Dedicated to my friends. To share abstract thoughts.
Half-Wise is my collection of all that i like. I believe that every one has interests, stuff, thoughts and passions that are worthy, notable and contribute happiness, courage and lessons to life of others.
Showing posts with label Research and Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Research and Technology. Show all posts
Xperia Ray is my first Andriod phone. I found it wonderful in terms of design, display and performance. Its specs are not much lofty however comparing price and performance it is a good choice. General specs are 3.3 inch screen, 8 MP camera, Andriod updatable to 4.0.4 ICS.
It has good audio quality and due to relatively small screen size battery time is quite good. Internal memory is 1GB (not all available to user) with about 512 MB RAM. However you may experience lack of CPU cycles as it is 1 GHz and not able to handle very heavy applications/games.
I am satisfied with its performance and enjoying its use.
In my last post i discussed couple of considerations while updating the Nokia E63 firmware. If you have executed the update process through Nokia PC suite, then you may be asked about lock code after the update process. The situation would get worst if you ever changed the default phone code and then abandoned its use.
What to do
First of all, try the default code that is 12345. If it does not work then go for following option
Dial 112 for emergency call, code prompt would leave the screen. But this is not solid solution. Code prompt would be there after every restart of phone.
Now install Nokia OVI Suite and re-update the firmware to same version or next available one.
Update through OVI suite would prevent the prompt of old abandoned lock code.
Nokia E63 was launched in 2009. With querty keypad, good display and stable software it is considered one the good selling product of E series. To get the firmware version of your Nokia phone dial *#0000#*. Currently firmware version 510.21.010 is available for update.
What is new in new version
Documentation for new features is not available however after the update i have noticed the improved Nokia Email. And may be a little better battery performance.
Important points for update
There are couple of points that may save you from post update hassle.
Backup all your data. Updating the firmware would erase all the data from phone and memory card. It also includes SMS, address book, notes etc.
Update with PC suit may lead you to a situation where you would be asked for a previous phone code. It is the code that you set last time as phone code, then disabled the code check and forgot it. Update may be around 100 MB.
Post Update
Cell phone is restarted at the end of a successful update. Now restore your data backup and preferences.
If Already dumped
If you are here after update through Nokia PC suite and being prompted for a forgotten lock code then click here to read about the way out.
Govt of Pakistan is having much emphasis on valid registration of your (Subscriber information Module)SIM. It means that your SIM should be issued on your own name. Due to negligence of customer itself and also on part of franchises, many people do not have SIM registered to their own name. This may lead to trouble.
YOUR CURRENT SIM STATUS
To check that whether the SIM that you are using is registered on your name or not, send SSMS with text MNP in it to 667. A reply SSMS will be received by you with registration information about your SIM.
ALL SIMS AGAINST YOUR CNIC
To get the number and names of companies whose SIMS are issued on your CNIC, just send your CNIC on 668. Reply SMS would contain the information about number and companies of SIMs that are issued against your CNIC.
Then What to do?
This facility is for all GSM networks in Pakistan like UFone, Warid, Telenor, Mobilink. Charges deducted for this information will be about Rs. 2 (charges may vary by time to time). In case if you find that some irrelevant SIMs are registered against your CNIC then visit to corporate office of related company and solve the issue. Avoid visiting franchises as they are not able to help in all cases.
Recently i came across an interesting article about a service provider in US that can report you your traits and conditions according to your DNA. This service has changed the meanings of personal information. For just about $400 you will get special equipment in which you have to send them your spit and you will get back the report according to your DNA. Time magazine has honored the DNA testing service as invention of the year 2008. If interested you can read more on their web site
According to a story by the Financial Times last week, US officials have confirmed that the White House email archives were attacked several times in recent months. The report said the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, a new unit established in 2007 to tackle cybersecurity, detected the attacks on the White House, and also traced the attacks back to servers based in China.
The quoted source said each time the attack was detected, new defenses were put in place: "It is constant cat and mouse."
Overall, the attackers apparently only had access to the unclassified White House computer network. Nonetheless, the data could still have value.
The unnamed official quoted within the report speculated that the cyberattacks might follow the "grain of sands" approach allegedly used by Chinese intelligence. That involves parsing through often low-level information to find a few nuggets.
Using cells from dead mice frozen for 16 years, a team of Japanese geneticists has successfully created healthy clones of the dead animals.
The breakthrough could pave the way for resurrecting extinct animals, such as the woolly mammoth, from frozen remains, experts say. "We have demonstrated that even frozen animal tissue can be used to produce clones," said Teruhiko Wakayama, a geneticist at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan.
