Google's new service asks: 'What Do You Love?'

LONDON: Google has launched a new website WDYL.com, that presents the results of searches across 20 different Google products on one page.

It is a new search engine, which presents a diverse set of information about any topic that a person is interested in.

WDYL.com features a simple gray page asking at-top "What do you love?" with a search bar to the side, the Los Angeles Times reports

Once a user enters a search query, the site presents its results in 20 widgets containing many of Google's different types of searches, such as news, blogs, YouTube and Picasa photos.

The new website popped up online with no marketing or introduction by Google, but was reported first by TechCrunch, which posted a story after being tipped to the site's launch.

The Search giant Google has also launched its new social networking website in its latest attempt to challenge Facebook.

Spice launches Transformer India’s first transformer phone for Rs 4599

Just when we were talking about the recent Micromax innovation - Van Gogh X450, we were hit by the 'Transformer'. Leading mobile manufacturer Spice has surprised its fan by unleashing India’s first transformer phone known as Transformer. Why Transformer? The phone in a true sci-fi like fashion transforms itself from a trendy bar to a smart touch in a flash.

Transformer Lovers Rejoice: Spice Mobility has entered into a one year agreement with Hasbro, the official licensing partner and franchisee holder for the latest Transformer 3 movie, which means that the Spice Transformer phone will come preloaded with all the Transformer 3 movie content in terms of wallpapers, themes, videos and more.


Speaking on the launch of Transformer, Mr. Kunal Ahooja, CEO, S Mobility said, “Transformer offers an exhilarating mix of style, innovation and features that is a breakthrough in the mobile handset market in India. With its form changing capability, we have yet again tried to offer a product that appeal to the ever trendy youth as it is as per their requirement and affordability. The tie up with Transformers 3 movie is further expected to raise its appeal quotient.”

This GSM-GSM Multi SIM handset has cutting-edge design and offers full touch experience with its 6 cm wide screen, a 1.3 MP camera and video recording feature. Equipped with a 8GB expandable memory assures ample space to save your all your must have goodies, Spice Transformer also packs in a FM, MP3 player, FM transmitter and stereo Bluetooth which will make sure the music lovers have a lot at their disposal.

Available in yellow, red and white colours, Spice Transformer is priced at Rs 4,599 and will be available across India in July.

Nokia revamps Symbian OS for India

In the course of the next one year, Nokia plans to introduce up to 10 new Symbian-based smartphones in the country.

According to Deloitte estimates, the company commands about 49 per cent of the market share in India.

Nokia is set to launch the N8, E7, C7 and C6-01 with the new Symbian Anna software update, which includes a number of user experience improvements. Symbian Anna is an update to the existing Symbian operating system (OS), and has been driven almost entirely by consumer feedback. The update would bring a faster web browser, new icons for its main interface, an update to Ovi Maps and enhanced security features. A new split-screen view would also be introduced.
“The Symbian Anna upgrade gives users a set of new icons, a faster web browser, improved text input and enhanced maps. In other words, your phone would get a free make-over,” says Nokia India’s recently-appointed director (marketing), Viral Oza, adding by September, even existing owners of these devices would be able to download Symbian Anna. He said Symbian and Windows Phone 7 would co-exist until at least 2012. “Nokia has invested an enormous amount in Symbian, and we would continue to support Symbian devices till 2016,” he asserts.

Talking about the Symbian Anna features, Oza says, “Even business users would benefit from the improved instant messaging with Microsoft Communicator Mobile email enhancements, including full-meeting request support and business grade security, with hardware accelerated encryption. It also offers easy and secure intranet access for people who want to get on their company intranet.”

Earlier, announcing the launch of dual-SIM devices at a global event, Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop said, “Innovation is at the heart of our strategy, and today, we took important steps to demonstrate a new pace of innovation at Nokia. It's the beginning of a new era for Nokia." Elop also underlined the company’s attempt to fortify its entry-level device offerings. Nokia recently introduced the C-series devices, including dual and single SIM options, with advanced web and maps experience for Series 40 (the earlier version of Symbian operating system) phone users, as well as the choice of a touch screen or a keypad.

Oza says entry-level and feature phones would be important for Nokia in India, where value proposition is the key while buying a new device. Giving users relevant software and services along with the devices is also critical to maintaining its position. With eight million downloads a week on its Ovi Store, close to two million email activations and six million music tracks on its store, Oza insists the company is streamlining the software division to match the needs of smartphone users. The company has already announced its intention to its combine the Navteq mapping unit with its location-based services business.

Google+ Social Network: Hands-On First Impressions

Google's new social network, Google+, premiered today (Tuesday), promising a new spin on socializing online with a slick interface and a unique way of sharing content. The service launched to a limited number of users Tuesday in what Google is calling a "field trial." A few PCWorld staffers were lucky enough to be invited (it’ll roll out to everybody in the coming months), so naturally we jumped right into testing the new service.

In general we thought the service borrowed some good ideas from the reigning king of social networks, Facebook, but also offers some cool new approaches to sharing content and managing privacy. In short, Google+ is a solid start to an incipient rival social networking platform that is sure to be enhanced rapidly over the coming months, and it could soon offer a solid alternative to Facebook. Now, let's dig in.

Getting Started

Google+ has an easy set-up with almost no learning curve, especially if you're familiar with Facebook. If you’ve used any Google products before, you might be surprised at how much of that information gets automatically imported to your new Google+ account, to use in a social context. For example, I’ve uploaded pictures to Picasa without allowing others to view them. Google+ first asked me to select a profile picture from my Picasa Albums, and then gave me a choice: Either link my Google+ account with Picasa, or don’t join Google+ at all.

