Infosys, Microsoft team up to offer cloud services

The country's second largest software services firm, Infosys, has tied up with Microsoft to provide cloud-based offerings to clients.

The MoU will see the two companies collaborate on solution area development, technical proof of concepts, and sales and marketing initiatives to address the needs of global enterprises as they adopt the cloud, across industries such as financial services, manufacturing, retail and healthcare.

When computing is delivered over a network as a service , similar to water or electricity delivered through pipes and wires, it is called cloud computing. Though the move to cloud computing started several years ago, it is only in the past 8-9 months that cloud adoption has picked up significantly among enterprises, Global Head for Cloud and Vice-President at Infosys, Vishnu Bhat said.

Infosys gets about 2% of its total revenue from its cloud business and has identified this as a major growth driver. At the end of the last financial year, the company reported revenues of $6.1 billion.

According to Forrester estimates , the global market for cloud technology will go from about $40 billion at present to $241 billion by 2020. "We believe that by 2015, 50-60 % of the enterprise workload or the activities that enterprises use IT for, will be on the cloud," Bhat said.

Infosys will offer Microsoft Private Cloud solutions such as Windows Server Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center, and solutions on Windows Azure to clients. Infosys and Microsoft intend to co-create and architect cloud environments for large corporates while developing solutions across hybrid IT environments.

The two companies will jointly take these solutions to enterprise clients globally. To begin with the companies will work together in seven geographies that include the US, UK, Australia, France, Germany, Middleeast and India.

Infosys aims at working with clients as an end-to-end cloud ecosystem integrator, providing professional services on the cloud, business platforms in the cloud and a partner ecosystem. It has partnered with over 30 cloud providers, addressing various aspects of cloud adoption.

The partners, with whom Infosys also works on building IP, include SAP, Oracle, Force-. com and Microsoft.

Magical Things About Google Maps

Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google that powers many map based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit via the Google Maps API. It offers street maps, a route planner for traveling by foot, car or public transport and an urban business locator for numerous countries around the world.Here are five services provided by Google Maps for the users.


Street View Partner ProgramStreet View in Google Maps helps one to explore places around the world with a 360 degree street level imagery. Street View imagery is viewed millions of times each day, and enables users to explore places near and far in Google Maps.

If one manages a unique property such as a park, pedestrian mall, a university or a campus, they can request for the Street View team to visit the location. Once the Street View team visits your location, they will collect imagery using a Google car, Google trike, or even a Google snowmobile. Once the images are added to Street View, people all over the world will be able to explore your property virtually.Google Street View CarsThe cars with mounted 360 degree cameras have been scouring the streets of Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi capturing photographs for Google's Street View project. Anyone can get an aerial view of your home on Google Maps but only when street view imagery goes live. The experience with Google Street view would be like just taking a walk outside your home or any location that you chose to see.


It also has GPS to track geographic positions as well as lasers that helps capture 3D data to determine distances. 3D Mirror of the WorldWebGL is a software library that extends the capability of the JavaScript programming language to allow it to generate interactive 3D graphics within any compatible web browser. To see these applications you need a modern graphical card and a browser with WebGL support .These pages are tested in Google Chrome and FireFox under Windows XP, 7. Street View in AntarcticaGoogle's "Street View" imagery has sparked privacy concerns in some countries but that's unlikely to be the case with its latest destination Antarctica, populated mostly by penguins.


Apparently, the internet giant has not spared any continents form its massive binoculars. It has also made its entry into the frosty South Pole. Brian McClendon, VP of Engineering at Google Earth and Maps, snapped the footage while on a recent Antarctic trek to Half Moon Island with his wife

Google's Face Unlock to take on Apple

Google Inc and Samsung Electronics Co unveiled their new mobile phone software, pitching facial recognition programs that enhance security and photo sorting to challenge Apple Inc's record-breaking iPhone.

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus runs Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Google's Android software, said Matias Duarte, Google's senior director. Samsung will start sales next month. No price was disclosed. The Samsung handset is Google's latest salvo in the battle to control the $207 billion mobile-phone market.

Apple's iPhone 4S sold a record more than 4 million units in three days last week, helped by the addition of voice-recognition features in the company's iOS software. "In terms of technology and functionality, it's hard to find a big difference between Android and iOS anymore," said Kang Yoon Hum, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities Co. in Seoul. "They are neckand-neck." Google and Apple are racing to upgrade their technology to lure users of smartphones.

Mountain View, California-based Google controlled 43.4% of that market in the second quarter, while Apple's iPhone had an 18.2% share. In Ice Cream Sandwich, the face detection technology is being introduced as a safety feature. Still, that "opens up a lot of possibilities," said Wouter De Meulemeester, a director at IRIS, a Belgian company that provides such technology. Applications such as photo-sorting can be developed, he said after attending the event.

Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook unveiled the iPhone 4S earlier this month featuring a new camera and a faster processor. The device is capable of detecting up to 10 faces while taking a photograph, according to Cupertino, California--based Apple's website. The phone features the Siri voice assistant that marks calendars.

Cooling the Warming Debate: Major New Analysis Confirms That Global Warming Is Real

Global warming is real, according to a major study released Oct. 20. Despite issues raised by climate change skeptics, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study finds reliable evidence of a rise in the average world land temperature of approximately 1°C since the mid-1950s.Analyzing temperature data from 15 sources, in some cases going as far back as 1800, the Berkeley Earth study directly addressed scientific concerns raised by skeptics, including the urban heat island effect, poor station quality, and the risk of data selection bias.

On the basis of its analysis, according to Berkeley Earth's founder and scientific director, Professor Richard A. Muller, the group concluded that earlier studies based on more limited data by teams in the United States and Britain had accurately estimated the extent of land surface warming.

"Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the U.S. and the U.K.," Muller said. "This confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate change skeptics did not seriously affect their conclusions."

Previous studies, carried out by NOAA, NASA, and the Hadley Center, also found that land warming was approximately 1°C since the mid-1950s, and that the urban heat island effect and poor station quality did not bias the results. But their findings were criticized by skeptics who worried that they relied on ad-hoc techniques that meant that the findings could not be duplicated. Robert Rohde, lead scientist for Berkeley Earth, noted that "the Berkeley Earth analysis is the first study to address the issue of data selection bias, by using nearly all of the available data, which includes about 5 times as many station locations as were reviewed by prior groups."

Elizabeth Muller, co-founder and Executive Director of Berkeley Earth, said she hopes the Berkeley Earth findings will help "cool the debate over global warming by addressing many of the valid concerns of the skeptics in a clear and rigorous way." This will be especially important in the run-up to the COP 17 meeting in Durban, South Africa, later this year, where participants will discuss targets for reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions for the next commitment period as well as issues such as financing, technology transfer and cooperative action.

The Berkeley Earth team includes physicists, climatologists, and statisticians from California, Oregon, and Georgia. Rohde led the development of a new statistical approach and what Richard Muller called "the Herculean labor" of merging the data sets. One member of the group, Saul Perlmutter, was recently announced as a winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics (for his work in cosmology).

How iPhone could be used as a spy phone

What if a hacker could log every key you typed on your PC by placing a cellphone nearby? US researchers have shown how this is possible using any smartphone available today.

