3D Printers Can Copy Your Loved One's Head - As a Cremation Urn

3D technology has come along a long way from being able to create a 3 dimensional image of the fetus to using the 3D technology in the 3D printers. These printers are being used for a variety of the reasons like printing of shoe burgers to printing the cars according to the requirements of the customer.

The extent or the reach of 3D technology can be felt now when we can easily add the features and the shapes of your loved ones on the cremation urns. It might sound off or may have come as a surprise for many people, but believe it or not, Vermont-based Cremation Solutions are now offering 3D printed cremation urns which hare custom made according to the request. This cremation urn will have the image of the people you love. However, mind you, this imaging is not restricted to the people you love; you can get the image of your favorite celebrity or even Obama, the president of the United States of America.

What difference will it make? 

Vermont-based Cremation Solutions have come up with a unique solution for the people who are looking to honor their loved ones in a unique way and not going through the traditional metal or wooden urns, meant for storing the ashes. According to the information available on the company’s website, they are using the most modern technology to develop the urn, which will have the closest possible resemblance to the deceased one. This will be carried out by using photographs and other facial recognition software’s, which are meant to transform the 2D image into a 3D sculpture and that too with finesse. Adding to this advantage, the company also offers “erase blemishes”, to present your loved ones in the best possible look ever.

Cremation Urn

According to the Company, the urn will come in two different sizes. The first size is 6-inches, meant for storing only a portion of the remains of the deceased, but the second urn comes in a size of 11 inches with the potential of holding all the remains or ashes of a deceased person.

The 6-inch urn has been given the name of keepsake sized personal urn. By this time, we can clearly understand that these urns will not be easy on the pockets. The smallest size of the urn has been priced at $600 while the largest one can go up to $2600. On the downside, the hair of the person has not been included but the company has stated that they can add artificial hair to give the urns a more realistic look.

While it might sound strange, but a 3D printed urn clearly shows the growth in the technology. It has already been said that the world will change due to 3D technology and there will be a rise in business as more companies are focusing on matching the needs of the customers with their service.

The Company has also stated that they are offering the service for not only the deceased ones, but also for a person who can make their own urns as well. People always plan their cremation to take the burden away from their family and nothing will add to their memories than the urn reminding them about you.

Sony’s Experimental E-paper SmartWatch

Rumours have been circulating regarding Sony working on an experimental Smartwatch which uses e-paper as display and e-paper is the same technology used on e-reader screens. Sony has developed this new entry as part of an initiative to experiment with the use of the material for fashion products.

According to Wall Street Journal, the FES Watch, an e-paper watch which appeared online somewhere in September is an offshoot of the Playstation maker and it is said that Sony has kept its involvement a secret to gauge public view instead has used the name Fashion Entertainments to move the product ahead. However, the video is in Japanese but the style of the FES watch is not deniable. The prominent feature of the watch beside the use of e-paper is that of the animation which is not just limited to the screen but the whole strap can be customised.

The tech in the watch is minimal with no real features to talk about rather than telling the time resulting in a battery life which could last up to two months on a single charge. Gadget expert, Stuart Miles from Pocket lint has described the latest device as `retro and cool’. He states that `one of his predictions for the next year is that fashion is going to play a huge part in shaping the tech industry and having a phone which is big and square is one thing but if it is actually worn, it needs to look good’.

Watch Face and Straps - E-paper Display

Compared to the technology used in e-book readers like the amazon’s Kindle, the watch face as well as the straps has an e-paper display which means that the watch can change between various different styles of watch face and strap design. Sony has kept the development of the watch very low and has opted in using a spin-off division known as Fashion Entertainment to work on the device.

According to Wall Street Journal it was reported that to fund the watch’s creation, Fashion Entertainment organised a crowd funding campaign and raised around 3.5 million yen. An anonymous reported informed the newspaper that `they had hidden Sony’s name since they wanted to test the real value of the product and whether there would be demand for the concept’, while a spokeswomen for Sony also confirmed to BBC that Fashion Entertainment is a division of the company’s New Business Creation department and are striving to work on various e-paper prototypes.

Release of FES Watch yet to be Provided 

Other projects which Fashion Entertainments have worked on e-paper include bow-ties, shoes and glass though the only drawback of using e-paper instead of, for instance liquid crystal displays – LCD which is a limitation on possible features due to the limitations of what e-paper could display.

However Mr. Miles states that he did not envision it being so significant a drawback for e-paper technology wearable. He further adds that on looking at traditional watches presently, they only tell the time and the people are happy with it, bringing about awareness that one of the popular smartwatches available in the market, like the Pebble, uses e-paper. The release of the FES Watch has not been provided by Sony yet.

Scientists Predict Green Energy Revolution after Incredible New Graphene Discovery

Graphene – Positively Charged Hydrogen Atoms/Protons

It has been discovered by researchers that graphene enables positively charged hydrogen atoms or proton to pass through it inspite of being completely impermeable to other gases inclusive of hydrogen. Recently discovered is a type of carbon graphite, the material in a pencil lead, having unexpected properties that could create a revolution in the development of green energy and electric cars.

According to scientist, the implications are immense since it could increase the efficiency of the fuel cells generating electricity directly from hydrogen. This breakthrough has brought about an expectation on the prospect of extracting hydrogen fuel from air and burns it as a carbon free source of energy in fuel cell in order to produce electricity as well as water without any damaging waste products.

There is some amount of hydrogen in the atmosphere which ends up on the other side in a reservoir and this hydrogen collected in the reservoir can be used to burn it in the same fuel cell in making electricity according to Professor Sir Andrei Geim of Manchester University. Since the discovery, ten years ago, graphene has amazed the scientisit which is the thinnest known material, million times thinner than human hairbut more than 200 times stronger than steel as well as the best conductor of electricity in the world.

Permeable to Protons

Till date, being permeable to protons was not taken into consideration as a practical possibility but Sir Andre’s international team of scientists who shares the 2010 Nobel Prize for his work on graphene has shown that the one atom thick crystal acts as a chemical filter which enables the free passage of protons but forms an impenetrable barrier to other atoms and molecules.

Sir Andre states that `there have been three or four scientific papers before about the theoretical predictions on how easy or how hard it would be for a proton to go through graphene and these calculations give numbers that take billions and billions of years for a proton to go through this same membrane. It is just so dense an electronic field it just doesn’t let anything through. But it is a question of numbers, no more than that and this makes a difference between billions of years and a reasonable time for permeation. There is no magic’.

Graphene Tough and Light 

Graphene being tough and stronger than steel is incredibly light and is considered the first two dimensional material since it forms sheets of crystal which are one atom thick. Besides it is also a good conductor of electricity and is useful for anything related to electronics, like bendable mobile phones, camera and wearable electrical devices attached to clothing.

