Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 15 Jan 2014 00:24

Intelligent Energy taps car cells to keep India connected
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1b55749c ... z2qP0F7R71

Intelligent Energy, a spin-out from Loughborough University, on Tuesday signed a deal with Ascend Telecom, a private-equity backed Indian network services company, to install its hydrogen fuel cell power units at 4,000 mobile telecom towers across 26 states.India has 425,000 mobile telecom towers, compared with the 23,000 built in the UK. In India, though, few towers have uninterrupted grid connections – with 70 per cent suffering from power cuts of up to eight hours a day. Typically, diesel generators are used to provide back-up power during these blackouts, but running them accounts for up to 25 per cent of the total network operating costs – reducing profitability for the mobile tower operators.
.Ascend Telecom is one of the smaller and newer of India’s telecoms infrastructure companies and is backed by New Silk Route, an Indian private equity firm with $1.4bn under management.But Intelligent Energy also plans to offer its fuel cell technology to other companies in the Indian telecoms infrastructure market, which is valued at around $2.8bn a year, as well as other developing markets where mobile telephony is rapidly expanding.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 15 Jan 2014 02:11

I wonder what happened to Bloom energy? They are still around in Sunnyvale but after the initial big deals, no news from them and their SDRE founder.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 15 Jan 2014 04:36

As expected...

Chrome 32 brings a Chrome OS-style 'desktop' to Windows 8

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 15 Jan 2014 06:08

Chacha needs to fix its terms and offering for online office. After having such a huge head start over Mickey in online office suite/collaboration which as usual was late to the game, its kind of sad Chacha got complacent and as per chai wallahs selling chai-paani on the road, went from a ~50% success rate in attracting new customers when Office365 was launched, to ~1% currently. Evidently Pichai Maharaj's late mush kicking didn't have its desired effect.

http://betanews.com/2014/01/10/from-goo ... oogle/#%21

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 15 Jan 2014 08:20

thats the case with any google online app except search which they keep tfta and tight.
take email for instance. why should anyone use gmail over N number of competitors?
google+ for social networking - ha ha ha
orkut ? - remember that?
chrome browser has numerous problems which never seem to get fixed
nexus phones & tabs - yawn - one of too many choices

google operates on a different model where everything seems left behind in beta and people are busy with the next big thing perpetually.\\

imo they are like the chinese jungle capitalist growth model....when the shoe drops it might drop hard and long.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 15 Jan 2014 09:38

Raja Bose wrote:As expected...
Chrome 32 brings a Chrome OS-style 'desktop' to Windows 8

Why is it called Chrome 32? 32 bit? or is it already at version 32?

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 15 Jan 2014 09:40

I like Google+ though. No exp. with anything else. So the first love and all that

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 15 Jan 2014 11:36

Motorola hires Disney scientist who made plants sing

He joins Motorola to work in the Google-owned company's Advanced Technology and Products department, run by Regina Dugan, the former head of DARPA.
...
...
Poupyrev recounted his "iconic" new employer's storied history. "Motorola invented the cellphone. The first Apples ran on Motorola chips, and their chips were instrumental in the Apollo program." The phone maker's future under Google reportedly excites the scientist. "In a small way," he tells Fast Company Design, "I can help shape the future of the company." (If only he knows what he is getting into, 2 years with Regina bibi should cure that)

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 15 Jan 2014 14:41

you dont need more cloud storage. you need some quiet time to read edward de bono's old book "Simplicity" - 399 in flipkart.

we are piling up digital junk at a frightening rate, way more than the rate at which we are destroying the earths resources and atmosphere. I sometimes look into old HDDs/CDs with "to read" papers and docs from 1998

but I dont get the time to clean that mess out. but lately I have been pruning ruthlessly to enforce some order into the system. I had a panic attack on throwing my still-working palmIIIxe into the bin.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 16 Jan 2014 22:45

Microsoft reportedly will pay $1.2 billion to Samsung, $500 million to Sony, $600 million to Huawei and $300 million each to several other partners...to make windows phones.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 16 Jan 2014 22:59

I found this website where people can login and solve problems/learn etc
http://brilliant.org/techniques-summary-pages/

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Jan 2014 02:45

Singha wrote:Microsoft reportedly will pay $1.2 billion to Samsung, $500 million to Sony, $600 million to Huawei and $300 million each to several other partners...to make windows phones.

