January 2012 ~ Technology Pod

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Wacky Green Gadgets

Blood Lamp
To get the taste of how much power do one need to turn a lamp on. The below lamp was made which require you a drop of blood to activate it. I bet such a small personal sacrifice will still make you think twice before truing on the lamp.
The lamp has a luminance, a chemical substance that forensic scientist use to check for the blood, which turns blue and glow when it react the the iron of the red blood cells.

Green Warrior Shower Curtain
Turn of the water or else....... The more time you keep the water on while bathing, one of the curtain will slowly inflate, and then soft spikes will come out of the curtain if you keep on using the shower.

White Goat
The Device converts Paper into toilet paper. Insert 40 sheets of paper from one side, and within 30 minutes you will get a paper roll of toilet paper. The machine actually shred the paper and then convert the paper into tolier paper by wetting it first and then drying it.
The price of this device is wopping $1000000.

Moss Carpet

Bring a little green into your bathtroom. The carpet outside your bathroom is made up of moss.

Solar Bikini

yeah! you read it right. The swimwear has solar cells and a USB port and you can charge your iPod with this device, while taking sun bath, now listen to all your favourite songs, which having the strain of you ipod battery getting low.

FishBowl Sink

The more water you will use to wash your hand, the Gold fish with left with the less amount of water for her.

Pencil printer

The pacil is used to print your documents. and you can also reuse the paper with the attached rubber after rubbing the doument.

Biodegradable coffins

Now that is something every one should used for their loved ones, These final resting places are made from paper, bamboo and all such materials which gets consumed by the soil

Grow your Own Grass Furniture
London-based contemporary design firm Purves & Purves offered a flat-pack DIY cardboard armchair frame along with a package of grass seeds in the summer of 2006, promising outdoor furniture that blends in perfectly with your lawn. You assemble the 14 pieces, fill it with soil, sprinkle the grass seeds over it and watch your new Chia Chair grow right before your eyes. Interesting idea, but mowing it could be a challenge.

Test Case Prioritization in Software Quality

I heard many testers, including me, complaining most of the time: “So many Tests and They expect us to do in so less time. That’s Unfair!!!!”. This is the most common problem, faced in our software industry, that management expects 100 percent testing in less time.

You must have heard a phrase “TimeBox the testing”. This is a time management technique in which you can complete the most important tests in a given time and deliver a high quality product.

Always prioritize your tests to achieve time-boxing in testing. One major task before prioritizing your tests is to work out plans addressing these two concepts:

Identify necessary features that are a MUST.
Identify the risks associated with the features which will not be tested.

Whenever you make a test case, you must have noticed a “priority” column. This is the easiest way to assign priority. Mostly companies follow three-level priority categorization scheme:

Low: Allocated to the tests, which if not executed, will not cause big upsets.

High: Allocated to all tests that MUST be executed in any case.

Medium: Allocated to the tests which can be executed, only when time permits.

However, this categorization scheme is not mandatory; you can customize it according to your company’s requirement. While setting priority, always keep in mind that you have to set the priority according to criteria which suits your company’s needs. I was going through a research in which analysis was done for prioritized and non-prioritized case with the help of Average percentage fault detection metric.

The research, proved that the number of bugs found per minute are greater in case of non-prioritized test cases as compared to prioritized test cases. Before prioritizing test cases, always consider these things:

· Criteria which suits your company’s needs.

· Where a failure would be most severe Test

· Where a failure would be most visible

· Always ask customer what is most important to him.

· Areas which are more complex and where changes are more frequent.

· Areas which have created most problems in the past.

Adeeba Aatif : A freelance writer and a software Analyst

Google uses Colossal Energy(260million watts continuously)

1/27/2012 03:25:00 PM Google, Google Data Center, Google energy, Tech News

260 million watts of energy is being consumed continuously by none other than our favourite search engine group Google. To make it understand better

260 million watts are equivalent to a quarter of output of a nuclear power plant.

Google has always kept their energy consumption statistics a secret, but in a good move, they have recently released the amount of energy they consume.
Google also estimated that its total carbon emissions for 2010 were just under 1.5 million metric tons, with most of that attributable to carbon fuels that provide electricity for the data centers. when it calculates that average energy consumption on the level of a typical user the amount is small, about 180 watt-hours a month, or the equivalent of running a 60-watt light bulb for three hours.