I decided to link. It didn’t actually change the privacy settings of my Picasa albums (it didn’t make them public to my friends or anything). But having the choice made me wonder what the implications of having my Picasa albums linked to Google+ really were.

One of the first things Google+ prompts you to do is select a profile picture. If you have a Picasa album, it’ll allow you to choose images from there.

Either link Google+ to your Picasa pictures or you don’t use Google+ at all!

The next place you go after you’ve set up a Google+ account is to the “About Me” section. You can tell that Google is trying to be a little saucier than Facebook, or at least have an edgier personality.

While Facebook profiles ask you the basic questions: gender, relationship status, religion, favorite movies, TV shows, music and so forth, Google+ asks you to make an introduction, like you’re back in the first day of your high school speech class, and then asks you to list “bragging rights” like “survived high school", "have three kids", etc.

You can pin “places you’ve lived” on a Google map in the “About Me” section--a cool feature for globetrotters (or Army Brats).

Forming Your ‘Circles’

Google+ imports all of your information from Gmail automatically--and that means all. When you’re updating your friend circles there’s a tab towards the top of the page that says “Find and Invite”; click on it and you'll see a list of just about everyone you’ve ever sent an email to through Gmail alphabetically--even if the last time you sent them an email was four years ago. It's not surprising that Gmail remembers everyone you’ve every sent an email to--but it's a little jarring when all those names come rushing back at you at once.

Now, how to organize all those people. Google claims to have done a radical rethink of the way social networks ought to work, so that they more closely mimic the way we organize our friends in real life. After using Google+ for just a few minutes I began to appreciate the simplicity of the "circles" approach. And I really like the way Google has represented it in graphical form in Google+: that is, you actually pick up people with your mouse and drag them into this circle or that.

Nice job Google--it makes me think you’re finally getting a grip on this social thing after all.

Google+ users can drag and drop their friends into the appropriate social circles. Here I'm dragging my colleague Daniel Ionescu into my "PCWorld Pals" circle.

However, because this drag-and-drop function is behind the Circles tab, I began trying to add friends by searching for them from the Google+ homepage. When I would visit a potential friend's page and add them to one of my circles, it wasn't immediately apparent to them that we were now linked. I hope Google moves the Circles function to the front, making the process of forming connections a bit more user friendly.

Sharing Content

Google+ answers the call of many privacy activists to provide the functionality needed to set the privacy level on each piece of content shared. For instance, when I share an article or upload a camera image, Google+ gives me choices of which friend circles I’d like to share that content with. A picture from my phone might be perfectly fine for my Close Friends circle but very wrong for my Colleagues circle, for instance.

For every piece of content you share on Google+ you're asked which circles or individuals should be able to see it.Still, I’m not sure that Google has given us the deep privacy controls that we might need. I’m not seeing the tool that lets me carefully fine-tune my sharing rules with a particular circle. I created a new circle for a new set of friends, but did not see where I could set the privacy settings for that group. Am I supposed to rely on the stock privacy settings Google has applied to the Friends, Family and Acquaintances circles it gave me to start with?

Stream = Facebook News Feed

The “Stream” section of Google+ is analogous to Facebook’s News Feed, and it does almost nothing different except for the fact that before you post anything, you have to decide which circles see it. You can make it available to “all circles” or even to “extended circles” where you basically email what you post to people who aren’t on Google+.

The Stream function in Google+ is very similar to the News Feed in Facebook. Controls at the side of the page allow you to choose which of your circles of friends can contribute items to your stream.

Choosing who sees what in your stream might do one of two things when everyone starts using this: either your news feed will finally have information that pertains only to what you’re interested in, without the blast of “everyone from knitting club message me!” updates; or your stream will become immensely boring, without any of the emotional impulse-statuses that make Facebook a salient place for social information. Would you post a dramatic break-up status to the world if you could just send it to your “Circle of Close Friends”? Probably not.

Of course, people who see your stream updates can comment on them, and Google’s version of Facebook’s “Like” is to “+1” it (Google premiered the "+1" feature earlier this year, which basically allows you to say "hey I think this website is cool" by clicking a "+1" button that appears next to items on your search page). Just as Facebook created new words for using its site (“I’ll facebook you when I get back to the city”), maybe later this year we’ll be telling each other “I plus-one’d your video last night.”

Hangouts

One interesting feature that could really put Google+ ahead of Facebook is its “Hangouts” feature. Google+ Hangouts are a kind of mashup of video chatting through Gmail, and the old “chat rooms” of the days when AIM was our only chat option.

First, you click on the “Start a hangout” button, and it takes you to a separate webpage and enables your webcam and mic (while it's loading it even gives you a “fix your hair and make sure your mic works!” message, so you’re not taken by surprise). Then, you invite circles of friends, or individual friends to the Hangout room for the video chat session. You can create Hangouts of up to 10 people.

Google puts the image of the person who is talking at the center of the screen. If multiple people are talking at once it moves the one who is talking loudest to the center (that’s a good lesson for you kids out there).

Sparks

One of the first ways Google will try to win users from Facebook is by leveraging the assets it already has. Search is, of course, Google's crown jewel. Where at Facebook you have to go wander around the web finding sharable content, Google+ brings the content to you.

In the Spark section I entered one of my interests--punk rock--and the Google search algorithm brought back a bunch of mainstream media articles, YouTube and Vimeo video, and blog posts. After selecting an article about my friend Jello Biafra, I chose which of my 'circles' I wanted to share the content with.The feature asks you to choose from a list of possible interests (biking, sailing, sewing, etc.), or to enter your own specific interest. Google then goes out and gathers relevant content from all over the Web. I found the content suggested by Sparks to be almost completely on-topic, and I even found some content that I could actually see myself sharing with friends. Importantly, you can choose which friend circles or single friends you want to share the content with. The posts show up in those friends’ news feeds, or as Google calls them Streams.