Moreover, Graphene is also being utilised as a new material for membrane connected in separating liquids and could be used in purifying water in the developing world or also to create efficient desalination plants. Scientists are of the opinion that graphene’s high strength together with the low weight could be harnessed for new composite material and polymers for the transport industry making travel much safer and fuel efficient and it seems that graphene could also be used to generate upgraded type of generating clean electricity with the use of hydrogen fuel cells as well as technology in harvesting hydrogen fuel from air.

Now Get The Latest Tech News Through Your Facebook Application

FB Techwire, is the latest page launched by the company completely dedicated for highlighting all the tech news and that too in your timeline. The latest page is an expansion of the FB Newswire. This page will certainly be an advantage for the reporters and journalists who are looking forwards to exposing the biggest tech news possible from around the world.

What is Techwire all about? 

According to the company, just like Newswire, even Techwire, will be carrying out verification and aggregation of the best of the contents available around the world in a manner, which will allow the common people to understand the concept and conversation pertaining to the news.

In this way, we can clearly see that it is very much similar to the other page, but the difference comes in terms of the focus area. Earlier this year, Facebook's director of news and global media partnerships, Andy Mitchell, stated that they are thinking about an official website (Facebook) as a main source of news and associated contents. The content has been made journalist friendly, which will enable them to scan and extract the relevant data they are looking for. They are hoping that their new page Techwire will also be accepted in the same manner ad given the same importance.

What is the challenge? 

The main challenge that will be faced by the company will be to persuade the tech journalists to use their page for posting the latest news instead of using Twitter as the main platform. Facebook is known to be the largest drivers of the traffic among all the social media platforms. They know that technology draws a lot of the audience and Facebook is looking forwards to using this opportunity.

The Company’s aim is to offer more than just posting your pictures and sharing your friend’s status. The Techwire page is dedicated towards highlighting all the incidents in the technology sector. The page is powered by Storyful which is known for checking the accuracy and authenticity of the posts. Facebook has been working on grabbing every opportunity possible, starting with the introduction of Hashtags as well as trending topics. Facebook has more users than Twitter, so the company does have the capability to disseminate more news than Twitter.

With the launch of Techwire, the company can extend their media coverage as well. Newswire has already reached the peak and already been picked up by The New York times, BBC, The Washington and other publications. Facebook has opened up a new tool for the benefit of the journalist, who can do their job on a much bigger platform.

They want to beat every other site and become the most go to site for the latest tech news. The company is always towards starting their own authentic content and started a tech-news feed. Facebook has become one of the most important platforms for journalists and publishers. The Facebook user’s will have to subscribe to this page to get alerts of the latest tech news.

Facebook Launches New Groups App For iOS And Android

Facebook is one app, which can be found on every Smartphone. On 18 November, Facebook announced the launch of groups for iOS and Android. This group with have functionality very similar to that of the app due to all being connected to the same social media platform. Users will be able to download Android app directly from Google play store, whereas iPhone users get this app from the Apple’s App Store.

What is the group all about? 

Compared to the regular Facebook website accessible on the PC and on the Facebook mobile app, the group app will have lot in stored for the users, which extends more than basic functions like chatting, discussion, collaboration, and planning. Groups for iOS and Android the users to choose between different groups, they will be able to join new groups, manage their notifications, and learn about additional features and contents.

According to Facebook, the main idea for building this new app came from the people who are interact more in their groups. The whole objective is to give people an app, which will provide them an easier and faster mean of interacting in their chosen groups. However, people need to remember that, Facebook is in no mood to remove the group feature out of their main app as they did with the messenger application.

The advantage of this app is that, if you already have Facebook main app and messenger app on your phone, then when you trying to login to Group app, you will get a notification asking if you would like to login as the same person. The account holder of the Facebook will not have to login separately in all these apps of Facebook. In the Facebook group app, the users will get their groups aligned according to their preference and usage. This will allow them to move easily between each of these groups. Since all these apps use the same icon (Facebook), notification are received in the same form. However, the user’s can change this in their settings option.

According to the recent performance report, the company claimed that as of Q3, 2014, they noticed 700 million people using the groups every month. The Company is not considering this app has any experimental launch but considering it part of their main operation on the line of messenger app.

However, as this app has been developed by the same company, which produced many experimental apps, suggesting that Facebook is still not very confident about this new app. The company is releasing the app on iOS and Android platform all around the world, but they do not intend to get windows anytime soon. Although the company has not made any upgrades in the Group feature but it is still a very popular feature of the main app. For a long time people expected upgrades to come out and the rumor mills indicated the time for September.

For PC users, they should soon be expecting notification about groups that you can join.

3D LED Printer Makes a Contact Lens Display Possible

3D Printed Contact Lenses 

According to researchers, 3D printed contact lenses can now be used like Google Glass or head up display showing the wearers’ data as well as monitor their health. 3D printer build up metallic or polymer material to form objects when instructed by computer code that conveys to the machine the desired dimension together with the appearance of the product, though this machine is more complex.

Researchers have started constructing prototypes for contact lens displays, and their biggest impediment was parts of fabrication which on a theoretical level is not difficult to build display in a contact lens but building and placing the tiny interrelated parts on a tiny polymer disk is a difficult task.

The 3D LED printer is a 3D quantum dot LED printer which on breaking the concept of an LED to its most basic form, researchers envisaged that they need not think of LEDs like small plastic light bulbs but stacks of interacting substance.

The printer on its part could lay down an LED with a sandwich type of a structure which is not unlike a single pixel in a display of OLED and get emissive layer which is nanoparticles of cadmium selenide that is referred to as quantum dots.

Active Approach

The quantum dots or nano sized crystals of certain substance exhibit unique or particular useful electronic properties. These are sandwiched between one layer which can donate electrons and one layer that accepts them and the entire process can be fused to a surface due to the bottom adhesive layer that is activated with the help of UV light.

Moreover, the printed LEDs are ultra-thin, almost transparent as well as flexible. The transfer of electrons through quantum dot layer causes the dots to produce photons of light and the main advantage of it is that they can be made to emit light at very specific wavelength or colours.

It means that the quantum dot screens can display more recreations of colour accurately but it would not be the first priority for contact lens display which will get static, sensible image in the user’s eye.The pixel on the other hand in a contact lens display could take one of two forms and the active approach uses individual pixel as a light source and emits photons in the eye, creating an image directly.

Passive Approach 

The passive approach on the other hand uses less power though it would be more difficult using individual pixel to bend the incoming light from the environment to portray a new picture on the retina. The issue with active approach is that it needs a good amount of power to go on and wireless power collection relies partially on physical size of the collecting antenna.

