Thursday, 28 October 2010
Google has just confirmed that their Android apps market has hit the 100,000 mark via their official Twitter channel. Let’s see, that’s about a jump from 70,000 to 100,000 in just three (3) months. And if you really want to know, that’s also about seven (7) months from 30,000 till this six figure number. That’s obviously still no where near Steve Jobs’s proud 300,000 apps mark, but you really can’t deny that Google is seriously catching up. It’s so sad to see that RIM’s been left behind, by so far!
Now this is what I call unplug! Driving a super environment friendly electric car, and don’t have to worry about insufficient electric for your new EV. Drive home, flip the switch, and you’re ready for dinner. That’s a very cool invention from WiTriCity, a pioneer in wireless energy transfer technology, and Delphi Automotive. That’s the result of the collaboration between the two companies that are working on developing a range of automatic wireless charging products for electric vehicles.
No additional plugs or charging cords are needed in the wireless charging system. All the driver need to do is to simply park their electric vehicles over a wireless energy source that sits on the garage floor or embedded in a paved parking spot, and the system will automatically charge up your car once you activate it.
This patented wireless energy transfer technology is invented by Nikola Tesla, and improved by a team of MIT physicists since four years ago to make it feasible. The technology makes use of highly resonant magnetic coupling, offering a transfer of over 3,300 watts – enough to fully charge an electric car at the same rate as most residential plug-in chargers. The system can efficiently transfer power over significantly larger distances and allow more parking-related vehicle misalignment than inductive systems. Ask any E&E Engineering student, and they should be able to explain better to you than me, what resonant cavity is. Despite the gap, no power would be lost as power is transferred through induction within the resonant cavity, not electrical conduction.
However, wireless charging technology will of course need to co-exist with plug-in charging solutions, the company states, so that electric vehicle drivers have the ability to charge their vehicle with something like Delphi’s portable electric charger – which fits into any standard AC outlet – when they’re away from their wireless charging source. This is actually a much refined package, by offering the wireless energy transfer package as an add-on instead of a standalone device. Sometimes we just can’t park properly. Well, now you have a better reason to buy an EV!
Well, here it is. Yes, it may still be in beta, but that’s better than none right? Microsoft has made available the beta version of their Windows Phone 7 Mac-friendly companion app, giving basic media syncing capability into your Mac.
Now what’s unique here is integration of iTunes and iPhoto, which comes as a surprise. This is great news, as most places worldwide have yet to properly launch their Windows Phone 7 handsets, yet. Well, except for some Kiwi-loving-hobbit country, who already have their phone.
Here’s something new for us to know. Perhaps this might also kill off Bluetooth. This was talked about quite some time ago by the Wi-Fi Alliance, but there’s no news until recently. They’re ready to push this new technology called ‘Wi-Fi Direct’.Here’s how it works.
In order to make a direct device-to-device connection over WiFi, just one of the two needs to be Wi-Fi Direct certified. In other words, a Wi-Fi Direct printer can recognize and interface with your Latitude D410 laptop from 1999, as all Wi-Fi Direct certified devices have to be able to control the one-to-one relationship. The goal here is pretty simple — it’s to create a protected connection between two devices over WiFi with as little hassle as possible. Think Bluetooth, but using WiFi. Yes, the range’s gone so big, you can still transfer your MP3 while you go to poo.
Another thing, “most” products certified will also support “one-to-many” connections, enabling a Wi-Fi Direct laptop to be in contact with a printer, connected HDTV and a tablet simultaneously, with no router in-between at any point. Something important to note here, is that while 802.11a/g/n is supported over 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, there’s no requirement for Wi-Fi Direct products to support 802.11b. Odd right?
Hardware wise, there’s no minimum requirement. That means any existing WiFi chipset could be upgraded via firmware to handle Wi-Fi Direct. Finally, they noted that the app ecosystem is likely to make this whole rollout a lot more interesting, particularly considering that Direct is simply a pipe that software can dictate as it sees fit. Don’t have to stick to your mate anymore when transferring that MP3.
We’ve seen so many add-ons for Firefox, and that’s a good thing. Now, things will be getting slightly haywire. Some Eric Butler who is a software developer, isn’t very happy with Facebook, and he thinks you should too. Well, at least he wants you to know why you should. So, here he is, forcing you to learn a few simple things to know how bad Mark Zuckerburg is, as so does the rest of the Internet.
He’s developed Firesheep, a Firefox add-on that even the least technically inclined among us can use to eavesdrop on open WiFi networks and capture your fellow users’ cookies. Any time a site recognized by Firesheep (including Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and Dropbox) is accessed by a user on your network, Firesheep provides you with an icon and a link to access that account. A simple click, and Firesheep will show a small picture and a link, if there’s anyone accessing these sites with no encryption. And with a double-click, you’re on your way to post some nasty things on that person’s wall.
So, maybe you should think twice before accessing Facebook at Starbucks, or anywhere that is using public network. Maybe you should learn a thing or two about force SSL. Search up Force-TLS in Firefox Add-on, if you’re using Firefox.
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
If dual-SIM is just not enough for you, look at this OTECH F1 with FOUR SIM card slots. More exciting is that all four SIMs are active at the same time, making the F1 a true quad-SIM phone. The phone, at the same time, is a Blackberry-copycat with QWERTY keyboard and a Blackberry-like UI.
The OTECH F1 has a 2.4-inch color display and a so-called 12.1 Megapixel camera on the back. It packs also built-in TV tuner, FM tuner and Bluetooth.
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