Snapdragon 835 Chipset Which will Power 2017 High End Phones

 

Qualcomm was expected to launch its Snapdragon 835 chipset with a grand ceremony during CES 2017 but most of its prolific information was revealed before that. Snapdragon 835 is its latest powerful chipset which is expected to power some of the most expensive and premium flagship devices in the rest of the year. Its information has been revealed in full by the famous leaker who goes by the name @evleaks. The documents procured by this leakster appear to be the official press release documents which bring key details about this chipset.

Snapdragon 835 rumors and leaks are abundant

A number of information related to the Sanpdragon 835 chipset has already been released in the online arena. Some of the presentation slide made its way on the Chinese social network Weibo. Quite contrary to the established trend these rumors and information were true to its core which has simply killed away the surprise that Snapdragon would have brought in CES launch event.

How Snapdragon promotes its upcoming chipset?

Snapdragon has boldly proclaimed that 835 which be much smarter, smaller and energy efficient than any of the chipset ever developed by the company. Qualcomm has invested a huge of money and resource at developing this chipset which will allow smartphone manufacturers to go further with their plans of developing thinner devices with larger batteries in future. Snapdragon 835 has a 10nm design with the presence of over 3 billion transistors which lends better functionality and power over its predecessors.

Qualcomm documents reveal that the improvements made in Sanpdragon 835 will help in redefining the charging, camera capabilities, connectivity, security and battery life on the upcoming range of smartphones.
Snapdragon 385 will bring better connectivity coupled with security

Snapdragon 835 features the X16 LTE modem and custom support for 802.11ad Wi-Fi networks which helps in delivering one of the fastest and robust connectivity options to the consumers. This will allow users to download content at 10X faster than the first generation of 4G LTE devices and modem itself will have a 45% smaller footprint and with incredible power efficiency. On security front it will have three layers of protection to the users on Soc, device and system levels. Snapdragon 835 will authenticate users with fingerprints, pin codes, eye or face based security. This will ensure that upcoming breed of smartphone will feature the iris scanners and camera enabled security more prominently than before.

Redefining smartphone experience in every possible manner

Qualcomm is leaving no stone upturned to make Snapdragon 835 chipset successful than its predecessors. It will also feature the coveted machine learning which will enhance the computing capability of the phones in future. Smartphones will start offering object recognition technology for better photos and VR experience will be also enhanced with real-time hand tracking capabilities. The trend for adopting the AI or virtual assistants on the smartphone will take a major push with Snapdragon 835 as it will help in strengthening their presence along with support for biometric authentication.

CES 2017: Smart Hairbrush Listens to Breaking Hair

After a point of time with the increase in health issues, problems related to hair also gets added to the list. These days almost everyone is facing troubles related to hair like split ends, dry hair, dandruff and most importantly hair fall. Dermatologists have stated that one of the reason behind problems related to hair is improper way to brush or comb hair.

Hence, to provide a remedy to it, L’Oreal a named brand in the field of beauty treatments and techniques has come up with a electrifying measure that will help you to reduce your hair problems without any fuzz. They have introduced a smart hair brushing technique that will tame you in terms of your hair combing ways which will ultimately enable you a great deal to solve all your hair related problems.

This hilarious hairbrush introduced by L’Oreal consists of extraordinary sensors that will help you to rectify your hair brushing techniques. It acts as your trainer that will train you how to deal properly with your hair. It contains sensors like microphone, gyroscope and accelerometer that adds to the efficiency of the product.

This technologically studded hair brush is a new beauty product invented in 2017 that you surely need to add in your wardrobe. It comprises of all those techniques that warns you by vibrating if you are brushing in an unacceptably tough manner. It simultaneously records the sounds of every hair that breaks and it also includes certain sensors that creates a profile of the user regarding his or her style of combing their hair and you can then share this via internet or Bluetooth to an application.

It is a kind of software that restores the information that you can use to improve the quality of your hair. This can be considered as a boon for most of the women in the current era as many are reeling under several hair issues.

It is extremely imperative to be sure that you do not comb your hair too harshly as that might lead to breakage of hair fibers which is a severe damage to your hair.

The brush is supported on disposable batteries and does not support any charging feature. This makes the gadget even more handy as you can carry it anywhere with some extra batteries that will save you from the tension of charging it on a regular basis. Just fit in the batteries and use it according to your convenience. The product is water resistant but not entirely waterproof. So, a little care needs to be taken.

This is a luxurious product where beauty gets clubbed with technique and provides you with the best possible results that will cover every corner of the market in due course of time. This is a biggest launch by L’Oreal in 2017 that is sure to help every woman to overcome their hair problems by improving the way to deal with their hair. This is the best antidote to hair fall where technology is used only to give positive results.

Taxi Sharing Could End Traffic Jams

It is highly believed and studies are there to support it that the concept of taxi sharing, if applied could result in a reduction of traffic which is a major concern of today’s day and age. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have studies done has that project statistics that taxi sharing could result in a massive 75 percent decline in traffic that is present currently on the roads.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) concentrate found that an armada of 3,000 four-traveler cabs could do an indistinguishable employment from the present armada of 13,000 yellow taxis in New York City. In any case, it would imply that individuals would need to travel with people they are not familiar with, in other words strangers which could not be appreciated by all. This review has been drawn together after gathering information from a massive 3 million taxi rides.

Most scholarly individuals suggest that among the many urban situations faced, congestion is one of major concern and it needs to be taken into control and seem to be in aid on the taxi sharing concept. Studies have proven that universally individuals squander 7 billion hours every year sitting in traffic, which is indeed a lot of time and the impacts on nature are additionally extreme - with cars in movement smoldering an additional 3 billion gallons of fuel.

"Rather than transporting individuals each one in turn, drivers could transport two to four individuals immediately, bringing about less outings, in less time, to make a similar measure of cash," composes Prof Daniela Rus from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT's) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.

