Author: Anand Kapre

Superman Due for a Costume Change

Superman. Theres much and more to be said about the man of steel. He’s the Hero of Heroes. The titan of Metropolis. He has been the inspiration for many other heroes. The last line of defence in Earth’s never ending battle against the cosmos. The man who has boldly shown of his red briefs since 1938. And after 73 years, he is finally due for a costume change.

In the next series posted by DC on their website, Superman’s costume is being changed by artists Rags Morales and Rick Bryant. There is great controversy on and offline, even in the iGyaan office, on whether they can do this and if its a good idea. Superman’s current costume can only be described as iconic and classic. There is no other hero that is as identifiable with his red and blue.

[polldaddy poll=5153788]

We personally feel that IF they are going to change his costume, they should really change it and not just remove his briefs and add a few seam lines. Let us know how you feel in the poll below.

June 18, 2011
IBM – Milestones from the last Century
IBM is one of the largest IT companies in the world. Yesterday it turned 100 years old. It has grown from a pre-World War I conglomeration of companies making tabulating machines and time-keeping devices into a globe-spanning technology behemoth that pioneered the development of electronic computers and dominated the mainframe era. The company holds a vast array of patents in a vast number of technologies.

It has crossed many milestones in the last century. Here are a few of them:
- 1889 – The Bundy Manufacturing Co., a time recording equipment maker is founded.
- 1896 – The Tabulating Machine Co., a punched-card, electric tabulating equipment maker is founded
- 1911 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company is founded which merges the Bundy Manufacturing Co., The Tabulating Machine Co., The Computing Scale Company and the International Time Recording Co. It has a total of 1300 employees.
- 1914 – Thomas J. Watson, Sr., joins the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and ends up as President in 11 months. The company more than doubles its revenues to $9 million in his first four years.
- 1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company is formally renamed International Business Machines.
- 1928 – IBM introduces the 80 column punch card which doubles previous capacity and remains a standard for the next 50 years.
- 1933 – IBM enters the typewriter business by acquiring Electromatic Typewriters
- 1944 – IBM introduces the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator or the Mark I, which is the first large scale computer to accomplish operations automatically.
- 1946 – IBM introduces the first commercially availabe machine with electronic arithmatic circuits, the 603 Electronic Multiplier.
- 1952 – Thomas J. Watson, Jr. becomes President of IBM.
- 1957 – IBM introduces FORTRAN, which is used to this day.
- 1964 – IBM bets $5 billion on future trends by introducing the IBM System/360 which used Solid Logic Technology microelectronics.
- 1969 – The first manned mission to the moon included an onboard computer designed at IBM
- 1971 – Frank Cary becomes CEO of IBM and the Floppy disk is also introduced. It becomes a PC data storage standard.
- 1981 – IBM introduces the worlds cheapest and smallest Personal Computer at $1565. It partners with Microsoft to supply the Operating System and allows competitors to buy it for IBM-Compatible clones which paves the way for competitors like Dell and Compaq.
- 1984 – IBM introduces its second generation PC with a 6Mhz Intet 80286
- 1991 – IBM shocks the industry by announcing its first annual loss of $2.82 billion
- 1995 – IBM acquires Lotus Development Corp. and its Notes software making it the worlds largest software company. It also launches the IBM Thinkpad running on an Intel Pentium 133Mhz processor. It is an instant success.
- 1997 – The IBM Deep Blue supercomputer, capable of calculating 200 million chess moves per second, defeats chess Grand Master Garry Kasporov.
- 2005 – IBM sells its PC business to Lenovo to focus on software development.
- 2011 – Watson, the IBM AI, which comprises of 90 IBM 750 servers defeats two Jepordy game show champions in a two match game.
June 17, 2011
Internet Usage up by 50% in Tier-2 Cities

Last year, the majority of interet users in India were from the Metros. However, the trend in internet usage is shifting towards non-metro cities. Senior Director Nitin Mathur, Yahoo India, had this to say:

[quote]”Internet penetration is very low in India right now as compared to other nations. It would surely touch 24 crore by 2015 and given the size of India’s population this too would not be enough. But we see more and more people using internet through mobile devices rather than PC’s. Even right now of the 8 crore internet users more than 2.5 crore access it through mobile devices. As 3G enabled handsets become cheap mobile internet would be the next big thing in the country which would take penetration to the remote corners of the country”[/quote]

He also said that the company was working towards implementing Yahoo Mail in regional Languages. The company has also started a “Learn with Yahoo” program which educates and trains new users on various aspects of the internet including email, search, and internet safety etc.

June 17, 2011
25 Year Old Man Killed by a Chinese Phone

A 25 Year old man, Dhanji Damor from the Panchmahal district of Gujarat, India, was killed by his phone while attempting to make a phone call while the phone was plugged in for charging. He recieved a massive electric shock and was pronounced dead on arrival by doctors at a local hospital.

