Holographic Telepresence - The future of business meetings?

One of the most intriguing challenges in the science of physics is to move one person from one one location to another in a very short time duration commonly known as teleportation. While a huge amount of research is being put into making that possible, science is much much closer to the next best thing which is telepresence.
Telepresence is basically communication with another person present at a distant location with a live 3D holographic presence of that person visible to you near you. As science fiction as that sounds, this technology has been cooking in research labs successfully for quite a while now and the current phase of research is aimed more towards how to make this technology a commercially viable option.

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Sharp Galapagos 003SH - The first Android phone with a 3D display!

It was just a matter of time before this happened. Sharp is company that is leading the technology of glasses free 3D displays. It was inevitable that this technology would trickle down into the mobile phone arena. Unlike the 3D displays you'll find in modern 3D HDTVs requiring the viewer to wear active or passive glasses, Sharp's display uses a parallax barrier system to create a sense of depth by using a series of vertical slits in an ordinary LCD to direct light to the right and left eyes. Other goodies included in the package include Android 2.2 (the latest firmware), a 1GHz Snapdragon powers it, with the 3D-capable displays stretching to 3.8 inches and 800 x 480 resolution. The 003SH also comes with a 9.6 mega pixel camera capable of 720p video. Soon you will see rest of the leading manufacturers jump onto the 3D bandwagon as well!

The HAARP program - Research or the true Weapon of Mass destruction?

As researchers in the world of technology find novel ways to make our lives easier and we are dazzled with the innovations that are making our lives and everyday chores increasingly easy and comfortable we forget that the same technologies have a bad side too. And the advances in those technologies are coming up with methods that are immensely powerful and have the capacity to wreak havoc in the world. One such technology is being developed by US researchers called the HAARP project.


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Android Gains Momentum in U.S. market with 1,309% Growth!

Let me start with a few facts for you first. The U.S. market is the leader and trend setter for the world as far as touchscreen phones are concerned thanks to the immense success of Apple's iPhone. So if any operating system or touchscreen handset manufacturer wants to prove his salt, they have to be competent in this market as products from here trickle down to the rest of the world, for example Blackberry, iPhone, Motorola Razr etc. With the massive amount of success that Google's Android platform has enjoyed recently and the results of the last quarter which shows an 800% plus growth in the last quarter, most people were skeptical that Google will be able to maintain this growth.

 Well, the results are in, and in this quarter Google has shown a phenomenal growth increase of over 1,300%. Yes, its thirteen thousand, i haven't misspelled and yet again betting against Google has proven to be a miscalculated. Also, as you can see in the statistics above, the OHA which is the open handset alliance has Android as its flagship software, now captures almost 50% of the market while Apple is losing ground with just one fourth of the market. Android is becoming increasingly interesting as it slowly moves the smartphone market into the mainstream. This OS will also become increasingly relevant in Pakistan as cheaper handsets in the range of Rs. 15,000/- start getting released from manufacturers like LG with their Optimus line.

The controversy about plastic bottles made of BPA takes a striking turn!

A study of Chinese research has now published striking findings showing without a doubt that BPA the chemical that is ubiquitous in all our plastics that is needed to make the bottle harder does in fact have estrogen like effects and makes reproduction harder by bringing down sperm count in men! This chemical is so common in everyday use that its all around us and its literally impossible to stay away from it. IT is even in our oceans thanks to the waste that is discarded there. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the effects of this chemical, you should know that in response to this study the Chinese government is contemplating going ease on the one child per family law! Some researchers say that the effect of this chemical will be slow long lasting that one day we will be worrying about under population rather than over population of the planet! To me it just seems like the horrific scenario show in the movie Children of Men is going to become a reality if all this is true!

Google Android - First Look!

Over the past few years in sure we have seen this little robot in many blogs and news posts. It is all the rage with the geeks and techies these days. Although it is a simple design, it stands for something that is quickly becoming the biggest thing in the mobile phone industry since the, well, mobile phone itself!

As some of you probably know by now, Android is Google's proprietary operating for touchscreen smartphones. It was first developed by Android Inc. a firm that was purchased by Google in 2005 for an undisclosed amount of money estimated to be around $50 million which is peanuts compared to its current worth. The OS was launched 3 years ago on the first smartphone and is a very young OS in the smartphone stage. Even than, it is the most sought-after and rapidly spreading OS. It is proving as a worthy competitor for industry heavy weights from the market leader Symbian from Nokia to iOS from Apple. The most novel property of Android is that it is open source which means that besides certain limitations, the complete code for the OS is open to the public for alteration and improvisation leading to endless possibilities.

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Car Straddling bus system - a permanent solution to traffic jams?

Well what do we have here? It is the future is closer to us than we can imagine. This May the Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Co Ltd. introduced a very novel idea that brings a futuristic idea to combat a very current problem in many leading metropolitan cities of the world.
What we have here is basically a buss that is elevated above the road so that it can allow most of the vehicles that currently are on the road to pass from beneath them without any reduction in speed. Although it seems that technologies to achieve this sort of thing are far off from now, the fact is that this system is supposed to go under construction by the end of this very year! What wonders would this do to Pakistan's busy roads and railways. Essentially the Pakistani Government wouldn't need to invest in new infrastructure and the load on the current infrastructure wouldn't be increased as well. Plus, this is a very green technology as well. Pakistani regulatory authorities, if you are listening, it sounds like a win-win here! Oh, and since you are here, where are the CNG buses you promised us a while back? 

Microsoft Office sent into the the Cloud by Microsoft!

So we have it here. Adding to the huge number of services available on the cloud, we now have a quality office suite as well. Microsoft has announced to make Ms Office available on the cloud for small and big businesses alike for $6 a month per user. This is a nice deal as the up-gradation as well as the technical aspects of the applications will be the responsibility of Microsoft while the user just has to log in and start using the services! Services like these are helping start up costs for businesses to a minimum and are going to further fuel innovation. This launch comes in direct competition to Google's Google Docs which was launched in Feb 2007 and will be covered in a future review by us. Yet again Google is leading the IT industry with cutting edge technology and is forcing the big boys of the industry to play by its rules!

Terabit Ethernet - The internet of the future!

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) have come together at the Terabit Optical Ethernet Center (TOEC) to develop the technology necessary for a new generation of Ethernet a thousand times faster, and much more energy efficient, than today's most advanced networks. They are under development of technologies that will one day send the data that is transferred in all the networks in the world combined today through just a single fiber optic! The main limitation right now is the usage of a huge amount of power that is being dealt with. This is a natural progression that is required for cable intensive tasks that are coming up as technology marches ahead towards cloud computing! They are planning to develop and implement this speed by the year 2015 which isn't that far from today! Just to give you an idea of what a terabit is. All of you having the standard 1MB connection right now should know that 1TB would be a million times faster than that!

Zong launches the Huawei Ideos Android Smartphone for a price of Rs.16000/-

Here is a treat for all you android fans out there in Pakistan! Ever since the launch of Android from Google, every handset that was introduce with this OS was so high in features to compete with the big boys for the market of high-end phones that manufacturers almost over-looked the budget end of the market. The cheapest offering with Android in the Pakistani market for a long time was the HTC Wildfire we reviewed previously. Now all that comes to an end, everyone say hello to Ideos!

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