The group built up a calculation that could reroute cars in light of real time requests. "A framework like this could permit drivers to work shorter shifts, while additionally resulting in lesser of traffic, cleaner air and shorter less unpleasant traveling as there will be much lesser traffic on the roads," said Prof Rus which would clearly be beneficial to all if applied and accepted. Such a framework would be especially suited to autonomous cars, she included.

Legal action

Ride-sharing plans are developing in prevalence, with entrenched firms, for example, Uber and Lyft driving the way. As indicated by Lyft, half of rides taken in San Francisco in 2015 were shared. There are likewise heaps of new choices on the scene, for example, DriveNow, a car sharing administration worked by BMW, which has around 200,000 clients in Berlin, or a pilot from Toyota that was as of late propelled in Dublin.

However it is not necessary that all these ventures are a success, for example, Car2Go as of late declared that it was ceasing administrations in Stockholm, a city quick to advance option methods of transport and cut contamination, because of absence of interest.

Sony Launching a New Slim PS4 Bundle With Two Call of Duty Games

Virtual Reality or VR as we know it, is the newest form of reality that Hollywood sci-fi films had promised us and it is finally here. Samsung and Google has taken the leap in the world of mobile VR technology. In the high end tech world HTC Hive and Oculus Rift were the sole representors of the future tech, but not anymore. Sony had revealed the prototype for the ‘Project Morpheus’ as long back as 2014, and now the dream is finally here shaped in the form of Playstation VR headset.

It is designed to be paired easily with Sony PS4 console, which had a seen a whooping demand of 40 million sales worldwide. It requires to be connected with a few wires, switch on the power button on the headset and you are good to step into the virtual world.

The headset is considerably heavy, weighing at 645g but it is designed in a clever way so the weight is distributed proportionately along the head mount. This reduces the claustrophobic feeling along with headache and a neck pain that arises by balancing heavy weight and that too wearing it on your face. Also it is equipped with a re adjustable dial that modifies its dimensions according to your head size and will take approximately 10 seconds to fit you snugly. Hive and Oculus are the heavier counterparts and their clumsy bulk dilate gaming involvement.

Hardcore techies are frowning at the 1080p display that Sony is offering. Playstation-VR is designed to patch up with PS4 as PC and therefore it does not adjust to the screen resolution like Oculus and Hive. Sony engineers explain that low-resolution display is not bound to distract the immersive experience due to the extremely high refresh rate of 120fps and gives a much vibrant and proportionate red,green and blue light emission to the pixels thereby reducing screen door effect. The pixels are much softer and give off an overall vibrant glow which is enough to mask the absence of HD for the time being.Also it comes with a big eye box that doesn’t force the necessity to divert from the game screen to find the sweet focus, reducing performance lag.

Able to support all the games that PS4 console does, gamers are awed at the quality of immersion which had not been experienced before. This however is restricted for children under 12 years.

Playstation VR is selling in the market for a mere $399, the full console and VR costs approximately $700 which is anytime a lot cheaper than counterparts which are quite costly at $1200 tag. A high end VR product coupled with cheap price is making headlines as few shops in Japan and China are running out of their supplies by the end of the day.

Sony CEO sounds hopeful about the future of VR as he plans to expand it’s reach to paradigms of medicine and job training. IT and graphics companies are looking forward to the waves of innovation that will come riding on the success of Playstation VR which has been hailed as the greatest innovation since the advent of television by Time.

The Car Of The Future Will Be Electric, Led By Tesla

One of the most predictable outcomes which are sure to happen in the near future is the prevalence of electric cars over petrol and diesel cars. The reasons to that being simple: Electric cars prove to be more efficient than any other cars and also the fact that they are the ultimate multi-fuel cars.

The reasons behind the forthcoming dominance of electric cars

• The decreased cost: - Let us analyze a small example to emphasize the point we are trying to make. Popular Mechanics in its May, 2006 issue published an article about bio-fuel comparing various technologies in automobile development such as ethanol, methanol, gasoline, Compressed Natural Gas, and even electric cars. Taking a cross-country drive in each of the cars of identical sizes they compared their costs. A drive in a Honda Civic cost them $212, the VolksWagon diesel Golf followed at $230. The cost in an E85 ethanol was $425 and that in a methanol car cost $619. The CNG car looked fascinating at $110 but guess how much the electric car cost, a staggering $60. And remember it wasn’t even an article about electric cars. 
•  Convertibility: - The best aspect about electricity is that it can be converted from almost any fuel that can be burned. Barring a few inefficient and old power plants, the modern ones have state of the art technologies which enable coal to be gasified and burnt in a very clean and efficient manner. Considering the large amount of coal reserves we have, this is a very helpful thing.

An advanced natural gas generator, known as the H-System Generator has a 60 percent efficiency and can easily burn biogas which is produced from the biomass. An electric car powered in this way has the transportation capacity of four times as much as one which is powered by ethanol made from the same stuff.
People can even put on solar panels on their rooftops which will hence power their electric car and therefore reduce our dependencies on oil to power our cars.

Tesla will be the leader

Tesla, the Silicon Valley disrupter has been successful to show the increased consumer demand for electrically powered cars that are well-designed. A powerful catalyst working in this favor is lithium-ion batteries whose prices are decreasing fast. Mobile computing and its growth has caused immense investment in the area which has further resulted in improving the range of electric cars and decreasing their costs.

Global trends unmistakably hint at the takeoff of electric cars in the international market. In the coming few years, petrol and diesel cars are going to face strong competition from the flurry of electric car launches from Chevy and especially from Tesla. In general, electric motors are much easier to produce and most importantly cheaper. That brings us to the inevitable conclusion that the future of cars will certainly be electric. With Tesla assuring $100 per kWh by the end of 2020, battery costs are sure to decline which means lower prices for electric vehicles.
Vehicle electrification is perhaps the most important change in automobile industry and Tesla the most significant leader.

Virtual Reality will have Same Mind Bending Effects as LSD: Microsoft

Virtual Reality or commonly referred as VR is just a few years old technology which made its way into the consumer products. But the level of advancement brought by different tech firms has taken it to a whole new level where people are actively adopting with a hope of getting better upgrades in short while. Microsoft has predicted that in near future VR technology will be able to cause drug-like hallucination as it gets more powerful in rendering articulated reality. One of the top researchers at Microsoft stated that VR technology has become capable of warping reality along with catapulting users into a new and enhanced world.

