Saturday 28 February 2015

Google's Vint Cerf Warns of 'digital Dark Age'


Vint_Cerf
In recent interview with Pallab Ghosh, Google's Vint Cerf warns about 'digital Dark Age'. Vint Cerf, who is a Vice-president of Google, says that he is worry about all the images and documents, which we have saved on our computers or on other devices because in future we can eventually lost them. He believes that it could occur as software and hardware become obsolete.

Vint Cerf fears that in future our generations will have very little or no record about 21st Century, if we will face digital Dark Age scenario. He made his comment at science conference in San Jose, where he arrived in a three-piece suit, for annual meeting of American Association for the Advancement of Science. We all know that he is an iconic figure, who love to define that how data packets moves in all over internet and he is the only Google employee who love to wear tie and suit.

Now his main focus is to solve this new problem of digital Dark Age, which is threatens to eradicate our past or history. Our memories, our life, our happiness, our sorrows and cherished family photographs now exist as bits of information on our hard drives or in cloud. But change is the law of nature and so technology moves on and we can lose them while accelerating the digital revolution.

What is Digital Dark Age? 

In report, Pallab Ghosh from BBC told that “I worry as Mr. Cerf told me that in near future you and I can experience the things like this because old formats of documents, which we have created in present they may not be readable in future when latest versions will come in existence and we all know that software’s backwards compatibility is not guaranteed.

And due to that in the presence of archives of digital content, we will not be able to scratch or use it as we may not know what it is. While promoting the idea to preserve each and every piece of software, technology and hardware he said that with the help of this idea we will be able to overcome from this issue and we can store them in the form of digital or in servers over could as things happens in a museum. If this idea of Mr. Cerf, will work, so our memories could be accessible for upcoming generations.

The recommended solution is to take an X-ray snapshot of the operating system, application, and content together with the detailed description of the machine, which runs on and able to preserve that for long periods such as; 100 to 200 years.

And these digital snapshots will be helpful to recreate the past in the future. There will be companies in future who will provide these services and therefore I suggested to Mr Cerf that how companies will exist for hundreds of years and because of that we cannot guarantee that both personal and human history would be safeguarded in the long run.

But Vint Cerf replied that we are trying to capture X-ray snapshot and they will be transportable from one place to another and so it will be easy to move them from Google cloud to some other cloud or move it into a machine.

Friday 27 February 2015

Lab on a Chip Turns Smart Phones Into Mobile Disease Clinics


Lab_on_Chip
A Device – Easy to Use Smartphone – Test Multiple Diseases

Early detection of any infectious disease is a very important public health issue and the development from web and mobile based communication together with novel bio-molecular detections abilities have come up with regards to public health infrastructure.

Progress in communications, computation and materials had given rise to new technologies like mobile phones and microfluidic chips. A cheap device has been created by researchers from U.S. and Rwandan, who have been making progress in designing cheap, easy to use smartphone attachments which could test patients for multiple dangerous infectious diseases within fifteen minutes. In the present world, smart phone have been paying up bills, tracking diets as well as recording our sleep and soon they will be utilised in the global fight against the various diseases with researcher making headway in this field.

A drop of blood is all that is needed from a finger prick of the person and on pressing the device’s big black button would create a vacuum that can suck the blood into a maze of tiny channels in its disposable cartridge which is the size of a credit card.

Functions – Lab Based Blood Test

Several detection areas trace any antibodies in the blood which could reveal the presence of a certain disease. It needs a little bit of power of the smartphone which helps in detecting and displaying the results of a disease. The team states that an iPod Touch has the potential of screening 41 patients on a single charge. A field test was conducted by the researchers of the device at three Community clinics at Rwandan where the health care workers screened ninety six patients for HIV and active and latent forms of syphilis.

A Lab on a chip could turn smart phones into mobile disease clinics and HIV and syphilis can now be detected in minutes with the use of cheap lab on chip device. The dongle being small and light, can be easily connected to a smartphone or a computer for the required power and the device provides the test results on the phone screen in fifteen minutes, instead of the two or more hours with the prevailing method.It is similar to all the functions of a lab based blood test and works by detecting antibody markers of any infectious diseases.

High Sensitivity & Ease of Use – Powerful Tool

On comparing with the gold standard laboratory tests, the team’s online report in Science Translational Medicine stated that the dongle was ninety six percent accurate in detecting infections, missing one case of latent syphilis. Inspite of a 14% false alarm rate, the researcher state that the device’s high sensitivity and ease of use makes it a powerful tool for diagnosing deadly diseases especially in the case of pregnant women.

They are now making progress in preparing a large scale trial for the $34 device which probably would enable mobile clinics and health workers with reliable and quick disease screening especially in the remote locations of the globe. Detecting a disease in time helps in timely diagnosis and treatment which could be helpful in early recovery from the ailment. Timely detection of the infection of those that are not common or have not been diagnosed in certain areas could be more vital.



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Thursday 26 February 2015

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HTC Sense 7.0 - can we expect any of these?


With HTC Sense 7.0 right around the corner I thought of making some little "wish-list" of a features I would love to see in the refreshed HTC UI. If you don't know yet - HTC Sense is so far the most advanced and by many known as the best custom Android User Interface. Apple has its iOS, Samsung has its plastic and HTC has its Sense UI.