When the antenna must be physically fitted in a contact lens, it creates a hard upper limit on power supply. It is unlikely to start printing smartphone screens pixel by pixel since manufacturing in bulk would be quicker and cheaper and while doing so, things like putting LEDs in circular area of contact lens less than 2 mm, it could be helpful. The cost of the prototype print cost about $20,000 to create though there is a possibility in reduction of cost in the near future.

Frontal Car Crash Test gives Several Top Manufacturers poor rating, while Toyota Receives Good

The frontal crash test by Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has become a serious benchmark for ensuring traveller’s safety since it made the first appearance. Nowadays car manufacturers from U.S. is checking the newly build car’s efficiency to reduce the damage when it faces frontal crash with another vehicle or tree or poll. Recently IIHS performed a frontal overlap car test with four majorly sold minivans in U.S., which are The Chrysler Group LLC Dodge Grand Caravan, Toyota Motor Corp Sienna, Nissan Motor Co Quest and The Chrysler Town & Country.

Minivans are hugely popular in U.S. villages and small town because of its capability to carry small to large carriages and also almost all delivery agencies use this type of minivan for transportation in U.S. towns. Crash test is being done to check how the car defence prohibits the hit to make severe damage. According to the test report, except Toyota Motor Corp Sienna, rest of the candidate minivans performed very poorly in the test. Toyota’s minivan joins Honda Motor Co Odyssey, which received ‘best safe pick-up’ rating from IIHS earlier.

How the test is being performed?

This test by IIHS only replicates the actual event of what happens during a road accident involving the frontal part of the car. In this test, around 25% of the front of a car hits an obstacle at an average speed of 40 miles per hour. The camera and sensors installed at different parts of the car, evaluates the car’s response to the hit.

Detailed report:

Minivans are popular mainly within parents and family-minded customers because of its road safety feature. According to the test report, three of four candidate models, namely The Chrysler Group LLC Dodge Grand Caravan, Nissan Motor Co Quest and The Chrysler Town & Country, when hit with an overlap obstacle, showed severe damage to the car and allowed high degree of intrusion involving the driver’s area.

A spokesperson from the institute stated that the Nissan minivan structure just collapsed like ‘a house of cards’. The Chrysler automobile minivans also showed severe damage as the steering wheel moved out of the coordinated place. This results in making the airbag less efficient and simultaneously driver’s head hits the dashboard. IIHS test report given The Chrysler Group LLC Dodge Grand Caravan,Nissan Motor Co Quest and The Chrysler Town & Country very poor rating, while Toyota Motor Corp Sienna received an acceptable rating prescribing the car safety to be ‘Okay’.

Toyota Sienna was also ranked in ‘Top Safety Pick up+’ car list, as it warns the driver prior to any possible front collision and also features an automatic brake system.

Response from the manufacturer:

After the release of test report, concerned manufacturers released mixed responses. Nissan released an official statement which says the company will continue the revision of the models and will improve the safety. While Chrysler automobile group stated that this single test cannot state their car to be damage prone.

BMW Decides To Manufacture the Takata Airbag Inflators in Germany

The Germany based BMW has announced its plans to help the Japanese counterpart company in delivering the replacement inflators quicker by assisting them in moving their production facilities from Mexico to Germany. BMW has explained that their decisions are in wake of the serious issues regarding the quality of the manufacturing at the Mexico plant raised by the U.S. safety regulators.

What Made BMW Take such Dramatic Steps? 

Automobile manufacturer who actively uses the Takata inflators also includes the Toyota Motor Corp. The Takata inflators seem to have the potential of blowing up with excessive force and spraying occupant with deadly sharp metals. It should also be noted that it isn’t feasible to switch to other suppliers in order to meet the demands for the replacement parts at this juncture.

Therefore the U.S. safety regulators are lending a helping hand by supporting BMW efforts in shifting the inflator production plant from Mexico to Takata plant in Freiberg, Germany. The Takata inflators are being currently investigated in at least five death cases in U.S.

German Facility Promises To Boost Production Capacity

Japanese company has the ability to produce 200 inflators per hour on its single production and at the moment it just has two of them in active use. This concludes that that it would be able only 1 million replacements in next five months at this snail pace. But the demand stands at 32 million for replacements parts. Therefore this shifting of production facility is taking place in order give a genuine boost to the production capacity of Takata.

Takata Runs into Serious Trouble

U.S. regulators have asked several questions relating to the Mexian plant production quality defects. The officials from Takata, Chrysler Group, Honda Motor Co and NHTSA would be testifying to a U.S. Senate panel in this regard on Thursday. Furthermore NHTSA has also ordered Takat and five other automobile manufactures to expand the U.S. recall of vehicles with the defective air bags.

Automobile Manufacturers Look For Alternatives

Companies like BMW, Toyota and Ford Motor Co are looking for quick solution to the problem of getting replacement parts. They are planning to buy replacement parts from the rival supplier but even such option is unviable as it would more than a year to get an alternate inflator production line in place.

Some of the automakers are looking to use completely new parts from other suppliers but they soon found that doing such a thing would require bringing in extensive changes in their cars. Companies like Honda, Toyota and Ford had considered this option. However problem would not cease to exist by implementing this as the suppliers would still fall short of keeping up with the demand. Even the companies go ahead with this proposition and build cars as per the exact specifications of the new inflators still it will take around a year to get it in the market.

Therefore the companies like Nissan, Mazda Motor and General Motors have dropped this idea and hope that Takata would be able to solve its supply problems in due time.

Will Apple's Next iPhone Capture DSLR Quality With 2 Lenses?

iPhone is one of the most loved brand and trusted among the people around the world and this could be the reason why rumors always keeping along with the brand. Although Apple has just released their latest version, iPhone 6, there are already market rumors that the company is working on the next version of the phone having two lenses on the camera, which will produce images with DSLR-quality.

How it all started? 

This rumor was sparked after a post on podcast entered by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber. John is highly respected Apple-focused commentator and well connected in their ecosystem. He is known to have never made any unwarranted predictions. In the month of August, John posted an update indicating that Apple is working on their wearable device thing and it is expected to be released in September. However, as people started getting curious about the same, he later stated that the post was just a joke and was meant to poke fun of the Motorola's smart watch, which resembled a flat tire. Whether rumor or joke; the company indeed unveiled their wearable smart watch in the month of September.

No damage done due to rumors

These rumors have not done any serious damage to the company and been told in a simple statement to the public. It all started with the statement indicating the news of the company working on upgrading the phone’s camera to two lenses. The lenses will be able to capture SLR quality images. As per to John, the new camera will not be able to replicate the SLR quality at technical level, but this sure is a huge step from the company’s end.

So what is special? 