Virtual Reality will be the new LSD

In the 1960 the use of LSD was widely prevalent in the society to embark on the psychedelic adventures. In such LSD infused reality people use to get naked and enjoy some unabashed sex soundtracked and it also led to the creation of the greatest music we have enjoyed so far. Currently virtual reality offering the first level of virtual wherein people are gradually adjusting to the thought of embarking on virtual reality trips by getting alone in the room, wearing the helmet and feeling the new environment without being touched by any other mortal.

Microsoft believed that by 2027 we will be able develop ubiquitous virtual reality system which will bring a much richer multisensorial experiences to the users. Such an advanced virtual reality system will possess the capability to induce hallucination thereby altering the perceived reality for the users. Furthermore this technology will be redefined to incorporate innovative haptic system which will stimulate touching and being touched feeling to bring a complete realistic trip. Therefore continuous trips to this kind of virtual reality will certainly become addictive for the users in the future.

Virtual reality in future will be a ‘need’

A senior researcher at New England research lab named Nicole Immorlica has elaborated that by the year 2027 the automation technology will reach new heights which will redefine our society and economy. In that time our society will be actively generating a huge amount of data from the use of various technologies which will be generated as they live by. In other words our lives will become dull and people will have less work to do on their won as automation will take care of all their needs.

Automation will help in increasing the efficiency along with decreasing the time required for variety which will ultimately lead to a lonely living cycle. That will be the time when people will actively hook themselves up with the virtual reality to get the thrill and excitement of the next level. In that phase virtual reality will become a new addiction for the society and its base has been developed today which will be enhanced with its each iteration loaded with more feature thereby diminishing the thin line between the reality and virtual reality.

A Camera without a Lens? Hitachi is on It

Hitachi Camera – Without Lenes

Hitachi has been working on developing cameras which does not seen to have lenses and the company claims that the images taken with the camera would be refocused after they are captured. They have announced the progress of a technology for digital camera which has the potential of capturing images without the use of a lens.

The intention is to make cameras much thinner as well as lighter, suitable for cars and mobile devices which could take minimum space. Another aspect is that of the robots – technology and Hitachi would be providing fewer limitations in placing of the cameras. As to Apple’s claim that eliminating the headphone jack permits bigger batteries as well as other parts to be placed in it. Hitachi states that the camera which utilises lensless tech would be much slimmer and lighter.

The lensless cameras are possible due to a pattern development technique known as `Moiré fringes’. Hitachi intends to utilise these cameras that tend to use this technology by 2018. The company also expects to use lensless photography in automated driving, vehicles as well as robotics.

Fourier Transform

With the help of investigation tech like CCTV, the images of individuals often tend to be blurred owing to low focal ranges. For instance, with Hitachi’s lensless camera tech, the still images would theoretically get adjusted on the fly from a range of depths in identifying individuals clearly.

The sensor has a film placed before it comprising of a pattern of concentric and when an image of the pattern is taken, it tends to cast a shadow due to the light which strikes it, on the sensor. Thereafter the shadow is captured by the sensor and overlaid on another pattern concentric just like the one place before the sensor at the time of the image process.

This tends to develop a moiré effect which is a kind of interference resulted by the two patterns touched. There is a possibility of using these data to reconstruct the concluding image by using the Fourier transform.

Capture Angle/Pattern of Light

Hitachi technology also tends to provide other benefits. In fact when the shutter tends to capture all the information connected to depth, it is capable of changing the point of focus after one has captured an image. The design of the Hitachi camera is unique since it tends to do double duty wherein it not only captures the images without the use of the lens but also captures depth information and focus that image after the fact.

Basically it tends to capture the angle and the pattern of the light which comes in the sensor that enables to change what is in focus after the detail by overlaying a another pattern over the captured shadow during processing.

We already other products which tend to provide the same function, for instance, the Lytro Illum and the difference in this case is the size which is more compact. The small range Xperia tends to have a bigger space. Sony Xperia Z5 Compact on offer from Amazon Marketplace to 369 euro or from Amazon at 419 euro.

AMD Sets Countdown for December Public Hands-On of Zen Processor

The desktop CPU market is about to be embroiled in a contest between master crafters, Intel and AMD. After almost a decade of ruling the market with dependable reputation, Intel is about to face a challenge from AMD in the form of their latest “Summit Ridge” series that will utilize high performance Zen architecture.

Aimed to tease the public with the potential of its performance, AMD has initiated a countdown that would ultimately reveal some live demos with the Zen architecture by engaging in intensive gaming sessions. This big reveal is supposed to be a web show called “New Horizon”; it will be hosted by George Keeley, a big name in video game journalism and the eminent pro gamer Peter Dager, better known as PPD, of Evil Geniuses fame.

Estimated to be aired on 13th December at 1pm PST or 4pm ET, this reveal is going to be a treat as AMD have themselves confirmed that there will be multiple guests on the show taking their turn to test the Zen extensively and give their take on the newbie. AMD is luring the nerds stating, “If you’re serious about gaming, this is an event you do not want to miss.”

Intel is slated to showcase their latest Kaby Lake desktop processors sometime in January; AMD therefore is preparing their ground to pit their super economical Zen processors against the comparatively higher range of Intel whose last Core i7 6950x processor costs a whopping $1723. “Summit Ridge” is expected to have a highest price of $500 for an ultra fast octa-core processor.

Aside from being economical, it manipulates the use of Simultaneous Multi Threading in the high end octa-cores which is a leap of modification from its previous Bulldozer series which had single threading and low processing capacities. Also there is expected to be a high cache hierarchy. Both these couplings are aimed to correct the drawbacks of older AMD models.

The New Horizon will inaugurate with a modest level quad core to test the gaming potential, which is expected to keep the curiosity burning till the next big reveal on “Summit Ridge” later on in the beginning quarter of 2017, with other technologies hidden up their sleeve.