Mobile Apps

The Google+ Android App lets you see your news stream, upload photos, manage your social circles, edit your own profile and start group chats using Huddle. Image: GoogleGoogle also debuted a couple of new mobile apps today, both of which work directly with your Google+ account online. While some other users I talked to had some trouble forming the handshake between the apps and the Google+ service, I had no problem.

Firstly, the main Google+ Android app (available for free from the Android Market) does a nice job of bringing the core parts of Google+ to a mobile device. The app sports a simple home screen with icons for the Stream, Huddle, Photos, Profile and Circles sections of Google+ (see image). You can easily post notes and content, and comment on others’ shared materials, from the app's Stream screen. It also asks you if you want to attach your location to the posts you make.

The Photos section shows you images shared by your friends, uploaded from your phone, stored in your albums, and photos of you shot by others and shared on Google+. A little camera icon in the top right corner brings you your camera app and lets you quickly post a picture to your “From Your Phone” album at Google+. I was a bit disappointed here, because Google made it sound as if photos taken from within the app were automatically sent to your Google+ album; but in truth you have push a "Done" button then go to another screen where you're asked if you want to attach a note or your geographic location to the photo. You have to go back into your album to designate which friend circles can see your photos.

When you are reviewing your photos you can “tag” the people in them similar to the way you do in Facebook. You draw a little square around a person's face, then type in their name in the box below (or choose one of the names Google+ guesses) You can tag people who are Google+ users or just email contacts.

Google attaches this note: “Adding this tag will notify the person you have tagged. They will be able to view the photo and the related album.” This is an important difference from Facebook, which does not make an effort to warn people the they’ve been tagged (possibly in an unflattering or compromising photo) and give them an immediate chance to remove the tag.

The other app, Huddle, is already included in the main Google+ app. So I’m not sure why you’d download Huddles unless you wanted only the group chatting function on your mobile device, and no access to any other parts of Google+. The Huddle function works great, however. I was easily able to initiate a group chat with come Google+ friends. And while there was a little bit of cross talk and out-of-order posting, overall the app worked well.

Privacy Approach

Google makes it very clear that the information you contribute to the social graph underneath Google+ will be used to help refine search results and to help target web ads more accurately. While Google+ seems to put a lot of emphasis on giving users control over the way they share information with different circles of friends, it’s yet to be seen if Google will be more sensitive to the privacy of userswhen it determines which personal data is public--that is, available for use (in aggregate or otherwise) by Google and its advertisers--and which remains private.

Battle Royal Starts Now

Google wants Google+ to rival its number-one arch-nemesis, Facebook--and by the looks of things the search giant may have a fighting chance. How will Google get people to move their online social lives away from Facebook and over to Google+? Google has already amassed a large body of user data search, Gmail, Picasa, Google Videos and YouTube, etc., but it needs the highly personal data that Facebook has been so successful at collecting. Google is said to have identified its social networking initiative as the company's central goal, and has the deep pockets to quickly build Google+ into a the kind of full-blown social networking platform that can challenge Facebook.

Perhaps most importantly, expect Google to build Google+ features into the majority of its products from search to mail to video to documents. With all those great (free) services and now a tightly-integrated social networking platform under one roof, who needs Facebook? Had Google launched this strategy three years ago that may have been a good question. But the burning question now is whether or not Google is too late to the "social Web" to ever catch up.

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Next Google Android device may be "Nexus Prime"

Google Nexus Prime will have a dual core 1.5 GHz processor and Super Amoled HD display capable of native 720p HD resolution.

The Google Android team is working on its next flagship device, which is to be launched by the end of this year. This smartphone will be the first handset to feature the Android Ice Cream Sandwich update. BoyGeniusReport was tipped, stating that the phone is likely to be branded as Nexus Prime and that it will be Google's third flagship device after Nexus One and Nexus S. Nexus Prime is to have a dual core 1.5 GHz processor, and will probably display 720p resolution on a Super Amoled HD screen.

According to BoyGeniusReport, Nexus Prime will run on a dual core 1.5 GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4460 processor. This processor is capable of supporting full 1080p HD video playback and 1080p stereoscopic 3D. To compliment that, the 1.5 GHz processor will be coupled with PowerVR SGX540 graphics that will power the next major Android update, dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich. Nexus Prime will not have a custom interface and will deliver a "plain vanilla" Android experience just like the Nexus S and Nexus One did.

Google's flagship handset will flaunt a Super Amoled HD display, which sort of hints at Samsung being the hardware manufacturer. It's quite possible that Google ordered displays from Samsung, but that's just a possibility. As hinted earlier, the Nexus Prime won't have any hardware home button on the front panel and will have capacitive buttons instead.

It is likely that Ice Cream Sandwich will be delivered to existing Android devices in the market in due course of time after Nexus Prime is launched. Rolling out the latest Android updates for different existing devices is challenge for several handset OEMs and the process often leaves smartphone owners frustrated. Hopefully, with the launch of Android Ice Cream Sandwich, Google plans to change the way the update cycle for older and existing handsets works.

Mammals and fish ‘use tongues differently while chewing’

A new study has shown that fish and mammals chew their food differently. While fish use tongue muscles to thrust food backward, mammals use them to position food for grinding. According to the researchers from Brown University, the difference in chewing shows that animals have changed the way they chew and digest their food, and that evolution must have played a role.