So Android is funding the Windows Phone slush fund?

negi · Post by **negi** » 17 Jan 2014 02:58

Singha wrote:you dont need more cloud storage. you need some quiet time to read edward de bono's old book "Simplicity" - 399 in flipkart.

we are piling up digital junk at a frightening rate, way more than the rate at which we are destroying the earths resources and atmosphere. I sometimes look into old HDDs/CDs with "to read" papers and docs from 1998 but I dont get the time to clean that mess out. but lately I have been pruning ruthlessly to enforce some order into the system. I had a panic attack on throwing my still-working palmIIIxe into the bin.

Sir on that note , there are already PPTs being prepared on storing switch and datacenter logs on a Hadoop cluster and run analytics on it to generate reports which are ostensibly critical to business.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Jan 2014 05:49

Google's new wearable project is a smart contact lens with medical uses

This is squarely Babak Parviz's territory (research he did as a professor in U. Washington) and I think he dropped hints about this about a year back. This has a much higher probability of success than Google Glass. I just hope he doesn't inadvertently cause IP issues for Chacha coz he did the same technology with MSR back in 2010-11.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 17 Jan 2014 08:01

I'll buy it if available at aam price

vishvak · Post by **vishvak** » 17 Jan 2014 19:29

Singha ji, long back in college there were debates in open source vs windows- friends on both sides. Made me think how windows (and now I realize Apple too) generally incorporates best features of open source software I.e. creates windows based code for different features that come out in different O.S. be it Linux or Symbian- and the features soon become part of Windows OS. There seems to be more to it than meets the eye as this has been going on for decades and Microsoft making it very big because of this.

Yogesh · Post by **Yogesh** » 17 Jan 2014 23:15

Maulana log - can you suggest some good quality voice recorders? basic need is to record classroom lectures (without lecturer knowing it

, so compact one ! ) I looked up a few on flipkart found This one

any suggestions, TIA!

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Jan 2014 23:29

What's wrong with your phone?

Yogesh · Post by **Yogesh** » 17 Jan 2014 23:34

no phones allowed inside the said class (as i said it would be concealed by the one who is gonna use .., so usb like is better..) also i guess better noise cancellation & audio should be with this recorder, no ?

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 18 Jan 2014 03:27

I liked livescribe pulse pen a LOT. You can write notes in a notebook with a physical pen and it automagically gets "scanned" online. (Well the pen has a camera in it, the paper has invisible dots in it so the pen knows its position and records what you write). The additional kicker is that it can record what was being said when you were writing it and you can either play it back by tapping on the word and watch a "movie" with words appearing while hearing what was being said.

Amazing product. Too little publicity.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 18 Jan 2014 04:21

cowon products (iAudio) are pretty good for sterophonic recording - bought one for SHQ and kids for recording music lessons, but the purchase was long time back.. should be in market and good models and shape perhaps.

in addition to mpegs, they also support other open source formats like ogg vorbis, etc.

btw, noise canceling is different from noise reduction or isolation. the external mic attachement can be bought for noise canceling condenser mics.

habal · Post by **habal** » 18 Jan 2014 10:27

Raja Bose wrote:Google's new wearable project is a smart contact lens with medical uses

also keep 24X7 tab at the idiot who is wearing it. Chip & antenna in a contact lens.

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 18 Jan 2014 14:57

ArmenT wrote:
Mort Walker wrote:^^^I don't trust NTP or at least its implementation.
You aren't the only one sir. The NTP code that came with some OSs was full of scary code and hard to debug. Luckily, one German fella decided to do something about it and wrote a replacement which doesn't go for full 100% microsecond accuracy, but something that is practical enough, supports most of the use cases and is not filled with lots of questionable code. Plus, it works with very minimal configuration.

http://www.openntpd.org/

Incidentally, there is a NTP amplication reflection attack that was active around the end of december, causing massive amounts of traffic. The hack took advantage of test commands and protocol extensions that were added to the daemon from ntp.org. Luckily, openntpd doesn't implement any of these test or extension commands and is unaffected.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 18 Jan 2014 22:18

pooch: on the malloo land, is bsnl better than asianet for broadband QOS?

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 18 Jan 2014 23:26

Anujan wrote:I liked livescribe pulse pen a LOT. You can write notes in a notebook with a physical pen and it automagically gets "scanned" online. (Well the pen has a camera in it, the paper has invisible dots in it so the pen knows its position and records what you write). The additional kicker is that it can record what was being said when you were writing it and you can either play it back by tapping on the word and watch a "movie" with words appearing while hearing what was being said.

Amazing product. Too little publicity.

