about Google

Information today has become as available as the internet, literally; but where would the world be without the revolutionary invention that made this happen? Nobody (except maybe Google) knows.

And since Google makes it its business to know all about everybody, have you ever wondered how much you know about the world’s most popular search engine? (If you haven’t, now is probably a good time to start).

Marissa Mayer, the vice president of local, maps, and localization at Google, has been on Google’s team from the second year after the search engine launched. Being on the team for so long has let her see Google’s growth first-hand, and in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, she listed out five things you probably didn’t know about the search engine.

Here are the five so-far-unknown insider anecdotes about Google:

1. Why so much of Google’s homepage is white:

Google's dependence on white space on its homepage was one that arose purely out of necessity, and not because it wanted to be minimalist in design. According to Mayer, Sergey Brin, Google co-founder explained “We don’t have a webmaster and I don’t do HTML.”

2. How Google's AdSense happened:

Mayer, in the interview, said she almost killed the idea of targeting ads based on users’ e-mails, because she (at first) thought the idea was “creepy”. However, a colleague working an all-nighter overlooked her dismissal of the idea, and thus started ads-in-e-mail.

Today, Google’s AdSense is a multi-billion dollar business.

3. How much would it take to occupy some white space?

According to Google’s calculation, an ad on its home page would cost at least $10 million, if not more, apparently.

If only the space were for sale! (But then again, the only white space humankind knows on the internet would be cluttered with stuff we see everywhere else).

4. Why did the Google homepage have a copyright symbol on it?

Talking about the white space on Google—the page had the copyright symbol installed after initial test users did nothing but stare at the home page, “waiting for the rest of it to load,” Mayer said. It’s not necessary, but the symbol served as a sign that the minimal page had finished loading and was ready for a search entry.

5. And about acquiring things...

Mayer once had an extreme fascination for Motorola’s circa-1996 StarTAC mobile phone; she even bought used models of the phone on e-Bay to try and build up a collection.
But any resemblance to the incident, whether from fiction or real-life (read “Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility") is like when you happen to hoard a product and then come to a point years later where you buy the company that makes said product— it’spurely coincidental.

Hottest Technologies of 2015 And Beyond

It’s human nature to fantasize about the future. But have you ever imagined your mobile changing its shape to fit your pocket or having a two inch music player, which can store all your music achieves?

This is how technology around you is evolving and in five to ten years from now, companies including IBM, Intel and Microsoft will commercialize many of these technologies which were once, just a fantasy.

SkinDisplay

The technology was developed by Clara Gaggero, head of Vitamins Design Ltd in a BlackBerry sponsored project. SkinDisplay uses piezoelectricity to display raised-up letters on the back of your phone, which can be imprinted into your thumb with a press. The raised-up message includes caller name, reason for call and the urgency, which is represented by three dots.

"If you're in a meeting and you hear your phone ring, you immediately get stressed out because you can't answer it. Is it an emergency? Is something wrong with the kids? We wanted to give the phone a chance to be discreet," Gaggero says.

So you simply put your hand in pocket, press the raised portion in mobile and read the imprinted message in your hand without anybody knowing it. The technology was patented by Research In Motion, the BlackBerry maker in 2011.

Microsoft’s Future Home

People who visit Microsoft’s executive briefing home in Redmond, Wash will be welcomed with a full scale model home of the future including kitchen, living room, dining room and a foyer. As soon as you enter the home, it will start briefing you on things that happened since you left including news that your son got A grade in math test, The air conditioner stopped working, your electric scooter will be charged in 27 minutes and you have six voice mails.

The home is completely equipped with micro sensors which help it to learn a lot including your daily routines. It will tell how to cook a dish, referring the things you have in fridge, remind you to take the medicines and automatically send a message to you or relatives if it finds anything out of ordinary like leaving the doors unlocked. According to Microsoft, the technology based on internet and “cloud” will become affordable and common within five years.

Intel’s Programmable matter

Imagine you stretching the mobile to make it big or pressing a button to convert it instantly to a lap top. It seems impossible, but that is what Intel is currently working on i.e. shape shifting technology and the company things it will be possible within next decade.

Intel has already built sphere shaped microrobots called “catoms,” which has enogh computing power to be self programmable. Millions of them work together to take a particular shape. Intel currently is successful in making catoms with 1 millimeter diameter and is trying to make the diameter tenth of a millimeter. If this material were used to make a device's casing, it would be theoretically possible for your smartphone or tablet to change shape whenever you want.