They also concluded that evolutionary divergence likely occurred with the amphibians.

“It’s pretty clear that all of these animals chew, but the involvement of the tongue in chewing differs,” said Nicolai Konow, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown and the lead author on the study.

“And that brings up the question of what the muscles associated with the tongue and the jaw are doing,” he added.

Konow and his team studied how the muscles of three mammals alpacas, goats, and pigs acted during chewing. They outfitted each with electrodes planted in the jaw and tongue muscles to identify the activity of each set of muscles during chewing. The analysis revealed that the animals’ tongues thrust forward and upward, as they began to chew and then fell back or retracted, to their original position. It also emerged that with the animals facing left, the tongue traces an ellipse in a counter-clockwise direction for each cycle.

On the other hand, when the fish face left, the chewing cycle looks like an ellipse tilted at an angle, with the tongue moving in a clockwise direction.

Earlier studies have shown that during chewing, the fish fires the muscle, called the sternohyoid downward, retracting the tongue inward, before moving it forward again and upward, to its original position in the upper mouth. “We think the herbivore needs the bolus (the soft mass of chewed food) to be in a precise place between each chew. So the tongue may be constantly moving around to make sure the bolus is in the right place between chews, Konow explained. The study has been published in the journal of Integrative and Comparative Biology.

Groupon India publishes 300,000 user passwords

Groupon subsidiary Sosasta.com accidentally published a database containing the email addresses and clear-text passwords of 300,000 users and the cache was indexed by Google.

The trove of personal data was discovered by Australian security consultant Daniel Grzelak as he plugged a handful of query terms into the search engine, he said Tuesday. He contacted Patrick Gray with security blog Risky Biz, which reported that the SQL database contained the details for 300,000 Sosasta account holders.

A Groupon spokesman confirmed that the digital coupon distributor “was alerted to a security issue” on Thursday night and corrected the problem immediately. The issue was limited to Sosasta, which uses its own servers and network and isn't connected to Groupon's systems in other countries.

“We have begun notifying our subscribers and advising them to change their Sosasta passwords as soon as possible,” the spokesman said in a statement. “We will keep our Indian subscribers fully informed as we learn more.”

At time of writing, there was no advisory on either the Groupon or Sosasta websites, although Sosasta's Facebook page contained a notice that came in the form of a JPG image that couldn't easily be indexed by Google or other search engines. Ah the irony.

According to Risky Biz, Grzelak found the massive cache as he was looking for additions to shouldichangemypassword.com, a side project that indexes email addresses included in more than a dozen high-profile privacy breaches carried out by LulzSec and other hacking groups. The query that hit pay dirt included the terms “filetype:sql” “password” and “gmail.”

“I started scrolling, and scrolling and I couldn't get to the bottom of the file,” Grzelak told Risky Biz. “Then I realised how big it actually was.”

The Groupon statement didn't say why passwords weren't encrypted or why such a sensitive file was publicly available.

The snafu is the latest to expose the folly of using the same password on more than one site, a practice still followed by a shockingly high number of people. If you're one of them, you ought to consider using a password-management program such as Password Safe or KeePass.

Motorolla 'XOOM' launched in India

Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) tablet will be made available in two variants: a Wi-Fi only version and a Wi-Fi + 3G version, priced at Rs 32,990 and Rs 39,990 respectively. The Wi-Fi only version seems pretty reasonable and it doesn't really make much sense to pay Rs 7,000 more to get the 3G SIM card slot, because most users use the tablets at home or while at the office. Having 3G on the tablet will be useful for users who are on the go for most parts of the day.

The XOOM will sport a 10.1" TFT capacitive display which is capable of playing 1080p Full HD videos, a 5 MP snapper on the back capable of recording 720p video, and a 2 MP front facing camera for video calls. Furthermore, the XOOM will be powered by NVIDIA's 1 GHz Tegra 2 dual core CPU with 1 GB of RAM, and will have 32 GB of internal storage which can be expanded up to 32 GB with the help of an external microSD card slot. Other features include an HDMI port, Bluetooth, GPS with A-GPS, etc.

Motorola Mobility's head for Sales and Operations (India and South West Asia), Mr Rajan Chawla said, "Motorola XOOM is redefining the tablet experience by pre-empting the future mobile experience today. Designed from the ground up with the user in mind, it offers productivity while on the go and, provides more ways to have fun and connect with friends. Motorola XOOM is everything that a tablet should be!"

With a wide range of Honeycomb tablets to choose from, we think the Motorola XOOM is no different from others in terms of hardware. Other tablets that come to mind are the Acer Iconia Tab, which was the first Honeycomb tablet to make way to India, and the yet to be launched Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Please note that the prices listed by Motorola are Best Buy prices so the actual MRP in the market might differ.


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Microsoft delivers Office 2010 SP1 upgrade

Along with today's launch of Office 365, Microsoft also released the first service pack for its Office 2010 business productivity suite.

Microsoft had previously said it would ship Office 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) by the end of June.

Office 2010 first reached most customers in June 2010.

As it usually does, Microsoft today made Office 2010 SP1 available only as a manual download, and will wait several months before adding it to Windows Update for automatic installation. Microsoft typically gives corporate customers a 30-day heads up before it starts to automatically serve Office service packs through its update services.

Office 2010 SP1 includes the usual roll-up of past security and hotfix patches, as well as a number of improvements and new features, particularly for its Office Web Applications (OWA), the online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that are key to Office 365, the service CEO Steve Ballmer today called "Office meets the cloud."

