Finally we have a version of Windows we can use without cursing for a hard to navigate UI and the missing start button. Windows 10 seems to be an OS which we all would love to use. Here is a quick list of top 5 new features:
1. Start Menu is back
Windows 10 Start Menu with Live Tiles
If Windows detects your device at a tablet, Start Menu will cover the whole screen
2. Voice-controlled digital assistant Cortana comes to PC
Digital Assistant make the leap from phone to PC
3. Brand new browser, codenamed “Project Spartan”
Spartan offers a distraction free reading experience and annotation features
4. You will be able to play Xbox One game on your PC with the Xbox app for Windows 10
Windows 10 X-box App
5. It's a free upgrade for those using Windows 7/8/8.1 - A smart move indeed by Microsoft!
The Latest Version of Google’s Mobile Operating System Android 5.0 Lollipop's most obvious new features come in the form of visual enhancements and user interface changes, which Google has dubbed Material Design. The platform has new, more fluid animations, a cleaner design with a bolder color palette, a revamped multittasking menu, and offers new ways to interact with your voice. Many of the new Material Design features can be seen in the recent updates that Google has released for its own Android apps such as Google+. The Material Design initiative is meant to unify the software's look and feel across various form factors, whether that's a tablet, smartphone, home media streamer, or something else.
In addition to a visual overhaul, Lollipop brings over 5,000 new APIs for developers to tap into and lets multiple different Android devices with various form factors work better together. Google says that things such as songs, photos, apps, and recent searches can be seamlessly synced across various Android devices. Lollipop also includes new notification controls to limit alerts during meetings and other times, a new battery saver mode that can eke out 90 more minutes of life between charges, multiple user accounts, guest user modes, and new ways to secure your device via trusted Bluetooth connections. Lollipop will also include a protection against resetting the phone to factory defaults, which is designed to make it difficult for phone thieves to use a stolen device. Many of these features have been implemented by various Android device makers on their own smartphones and tablets for some time, but Google is now making sure they are part of the core Android experience.
Android 5.0 Lollipop is a big release for Google — it's the most significant visual update to Android since 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich was released in 2011, and it lays the foundation for Android to grow as a platform outside of smartphones and tablets. Google is very clearly pushing Android as the software for the future, and it wants Android to be on every connected device we interact with. Lollipop is the first step to getting there.
Disgruntled windows 8 users there is finally light at the end of the tunnel! Microsoft is planning to roll out Windows 9 technology preview in late September or early October which is much sooner than expected.
We all know that start menu will make a reappearance in Windows 9. Other features may include Cortana - the voice-activated digital assistant, Virtual Desktop and a new tool to replace the Windows 8 Charms bar.
Windows 9 Start Menu
If rumours are to be believed then there can be a huge surprise on the pricing front to convince reluctant users who are still using older version like Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 to finally move to the latest Windows operating system available. Microsoft may even give a free upgrade offer, which has never happened before.
Clearly the attempt to have a unified OS (aka Widows 8) across devices of all form factor has not gone down well and Windows 9 is going to be a part or Mircosoft’s strategy to regain the lost share in OS market with a desktop centric OS.
I will be posting a series of 6 presentations on object oriented programming using core features of Java. You are free to use it for learning or educating someone. Here goes the first one...
Apple iPhone 5C - the cheap looking colored plastic phone, that isn't cheep
Pricing unlocked iPhone 5C at $549, Apple has simply lost the opportunity to make inroads into developing markets such as China, India and Indonesia, where competitors like Samsung have garnered a large market share by flooding it with dozens of affordable smartphones powered by Android.
Having two iPhone models was unthinkable in Steve Jobs era. Having a cheaper, feature stripped sibling of iPhone contradicts with Jobs' vision for iPhone as the best smartphone ever. However steady decline of Apple's market share in the global smartphone shipments led Apple take this extreme step. But they got it all wrong because $549 is not an affordable price for the developing world and Apple can not hope to sell any significant numbers.
A German startup has developed a smartpen named Lernstift (German for "learning pen") which can check spelling as you write with it on paper. The pen vibrates when it detects any spelling mistake. At a time when digital devices like Laptops and iPads are getting increasingly integrated in school education and spell check as a feature is taken for granted even on mobile phones, this device can bring the fun back to writing with hand.
