Monday, August 1, 2011

Facebook will destroy your children's brains

Facebook users face a future of rolling around on the floor, dribbling incoherently as they demand approval from passers-by.



Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have left a generation of young adults vulnerable to degeneration of the brain, we can exclusively reveal for about the fifth time. Symptoms include self-obsession, short attention spans and a childlike desire for constant feedback, according to a 'top scientist' with no record of published research on the issue.
Repeated exposure to the internet leaves people with an 'identity crisis', wanting attention in the manner of a toddler saying, 'Look at me, Mummy,' or a scientist touting their latest brain-fart in the national press.

The scientist believes that use of the internet – and computer games – could 'rewire' the brain, causing neurons to establish new connections and pathways. "Rewiring itself is something that the brain does naturally all the time," the professor said, "but the phrase 'rewiring the brain' sounds really dramatic and chilling, so I like to use it to make it seem like I'm talking about a profound and unnatural change, even though it isn't."

This rewiring can result in reduced concentration, a need for instant gratification, poor non-verbal skills, and the habit of talking really loudly like Alistair Stewart, according to research that hasn't yet been performed.
"I think it's really important that people aren't frightened by scare stories about new technology, and I've been a big supporter of brain-training software in the past," the scientist said, "but people's brains are literally melting inside their heads from all the MyFace waves being absorbed."
In a controversial move, popular science journal The Daily Mail published the academic's findings before they had actually been found. "In academia I've faced a great deal of prejudice from peers," she explained, "They say 'oh you haven't done the research, you've not got any evidence,' but really they're just jealous of my fashion sense. Publishing in the Mail lets me rise above all the petty politics and fact-checking in science, and just say 'this is the truth, bitches'."
Responding to criticism from the Guardian's Ben Goldacre, she said "he thinks his hair's better than mine. It isn't. I don't even think it's real. Who is he anyway? Is he a 'top scientist'? No."
The scientist, who doesn't actually use Twitter, said: "What concerns me is the banality of so much that goes out there. Why should someone be interested in what someone else has had for breakfast? My friend told me what they were having for dinner the other day, and I told them to 'fuck off' before slamming the phone down."
The high-profile academic, who frequently uses the media as a platform to push her theories to the public, suggested that some Facebook users feel the need to become 'mini celebrities' who are watched and admired by others on a daily basis. "They do things that are 'media worthy' because the only way they can define themselves is by 'people knowing about them'", she told a tabloid journalist.
Following her successful move from peer-reviewed journals to the Mail, the Professor will take the next logical step of publishing her future research through the medium of romantic fiction.
(The following is actually, seriously, true.)
She is currently working on her first novel, based on her interest in technology's impact on man and the idea that young adults are turning into zombie like 'cyber people' before our very eyes.
"Cyber people aren't robots," she explained to the Evening Standard, "It's just that they spend all their time interfacing with technology so they're uncomfortable with relationships. So there's bound to be a backlash. We should be the masters of technology, not the servants."
The protagonist is a 22nd-century neuroscientist with three women in his life, loosely based on Winston Smith in George Orwell's 1984. Really. Source: Click here

HP ready to launch Pre 3, seeks apps from developers


HP spills beans regarding the launch of Pre 3, asks developers to submit apps for the new smartphone

It all started with a official email in which HP asked its developers to submit exciting webOS apps for its smartphone. The smartphone in question is HP's latest offering - Pre 3. 

The official email indicated that the developers with webOS apps should check the compatibility with the Pre 3 using the emulator which will be released this week. 

The developers targeted here belong to HP’s Early Access Program. However the forum is open to newbie's as well. To join the program all developers have to do is send an email to  PDC@palm.com to register. 

Pre 3 is touted as one of the powerful smartphone coming out of the HP stable. A smartphone that caters to both personal professional usage, comes equipped with a 1.4 GHz processor and sports a 3.58’’ touch screen. A QWERTY keypad with a slide out feature, makes texting easy. 

The streamlined design and sturdy structure, make the phone quite ideal for business users. If you are particular about the safety of your data, with HP Pre 3, your privacy and security will be maintained. 

Integrated with a GPS navigation system, Office Suite for Word, Excel and Powerpoint presentations coupled with Google Docs and Box.net, this smartphone is your office on wheels. 

The smartphone comes with a 5 mega-pixel autofocus camera with LED flash snapper and with a additional fixed focus camera, your door to two way calling will be smooth and seamless. 