John backed away from any kind of comparison being made between iPhone and SLR or DSLR on technical basis. The main point of this post was to highlight the current iPhone users will be able to migrate to the new high-end camera. Apple’s iPhone is known to capture the best of the images and one of the best camera due to which many people have stopped using the stand-alone camera. If the rumors have to be true, then this giant leap in terms of capturing moving images without any blur and ability to zoom will be enough to encourage many iPhone users to upgrade their iPhone 6 to the newest version.

If Apple is considering this option then, they will not be the first one to try this option out. HTC has already used the dual-camera system in their HTC One M8. HTC phone allows the users to change their focus angle even after snap has been taken.

If Apple is working on taking this new leap in terms of improving the quality of their camera by using CMOS imaging sensor system of Sony, then this move will be wholeheartedly welcomed by their customers. Although it is unlikely that the company has get the DSLR quality in their iPhone, but any change will be enough to spark the excitement in the customers towards upgrade.

China Suspected Of Attacking USPS and NOAA

Last week, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United States Postal service had confirmed that that there were attacks on their computer system. These cyber attacks went on for a month and suspected to be originated in China. According to USPS, these attacks compromised the private information of nearly 800,000 employees. The type of information that was at risk includes date of birth, names, addresses, date of employments and Social Security numbers. This information’s is very important as anyone can forge and influence the service as well as other government agencies.

What is at risk? 

According to CTO, Greg Kazmierczak, Wave systems, specific details about any individual can be risky as the attackers can use them to spear phishing attacks later on. According to Eric Chiu, the president and founder of HyTrust, apart from attacking the companies, this personal data can be harmful to the employees against themselves. He stated that compared to the customer’s date, employee data is more valuable as the companies have a record of their social security, finance and home. This can help the attackers to forge the identity.

NOAA Breach: 

Even though USPS had not pointed fingers at anyone pertaining to this attack, but China is being suspected behind these attacks. According to CEO of ThreatTrack, Julian Waits Sr., this revelation could not have come at any bad time, now the customers will get concerned about their identity and their personal security. NOAA was called on the carpet regarding the breach originated from the Chinese systems. They informed Frank R. Wolf from the Virginia Republican that they sure that their systems were hacked by China. However, they were unable to confirm that this attack specifically originated in China.

The Breach Diary: 

1. 10th Nov- USPS confirms the cyber intrusion and gave an estimation of 2.9 million affected customers.

2. 10th Nov- Sarah Hendrickson appointed as the chief of security.

 3. 11th Nov- Microsoft fixed a 19-year-old bug, which can be used by the hackers to launch drive-by attacks.

4. 12th Nov- 24,105 stories about data breach was reported by the Deloitte

According to another news report, after hacking into USPS, days after this event, hackers broke into U.S. National Weather Service computers. This attack was confirmed by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This attack took place just two days after the attack on the USPS. According to the American media reports, many of the NOAA services were put under temporary maintenance or were taken down temporarily. One of the representatives of the company told the Washington post that they know it was an attack from the hackers and it originated from China.

The agency had failed to inform appropriate authorities regarding these attacks. Although there is enough evidence pertaining to these attacks, NOAA refused to comment on the issue pertaining to the Chinese attacks on the United States Satellite network and weather conditions. They haven’t confirmed if this attack affected their notification or impacted any classified data.

HBO Go Lands on Xbox One

On Thursday, it was confirmed by Microsoft that the cable network's a la carte online streaming service, HBO Go, would now be available on the Xbox One gaming console. According to the reports, Microsoft had already announced that Xbox One users will be able to access the HBO Go by end of 2014.

HBO Go: 

HBO Go is one stop destination for all the viewers of HBO, as it gives them an access to an entire range of library starting from the "The Sopranos" to the most thrilling "Game of Thrones”. It has to be noticed that HBO go is only available to the paid channel subscribers. While on one side HBO Go was unavailable on the latest hardware from both Microsoft and Sony, it was available on their previous hardware like last-generation Xbox 360 from Microsoft to PlayStation 3 from Sony.

According to HBO's vice president of digital domestic network distribution, Jeff Dallesandro, the users of the Xbox One will be able to access to the action world with a series of films from HBO. The users will be able to Kinect with the films. This remark was considered quite witty as it was referring to the Kinect voice-controlled camera by Microsoft, which enables the users to switch off apps and even play games.

The existing library of Microsoft consists of companies like Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video and Netflix and now it is joined by HBO Go. This comes at a retail cost of $350 and that too after a price of $50 price cut announced by Microsoft until the end of 2014.

Market competition: 

There has been an increased competition in the market since many console makers are aggressively investing in their product marketing aiming to target both entertainment hub as well as video game players. Although companies like Microsoft and Sony continue to grow, they are always looking for an prospect to enter the living room area of nearly 10 million homes in United States of America. According to Gfk, market researcher, one of the best or most common device through which user can view Netflix on a TV screen will be the gaming console.

Microsoft and Sony have been facing problems in terms of time management as it takes long time to provide media apps on any of their latest devices. If the viewers do not have access to HBO Go, they are forced to use streaming devices and web browsers and it takes them away from PlayStation and Xbox. HBO Go is one of the most searched by customers who are looking for purchasing streaming devices. Fire TV stick, which was recently launched by Amazon lacks HBO Go and it clearly highlights the difficulty that is faced by big companies to acquire the rights for HBO movies and shows.

HBO has already announced that they are working on releasing a stand alone online service, which is meant for the users without subscription to the cable service, and this is completely different from HBO Go.

Reduce the Risk of Mobile Radiation- Follow These Tips

In order to carry out data transmission, Radio frequency Energy or RF is emitted by the mobile phones. Radio frequency Energy waves are said to be travelling in the form of electromagnetic fields. Other radiations like Gamma and X-Ray are known to cause interference or ionization in human body, but contrary to this RF waves do not cause any such problems.

Whom to trust: 

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already said that the RF radiations produced by the mobile phones are at very low level hence not capable enough to cause any serious health problems. Probably the same would have been told about Alcohol and Cigarettes. Contrary to FDA, World Health Organization (WHO) has said that the electromagnetic waves, which are produced by the mobiles phones, are considered carcinogenic to human beings and this has been very much classified by the “International Agency for Research on Cancer”.

No one can assure whether mobile phones are threatening or not. If you ask a common person, excessive use of phones have really given headache and restlessness to them. So what can we do? Following the below mentioned tips will come handy:

Always buy branded phones: 

One of the best means of prevention from the dangerous radiations emitted from phones. There are many phones, which have been approved by the authorities. Some of the example brands are Apple, Samsung, Nokia, HTC, Sony, among others.

Always check the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) value: 

Most of the time, this information can be found on the setting tab of the menu. If you are unable to locate the same then you need to dial *#07# on your mobile and the information will be relayed. If the phone does not relay the information, it means that the brand is not following with local and International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) standards.

