Are you in dilemma? Google+ or Facebook or Twitter, Here you go...

Google+ has marked 20 million+ users in so short time span. Most of users are still in between the both major Social networks that is Facebook or Google+. Technology has solution for most of the problem and we are good at exploiting it. Ha-ha.

An Add-on is now available for Google Chrome. By this now user will be able to consolidate Google+, Facebook and Twitter. This add-on will be soon available for Firefox too. The name of the add-on is “Start Google+”, provided by Zane Klaes. Now this add-on works on the basis of API provided by the Facebook and Twitter. Installing this add-on just takes seconds and you are there. Additionally on User Interface of Start Google+, there is flag box which will keep you notified on receiving of emails on Gmail.

Now all the updates and tweets from the Facebook and Twitter respectively will be visible in the main page of Google+. Now as a drawback identified till now with this add-in is that the filter which a user may have kept for specific friends does not works here. So unlike Facebook if you link your accounts of Facebook and Twitter account to Google+ then you will receive all the updates and tweets without filter. Still Zane says that he is working on to give functionality like this in the add-on also. Stats depict affirmative response from the user as 100 thousand+ users have already adapted this add-on and at least 60% of them are actively using the same. Interestingly, Google+, Facebook as well as Twitter has not yet banned this add-on still so it is expected that it will be a boon to users and day today the add-on will be optimizing for better functionalities.

Success of Angry Birds

“This success is not achieved overnight.  We built around 50 games before this”, says Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio Chief. Angry birds have marked a 300 million downloads and targeting to be the first among all the entertainment franchisee to reach up to 1 Billion Fans worldwide.

Angry Birds was made with at most care for players so that at any point of entertainment, players don’t get stuck to some level and get bored. It was prime important to keep balance between the frustration and the excitement created in the game. “Game should be addictive but not like smoking”, Peter added.  Designers were very analytical on the success expectation with this game and said to people that the success of this game, should not be associated with the luck but with the work.

Besides the games they had come up with toys which sales figures have touched to 8 million units already. Game has got a trademarked red sweatshirt with Angry Bird on it. We can expect a feature film and novel based on the “Angry Bird” game.  They are planning to launch a cook book with egg recipes also. 

Ah!! Give Google Vocals for searching your keywords

It will not be a fiction when we brag out the keywords and search engine gives the respective results. Google is working on Speech recognition mechanisms for its search engine. Will you really be able to leave the keyboard in front of you if you get this gift from Google?

If you see the smart phones, this functionality of speech recognition is present from last three years. This is provided in Android phones much efficiently. Now when you are using Google chrome browser you will find Microphone icon built in the text box on Google Search Engine page.

People have started using this functionality via Android phones.  According to Vincent Vanhoucke the number of inputs for the search via speck recognition has increased to up to six times from last one year like every day thousands of hours of audio is inputted in the Google server. But it will be a challenging task to implement it on the Desktop and up to major extent in Laptops too. Now it is not an easy task to filter out the background sound of someone speaking, Fan rotation or others when Microphones are used for Desktops. This was easy task in Smart Phones. Laptops mostly have the Microphone but it also faces same problem as Desktops.

Google tried out with thousands of people and asking them to input their speech and test the efficiency by which the process gets trained further. People have less tolerance when you let them use something very new. People may get surprising response on take this as very positive move and they get ready to change their conventional way of using the computers and search engines. W3C, Mozilla, Microsoft, AT&T are also helping on betterment for this collaboratively.

Big Q: Will Google+ will Minus Facebook usage?

It was surprise for most of when came to know that Innovation Leader Google has copies almost all the things of Facebook and launched a new Social Networking site when Facebook is booming like anything. Unexpectedly found replica of User Interface also overlooking the features and functionality.

But then what is the entire Crux which makes Google+ even able to stand in front of Social network giants who has already grabbed millions of users like Facebook, Twitter and all.

·         First and foremost, Human tendency of expecting a change and explore new things take the users to all new Facebook renamed as Google+ (Disclaimer: Almost J). People are always fond of new things and especially when it is part of their daily routine.

·         Secondary, people start using Google+ just because their friends insist to use it. So they can’t resist and can’t be on old social networking site so, that make user to at least reach up to Google+ sign up.