A lot of curiosity and interest is abuzz about this AMD Zen as this project has been entirely under wraps; the idea had been planted in a small Developer Forum convention event in August. It has been worked on meticulously by AMD to improve the design of Excavator architecture and improve its processing speed by adding more clocks; each clock is supposed to be fed with 40% more instruction than Excavator.

Assuring promises of giveaways, AMD is encouraging viewers to book a spot for the prime show and catch all the action live. An adrenaline fuelled performance on the 13th will probably be a premonition of how the processor industry of the future will turn out, commanding the best from both Intel and AMD.

Japan Plans Supercomputer to Leap into Technology Future

Japan has made plans for building a supercomputer with a speed of 130 peta flops. The price estimation made by the ministry of economy, trade and industry is 19.5 billion yen ($173 million). This has been made as the Government policy to bring back the country’s lost market back. Japan has lost its technology market to South Korea and china due to heavy competition among them. This supercomputer yet to be made by the country will help its country’s manufactures to develop and to improve their research works. This computer technology might improve Robotics, medical diagnostics and driverless vehicles.

This computer which is being made by the country can calculate 130 quadrillion calculations per secondor 130 peta flops. This computer is made ahead of China’s Sunway Taihulight that is capable of 93 peta flops per second. Japans aim is to create a fast calculating computer to create advancement in computer technology in Artificial Intelligence (AI). This can mimic the human minds neural Pathways to analyze Data and work out calculation. This has been made possible by Google with Google’s DeepMind AI program which has beat South Korean professional Lee Seedol in the ancient board game of Go in the month of March.

This applications in technology includes the developments of various technology by companies and create an fully automatic machinery range. This might create an revolution in the medial industry to track a person’s medical record and analyze their medical health and be used to help them in some critical situations.

This computers made by Japan will be made available first to all Japanese Corporation with fee. This might free many Japanese corporations from depending on other countries super computer. Many leading computer companies have been keen to be involved in the Development of this Super Computer. The Fastest super computer ever built in Japan is the Oakforest –PACS with a speed of 13.6 peta flops and had been developed by Fujistsu. This creates a high expectation for this project among many companies and countries.

The Super computer has been named AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure and has been called ABCI in short form and is expected to be finished in the end of 2017. The bidding for this super computer project has been made and has started and would be closed on December 8. Still it has not been confirmed that who will be making the super computer for government. Japan has the fourth largest number of supercomputers in the world after the United States, Germany and China.

iPhone Video Bug Crashes Any Apple Phone

Ever wondered that playing just a simple .mp4 video file may crash your iPhone? Well, reports say that a malicious video file is being circulated online via Safari in the form of a link. Once the file is opened, a video starts playing but after about 30 seconds, the phones become sluggish until it stops working altogether. First reported by EverythingApplePro, the video is of a person standing beside a bed and the word ‘Honey’ pops up on the screen. Initially the phone works fine but slows down till it crashes. The video file may be corrupted or infected with a virus and produces the same result even if the complete video is not played. Till now, it is unclear about what exactly is causing the iPhones to malfunction.

The Victims

All versions of iOS seem to have been affected. Even older iPhones running on i0S 5 are showing same results when the video is played. On the beta version of the iOS 10.2 it even pops up the spinning wheel which is indicates that the device is being turned off. Apple now has to deal with this issue and hope it gets fixed in the next update. On the other hand, Android and Windows phones are unaffected by this bug.

Protect Your Phone

Do not open any suspicious link until and unless you trust the sender. Clicking on such links may download malware and other unwanted applications on your device. Consider the following tips to secure your iPhone from hackers.

• Use the fingerprint sensor or a PIN every time you access your device. 
• Turn off ‘Simple Passcode’ in your phone settings which will allow you to set a strong password comprising of numbers, upper and lowercase letters and symbols. 
• Self-destruct feature on the iPhone wipes all the data if someone tries to hack your phone and has entered a wrong PIN 10 times. 
• Turn off unnecessary app permissions to enhance your privacy. 
• A glance of all the notifications on the home screen comes in handy. However they may sometime contain sensitive information and it’s better to turn them off. 
• Do not use AutoFill on Safari. It is tempting to save your personal information on your web browser so that you don’t have to enter it over and over again. But if your phone is in the wrong hands, you may end up in trouble.

Are you a victim? Here’s how you can fix your phone

You can fix your iPhone with a Hard Reset if it has stopped working. All data will be lost but it brings your device back to life. You can hard reset your iPhone using the following steps:

• Press and hold the home button and the power button at the same time for about 10 seconds 
• Wait for the Apple logo to appear 
• Release the buttons

Use the decrease volume button and the power button in case of an iPhone 7 and your phone will boot up normally.

Banned Uber Drivers Can Now Appeal in New York

Ride-sharing administration Uber will interestingly offer drivers in New York who have been commenced the administration the opportunity to advance - however there are strings appended. Uber deactivates its drivers for a large number of reasons, most broadly to have a traveller rating which drops beneath 4.6 out of five. Drivers can likewise be banned for genuine unfortunate behaviour, for example,sexual assault. Be that as it may, the greyer territory for drivers is the different ways you can be deactivated, for example, "too much" scratching off rides or not accepting enough rides.

At times, drivers have reported being deactivated in the wake of posting slandering comments about Uber via web-based networking media. In any case, now an interest’s procedure - for New York City drivers just - will see drivers up against a board made up of five other Uber drivers. Here they will have the capacity to claim deactivations, however just those in that hazy area. "Awful" drivers appraised inadequately by travellers won't be qualified. The choice is being touted as a "colossal win" by the Independent Drivers Guild (IDG), the main laborers' rights bunch perceived by Uber.

It isn't, be that as it may, a union - as drivers can't utilize the gathering to can hope for better pay or advantages. Jim Conigliaro, organizer of the IDG, told his individuals in an email that the gathering was "praising another triumph". "Following quite a while of arrangements," he kept in touch with, "we at last won you the privilege to a reasonable deactivation bid with Uber administration."