For their cloning process, Wakayama and his colleagues drew dead brain and blood cells from the frozen mice. The researchers injected the nuclei from the dead cells directly into unfertilized mouse eggs, creating embryos.
Android is a software stack by Google, for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. This beta version of the Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications on the Android platform using the Java programming language.
Android will ship with a set of core applications including an email client, SMS program, calendar, maps, browser, contacts, and others. All applications are written using the Java programming language.
Getting into the music download business is the dot-com equivalent to buying a professional football team. As business investments go, it's a cinch to lose money. Even Steve Jobs would advise against it.
Just how grim are the prospects? Consider the Napster transaction from earlier this week. The struggling online music store was sold for less money than it brought in last year. For those keeping score, Napster's full-year fiscal 2008 sales (ending 31 March) topped $127 million. It sold to American consumer electronics chain Best Buy for $121 million on Monday. Investors bailed on Napster long before management did; the company's market cap has remained well below sales for most of 2008 as sales continued to slip quarter after quarter.
A phone that lets owners download an unlimited number of tracks and keep them indefinitely aims to rein in the iPod.
Nokia is aiming to take on the might of Apple's iPod by releasing a phone that will allow owners to download an unlimited amount of music for a fixed fee.
The world's largest handset manufacturer has signed a deal with Carphone Warehouse to distribute its new "Comes With Music" phone, which will give owners access to about 2.1 million music tracks and goes on sale in October.
Owners of the Nokia's new phone will be able to download an unlimited number of songs from the world's three largest record labels — Universal, Sony BMG and Warner — for a year. The music can be played on the customer's phone and computer.
The founders of the popular – and controversial – classified advertising website have built a $5 billion giant without selling out.
Craig Newmark oversees a classified advertising website that spans the globe and is used by tens of millions of people every day. He drives a scruffy seven-year-old Toyota Prius and he goes to work only a couple of days a week. Jim Buckmaster is his business partner, responsible for the day-to-day running of an organisation that Wall Street estimates is worth about $5 billion (€3.5 billion). He lives in a modest, rented apartment not far from the company’s global headquarters, a rickety 19th century house tucked between a pizza restaurant and a junk shop in San Francisco. Even by the laidback standards of the Californian city’s sandal-wearing, Frisbee-tossing dotcom industry, the duo behind Craigslist could be considered a little odd.
In the flesh, however, this odd couple of self-proclaimed nerds seem as American as apple pie. Newmark, 55, is short, stocky, bald and wears glasses. Buckmaster, 46, is tall and slim, with lustrous brown hair and the good looks of a mature model. As befits liberal San Francisco tech entrepreneurs, both have goatees.
Sergey Brin said he has a genetic mutation which increases his chances of contracting the degenerative disease
Sergey Brin, one of the co-founders of Google, has revealed that he has a genetic mutation which increases his chances of contracting Parkinson’s disease.
Writing on a personal blog that was launched yesterday, Mr Brin, 35, said he made the discovery following a genetic test.
He wrote: “The exact implications of this are not entirely clear,” but added: “Nonetheless it is clear that I have a markedly higher chance of developing Parkinson's in my lifetime than the average person.”
Parkinson’s diseases is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that impair functions such as speech and movement. Mr Brin said that studies have shown that his likelihood of contracting Parkinson’s disease in his lifetime may be 20 percent to 80 percent.
The new phone powered by Google is set to launch tomorrow, ready to face off against Apple’s iPhone in the run up to Christmas.
The long-awaited smart phone, called “G1”, will be manufactured by Taiwanese manufacturer HTC and will be available exclusively on T-Mobile in the UK.
The mobile, already dubbed the “G-phone,” will run on Android, Google’s new software for mobile phones. It will be launched in New York tomorrow afternoon, and will be available in the US next month. It is anticipated that the phone will be available in British stores by November.
The G1 is expected to cost about $199 (£108), which would be around the same cost as basic 8GB version of the iPhone.
Google, notoriously secretive about any of its new technology, is refusing to comment on the phone before its launch. But leaked photos and videos of the expected device, along with screenshots released by the search giant, show that the device is likely to have a touchscreen like the iPhone but also a slide-out Qwerty keyboard.
The phone is expected to have as built-in GPS (global positioning system), a tilt sensor for gaming, and a camera. It is thought it will be able to run Google's range of web applications, including Gmail, Google Docs and Google Maps, and will likely also feature Google's new web browser, Chrome.