None of the features are revolutionary, some of them are actually quite common or already available via 3rd party mods (like Sense Toolbox). The thing is, it would be great to have them (at least few of them) available out of the box. Lets go through the list!
  1. New section in / Settings / Personalize / called "Status bar" with the following features:
    1. possibility to remove the clock
    2. possibility to add XX % battery indicator, moved from / Settings /  Power / Show battery level
    3. possibility to have only XX % battery indicator without the battery icon
    4. possibility to have both XX % indicator and a battery icon (current solution). All these features related to the battery level can be sorted this way: / Settings / Personalize / Status bar / Show battery level: show battery icon | show battery level | show both battery icon and level
    5. possibility to change between 4G and LTE icons
  2. Increase the number of icons inside a folder - for some reason the maximum number of icons inside a folder is 20. With so many games and applications in the Google Play it's really strange limitation. I'm not a gamer, but I have more then 20 games. Shell I have folders like "Games 1", "Games 2", "Games 3" etc?
  3. Possibility to create folders in the app drawer when using the Alphabetical mode. So far we can add folders only in the "Custom" view mode. I would like to organize icons inside the app drawer into folders and keep the aliphatic order of the icons outside folders.
  4. Possibility to customize the battery saver feature - HTC in the Sense 4+ UI introduced a very useful toggle to turn on/off battery saver. However, it's barely possible to customize it, even in the HTC Sense 6.0. Possibility to change the moment when the power saver mode is turned on, the CPU min/max frequencies, screen dim level etc. would be really great.
  5. Move the Flashlight and the Calculator apps from the /data/preload back to the /system/app location. I know - this has barely anything to do with the user interface, however I can't find a proper explanation why HTC decided to let these 2 stock apps be on the /data partition instead a /system partition. It's not a big deal as long as the bootloader is not unlocked. After unlocking the bootloader the content of /data partition is being wiped, so both - pretty useful - apps are gone.
  6. Independent Lock Screen short-cuts. I really miss the possibility to use different short-cuts on the Lock Screen and different on the main screen.
  7. Easy copy phone number from the contact details page. Let me explain it this way - go to the People app, enter any contact and long press on the phone number. There is no "Copy" on the list. Instead, you need to select "Edit" first and then select the entire number and copy it. Why not making it easier with just "Copy" command on the long press menu?
  8. Restore the sliding ("scrolling") wallpaper. Or at least give provide an option in the / Setting / Personalize / Home screen to choose between "static" or "scrolling" wallpaper. I really liked that Android feature!
  9. Simple 1x1 alarm clock widget - it would be great to have one, small 1x1 widget that takes you directly to alarm clock settings.
So, what do you thing about these ideas? Do you think that some of them might be already in the HTC Sense 7.0? Or maybe you have something else in mind? Please share your opinion!

Do you have any questions or comments? Feel free to share! Also, if you like this article, please use media sharing buttons (Twitter, G+, Facebook) below this post!


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New Algorithms Locate Where a Video Was Filmed From Its Images and Sounds


geo taggging
Creation of A System to Geolocate Video

A system capable of geo-locating video on comparing with their audio visual content with worldwide multimedia database has been created by researchers from Ramon Llull University in Spain for instances when textual metadata is not relevant or available. This could be helpful in the future, in locating people who could have gone missing after posting images on social networks or to recognize areas of terrorist activities. Several of the available online videos have text providing information on the destination it was filmed though there are others which do not provide the information which complicates the application of the frequent geo-location tools of multimedia content.

To resolve this issue, scientists from the La Salle campus at Ramon Llull University – Barcelona - Spain, have come up with a system which helps in locating the videos without any indication of the location where they were produced on the map, which is very challenging, taking into account the major part of the scenes of daily life minus the appearance of clearly recognizable places. Since they are not accompanied with text, the system is based on the recognition of the images or frames and the audio.

Physics & Mathematical Vectors Taken

One of the authors, Xavier Sevillano, states that `the acoustic information can be as valid as the visual and on occasion even more when it comes to geo-locating a video. In this field the use of some physics and mathematical vectors is taken from the field of recognition of acoustic sources because they have already demonstrated positive results’. Data gathered is put together and diverted into clusters, to enable using computer algorithms that has been developed by researchers and compared with a large collection of recorded video that have already been geo-located across the world. The team in their study published in the journal - `Information Sciences’, used around 10,000 sequences as reference from the MediaEval Placing task audio-visual database which is a benchmarking initiative or assessment of algorithms for the purpose of multimedia content. Sevillano states that `the videos that are similar in audio-visual terms to what they need to find, are searched for in the database, to identify the most probable geographical coordinates’.

Recognized the Need for Greater Audio-Visual Base

The researchers also indicate that the proposed system inspite of a limited database with regards to size and geographical coverage has the potential of geo-locating video accurately than its competitors. Moreover, it is also capable of locating 3% of videos within a radius of ten kilometres of its actual geographical location and in 1% of the cases; it tends to be accurate to one kilometre.

The researchers have also recognized that their system may need a greater audio-visual base in order to apply it to millions of videos that tend to circulate across the internet though they highlight the usefulness in locating those which do not have textual metadata as well as the capable possibilities it offers. Sevillano further states that `this system could help rescue teams in tracking down where a person or a group may disappear in a remote area and detect the locations portrayed in the video that could have been uploaded in a social network before they lost contact.

Wednesday 25 February 2015

Glassed-in DNA Makes the Ultimate Time Capsule


DNA
If you want to preserve messages for long terms such as; 100 years to 1000 years or more, so may be Blu-ray discs or USB sticks are good enough as now you have one more option to preserve even more data and that option is DNA time capsule. Theoretically, 1 gram of DNA is capable to hold 455 exabytes, which is enough to store all data held by Facebook, Google and other major tech company. DNA time capsule have incredible feature for durability as some of the DNA has been extracted and sequenced from the bones of 700,000-year-old horse, but this theory comes with certain terms and conditions.

In Zurich, Robert Grass from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, said that “We all know that if we store it lying around, so we will lose the information” and because of that he and his team is working on ways to increase DNA's longevity with a single aim to store data for hundreds or millions of years. The process is simple to store the data on DNA is to encode the information on DNA stand whereas; the most simplest method is to treat DNA bases G and T as a 1 and A and C as 0. Of course if there will be any damage on DNA levels or in DNA holes, so there is method to recover that which is widely known as Reed-Solomon code or an error-correcting technique. Robert Grass and his team is also trying to mimic the way fossils for the purpose to keep a DNA sequence intact by excluding all water from environment, which is key to encapsulate the DNA in any microscopic spheres.


