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Thursday, 24 October 2013

What is a widget?

In Android, the word widget is a generic term for a bit of self-contained code that displays a program, or a piece of a program, that is also (usually) a shortcut to a larger application. 



We see them every day on web pages, on our computer desktop and on our smartphones, but we never give too much thought into how great they are. Widgets first appeared in Android in version 1.5, and really gained traction thanks to HTC's Sense-flavored version of the operating system. Prior to the release of the HTC Hero and our first taste of Sense, widgets were functional, but pretty bland in appearance. Since then, OEMs and independent developers alike have done some marvelous things with widgets, and it's hard to imagine using Android without them. 

Android widgets come in all shapes and sizes and range from the utilitarian 1-by-1 shortcut style to full-page widgets that blow us away with the eye-candy. Both types are very useful, and it's pretty common to see a widget or two on the home screen of any Android phone. A full-page widget, like HTC's weather widget for late-model Android phones, tells you everything you need to know about the current conditions, and is also a quick gateway to the weather application where you can see things like forecasts and weather data for other cities. At the other end of the spectrum, the Google Reader 1x1 widget watches a folder in your Google Reader account and tells you how many unread items there are, and opens the full application when pressed. Both are very handy, and add a lot to the Android experience. 

Most Android phones come with a handful of built-in widgets. Some manufacturer versions of Android offer more than others, but the basics like a clock, calendar, or bookmarks widget are usually well represented. This is just the tip of the iceberg though. A quick trip into the Android Market will dazzle you with the huge catalog of third-party widgets available, with something that suits almost every taste. With Ice Cream Sandwich supporting things like higher resolution screens and re-sizable widgets, it's going to be an exciting year seeing what developers can come up with.

10 things you don't know about NOKIA

10 things you don't know about NOKIA

1) The ringtone "Nokia tune" is actually based on a 19th century guitar work named "Gran Vals" by Spanish musician Francisco Tárrega. The Nokia Tune was originally named "Grande Valse" on Nokia phones but was changed to "Nokia Tune" around 1998 when it became so well known that people referred to it as the "Nokia Tune." 

2) The world's first commercial GSM call was made in 1991 in Helsinki over a Nokia-supplied network, by Prime Minister of Finland Harri Holkeri, using a Nokia phone. 

3) Nokia is currently the world's largest digital camera manufacturer, as the sales of its camera-equipped mobile phones have exceeded those of any conventional camera manufacturer. 

4) The "Special" tone available to users of Nokia phones when receiving SMS (text messages) is actually Morse code for "SMS". Similarly, the "Ascending" SMS tone is Morse code for "Connecting People," Nokia's slogan. The "Standard" SMS tone is Morse code for "M" (Message). 

5) The Nokia corporate font (typeface) is the AgfaMonotype Nokia Sans font, originally designed by Eric Spiekermann. Its mobile phone User's Guides Nokia mostly used the Agfa Rotis Sans font.

6) In Asia, the digit 4 never appears in any Nokia handset model number, because 4 is considered unlucky in many parts of Southeast/East Asia. 

7) Nokia was listed as the 20th most admirable company worldwide in Fortune's list of 2006 (1st in network communications, 4th non-US company). 

8. Unlike other modern day handsets, Nokia phones do not automatically start the call timer when the call is connected, but start it when the call is initiated. (Except for Series 60 based handsets like the Nokia 6600) 

9) Nokia is sometimes called aikon (Nokia backwards) by non-Nokia mobile phone users and by mobile software developers, because "aikon" is used in various SDK software packages, including Nokia's own Symbian S60 SDK. 

10) The name of the town of Nokia originated from the river which flowed through the town. The river itself, Nokianvirta, was named after the old Finnish word originally meaning sable, later pine marten. A species of this small, black-furred predatory animal was once found in the region, but it is now extinct.

Google Nexus 5 Specs and Price

The rumored specifications of the Google Nexus 5 include a 4.95-inch full-HD (1080p) IPS LCD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor clocked at 2.3GHz, 2GB of RAM, 8-megapixel rear camera with OIS and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera. 




The alleged Nexus 4 successor has also been expected to include a host of sensors like ambient light, proximity, pressure as well as accelerometer, compass, notification LED and gyroscope. 

A recent report had suggested that the Nexus 5 might be priced at $399 for the 16GB model, while the 32GB model would come at $499, but that looks to have been proven wrong with this accidental listing.

Wednesday, 23 October 2013

Android Powered Helmet By Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is going to introduce a new innovative gadget. The Android powered helmet that gives its rider directions, map locations and weather forecasts has been developed. 



The helmet, developed by a Silicon valley-based start-up, features a tiny heads-up display, positioned so that the image appears in front of your right cheek, where you would need to look to keep your eyes on the road. 

An integrated rearview camera with a 180 degree viewing angle gives the view behind the rider. 

The Android-powered, Bluetooth-linked motorcycle headgear can show driving directions, the weather and other basic interface elements, ’Discovery News’ reported. 

It is also able to pair with smartphones so you can use voice controls to make calls, listen to music, send texts and change your destination all hands-free. 

The company, Skull helmets, hopes to ship the headgear in the first quarter of next year. 

The helmet has also bagged one of five DEMO God awards handed out at the International Data Group (IDG)'s DEMO Fall 2013 conference in US.

