Author: Anand Kapre

Microsoft Ready To Distribute The Cloud To Your Home

The cloud is a hot topic today. Not only is it popular, it literally generates a lot of heat. Data-centers are a huge investment and require a lot of power to run the machines as well as to keep them cool. On a very basic level, a computer efficiently converts electricity to heat, while processing some data, the same way a car engine converts petrol to heat, while also turning the wheels of the car.

This analogy has led researchers at Microsoft to come up with the idea of distributing the physical hardware of the cloud from a single data-center into multiple smaller installations that could replace the furnaces in a house or office building. These data furnaces would consume electricity and crunch numbers while simultaneously using the excess heat for spatial or water heating.

Using the data furnaces would have a number of advantages over conventional furnaces. Typically, the exhaust air from a computer is between 100 to 120 degrees fahrenheit. For homeowners, this exhaust air can be used to heat rooms as well as water for washing clothes. For company’s that build and operate data-centers, the physical cost of setting up the building as well as the cost of cooling the servers would be zero. In this situation, provided the companies pay for the electricity and Internet costs (which they would have to pay for anyways), everyone wins.

July 27, 2011
The Space Invaders Multi-Tool

Everyone has needed a multi-tool at some point, but when you really need it, most of the time you don’t have one. One of the most popular multi-tools has been the Swiss Army Knife. Its got a ton of features and it works really well. What if you didn’t want to roam around with a Swiss Army Knife in your pocket all the time?

Well there is a device for you. Its called the Space Invaders Multi Tool. Its shaped like an alien invader from Space Invaders and it’s got a phillips and flat head screw driver built in so that you are never without them. And the best part? Its lightweight and has a key-chain ring for you to attach your car/home/office keys.

July 25, 2011
Vodafone To Release Its Webbox Soon

First unveiled in South Africa in February, Vodafone’s Webbox is to be release in India soon. The device, which looks like a QWERTY keyboard, connects to any television set via standard RCA cables and converts the attached TV into a monitor. This setup can then be used to browse the web, read e-mail and perform simple computing tasks.

The device offers internet access via a Vodafone SIM card that supports 2.5G and EDGE networks. When connected, the home-screen offers users the ability to browse the web using an android version of Opera Mini 5.1, which compresses data by upto 90% to ensure fast loading pages. The device also boasts the ability to send and receive SMS and E-Mail messages, listen to FM radio as well as music, view photos in the photo gallery, edit documents with the built in text editor and integration with social networks.

The Webbox is expected to retail for Rs. 5800/- which includes a 12 GB data plan for free. You can see a demo of the device in the video below.

July 22, 2011
Optical Discs Get A Makeover – Enter Holographic Discs

Optical discs are quite an old technology. They’re big, fragile and easily damaged, and the principle behind them hasn’t changed much in years. GE has developed a commercial micro-holographic storage technology that can store 500 GB on a single optical disk the size of a CD. That’s over 20 times the storage capacity of today’s single side Blu-Rays and over 100 times the storage capacity of a single DVD.

GE has had this technology for a few years now but the real breakthrough was made when they successfully created a reader/writer system which can read and record data to and from the disc at Blu-Ray speeds, which makes the discs commercially viable.

Holographic storage is nothing like a CD, DVD or Blu-Ray. The only thing that the technologies have in common is the spinning plastic disc and the laser. Instead of reflecting a laser off the disc to read one’s and zero’s, holographic discs store data in three dimensional patterns, called holograms, within the material of the disc itself. To read a holographic disc, a laser is used to create a snapshot of the data stored on the disc, and multiple snapshots can be layered one on top of the other to increase storage density.

Since the data on a holographic disc is stored in 3D, GE has the entire volume of a disc to play with, therefore 500 GB is not the storage limit for this technology. Researchers at GE’s labs are already hard at work developing the second generation of these discs which could hold upwards of 1 TB of data. This technology will be backwards compatible with CD’s, DVD’s and Blu-Ray’s, ensuring the continued life of optical discs everywhere.

July 22, 2011
Over 1 Million Copies Of Lion Sold On Day 1

On the day that Apple launched the new version of its operating system OSX Lion, it sold over a million copies. Apparently, people were not intimidated by a lack of a disc to install from. The ease with which Apple has distributed its update can be seen in the sales figures. The price of the update along with the ability to download is must have helped boost sales even further than Apple expected.

The update is available in the Mac App Store for only $29. It will be available on physical media in August.