To test the longevity of storage system they encoded two venerable documents of 83 kilobytes, a 10th-century version of ancient Greek texts, The Archimedes Palimpsest and and The Swiss federal charter from 1291. And then DNA versions of these texts were kept at 60 °C to 70 °C for a week to simulate ageing and they found that documents are still readable without any major or minor errors. And result suggested that data in DNA form could last in 2000 or 2200 years if it will be at a temperature of 10 °C or little more.

Grass is trying to store all the current knowledge for future generations, but this method is so much expensive to generate DNA stand in present. In normal conditions the cost to encode 83 kilobytes is approx. £1000, so if anyone will attempt to do same with Wikipedia then it will run to billions. Apart from this Grass suggests that we should focus on what our upcoming generation or future historians might want to read rather than storing all information. He says that if you will see that how we look at the Middle Ages, so it can influence them and due t that we should save these types of specific information’s. But still Grass is not sure about what to put in a time capsule.

Tuesday 24 February 2015

Interaction between Light and Sound in Nanoscale Waveguide


Interaction_of_Light_Sound
Interaction between Light & Sound – Nanoscale Area

Scientists of Belgium from Ghent University and Nano-electronics research institute, Imec, had a demonstration on the interaction between light and sound in a nanoscale area and their discovery published in the Nature Photonics indicate that the physics of light matter coupling at the level of nanoscale, has paved the way for enhanced signal process on mass producible silicon photonic chips.

The field of silicon in the last decade has attracted increased attention as a driver of lab-on-a-chip biosensors as well as of faster-than-electronics communication between the computer chips. The technology has been built on nanoscale structures which are called silicon photonic wires that are roughly hundred times narrower than human hair and these nanowires tend to carry optical signal from one point to another at the speed of light and are developed with the same technology to fabricate electronic circuitry.

 The wires tends to operate since light moves slower in the silicon core than the surrounding air and glass and due to the trapped light in the wire by the phenomenon of total internal reflection.

Sound Moves Quicker in Silicon Wires 

Confining light simply is one thing though manipulating it is another and the problem is that one light beam cannot change easily the properties of another. It is here that the light matter interaction is in focus which enables some photons to control the other photons.

Researchers from Imec as well as the Photonics Research Group of Ghent University portrayed a peculiar form of light matter interaction and managed to confine light as well as sound to the silicon nanowires where the sound oscillates ten billion times per second which is far more rapid that human ears can hear. They realized that the sound cannot remain trapped in the wire by total internal reflection and unlike light; sound tends to move much quicker in the silicon core than the surrounding air and glass.

The scientistsframed the environment of the core in order to make sure any vibrational wave intending to escape it would eventually bounce back and in doing so, they confined light as well as sound to the same nanoscale waveguide core, a first observation.

Light & Vibration Influence Each Other 

Light and vibrations strongly influenced each other when trapped in an incredibly small area, where light tends to generate sound and sound shifts the colour of light which is a process known as stimulated Brillouin scattering.

They exploited the interaction in order to amplify specific colour of light, anticipating that the demonstration would open up new ways in manipulating optical information such as light pulses could be converted into sonic pulses and back into light, by implementing the much needed delay lines.

Moreover the researchers are expecting that the similar techniques could also be applied to even smaller entities like viruses and DNA since these particles tend to have unique acoustic vibration which could be used to probe their global structure.

Telescopic Contact Lenses Could Magnify Human Eyesight


Telescopic_Contact_Lenses
Telescopic Lens – Magnifying Objects – 2.8 Times

Interesting development have been coming up in the world of contact lenses with scientists making great headways in creating a pair of `smart lenses for diabetic who are capable of monitoring glucose levels as well as Google inventing a set with an in-built cameras. We now have optics researchers from Sweden, developing contact lenses which can zoom in on an object at the blink of an eye where a simple wink tends to activate the telescopic lens and help people to read as well as recognize faces easily.

The prototype lenses which was unveiled recently at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting helps in magnifying objects up to 2.8 times and probably someday could be useful for those with visual impairment affecting around 285 million people all over the world.

This could be helpful for those with a condition known as age-related macular degeneration –AMD which is a major cause of blindness as well as visual impairment in older people beyond the age of 50. AMD is a progressive condition wherein the person tends to lose their central vision gradually due to cell damage and death in the retina.

Enhanced Design 

Though glasses known as bioptic telescopes are available to help them with this condition, they tend to be bulky and interfere with social interaction and this latest design seems to be less intrusive. The telescopes are inbuilt in the lenses and were first developed with funding from DARPA as super thin cameras for aerial drone, though they were then converted into vision enhancing system and was first unveiled in 2013.

They were not quite suitable for eyeballs for instance the magnification which was always on, had to be deactivated by taking them out. Besides this, the original lenses were not gas permeable and hence could not be worn for very long. Two years later, the development team led by Eric Tremblay of Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne has now enhanced the design and they are of the belief that the telescopic lenses can be tried for humans which has been only tested on a mechanical model so far.

Updated PrototypeFeatures 

The updated prototype features small air channels which enables oxygen flow through the underside of the lens in order to eliminate eye irritation. The lenses are larger and rigid than the standard lens which covers the sclera or white area of the eyes and within the 1.5 mm thick lenses, a ring of tiny aluminium mirrors which bounces light around and increases the visualized size of the image magnifies it 2.8 times.

According to science, in order to switch between the zoomed and normal vision, the user needs to wink their right eye that interrupts the light from being reflected from the contacts to the glasses.When this signal is block, the polarized filter in the glasses kicks in and guides lights in the telescopic area and to get back to normal vision one needs to wink their left eye.