The researchers from Georgia Tech have done this by using a smartphone accelerometer - the internal device that detects when and how the phone is tilted - to sense keyboard vibrations and decipher complete sentences with up to 80 per cent accuracy. The procedure is not easy, they say, but is definitely possible with the latest generations of smartphones.

"We first tried our experiments with an iPhone 3GS, and the results were difficult to read," said Patrick Traynor of Georgia Tech. "But then we tried an iPhone 4, which has an added gyroscope to clean up the accelerometer noise, and the results were much better. We believe that most smartphones made in the last two years are sophisticated enough to do this attack."

How it works

The technique works through probability and by detecting pairs of keystrokes, rather than individual keys (which still is too difficult to accomplish reliably, Traynor said).

It models "keyboard events" in pairs, then determines whether the pair of keys pressed is on the left versus right side of the keyboard, and whether they are close together or far apart. After the system has determined this for each pair of keys depressed, it compares the results with a dictionary. The technique only works reliably on words with more than three letters with an accuracy as high as 80 per cent.

How to fight the hack

"The way we see this attack working is that you, the phone's owner, would request or be asked to download an innocuous-looking application, which doesn't ask you for the use of any suspicious phone sensors," said Henry Carter, one of the study's co-authors . "Then the keyboarddetection malware is turned on, and the next time you place your phone next to the keyboard , it starts listening."

Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability are pretty simple and straightforward, Traynor said. First, since the study found an effective range of just three inches from a keyboard, phone users can simply leave their phones in their purses or pockets, or just move them further away from the keyboard.

Galaxy Nexus, Ice Cream Sandwich OS launched

Google and Samsung today made a gaint leap into the next version of the Google experience phone - Galaxy Nexus and the OS - Ice Cream Sandwich or Android 4.0. The launch comes within days of the launch of the iPhone 4S by Apple.

The Galaxy Nexus has a 4.65 inch display with 1260x720p resolution, one of the biggest in mobile phones and comes with LTE and HSPA plus versions.

The phones has a contoured display with buttonless design and is more sleek than the Nexus S. The bezel is just 4.2 mm, leaving a much larger area for display.

The Galaxy Nexus also features a ‘hyperskin’ battery cover that prevents slipping.

It comes with a 5 mp camera, with zero shutter lag and can record full HD video.

The Galaxy Nexus will be the first phone to have the new Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) operating system.

The main feature of the new OS is the brand new Roboto typeface.

The ICS has, apart from the apps tab, a widgets tab. Widgets and apps can be selected and pushed to the home screen with just a single press. Widgets are also resizeable.

Creating folders has also been made easier. Apps can just be dragged one over the other. They combine to create a folder. Apps can also be moved anywhere within a folder. The added functionality is that folders can also be created with contacts with speed dial functionality.

The ICS brings one feature missing from most Android phones, and especially the Nexus range of phones - screen capture. Pressing the power and the volume down buttons simultaneously creates a screenshot of the screen.

Notifications have also received a makeover. The notifications also contain contacts. Unwanted notifications can be swiped away.

The ICS also has major changes to the way the user inputs text. It has an in-line spell checker and talk to text where the user can type anything by speaking.

The new OS features a brand new security feature — face unlock. Once you ‘register’ your face, the phone will open only if it recognises your face, obviating the need for passwords or gestures.

Google has made major improvements to the browser. It supports multiple tabs, and the bookmarks can be synchronised with the Chrome browser in your desktop. The browser opens, by default, the mobile site, but if you wish to see the full desktop version of the site, a single click will bring it to you. Web pages can also be saved for offline use.

The new Gmail app has a two-line display and action buttons at the bottom, that change with what you wish to do with the emails. For example, if you are inside an e-mail, the action buttons will display reply, forward and other buttons that you would use while inside an email. In the preview screen, you can also select multiple buttons and use the action buttons, apart from other things, to delete or archive emails.

Tapping of the contact info on top of the email will show you other ways to get in touch with the contact such as phone number, Twitter or Facebook info.

The new Gmail app also has offline search functionality.

As said earlier, the camera app can take photos with zero lag. Photos taken can be shared with a single click to any network.

The ICS also has photo editing tools. Photos can be edited and effects added. The new edited photo will be saved separately and can also be shared.

The camera also comes with a easy panorama feature, and the ability to take time-lapse videos. While recording a video, the user can also take high resolution snapshots.

The contacts app has received a major overhaul. Called the ‘People’ app, tapping any contact in the list of contacts displayed in a photo grid will bring the full details of the contacts - a high resolution photo, contact details and other social media details. for example, clicking on the contact’s Twitter icon will bring his tweets.

The Beam feature allows transfer of photos, maps, contacts or even apps to another ICS phone through NFC (near field communication) technology by simply bringing both the phones together and with a single tap.

Sea Levels to Continue to Rise for 500 Years? Long-Term Climate Calculations Suggest So

Rising sea levels in the coming centuries is perhaps one of the most catastrophic consequences of rising temperatures. Massive economic costs, social consequences and forced migrations could result from global warming. But how frightening of times are we facing? Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute are part of a team that has calculated the long-term outlook for rising sea levels in relation to the emission of greenhouse gases and pollution of the atmosphere using climate models.The results have been published in the scientific journal Global and Planetary Change.

"Based on the current situation we have projected changes in sea level 500 years into the future. We are not looking at what is happening with the climate, but are focusing exclusively on sea levels," explains Aslak Grinsted, a researcher at the Centre for Ice and Climate, the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

Model based on actual measurements

He has developed a model in collaboration with researchers from England and China that is based on what happens with the emission of greenhouse gases and aerosols and the pollution of the atmosphere. Their model has been adjusted backwards to the actual measurements and was then used to predict the outlook for rising sea levels.

The research group has made calculations for four scenarios: a pessimistic one, an optimistic one, and two more realistic ones.

In the pessimistic scenario, emissions continue to increase. This will mean that sea levels will rise 1.1 meters by the year 2100 and will have risen 5.5 meters by the year 2500.

Even in the most optimistic scenario, which requires extremely dramatic climate change goals, major technological advances and strong international cooperation to stop emitting greenhouse gases and polluting the atmosphere, the sea would continue to rise. By the year 2100 it will have risen by 60 cm and by the year 2500 the rise in sea level will be 1.8 meters.

For the two more realistic scenarios, calculated based on the emissions and pollution stabilizing, the results show that there will be a sea level rise of about 75 cm by the year 2100 and that by the year 2500 the sea will have risen by 2 meters.

Rising sea levels for centuries

"In the 20th century sea has risen by an average of 2mm per year, but it is accelerating and over the last decades the rise in sea level has gone approximately 70% faster. Even if we stabilize the concentrations in the atmosphere and stop emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we can see that the rise in sea level will continue to accelerate for several centuries because of the sea and ice caps long reaction time. So it would be 2-400 years before we returned to the 20th century level of a 2 mm rise per year," says Aslak Grinsted.

Seeing Through Walls: New Radar Technology Provides Real-Time Video of What’s Going On Behind Solid Walls

The ability to see through walls is no longer the stuff of science fiction, thanks to new radar technology developed at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory.Much as humans and other animals see via waves of visible light that bounce off objects and then strike our eyes' retinas, radar "sees" by sending out radio waves that bounce off targets and return to the radar's receivers. But just as light can't pass through solid objects in quantities large enough for the eye to detect, it's hard to build radar that can penetrate walls well enough to show what's happening behind. Now, Lincoln Lab researchers have built a system that can see through walls from some distance away, giving an instantaneous picture of the activity on the other side.