Monday, 21 October 2013

Ultra Fast Alternative To Wi-Fi - Li-Fi Bulb

Researchers at Fudan University in Shanghai have just become the latest to demonstrate a technology that transmits data as light instead of radio waves, which gets around the congestion issue and could be ten times faster than traditional Wi-Fi. 



In dense urban areas, the range within which Wi-Fi signals are transmitted is increasingly crowded with noise—mostly, other Wi-Fi signals. What’s more, the physics of electromagnetic waves sets an upper limit to the bandwidth of traditional Wi-Fi. The short version: you can only transmit so much data at a given frequency. The lower the frequency of the wave, the less it can transmit. 

10x faster connections than Wi-Fi, through the nearest lamp 

But what if you could transmit data using waves of much higher frequencies, and without needing a spectrum license from your country’s telecoms regulator? Light, like radio, is an electromagnetic wave, but it has about 100,000 times the frequency of a Wi-Fi signal, and nobody needs a license to make a light bulb. All you need is a way to make its brightness flicker very rapidly and accurately so it can carry a signal. 

The idea sounds daft: Who would want to sit under a flickering bulb? But Li-Fi, a standard proposed just two years ago, is seeing rapid technological progress. 

First, data are transmitted to an LED light bulb—it could be the one illuminating the room in which you’re sitting now. Then the lightbulb is flicked on and off very quickly, up to billions of times per second. That flicker is so fast that the human eye cannot perceive it. (For comparison, the average energy-saving compact fluorescent bulb already flickers between 10,000 and 40,000 times per second.) Then a receiver on a computer or mobile device—basically, a little camera that can see visible light—decodes that flickering into data. LED bulbs can be flicked on and off quickly enough to transmit data around ten times as fast the fastest Wi-Fi networks. (If they could be manipulated faster, the bandwidth would be even higher.) 

Li-Fi’s limitations are similar to next-generation Wi-Fi 

Li-Fi has one big drawback compared to Wi-Fi: you, or rather your device, need to be within sight of the bulb. It wouldn’t necessarily need to be a special bulb; in principle, overhead lights at work or at home could be wired to the internet. But it would mean that, unlike with Wi-Fi, you couldn’t go into the next room unless there were wired bulbs there too. 

However, a new generation of ultrafast Wi-Fi devices that we’re likely to start using soon face a similar limitation. They use a higher range of radio frequencies, which aren’t as crowded with other signals (at least for now), and have a higher bandwidth, but, like visible light, cannot penetrate walls. 

Engineers and a handful of startups, like Oledcomm, have been experimenting with Li-Fi technology. The Fudan University team unveiled an experimental Li-Fi network in which four PCs were all connected to the same light bulb. Other researchers are working on transmitting data via different colors of LED lights—imagine, for example, transmitting different signals through each of the the red, green and blue LEDs inside a multi-colored LED light bulb. 

Because of its limitations, Li-Fi won’t do away with other wireless networks. But it could supplement them in congested areas, and replace them in places where radio signals need to be kept to a minimum, like hospitals, or where they don’t work, such as underwater.

Sunday, 20 October 2013

Interesting Facts of Technology



Interesting Facts of Technology










Sunday, 6 October 2013

What is a Game?

Defination :

In the German language a game is any activity which is executed only for pleasure and without conscious purpose. In this definition every activity that brings pleasure is a game. For example, people dance, play musical instruments, act in plays, and play with dolls and model trains.


Other definitions :

  • "A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome."
  • "A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal." According to this definition, some "games" that do not involve choices, such as Chutes and Ladders, Candy Land, and War are not technically games any more than a slot machine is.
  • "A game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context."

Types :

  1. SportsMany sports require special equipment and dedicated playing fields.
  2. Lawn gamesLawn games are outdoor games that can be played on a lawn.
  3. Tabletop gamesA tabletop game generally refers to any game where the elements of play are confined to a small area and that require little physical exertion.
  4. Dexterity and coordination gamesThis class of games includes any game in which the skill element involved relates to manual dexterity or hand-eye coordination.
  5. Board gamesBoard games use as a central tool a board on which the players' status.
  6. Card gamesCard games use a deck of cards as their central tool. These cards may be a standard Anglo-American (52-card) deck of playing cards.
  7. Dice gamesDice games use a number of dice as their central element. Board games often use dice for a randomization element, and thus each roll of the dice has a profound impact on the outcome of the game.
  8. Pencil and paper gamesPencil and paper games require little or no specialized equipment other than writing materials.
  9. Guessing gamesA guessing game has as its core a piece of information that one player knows, and the object is to coerce others into guessing that piece of information without actually divulging it in text or spoken word.
  10. Video gamesVideo games are computer- or microprocessor-controlled games. Computers can create virtual spaces for a wide variety of game types
  11. Online games From the very earliest days of networked and time-shared computers, online games have been part of the culture.

What criteria must a game have?

There are criteria which apply to all games and those that apply to the "games with rules". First, I will describe the criteria that apply to "games with rules".
  • Game rules
  • Goal
  • The course of the game is never the same - chance
  • Competition

Summary

Games are objects which consist of components and rules and have certain criteria: rules, a goal, always changing course; chance; competition; common experience; equality; freedom; activity; diving into the world of the game; and no impact on reality.