July 22, 2011
Read Unlimited Comics Till The End Of The Month For FREE
This one is for all the comic book lovers out there. Marvel comics has a monthly subscription package that lets users read unlimited digital comics. Well we’ve got a coupon that will let you read as many comics as you want for free. The only catch is that its valid till the 31^st of July. So hurry up and create your account on Marvel using the following steps:
- Go to the subscriptions page
- Select the Monthly Package
- Enter the Promo Code: CAP734
- Click Apply Promo
- Enter your user details.
- You dont have to enter your credit card info unless you want to continue your subscription after the promo expires.
- Agree to the terms and click the Start Your Subscription button.
Once you’ve created your account, you can browse Marvel’s digital comic library and simply click the Read It Online button for any comic that you wish to read. This will open a new window which loads a flash comic book reader. Not only can the reader display pages in a single page or two page format, but it can also zoom into specific panels while you’re reading. This makes it much easier to read the comics on a digital display.

We hope you enjoy this little surprise and we’ll see you after the 31^st. With great power comes great responsibility.
July 22, 2011
Android 3.2 All Set For Release On A Tablet Near You
Google’s latest update to its Android Platform is all set to come to a tablet near you. The new version is an incremental release which adds several new updates for developers as well as users. The new version includes many changes to the Android API.

A few highlights for the new version:
- Support for multiple screen sizes which allows developers to create apps for various screen sizes, not just 10.1 inch.
- A new compatibility mode which renders applications in a smaller screen area and then stretches the rendered image to fill the screen.
- Media files can be directly loaded from the SD Card in apps that use them and a new module that allows applications to use the system media library.
- An extended screen support API that allows developers to have precise control over the user interface across the range of Android powered devices. It also allows developers to target specific screens based on their dimensions.
Motorola has already begun to roll out the 3.2 update to its Xoom tablet. Other tablet candidates for the 3.2 update include Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, Acer’s Iconia Tab 500 and Toshiba’s Thrive. Huawei made an announcement last month for what it claims to be the worlds first 7 inch Android 3.2 Honeycomb Tablet which has a dual-core processor.
July 20, 2011
The Kindle – Your New Text Book

When we were in school and college, we often forgot our textbooks at home or in the hostel and we sat through class with no clue of what was going on. Enter the Kindle. Amazon has launched a new service called Textbook Rental, which lets you store all your textbooks and notes in the cloud.

Amazon’s new service, which was announced today, allows students to rent their textbooks for as much as 80% off the listed price. They can rent the textbooks for a month, a year or any duration in between with additional days being charged on a per-day basis. Not only will this service allow students to make killer savings, but it will also reduce the amount of stuff they need to carry to school.

This service, along with the Kindle app which is available on all major platforms including iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry, will allow students to read their textbooks and jotted notes on virtually any device. The kids today get all the cool stuff.

July 20, 2011
Ideum Takes On The Microsoft Surface With Its Ultrathin Multitouch Table

Microsoft’s Surface Table hasen’t quite taken the world by storm. This is probably due to the table’s bulky size and hefty price tag. I you are one of those people who was more upset with the table’s size than its price tag, Ideum hopes that you will be interested in its MT-55 multi-touch table.

Instead of sitting in a box, Ideum’s table is more like a flat-screen TV mounted on a stand. The table, which is only 3 inches thick, costs a whopping $18,000. The screen features a 5,000,000:1 contrast ratio and has a 178^o viewing angle and supports a 64-bit copy of Windows 7. The viewing angle is important because it means that even someone whose peeking over the edge of the table will be able to see the display clearly.

Multi-touch table’s may become the rage someday, but until the price comes down, and they create more software specifically for this kind of application, we don’t think that they’re going to sell too many.

July 20, 2011
4 Out Of Every 10 Servers Are Virtual

According to a study, conducted by the virtualization management firm Veeam, of 544 large businesses in the UK, US, France and Germany, nearly four out of ten servers are virtual.

The V-Index study shows that across the countries, on average, about 39 percent o servers are virtualized, with a typical large business running 470 virtual machines and 113 hosts. Almost nine in ten businesses use virtualization to some degree with four out of ten feeling that further virtualization is outweighed by reliability concerns. A similar proportion are waiting to refresh their hardware before further virtualization.

The most widely used hyper-visor is VMware, used by 84 percent of firms. Six in 10 also use Microsoft Hyper-V, fifty-five percent use Citrix Xen and 12 percent use alternatives. Ratmir Timashev, chief executive at Veeam had this to say:

While the results show that virtualization has become a standard technology in most enterprises, it is clear that there is still room for increased penetration.

July 19, 2011
iOS Is Still Bigger Than Android

Over 15,000,000,000 apps have been downloaded by some 200,000,000 users from the Apple App Store. In total, the App Store has around 425,000 applications available for sale. Last Thursday, Google announced that over 6,000,000,000 app downloads had been made by some 135,000,000 users form the Google Marketplace, which has around 250,000 applications available for sale.