The researchers' device is an unassuming array of antenna arranged into two rows -- eight receiving elements on top, 13 transmitting ones below -- and some computing equipment, all mounted onto a movable cart. But it has powerful implications for military operations, especially "urban combat situations," says Gregory Charvat, technical staff at Lincoln Lab and the leader of the project.

Waves through walls

Walls, by definition, are solid, and that's certainly true of the four- and eight-inch-thick concrete walls on which the researchers tested their system.

At first, their radar functions as any other: Transmitters emit waves of a certain frequency in the direction of the target. But in this case, each time the waves hit the wall, the concrete blocks more than 99 percent of them from passing through. And that's only half the battle: Once the waves bounce off any targets, they must pass back through the wall to reach the radar's receivers -- and again, 99 percent don't make it. By the time it hits the receivers, the signal is reduced to about 0.0025 percent of its original strength.

But according to Charvat, signal loss from the wall is not even the main challenge. "[Signal] amplifiers are cheap," he says. What has been difficult for through-wall radar systems is achieving the speed, resolution and range necessary to be useful in real time. "If you're in a high-risk combat situation, you don't want one image every 20 minutes, and you don't want to have to stand right next to a potentially dangerous building," Charvat says.

The Lincoln Lab team's system may be used at a range of up to 60 feet away from the wall. (Demos were done at 20 feet, which Charvat says is realistic for an urban combat situation.) And, it gives a real-time picture of movement behind the wall in the form of a video at the rate of 10.8 frames per second.

Filtering for frequencies

One consideration for through-wall radar, Charvat says, is what radio wavelength to use. Longer wavelengths are better able to pass through the wall and back, which makes for a stronger signal; however, they also require a correspondingly larger radar apparatus to resolve individual human targets. The researchers settled on S-band waves, which have about the same wavelength as wireless Internet -- that is, fairly short. That means more signal loss -- hence the need for amplifiers -- but the actual radar device can be kept to about eight and a half feet long. "This, we believe, was a sweet spot because we think it would be mounted on a vehicle of some kind," Charvat says.

Even when the signal-strength problem is addressed with amplifiers, the wall -- whether it's concrete, adobe or any other solid substance -- will always show up as the brightest spot by far. To get around this problem, the researchers use an analog crystal filter, which exploits frequency differences between the modulated waves bouncing off the wall and those coming from the target. "So if the wall is 20 feet away, let's say, it shows up as a 20-kilohertz sine wave. If you, behind the wall, are 30 feet away, maybe you'll show up as a 30-kilohertz sine wave," Charvat says. The filter can be set to allow only waves in the range of 30 kilohertz to pass through to the receivers, effectively deleting the wall from the image so that it doesn't overpower the receiver.

Oracle launches SMB database appliance

Oracle has expanded its product offering - with a standalone, all-in-one appliance - in a fresh bid to woo small and medium businesses in India.

The company has launched a database appliance, targeting small and mid-size businesses that run both transactional and analytic applications. The appliance is a complete package of software, server, storage, and network.

It has been engineered for simplified deployment, maintenance, and support of database workloads. All hardware and software components are supported by Oracle itself, and offer customers pay-as-you-grow software licensing to scale from 4 processor cores to 24 processor cores without incurring the costs and downtime usually associated with hardware upgrades.

In addition, the database appliance brings the benefits of Oracle Exadata to entry-level systems offering SMBs to leverage Oracle solutions.

Kapil Sood, vice president, Systems Business, Oracle India said, "There is a big market below the Exadata quarter RAC that we were not tapping and we have a lot of customers who do not need all the power of Exadata RAC system. They've been asking for an engineered system to meet their requirements. Oracle Database Appliance will enable SMBs to simplify their IT infrastructure, keeping in mind the unique requirements of the sector."

The Oracle Database Appliance runs the similar software stack as found on Exadata, including the 11g database, RAC (Real Application Clusters) clustering software and Oracle Linux. It also features Appliance Manager software, which provides automatic monitoring and patching. The important feature is that it connects the support system in event of hardware failure.

"Simplicity, affordability and accessibility are the key features of Database Appliance, which will meet the requirements of the small and medium size customers," Sood said. He added that channel partners will drive the sales for this product in Asia-Pacific.

However, Oracle did not share how it will price the product, nor a specific time schedule for its availability. A company spokesperson said the pricing would be announced at the time of general availability of the product within a few days.

The product is targeted at customers who are running older hardware under their Oracle databases and want to make an upgrade.

Similar to Exadata, the Database Appliance is an engineered system combined with hardware and software for running the Oracle database. Redundancy is built in to all components and the Oracle appliance manager software reduces the risk and complexity of deploying highly available databases. It consolidates OLTP and datawarehousing databases up to 4 terabytes in size,

Table salt used to boost digital storage: Scientists

Scientists in Singapore they have discovered a process that can expand the data storage capacity of computer hard disks six-fold using a common kitchen ingredient -- table salt.

The discovery was made by Singapore's national research institute the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, in collaboration with the National University of Singapore and the Data Storage Institute.

The institutions have "developed a process that can increase the data recording density of hard disks to 3.3 Terabits per square inch, six times the recording density of current models", they said in a statement.

"This means that a hard disk drive that holds 1 Terabyte (TB) of data today could, in the future, hold 6 TB of information in the same size using this new technology."

The discovery has been published in scientific journal Nanotechnology as well as the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B.

Scientists were able to boost data storage capacity by packing more bits -- miniature structures which hold information -- in neater patterns compared to the random configurations used in current hard disk drives.

"It's like packing your clothes in your suitcase when you travel. The neater you pack them the more you can carry," the statement said.

The method -- called bit patterning -- had previously not been feasible as scientists were unable to see the outlines of the bits clearly after they had been printed onto a film in a process much like developing photographs.

But adding table salt into the solution used for bit imaging allowed the outlines to stand out in sharp relief.

"It can give you a very high contrast. We are now able to see fine lines that would normally be blurred out," Joel Yang, the Singapore scientist who discovered the salty recipe
"Otherwise you can try your best to pattern these bits very closely but they will all end up being gigantic blurred-out blobs," said Yang of the national research agency's Institute of Materials Research and Engineering.

Yang predicted that the salted bit-patterning process will be adopted by the industry by 2016 "when the current techniques run out of fuel and (hard drive manufacturers) need to find alternate methods" of increasing data storage space.

How Life Might Have Survived 'Snowball Earth'

Global glaciation likely put a chill on life on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago, but new research indicates that simple life in the form of photosynthetic algae could have survived in a narrow body of water with characteristics similar to today's Red Sea.Under those frigid conditions, there are not a lot of places where you would expect liquid water and light to occur in the same area, and you need both of those things for photosynthetic algae to survive," said Adam Campbell, a University of Washington doctoral student in Earth and space sciences.

A long, narrow body of water such as the Red Sea, about 6.5 times longer than it is wide, would create enough physical resistance to advancing glacial ice that the ice sheet likely could not make it all the way to the end of the sea before conditions cause the ice to turn to vapor. That would leave a small expanse of open water where the algae could survive.

"The initial results have shown pretty well that these kinds of channels could remain relatively free of thick glacial ice during a 'snowball Earth' event," Campbell said.