Google also released an estimate that 'an average search uses 0.3 watt-hours of electricity', a figure that may be difficult to understand intuitively. But when multiplied by Google’s estimate of more than a billion searches a day, the figure yields a somewhat surprising result: about 12.5 million watts of Google’s 260-million-watt total can be accounted for by searches, the company’s bread-and-butter service.
Though Google should be applauded for the efforts it make to make use of renewable energies, Google says that 25 percent of its energy was supplied by renewable fuels in 2010, and estimates that figure will reach 30 percent in 2011.

Take a look below at the Google's DataCenter in Hamina(Finland)

Self Driving BMW (ConnectedDrive Connect (CDC)

1/26/2012 02:19:00 PM BMW, Cars, Research, Self Driving BMW

BMW later annunched ConnectedDrive Connect (CDC) a semi-autonomous driving system back in August, They have recently release a new video of BMW in action with hands off.

The CDC car works on premapped highway roads, the car is intellegent enough that if it feels that it is behing a slow paced car it can look for a open lane and move to that lane. For now it can easily attain a speed upto 130 km/h (81 mph).

CDC in BMW- Self Driving Car

The CDC system can be installed in any BMW car. As Dr. Nico Kaempchen explains, "Our main challenge was to develop algorithms that can handle entirely new situations. In principal, the system works on all freeways that we have mapped out beforehand with centimeter accuracy." He goes on to say CDC ensures the car "adheres to all traffic laws" and sticks to the speed limit.

Though this is doubtful that if the CAR makes an illegal move on the streets like breaking a signal or did not follow the treffic law, who should be chalaned for this conduct? Driver or the Car, or may be BMW manufecturers should be challaned. However everyone is excited about this technology and are waiting to be shipped as an inbuilt system.

How Frequent Mobile and Laptops should BE CHARGED

1/25/2012 12:48:00 AM battery, Mobile

A Life long question that has always been discussed as to how much should one charge his cell phone or laptop battery to prolong the battery life.
Charging a battery incorrectly does reduce the life of the battery, Given below are some of the facts and suggestions that will defiantly increase the battery life of you cell phone and laptops.

In order to understand it fully, let us start from the reasons that can effect the life of battery the most.

Temperature Conditions
Charging Voltage at which a battery is charged(Charger)
How frequent a battery is charged.

Charge Battery after every 50% Discharge: Do not wait for the battery to discharge 100% , rather it has been proven that the battery will last longer if the battery is charged after 50% discharge.

The smaller the depth of discharge, the longer the battery will last.

Do not Charge the Battery to full 100%: A battery which has been charged to 100% should be removed from the charger ASAP. with the busy life that we have, it probably might not be an easy task to wait and see the charger every 10min to make sure that the battery is charged to 100% or not. A good practice is to remove the charger once it reaches around 90%.
Though new charges are intelligent enough that they should disconnect themselves from the charging circuits and starts supplying the power directly to the laptop or cell phone. I am not sure if the cell phones are intelligent enough.

Fully Discharge the Battery once a Month: Why should you do this. well the new batteries are smart batteries and they exactly tell us how much battery life is remain and how much time will they last. Some times with frequent charging/discharging, their intelligence become less and they need to be Reset, which is possible only by discharging it to full 0%

Keep the Battery Cool: Heat is the biggest enemy of batteries, The cooler the better. For the cell phones, keeping them in pocket for long hours are never recommended. The table needs no explanation. Any temperature higher than 30°C lies in the range of higher temperature.

Try removing your cell phone from the pocket every once or twice an hour and hold them in your hand to keep them cool.
Similarly Laptops when used in bed and mostly placed over blankets, which could degrade and shorten the life of your battery much sooner than normal.

Try Using the Original Charger
Manufacturers do extensive research in designing the charger they ship with the cell phone or laptop. Using any other charger will defiantly have some voltage difference with the original once. Higher voltage chargers are never recommended for your device. though lower voltage charger may be recommended as they do not do as much damage as the higher voltage ones.

Conclusion:

Never discharge Li-ion too low; try to charge more often.
A random or partial charge is fine. Li-ion does not need a full charge.
Avoid ultra-fast chargers.a
If the charger allows, lower the charge voltage limit to prolong battery life.(keep the charger voltage as low as possible if your charger has this option)
Keep the battery cool. Avoid hot cars, windowsills, blanket tops.
High heat and full state-of-charge, not cycling, cause short battery life in laptops.
Remove battery from laptop when used on the power grid(though impractical)

Requirements from the Customer’s Perspective

1/23/2012 11:33:00 PM Software Testing

If you are working in a software company, have you ever thought “What a customer expects from you?”