It is not certain when these future lenses would come in the market though science is making changes in viewing the world.

Wednesday 18 February 2015

Facebook Will Soon Be Able to ID You in Any Photo


Face
Facebook’s DeepFace System

When one appears in a photo taken at any event, they are recognized most of the time but a machine may fail to do so unless a computer has been programmed to look for you and has been trained on several photos of the face with high quality images to examine you.

However, in Facebook, where one will find the largest collection of personal photographs, the technology is making some headway in that direction. The California based company besides several other corporate players in the field – Facebook’s DeepFace System, is presently as accurate as a human being with few constrained facial recognition tasks. According to Yann LeCun, a computer scientist at New York University in New York City directing Facebook’s artificial intelligence research, states that the purpose is not to intrude on the privacy of Facebook user which is more than 1.3 billion active users but to protect it.

When DeepFace tends to identify a face in one of the 400 million new photos which the users upload daily, ‘one will get an alert from Facebook informing them of their appearance in the picture. The user then has the option to blur their image from the picture in order to protect their privacy.

Automated Facial Recognition – Usage/Limitation - Unknown

Most of the people tend to get disturbed on being identified particularly in stranger’s pictures and Facebook has already begun using the system though its face tagging system reveals only the identities of their friends. Besides DeepFace, the U.S government has also been funding in university based facial recognition research while others in the private sectors, like Google together with other companies are proceeding with their own projects to identify individuals automatically who tend to appear in videos and photos.

How automated facial recognition will be used and its limitation on the law is unknown though once the technology takes shape it would create many privacy problems as it solves. Brian Mennecke, an information systems research at Iowa State University in Ames, studying privacy states `the genie is or soon will be out of the bottle and there will be no going back’.

Social Face Classification 

LeCun comments that identifying a face could be much harder problem than detecting it which unlike fingerprints constantly tends to change. By just a smile, the face gets transformed where the corners of the eyes wrinkle, nostrils flare and the teeth are seen. When the head is thrown back with laughter, the apparent shape of the face contorts and when one has the same expression, the hair varies from each photo particularly after a visit to a hair dresser.

Yet most of them are recognized without any effort even if they have been seen in just one photo. The greatest advantage of DeepFace and the aspect of the project which sparked off is its training data. The DeepFace paper mentions the presence of a data set called SFC – Social Face Classification, which is a library of 4.4 million labelled faces taken from the Facebook pages of 4030 users and though users have given permission to Facebook to use their personal data on signing up for the website, DeepFace research paper does not make a mention on the consent of the owner’s photos.

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Tuesday 17 February 2015

Net Neutrality



Internet_Map
Net Neutrality – Guiding Principle of Internet

Net Neutrality is the guiding principle of Internet and preserves our right to freely communicate online which is defined as an open Internet. It is the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally.In other words it means an Internet which allows and protects free speech wherein the internet provider provides the user with open networks and should not block or discriminate against any content or application which rides over the networks.

It is the principle which Internet service providers as well as government should treat the data on the internet equally without discriminating or making any charges differentially by user, site, content, platform, and application, type of attached equipment or mode of communication. Tim Wu, Professor of Columbia Law School states that the best way to explain network neutrality could be as a principle which could be used while designing a network which a public information network could end up being useful for all content, sites and platform, are equally treated.

Absence of Net Neutrality 

With the absence of Net Neutrality, phone and cable companies could carve the internet in fast and slow lanes while an ISP could slow down its rivals’ content or block political views disagreed upon. ISPs could also charge additional fees to the few content companies which could afford to pay for preferred treatments reducing the others to a slower tier of service thereby affecting the open internet.

Several debates are on with regards to Net Neutrality being required by law, especially in the United States. Lawrence Lessig, advocate of net neutrality has raised concern with regards to the ability of broadband provider using their last mile infrastructure to block Internet applications as well as content and to block out competitors. Neutrality advocate claims that the telecom companies need to impose a tiered service model to control and remove competitors, create artificial scarcity as well as oblige subscribers to purchase other uncompetitive services.

Important as Preservation 

Many are of the opinion that net neutrality is primarily important as preservation for current freedom and prominent supporter of net neutrality comprises of Vinton Cert, co-inventor of the Internet Protocol as well as Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the Web.

It is crucial for small business owners, entrepreneurs as well as for start-ups, who tend to depend on the open internet in order to launch their business, advertise their products and services, create a market, and distribute products to their customers. The need of open Internet is essential for job growth, competition as well as innovation.

It also tends to lower the obstacle of entry for entrepreneurs, start-ups and the small businesses by making sure that the Web is a fair and a level playing ground and the internet is used to reach the audiences and showcase their goods, services and applications. Interference from any company should not be permitted with this open marketplace. According to definition, ISPs are the gatekeepers to the Internet wherein without the Net Neutrality; they would take then every possible opportunity in order to profit from the gatekeeper control.

Microsoft's Outlook App for iOS is better than Gmail


Outlook_App
Microsoft’s new e-mail app, which is exclusively for iOS was released at the end of January 2015 and it seems that Microsoft’s Outlook app is getting a lot of positive reviews in terms of function and look as this app supports Yahoo-Mail, Gmail, Exchange and more with inbuilt calendar syncs. It is expected that this app will be better alternative of Gmail’s official app on iOS platform.

According to anonymous users Microsoft’s Outlook app deserves hype because after installing and using this app I’ve not felt the need to use Gmail app since then. Yes, it is true that there are scopes for few improvements as Gmail and Inbox by Gmail is better in categorizing mails.