He examined the issue using an analytical model that applied basic principles of physics to a simple set of atmospheric conditions believed to have existed at the time. The results were published Oct. 8 in Geophysical Research Letters. Co-authors are Edwin Waddington and Stephen Warren, UW professors of Earth and space sciences.

Many scientists believe Earth became a giant snowball two or three times between 800 million and 550 million years ago, with each episode lasting about 10 million years. These all preceded the Cambrian explosion about 530 million years ago, when life on Earth rapidly expanded, diversified and became more complex.

But simple photosynthetic plankton turn up in the fossil record before and after the "snowball Earth" events, leading scientists to wonder how that could happen if Earth's oceans were completely encased in ice.

Campbell said it is assumed the algae survived these episodes, "unless they re-evolved each time, which creates a whole different problem for evolutionary biology."

He chose the Red Sea as an example because it is formed from a tectonic process called continental rifting, a process known to have existed at the time of the snowball Earth events, and it lies in an arid region between Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula.

Campbell noted that in a snowball Earth event, the open water in such a sea wouldn't have lasted long if it didn't have a way of being replenished -- if, for example, the glacial ice acted as a dam and cut off the influx of additional sea water. The open water had to exist on the order of 10 million years for the algae to survive.

Apple publishes guide on how to set up iCloud

The newly released guide explains how to get the online service working on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, as well as on a Mac or PC, a process that apparently can be confusing.

To start off, you'll need to upgrade iTunes to version 10.5 and then upgrade your Apple gadget to iOS 5. The iOS 5 install may itself be the first challenge since some users have bumped into technical problems trying to install Apple's updated mobile OS. .

Assuming you can get iOS 5 working without any hiccups, the next step is simply to follow a series of onscreen directions that will pop up on your device to set up your iCloud access. After opting in to iCloud, you can choose to back up your device on a daily basis via Wi-Fi.

You can then customize your iCloud settings by selecting which services you want and choose the specific content you wish to back up to the cloud. You can also enable automatic downloads, which means that any music, apps, or books you buy via iTunes are automatically sent to and synced among all of your iOS devices and computers.Once iCloud is set up on your mobile device, you'll have to get it cooking on your computer.

Mac users need to be running the latest version of OS X Lion (version 10.7.2 or later) to fully interact with all of the features in iCloud. After you've updated Lion, open the iCloud icon that appears in System Preferences, enter your Apple ID, and then choose the iCloud services you want to enable. You can also set up Photo Stream in either iPhoto or Aperture, which can store recent photos in the cloud and then sync them among your mobile devices. Finally, you can turn on automatic downloads to sync your music, apps, and books among your devices.

Windows users must be running either Windows Vista Service Pack 2 or Windows 7 to tap into iCloud. You'll first have to download and install the iCloud Control Panel for Windows. You can then open iCloud from Windows Control Panel, type in your Apple ID, and then check the services you want to enable. As on the Mac, you can turn on automatic downloads to sync certain content.

 Though it wasn't the most user friendly process, it did move forward without anymore glitches, allowing me to set up and customize my access to iCloud.

Microsoft Acquires Skype For $8.5 Billion

Software giant Microsoft has bought Internet communications company Skype for $8.5 billion in its largest ever acquisition deal, Microsoft said .

"Skype is a phenomenal product and brand that is loved by hundreds of millions of people around the world. We look forward to working with the Skype team to create new ways for people to stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues - anytime, anywhere," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was quoted in a statement as saying. Skype CEO Tony Bates will head the Skype Division in Microsoft.

"By bringing together the best of Microsoft and the best of Skype, we are committed to empowering consumers and businesses around the globe to connect in new ways. Together, we will be able to accelerate Skype's goal to reach one billion users daily," Bates said.

The number of registered users of Skype, founded in 2003, exceeds 500 million people, while monthly audience of the service reaches 170 million users. 

Top Websites That Changed Our Lives

With the development of technology, internet was accessible to worldwide users and many websites emerged in for various purposes. Today technology plays a vital role and is a part and parcel of everyone's life who indulges themselves in its creation of enormous websites.

There are millions of websites that are used by people, but only few are familiar in the minds of commoners which have made a large impact through their new features when compared to others.


Here are few websites that changed everyday life of people.

Google-Google is the website that is present over many years on the screen by allowing users to search for information, watch videos, blogging and other services efficiently provided by it. So, when it comes to Internet the first word that strikes our mind is Google. It has such a huge impact on every Internet user.Google has invaded virtually every aspect of the Internet. Most people use at least one Google product or service on a regular basis personally. Whether it's Google maps, Blogger blog, a Picasa photo album, a Google search, or even a YouTube video.

Facebook-Facebook is a social network; which has revolutionized the way of interaction with one another. People use Facebook to talk online, build networks. They are using it to follow and interact with their favorite personalities also. People use it to keep in touch with business contacts, friends, family. Facebook has made social networking mainstream worldwide.Attracting more than 500 million users, ranging from all age groups includes celebrities, and even political world leaders. It also offers additional feature in addition to blogs, members can express themselves by designing their profile page to reflect their personality. The most popular extra features include music and video sections. 

YouTube-There weren't many options if one wanted to watch a video online. Hardly videos were found. After the arrival of YouTube, it is successfully running by solving all problems when it came to entertainment on the Internet. One can watch videos and can also listen to music and even blog through videos. The website allows watching things ever thought of.Web users now had a centralized place to watch video online. And because of YouTube's pioneering effort, online video is now enjoyed by millions every day.

Wikipedia-Earlier most online encyclopedias were sorely lacking in information, Wikipedia changed all that by not only allowing to view the content for free, but also by allowing individual users to review and update content, making it more complete and accurate overall.Wikipedia also brought user generated content to the mainstream online, making both much more viable and valuable. In Wikipedia one can literally find anything and everything. The website appeals to Internet users from all over the world, offering information in various languages.The website became a free e-encyclopedia that has grown and will probably continue as long as the Internet is available. It is also a most visited website for information's. 

eBay-eBay is well known for its ability for users to sell various items. eBay is one of the very few websites that offers live real time auctions for products. With online shopping and a few simple clicks from your finger tip the shopping is done. eBay allows users from all over the world to buy items.The website allows one to get items that are not available in the market. eBay has made it easy to find some of the most popular items that are not sold in stores anymore. It is the website that gives consumer satisfaction by providing every information about a product that saves customers who are in a confused state of mind.

Physicists Move One Step Closer to Quantum Computer

Rice University physicists have created a tiny "electron superhighway" that could one day be useful for building a quantum computer, a new type of computer that will use quantum particles in place of the digital transistors found in today's microchips.In a recent paper in Physical Review Letters, Rice physicists Rui-Rui Du and Ivan Knez describe a new method for making a tiny device called a "quantum spin Hall topological insulator." The device, which acts as an electron superhighway, is one of the building blocks needed to create quantum particles that store and manipulate data.

Today's computers use binary bits of data that are either ones or zeros. Quantum computers would use quantum bits, or "qubits," which can be both ones and zeros at the same time, thanks to the quirks of quantum mechanics.

This quirk gives quantum computers a huge edge in performing particular types of calculations, said Du, professor of physics and astronomy at Rice. For example, intense computing tasks like code-breaking, climate modeling and biomedical simulation could be completed thousands of times faster with quantum computers.