The device also works without paper so instead of typing the text message on the small touchscreen of your phone and dealing with T9 dictionary you can use Lernstift and write the message in air!
To accomplish this the pen packs in nifty electronics inside comprising of a processor running embedded linux, motion sensor wifi, vibration modules and a battery. The prototype of the pen is ready and the founders are trying to raise funds at Kickstarter for commercial production. Here is the Kickstarter pitch for Lernstift:
A number of officials and ministers when challenged about the internet surveillance by NSA, try to defend by saying that they are only collecting metadata related to your mails, messages and interactions from phone and internet companies and are not collecting the content. The idea that it somehow is no big deal, and people have nothing to worry about when it comes to metadata is ridiculous.
We already know how detailed an account of an individual's daily life can be constructed from metadata extracted from a mobile phone. What people may not realise is how informative the metadata extracted from their email logs can be.
In an attempt to illustrate this, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Media Lab announced a new tool named 'Immersion' that uses your Gmail metadata (eg. From, To, CC, Timestamp) to build a stunning visualisation of your social network (and of your private life).
Motion control is not a new technology, Kinect had it for years, but a new device by a startup called Leap Motion has the potential to make motion control with PC ubiquitous and awesome, changing the way we interact with computer and may even sound the death bell for mouse.
The Leap Motion Controller tracks all 10 fingers up to 1/100th of a millimeter. It’s up to 200 times more sensitive than existing motion-control technology. All this packed in a device of size 3"x1" and costs only 80$.
With the controller, you can navigate through your Windows 8 Start screen by waving your hands in the air, and launch and play games on your PC without ever touching the keyboard.
Google Earth app can already be explored using Leap Motion, letting you fly high above the city of your choice for an earth experience like no other.
The device has a lot of potential in fields like 3D design, music, entertainments and education.
Leap motion is also providing API for application developers and has already launched an App Store called Airspace, where developers will sell the apps.
Its not yet in the league of big boys like google, bing or yahoo, but a new search engine DuckDuckGo has shown an impressive surge in search traffic recently and has crossed 2.5 million search queries per day mark this friday.
The search engine does not store any user information and this fact alone has contributed to users wary of privacy concerns, flocking to it after the news about the NSA PRISM program broke out this thursday.
I tried it today and really liked it. It feels a lot like early Google, with a stripped-down home page and clean search result page. When you search on DuckDuckGo, what you get first is a definition of the thing you were looking for, followed by links that reference it.
DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of about 50 sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha, Bing, its own Web crawler, the DuckDuckBot, and others. It also uses data from crowd-sourced sites, including Wikipedia. DuckDuckGo Goodies tucked under More button add to it's coolness factor.
Google is redesigning the Gmail inbox by including a tabbed interface having capability to sort your mails and automatically put them in appropriate category - Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates and Forum. I just got the new interface on my inbox and I must admit that its really going to help me stay organised and focussed on the things that I need to work on.
Google will roll the new Gmail to users gradually, with the mobile versions expected to become available within the next few weeks. If you can not wait, go to your inbox settings (gear icon) and choose Configure inbox to enable it instantly!
After reading about the Google I/O keynote event and learning that major changes are going to happen to Google Plus I thought of giving it a try and was in for a pleasant surprise on seeing the new version rolled out already, contrary to normal practice when these updates are rolled out after a wait time or after requesting an invite,
The new Google Plus includes a multi-column layout for Google Plus Stream. Now, users will see one, two, or three columns of content depending on their device’s screen size and orientation. I really liked the new interface because it makes exploring content easier. Other notable upgrade are improved photo experience, with features like Auto Enhance and Auto Awesome and also group video application Google Plus hangouts, so you can have conversations online across any device or platform.
Two programmers have developed a website - www.hatnote.com, which shows locations of edits happening to Wikipedia in real time, superimposed over a world map along with name of article being edited. Clicking on the article title will show you the article with a listing of changes done recently. If you feel the article merits more editing you are free to do so, thereby improving Wikipedia.