1. no conversion to doc file

and this:
http://www.amazon.com/Livescribe-2GB-Pu ... Descending

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 19 Jan 2014 11:22

ArmenT wrote: http://www.openntpd.org/

Incidentally, there is a NTP amplication reflection attack that was active around the end of december, causing massive amounts of traffic. The hack took advantage of test commands and protocol extensions that were added to the daemon from ntp.org. Luckily, openntpd doesn't implement any of these test or extension commands and is unaffected.[/quote]

For me, it turned out ntpd was arbitrarily dying on a primary UNIX machine that had a precision time source. Subsequent networked LINUX machines became incorrect after a period of time that were running ntpd as well. It was first thought that a software bug existed in the primary machine application software that was killing ntpd. After much troubleshooting, it was not the case, at least from what I could tell. The initial approach was not to use NTP at all on the primary machine and set time by polling the precision time source on a period basis and set the time using a background script or utility. It involved some work, but by the time the decision was taken to press ahead, there was another implementation of ntpd available from open sources which worked well. It all ended well, but NTP doesn't inspire confidence.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 19 Jan 2014 11:26

Anujan wrote:I liked livescribe pulse pen a LOT. You can write notes in a notebook with a physical pen and it automagically gets "scanned" online. (Well the pen has a camera in it, the paper has invisible dots in it so the pen knows its position and records what you write). The additional kicker is that it can record what was being said when you were writing it and you can either play it back by tapping on the word and watch a "movie" with words appearing while hearing what was being said.

Amazing product. Too little publicity.

I don't know if Livescribe will gain popularity. For one thing, they've now abandoned a PC application where you can transfer data from the pen. The new Livescribe 3 pens need a BT enabled iOS device to transfer data. They also will not support Android or WP. I still love my Echo Smartpen and use it every day. The direction Livescribe is going in is questionable to me.

Skanda · Post by **Skanda** » 21 Jan 2014 02:27

AMD's new processor is called Kaveri. Is there an Indian connection or anyone knows the origin of the name for this processor

http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/17/amd- ... -round-up/

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 21 Jan 2014 02:35

Its named after the engine.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 21 Jan 2014 03:07

Looks like Mortullah is gonna have to switch to the tile-less iOS after all

Is this the Samsung Galaxy S5's new tile-based home screen?

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 21 Jan 2014 03:22

Or both are named after the river?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 21 Jan 2014 03:26

ssshhhh,....

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 21 Jan 2014 08:11

Raja Bose wrote:Looks like Mortullah is gonna have to switch to the tile-less iOS after all
Is this the Samsung Galaxy S5's new tile-based home screen?

No worries. I tend toward the GPE or Nexus phones now. There is a fair amount of choice on the Play Store Devices ranging from the Moto G all the way up the price chain to the behemoth 6.4" Sony Z Ultra.

vina · Post by **vina** » 22 Jan 2014 05:48

Pah. You guys can play with your wheezy lil Windoze and Android phones, while iPhunwa runs away with record sales.

Take that you haters!

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 22 Jan 2014 05:54

Yes, Apple is really da boss as far as phablet UI/UX goes. I can't be happier with my iPadmini - touch is responsive and quite intuitive. Cannot say the same about XBox One. But I do have difficulties with MBP though. Somehow could not install applications (sagemath for one and the NASA eyes prasannasimha recommended) for all users - it installed for just the super user under which I installed.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 22 Jan 2014 05:55

planning to upload iOS7 on my purana 4 device. any caveats?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 22 Jan 2014 07:11

^^^You wont get buttery smooth performance and its kinda buggy/laggy.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 22 Jan 2014 07:12

vina wrote:Pah. You guys can play with your wheezy lil Windoze and Android phones, while iPhunwa runs away with record sales.

Take that you haters!

What to take hain ji? The stock is in Pakistan and while Bawarchi is off GUBOing.

What happened to all those Hair-bird/Bartan YumBeeAyes piously prediciting trillion dallah market cap for Appil hain ji?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 22 Jan 2014 07:14

Mort Walker wrote:
Raja Bose wrote:Looks like Mortullah is gonna have to switch to the tile-less iOS after all
Is this the Samsung Galaxy S5's new tile-based home screen?
No worries. I tend toward the GPE or Nexus phones now. There is a fair amount of choice on the Play Store Devices ranging from the Moto G all the way up the price chain to the behemoth 6.4" Sony Z Ultra.

You mean you are abandoning your favorite beloved Sammy?

The sun surely has risen in the west.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 22 Jan 2014 07:46

okay, come may, i'm ending the 2 year kuntrakt with sprint. of course pamalee and dhost plan onlee.
so, may time may be the new sammy panch would have set in, and sammy 4 would go cheap or $0.
that should be buttery for me then.. the onlee issue with these kind of deals are after the contracts,
the device becomes useles.. can't unlock sprint phones to be used in desh as well