Headsets: 

If you are a person who is not able to invest in branded phones and have rather settled down with a Chinese make phone, it is time to start using headphones. This is only way you can avoid using the phone directly close to your head. Do not think of getting a Bluetooth device as that also will emit radiations to affect your health.

Switch of the phone when not using it: 

It is not possible to switch off the phone during office hours, but is always important to switch off the phone at bedtime and not to sleep with the phone close to you.

Keep the phone away from body: 

Always try to avoid keeping phone close to you. If the phone is in pocket always, keep the screen towards your body to ensure radiations move out of the body.

Using mobile phones continuously can never be deemed correct; it is common understanding among the users. However, sometime there are situations wherein you might have situations wherein you have to carry your phone or use it most of the time. Just try to follow above steps to avoid any future damage.

Device Could Make It Easier To Find Your Veins

Many a times we tend to face shortage of blood for life saving transfusions due to shortage of donors for the same. At times they may be discouraged due to the endurance of being poked by the nurse at several areas of their arm with a sharp needle to locate a vein which is not a very pleasant experience for them. But now with a device which shows a glowing map of the veins the process is made simple and trials of the technology have made headways in Australia.

A discovery has been made by scientists to find a way in locating the veins instead of poking around the body to find a spot. The Australian Red Cross Blood service is now utilising the near infrared light device which locates blood in studying whether it is able to locate hard to find veins resulting in less tension, making it likely for donors to come back and donate again.

The Blood service states that it would test 300 first time donors and 600 returning blood donors in the age group of 18 – 30 on several devices from different Australian providers with a hope that the vein visualization device, functions by waving a near infrared light source above the naturally deoxygenated haemoglobin in the body wherein it absorbs that light and the veins portrayed in glowing green.

Machine Safe – Adjusted to Individual Preferences

The machine is safe though it is suggested to avoid staring directly at them. Moreover, it can also be adjusted to individual preferences. This technology functions by beaming harmless near infrared light at the arm and our veins tend to contain lot of deoxygenated haemoglobin and since it is absorbed by infrared light, it develops an image of where the veins lie under the skin. Besides, the device could be used anywhere and is already being used widely in hospitals as well as pathology clinics around the world making it easier for people to have blood taken though it will also be helpful for generous donors in donating blood.

The first blood bank service in the world is the Australian Red Cross who have tried this technology and has started using in its Sydney clinics. Though it tends to look like a small radioactive, it is very safe and works by shining near infrared light on the arm that gets absorbed by the deoxygenated haemoglobin which floats around the blood and develops a glowing green image of the veins which the nurse can utilise in guiding the needle.

Reduced Anxiety/ No Painful Experience

With the introduction of this technology, which is already being used in several clinics all over the globe, enabling and assisting practitioners in taking blood samples, it will help in reducing anxiety of going through painful experience of locating vein thus enabling generous donors to return.

According to senior researcher at Australian Red Cross Blood Service, Dr Dan Waller, he states that `they are keen to retain young donors and it is important to test if this technology could help them to do that and are interested to see if the technology improves the donation experience in young people and if it increases their likelihood to return to make repeat donations’.

Graphene-Based Supercapacitors for Battery-Free Electric Cars

Photo credit: AlexanderAlUS, CC

Change in Power Battery free Electric Cars

Latest technology has brought about a change in power battery free electric cars within five years with scientists developing graphene based super capacitors which are light and can be used to create electric vehicles that are powered by their own parts of the body rather than the batteries.

Electric cars is considered as the future of sustainable transport but are held back due to the fact they need heavy, slow releasing batteries to power them and the top end Lithium-ion batteries available in the market tend to charge really slowly besides weighing a lot.

A better option is to use supercapacitors devices which could release a large energy burst though they are difficult to store much energy as batteries and hence plenty of them would be needed to power a car. Scientist have worked their way to combine batteries and supercapacitors to make batteries powerful as well as lighter in the shortest term though the ultimate goal is to create super capacitor which would also store a large amount of energy.

Since batteries seem to be the limiting element in the popularity of electric car, they are also one of the most expensive components of the vehicle, having limited range when compared to gasoline powered vehicles.

Supercapacitors Film to replace Battery

There have been remarkable changes recently wherein a team of researchers have developed a supercapacitor film which could replace the requirements of battery within the next five years and the collaboration between scientist at Queensland University of Technology and Rice University has resulted in two papers, published in Nanotechnology and Journal of Power Sources.

The supercapacitors comprises of two layers of graphene having an electrolyte layer at the centre and while the film is strong and very thin, it is able to release a large amount of energy in the shortest possible time, which is a necessity.

The ordinary batteries would take a huge amount of space while the super capacitor film can be integrated in several areas of the vehicle like the roof, floor, doors and the body panels.

The super capacitors of this size would be capable of providing the vehicle with the right amount of energy which the vehicle would be needing while at the same time making the vehicle much lighter.

A Graphene – Charges Quickly

Marco Notarianni, a PhD researcher of QUT stated in a press release that, `since vehicles would need extra energy spurt for acceleration, supercapacitors could be helpful which holds a limited amount of charge and are capable of delivering it swiftly thus making them the appropriate complement to mass storage batteries.

He was the lead author of the Nanotechnology paper - `Super capacitors offer a high power output in a short time, meaning a faster acceleration rate of the car and a charging time of just a few minutes, when compared to several hours of a standard electric car battery’.

Supercapacitor film which is grapheme has the potential of charging fully in a matter of minutes instead of the several hours taken for a conventional battery and though it would charge, releasing energy faster than standard batteries, they presently do not hold so much energy which the scientist are probably intending to change with further research.

Yahoo Replaces Google as Firefox's Default Search

Just from the coming December, Mozilla Firefox will utilize Yahoo search engine as a default, only in the United States on cell phone as well as desktop. On account of this five-year agreement, Yahoo will also start a new search experience in favor of the users of Firefox in the U.S. that would simultaneously make this Firefox to move away from Google.

Such a new kind search experience will provide a clear, fresh and immersive layout that reveals input from the Mozilla group. In Russia, Firefox will employ Yandex Search, while in China this will make use of Baidu as its default. On the other hand, Google, and a lot of other search engines like DuckDuckGo will stay as integral options.

Reasons for changing the partnership-

The Mozilla Company has long earned most of its funds by means of its joint venture with Google that has always been seen as default in Mozilla. In fact, in 2012, information known from a reliable source reveals that 88 percent of Firefox’s revenue came mainly from Google. The deal with Google was going to terminate this year, although, and it seem as either Yahoo has made an offer that Mozilla cannot reject or Google planned to walk away from the contract.