Offering a video recording up to 720p, Pre 3 packs in plenty of space for all your pictures, videos, documents and more. With push mail and other such facilities, Pre 3 stands to score high among the top players in the business phone market.

Pre 3's launch in India is not yet known, but it is rumoured to be launched soon at price point of approximately  Rs. 25000. Source: Click here

Acer ICONIA A100 Coming to US this Month

Now that the new Android 3.2 Gingerbread is out, Acer is all set to launch its ICONIA A100 Honeycomb tablet which supposed to launch back in July. Engadget, reports that Acer has sent out mails to their retail partners, saying that the device will start shipping in the early weeks of August.




The ICONIA A100 is a 7-inch Android tablet which is powered by the same processor as the 10-inch ICONIA A500. While this launch seems specific to the US market, the device may soon arrive in UK and India, probably by the end of the next month.
Sporting the 1GHz dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor along with 512MB of RAM this would run Android Honeycomb version 3.2.  The same update with make it to the ICONIA A500 sometime in the month of September. Source: Click here

Microsoft's IE9 OS Gamble Paying Off?


Microsoft's Internet Explorer retained its browser dominance in July, followed by Mozilla's Firefox, but both saw a slight decline in the last month while Google's Chrome enjoyed a slight, incremental boost, according to data from Net Applications.
Nonetheless, Microsoft touted the gains the latest version of its browser, IE9, has made in the business sector and on its latest OS, Windows 7.
Overall, Internet Explorer had 52.81 percent of the global browser market last month (down 0.87 percent), followed by Firefox with 21.48 percent (down 0.19 percent), and Chrome at 13.45 percent, up from 13.11 percent last month. Safari also dropped slightly to 7.48 percent, while Opera bit off about 1.73 percent of the browser share.
Broken down by browser version, IE8 was the most popular at 29.3 percent, though that was a drop from June's 30.07 percent. Chrome 12, meanwhile, captured 11.16 percent, up from 7.32 percent in June. Microsoft's push to abolish IE6 appears to be working; IE6 global share was down to 9.24 percent from 10.18 percent the month before.
IE9's worldwide share crept up to 6.77 percent, from 5.63 percent. But Net Applications said that Microsoft's strategy of releasing IE9 only for Vista and Windows 7 appears to have paid off.
"In July on Windows 7, Internet Explorer 9 hit 18.5 percent share worldwide and 24.8 percent in the United States. There are indications that this strategy is working. Although Internet Explorer lost usage share on XP, on Windows 7, Microsoft increased global usage share, going from 54.6 percent in June to 54.8 percent in July. And in the U.S., Internet Explorer share on Windows 7 grew 0.6 percent to 68.1 percent," Net Applications said.
In a blog post, Microsoft's Roger Capriotti said the numbers are "a good leading indicator of the value companies are seeing in moving to Internet Explorer 9 with Windows 7."
On all operating systems, IE9 had 11 percent share in the United States, Net Apps found.
In other browser news, a report emerged this weekend that suggested Internet Explorer users are not as smart as their Firefox- and Chrome-using counterparts. Across the board, the average IQ scores presented for users of Internet Explorer versions 6 through 9 were all lower than the IQ scores recorded for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Camino, and Opera users, according to online psychometric testing company AptiQuant.
Source: Click here

Indian Origin Scientist Designs Nanosized Batteries

Pulickel M. Ajayan, an Indian origin scientist  who had been researching from years in the field of nanowire devices has finally emerged successful as he has packaged lithium ion batteries, which power mobiles and smartphones, into a single nanowire. To say possibly, the world at large runs on lithium ion batteries and such a great advancement in this field is a matter of deep appreciation.


The schematic shows nanoscale battery/supercapacitor devices in an array, as constructed at Rice University. The devices show promise for powering nanoscale electronics and as a research tool for understanding electrochemical phenomenon at the nanoscale. (Credit: Ajayan Lab)
Giving technical details of the device the researchers said that the two versions of their battery had the first one as a sandwich with nickel/tin anode, polyethylene oxide (PEO) electrolyte and polyaniline cathode layersin which lithium ions would move efficiently through the anode to the electrolyte and then to the supercapacitor-like cathode, which would store the ions in bulk and give the device the ability to charge and discharge quickly.
“The idea here is to fabricate nanowire energy storage devices with ultrathin separation between the electrodes,” said Arava Leela Mohana Reddy, study co-author and research scientist, according to a university statement.
The Rice University had invented one such device last December but it had the drawback that the cathode had to be attached from outside but the new device tucks the cathode inside the nanowires. That’s great, isn’t it? After having a hand at almost all the materials for devicing a suitable cathode, finally the scientists settled on the synthesized polymer known as polyaniline (PANI). Drop-coating the widened alumina pores with PEO coats the insides, encases the anodes and leaves tubes at the top into which PANI cathodes could also be drop-coated. An aluminum current collector placed on top of the array completes the circuit.
These new devices are about 50 micron tall and have a diameter of about the size of human hair, almost invisible when viewed on the edge! Truly speaking there is nothing impossible with these devices – they can even be scaled to greater distances as per the requirements of the application.
“There’s a lot to be done to optimize the devices in terms of performance,” said the paper’s lead author, Sanketh Gowda, a chemical engineering graduate student at Rice. “Optimization of the polymer separator and its thickness and an exploration of different electrode systems could lead to improvements.” source: click here