Among the new features in SP1 is official support for Chrome, a rival of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), for running OWA through SharePoint 2010 SP1, which debuted last week.

Microsoft added native support for IE9 for accessing both SharePoint and OWA through the company's newest browser, and printing in the online Word's editing mode and in the OWA version of PowerPoint.

The Outlook 2010 SP1 email client also supports Office 365, said Microsoft in a partial list of the service pack's improvements and additions.

A full change list can be downloaded from Microsoft's website (download Excel workbook)

Users can uninstall SP1 if necessary, a tactic Microsoft first offered in the application suite two years ago with Office 2007 SP2.

Office 2010 SP1 can be downloaded from Microsoft's site in either 32-bit or 64-bit versions. Alternately, users can launch Microsoft Update and manually select SP1.

Nokia N5 Images Leaked

When Nokia revealed the N9, the N950, and more recently the Sea Ray, most of us started to think that the company will maintain focus on the high-end smartphone segment for a while. With low-end Symbian smartphones currently available in the market, it wouldn't have been wrong for someone to think that these phones will be the last lot of mid-range Symbian devices. Now, here is a handset which will mark the entry of the Symbian Anna platform into this particular market segment. This new handset will be known as the Nokia N5. Images of this new handset have now leaked, displaying the handset in all its glory.

There is still some confusion over the operating system of the handset. While the source claims that this handset could run on Symbian Anna, it looks strikingly similar to the MeeGo platform. The hardware aspect of the Nokia N5 points towards a decently priced handset. The display looks like a 3.2", and there's a neatly placed 5 MP camera on the back. Physical buttons are present on the front, which is a good addition on mid-range handsets. A volume rocker is placed on the right hand side of the handset, and the left side is left plain. The device is currently a prototype, so the actual announcement could be made in a few days. Hopefully, the device will be launched soon, unlike the Nokia N9 which will not be launched in India initially. Also, according to the source, an N6 and N7 are on the cards, which could possibly be revamped versions of the N5.

The images show the N5 posing green and black colours. The user interface has seen improvements as compared to the current Symbian S60 v5 seen on most low-end Symbian smartphones. This clearly shows that the company is not merely focused on preparing flagship handsets; emphasis is being given the low-end market as well.

Here are a few more leaked images of the N5:

Test-tube hamburger will feed you

Researchers say that in the face of an ever-increasing population and insufficiency of livestock to feed everyone, the world's first 'test-tube' hamburger marks the first stage in a food revolution that might be able to solve the problem.

They believe the product, beef mince grown from stem cells, could pave the way for eating meat without animals being slaughtered.

The scientists are currently developing a burger, which will be grown from 10,000 stem cells extracted from cattle, which are then left in the lab to multiply more than a billion times to produce muscle tissue similar to beef, reports the Daily Mail.

The product is called 'in vitro' meat.

Mark Post, professor of physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, who is behind the project, told Scientific American magazine that he thinks that the first burger could be made within 12 months.

Holland is currently leading the world in the production of artificial meat, and the Dutch government has put £1.5million into the research.

Researchers at Utrecht University have calculated that an initial 10 stem cells could produce 50,000 tons of meat in two months.

An Oxford University study found that this process would consume 35-60 per cent less energy, 98 per cent less land and produce 80-95 per cent less greenhouse gas than conventional farming.

Strong current accelerates Atlantic melting

Strong ocean currents are eroding the ice beneath West Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier, accelerating its melting.

According to one estimate, the total collapse of Pine Island Glacier and its tributaries could raise sea level by 24 cm. Global sea levels are currently rising at about three mm a year.

The glacier is currently sliding into the sea at a clip of four km a year while its ice shelf is melting at about 80 cubic km a year, 50 percent faster than it was in the early 1990s, says a new study.

The glacier, among other ice streams in Antarctica, is being closely watched for its potential to redraw coastlines worldwide.

The researchers say that a growing cavity beneath the ice shelf has allowed more warm water to melt the ice — a process that feeds back into the ongoing rise in global sea levels, reports the journal Nature Geoscience.

“More warm water from the deep ocean is entering the cavity beneath the ice shelf, and it is warmest where the ice is thickest,” said Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory oceanographer Stan Jacobs, who led the study.

The researchers found that in 15 years, melting beneath the ice shelf had risen by about 50 percent. Although regional ocean temperatures had also warmed slightly, by 0.2 degrees Celsius or so, that was not enough to account for the jump, according to a Columbia statement.

The local geology offered one explanation. On the same cruise, a group led by Adrian Jenkins, a researcher at British Antarctic Survey and study co-author, sent a robot submarine beneath the ice shelf, revealing an underwater ridge.

Researchers also directly observed, near the southern edge of Pine Island Glacier, the strength of the melting process as they watched frigid, sea water appear to boil on the surface like a kettle on the stove.

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HTC launches Flyer tablet in India

NEW DELHI: Smartphone manufacturer HTC announced the launch of its first tablet -- HTC Flyer -- in India to compete with the already existing players such as Samsung's Galaxy Tab, BlackBerry Playbook and Apple iPad.

The seven-inch touch screen tablet is powered with HTC sense, a graphical user interface and it combines natural touch and pen interaction.

HTC also announced HTC watch, a new connected video service that will debut on HTC Flyer tablet, and will collaborate with the pioneer of cloud gaming OnLive, Inc to launch the first cloud-based mobile gaming service on a tablet.

"HTC believes that many people are progressing beyond a single wireless device paradigm into an era where some will own multiple wireless devices that serve their different needs. We saw an opportunity to create a tablet experience that is different, more personal and productive," said Faisal Siddiqui, country manager, HTC India.