While using this app I felt that sometimes it doesn’t show most relevant contacts and to find any specific contact you might have to scroll a lot. In Microsoft’s Outlook app account setting is pretty easy. If you wish to set up multiple accounts, so you can do same in one app and as per wish you can view each inbox separately or together. This app is good enough to cover all the major e-mail service providers such as; Yahoo, Box, Exchange, Dropbox, Outlook, Exchange, iCloud, OneDrive and Gmail and with this facility you can sync your Gmail and Office mail at the same time in same app.

This app also allows you to set different swiping gestures for every e-mail as you can swipe an email from left to right. If you have subscribe for many different website or getting a lot of emails from different websites, so sometimes it becomes tedious task to hunt for important mails, but with this app you can bundle them into one particular coherent group as per the content of mail. Same as Gmail, which is good enough to categorizes emails into different tabs such as; Promotions, Primary, Updates, Group or Inbox, it has Focus inbox that has emails from your colleagues and as well as personal contacts.

The other tabs are useful to keep the record of emails from Twitter, Facebook, your bank bill, Amazon and your purchases, but the good thing is that it keep Focus tab clean and simple. Apart from basic features, you can set Mark as Read¸ None, Flag, Delete, Schedule, Move, Archive and more. The other interesting feature is that if you have gotten some annoying email, so you will get the freedom to delete it straight from the notification bar.

This new app will help you to make the good use of extensions feature in iOS8 because it let you to share the files and attachment in another supporting app. This app have automatically sync feature with your iOS and Google calendar as well, which make it’s pretty convenient to schedule meeting or events. In emails separate tab showcase all the files and attachment, but the best thing is that it will syncs with Dropbox and Google Drive as well, whereas; on slide menu on left side you can see the Birthday, Holidays in India, Contacts’ and more in the calendar as well and this feature can be pretty important and useful for users in India.


A New App That Provides Real-Time Sun Protection Advice


Sunscreen
Now to get the real time sun protection advice, all you need to use a new smartphone app, which is good enough to provide individually personalized, real-time sun protection advice to improve sun protection behavior, according to new study reports.

This new Smartphone app provides real time sun-protection advice purely based on personal information from users and UV Index forecasts, as well as basic alerts to apply or recover skin with sunscreen. Klein Buendel, Colorado in an association with National Cancer Institute of US have developed “The Solar Cell app” for the purpose of real time sun protection advice.

In 2012, David B Buller from Klein Buendel and few other co-authors conducted a randomized clinical trial that enrolled 604 participants with 305 individuals in the treatment group. In research 232 people have downloaded the Solar Cell app whereas; 41 per cent or only 125 individuals used it. After the whole research data was available as per the study on 454 individuals in which 222 people were in the treatment group and rest 232 people were in the control group.

As per the study reports it’s clear that there were no significant difference in the number of sunburns, which were for the duration of three months between two different groups. Users of the Solar Cell app reported spending more use of sun protection behaviors while spending less time in the sun like; use of protective clothing, sunscreen and shade combined. All participants from same treatment group reported that they spend more time in shades with an average of 41 per cent and use less sunscreen for that particular duration with an average of 34.5 per cent.

It is expected that “the Solar Cell mobile app” will promote the sun protection practices and it will also spread the harm of UV rays among the public. The other possibility is that it can enhance the use of shade because shades are good enough to reduce the direct exposure of UV radiation or UV-R, but to avail these benefits person should have this app on their Smartphone, as authors said. In second randomized trial of the app, it showed some specific improvements, which was associated with more sun protection.

Researchers and scientists have found that all participants in the group have received the app with wide-brimmed hats for the duration of seven-week through follow-up process and then it control participants, who didn’t receive any app.

The ratio between men and women participants, who used the Solar Cell app reported that more use of sun protection like; protective clothing, shades and sunscreen was 46.4 per cent vs 43.3 per cent, whereas; the ratio between men and older participants were 32.7 per cent vs 35.5 per cent.

Now if you have the Solar Cell app on your smartphone, so you don’t have to take advice from medical experts or doctors as it is obvious that app is providing authentic advice and as well as information.

The JAMA Dermatology was published same study and research in their online journal.

Monday 16 February 2015

Your Broadband Internet Technically Isn't Broadband Anymore


FCC
Recently, the FCC (the Federal Communications Commission) has given a fresh definition of high-speed internet and there are chances are that your current connection is not according to the standards. The Federal Communications Commission was given the task of overseeing the regulations and rules, which govern the internet. They have now raised the standard for broadband to nearly 25 megabits per second from what it used to be at 4 Mbps. The upload speed has been increased from 1 Mbps to 3 Mbps.

What the report says? 

According to the reports, while dissenting Republican commissioners have blasted the new move stating it as over reaction, the other commissioners have voted 3 to 2 in support of the change. These changes came into limelight when FCC published their 2015 Broadband Progress Report. This progress report is used by Congress to assess the US broadband market.

The main meaning behind the new definition indicates that the millions of American customers who have subscribed for the internet services but receiving less than 25 Mbps will no longer be considered as "broadband" subscribers. The average speed of service that can be expected in America is around 10 Mbps. Going by the standards the agency identified that in the report it has been highlighted that the current broadband speed is never delivered at a timely manner.

According to the agency’s report, 17 percent of the population or 55 million Americans have no access to the advanced broadband services. Most of the rural areas have no access to such high speeds. The report also indicated that nearly 53 percent of rural Americans lack broadband and do not have the download speeds of 25 Mbps.

A controversial decision: 

This decision has put Chairman Tom Wheeler, who is a Democrat, appointed by President Barack Obama, against Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly, the two Republicans on the commission, who were selected by the Republican-controlled Congress, into a very bad state. According to Wheeler, this change is an inspirational target in accordance with the marketing claims of broadband providers and increasing demands of the customers. According to the other counterparts, this move is completely over reaction and a broadband should be considered as what actually a consumer can buy.