This just goes to show the shoddy design and construction of devices from China as well as a lack of quality control. If you can’t afford a branded device then it might be worth your life to not buy a cheap knockoff. Its always safer to purchase a device from a known company. It’s incidents like these that give Chinese technology a bad name which is rather scary if you’ve ever taken a look behind your iDevice.

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June 17, 2011
Lulzsec Targeting more Games for its Titanic Takeover Tuesday

The hacker collective known as Lulzsec has singled out MMORPG Eve Online, Indie-Hit Minecraft and RTS League of Legends as their next targets. All three games faced distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on Tuesday and their login servers went down. Eve took its servers off the Public Internet when it realized what had happened. No news on when it would be back up. The Minecraft servers were the first to recover as they have faced massive DDoS attacks in the past, which might have helped them to rectify the situation faster. League of Legends seems to have fared no better.

The arm of Lulzsec seems to have grown long indeed and they seem to be soliciting targets now. They said this in a tweet:

[quote]Call into 614-LULZSEC and pick a target and we’ll obliterate it. Nobody wants to mess with The Lulz Cannon – take aim for us, twitter. [/quote]

June 16, 2011
Bio-Energy Plants to be setup in Himachal

The Himachal Pradesh Government is ready to setup Bio Energy Power Plants ranging from 100 KW to 1 MW in capacity. The plants would be using a variety of grass called the Congress Grass and Pine Needles as fuel. These plants are causing trouble for farmers in the state but can now be put to good use generating electricity. The state has the potential to generate upto 418 MW of electricity from a number of these Power Plants.

June 16, 2011
Xbox 720 Coming in 2012?

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 has been around for many years. It’s successor, dubbed the Xbox 720 is rumored to be released during E3 in 2012. A high level source from Crytek, the makers of Crysis, claims that:

[quote]Microsoft will announce the existence of a new Xbox within the next 12 months, hinting that an E3 2012 reveal is likely. [/quote]

Although no console specs have been confirmed, DirectX 11 – which includes tessellation, multi-threaded rendering and compute shaders – which has had a hugely positive effect on visuals, will probably be included. The Crytek source also claimed that Microsoft was likely to launch the new Xbox 720 before Sony launched the PS4.

Both Microsoft and Crytek have declined to comment on the matter.

June 15, 2011
iPad 3 to have a Double Resolution Screen?

Rumors abound that the iPad 3 will have twice the resolution of the iPad 2. While the current device has a 1024×768 resolution, images discovered by a person familiar with the beta release of iOS 5 have a resolution of 1536 x 2048 and have created further speculation on wheather Apple will increase the resolution on the device.

Doubling the resolution of the iPad 3 will quadruple the number of pixels over the iPad and iPad 2. This would be similar to the introduction of the Retina Display on the iPhone 4 which allowed the phone to jump from a resolution of 480x320px to 960x640px. According to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the limit of the human retina to discern pixels is 300ppi at 10 to 12 inches. The new iPad 3 display at 2048x1536px would still fall short of the ‘Retina Display’ as it would still have a pixel density of 264 ppi.

Rumors of an enhanced display for the iPad have persisted since before the release of the iPad 2, with some reports suggesting that Apple planned to include a 2048 x 1536 display on the iPad 2, but ran into last-minute “engineering issues” that prevented it.

June 15, 2011
Skype Calls Coming to TV’s

One of the largest cable companies in the US announced that it is planning to bring Skype Video Calls to TV’s by the end of this year. Subscribers will be able to rent a special kit which contains a Webcam, an adapter and a Special Remote which will have a Keyboard at the back to type chat messages. Subscribers will get notifications of incoming calls on their TVs and will be able to answer calls with full-screen video or in a window while watching TV. No pricing plans have been decided as yet.

The Skype adapter won’t work with Skype services that let users call phone numbers, or receive calls to a phone number. Instead, Comcast plans to bundle a limited version of Skype’s offerings with its own phone service, for which it charges $20 per month and up, to the adapter, so subscribers can place and receive phone calls through the TV set.

June 15, 2011
AMD Launches A-Series APUs

AMD has launched its A-Series Chips. These Chips have a combination CPU + GPU chips in a single package that the company is dubbing APUs or Accelerated Processing Unit. The A-series was formerly known under the code name Llano. The company describes the new chips as follows:

[quote]AMD A-Series APUs combine up to four x86 CPU cores with powerful DirectX 11-capable discrete-level graphics and up to 400 Radeon cores along with dedicated HD video processing on a single chip. [/quote]

The processors will be available as the A4, A6, and A8 and are meant for mid to high-level laptops. The high-end quad-core A8 is targeted for “enthusiast HD and 3D entertainment,” with the quad-core A6 for “HD creation and Blu-ray entertainment,” and the lower-end dual-core A4 (comparable to Intel’s Core i3) for “Photo editing and HD movie playback.” Higher-end Laptops will also offer a separate discrete graphics card on top of the bundled GPU, in a setup called AMD Dual Graphics. The physically discrete GPU can be set to turn off while the system is not plugged into an outlet, in order to extend battery life.