'Peer board' 

Uber did not react to the BBC's ask for input other than to point toward its recently set up gateway for offers. The administration has additionally not yet said whether a similar framework will be applicable in other countries or cities. "After months of negotiations,” he wrote, “we finally won you the right to a fair deactivation appeal with Uber management.""Accordingly, certain deactivation choices, particularly those identified with zero resistance infringement, are not qualified for offer. “For instance, we won't acknowledge advances identified with criminal movement while on the application, similar to burglary or heedless driving.

In like manner, we won't acknowledge claims identified with physical or sexual quarrels." Drivers with a low traveller rating will likewise not be considered utilizing this procedure, Uber said. Drivers commenced for poor "quality" can experience an instructional class which may see their record reactivated. The purported "peer board" of drivers will be mutually picked by IDG and Uber and will be encouraged by the American Arbitration Association.

Uber has tussled with its drivers over specialists' rights in urban communities everywhere throughout the world. In October a business tribunal in London verified that drivers ought to persuade the privilege to be considered workers - significance occasion pay, wiped out leave, paid breaks and different advantages. A comparable column is occurring in different areas in the United States. Uber, which propelled in 2009, is said to be worth more than $60bn in view of ventures made in the organization. It is broadly thought to be one of the significant tech firms considering opening up to the world one year from now.

Google Announced Winners of Material Design Awards 2016

Google Announced Winners = Material Designs 2016

A design system tends to come to make waves when it is utilised in creating meaningful experiences.Google had introduced the Material Design showcasing applications which had embraced and embodied the design principles of Android much better than the others.

At Google I/O 2016, the app Robinhood had won the Google Play Award for the Best Use of Material Design. The winners of the Awards for Material Designs 2016 have been announced by Google last year, which had been dedicated at recognising the `best-in-class’ achievements for utilising material design for apps.Classifications of the award tend to focus specific aspects of Material Design which have been utilised in the creation of the apps that are inclined to satisfy users and express the brand suitably.

The five winners had been honoured on October 27 at the SPAN LA conference which represented the finest application of aspects of Material Design. The awards had been cut down into categories which focus on how developers could create apps that are not only great for use but also tends to express their brand on utilising the application design guidelines offered by Google. Asana had won the Brand Infusion award- Team Tasks & Projects.

Goal Completion Animations

According to Google, Asana makes the teamwork productive as well as collaborative by providing short together with often repeatedly interactions to `make efficiency feel rewarding’. Fabulous – Motivate Me, had won the Charming Engagement award wherein the app tends to feature charming illustration style in creating an impression on the users.

Google has noticed that the state transition with pleasing goal completion animations tends to keep up the motivation. C Channel received the Creative Navigation award and the app is said to organise content in a series of tabs which has the tendency of navigating through swiping. Google informs that the state that the app `neatly balances a blend of studio-created and user-submitted videos related to fashion, food and much more.

But it is only available in Japanese and Thai.The Expressive Layouts award was won by Kitchen Stories app and the app had been distinguished for its capability of creative effective together with scanning of layouts with ease for recipes on various kinds of screens and sizes.

Winning Apps – Taken Up Design Language to Great Heights

Moreover, it also tends to minimise the number of times user tend to have to touch the screen and is beneficial if the user seems to have untidy fingers while cooking. Airbnb was awarded for Focused Efficiency wherein Google informed that the app is `able to sidestep the appearance of complexity, thereby making the overall experience comfortable.

But it also observed that efficiency does not come at the cost of the visual appeal of the app. The award winning apps have taken up the design language to great heights and also deserves the honours and awards they have been provided. The Material Design Contest follows Google-hosted app contest – the Indie Games Festival which had wrapped up in September. This envisaged three game developers awarded tickets to I/O 2017 developer conference of Google, a Tango Development kit together with a Razer Forge TV bundle.

100 Guesses Is Enough To Crack Your Password

In the past few years the constant ever growing threat of cyber attacks and rampant attack has brought a new sensibility among the avid internet users towards strengthening their password. So how people make their password stronger is not an enigma. Most of the people include a number of two along with punctuation in order to make it difficult for the bad guys to figure it out. Sometimes people even add the name of a site or their pet or some other tricks to spice the things up. But a recent study has shown that if you do things like these then it is simply not enough.

A team of four researchers from the Peking University along with Jeff Yan from Lancaster University has published a study wherein they were able to crack a number of passwords from lesser than 100 guesses. They had aptly titled their study as ‘targeted Online Password Guessing: An Underestimated Threat.

TarGuess designed to break password effortlessly

Typing in the guessed password for hundred times or less than hundred times will be considered as a time consuming affair. Therefore researchers have created an algorithm named TarGuess which has been able to notch 73% of success in selected test scenarios. This means that the algorithm has been successful in decoding the password of users in 100 guesses at the most. TarGuess works so well on the cracking the password because at first it indulge in getting to know the targets.

TarGuess is designed to make use of the personally identifiable information (PII) in order to guess the passwords. Once the target is identified TarGuess makes use of the available information present on the site such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Then it also makes use of the dozens of the massive breaches which has happened in the past revealing the personal details or account info of the users.

Reuse Password practice should be avoided

Most of the people tend to reuse password for different website and accounts which is a very bad idea when it comes to security. TarGuess can easily spot your email address when you use passwords like biglove123yahoo for yahoo account and a similar password for PayPal account. TarGuess will quickly decide to start guessing with biglove123paypal for the PayPal as the safe bet.

Do not substitute numbers for letters

A number of TV show hackers has popularized the usage of numbers as a substitute for letters. But this practice isn’t a great weapon for creating stronger passwords. Researchers have embedded TarGuess with more than a dozen of transformation rules which can easily help in decoding the numbers for their respective letters. Apart from that it can even do difficult transformation like swapping the word as for @s.

There is a similar kind of tool named Telepathwords created by Microsoft which has the ability to predict the next character within a password as user happens to type it. Therefore substituting habit should be avoided at all cost as it makes your passwords much easier to crack than you can even think of.