Strong viewpoints: 

Consumers are happy with this decision. This decision was also applauded by the Communications Workers of America union. But on the other hand, the conservative groups derided this decision. According to FCC's Republican commissioners, the broadband vote looks to be a setup for the agency's for settling the Net neutrality fight with new regulations and also force the local municipalities to build new laws and their own Internet networks.

At the center of the et neutrality debate, there is an option for a new rule that will help in reclassifying the broadband under the Telecommunications Act as Title II service. The FCC is expected to allow two new rules that will supersede state laws in North Carolina and Tennessee, which actually forbids municipalities from constructing or expanding broadband networks.

Sunday 15 February 2015

Google Agrees Privacy Policy Changes With Data Watchdog


It is after the pressure put on Google by the UK Information commissioner’s office (ICO) that they have decided to rewrite their privacy policy.

Following this similar reviews are being conducted around Europe, where the firm must make it easier for its users to get to know how and for what the data is collected and used and need to submit a two year review which is the outcome of an investigation done by the regulators. It has come to the attention of the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) that the personal data collected from the web services and products of Google are being too unclear. The outcome of this, made Google plan to implement the same with other European regulators.

The process involved in the inquiry: 

It all triggered off when the Mountain View company started being noticed by the regulator and its continental counterparts following their controversial policy which was updated on March 2012 that pooled 70 existing documents. This was later also joined by other data regulators who form the European Article 29 Data Protection Working Party. The investigation held made Google not only to agree, but also ensure that the accessibility to the privacy policy is easy as well as to redesign their account setting features in such a way that it allows the users to find its controls more easily.

Appeal: 

Apart from these clarifications, the company will also have to provide information pertaining to the anonymous identifiers, which are similar to that of cookies. Google has been given time till 30 June 2015 to put into practice all the changes and according to the rumors the company will be rolling out a single policy across the EU with the aim of satisfying each and every regulators who has opened the investigations. Google has also dropped the appeals related to these investigations which are being undertaken by the Spanish and French watchdogs.

According to Steve Eckersley, the ICO's head of enforcement, this step which has been taken will mark a very important step towards a long standing investigation and also the extended dialogue. He also added, while their investigation summarized that this case has not brought out any substantial distress and damage to the consumers, it is still very important for the organizations to accurately understand the influence of their actions and the need to meet and comply with the requirements of the data protection law. According to the spokesperson of Google, the company is very happy that the ICO has finally decided to close and put an end to the investigation. Google has agreed that they need to make improvements in their privacy policy and vowed to continue to work constructively along with the commissioner and the team in the near future.

As the result of closing this investigation, the company will not be fined for any of their actions in the United kingdom, this is completely opposite to the fine and penalties imposed on the company in France and span.

Few Tricks Every Android User Should Know


android
Most of the phones with the android system in the market are very easy to use but there are some easy tricks, which can be used for making these phones, not only efficient but more enjoyable as well. Android being an open platform gives lot of opportunities for customization. Apart from personalizing the phones, these tricks can be used to keep the phones neat and can be practiced for keeping them organized. This will allow plenty of battery to survive all day long.

Google: 

Google is one such application, which is more like a personal assistant. User’s have to open the Google app, click on get Google now and fill all the necessary preferences. To get personalized notifications from Google, you need to tell the app about your favorite sports team, stocks among others. Google can be given direction about the Google Maps transportation in the user’s preferred mode.

Make use of lock screens and launchers replacements: 

Not everybody can stare at the same weather widget every day. Google play store now provides the user with changing interfaces for the android phones.

Power saving mode: 

User should turn on the power saving mode on their phones by going to the setting menu. Some of the android phones also have the option of higher-level battery-saving mode. Unfortunately, not all the phones have battery saving mode option.

Always keep an extra battery: 

Always remember, the battery can die anytime and it is not possible to be beside a store. If your android phone has the option of replaceable back, then you can keep an extra battery that can be used when required.

Google Chrome: 

Using Google chrome to login to the Google account will allow the users to carry over all their bookmarks and preferences automatically.

Create folders for apps: 

Users can divide all their apps into different folders and keep it organized. This not only reduces the time to search for application but also minimizes the clutter from the screen. To create a folder, you need to press and hold on any app and you will get an option to create folder on the top left hand side. Some of the phones have the option to dragging and dropping one app on another to create folders. This is the perfect example for iOS.

Third party keyboard: 

Users now have the option to choose different types of keyboard and they do not have to be restricted to the Google standard keyboard. Google play store provide plenty of option, one such app is the Swype, which allow the users to swipe between the letters rather than type.

Bandwidth management: 

One can cut down on the amount of the data usage but turning on Reduce Data Usage in the Google Chrome. This will ensure that all the unnecessary whitespace is removed and large images are reduced to a smaller size.

Google Authenticator: 

Google account can be verified through this app. Through this app, the user has to enter the security code apart from the login password to access the account. This allows no stranger act on your phone.

Saturday 14 February 2015

6 Ways Online Technology Can Create a Residual Income for Small Businesses


Some small businesses are overly dependant on local customer sales in order to remain open. Often times, a loss of a high-volume client can cause one of these establishments to close down. This happens a lot in rural areas where the foot traffic of local consumerism is very low. However, there are ways that technology can be used to help create a residual income to keep the doors of a brick-and-mortar business open to the public. The best part about these methods is that most do not require a huge investment in order to begin.

Website Ad Revenues 

Building a website is easy. It's the maintenance and constant vigilance to create a successful site that can be stressful. However, ad revenue through your website could bring in a bit of money depending on how popular your site and business niche is. People such as Bob Parsons of Godaddy have made a great deal of money by developing a site that sells domain names and hosting. With proper marketing, your site could be a success as well.

eCommerce Income 

Operating an eCommerce site may be something your business could get into depending on its structure. If you own an ice cream shop, you may not be able to sell scoops of ice cream on a waffle cone online. However, you could sell ice cream accessories and home kits. Nearly any business can break into eCommerce giving you access to a much wider market than what is available locally.