·         Google+ has given an opportunity to the Facebook-Weary people to move on new platform which is like “Reset to Facebook”. Some user who may don’t want old friend to be connected with and can’t even De-Friend them, then this is the way to come over it.

·         It has come up with 10 person Video chat feature called as Hangouts.  This will gradually support Google to attract user towards G+ then FB.

·         Google+ is much better in terms of security and privacy worries.

·         Twist in traditional way of going for Friend request and acceptance. Google has come up with concept of “Circle”. One can create its own Circle and add people into it who shares same interest. Here one Privacy feature is if you don’t add that person to your circles they will not get any notification unlike to Facebook it can be an offense by not confirming the request.

·         Google might come up with filter options for the post between different groups of people, which Facebook already have, before Google+ end its Trial period with limited people. But as of now Google+ lags behind on that.

·         It is still Ads-Free where Facebook’s has 30% of it wall is occupied by Advertisements. Moreover Facebook has viral apps that keep spamming your wall like “Hadrique has taken test” and “Sagar’s horoscope for week”.

·         Unlike Facebook, user doesn't need to approve 776 friend requests and moreover user won’t be like feel rude when others block their updates.

Anyways but Google has challenged a King of Social Networking “Facebook”. The Facebook is not going to take it lightly and nor The Google. Let see the interesting rivalry that have started.

Tablets at the Corporate, CISCO will bang tablet market

Now Tablets for your Office desk also. Cisco Revolution If you think that tablets are for casual use only then Cisco has given better answer by developing a Tablet which will replace your desktops on your office desk. Tablet world's market is going to face one tougher competitor when Cisco will introduce its CIUS in the market.

What is good about it? Why should Apple, Samsung and other Tablet producers fear CIUS? Here is the answer,
• CIUS runs on Google's Android.
• Cisco has selected open source OS i.e., Android, so rather going into developing its own OS it has extended Android and customized it from low level to make it better in terms of Corporate Use. The CIUS have featured a Radical Reworking of Android.
• CIUS can be integrated with Cisco's voice and Video phone system which corporates or offices might be using. It connects to the desktop computer, keyboard, and mouse and importantly to the Cisco desk extension phones.
• This will allow user to receive the Desk Phone calls remotely on their tablets and this is an exceptional facility from CISCO.
• CIUS has HD quality cameras on both sides which will help for Video calling.
CIUS can easily switch between Wi-Fi and cellular Network Connection (used for private calling).
• As Android is an open source platform, CIUS will get an advantage of getting the devices customized for the big corporates and will be greater attraction for corporates to go for CIUS?
• CIUS has powerful processing capacity as it uses ATOM 1.6 GHz processor designed by Intel.
• Cisco has foresight. Cisco will have its own Malware-free application store so that manager do not have to visit other stores and can protect their network from malicious apps.
• On security level Cisco under Google's mentoring will make use of Dedicated chip for encrypt all its data.

CIUS, Wi-Fi version will cost you only $750 or around Rs. 35000 in India. This could be even Rs. 5000 less on limited services. AT & T and Verizon may offer 4G network to it. Vice president and Analyst says, "Cisco has likely delivered something that none of the 200 or so other tablets launching this year can match". Cisco has added value to enterprise need which is unique combination of phone, tablet and video-conferencing device.


Features having a negative impact on "The CIUS" are,
• 2 inches smaller screen compared to it Cut throat competitor IPad-2.
• Uses older Version of Android name “FroYo”, made for mobile use.
• Still the first version may not be good at security compared to other tablets.

Cisco has also clarified that it will aggressively support iPads and iPhone application they are providing under collaboration with the same and if it seems not working out they will put extra efforts to support the most popular tablet that is iPads.

Facial Robots are here.

Now, it’s you at two different places at same time

You on your bed and your replica is attending meeting

Humans were expecting teleportation in 21^st century but it seems like not possible in near future. But you know we humans are not at all going to stop and find out another way to satisfy that desire and here we are. Now the scene is like you land on your computer and see and speak in remote location and also move around up to greater extent.