How to Make a Mirror That Tells You the Weather

Credit:Imgur

Cool Smart Mirror – Informs About Weather

Much progress has been taken place in the internet of things and with great headway in the field of technology; we tend to live in the future where everything has a tendency to be Wi-Fi compatible. A boring normal mirror can be boosted into a cool smart mirror which could inform you about the weather while one seems to be watching your reflection.

One of the most well-known stop in the making of everything in our lives `smart’, is the mirror.It could be expensive to get a smart mirror and hence creating one could be quite economical. All that one would need is some glass and some support for the mirror, together with a monitor for the display accompanied by a Raspberry Pi for the smarts.

Max Braun, Google engineer for instance had built a smart mirror earlier in the year and presently web developer, designer as well as tinkerer Zach had developed an identical gadget which tends to add voice commands together with verbal responses which seem to sound like a very simple J.A.R.V.I.S.

The manufacturers had developed their own mirror from a sheet of glass together with support. The option lies with the user intending to develop one by following the instruction or by purchasing a custom mirror which has been developed for this purpose.

One Way Mirror/Monitor/Computer

Thereafter one could build a frame for the mirror keeping in mind that the frame too needs to hold a monitor. This could be huge; hence one would require a thick frame to hide it. Moreover you would also require building a section in the frame to grip the mirror.

Eventually you need to install everything and plug it in and then you could have your own smart mirror. A magic mirror is essentially a frame, a one-way mirror, a monitor together with a computer – Raspberry Pi. All that is needed is a-

•  Computer screen which can be taken apart 
•  An observation mirror or a glass together with a mirror film 
•  A Raspberry Pi having a casing and micro USB power cord 
•  A SD card – 8GB 
•  Network adaptor, for Wi-Fi 
•  Wood frame – boards, screw, glue, paint, drill 
•  HDMI-to-VGA adaptor based on if the screen tends to have HDMI or not 
•  A mouse together with a keyboard with USB 
•  An alternate computer to fix OS and stuff

Enhancement of Self-Confidence

One ought to know not to take the measurements for the mirror till you have opened the screen which would tend to be smaller when the plastic is removed. Moreover when you have the screen, ensure that the contacts tend to be on one area on the sides and not straight back. Should they be straight back, one could envisage an issue if the need to hang it later on the wall arises.

The smart mirror has the tendency of providing plenty of useful data for those getting ready to leave their home in the morning, comprising of the date and time, together with the weather, future events on their calendar as well compliments. What one would need most in the morning more than a reminder of caffeine is an enhancement of self-confidence.

Amplify Your Mood with the New Google Home

Say hello to the new smart speaker from the tech-giant, the “Google Home” which is listed under the “Made by Google” product line up. Priced at around $129, the Google Home is a direct competition to the Amazon Echo which has been in the market for a while. So does it have what it takes to be the new favorite? Here’s a quick review of the latest Google Home!

Hardware Specifications: 

Standing at 5.62 inches or 143 mm tall and 3.79 inches or 96 mm in diameter and weighing at around 480 grams, it has a cylindrical shape with 4 LEDs on the top of the device programmed to indicate battery life. The upper surface is also equipped with a capacitive touch panel which allows play/pause music, adjusting volume or opening up the Google assistant. Powered by the same ARM processor and WIFI module present on the Chromecast, it is a pretty compact device that turns your residence into a Smart Home. The base comes with an interchangeable cover with various colors like carbon, copper, snow, marine, mango and violet.

Know Your Companion: 

Google Home seamlessly controls home devices and products like Nest Thermostat, Philips, IFTTT and SmartThings. It also behaves like a Chromecast and using voice commands it can stream audio and video to compatible devices. So if you feel lazy, you can just ask the device to adjust the room temperature or play your favorite TV show for you from your bed! It is rumored that Netflix is working on adding voice commands to their apps and soon Google Home will support it.

The Google assistant supports YouTube, Pandora, Google Play Music, IHeart Radio and Tunein. It comes with a feature viz. “My Day” which lets the assistant access information about the daily schedule of the user. Before heading out of the door you may ask “Ok Google, How’s the weather?” and it will say it loud for you. Consider a situation that you may have more than one speaker in your home; Google clarified that the devices comes with a dual microphone set up and the one which hears the voice best will wake up.

It is context aware which makes it far easier to talk to. Conversations with the device seem a lot easier compared to Amazon’s Echo. However it can access information from only one Google account. This may considered as a minute drawback as nowadays everyone has more than one personal account. Hope it gets fixed soon.

The Final Verdict 

So should you buy it? If you are out in the market for a portable speaker then the Google Home is definitely a wise choice. It has great quality sound output and a compact design. It excels in what it is meant to do i.e. provide a seamless interconnection between devices and play quality music. Yes, it doesn’t come cheap but it delivers for the price point. There are alternatives in the market but a product from a tech-giant like Google is always preferable.

Samsung Electronics to Acquire Artificial Intelligence Firm Viv

Samsung Acquiring US AI Platform Developer Viv Labs Inc

Recently the tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd had mentioned that it will be acquiring U.S. artificial intelligence – AI platform developer Viv Labs Inc. which is a firm run by co-creator of Apple Inc’s Siri voice assistant programme. Samsung had specified in a statement that it intends to integrate the AI platform of San Jose based company known as Viv, into the Galaxy smartphones and develop voice-assistant services to home appliances together with wearable technology devices.

The financial terms had not been disclosed. In order to make artificial intelligence adequately good in enabling consumers to interact with their devices much more naturally especially through voice, the technology firms have been locked in an increasingly heated race.

 Alphabet Inc’s Google has been considered to be the leader in AI though there are others such as Amazon.com, Apple and Microsoft who have also launched their own offerings comprising of voice-powered digital assistant.Samsung being the top smartphone maker in the world is also eager to differentiate its devices from phones to fridges by combining AI.

The achievement of Viv could benefit the Korean firm showing its effectiveness when the Google’s new Pixel smartphones equipped with the U.S. firm’s voice powered digital assistant tends to threaten Samsung together with the other smartphone manufacturers who seem to be mainly dependent on the Android operating platform.