The first company to announce a line of A-Series Laptops is HP. It is not creating new models for these chips but is instead, adapting its existing models for these APUs. These processors should provide Intel’s second generation Sandy Bridge CPUs a run for their money.

June 14, 2011
Bogus Angry Birds Apps on the Google Marketplace

Bogus Angry Birds Apps on the Google Marketplace are being used to distribute Malware. Andrew Brandt, lead threat research analyst at Webroot, had this to say about the code dubbed “Plankton”

[quote]It has the ability to remotely access a command-and-control [C&C] server for instructions, and upload additional payloads. It uses a very stealthy method to push any malware it wants to phone.[/quote]

The code was first found by Xuxian Jiang, who is the Assistant Professor in Computer Science at North Carolina State University. Unlike other malicious code found in the Marketplace, Plankton does not rely on getting “root” access to the device. Instead, once installed, Plankton can call in other files from a hacker-controlled server, including ones that would exploit one or more unpatched Android bugs. It also harvests data from the phone, including the bookmarks, bookmark history and home page of the device’s built-in browser.

All 10 of the apps that Google pulled after Jiang’s report purported to be add-ons or cheats for the popular mobile game “Angry Birds” from Finnish game company Rovio. None of the apps actually provided their promised functionality, however, but were simply the delivery vehicles for Plankton.

This is not the first attack code removed by Google from its Marketplace.

June 14, 2011
Duke Nukem Forever – Finally Here

Its been nearly 14 years since the release of the multi-million selling Duke Nukem 3D. Well the long wait is finally over for all the Duke Fans out there as Duke Nukem Forever is being released Today ($60, for PS3 and Xbox 360 & $50 for Windows PCs). The Guinness Book of World Records 2011 Gamers Edition lists Duke Nukem as being the 27th most popular video game charecters of all-time, and the First Person Shooter with the longest development time (14 Years).

Duke Nukem 3D was one of the first games with a fully interactive world with working soda machines and toilets in 1996. You can only expect that its gotten a lot better since then. We cant wait to get the game. Check out some screenshots below. dncornholio anyone?

June 14, 2011
App a Day – 3D Board for iOS

Have you ever wanted to turn your iPhone screen into a 3D screen? Well now you can. With the 3D board application, your home screen turns into a glasses free 3D screen. The wallpaper moves and shifts based on how you’re holding the phone. It is available from the BigBoss repository in Cydia for $2.99. All in all its a fun application to fool your friends into thinking you’ve replaced your iPhone’s Retina Display with a 3D Retina Display. Check out the video for more info.

June 13, 2011
First iPhone in Space
The last space shuttle launch is scheduled towards the end of this year and its going to be carrying some special cargo. Two iPhone 4’s will be on board running special software designed by Odyssey Space Research.

Once the space shuttle docks with the International Space Station, the crew members will use the iPhones to conduct four experiments, using the iPhones’ cameras, gyroscopes, and other sensors.

[quote]”I’m pretty sure this is the very first iPhone to go into space,” said Odyssey CEO Brian Rishikof.[/quote]

The debut of the iPhone 4 in 2010 inspired the Odyssey team to create iOS based space experiments as the new phone had a built in gyroscope. The company has developed software and simulations for guidance and navigation used in several spacecraft; a gyroscope means that the iPhone could potentially be used to determine a vehicle’s orientation in space as well as its position.

The four experiments are:
- A “limb tracker,” which lets astronauts take a picture of the Earth’s limb (its curved edge). The app then estimates the iPhone’s altitude.
- A sensor calibration tool that uses camera images plus multiple sensors to calibrate the phone’s gyroscope and accelerometers.
- Latitude and longitude estimation using photos of the Earth and matching them to wireframes of coastlines.
- A test to see if space radiation affects computer memory by watching for unintended changes to single bits in the iPhones’ RAM.
June 13, 2011
New Method to Make Lighter Stronger Steel Discovered

A Detroit entrepreneur, Gary Cola, surprised scientists at the Ohio State University by inventing a process that makes steel stronger by a whopping seven percent, all in a measly 10 seconds. What he has discovered may hold the key to making cars and other vehicles stronger, lighter, safer and more fuel efficient.
The process basically involved rapidly heating and cooling the steel to change its molecular structure to make it less brittle. In fact, the steel trademarked as Flash Bainite, has tested to be stronger and more shock resistant than most titanium alloys used by the industry.

Cola has a proprietary Lab setup at SFP Works, LLC, where rollers carry sheets of steel through flames as hot as 1100°C, followed by rapid cooling in a liquid bath. Though the typical temperature and length of time for hardening varies by industry, most steel types are heat-treated at around 900°C for a few hours. Others are heated at similar temperatures for days. Cola’s entire process took less than 10 seconds. He claimed that the resulting steel was seven percent stronger than martensitic advanced high-strength steel. Martensitic steel is so named because the internal microstructure is entirely composed of a crystal form called martensite.

June 13, 2011