The most concise and precise answer could be quality product, reasonable price, speed, efficiency, accuracy, integrity, reliability, courtesy, commitment, helpful attitude and a personal interest in his/her patronage. In short, customers expect more and more.

Customer’s expectation is a major challenge as they can grow, shrink, change shape or direction any time. It is quite possible that what you perceive is entirely different than what your customers have perceived it which is not unusual. It is just the difference of thinking between two humans. Keep in mind that if customers view you as unresponsive, then you are unresponsive in THEIR eyes…..the reverse can also be true!

Mostly customers don’t know what exactly they want, and if they get it, they will change their minds. I saw many IT managers complaining about indecisive and demanding customers. The reason behind, mostly people convey the things in terms of what they know and what they like. There is an old saying “I’ll know it when I see it” is literally true in terms of customer’s unrealistic expectations….Therefore, always clarify what they want and what they expect.

I heard complaining one of my friends (who recently opened his software company) that his customer wants him to do what initially was out of scope from the project. Moreover the customer wants it to be done without extra payment. Think what could be the reason behind? Just because he didn’t formally approve any document from the customers against the requirements. So, always develop a common understanding between you and your customers.

Why today’s customers have become incredibly demanding? Because, now customers have more choices than ever in today’s competitive software industries; if a software company can’t meet their expectations, they will go anywhere else. To gain customer’s interest, confidence and trust, you must learn the power of managing customer unrealistic expectations.

Requirement analyst plays the main role at this stage. Being a requirement analyst, don’t over promise, make things realistic and achievable. Consider yourselves business people/service providers rather than software engineer or requirement analyst. Align yourself with your customers’ needs and explain your services in their terms, not yours. Keep commitments and overestimate how long it will take to deliver like tell them that the software would be ready on Friday, knowing that it would be ready on Wednesday. Nothing can be managed without communication. Continually, let the customers know about the progress but don’t overcrowd. Make frequent short deliverable and involve customer at each delivery. If you don’t do this, it can lead to the traditional IT complaint, “We gave them just what they asked for, but it wasn’t what they wanted.”

Don’t wait for your customers to contact you, it is your responsibility to keep them up to date, customers hate it when they don’t know what’s going on!!! Review your work or get external person to review your work. Remember, Fresh eyes can see what you can’t.

Master these tactics and keep the customers rolling in!!!

Adeeba Aatif : A freelance writer and a software Analyst

100 Best Companies to Work For

1/20/2012 06:59:00 PM Tech News

Fortune recently released a list of best companies people want to work for. and it is not a surprise that Google tops the list of the world's best company people wants to work for with their job growth rate of 33 percent. Google as 18500 employees.

Mercedes-Benz USA is at 12th place in the ranking followed by Adobe at 41, Intel at 46, AutoDesk at 52, Microsoft at 76 and Cisco at 90.

Google- Best Company to work for- Frobes

Best Companies by 'Job Growth'
Google stands at number 4 by job growth as it has 33% job growth. Zappos.com stands at no 1 by job growth of 70%.

Best Companies by 'No LayOffs'
SAS Institute tops the list as it has never laye-off any of his employee, it is followed by Wagmans Food Markets

Companies with most Women
Bright Horizons Family Solutions ranks no 1 with 95% of its employees are women and Starbucks is at 21 in the list of companies with most women with 65% of its employee are women.

Nike+ Fuel Band : For Fitness Enthusiast

1/20/2012 01:05:00 AM gadgets

Every fitness enthusiast wants to measure and keep track of how much calories he has burn and wants to set a mark for improvement. Nike has introduced a new gadget to keep track of all activities. Its simple yet effective and above all can become a fashion statement. A wrist band and marketed with the name of 'Nike+ Fuel Band'.

Nike + Fuel Band

The interesting thing about fuel band is that it do not count the steps or ticks of miles rather it uses "oxygen kinetics to measure the amount of oxygen you are using and convert it into Nike fuel.