Teach System in Creating New Apps

Samsung’s executive vice president, Rhee In-jong informed Reuters in an interview that Viv brings in a very unique technology enabling them to have an open system where any third party service and content providers could add their services to our devices’ interfaces. Rhee stated that Samsung needs to really revolutionise how its devices operate, moving in utilising voice instead of touch and that they cannot innovate using only in-house technology.

The chief executive of Viv and co-founder Dag Kittlause, a Siri co-creator together with other top managers at the firm would be continuing in managing the business independently after the acquisition. Rhee also informed Reuters that Samsung would continue in looking for acquisitions to strengthen its AI together with the other software capabilities without mentioning any targets. Viv’s AI platform enables developers to teach the system in creating new apps or to utilising the prevailing one and build an open ecosystem of intelligence.

Envisaging Future Beyond Apps

Kittlaus had mentioned in a statement that at Viv they are building the simplest system to talk to devices and services everywhere. They are envisaging a future which is beyond apps where one could get what they need instantly and easily irrespective of where they could be or what device is nearby.

Analyst at Edison Investment Research Richard Windsor told IBTimes UK that Viv is very good at interpreting and understanding natural speech and understands context with regards to earlier asked questions. It can unravel multi-part complex questions. If this tends to work as advertised, it would be better at natural language than Google Assistant.

Viv runs everything in the cloud which means the dislocation of the phones on Android of Samsung and everything else on Tizen could be less of an issue than what is at present. But this has placed Samsung in a position to compete directly against Google whose focus is to have its Google Assistant front and centre of every Samsung Android device according to Windsor.

3D Printing Technology to Create Shock Absorbing Skin

3D Printing Technology – Custom Shock Absorbing Dampers/Skins

Robots have a tendency to break and often it could be due to improper padding to protect them. However scientists of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT – CSAIL have come up with a new technique for 3D printing soft materials which tends to make robots safer as well as more accurate in their movements.

For instance, after 3-D printing a cube robot that moves on bouncing, the researchers prepared it with shock-absorbing `skins’ which utilises only about 1/250 of the amount of energy it transfers to the ground. The 3-D printing technology had been utilised to create custom shock absorbing dampers or skins in order to safeguard drones and robots.

Known as the `programmable viscoelastic material – PVM technique, the printing method of MIT provides object with the accurate stiffness or elasticity they may need. According to the MIT, the inspiration for the project had come from a predicament. Common damper resources usually tend to have solid as well as liquid assets which are made from compact, cheap and readily found items like rubber or plastic, but these seem difficult to customize. They cannot be created beyond specific sizes and dampening levels which are already in place.

Cube Shaped Robot – TangoBlack

This issue had been resolved by the team by utilising 3D printing technology in creating a bouncing cube shaped robot from a solid, a liquid together with a flexible rubber type material known as TangoBlack+. Besides absorbing shock, the cube robot is said to be capable of landing more accurately in consideration of its skin.Daniela Rus, Director of CSAIL who had supervised the project and co-wrote a related paper, commented that reduction tends to make the difference in preventing a rotor from breaking of a drone or a sensor from cracking when it tends to hit the floor.

 These materials permit 3-D print robots with visco-elastic properties which can be recorded by the user at print-time as part of the process of fabrication. MIT informed that the technology could be utilised in expanding the lifespan of delivery drones such as the ones that have been created by Amazon and Google. It could also be engaged on a more practical level for performing tasks like helping to protect phone or cushioning heads in helmets and the feet in shoes.

Skins Enables Robot to Land Four Times More Accurately

The skins also enable the robot to land almost four times more accurately recommending that related shock absorbers can be utilised in helping in lengthening the lifespan of delivery drones.The new paper was presented at IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Korea written by Rus together with three postdocs with lead authors Robert MacCurdy together with Jeffrey Lipton as well as third author Shuguang LiThe cube robot comprises of a rigid body, accompanied by two motors, a microcontroller, battery together with inertial measurement unit sensors.

Four layers of looped metal strip seem to serve as springs which tend to propel the cube. Hod Lipson, professor of engineering at Columbia University and co-author of `Fabricated: The New World of 3-D Printing’, states that by combining multiple materials in achieving properties which are beyond the range of the base material, this work drives the envelope of what’s probable to print. On top of that being able to do this in a single print-job, raises the bar for additive manufacturing’.

If the US Hacks Russia for Revenge, That Could Lead to Cyberwar

After Russia took claim of a recent upon the US government in the cyber field CIA wishes to send a message back by indulging in similar response. Russian hackers brought massive cyber attacks upon the US and try to bring huge interference during the US election through state sponsorship. CIA has a plan to bring the offensive back to the Russian by launching similar attacks which will only help worsening the relationship between the two countries.

Just last week a report was released by NBC News where it was specifically stated that CIA is actively working on the blueprints to launch one of the most covert cyber operation against Russia in near future. Few experts has suggested that CIA would be working towards leaking the letters and documents related to Vladimir in the similar fashion as Russians has released the documents related to the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Documents collected to be utilized during cyber attack

Retired security personnel has stated that over the years CIA has accumulated a wide number of documents and filed which can create trouble for the Russian and most importantly for Vladimir Putin. These documents basically deal with notorious dealing of the Putin and his associates in the last decade and beyond.

Ex-NSA Chief Michael Hayden has even went ahead to say that hacking foreign governments as well as political happens to be the past time of the CIA. Currently the relationship and atmosphere surrounding these two countries has become quite similar to the Cold War era but instead of a nuclear war threat of an impending cyber war looms in the air. Obama is going out of the office in November but even that has not stopped him from criticizing Putin in this regard.

It might even happen that all these theories about CIA possessing a truckload of information on Putin is simply a story to scare off Russians from causing anymore undue damage in the cyber field. If CIA plans are real then how useful will it be against Russia is yet to be asserted. A number of security experts has stated simply releasing damaging documents against Putin will not have any impact among the Russian government though his image might take a hit globally but nothing worthwhile can come out of it in the long run.