Intel plans to use the technology first in health field, where doctors can model the 3-D structure of organs for diagnosis

IBM’s 12 atom memory storage

To store one bit of data, you now need about 1 million magnetically charged atoms, a main reason why hard drive capacity is not getting much bigger related to physical size. But in January this year, IBM announced that it stored one bit in just 12 atoms, a technology which could increase the capacity of hard disks to 100 times without increasing size.

Eventhogh IBM achieved the success in limited conditions in a lab with an electron microscope, the company believes that it can eventually use the results to bring something significant into market.

So you could see a 2 inch iPod shuffle which can store an entire archive of pop songs back from 1950’s or a hard drive with 300 TB capacity in the near future.

IBM’s Lithium Air battery

The batteries currently used in electric cars have the same limitation as the magnetic tapes. If you want more mileage on a single charge, you will have to pack more batteries into the vehicle.

That is where IBM’s next generation Lithium- Air battery technology will play. It can power a car for 500 miles on a single charge.

The battery generates electricity from a reaction between Lithium and Oxygen ions and it will be much denser and can store more than the existing Lithium-ion batteries.

IBM plans to produce a working prototype next year and is collaborating with several labs on the project.

Seeweed-powered supersonic airplane

Aero planes are the fastest means of travel but on the other hand it’s a major contributor to air pollution. But imagine travelling 3 times faster than the airplane which has zero emissions- offered by aircraft manufacturer EADS's Zero Emission Hyper Sonic Transport (ZEHST).

A prototype was first unveiled in Paris Air Show last year and is due out in 2050. The high speed aircraft uses bio-fuel made of seaweed and has three engine types- jets, rockets and “ramjets” which is the supersonic version. It speeds the aircraft to 5000 kmph, which will significantly cut down the time. For a clear picture it will take you from Paris to Tokyo in 2.5 hours which now takes 11 hours.

5 Daring Predictions about Technology in 2020

With the rate of advent of technology, nothing seems to be unachievable. Some of our wildest imaginations might come to life by the year 2020.

Every second in the world of tech something new is being innovated and invented. The latest smart-phone that you bought yesterday and are so proud about can become out dated by the end of next week. In this era when science seems to have reached the point of saturation but it is actually growing at the rate of a big-bang, futurologists are not hesitating to predict that technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Digital Media will take there places in a common man’s living room.

Let’s take a look at some of the astonishing predictions which can take real shapes by the year 2020.

1.Holographic Avatars

Would it not be interesting to see the receptionist at a hotel book your rooms and then vanish into thin air? All of us have seen the Jedi Knights communicating with their holographic projection communicators. The day isn’t far when we might be using one of those to make presentations in multiple auditoriums at once. It doesn’t stop there; the same technology can even be modified to create avatars with human like physical capability and intelligence to replace staffs in a hotel or nurses in a hospital.

2.Oops! All the money is digitalized

Money is a tough commodity to handle. We all want money but we don’t want to manage it. Technological ascent in the past decade has made the management of money very easy through credit-cards and internet banking. By the year 2020 futurists are expecting that there would not be any hard bills in use and all the monetary transactions would happen through cell-phones and computers. The smallest to the largest amount of transaction would not require the involvement of any painstaking procedure in the bank; instead it would take is a few clicks on your cell-phone.

3.From smart-phones to smart-jewelry.

Fashion and Technology are the most effective trends of this age. Future has a lot more in store with these two trends’ infusion to create some amazing products. In the next decade, a bracelet or an earring would not just be a mere accessory. Scientists have already started developing jewelry embedded with technologies like Bluetooth, Wifi etc. Imagine a watch which is also a Smartphone and a necklace that can store Giga-bytes of data. That is exactly where science and technology is taking us we are more than happy to follow it.

4.Small but Intelligent

Technologies like VLSI, ULSI and Nano-technology have already made our whole world shrink into the cupboard space. 30 years ago, a computer that took a huge room to fit into can be placed on the tip of our finger today. The amount of intelligence that these devices have and the level of processing hey can do without human indulgence is immense. Under such circumstances where intelligence can be embedded into smallest possible device, we might see a future where from a calculator to a space shuttle launcher, all will be able to sense the environment and work accordingly, and most amazing thing is that they would all defy human intelligence. All of this takes “Very less Space Indeed”.