The growth of Android is spurred on by the release of new Android smart phones and tablets in the market. While the tablets might not be able to dislodge the iPad from the top spot, the smart phones are giving the iPhone a run for its money. Google CEO Larry Page said that new Android devices are activated at a rate of around 50,000 per day. Despite the number of activations, the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch still lead the pack.

At present, Apple’s iOS remains the number one mobile operating system but speculation is ripe that its just a matter of time before Android overtakes iOS to become the leading mobile operating system.

July 18, 2011
Is Apple Killing The iPod?

Apple’s iPod has been around for the last ten years. When it was launched it was a revolutionary product that defined an industry. We’re sure that the iPod will be around for some time but is the end in sight? According to an analysis by Fortune magazine, iPod sales hit their peak during the holiday season of 2008. Since then, sales have been pushing south at a steady pace.

Apple’s jumped from around 22.7 million iPods sold at the end of 2008 to an expected 8.39 million iPods sold within the third quarter of 2011. These numbers do include the bump in sales received during the holidays, but, when comparing sales with the previous year, there is a 7.2% drop from Q3 of 2010.

Apple has decided to concentrate its efforts in its smart phone and tablet sales. When you think about the features that are built into Apple’s product line, the decline in sales starts to make sense. The more of Apple’s user base that shifts to the iPad or the iPhone, the more its antiquated iPod line looks like a meager purchase. The only huge difference between an iPod and an iPhone for example is price and capacity. While music lovers can store many many more songs in their iPods, and pay less for it, they are giving up a huge number of features.

It costs less money to shift from a low capacity iPhone to a high capacity one, than it does to purchase an iPhone and an iPod. And this is not considering those people who have already bought an iPhone and an iPad both. Why would people want all three? We highly doubt that users who use an iPad and/or an iPhone will be wanting to add an iPod touch to their collection.

Apple’s expected to hit around 7.9 million in third quarter sales for the iPad 2, and around 18.3 million in iPhone sales.

July 18, 2011
Is Google Changing The Way We Remember Things?

We’ve all been in a situation where we needed to remember a certain factoid about our town/city, our cars, a new concert or movie in town but for the life of us, we just can’t remember. So what do all of us do? We take out our smart phones or goto a computer and open up Google. We search for what we want, supply that information to our peers and promptly forget it again. So what exactly is happening here?

Researchers from Columbia University, in a study titled “Google Effects on Memory”, conducted a crucial experiment in which participants were asked to type in some trivia into the computer. Half the group was told that the data would be safe and stored in multiple folders, while the other half was told that the data would be erased. Surprisingly, the group that thought the data would be deleted had a better retention of the trivia they entered. Even more surprisingly, the other group did not remember the trivia as well as it remembered exactly where the trivia was stored. Does this resemble a Google keywordish effect to you?

The study has come to the conclusion that the Internet is acting like a collective Super Long Term Memory for the entire human race. In ancient times, people used to memorize entire histories and texts aided by mnemonic codes like rhymes and metre. Once printing was invented, mankind was liberated from having to perform such tasks. Now that we have the Internet, the effect is much larger. All we have to do is search for what we want and we find it. It seems that our brains are being reprogrammed to remember keywords or tags that would provide the information that we should have remembered in the first place, resembling search engines in their own right. Touché Google, touché.

July 18, 2011
Tech 101: How OLED Displays Work
In our previous article, we explained How Modern LCDs Work. In this article, we’ll be exploring how the new generation of displays based on OLED technology work.

What Exactly are OLEDs?

There are a lot of products in the market today ranging from TV’s to Laptops and even Smart Phones that contain an OLED display. But what are these displays and how do they work? OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode. This technology is named after the organic polymers that are used in its construction. For a long time, organic compounds have been assumed to be electrical insulators but new research and manufacturing techniques have allowed the industry to use these polymers for many applications on a vast scale.

OLEDs are solid-state devices which are composed of thin films of organic molecules which emit light when a current is applied. OLEDs can provide brighter crisper displays that use less power than conventional Light Emitting Diode (LED) and Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) technologies. Another application for OLEDs is in the form of lights to be used in homes and offices. These lights have a long life and are very efficient.

The Manufacturing Process

OLEDs are basically layers of organic material sandwiched between an anode and a cathode and mounted on a substrate. This entire device is usually between 100 to 500 nanometers thick or is about 200 times thinner than a human hair.

The substrate is usually a sheet of glass which is coated with a transparent conductive oxide which works as the anode. The next layer consists of hole injection material, the organic emitters and the electron transport layer which are together referred to as the organic stack. On top of the organic stack is the inorganic cathode. The device operates as follows:
- Cathode – The cathode injects electrons into the system when a current flows through the device. It may or may not be transparent.
- Organic Stack – This layer is made up of different organic polymers that are built up in layers. This is where light is made. The organic stack consists of the following layers:
- Anode – The anode removes electrons from the system when a current flows through the device. It is always transparent.
This is the process by which a single OLED works. To turn them into colour displays, manufacturers place several layers of OEs on a display. There are various methods with which these individual pixels can be turned into a full colour display.