The more activity you will do in a day the more Nike fuel you are goning earn. The fuel band has an accelerometer, LED lights to display the progress in terms of Nike fuel, and has a hidden USB port. It can also be connected with the iPhone via Bluetooth and to a Nike+ web application.

The gadget can last four days in a single charge.It will cost around $150 and is ready to be shipped by February 22nd. For the full specs . For Detailed Specifications of the band click Technical Specs.

Nike +

Self Healing iPhone Case- your phone will never get a scratch for life

1/18/2012 09:38:00 PM Tech News

Nissan who earlier announced a high tech scratch less paint, which gets healed and repair itself quickly if the car gets a scratch. with such a great product and idea, Nissan was not able to make a mark as far as finances are concerned. They dropped the marketing campaign for the product after not getting a positive response from the market from sales perspective.

Now again back with a bang, Nissan announced that they will soon be shipping the iPhone cases, and bases on their paints, the iPhone cases will heal itself if they get a scratch.

Nissan's New Scratch less Paint

Company says that currently they are doing some trial runs on prototype iPhone cases. Not more than it takes only an hour that it takes to heal a small scratch; and a month in case the scratches are much deeper.

Some thing about the paint now- The paint is actually made from polyrotaxane, it can actually mend itself by changing back into its original form by filling the gaps i.e. scratches.

The pain has a gel like surface which will give users a better grip. This is the first time a motor giant will be putting its hands in the mobile market.

Engineer's Pick Up Lines

1/18/2012 12:49:00 AM Fun

I won’t stop bugging you until I get the address of your home page.
You fascinate me more than the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus.
Since distance equals velocity times time, let’s let velocity and time approach infinity, because I want to go all the way with you.
My love for you is like a concave up function because it is always increasing.
Let’s convert our potential energy to kinetic energy.
Wanna come back to my room? …and see my 1000 Mhz Pentium VII?
How about you and I go back to my place and form a covalent bond?
You and I would add up better than a Riemann sum.
You’re sweeter than glucose.
We’re as compatible as two similar Power Macintoshes.
Why don’t we measure the coefficient of static friction between you and me?\
Wanna see the programs in my HP-48GX?
Your body has the nicest arc length I’ve ever seen.
You’re hotter than a bunsen burner set to full power!

Chargers not needed, you walk and phone gets charged

1/13/2012 04:05:00 PM gadgets

With new gadgets and smartphone populating the market with ingenious computational powers, these gadgets are becoming more power hungry . Bigger Smart screens need a good better and bigger battery and similarly the gigahertz processor urge to get more power out of the battery.

There are 2 ways to find a solution for the battery, either to get a battery which could last longer, which could make manufacturers go for more R&D and a result will be a pricey gadget.

Electricity-Harvesting Device May Put Power in Your Steps

A simple ingenious method was made public at CES by 'InStepNanoPower' is to create such a gadget which could power or charge the device whenever a person move/walk/run.

40watts of mechanical power is generated when we walk. A special shoe which has a pair of electricity generating cushion in its sole. Over the course of a single day, the generated energy, which gets stored in a small battery in the sole, provides enough electricity for a pedestrian to extend her smartphone’s battery life.

The science inside this idea are piezoelectric sensors, which converts mechanical power to electrical power.

It’s like having an electrical power generator and a Wi-Fi hot spot under the heel !

A Phone with 15 Years Battery Life

1/12/2012 12:01:00 PM Mobile

SpareOne mobile phone has comes up with a new mobile phone which has a battery life of 15 years. Basically the phone is designed for emergency cases. The good thing about this cell phone is that it won't cost you that much. The phone costs around 50 dollar.

It operates on a single AA battery, and they claim that the phone will remain on for 15 years. Consider buying this phone and throwing it in car's trunk, you never know when you would need it in emergency.

The SpareOne can be programmed for instant access to phone numbers of key contacts, including emergency services in any location.The Phone will also transmits its location automatically and it has a build in torch.

Though i seriously doubt if it has been tested to last so long, i am sure they have not tested it by maintaining it for 15 years, anyhow it is a good gadget and should be in a car trunk.

AR.Drone: Next Era of Video Gaming

1/10/2012 11:55:00 AM gadgets, Mobile No Comments

Drones have been known for years for survalanes and even killing people. Every one must have thought about contoling and flying a drone for spying. What if you can buy a drone and not only fly it with your iPhone or Andriod supported mobile, but you can also record and share on youtube.