Your cell phone will provide the important linkage between the real world and the digital universe.
“Press F1 for help.” When you’re working in a computer program and you get stuck, you can press a button and a handy guide pops up alongside whatever you’re puzzling over to clue you in. Wouldn’t it be great if real life worked that way? Out on the town, you could look at a restaurant, press a button, and get advice on whether the staff is surly or what wine to order.
A space-age battery is about to revolutionize portable computing.
You’re 35,000 feet up, a few hours into a cross-country airplane journey. Having dutifully worked on some office memos, you finally get around to watching the DVD ofMurder on the Orient Expresson your laptop. But just as Detective Poirot is revealing whodunit, the screen goes blank. Your laptop’s batteries have run out of juice.
It’s a common enough scenario because rechargeable battery technology has failed to keep pace with other improvements in computers. While the number of electricity-hungry transistors that can be squeezed onto a silicon chip has doubled about every two years over the past few decades, it took more than 20 years (from 1970 to 1990) to double the amount of energy that rechargeable batteries can store per pound.
Now portable-energy start-up ZPower aims to strike a blow for frustrated laptop owners everywhere with a rechargeable battery that the company claims will offer 20 to 40 percent more computer time per charge than do the current champs of rechargeable technology, lithium-ion batteries. ZPower’s batteries also offer the advantage of being immune to “exothermic decomposition” (also known as “bursting into flames”), a problem that has prompted the recall of millions of lithium-ion batteries worldwide, not to mention some spectacular YouTube videos.
ZPower’s batteries use silver- and zinc-based electrodes. Silver-zinc batteries are not technically new; because they are so good at storing electricity, they were used in NASA’s Apollo spacecraft of the 1960s and 1970s. The technology wasn’t widely adopted back then because those silver-zinc batteries could be charged only a few times before they stopped working—not a problem for a 10-day mission to the moon, but a real deal breaker for mobile electronics.
ZPower has made improvements that allow its silver-zinc batteries to be recharged as often as lithium-ion batteries. And when the batteries do reach the end of their useful life, the silver and zinc can easily be recovered and recycled into new batteries, reducing environmental impact. On the downside, the batteries operate at a voltage different from that of lithium-ion batteries, meaning that laptop makers have to tweak their computers to work with the new batteries. ZPower is collaborating with computer component suppliers to develop laptop power systems that can handle both lithium-ion and silver-zinc batteries and says the first silver-zinc battery–powered laptop is due out in early 2009.
How It Works One big problem with traditional silver-zinc batteries is that as each cell is drained and recharged, zinc dendrites (shown as irregular objects in the diagram above) can form within the zinc anode (shown in green). These dendrites can distort the shape of the anode and can migrate through it, eventually piercing the membrane (yellow) that separates the zinc anode from the silver cathode (not shown, for clarity). If the membrane is pierced, the cell will short-circuit and die. To solve this problem, ZPower introduced polymers (shown as red balls) into the zinc anode. The polymers inhibit dendrites from growing and block their migration inside the anode, reducing the likelihood that the membrane will be pierced.
If you had to sum up the past 40 years of research on the mind, you could do worse than to call it the Rise of the Zombies.
We like to see ourselves as being completely conscious of our thought processes, of how we feel, of the decisions we make and our reasons for making them. When we act, it is our conscious selves doing the acting. But starting in the late 1960s, psychologists and neurologists began to find evidence that our self-aware part is not always in charge. Researchers discovered that we are deeply influenced by perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and desires about which we have no awareness.
heir research raised the disturbing possibility that much of what we think and do is thought and done by an unconscious part of the brain—an inner zombie.
Whenever I lose my watch, I take my sweet time to get a new one. I savor the freedom from my compulsion to carve my days into minute-size fragments. But my liberty has its limits. Even if I get rid of the clock strapped to my wrist, I cannot escape the one in my head. The human brain keeps time, from the flicker of milliseconds to the languorous unfurling of hours and days and years. It’s the product of hundreds of millions of years of evolution.
Keeping track of time is essential for perceiving what’s happening around us and responding to it. In order to tell where a voice is coming from, we time how long it takes for the sound to reach both ears. And when we respond to the voice by speaking ourselves, we need precise timing to make ourselves understood. Our muscles in the mouth, tongue, and throat must all twitch in carefully timed choreography. It’s just a brief pause that makes the difference between “Excuse me while I kiss the sky” and “Excuse me while I kiss this guy.”
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