"In principle, we don't need many qubits to create a powerful computer," he said. "In terms of information density, a silicon microprocessor with 1 billion transistors would be roughly equal to a quantum processor with 30 qubits."

In the race to build quantum computers, researchers are taking a number of approaches to creating qubits. Regardless of the approach, a common problem is making certain that information encoded into qubits isn't lost over time due to quantum fluctuations. This is known as "fault tolerance."

The approach Du and Knez are following is called "topological quantum computing." Topological designs are expected to be more fault-tolerant than other types of quantum computers because each qubit in a topological quantum computer will be made from a pair of quantum particles that have a virtually immutable shared identity. The catch to the topological approach is that physicists have yet to create or observe one of these stable pairs of particles, which are called "Majorana fermions" (pronounced MAH-yor-ah-na FUR-mee-ons).

The elusive Majorana fermions were first proposed in 1937, although the race to create them in a chip has just begun. In particular, physicists believe the particles can be made by marrying a two-dimensional topological insulator -- like the one created by Du and Knez -- to a superconductor.

Topological insulators are oddities; although electricity cannot flow through them, it can flow around their narrow outer edges. If a small square of a topological insulator is attached to a superconductor, Knez said, the elusive Majorana fermions are expected to appear precisely where the materials meet. If this proves true, the devices could potentially be used to generate qubits for quantum computing, he said.

Knez spent more than a year refining the techniques to create Rice's topological insulator.

How the Brain Makes Memories

The brain learns through changes in the strength of its synapses -- the connections between neurons -- in response to stimuli. Now, in a discovery that challenges conventional wisdom on the brain mechanisms of learning, UCLA neuro-physicists have found there is an optimal brain "rhythm," or frequency, for changing synaptic strength. And further, like stations on a radio dial, each synapse is tuned to a different optimal frequency for learning.The findings, which provide a grand-unified theory of the mechanisms that underlie learning in the brain, may lead to possible new therapies for treating learning disabilities.

The study appears in the current issue of the journal Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience.

"Many people have learning and memory disorders, and beyond that group, most of us are not Einstein or Mozart," said Mayank R. Mehta, the paper's senior author and an associate professor in UCLA's departments of neurology, neurobiology, physics and astronomy. "Our work suggests that some problems with learning and memory are caused by synapses not being tuned to the right frequency."

A change in the strength of a synapse in response to stimuli -- known as synaptic plasticity -- is induced through so-called "spike trains," series of neural signals that occur with varying frequency and timing. Previous experiments demonstrated that stimulating neurons at a very high frequency (e.g., 100 spikes per second) strengthened the connecting synapse, while low-frequency stimulation (e.g., one spike per second) reduced synaptic strength.

These earlier experiments used hundreds of consecutive spikes in the very high-frequency range to induce plasticity. Yet when the brain is activated during real-life behavioral tasks, neurons fire only about 10 consecutive spikes, not several hundred. And they do so at a much lower frequency -- typically in the 50 spikes-per-second range.

In other words, said Mehta, "spike frequency refers to how fast the spikes come. Ten spikes could be delivered at a frequency of 100 spikes a second or at a frequency of one spike per second."

Until now, researchers had been unable to conduct experiments that simulated more naturally occurring levels. But Mehta and co-author Arvind Kumar, a former postdoctoral fellow in his lab, were able to obtain these measurements for the first time using a sophisticated mathematical model they developed and validated with experimental data.

Contrary to what was previously assumed, Mehta and Kumar found that when it comes to stimulating synapses with naturally occurring spike patterns, stimulating the neurons at the highest frequencies was not the best way to increase synaptic strength.

When, for example, a synapse was stimulated with just 10 spikes at a frequency of 30 spikes per second, it induced a far greater increase in strength than stimulating that synapse with 10 spikes at 100 times per second.

"The expectation, based on previous studies, was that if you drove the synapse at a higher frequency, the effect on synaptic strengthening, or learning, would be at least as good as, if not better than, the naturally occurring lower frequency," Mehta said. "To our surprise, we found that beyond the optimal frequency, synaptic strengthening actually declined as the frequencies got higher."

The knowledge that a synapse has a preferred frequency for maximal learning led the researchers to compare optimal frequencies based on the location of the synapse on a neuron. Neurons are shaped like trees, with the nucleus being the base of the tree, the dendrites resembling the extensive branches and the synapses resembling the leaves on those branches.

When Mehta and Kumar compared synaptic learning based on where synapses were located on the dendritic branches, what they found was significant: The optimal frequency for inducing synaptic learning changed depending on where the synapse was located. The farther the synapse was from the neuron's cell body, the higher its optimal frequency.

India unveils $35 tablet computer - world’s cheapest tablet PC

 The world’s cheapest tablet PC, priced at around Rs. 1,200, will now be available to students in the country as part of the government’s programme to expand education through information technology.

The nation of 1.2 billion people announced plans to sell government-subsidized tablets priced at $35 to thousands of needy villagers in the countryside. Named Aakash, or "sky" in Hindi, the tablet has been touted as the cheapest of its kind in the world.

The device followed years of efforts by developer Datawind and the Indian government to design and build a $10 computer that could help millions get online, many for the first time. That ambitious goal wasn't quite met -- the government is actually paying $45 for each tablet from Datawind, and subsidizing it for distribution to students and teachers in the coming months.

But $45 is still a mere fraction of the cost of other blockbuster tablets: the basic iPad tablet costs $499, and the upcoming Amazon Kindle Fire is priced at $199.

The Android-powered device will have a color touchscreen and be capable of handling more basic computing tasks such as word processing, Web browsing and video conferencing.

The company sold 16 million iPhones in the first quarter of 2011.  

Digital diviner who made computing personal- Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, the 56-year-old iconic co-founder of Apple, breathed his last on Wednesday.

“Technology alone is not enough,” Steve Jobs, the 56-year-old iconic co-founder of Apple, declared last year while unveiling the iPad. “It's technology married with liberal arts, married with humanities, that yields the results that make our hearts sing.” On Wednesday, his own heart stilled as he lost the battle with pancreatic cancer; but the chord he first struck in his garage-based computer venture three decades ago by linking the drive for innovation with the consumer's desire for utilitarian technology will continue to move the world of computing and electronics for many years to come.

A pioneer who made Silicon Valley synonymous with entrepreneurial spirit, innovation and technological excellence, Jobs, launched Apple with his friend, Steve Wozniak, in 1976.

Jobs “died peacefully surrounded by his family,” his wife, Laurene, and four children, said in a statement. In a tribute, Apple said it had “lost a creative and visionary genius and the world [had] lost an amazing human being.”

Tributes poured in from around the world and fans flocked to Apple stores in several countries to mourn the passing of the “leading light” of the digital age, as one industry CEO described him. Flags flew at half mast at the headquarters of the company at Cupertino, California.

Steve Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of treatable pancreatic cancer in 2003, and underwent surgery. He had a liver transplant six years later with doctors giving him an “excellent prognosis.” In August this year, Jobs stepped down as the CEO of Apple, making way for Tim Cook to take over. He declared that the day had come when he could no longer meet his duties.

U.S. President Barack Obama described Steve Jobs as among the greatest of American innovators — brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, said in a statement, “For those of us lucky enough to get to work with Steve, it's been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.”