This commercial Drone is known as Parrot AR Drone Quadricopter. The interesting part is that the AR Drone is controlled via WiFi so just imagine how far you can take this thing.

The AR Done has four(4) propellers and 2 cameras are attched with it for video capturing. It is around 12 inches in length and is made from plastic and foam.

The device can be best utilized to play augmented reality games.

Some features are mentioned here:

Controllable by iOS/Andriod operated devices like the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad. Android devices are also included as well as some Apps for Samsung BADA and Symbian devices.
Wi-fi connection.
Ability to distinguish 3d stages.
Perfectly fits augmented reality games.
Fitted with ultrasound altimeter for hovering capability.

The gadget can be bought from http://www.parrot.com/catalog/pos/parrot/ar-drone/US/stores

AR Drone augmented reality game

An interview with the AR Drone Team at CES

World's Cheapest Tablet

1/08/2012 10:00:00 PM Mobile No Comments

World's cheapest tablet aka 'AKASH' can be bought at a mere price of $35 dollars as a student on subsidized price and in the market it has a $60 price tag.The 7" tablet is design by a london based company 'Datawind' in collaboration with IIT(Indian Institute of Technology) and is manufactured in India by QUAD

The device is being sold in India for students who cannot afford an expensive tablet like iPAD. Manufacturers are hopeful that they will be able to sell their products easy and convincingly. Indian government is also supporting their project by buying 8 to 10 millions of the tablet for poor students.

Specifications:

Screen Resolution: 800x480 pixel resolution with a 7” inch resistive screen
Weight: 350gms
Operation System: Andriod 2.2

Processor: 366Mhz Connexant with Graphics accelerator & HD Video processor

RAM: 256 MB RAM
Memory: Micros SD slot with a 2GB Micro SD card (expandable to 32GB)
Ports: 2 USB ports
Battery: 2100mAh battery, upto 3-4 hours backup, very less power consumption of 2 watts with solar charging option.
Web Browser: a browser developed by Datawind
Connectivity : Wi-fi capability , Bluetooth, internal SIM modem(GPRS)
Audio: 3.5mm audio output and input jack

supported documents: DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX, ODT, ODP,PDF
supported images: PNG, JPG, BMP and GIF
supported audio: MP3, AAC, AC3, WAV, WMA
supported video: MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, FLV formats and includes an application for access to Youtube video content

Price: Rs.2500/- (Rs.1700/- for students) - Indian Rupee
A new version which is better will soon be available with some extra price added

Do you know what 'Moore's law' is?

1/04/2012 06:13:00 PM Science 14 Comments

Can you guess the number of transistors in a PC that will be sold after 2 years by the best tech company like intel or IBM? I bet you can. All you need to know is the previous trend of approximate number of transistors and ‘Moore’s Law.
More’s Law States that the “number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an IC(integrated circuit) doubles approximately every 2 years”.

Moor's Law 1971-2011

Gordon E.Moore, an Intel co-founder, described this trend in his paper in 1965. He compared the number of components in an IC(integrated Circuit) from 1958 to 1965 and predicted that the trend will continue to grow the same way for atleast ten years.

One of the biggest technologic and R&D companies working for semiconductor devices now a days use this law for their long term planning and to achieve their target for research and development.

Until 2005, Moore’s law was BANG ON, however International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors has updated a minor changed in this law stating that the number count of transistor and the densities are to double after every 3 years from 2010.

The law is so popular that similar to Moore’s law has been devised for many other components. Some of them are explained below.

Transistors per integrated circuit.

This is the most popular formulation as explained above and is the basis of the Moore’s law , doubling of the number of transistors on integrated circuits every two years. At the end of the 1970s, Moore's law became known as the limit for the number of transistors on the most complex chips. Recent trends show that this rate has been maintained into 2007

Hard disk storage cost per unit of information.

A similar law has been made for Hard Disk Storage per unit of information (Kryder’s Law), Stating that the “progressing storage and increate in the hard disk capacity is almost equal to the rate of increase in the transistor count”

That means the number maximum transistors that can be used inexpensively will actually be the size of hard disk that can be made or which will be available in the market.

Network capacity vs Cost

The amount of data coming out of an optical fiber is doubling every nine months. Thus, the cost of transmitting a bit over an optical network decreases by half every nine months. Bandwidth available to users increases by 50% annually