Two Robots namely Anybots, VGo were already set to rock the market and the third ROBOT ready to join them. Suitable technology has developed ROBOT named “Texai”, which is about to launch in market but probably in next year. Problem with the Anybots and VGo is person who is interacting with you at remote place cannot see operator’s clearly but in place of that operator was getting good surrounding feel and look and feel of people around at remote place. Anybots use to show only the still photo of the user while VGo is just 4 feet long Robot with small resolution screen. This is the area where Texai can beat and the market of the previous inventions and go ahead of that and two way interaction will be possible later on.

VGo user says, "My robot body could do some of the basic things I would do in person: move around the office to talk and listen, see and be seen. But it couldn't do enough. In a group conversation, I would clumsily spin around attempting to take in the voices and body language outside my narrow range of vision. When I walked alongside people, I sometimes blundered into furniture, or neglected to turn when they did. Co-workers were tolerant at first, but they got frustrated with my mistakes."

Now Texai Robot has only one limitation that it as it does Two way communication efficiently, it need good bandwidth for having uninterrupted relay. But hoping good high speed internet facility is available now in mostly all the House and Business work place says Willow Garage, Co-Designer of Texia.

A Biologically Inspired Search Engine

Ever found a product in a store and wondered if you could get it cheaper somewhere else? Soon a visual search tool will be able to help. Take a snapshot of the product with your phone and it will automatically pull up online pricing information.

The technology, developed by Cortexica, a start-up spun out of research conducted at Imperial College London, has already been used to create a wine comparison app called WINEfindr. Last week, the company launched an application-programming interface (API) for the technology, which will allow others to build similar apps.

It's a bit like the bar-code scanning apps that link a physical object in the real world to online content," says Anil Bharath, a researcher at Imperial and cofounder of Cortexica. "But rather than having to create a QR code, it recognizes the object itself," he says.

Cortexica's Visual Search platform uses techniques inspired by the human vision system to compensate for different lighting conditions. It identifies key features of an object irrespective of their orientation, size, or how dark or light they appear in the image. This makes it possible to identify products at a distance or even while they are moving. Cortexica's technology can also spot logos and objects in videos.

"The technology is interesting, but they aren't giving away much," says James Ferryman of the computer-vision group at the University of Reading, in the U.K.

Ferryman notes that other visual search tools already exist, such as Google's Goggles, which recognizes many objects, labels, and landmarks and automatically searches the Web for information about them; and TinEye, a service that lets users upload an image and search the Web to find webpages on which the thing pictured appears.

Another of Cortexica's cofounders, Jeffrey Ng, says his company's technology is more accurate and scalable than any other now available.

The human vision system compares different points of an image with its neighbours’—a phenomenon known as "edge extraction"—in order to identify features in a range of different conditions. "We have basically copied that architecture," says Bharath. Cortexica uses graphical processing units (GPUs) to handle the parallel processing.

Coping with variations and resolving them is a major issue in computational vision, says Ferryman. "It's crucial. If you can't have this invariance, then you can't do reliable matching," he says.

You will say, “Ah! Yes my house runs on Android”

Oh! Come on I am not going to stand up and switch on the damn lights and fans. Have you ever thought that, there should be something in our hand which can control all electronics of our House? It should turn off your oven sitting on sofa busy in watching something interesting on TV. All the damn electrical appliances can be managed from small device in your hand. Now this time is not too far friend.

Technological freaks at Google have come up with a concept of Controlling home via Android. Obviously it sounds weird but actually it is reality and so that in some while we will able to see in our houses. “We'd like to think of Android as the operating system for your home” Joe Britt, who is leading this project at Google. The device “Tungstens” will act as interface between tablet or android phone and home appliances. This will remotely allow operating anything.

 

Researchers have demonstrated that how this can change the gaming experience. You can have light emitting blubs and surrounds, which are in synch with your game via Tungsten device. Now in Counter Strike whenever you will “Fire in the Hole” with grenade and your room ambience will make you feel like grenade explosion and firing.

Google encourage other companies to research and develop the product based on this technology because Android is open source software. This device uses the Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet as well as new low power wireless standard of Google’s own invention to link with other devices. Moreover in demo, built-in device RFID reader helps to read the CD which is not inserted in CD player or personal computers. Another wonderful usage is to use this technology as alarm. Just think of it that when alarm triggers, LED lighting in room changes like a morning and you are waking up with sweet music rather than “te ne ne ta… te ne ne ta…”

Now, we just need to wait and watch for the arrival of things like this in our life. It will really make a man so comfortable to make us so lazy creatures more than Croc.