Apple unveils iPhone 4S

Apple Inc. unveiled a new iPhone on Tuesday that is faster and more powerful but stops short of a more radical upgrade. It said Sprint customers will now be able to use one.

The new iPhone 4S has an improved camera with a higher-resolution sensor. The processor is faster, which helps run smoother, more realistic action games. It’s also a “world phone,” which means that Verizon iPhones will be useable overseas, just as AT&T iPhones already are.

There had been speculation that Apple would reveal a more radical revision of the phone, an “iPhone 5.” The no-show leaves room for speculation that Apple will reveal a new model in less than a year, perhaps one equipped to take advantage of Verizon’s and AT&T’s new high-speed data networks.

Apple is including a “personal assistant” application called Siri in the iPhone 4S. It responds to spoken questions and commands such as “Do I need an umbrella today?” It’s an advanced version of speech-recognition apps found on other phones.

The new iPhone also comes with new mobile software that includes such features as the ability to sync content wirelessly, without having to plug the device to a Mac or Windows machine.

The iPhone announcement came during Apple’s first major product event in years without Steve Jobs presiding. New CEO Tim Cook led the show after Jobs, who has been battling health problems, resigned from the post in August.

Mr. Cook, wearing a navy blue button-down shirt and jeans, opened by calling his nearly 14-year tenure at Apple “the privilege of a lifetime.” Those in the audience clapped as he entered, but the reaction seemed more muted than what Mr. Jobs had recently received.

Mr. Cook said the latest iPhone, which came out in June 2010, sold more quickly than previous models, but the iPhone still has just 5 per cent of the worldwide handset market. Apple is hoping to grow that with the new model.

Apple’s new mobile software, iOS 5, will also be available on October 12 for existing devices the iPhone 4 and 3GS,

Google Earth reaches 1 billion downloads

 The planet’s computer users have downloaded Google Earth more than 1 billion times, the company said on Wednesday in an official blog.

The programme, which offers users a customisable and navigable rendering of the world from Mars to the ocean floor, was bought by Google in 2004 when it acquired the company Keyhole, which invented the first version of the software in 2001.

To celebrate the one-billionth download, Google launched a new website at www.OneWorldManyStories.com, which features “people all over the world who use Google Earth to follow their dreams, discover new and distant places, or make the world a better place.”

“While it’s inspiring to see how Google Earth has touched the lives of so many, we know the best is yet to come,” said Brian McClendon, vice-president of Engineering, Google Earth and Maps.

Jobs was “leading light” of digital age

we can describe Steve Jobs as the “leading light” in the digital age.


Few companies have felt Apple’s rise more so than Japan’s Sony, whose iconic Walkman transformed the music listening experience in the 1980s. But it was slow to embrace the shift to digital downloads.



The Walkman was no match for Apple’s iPod when it launched in 2001.



But Mr. Jobs himself was deeply influenced by Sony and Japan. He counted Sony founder Akio Morita as one of his mentors and was said to have been inspired by the Walkman. “The digital age has lost its leading light, but Steve’s innovation and creativity will inspire dreamers and thinkers for generations,”   Sony Corp. President and Chief Executive Howard Stringer said in a one-sentence statement.



Person of great vision: Acer


Taiwan’s Acer Inc., a leading PC vendor, calls Steve Jobs a “person of great vision, innovation and leadership” as it remembered the late Apple founder’s “huge influence” on the industry.

In a Thursday statement, Acer said Mr. Jobs’ death “is a great loss to Apple as well as the industry.”

Acer was once the world’s No. 3 PC vendor, but the advent of Apple’s iPads cut into PC sales and forced Acer to change directions to meet the challenge early this year.

Mr. Jobs’ death did not have an immediate impact on Hon Hai Industry Precision Co., a key producer of iPhones and iPads. Its share prices rose about 2 percent early Thursday on expectations that recent Apple price cuts will bolster the Taiwanese company’s revenues.



Innovative spirit: Samsung

Samsung is calling rival Steve Jobs an “innovative spirit” who will be remembered forever.

Samsung said Thursday that Mr. Jobs “introduced numerous revolutionary changes to the information technology industry.”

The announcement of Mr., Jobs’ death came a day after Samsung said it would file court injunctions in France and Italy seeking to block the sale of Apple’s latest iPhone. The smartphone giants are locked in an intensifying patent fight.

Samsung says Mr. Jobs’ “innovative spirit and remarkable accomplishments will forever be remembered by people around the world.”

The companies have been at odds since April when Apple took legal actions claiming Samsung’s Galaxy line of smartphones and tablet computers copy the iPhone and iPad.Sony Corp. President and Chief Executive Howard Stringer described Steve Jobs as the “leading light” in the digital age.


Few companies have felt Apple’s rise more so than Japan’s Sony, whose iconic Walkman transformed the music listening experience in the 1980s. But it was slow to embrace the shift to digital downloads.



The Walkman was no match for Apple’s iPod when it launched in 2001.



But Mr. Jobs himself was deeply influenced by Sony and Japan. He counted Sony founder Akio Morita as one of his mentors and was said to have been inspired by the Walkman. “The digital age has lost its leading light, but Steve’s innovation and creativity will inspire dreamers and thinkers for generations,” Mr. Stringer said in a one-sentence statement.

Think like Steve Jobs

Do you want to think and innovate like Steve Jobs? Well Apple University is the place that you need to be with. This place is the ultimate galore to take lessons of leadership and long term vision that will benefit your organization.

Way back in 2008, Apple University was launched with the sole motive to teach Apple employees on how to think like Steve Jobs and make decisions he would make. The ultimate goal is to teach the executive team the thought process to be the future leaders Steve Jobs is the person who oversees the whole process surrounding Apple University. Joel Podonly, who was a former Yale professor, is the manager of Apple University. Tim Cook, COO and Apple CEO, and Ron Johnson, senior Vice President is the teachers of Apple University.

According to Forbes, Job is ensuring that his teachings are being collected, curated and preserved so that future generation of Apple's leaders can consult and interpret them.

According to Business Insider, the company prepares case studies of major decisions that Apple executives have made throughout their history, such as why they decided to build Apple retail stores, or focus on having one factory in China manufacture the iPhone, and then they discuss them in class.

These are precious lessons that will shape up the future course of leadership in Apple. And every organization desperately wants to get the format in which apple cultural phenomenon had worked. It has cultivated the tradition of working in a more creative, forward-thinking environment. Their strategy is remarkably common sense more down-to-earth than artsy. Apple ignores what's going on in the tech industry instead the company develops products by paying strict attention to its audience, high-end consumers. And one of the reasons of their high voltage anticipation of its products is their vaunted secrecy that keeps industry buzzing all the time about its next move. They develop their marketing strategies and executions by listening to their audiences instead of aping the competitor up the street. Moreover, the best things get done by top-down leadership. Apple also turns down many more ideas than it approves for production. The company believes in the principle of perfection. Apart from its creative arena, it also outsells all other organization as far as the marketing strategies is concerned. Apple is totally a user experience, especially when it comes to serving their customers.

Google ranked world’s most attractive employer, again

 Internet search giant Google has been ranked as the best company to work for by management and engineering graduates in two separate surveys, which term the company the world’s “most attractive employer” of 2011.

According to the survey conducted by global employer branding firm Universum, Google has been ranked at the top of its 2011 list of the top 50 global businesses and engineering companies to work for - the third year in a row.