App Development 

Many developers create apps to use on smart devices and have made large amounts of money. This will depend on your skills as a developer and what kinds of apps you want to create. Of course you can hire a developer to create the apps for your business. Just keep in mind that it will take a decent amount of marketing and advertising in order to get people to download and install the software.

Reseller Accounts 

Many services online host reseller accounts allowing you to make a bit of money by leasing those services out. An example of this is when web hosting companies offer you space and bandwidth to resell to local or online customers for any price you wish. For computer-based businesses, this could be a sensible idea as you could help people set up websites using WordPress or Joomla for instant activity for low monthly payments.

Browser Apps 

Much like mobile apps, those that operate on browsers can help create a residual income through subscription fees. This may take extensive website programming knowledge, but it could be lucrative depending on the idea. Again, hiring a developer to assist can help get the application operational. Examples of these kinds of ideas are apps such as Quickbooks Online and many others.

Informational Videos 

Video content is growing online at an incredible rate. By creating informational videos on sites such as YouTube, you could make money through ad displays. However, entertaining and engaging videos may be more difficult to produce than your realize. The flip side of this is that a video could go viral turning your company into a quick success if the video is produced correctly.

While some of these may require a bit more work and increasing knowledge of technological advancements, they can be used to help stabilize income when sales are low or a major client moves away. By keeping costs as low as possible through efficiency and expanding the capabilities of the business to include some of these methods, it may be possible for the small business to continue thriving.

Friday 13 February 2015

Xposed for Android Lollipop is out!


The day we've been all waiting for since Android Lollipop landed on the HTC flag-ship devices! Xposed (so far Alpha version) for Android 5.0 is finally here!

Installation procedure is a bit more complicated than it used to be with pre-Lollipop Xposed installer. This time you need to install regular .apk file to manage installed modules and also flash a .zip package with a framework inside custom recovery.

Ok, so wait no more! Go to the original thread - [OFFICIAL] Xposed for Lollipop and download proper installation files. Keep in mind it's still in Alpha stage, so rovo89 warned that there is a risk of boot loop, because Xposed hasn't been yet tested on many devices.

Let us know how it works for you!

Do you have any questions or comments? Feel free to share! Also, if you like this article, please use media sharing buttons (Twitter, G+, Facebook) below this post!


For latest news follow Android Revolution HD on popular social platforms:

HTC One M9 - What do we know so far?


The HTC One M9 launch day is just around the corner. We've heard a lot of rumours already and saw a different renders presenting the concepts of the incoming HTC flag-ship device. The question is - what do we really know so far?

The answer is vague. We know all, and we know nothing. Current HTC One M9 specification looks reliable, but after all we might be surprised by the HTC. So let's take a look at the most "possible" details.

The HTC One M9 model ID (MID) will start with 0PJA. Per example, it's highly possible that the European WWE (401) variant will have 0PJA10000 MID number.

Screen - some said it's going to be 5,5", some 5,2" but in the end it seems that HTC ended up with the same screen size as in the HTC One M8 - 5.0" with Full HD resolution and Super LCD3 technology, which seems to be a way better solution rather than using QHD display, mostly for performance reasons. Technically you have no chance to see the difference between the FHD and QHD displays in a real life. Under the microscope - sure. But in fact the QHD resolution looks better only on paper as a raw numbers. Marketing effect? Yes, sadly.
www.corninggorillaglass.com

Some sources said that the M9 screen is going to be covered with the new Corning® Gorilla® Glass 4 technology. This is a great news, because the 4th generation of the Gorilla Glass brought a couple of improvements:

• Enhanced retained strength after use
• High resistance to scratch and sharp contact damage
• Improved drop performance
• Superior surface quality

SoC - already well known Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 (MSM8994) with a CPU running at 4 x 2.0 GHz + 4 x 1.5 GHz. The Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 810 processor is the "ultimate connected computing processor, with 64-bit computing on 8 CPU cores and leading modem capabilities, is designed to enable the most advanced connected mobile user experiences, including streaming 4K Ultra HD video, sharing top-quality digital photos, on-line 3D gaming, and virtually seamless communications, along with outstanding battery life for premium smartphones and tablets". And it's now only what Qualcomm says about the new S810. Some first benchmarks already proved how powerful this SoC is. Also, keep in mind it's equipped with new Adreno 430 GPU and improved Hexagon DSP multithreaded CPU architecture -  V56 DSP (up to 800MHz) vs Hexagon V50 on the HTC One M8.
RAM Memory - we already know that the HTC One M9 is going to have 3GB LPDDR4 (Low Power) RAM memory. It is a significant improvement versus HTC One M8 equipped 2 GB LPDDR3 RAM memory. It's worth to say that Snapdragon allows to use LPDDR4 1600MHz Dual-channel 64-bit (25.6GBps) memory vs. 933 MHz on the LPDDR3 technology.

ROM Memory - two variants: 32GB and 64GB. And of course a possibility to insert a microSD card. Let's hope HTC decided to use eMMC 5.0 SD 3.0 (UHS-I) this time. In the HTC One M8 - My point of (re)view I wrote that Snapdragon 801 added support for eMMC 5.0 (embedded Multi-Media Controller) storage technology but HTC decided to use older, eMMC 4.51 technology in the HTC One M8.

Communication - VoLTE, Carrier Aggregation and LTE Category 6 up to 300 Mbps for download and 50 Mbps for upload. As a comparison let's notice that the HTC One M8 is equipped with LTE modem category 4.

Rear camera - 20.7 MPx with Dual LED Flash.

Front camera - 4 MPx with UltraPixel technology

Operating system - Android 5.0.2 with a brand new HTC Sense 7.0 user interface.