Types of OLED Displays

There are several types of OLED Display
- Passive-matrix OLED
- Active-matrix OLED
- Transparent OLED
- Top-emitting OLED
- Foldable OLED
- White OLED
Passive Matrix OLEDs or PMOLEDs

PMOLEDs are designed in a hash pattern. The anode and cathode are made in strips that are arranged perpendicular to each other. The points of intersection of the strips of anode and cathode make up the individual pixels where light is emitted. External circuitry is used to control which pixels are on and what colour they emit. The brightness of each pixel is dependent on the amount of current in the system.

Active Matrix OLEDs or AMOLEDs

AMOLEDs have a full layer of anode and cathode materials but they borrow a technology from LCDs to produce a visible display. Sandwiched between the anode and the organic layer is a layer of thin film transistors or TFTs that makes the array. The TFT array is the circuitry that decides which pixel is on and what colour it displays. AMOLEDs are more efficient than PMOLEDs because the external circuitry used to run the PMOLEDs consumes more power. AMOLEDs also have a faster refresh rate which makes them more suitable to larger displays used in televisions and computer monitors.

Transparent OLEDs or TOLEDs

TOLEDs are constructed with only transparent components, and are upto 85% as transparent as the substrate used when they are turned off. When it is turned on, the display still allows light to pass both ways and remains transparent. It can have either an active matrix or a passive matrix. This technology would be perfect for Heads Up Displays and Medical Equipment.

Top Emitting OLEDs or TEOLEDs

TEOLEDs are constructed with a substrate that is either opaque or reflective. They are perfectly suited for an active matrix design. They are used in smart-cards.

Foldable OLEDs or FOLEDs

FOLEDs are constructed with a highly flexible substrate which could either be a plastic or metallic foil. These types of OLEDs are very lightweight and durable. They are used in cell phones and can reduce breakage. They could also potentially be integrated into fabrics to create smart clothing.

White OLEDs or WOLEDs

WOLEDs emit pure white light that is brighter and more uniform than the light which is emitted by fluorescent lights. . WOLEDs can be made in large sheets and can reduce energy costs massively if used to light homes and buildings due to their low power consumption.

Advantages and Disadvantages of OLEDs

OLEDs offer many advantages over the current favorite, LCDs and LEDs.
- The organic construction of an OLED is much thinner than the many layers required for an LCD or LED display.
- OLEDs can be built onto a thin plastic substrate which allows them to be flexible instead of the glass used in LCDs and LEDs.
- Due to its design, an OLED display is much brighter than an LED display. This is because the conductive and emissive layers of an OLED can be stacked several times to produce more light than an LED while still remaining extremely thin.
- Since OLEDs emit light themselves, they do not require a back-light. LCDs work by selectively blocking areas of the back-light to produce individual pixels. OLEDs are also much more energy efficient than LCDs because they lack a back-light.
- As OLEDs are made from plastics, they can be built into large thin sheets which makes them much easier to produce. It is much more difficult to create an LCD display of the same size.
- OLEDs have a much viewing angle than LCDs because they do not block light in any fashion. Since they produce their own light, they can provide a field of view of upto 170^o.
For all their advantages over LCDs and LEDs, OLEDs have a few problems as well.
- Red and green OLED films have a very long life of between 46,000 to 230,000 hours while blue OLED films currently have a much shorter lifespan of around 14,000 hours.
- The manufacturing process for OLEDs is not cheap as of now.
- OLEDs are not at all water resistant and can easily be damaged on contact with even a few drops of water.
While LCD and LED technology remains in the mainstream, OLEDs are making headway into the television, computer and mobile segments. Manufacturers and engineers are realizing the potential benefits of using OLED technology for their devices. In the next few years we should see an increase in OLED sales as well as some novel applications of the technology.

Stay tuned to the Tech 101 segment to learn more about what makes our everyday devices tick.
July 16, 2011
A New Sleek iPhone 5 Concept

People all the world are waiting anxiously for the next iteration of Apple’s Jesus Phone. There are many rumors going around and speculation is ripe about to the design and specifications of the iPhone 5. Some people believe that the phone will have a larger screen, some believe that it will have a better camera and processor. Whatever the case may be, the iPhone is coming and its coming soon.

Antoine Brieux of NAK Studio recently came up with his own idea of what the iPhone 5 should look like. And he’s come up with a super sleek design. The concept is reminiscent of the iPod Nano due to the coloured aluminium and shape of the bezel. If the new iPhone looks this good, it’s going to have no trouble selling (not that it’s going to have any trouble selling either way). What do you think of this new concept?

July 15, 2011