The search giant has been dubbed the most attractive employer by more than 160,000 people from Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain, the UK and US looking for the right place to work.

“For the last three years, we have been seeing Google leading the pack and it will take a strong player with a clear talent strategy to steal this number one spot,” Universum Head (Research and Consulting) Lovisa Ohnell said.

The search giant is followed by auditor KPMG, where most B-Schools students want to work, while engineering graduates picked tech giant IBM as their second choice.

For engineering students, software giant Microsoft is the third choice, followed by car-maker BMW (fourth), chip-maker Intel (fifth), electronics company Sony (sixth), tech firm Apple (seventh), GE (eighth), Siemens (ninth) and consumer goods group Procter & Gamble (10th).

The other technology firms that were favoured by engineers are HP, Cisco, Oracle, Nokia, Dell, and Lenovo.

“The software industry is highly dependent on its human capital, hence the efforts to attract and retain the brightest minds in the world,” Universum Global Account Director Carlo Duraturo said.

“There’s a new working culture paradigm today - the relaxed and creative office - and part of it we owe to this industry. Generation Y feels very comfortable working in this new environment and it’s clearly reflected in the attractiveness of the software industry,” Duraturo added.

Meanwhile, in the list of top 50 employers for business students, KPMG is followed by rivals PwC, Ernst & Young and Deloitte at third, fourth and fifth spot, respectively.

In addition, B-Schools students seeking the best employer ranked Microsoft sixth in the list, followed by Procter & Gamble (seventh), financial services entity JP Morgan (eighth), Apple (ninth) and financial services major Goldman Sachs (10th).

Among the other notable names in the list, soft drink major Coca-Cola figured at 12th position in the list, while Citi occupied 29th place and beverages firm PepsiCo bagged 30th place in the list for business students.

“The talent market for business career-seekers is being dominated by the professional services firms, known for being great places to launch a career, and by companies that offer a new working culture in a dynamic environment,” Ohnell added.

Thinnest Nanowire Will Make Computing Super Fast

World's thinnest nanowires will drive computers super fast in the near future using light, a new research claims.

Nanowires will use a 'photonic chip' at its core to perform functions in computing and electronics.

Researchers from Swinburne University of Technology and the Australian National University engineered a nanowire thousand times thinner than a human hair in a special type of glass known as chalcogenide. The photonic chip is the primary goal of the Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), involving six universities, says doctoral student Elisa Nicoletti, who led the study.

The internet is connected by miles of optic fibre cables and electronic routers. However, these routers work at much slower speeds than the optic cables, slowing the system down, according to a Swinburne statement.

 Photonic chip would solve this problem, powering ultra-fast telecom networks that transfer information at the speed of light.

 The realization of the chip will rely on a range of factors, including the fabrication of extremely tiny materials and the researchers' ability to harness a unique optical property known as the 'non-linear effect'.

 Chalcogenide exhibits non-linearity, which means its optical density changes according to the applied light intensity. Simply told, it can handle the passage of greater or lesser intensity of light, without breaking down.

Heat-resistant fungal spores found in Western Ghats

  The spores survived and germinated after being exposed to 115 degree C for two hours

Can the mesophilic fungal spores that normally grow at 20 degree C to 35 degree C survive higher temperatures and still be able to germinate when the conditions are right? Believe it or not, laboratory studies have shown that some species of mesophilic spores can indeed survive even when exposed to 115 degree C for two hours! The duration of survival was longer at lower temperatures.

“The fungi are among the most heat-resistant eukaryotes on record and are referred to as ‘Agni's Fungi,' after the Hindu God of Fire,” notes the paper published recently in the Fungal Biology journal.

Serendipitous

This has been a serendipitous finding of a Chennai based scientist T.S. Suryanarayanan and his team. Dr. Suryanarayanan is the Director of the Vivekananda Institute of Tropical Mycology.

“We were studying the fungi for enzymes of pharmaceutical interest and discovered the heat-resistant trait accidentally,” said Dr. Suryanarayanan. “We were very surprised by the find.”

Leaf litter became the natural choice to look for new species as bacteria and fungi facilitate the degradation of the leaves. And the search was further narrowed down to endophyte fungi that normally live inside living leaves and turn into leaf-litter degrading fungi once the leaf dies.

Tropical forests are one of the best habitats to search for new endophyte species. Hence the search for leaf litter naturally took him to a forest adjacent to the Mudumalai wildlife sanctuary.

As Dr. Suryanarayanan recalls, the fungi were isolated from the dead leaves and cultured for extracting the enzymes of interest. In the process, the fungi with the spores had to be heated to 115 degree C for two hours to completely remove the water content.

However, after weighing the fungi along with the spores, for some inexplicable reasons, the scientists did not discard the waste material. Instead they cultured the spores of Bartalinia sp.

What happened next was totally unexpected. “The spores germinated and produced fungus after a few days,” he said. The ability to germinate was sufficient proof that the spores had indeed survived the heat treatment.

The scientists repeated the experiment several times to be sure that the phenomenon was real and not due to any contamination. Having observed this strange phenomenon in one species, the researchers studied a few more species and saw them behaving the same way.

There is something more important than the spores' ability to withstand higher temperatures. “The change in temperature was not gradual. There was a sudden and steep increase in temperature from 20 degree C to 115 degree C,” said Dr. Suryanarayanan. “But the fungal spores still survived.”

Another aspect is the nature of the heat. “It was dry heat, and this type of heat has a very different effect on the fungal cells,” he underlined.

The mechanism of survival may be very different as the temperature shift was very sudden and steep, and the heat was dry in nature.

The temperature inside the oven and the kind of heat that they were subjected to were very different from what even the higher temperature resistant thermophilic fungi can withstand. The optimum temperature at which thermophilic fungi grows is around 50 degree C.

So how did the mesophilic fungi withstand such high temperatures? The answer lies in the original habitat from where the litter was collected.

“The location from where we collected the litter is often subjected to forest fires,” he said. “Our hypothesis is that periodical forest fires have made the spores adapt to and survive high temperatures.”

Dr. Suryanarayanan is leaving this month-end as a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Fellow to the Department of Biochemistry, Ohio State University to study the feasibility of using fungi to produce biofuel from plant waste.  

Top Tech Stories of 2011

2011 is been full of excitement for the tech world. It was phishers and hackers who were making news for the first 6 months. The epic hack on the play station network by Geohotz will be noted forever in the history of technology. It was all about awareness for the cyber and web security. The new inventions and innovation like Google bringing out Google+, MySpace and Friendster coming with a different look and Facebook itself announced plans to unveil "something awesome".


1. The PS3 Hacking The major hacking the led to the disablement of the Sony play station network, made the techies realize how weak their technology is. The compromising of credit card information anguished the gamers. The hacker group called anonymous threatened and hacked the Sony play station to compete with the PS3 hacker Geohotz. The other sect of hackers called Lulzsec split-up after they cluttered with the digital bits of plenty of organizations including the CIA and Arizona police. The hacking led to the widespread adoption of ironclad security across the Web. In some way we should be thankful to the hackers.


2. AT&T Announces Fusion with T-MobileThe announcement of AT&T acquiring T-Mobile (mobile with 4G facilities) for $39 Billion through a press release joggled up a sleepy Sunday in the month of March. The later declaration of new 4G modems for Albequerque led to a conspiracy since this would create a monopoly which is a great threat for GSM carriers. But many big players supported the AT&T mobile as it would be helpful for people living in rural areas.