HTC Flyer will be available in the market at a price of Rs 39,890.

Anonymous Picks up Slack as LulzSec Calls it Quits

Hacking season is not over yet. Even though LulzSec, the group of hackers who made a name for themselves by hacking Sony, Nintendo, and PBS among others, called it quits on Saturday, another group wants to pick up the slack.

After announcing the end of its activities, Lulzsec encouraged its 281,870 Twitter followers to follow the account of Anonymous, another hacking organization, which on Monday published new materials on counter-hacking tools and addresses of U.S. FBI locations. Anonymous also picked up more than 60,000 Twitter followers over the past 24 hours.

Acknowledging LulzSec's retirement, the group released a torrent file containing all the data it obtained over the past seven weeks, including data from prominent targets such as the CIA, U.S. Senate, Sony, and AOL.

Even though LulzSec has been active for only 50 days, the hacking group garnered a significant amount of media attention: "For the past 50 days we've been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could," the group says in a goodbye note.

Anonymous is the hacking group that was alleged (but denied any involvement) to be behind the massive Sony PlayStation Service hack earlier this year.

The files Anonymous released Monday include documents and hacking and counter-hacking tools. The data weighs in at 625MB and its exact source is not mentioned, except a link to the CDI Sentinel program page, which provides free cybersecurity training using a mobile computer lab.

Dogs can recognize smiling faces

A new Japanese study has indicated that dogs can recognise smiling faces, which researchers say may have helped them to live with humans.

They can also learn to distinguish a smile, even on the faces of some strangers, said the study. 

The researchers led by Miho Nagasawa of Azabu University trained nine pet dogs using photos of their owners, who were smiling in some of the photos and looking neutral in the others. 

The dogs were trained to touch their nose to photos of their owner's smiling face. Only five of the dogs completed this training. 

These dogs were then shown photo pairs of smiling and blank-expression faces of unfamiliar people as well as of their owners. 

When shown photo pairs of either their owner or a stranger who was the same gender as their owner, the dogs selected the smiling faces more often than would be expected if they were randomly choosing a photo. 

"This study has shown that dogs that live closely with humans are also able to recognise positive facial expressions, indicating that these dogs have acquired the social skills helpful to survive. The ability to learn to discriminate human facial expressions must have helped dogs to adapt to human society," Nagasawa's team concluded in the study. 

The study was published in the July issue of the journal Animal Cognition.

Asteroid to kiss the earth on Monday

HYDERABAD: It will be a treat for sky gazers on Monday as a recently discovered " Asteroid 2011 MD" will be passing by extremely close to the earth - at a distance of only 10,000-12,000 km. Experts say that it will be visible in India.

Discovered on June 22 this year, the asteroid is estimated to be 8 to 18 metres long. It will pass by the earth on June 27 at 6.56 pm.

N Raghunandan Kumar of Planetary Society India said that there was no danger to the earth. "If it tries to enter the earth's atmosphere, the asteroid of this size would burn up. What is more interesting is this was discovered just two days ago though this asteroid existed for a long time now," said Kumar.


According to experts, the celestial encounter is going to be so close that earth's gravity will sharply alter the asteroid's trajectory.

At its closest point, a chunk of rock estimated to be 8 to 18 m across will pass in daylight over the southern Atlantic Ocean, near the Antarctica.

As it recedes away from the earth, it will pass through the zone of geosynchronous satellites. The chances of a collision with a satellite or manmade space-junk are extremely small but not zero, experts said.

"Judging from its brightness, it measures only 5 to 20 metres in diameter. One would expect an object of this size to come this close to earth about every 6 years on an average. For a brief time, it will be bright enough to be seen even with a medium-sized backyard telescope," said Kumar.

‘Brain-like’ computing now a step closer to reality (re-issue)

The study involved the first ever demonstration of simultaneous information processing and storage using phase-change materials. This new technique could revolutionise computing by making computers faster and more energy-efficient, as well as making them more closely resemble biological systems.

Computers currently deal with processing and memory separately, resulting in a speed and power 'bottleneck' caused by the need to continually move data around. This is totally unlike anything in biology, for example in human brains, where no real distinction is made between memory and computation.

To perform these two functions simultaneously the University of Exeter research team used phase-change materials, a kind of semi-conductor that exhibits remarkable properties.

Their study demonstrated conclusively that phase-change materials can store and process information simultaneously. It also showed experimentally for the first time that they could perform general-purpose computing operations, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. More strikingly perhaps it shows that phase-change materials can be used to make artificial neurons and synapses.

This means that an artificial system made entirely from phase-change devices could potentially learn and process information in a similar way to our own brains.

"Our findings have major implications for the development of entirely new forms of computing, including 'brain-like' computers. We have uncovered a technique for potentially developing new forms of 'brain-like' computer systems that could learn, adapt and change over time. This is something that researchers have been striving for over many years," said lead author Prof David Wright.

First ever robot that corrects its mistakes

The world’s first ever robot with ‘muscles’, ‘tendons’ and ‘bones’ is here. Dailymail reports that the robot looks like a stripped-down version of the Star Wars character C-3PO.

One of the most advanced robots in the world, Ecci, is made up of a specially developed plastic. The robot even has a brain that enables correction of mistakes, Dailymail reported.

A team of scientists at the University of Zurich developed Ecci – short for Eccerobot. ‘Ecce’ means Lo or Behold in Latin, Dailymail said. The newspaper further said a series of electric motors helps the robot to move its joints. A computer installed inside the brain of Ecci helps it learn from its mistakes.

For example, if a movement causes it to stumble or drop something – the information is studied, analysed and used to avoid similar mistake in future.