Opinion of Mozilla

CEO of Mozilla, Chris Beard stated that Google has been the default search engine of Firefox global since the year 2004. The renewal time of the deal is in this year, and hence Mozilla took it as a chance to assess its competitive approach and investigate the options. He even added that his company is really eager to work with Yahoo to get a new, expected search experience of Yahoo to the Firefox users in the particular country featuring the best of the Web, and to discover new modern search experience along with the content.

Statements from Yahoo

Similarly, CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer recently perceived that she thinks that search is really a point of investment, prospect and development for the company. Such a joint venture aids to increase their success in search and even provides with an opportunity to serve closely along with Mozilla to get ways to create something more in search matter, communications as well as digital content.

Yahoo engine, in its present form, is supported by Microsoft Bing, certainly, although the company largely alters the results it obtains from Microsoft, in terms of design and in terms of status. There have long been gossips that Yahoo might end this agreement and return back its own particular search engine; however that appears improbable

This collaboration with Firefox will definitely provide Yahoo and even Microsoft a more powerful dominance in the search market. When Firefox usage has turned down over some of the previous years, this yet accounts for minimum 15percent of the browser market in the US. Yahoo at present possesses nearly 10 percent of the search engine of US market. To return back to the Google as default is only a matter of some seconds though some of the users want to go for the default.

GTA 5 Patch Coming to Xbox One Soon!

Grand Theft Auto V – GTV 5, an open world action adventure video game which has been developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games was released in September 2013 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and on 18 November 2014 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. For Microsoft Windows it is scheduled to be released on 27 January 2015.It is the first main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series since the Grand Theft Auto IV in 2008.

It is set within fictional states of San Andreas which is based on Southern California wherein the single player follows three criminals with their efforts in committing heist, are under great pressure from a government agency.

It enables the players to freely roam San Andreas including open countryside as well as the fictional city of Los Santos, based on Los Angeles and the game is played from a first person or a third person view while the world is navigated by a vehicle or on foot.

Players have the capabilities of controlling the three lead protagonists throughout the mode of a single player, switching them during and outside of the mission with the focus on the heist sequence. The mission revolves between shooting and driving gameplay and players who tend to commit crimes may receive a response from law enforcement agencies which is measured by a `wanted’, system which governs the response of their aggression and a patch update is going to be released soon.

Latest Games Envisaged Issues of Download

Since the craze following the release of GTA 5 for the next generation console has begun, several players have envisaged issues in the latest game which had won positive reviews from major gaming sites and many players have postedon the official Rockstar Forum their inability to download the first update thereby being unable to play the online version of the game.

Rockstar has been working to resolve the issue faced by several players stating on 18 November 2014 that `at this time PlayStation 4 users should no longer have issues downloading the patch. All character migrations are now working on PlayStation 4 and affected PlayStation 3 users can play GTA online as normal.

This issue will be addressed for Xbox One and Xbox 360 users tomorrow’. The GTA V draws inspiration from several other past Rockstar titles which include Max Payne 3, Midnight Club, Manhunt and Red Dead Redemption.

Several Unique Features 

There are several unique features in the game wherein when the players are playing as one of the three protagonist, the other two tend to live out their daily lives and one will be surprised in finding what the characters are doing when one switches back into them. The other feature is the character swapping feature which is executed in a Google Earth manner which was displayed at a Game Informer demo, showing a smooth run without any lag.The Xbox One, PC, and PS4 version would be presenting an exclusive feature that is a first person mode and the entire game can be played through the concept of the protagonist. The mode of the gameplay will bring about a new way of playing the game and cars will have detailed interior which would be different from one another while the shooting will be like a FPS game.

Researcher Put Their Focus on the Masque Attack on OS X/iOS

According to the reports released to public by the researchers working at FireEye on 17 November, Mac OS X and iOS operating systems have threat from Masque Attack, which has already come into existence. This report was published within a gap of a week post the discovery of WireLurker by the Palo Alto Networks.

What is Masque Attack? 

Masque attack can easily utilize a drawback in the operating system of Apple, which allows the user to replace one app by another app, as long as both these apps are using the same bundle identifier. One of the threatening issues is that through this attack, all the preinstalled apps on the operating systems (example Mobile Safari) can be easily replaced.

The duplicate apps will be able to track the local data of the original apps, which includes the login details like user id and password. Through this attack, an attacker can easily login into anyone’s account and make transactions from their bank accounts.

These attacks become more easy, has the iOS usually does not put in force certificate matching for apps that come with the same bundle identifier. FireEye researchers were able to verify and identify the vulnerability on both regular iOS and jailbroken. The regular iOS includes iOS 7.1.1, iOS 7.1.2, iOS 8.0, iOS 8.1, and iOS 8.1.1 beta. Attackers can influence the vulnerability through USB ports and even wireless networks.

According to the blog post of FireEye researchers Tao Wei, Hui Xue and Yulong Zhang, Apple is unable to prevent such attacks due to the existing standard interfaces and protections. They are requesting the Company to develop interfaces that are more powerful and give it to professional security vendors.

This way these vendors will be able to protect their enterprise users from all these advanced attacks. This attack will prompt the users to download malicious apps with new names like for example, the new angry bird.

The users of these operating systems are more susceptible to these attacks when they download any app from third party source or by ignoring the un-trusted app message popping on their phones. Users, who have set the Gatekeeping feature on “Anywhere”, actually nullify their protection.

As per FireEye's researchers, WireLurker utilizes very limited form of the attack when hitting the iOS through USB ports.

According to director of software engineering at Arxan, Joe Abbey, WireLurker will be able to deliver the workload only if the user has installed any un-trusted app on MAC, on the other hand for the Masque attack to occur, the user must have downloaded enterprise-provisioning profile.

Companies who have the BYOD policies are more susceptible to Masque attack. According to Abbey, it is recommended that the owners of BYOD policies disable the provisioning profiles, till Apple comes out with a solution.

Masque attacks and WireLurker are additional examples of highly sophisticated and automated attacks, which are growly rapidly. These attacks highlights that we are in serious need of automotive proactive protection and prevention methods.

Hydrogen Powered Audi A7 Sportback H-Tron Quattro Four Door Luxury Saloon

Audi – Progress Through Technology

Audi AG, a German automobile manufacturer is known for its designs, produces, markets, engineers and distribution of luxury automobiles as well as its overseas worldwide activities from its headquarters in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany.

The Audi brand vehicles are manufactured in nine production facilities all over the world. Audi has been a major owned – 99.55% subsidiary of Volkswagen Group right from 1966, which was followed by a phased purchase of Audi AG predecessor, Auto Union from Daimler-Benz. It was re-launched by Volkswagen with the Audi brand with the 1965 introduction of the Audi F103 series. Each of the four rings of the Audi logo represents one of the four car companies which banded together to form Audi’s predecessor company, Auto Union.