3. Twitter Takes Down Anthony WeinerThis news was a less of awareness and more of a caution. May 27th Anthony Weiner's 45,000 followers on twitter checked out his photo with a bulge on his face. Weiner alleged that his account was hacked and the photo posted was a hoax. But later when he was found guilty his fate was all sealed. He had to step down from his position. He was also following random young women on twitter was considered to be a lousy act by a reputed politician.

4. Apple, Google, and Amazon Take Music into the CloudAmazon unveiled its cloud music locker and player which later Google was about to bring out. In the June starting apple announced iCloud. iCloud has the features that the cloud service offers but didn't have parallel users. Steve jobs flattered about the major music labels which sadly Amazon and Google didn't do. There are rumours that iCloud must have cost Apple around $150 million.

5. Microsoft Windows EvolvesThe Announcement of Microsoft designing windows8 to work on ARM devices which has been modified to run on Intel's x86 chips. The metro tablet interface enjoyed the gossips and rumors about their brand new OS.

6. Nintendo Announces Wii UNintendo's Wii U was sensationalized as they announced about their games to be more superior to PlayStation 3, Xbox 360. But their ideas and plan were vague so no one got the answer for the question "what are they upto?" A sophisticated tablet motion controller, and the console itself will have HD graphics, but the experience of using a tablet just isn't as intuitive as waving a Wiimote. This will be a mystery till 2012.

7. Verizon gets the iPhoneVerizon iPhone was expected to be a myth among many people which was later proved to be a true fact. The Verizon version was a CDMA version ofiPhone 4. The upcoming iPhone 5 which will be the world's top phone would work on both CDMA and GSM networks.

8. Location Tracking brought to light Apple was sued by 2 scientists when they found the company tracking locations of iPhone users. Apple was mum about this issue in
the start but later it broke its silence and said they had a location tracking database to make it more secure which tranquilized the issue a bit. The database was confidential and no one would see the location services on their phones in a same way again.

9. Google Announces Its Facebook Competitor, Google+This is news that was spread like a virus and was the craze among the all the Facebook fans. Every person wanted to try out Google+. Google+ was actually brought to bring down Facebook; can also be called as an alternative of Facebook. The innovation of google+ led to a serious rivalry between Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page.

10. Microsoft Buys SkypeMicrosoft investing and acquiring Luxembourg-based VoIP upstart Skype for $8.5 billion shows that they have loads of cash.

New light shed on how memory is organised

  A method that allowed measurements right down to the millisecond level was used

In an article published  in Nature, researchers describe exactly how the brain reacts during the transition between one memory and the next.

Consider these situations: You're rudely awakened by the phone. Your room is pitch black.

It's unsettling, because you're a little uncertain about where you are — and then you remember. You're in a hotel room.

Similar disorientation

Sound like a familiar experience? Or maybe you've felt a similar kind of disorientation when you walk out of an elevator onto the wrong floor?

But what actually happens inside your head when you experience moments like these?

The study by researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience employed a method that allowed them to make measurements right down to the millisecond level.

The research was conducted in the laboratory of May-Britt and Edvard Moser, co-director and director respectively of NTNU's Kavli Institute, by first author Karel Jezek.

Their findings show that memory is divided into discrete individual packets, analogous to the way that light is divided up into individual bits called quanta. Each memory is just 125 milliseconds long — which means the brain can swap between different memories as often as eight times in one second, according to a Norwegian University of Science and Technology press release.

“The brain won't let itself get confused,” says Professor May-Britt Moser. “It never mixes different places and memories together, even though you might perceive it that way.

This is because the processes taking place inside your head when your brain is looking for a map of where you are take place so fast that you don't notice that you are actually switching between different maps. When you feel a little confused, it is because there is a competition in your brain between two memories. Or maybe more than two.”

Brain researchers Edvard and May-Britt Moser are trying to understand exactly how the brain works. Their approach is to meticulously monitor electrical activity in different parts of the rat brain, while the rats explore different mazes.

Painstaking approach

It's a painstaking approach that provides them ever more pieces to the puzzle that is the workings of the brain.

To explore the question of whether the brain mixes memories together, the researchers created a special box for their laboratory animals that effectively enabled them to instantaneously ‘teleport' a rat from one place to another — without the help of the Starship Enterprise as featured in the science fiction teleseries ‘Star Trek.'

Then, they tested how the brain handled the memory of place when the experience of that place suddenly changed from one location to another.

“We tricked the rats,” May-Britt Moser explains. “They're not really teleported of course, but we have an approach that makes them believe that they have been. The features of the box, which give the rats a sense of where they are, are actually ‘constructed' out of different lighting schemes. So we can switch from one group of location characteristics to another with the flick of a light switch.

Apps to Survive TRAI's SMS Cap

Should we really feel disappointed with TRAI's limitation on SMS? The answer is "NO". There is always a solution for everything. Similarly, to avoid this restriction of 100 SMSes per day for each SIM card, listed below are a few practical and handy apps for your phone, that help you be connected for ever and a day.


WhatsAppLacking qualm, it's the best available IM App for any policy! The mobile number is your login ID and a nickname to keep your friends closer. Friends from your address book that are using WhatsApp are positioned in the Favorites category. You can have simple and clean text chats, share pictures, videos, voice recordings, and your location on a map. Although paid on iOS, it is liberated on platforms like Blackberry, Android, Symbian, and Windows Phone 7 Mango.
Fring-The great way to stay connected to your buddies is through Fring. It's available for iOS, Symbain and Android for free. You can have an access to video chats
or group video chats, live chats and voice chats. All you need to do is just register for an account and link your GTalk, AIM, ICQ or MSN accounts to it and get started. It can be downloaded from your phone App Store, or head on to m.fring.com!
Kik Messenger-Available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7, Kik Messenger has over 4 million users. It has features like real-time chatting which informs you whe
n a message has been sent, read, and even when the opposite person is typing. You can also share pictures, and even have group chats. You have to create a username and login, and then add those of your friends that are using Kik Messenger, and get going. eBuddyeBuddy is an awesome messenger that allows chat on Facebook, AIM, Yahoo!, GTalk, MSN and ICQ. It can be downloaded for free from the iOS App Store, Android Market, and Nokia Ovi Store. For other phones like Blackberry, you can check out get.ebuddy.com for the download. One more fact about eBuddy is that it also has a web messanger that allows you to chat directly from your phone's web browser
Meebo-Meebo, available for iOS, Android, and Blackberry, comes free of cost. Alike eBuddy, it also has a web chat feature. The platforms that do not have the app av
ailable can log on to meebo.com/mobile and chat. Meebo allows you to chat on Facebook, AIM, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo!, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber. It can be easily downloaded from the respective App Stores. NimbuzzNimbuzz is software that links you to friends via the internet. The finest part is, even a low-end phone can run the service. You need to just Log in and you will be flooded with multiple options. Chat using text messages, make phone calls or send pictures and multimedia files, all this for free. All you need to pay is the internet usage charged by your telecom provider.
Cnectd-Cnectd works on BlackBerry, Symbian, iPhone and Android phones. It can be downloaded from cnectd.getjar.com. The software uses very little of your phone's me
mory yet the user interface are very refined, almost like BlackBerry Messenger.