5.The Cloud that knows all

Cloud Computing is already in its adolescence. In a decade, all the computers will be connected to each other via the cloud and all the data in them will be stored in the cloud. This would not just make the size of our computing devices small but will also enable us to access any data in any computer (under certain applied conditions) placed anywhere in the world. Futurists predict that by 2020, not just all the computers but all the electronic devices around us will be connected to cloud to create a huge family which is sharing data to serve the world better.

Machine To Make Drinking Water from Toilet Waste

A new invention, being funded by billionaire Bill Gates, aims to turn used toilet water into drinking water, a British nanotechnology expert says.

According to Manchester University's Sarah Haigh, the invention could make waste water from toilets safe to drink, the Daily Mail reported.

She believes a new range of materials could extract energy from human waste.The innovation could transform the lives of millions of people in the Third World.

The researcher says, even if the result may not be bottled mineral water but it could be the difference between life-and-death in regions without clean water.

She said: "I get a lot of comments about the research I do. I don't mind people making jokes as long as they're clean ones.

"There has been a lot of research into biofuels. There is a lot of energy already present in human waste. Nano-scale materials mean that you can harvest the hydrogen and turn it into hydrozene - which is basically rocket fuel."

Samsung's Flexible Display Coming in 2012

Samsung has teamed up with Corning to make a bendable Gorilla Glass screen which is much thinner and lighter. Samsung’s YOUM brand which focuses on AMOLED display is now entirely concentrating on flexible displays, which are expected to hit the gadget market by the end of 2012. The company has already displayed a prototype model of its flexible display at CES 2011 and had said that these screens will grace the tablet or smartphones by 2012.

Samsung is already known for their best displays, especially in their tablets. These new screens will be thinner, lighter and unbreakable than present displays. The secret behind the flexible nature of these screens will be its film-based encapsulation and TFT layers, in place on glass. This complete lack of glass substrate removes the brittleness from the display and makes it resistive from breakage.

LG has already launched its flexible E-paper display which is meant to the used in E-book. With the release of bendable displays by Samsung the tablet and smartphone industry will be getting a new face as we will be seeing some good looking wraparound smartphones, foldable tablets and lots of other ‘bendy screened’ gadgets in the market

500 Startups Moving Ahead with Big Money and Big Plans

With over 250 investment ventures in the bag already, 500 startups is taking a huge leap of faith by raising $50 million for the second round of investment. It has been a great year for Dave McClure, founder of 500 startups and company in terms of incubation and expansion. Dave McClure has already been investing in Latin-America and is now planning to spread the roots into Asia, Middle-East and the Eastern European countries. As a step towards the company’s expansion in Asia, a program called ‘Geeks on a Plane Trip to India’ was launched by 500 Startups last December which focuses on learning from startups with great ideas present in Indian market.

Startup entrepreneurs from all around the globe visited India to learn the ways of the business and some colloquial Tricks of Trade.The news of $50 million came along with another sweet sound to the ears of the startups, i.e. a $30 million fund for official investment in startup seed money launched by 500 Startups. McClure and company state that 500 Startups is a successful investment organization, not only in the level of startups but they have also been funding other incubators. Some of these incubators derive their roots from seed accelerator groups like Y Combinator, Techstars, Seedcamp, etc.

According to another ground breaking revelation, Mentors from 500 Startups will also be able to co-invest in its accelerator companies. This is something that not many of the other capital funding firms are doing at the moment. 500 Startups in no longer a one person show as Paul Singh and Christen O’Brien, who were mentoring companies in subjects of customer acquisition and expertise, have been promoted as business partners. O’Brien will be leading business development events and conferences while Singh heads the investment acceleration program as the Data/Metrics Guru. Bedy Yang and George Kellerman will also join the group of partners to expand the business of scouting emerging talent in Latin-America and Japan.

An added feather to the much decorated cap would be a conference called MamaBear that focuses on new technology for Kids and Mothers. The one day event organized by 500 Startups would see guest speakers from Disney, Sesame Street, BabyCenter and many more. With a lot of plans under the sleeves and really big money in the bag, the fresh team of 500 Startups looks all geared up for the long road ahead.