The company ethos and core belief – `Progress through Technology’ is what drives the development of every Audi vehicle. Right from driving clinics to picking up latest vehicle there are several ways an Audi lover could strengthen their connection to the brands which portrays the pinnacle of luxury performance.Audi is recognized for its awesome standards, uncompromising quality and relentless performances and though one may be associated with those qualities with this particular brand, the characteristics tend to describe the employees as well who have been instrumental in their contribution to the final design of the brand.

Sportiest Car in Luxury Segment

Audi inspires the revolutionary engineering and progressive design which has become synonymous with the Audi brand together with innovative solutions. The Audi is available for those who tend to enjoy the finer taste in life.

It stands for sportiness, lightweight design together with the quattro permanent all-wheel drive, according to the new chief designer, Marc Lichte. He further states that, `In the Audi prologue, we are expressing this know-how in a new form; we have put the sportiest car in the luxury segment on wheels.

Our team took new approaches in both exterior and interior design’.Audi’2014, Auto Show festivities in Los Angeles would be presenting the design concept on which the future models would be based and called the Audi `Prologue’,would be signalling a marked change in the brand’s design direction under Marc Lichte.

Some of Audi’s models are in the twilight of their production life cycles such as Audi’s A4, A5, A6, A7 and A8 resulting in Lichte having a difficult though a rewarding task ahead of shaping the Audi’s line-up of cars.

Technology Combination of Comfort/Efficiency/Power

Audi design would now be showing progressive technology in a more powerful manner where the two door coupe will be having a flowing elegant shape in a sporty as well as taut design. The architecture melds with display together with the operating concept creating a new kind of unit in the clear and unobstructed interior while the complete front area of the instrument panel has a large touch display with a portion of the user interface operating with a new kind of OLED display which is made of organic LEDs.

The show’s car technology is a combination of comfort, efficiency and power and the 4.0 TFSI provides up to 445 KW of power and 750 Nm of torque, accelerating the Audi prologue from 0 to 100 km/h in 3.7 sec. It has a dynamic all wheel steering wherein the rear wheels have the capabilities of turning up to five degrees, making it responsive as well as stable while driving.

Assassin’s Creed Unity- Stuffed with Bugs and Poor on Computers and Consoles

Assassin’s Creed Unity, which was released with such hype, got a complete blow when 12 hours post the game’s release, it was declared a completely messed up game. The consumers are stating that the games from its looks, looks like was not yet ready and the Company Ubisoft wanted to just get it released as soon as possible.

Some of the drawbacks f the game includes its limitation to 900p on the consoles, the poor draw distance, dramatic decrease in the frame rates, and due to some unexpl

ainable reasons the characters and the faces keeps on disappearing.

Drawbacks: 

There are a completely new thread which has been dedicates to the performance of the Assassin’s Creed Unity on the PC, which is even more than NeoGAF. The creator of this thread had tried to run on the game on Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 but still unable to get the desired results. This thread consists of many posters having the same issue of cut scenes dipping below the 30 fps.

There are some of the screenshots, which display the bug, which have drawn lot of criticism. Ubisoft send the Xbox version of the game to many outlets for overview and the response was dire and indicated that the problems with the Assassin’s Creed Unity is no longer limited to computers only.

As per the Joystiq, both Xbox A single and PS4 versions are having problems with the game-breaking bugs and the dipping in the frame rate. Unbelievably it is true that the frame rate of the Xbox A is more noticeable and the consoles are locked at the maximum of 900p.

According to the reports from PC World, the game Assassin's Creed Unity although available can be rough. They have stated that the game itself is having riddles of self-performance. On similar lines, users have been posting nasty feedback about the game on the NeoGAF.

The company had placed a devious review restriction during the first half of the day of the launch, which actually caused many people to take the plunge and buy the game even without seeing the full review.

Why the game has so many flaws? 

The Ubisoft company is known to have the best of the software engineers, they have the required talent pool and enough finance to make unbelievable games, but going by the looks of Assassin’s Creed Unity, the short turnaround time given to the development team has affected the final product. The game would have had all the advantages if the company would have held back on the release data and given more time for the internal resources to show its effect on the product.

Ubisoft already knew that the game will not be making the people around the world happy and it has certainly brought lot of embarrassment to the company. Although there are times when a game is launched, people give time to the company to run initial updates and patches but the feedbacks and reviews of the game have been extremely ferocious.

Did You Know How to Delete Your Search Records Facebook Records?

Today, every person can be expected to have an account in Facebook. They record and update every single minute of their life on Facebook. However, do you know that every time you perform any search on Facebook, it gets stored in their database?

So do not think that no one knows you have searched for someone special or any specific kind of group on the Facebook. All the searches performed by you on the Facebook get stored in their activity log as well as yours.

If you are thinking that this is seriously an invasion of privacy, then keep calm, most of these searches, which can stored in the activity log are visible to you only as they are stored as private searches. There are people who are quite comfortable with the idea of having their search data stored, but there quite a number of people who are very uncomfortable with the fact that their data is being stored and that too, on a long term basis.

If we visit any pages online, we make sure that we are deleting the search history, as we do not want anyone to know what we were searching and what the reason for the search was. During our regular work hours, we are extra cautious about our privacy but when it comes to Facebook, there are no issues at all.

According to the Facebook, the only reason for them to store you search data is to enable you and provide you with more relevant search results. If you are among the people who are not interested in keeping their search records then you just need to follow the below steps:

•  The user will have to start the Facebook page and login in. One will be able to find their search activity page by going into their profile. There you have been given with a tab called View Activity log. Once you click on this tab, you will be given additional options comprising of your search based on photos, likes, comments and another tab indicating “more”. User can also login into their Activity log by going through the URL: 
• https://www.facebook.com/login.php?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fme%2Fallactivity%3Fprivacy_source%3Dactivity_log%26log_filter%3Dsearch
•  If you are looking for removing entries pertaining to any particular individual then you just need to click on the Hidden from Timeline tab, which has been given on the right side of each of your search entries and click to delete them permanently from your records.
•  In case you want to delete your entire search history then you just need to click on the button called Clear searches, which has been given on the top right hand side of the screen. This button can be seen beside the magnifying glass icon on the right side of the screen.

By following these steps, you will be able to clear any individual search or overall searches in just some clicks. If you are among the people who have no issues in keeping their searches and want to make their future searches tailor made.

WhatsApp’s New Update: Blue Ticks- Are you Happy?

The new update rolled out by WhatsApp has been welcomed by many people, but there are people who are actually dreading this update. The update was about receiving confirmation from the receiver that the message has been read by them.

You will find people freaking out due to the latest update rolled by the messenger. In the latest update, WhatsApp will be sending a read message from the receiver to the sender of the message by issuing them a double blue tick on the sent message. This tick will be marked on the message. The double blue tick indicates that the message has been seen and read by the user on the other end.