Battery - we had a 2,600 mAh battery on the HTC One M8 and now we have 2840 mAh on the HTC One M9. Not a huge change, but considering the fact that the screen size is the same we might actually notice some improvement. Also, the HTC Sense 7.0 might be more battery friendly than HTC Sense 6.0.

The HTC One M9 will come with a BoomSound of course. Release date? March, the 1st!

Want to chip in?
What about Android Revolution HD for the HTC One M9? Well, I hope to start working on it as soon as possible. For that I need a HTC One M9 software (system dump) and a device itself. I can't sell my HTC One M8 so any contributions towards the upgrade are very much appreciated. If you like my work - just consider to chip in. Also thank you for your great support and letting Android Revolution HD be the most downloaded and desired custom ROM for almost 5 years! With more then 6 millions downloads on the counter I will keep working hard on the stuff you love.

Click here to lend your support to: HTC One M9 Piggy Bank and make a donation at pledgie.com !


Do you have any questions or comments? Feel free to share! Also, if you like this article, please use media sharing buttons (Twitter, G+, Facebook) below this post!


For latest news follow Android Revolution HD on popular social platforms:

Thursday 12 February 2015

Once $399 A Year, Google Earth Pro Is Now Free


Earth
Recently Google has announced that now onwards Google Earth Pro will be available in free, as earlier it was available in $399/year. We all know that Google Earth is one of the geospatial software applications, which displays a virtual globe that has an ability to capture and analyze almost all of the geographical data. Google Earth was comes in existence when in 2004 Google was acquired CIA funded Keyhole Inc, under the brand name of Keyhole the application was known as the Earth Viewer 3D, whereas; in October 2011 Google Earth desktop client has recorded the billions download.

Difference between Google Earth and Google Earth Pro: 

If you will use the free version of Google Earth and Google Earth Pro, so you will find the several differences, as free in free version you can only print the screen resolution images and in Google Earth Pro you will be free to use premium high resolution photos.

In free version of Google Earth you need to manually geo-locate the any GIS (geographic information system) images, but in Google Earth Pro you will find them automatically and free version of Google Earth will allow you to import image files, which are up-to the max texture size, whereas; Google Earth Pro provides SIO (Super Image Overlays), which are more than the any max texture size. Google Earth and Google Earth Pro use the same imagery, however Google Earth Pro offers many additional tools, which are very helpful for any business such as; to create animation movies and to measure the areas of circles or polygons. Google Earth Pro will help you to ma the multiple points in one sitting and it will let you to access the graphic, demographic and traffic data layers.

From past 10 years, businesses, researchers, scientists, individuals and hobbyists are using the Google Earth Pro in all over the world for different purposes such as; to place the solar panels on rooftops and more. Google Earth Pro has many easy to use feature, which offer the detail imagery of Google Earth with the advantage of additional tools, which help to measure 3D buildings and to print high resolution images for reports, presentations and to record HD movies of virtual flights in all over the world, stated by the Stafford Marquardt, Product manager of Google Earth Pro.

For U.S. you can find the most compelling data in Google Earth Pro for example you can find the demographic information in reference to age, gender education, employment status and income for the current year and as well as for the five-year projected and these data can be more useful to conduct the marketing research.

It will be better deal for users as pro version offers additional features such as; it is capable to print the images with the resolution of 4,800 x 3,200, which offer the standard version that maxes out at 1,000 x 1,000. It is for sure that some users will enjoy this new offer because all you need to sign up for a key to use Google Earth Pro, whereas; existing Pro users need not to do anything and no longer they will have to pay the charges.

Some Common Misconceptions about Mobile Device Batteries


Batteries
Technological advancement has not restricted the mindset of humans pertaining to the myth of mobile batteries. We are so much concerned about the battery life that we are ready to spend enough to get hands on a phone, which will ensure a couple of days of usage. There are devices that have claimed to have a battery life extended for weeks as in case of Amazon Kindle. Mobile phone users have very specific and unique ideas about keeping their mobile batteries working for a long time. However, on the other side, not everything pertaining to the batteries can be simply trusted. So let us read about some of the misconceptions pertaining to the battery that we use every day:

1. Memory power of battery: 

Not true at all. People often think that they need to train their phone battery to perform to its complete potential and uses most of the charge. They will drain the battery power out and keep on charging it regularly. They believed that any percentage near 50% is good and the phone does not need charging.

2. Other company brand chargers spoil the battery: 

Even though there are some off brand, chargers that are not optimal but they do not do any damage to the battery. As long as the charger is working, they will allow the battery to operate properly. You can certainly opt for an off brand charger from the market made for your device as a replacement with the only drawback that it will not give you the same 15 minutes= 8 hours usage.

3. Overnight charge damages battery: 

Most of the phones are now smart enough to analyze when the battery is fully charged and it will automatically stop charging. Instead of keeping the phone to charge overnight, charge the battery when it is between 40-80% for optimum battery life.

4. Don’t use phone when on charge: 

People often believe that using phone while charging will have negative impact on the batter life of the phone. This is only true in case if you are using any off brand low quality charger.

5. Battery is damaged if phone is turned off: 

It is not true but if you keep your phone turned off for long time, the battery is drained. In android devices rebooting the phone will bring back the functionality of the phone.

6. Charge the phone full before using it: 

Smartphone batteries perform the best when charged between 40-80%, so if you have a new phone, you should be able to use it immediately without charging it.

7. Extend life by putting in freezer: 

Li-Ion batteries are affected by heat and cold hence room temperature is the best. Cold is an enemy and hot is not required for smartphones devices. Always store phone where there is ventilation, you might get moisture but will avoid overheating of the device and battery.

8. Using internet uses lot of battery: 

Only the games drain the battery power. Games should be played with less brightness, but if the phone is on charging then you can keep the brightness on. Viewing videos through You-tube and other graphics-intensive can certainly drain the battery power.