The robot also displays a vision capacity similar to that of humans – though it has just one cyclops style eye, claims Dailymail.

The scientists at the varsity expressed hopes that their creation will not only make way for a complete new generation for robots but also aid development of artificial limbs, Dailymail reported.

Director of the laboratory for artificial intelligence at University of Zurich Rolf Pfeifer said the creation opens up a lot of possibilities and it will especially help us understand better how the human moving apparatus works, said Dailymail.

Speaking to Dailymail reporter, Pfeifer said if robots can be made to operate limbs the same way as humans do, the world of artificial limbs will receive a boost. Moreover, it will also help in jobs where human hands are needed, Pfeifer added.

The scientists at the varsity worked for around three years on a multi-million project and ultimately came up with Ecci, Dailymail reported. The project was funded partially by private enterprise apart from two million euros that came from EU funds.

The scientists’ team plans to present a more complete version of Ecci within two months, Dailymail said.

No more Meego device even if N9 succeds : Nokia

Not long after "leaking" Nokia's first Windows smartphone, codenamed "Sea Ray," CEO Stephen Elop told a Finnish newspaper that even if the new MeeGo-based N9, launched the day before, succeeds, it will be
Nokia's last device on the Meego operating system.

"In Elop's words, there is no returning to MeeGo, even if the N9 turns out to be a hit," wrote the Finnish daily, the Helsingin Sanomat.

On Thursday, Elop stirred the blogosphere when he teased what he called the first Nokia Windows device, which is rumored to be launching this fall.

Unfortunately it left a sour taste in the mouths of MeeGo fans, most of whom are passionate, long-time Nokia users and developers. In February Elop, who joined Nokia from Microsoft in 2008, announced a billion-dollar agreement with Microsoft that puts the Windows Phone 7 operating system in Nokia handsets; Nokia's own Symbian and MeeGo operating systems would be relegated to "science projects."

"I have taken part in the conversations with the teleoperators and I have been part of the consumer test groups. The feedback has been extremely positive and I am sure that the Windows Phone system will be a great success", Elop says of the strategic partnership announced with microsoft in February of this year.

Elop desperately needs Nokia's recent partnership with Microsoft, which fills Nokia handsets with Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system, to succeed. He faces lowered sales targets for the rest of the year, rumors of a Nokia selloff, layoffs in the thousands, and alienation by Nokia's most loyal followers.
In the same interview Elop said he was "sure" upcoming Nokia Windows phones would be a "great success."

"I understand completely that the investors want to see the results of our new strategy in their full glory. This will take some time, but once we are in a position to introduce the results of our strategy, I am sure the doubts will disperse," he said.

Peer pressure fuels juvenile cyber crime, says study

WASHINGTON: Adolescent children are more likely to engage in juvenile cybercrimes such as hacking and online bullying if their friends are into it, a new study on peer influence has suggested.

The study, which consisted of surveying 435 middle- and high-school students, showed that the biggest predictor of how likely a child is to engage in illegal online activities is whether his or her friends have committed cybercrimes. Previous research has primarily focused on college students.

The study showed that a lack of self-control is also a major predictor of children's cybercrimes . Risk-taking , impulsive kids are more likely than other children to act on an opportunity to commit illegal online activities , said Thomas Holt, a Michigan State University criminologist who led the study.

"It's important to know what your kids are doing when they're online and who they are associating with both online and offline," Holt was quoted as saying by LiveScience.

Cybercrimes include digital piracy, such as "stealing" music or movie files by downloading them without paying, or online bullying and harassment, which can consist of sending threatening or sexual messages via email or text message.

Computer hacking, also known as cybertrespassing, and viewing online pornography, which is illegal for those under 18, are also cybercrimes.

10% fall in students passing BSc exam

MUMBAI: The final year science results are out but there is a whopping 10 percent drop in the success rate as compared to the last year. The percentage of successful students stands at 56.88%.

In all, 10,704 candidates took the exam that was held in April. Students' performance ahs been slipping over the years. This time, merely 1,999 students crossed the 60 per cent mark; another 3,346 scored a second class and 514 students secured a pass class. "These are the correct, absolutely true results," said Vilas Shinde, controller of examinations, hinting at the fact that with the bar code system in place, there was no room for adopting fraudulent means to raise marks.

"Evaluators didn't know who papers they were assessing. Just like in engineering, science results have also shown a huge drop in performance levels," said a university official.

But college principals fear a deeper problem. Ruia college principal Suhas Pednekar said, "Basic science has become the last choice for students. The ones who come here with a passion for the subject are doing very well. There are so many opportunities now. But those who have taken up the stream out of compulsion, don't take it very seriously. Somewhere the lack of interest affects their performance."

Most others concur. Sathaye College's head Kavita Rege, said, "One of the primary reasons for this poor pass percentage is the quality of students. Many of these students wanted to opt for engineering or medicine but did not make it so took up BSc out of a lack of option."

The results will be available in the college on June 25. The statement of marks will be sent to all colleges by June 30. This is first time the university is printing the photographs of the students on their marks statement. The results of close to 4,000 BSc (computer science) students is yet to be declared.

Apple slashes iPhone 3GS price in India

Apple is taking Android devices head-on and has now brought down the iPhone 3G S price to Rs. 19,990/ competing directly with several Android devices in that range.


In India, iPhone 3G S was launched in March of 2010 and the price of iPhone 3G S in India was Rs 35,500 (16GB) and Apple has now slashed the price by 15K [via, a tweet from mahesh Telecom].

As per Apple, iPhone 3G S will support iOS5 (beta 2, though not all features will be supported).