“Humans and Technology, Always Unstoppable.”

Provide snaps and 3-Dimensional object is ready

Autodesk, Software Company is going to launch freeware named Photofly which can generate 3D model. Software is available for Windows platform, uploads photo to cloud server and process the photo and parameters for generating 3D model out of it.

This technology works on density of the object like laser scanner works. Although this technology won’t cost you thousands of bucks as it needs are just 35-40 photos with required angles. Say for example, if we want to make a 3D model of a person you need to capture snaps of the head and shoulders of that person and just give it to Cloud server to process it into 3D model. You can print this model with the help of 3D printers which is not so costly these days and you can have print-out of 3D models in forms of ceramics, plastics and metals.

Autodesk will be the first company to launch such an application and on other hand Microsoft Researchers are coming up with substitute product of Photofly that is ‘PhotoSynth’. Addition to that it will be application by which you facilitate your cell phone to convert its photo into 3D models says Mathews.

It might interest you to take a hawk eye view about working of this technology. The Application ‘Photofly’ goes through many processes like identifying the position of camera and triangulating it based on different views and certain distinctive features. Further going too sharp, it triangulates the view more efficiently on second round.

Yuan-Fang Wang, a computer scientist at the University of California, said that “Technology has become very robust and simple to place this in front of consumers but there are some limitations which may be concerns for the same”.  “The efficiency of the technology will be tested hard when snaps will be taken in dark light or too flashy environment”, he added. As a major implementation of this technology, paleontologist named Louise Leakey in Kenya have captured early human bones with accurate measurements of specimen, such as spacing and sizing of teeth. On other hand as major usage we can see Photofly helping Engineers in retrofitting the building and saving their time, efforts and resources. They can with the help of Photofly, quickly figure out what need to be done to make building more eco-friendly.

Your palm becomes your iPhone

It will be past, when you are using your smartphones holding in your hands and tapping the screen. Now when we are going so strong on sixth sense technology implementation, German researchers have decided to apply the same technology on simplifying the usage of smartphones. You will be having an imaginary phone screen on your palm and you need to just tap your palm to operate your phone and the system sends the command to actual phone.

The system relies on three wonderful piece of technology, they are depth sensitive camera, software analysing the picture, and wireless radio to send the instruction back to actual phone. Patrick Baudisch, say “serves as a shortcut that frees user from the necessity to retrieve the actual physical device”. Now if you are driving a car and you need to attend the phone call, you don’t need to tap the phone screen rather you can just receive by one click of your finger on your hand. Guys, See here how it will work...

The concept is very thoughtful and innovative implementation of the Sixth Sense technology developed by Pranav Mistry and Pattie Meas. But this is all together a different way of exploiting the Sixth Sense Technology. Here first of all, there won’t be any strict gestures to learn like suggested before. Moreover this is feedback free way of using Sixth Sense Technology, which means there will be nothing like projector or any interface which will provide reflection of your acts. On first thought you may be finding bit weird but all together it’s not completely replacing the physical existence of actual smart phones rather it is just a way of making interaction with actual phone more convenient.

Crisp of the technology is capturing the gestures of the person. Camera focuses the finger position on the palm and subtracts the background. This technology has worked in harsh lighting conditions and on over brightness too. Software identifies finger positions and correlates with the object position on the actual screen of iPhone. As said mentioned earlier Wi-Fi radio transmits these movements to the phone.

Study carried out in October, it has been found out that usually people finds correct position of 2/3 icons on the blank iPhone and on the tapping they are 80% accurate. Daniel Vogal, postdoctoral fellow of University of Waterloo, says “It’s a little bit like learning to touch type on the keyboard, but without any formal system or the benefit of the feel of the keys.” He added that voice control can also be a better serving option but have some limitations like it can fail in noisy environment. Anyways we will always be waiting for such a wonderful piece of innovation which will make out like more lethargic but pretty interesting and full of technologies all around.