Meaning of the Ticks: 

Initially a single tick beside the messages was meant for indicating the sender that their message has been sent. Then they used to receive a double click in gray color indicating that the message has been received on the receiver’s phone.

However, there was no confirmation sent to the sender if the message has actually been read by the receiver or even seen by the receiver. However, with this new update the receiver of the message is not hidden anymore. Not only the sender of the message will be able to see if their message has been read but it will also indicate when it was read.

Looking at all the sides, while it is good for some to get information about the message being read it can go to the extent of spoiling many relationships. WhatsApp might lose some of their customers due to this update and they might even opt to other messenger services that are available in abundance now.

How can you get rid of these ticks? 

If you want to make your life easier by getting rid of these ticks, there are few ways to do that and there are tricks available on the internet. There has been no guarantee given for any of this tricks to work on your phone, it might work for some and might not for others. According to one of the tricks, once you are notified about the message, do not go directly to the WhatsApp, but you can view the same in the notification window and read the same.

You will have to remember that once you click on the notification, it will lead to WhatsApp page to open and sending notification to sender about the message being read. According to some people, you can put your phone on Airplane mode and then check on the messages.

Once you have read the message, put your phone back on normal mode and still WhatsApp will not be able to send any notification to the sender. This trick has worked for many people but few of them have encountered problems as WhatsApp on their phone was able to sync with their 3G or Wi-Fi and immediately sent notifications to the senders.

Although these are not sure shot methods, Android users have something to be happy. They can now add an additional desktop on their launcher and add WhatsApp widget to it. Once you receive any message, you simply have to check them on widget ensuring not to click on any message. To avoid opening the app in error, one can install app locks.

Whatsapp Just Switched on End-to-End Encryption

Jan Koum, founder of Whatsapp who grew up in Soviet Ukraine in the 80s, learned to distrust the governments. detesting its surveillance. When he emigrated to the U.S; decades later, he developed his ultra-popular messaging system and vowed that Whatsapp would never make eavesdropping easy for anybody.

Presently this app is following on that anti snooping promise at an unprecedented scale. Whatsapp currently the most popular instant messaging platform has started encrypting all data by default, which privacy advocates state would be aiding dissidents as well as human rights activists seeking communication protection from governments as well as hackers.

A privacy person not wanting the possibility of others reading the chat conversations, here is some good news from this quarter. A recent announcement has been made that it is implementing end-to-end encryption, which is an upgrade to privacy protection making it impossible for any to read users’ messages which includes the company itself.

The app will integrate the open source software messages with a cryptographic key which the user only can access. It is an uncrackable encryption for hundreds of millions of phones and tablets which have installed Whatsapp, the worlds’ largest ever implementation of this standard of encryption in messaging services.

End-To-End Encryption

End to end encryption mean that only the sender and receiver can read the text. The encryption feature is available in the latest build of the Android app which currently supports only one-on-one text messaging.Open Whisper System’s creator as well as a well-known software developer in the cryptography community, Moxie Marlinspike states that he thinks this is the largest deployment of end-to-end encryption ever’.

For a week, Textsecure had already been quietly encrypting Whatsapp messages between Android devices and the new encryption indicates that Whatsapp messages would now travel to the recipient’s device before being decrypted instead of being encrypted between the Whatsapp’s server and the users’ device.

Though the change is invisible, Marlinspike states that Whatsapp will add a feature soon to enable users to verify other identities depending on their cryptographic key which is a defence against the middle man’s attack that may intercept conversations. He states further that `ordinary users would not know the difference and it is totally frictionless’.

Not Applicable to Group Messages/Video/Photo Messages

Whatsapps’ messaging encryption, in its initial stage  is limited to Android and does not apply to group messages, video or photo messages. Marlinspike also adds that Whatsapp plans to expand its Textsecure to other features and platforms which includes Apple’s iOS, though he did not specify the details of the time frame and staffers of Whatsapp refrained from commenting on the latest encryption features.

He further stated that the Textsecure implementation has been progressing for six months, shortly after Whatsapp had been acquired by Facebook in February last. Massive user base for end-to-end encrypted messaging is from Whatsapp’s Android users alone and Whatsapp’s page in Google Play store portrays over 500 million downloads.

Textsecure had earlier been installed on only about 100 million devices running the Cyanogen mod variant of Android and about 500,000 other devices. This rollout of strong encryption to hundreds of millions of users could be unfavourable among governments across the world where surveillance could make it a difficult task.

Less Know Facts about the New Sensation- Self-Driving Cars

There were huge number of predictions made for the 21st century, which included the cure for cancer, people spending their weekends on the Moon and even personal jetpacks. Keeping some these both on the funnier as well as serious side, none of these predictions have come true apart from one exception and that is the “driverless cars”.

Market and Search giant Google currently holds the topmost position of owning the most famous – driverless cars. The company has been experimenting on this concept since 2009 and the experimental models have clocked nearly 750,000 miles on the roads of California and that too without a driver as well as without any accidents.

Researchers working at the Carnegie Mellon University’s Navlab were the first ones to build an autonomous vehicle that too in the year 1984. The year 2010 saw arrival of a semi automatic van, which was built by the researchers working at the University of Parma. This semi automatic van was able to drive a round trip from Italy to Shanghai. This trip was accounted to be more than 8000 miles.

There are some of the innovative technologies meant for these kinds of vehicles but now they have also been adopted by the mainstream vehicles. An example of this technology is the adaptive cruise control, which is meant to apply brakes whenever it detects a slow traffic ahead. If we see on the positive side of this technology, in a normal driving condition, a vehicle, which offers radar, camera, and even advanced software, can be easily considered the best driver compared to human beings.

These vehicles are also made to perform some of the task, which we might not like to do while driving. One of the tasks, which daunt every driver, is the lack of parking space and parking the car itself. These driverless cars have been equipped with software, which allows them to park the car themselves.

This feature has gained so much of attention that companies like Ford, BMW, Lexus, and Audi are also offering vehicles with similar feature. Another feature adopted by 2014 Mercedes S-Class sedan is that it can negotiate stop-and-go traffic and that too without any inputs from the driver. According to director of electrical and active safety R&D, John Capp, General Motors is planning to introduce a new range of Cadillac’s, which will be equipped with Super Cruise control. This feature will allow the drivers to merge in the freeway and then the car with drive on its own and steer itself. A similar feature will be adopted by Tesla’s Model D sedan and Volvo.

At present, we only have semi autonomous cars, which will still need a human to sit at the wheel and take control of the cruise at most of the time. As Google and Parma researchers are working on their prototypes, we can soon expect fully autonomous cars in the next decade or so. The day is not far, wherein we will see cars without drivers, steering wheels, and even brakes.