So where does that leave Nexus S and several other HTC/Samsung based Android devices? fyi: [Nexus S price in India is also, 19,900/].

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Nokia's first Windows Phone 7 device : Sea Ray

Excited about the Nokia N9, but don't want to be stuck with the withering MeeGo operating system for the next two years? Take a look at the Nokia Sea Ray.

Earlier this week, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop gathered his employees for the unveiling of a “super confidential” new product. Before revealing it, he asked everyone to “put away their cameras” – but apparently some employees kept them out anyway, and now pictures and video of the unveiling are in the wild. Is this a leak? Or is it – judging from the professional-quality video that came out of the event – an “unofficial official” leak? Either way, we’ve got a glimpse at “Sea Ray,” Nokia’s first Windows Phone 7 handset.

Physically, the phone looks almost identical to Nokia’s N9, which was announced on Tuesday. It has a featureless glass front, polycarbonate body, and an 8-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens. The crucial difference is that the leaked photos and video show it running the Windows Phone 7 “Mango” operating system.

Why is that a big deal? In its Tuesday announcement, Nokia confirmed that the N9 will run the mobile Linux-based MeeGo operating system, which Nokia developed with Intel. But earlier this year, Nokia also signed a deal with Microsoft in which it agreed to port all its smartphones (including those running the Symbian operating system) to Windows Phone 7.

InformationWeek reports that with the deal, Microsoft is hoping to attract enterprise and business users, who would be able to run business apps such as Microsoft Office on Nokia smartphones. The apparent existence of this new handset signals that the N9 may be the only Nokia smartphone to ship with MeeGo; the company's future handsets would instead come with Windows Phone 7 out of the box.

If true, that’s good news for developers: they could focus their energies on developing apps for the Windows Phone 7 platform, which is already widely supported, rather than worrying about compatibility with MeeGo.

The leaked photos and video do show a few apparent physical differences between Sea Ray and the N9. The new phone has its LED above the rear-facing camera lens, rather than alongside it, and also sports an extra hardware button along the side that Engadget speculates is a manual shutter release.

No word yet on when this new handset will be released, although it’s safe to say it’ll be no earlier than this fall, since Mango isn’t sheduled to be released until then.

LulzSec Hacks Arizona Police Computers

The Arizona Department of Public Safety apparently has been victimized by the LulzSec hactivist group's "Operation Anti-Security" campaign.

On Friday the group posted a torrent on The Pirate Bay containing internal documents from the Arizona DPS to protest its anti-immigration policies, according to documentation accompanying the torrent link.


The torrent contains documents including "private intelligence bulletins, training manuals, and personal email correspondence," as well as names, phone numbers, addresses, and passwords of state law-enforcement personnel, according to the documentation.
"We are targeting AZDPS specifically because we are against SB1070 and the racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona," the group said in the documentation.


SB1070 is a controversial anti-illegal immigration measure in Arizona that makes it a misdemeanor crime for aliens in Arizona who have been required to register with the U.S. government to not have their registration documents with them. It also imposes stiff penalties on people who harbor illegal aliens.

A cursory look at the AZ DPS documents available through the torrent show a mishmash of unrelated and largely inconsequential files, including various situational awareness bulletins, a complementary invitation to a border security conference, and a street price list for various illegal drugs. There also are personal photos of men holding fish, ostensibly after catching them.

Additionally, the torrent contains a graphic video--apparently taken from a camera inside a police cruiser--showing an AZ law-enforcement officer throwing an unidentifiable metal object across a highway and then being hit by a car. The files are assumed to have been extracted from the email accounts of AZ DPS personnel.

The AZ DPS did not respond to multiple attempts to contact them. However, several published reports claim the department acknowledged it indeed had been hacked and that the documents posted in the torrent are from within the organization. Reports also said the agency took down its website and disabled Web-based email in response. Indeed, the department's website remained unavailable Friday afternoon EDT.

LulzSec--also known as Lulz Security and LulzBoat--has gone on a hacking spree in the last several weeks, hitting government-related sites such as the U.S. Senate and Atlanta chapter of FBI affiliate InfraGard, as well as companies like Sega and Nintendo.

The FBI has increased its efforts to track down those behind LulzSec as well as another hactivist group, Anonymous, since the two released plans to "open fire" with an onslaught of cybercrimes against world governments.

Firefox 5.0 for Androoid

Firefox developers have tweaked page-load performance and now the mobile web browser works smoother over 3G networks using phones running Android 2.0 and newer versions.

Mozilla has released Firefox 5 mobile web browser for Google Android with a Do Not Track privacy feature and improved page load performance on 3G networks. Firefox for Android mobile web browser works like a port of the desktop version. Firefox 5.0 for Android is available from Android Market or you can check it online throughthis link.

Firefox for Android has matured to version 5.0 and added the Do Not Track privacy feature that prevents websites from tracking the user's actions online. Firefox for Android developers has tweaked the latest version to work better with the SwiftKey X keyboard.

The previous version of the browser did suffer from some panning issues and sluggish performance over fast 3G networks. The new version promises that both issues have been fixed to give a zippier mobile web browsing experience on Android smartphones. Firefox and add-ons go hand-in-hand and thereby about 20 add-ons for the mobile web browser will be released with this update.

Besides all that, Firefox offers a Sync feature that synchronizes the history, bookmarks, notes and sessions on the desktop version of Firefox with those on the Android version.

Surprisingly the Firefox 5.0 for Android file comes to 14 MB, compared to Firefox 5.0 for Windows platform. Do note that this new update is available for compatible handsets running Android 2.0 update or higher.