Google Chrome becomes UK's second most popular web browser

Internet browser passes Firefox, with speed and a nationwide advertising campaign credited for the rise in popularity

Google Chrome has overtaken Firefox to become the UK's second most popular web browser. Photograph: Walter Bieri/AP
Google's Chrome is Britain's second most popular browser, a sign of the internet giant's increasing grip on the UK search market.


Three years after launch, Chrome last month captured 22% of UK users and marginally overtook Mozilla's Firefox browser, according to the web metrics firm Statcounter. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is losing market share to Chrome but remains the most popular browser for UK users with 45% – although it has a head start by being pre-installed on almost all computers sold in Britain. Apple's Safari is UK number four, with a 9% share.


Google's rise in the browser market is in part down to nationwide advertising – Chrome is the first Google product advertised on British TV – but is largely attributed to its speed.


Lars Bak, the Google engineer responsible for Chrome, said the goal had never been to attract a huge user base, but to energise a dormant browser market: "Speed is a fundamental part of it, but it's also about the minimal design and the way it handles security. If you as a user try [to load] a webpage and it feels snappy, it's really hard to go back [to another browser]. It has shown that people spend more time interacting with the web."


Unlike most of Google's talent based at its Mountain View headquarters in California, Bak works from a converted farmhouse in the Danish countryside two hours from Copenhagen. He has become obsessed with speed, and despite numerous tests that show Chrome outstrips all rivals, he thinks it could be much faster. "You should never be happy with [existing] speed," he said. "Of course it gets harder to make substantial gains, but it's all healthy competition. From the beginning we wanted everybody to be fast, and now all browsers are fast. I'm absolutely flabbergasted [by the improvements made by rival browsers]."


Chrome is the number three worldwide, with a 20.65% market share according to Statcounter. But analysts expect it to edge ahead of Firefox, which has dipped steadily since January. Microsoft's Internet Explorer has also fallen heavily, to 43%, with warnings about security vulnerabilities.


Google last month announced its Chromebook laptop, based on its browser and seen as another ambitious attack on Microsoft; it will be made by Samsung and Acer, companies that previously made computers running Microsoft's software.


Unlike most computers, the Chromebook has almost no capacity to store and hosts most data online in a "cloud". Bak said: "The Chromebook is really important because it tries to simplify the machine – it is basically no maintenance, which means you can cut the price. If all you are doing is using a browser it's a fantastic tool." source: click here

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Apple Halts Samsung Galaxy Tab Launch in Australia

As part of the ongoing lawsuit between Samsung and Apple, the launch of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has been delayed in Australia. A court injunction has been won by Apple which will prevent Samsung from selling the tablet “until [Samsung] wins court approval or the lawsuit is resolved,” according to a report by Bloomberg.
The lawsuit started in the US in April, and has Apple accusing Samsung of ripping of the iPhone and the iPad in look and feel. The evidence is hard to contradict. Show one of Samsung’s recent touch-screen handsets to a layperson and they’ll probably mistake it for an iPhone.
Not only has Apple successfully halted the launch of the Tab 10.1, but Samsung has agreed to supply Apple with three examples of the tablet at least a week before any future launch date. This is necessary as the Australian Tab 10.1 will differ from the U.S model. Unless it looks like an Etch-a-Sketch, though, it’s pretty hard to imagine that Apple will give it the go-ahead.
By the time this spat finally works its way through the courts, it’s likely we will have forgotten about it. But what seems clear right now is that Apple is currently winning, likely thanks to the obviousness of Samsung’s rip-offs. If the Korean tech giant is to move forward with its Android phones and tablets, it’s going to have to invent some of its own.source : click here

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