A warning for impending cyber war

US politicians are highly susceptible to the public pressure which can even spoil their future and political career if any documents are found against them. On other Putin isn’t much susceptible to such thing but Russian can utilize its highly robust internet surveillance plan to launch attack upon the US in the cyber field if it ever feel threatened then it will go on full-fledged cyber war against US.

The international paradigms changes just a few years ago the greatest threat to US cyber security was China. China has been accused of hacking into and tens of millions of US citizen’s security review files right from the US government online databases which tend to go decades back.

New Security Method Sends Codes through Your BODY

Low Frequency Transmission

Wi-Fi together with Bluetooth are said to be areas for hackers since these techniques enables easy and anonymous stealing of passwords. In order to stall these activities, a group of students have come out with a system which tends to utilise low frequency transmission to send passwords via the human body.

On reversing the same system utilised by fingerprint sensors, they have achieved a method to generate wireless data transmission between the smartphones and the other devices. Senior author Shyam Gollakota, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington (UW) stated that till now, fingerprint sensors had been utilised as input devices.

He further added that for the first time that fingerprint sensors can be re-purposed to send out information that is confined to the body. Fingerprint sensors had been designed for the purpose of receiving data about one’s finger which is utilised to authenticate identity. However, the UW team inverted the procedurealtering the technology into an output which tends to push the data comprising of a password or access code from the smartphone to the other device.

Works in Various Postures

Co-lead author Mehrdad Hessar, a UW electrical engineering doctoral student explain that if one intends to open a door utilising an electronic smart lock he can touch the doorknob and touch the fingerprint sensor on the phone and transmit secret credentials via the body to open the door without leaking the personal information over the air.

In experiments, the researchers had demonstrated this system utilising the Touch ID sensor of an iPhone 5s and iPhone 6s, together with the trackpad of a Lenovo laptop as well as other fingerprint scanners. During the evaluation, around ten subjects had been utilised and varied in height, weight and body type, which were capable of generating usable on-body transmissions.

The team also envisaged positive results even when the participants were moving, like walking around or moving their arms. Co-lead author, Vikram Iyer, a UW electrical engineering doctoral student commented that they had shown that it works in various postures like sitting, standing and sleeping. Good strong signal is obtained throughout the body. The receivers could be anywhere, either on the chest, hands or legs and still tends to function.

Generate Low Frequency

This ground-breaking project began by analysing smartphone sensors by the team in order to detect which one tends to generate low-frequency less than 30 megahertz and travels well through the body though does not propagate over the air. It was only fingerprint sensors and touchpads which were found to meet up with all these requirements.

These methods tend to generate signals in the 2 to 10 megahertz range and transfers energy in an electric network to sense where in the space your finger would be. Moreover, it also identifies the ridges as well as valley which form the unique fingerprint patterns. The procedure which the UW utilised is a sequence of finger scans to encode and to transmit data.

With a finger scan it tends to correlate to a 1-bit of digital data and without the scan correlates to a 0-bit. The team had also succeeded in bit rates of 50 bits per second on laptop touchpads and 25 bits per second with fingerprint sensors which were adequately fast in sending a simple password or numerical code through the body and to a receiver in seconds.

Computer Engineers Boost App Speeds by More than Nine Percent

New Method of Boosting Speed of Computer Application – 9%

A new method of boosting the speed of computer application by 9% more has been discovered by researchers from North Carolina State University and Samsung Electronics.The developments are the cause of technologies which permit computer processor to recover data much more efficiently.

To perform operations, the computer processors need to recover the data from memory which is stored in off-chip `main’ memory. The data which is utilised the most is also stored temporarily in a die-stacked dynamic random access memory – DRAM cache that is placed nearer to the process which can be recovered much faster.

The data in the store is organized in large blocks or macro-blocks so that the processor identifies where to locate whichever data is required. But for any specified operation, the processor may not need all the data in a macro-block and recovering the non-essential data tends to be time consuming.

For efficiency of the process, researchers have established a procedure wherein the cache learns over a period of time which data the processor would require from each macro-block. This enables the cache to perform two things. Firstly it can compress the macro-block recovering only the relevant data that permits the cache to send data efficiently to the processor.

Dense Footprint Cache

Secondly, since the macro-block has a tendency to be compressed, it tends to free up space in the cache which can be utilised to store the other data that the processor would probably require. This approach had been investigated by the researchers known as Dense Footprint Cache in a processor and memory simulator.

On running 3 billion instructions for each application that had been tested through the simulator, the researchers observed that the Dense Footprint Cache had raced up application by around 9.5% in comparison to the state-of-the-art challenging systems for managing die-stacked DRAM.

Die-stacked DRAM technology permits a huge Last level Cache – LLC which offers high bandwidth data admission to the processor but needs a large tag array. This could take a major amount of space of the on-chip SRAM budget.

 In order to reduce the SRAM overhead, systems such as Intel Haswell tends to depend on huge block –Mblock size. One disadvantage of large Mblock size is that several bytes of Mblock may not be required by the processor though are drawn in the cache.

Last Level Cache Miss Ratios

Dense Footprint Cache utilised 4.3% less energy. The researcher also observed that the Dense Footprint Cache had a substantial enhancement with regards to `last-level cache miss ratios’. Last-level cache misses takes place when the processors attempts to recover the data from the store though the data is not there thereby compelling the processor to recover the data from off-chip main memory.

 These cache misses tend to make the operation far less competent.The Dense Footprint Cache also tends to reduce last-level cache miss ratios by about 43%. The work had been featured in a paper - `Dense Footprint Cache: Capacity-Efficient Die-Stacked DRAM Last Level Cache’ which was presented at the International Symposium on Memory Systems in Washington, D.C. on October 3 – 6.

The lead author of the paper is said to be Seunghee Shin, a Ph.D. student at NC State and the paper had been co-authored by Yan Solihin. Yan Solihin is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State and Sihong Kim of Samsung Electronics.