Technology News
Wikipedia shuts for 24 hours
Washington, Jan 18 - Wikipedia, which describes itself as the largest encyclopaedia in human history, has blacked out its English-language site to protest proposed US anti-piracy laws.
"Imagine a world without free knowledge," says a statement posted against a black background when one tries to access the site.
Wikipedia is opposing the US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) being debated by Congress.
Jimmy Wales, who founded the site, told the BBC: "Proponents of SOPA have characterised the opposition as being people who want to enable piracy or defend piracy".
Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang resigns
San Francisco, Jan 19 - Yahoo's co-founder Jerry Yang has resigned from its Board of Directors and all other positions with the company, it was announced Tuesday.
The 43-year-old Yang also resigned from the Boards of Yahoo! Japan and Alibaba Group Holding limited, Xinhua quoted the company as stating in a press release.
Having founded the online company in 1995 with David Filo, Yang was Yahoo's chief executive from June 2007 until January 2009. (IANS)
World’s smallest magnetic data storage unit beats modern hard drive
Washington, Jan 13 : Scientists have succeeded in developing the world’s smallest data storage unit, which uses just twelve atoms per bit and squeezes a whole byte (8 bit) into as few as 96 atoms.
In comparison, a modern hard drive still needs more than half a billion atoms per byte.
The nanometre storage unit was developed by scientists from IBM and the German Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL).
Everyday microwave ovens to make future solid-state refrigerators
Washington, Jan 11 : Advanced nanomaterials could now open the door to a new generation of high-performance, cost-effective solid state refrigeration and air conditioning, requiring no refrigerants and no moving parts, a new study led by Indian origin researcher has revealed.
The key ingredients for this innovation by engineering researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are a dash of nanoscale sulfur and a normal, everyday microwave oven.
Now, endoscopic pill that allows doc tour our insides and take pics
Washington, Jan 11 : Drawing inspiration from science fiction, researchers have developed a controllable endoscopic capsule that patients can swallow like a pill and let doctors explore inside of their bodies.
Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have successfully tested a prototype of the capsule that has the ability to "swim" through the body and could provide clinicians with unprecedented control when photographing the inside of the human body.
The capsule can be equipped with a camera.
Once inside the patient's digestive track, a doctor can "steer" the capsule through the body using an MRI machine, photograph specific areas of interest, and view those pictures wirelessly.
Now, micro-thin coatings that make your mobile phones toilet-proof!
Washington, Jan 10 : Three start-up gadget makers are now offering micro-thin coatings that protect cellphones from moisture even when they are completely immersed in water.
The special coatings are made of nanomaterials that can seamlessly and invisibly encase iPhone or Android phone and keep it safe from water.
HzO, P2i, and Liquipel will be putting their technology on display this week at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
“We can’t see why every cellphone on the planet shouldn’t be using our technology,” Paul Clayson, president and CEO of nanotech firm HzO told FoxNews. com.
Living robots may be coming within 15 or 20 years
Washington, Dec 31 : We are a lot closer to living robots than we may realize, says a scientist who has developed a robot that uses the same words, expressions and movements that humans do to communicate with each other.
Philip K. Dick Andriod, built by Hanson Robotics, is a state-of-the-art robot with a large vocabulary, complex facial expressions, a sense of humour and something of an ego, ABC News reported.
He is, well, surprisingly human, not just in mechanics, but also in appearance.
Soon, undersea telescope will be second in size to Great Wall of China
Washington, Dec 23 : A new under sea telescope that will be the second largest structure ever built after the Great Wall of China, is currently under development.
The KM3net telescope planned for the sea bed under the Mediterranean will be a network of detectors with a volume of several cubic kilometres, built to detect neutrinos - tiny, fast-moving particles that pass straight through water and even solid rock.
Yahoo reportedly plans to slash Alibaba stake to 15 percent
Washington, Dec 22 : Yahoo is reportedly planning to cut its 40 percent stake in Chinese Internet firm Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to about 15 percent.
Yahoo, which has been shopping itself to a slew of private-equity suitors, is considering cutting its stake as part of a tax-free transaction worth between 17 billion and 18 billion dollars, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Yahoo’s current stake in Alibaba represents a 40 percent investment and is valued at about 13 billion dollars, according to the paper.
Indian American launches a virtual tutoring portal
Washington, Dec 22 : Though originally aimed at teaching Hindi to Indian children in the US, an Indian American has launched a virtual tutoring portal for teaching various academic levels as well as 18 languages.
TheETutor. com, an educational online tutoring company, started by Harry Aurora, CEO, and Preeti Aurora, managing director, was launched by Nassau county executive, Edward P. Mangano, at a function in Long Island, New York last week.
Describing the state-of-art virtual portal as a revolution in learning, Aurora said the students participate in one-on-one tutoring led by superb tutors from the comfort of their home.
Intel-powered smartphone, tablet to enter market in 2012
San Francisco, Dec 22 : Smartphones and tablets running Intel's chips will enter the mobile market early next year, posing a challenge to the dominance of Apple's iPhone and iPad, US media reported Wednesday.
Technology Review, a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said it had tested prototype smartphones and tablets equipped with Intel's latest mobile chip, dubbed Medfield. The products run Google's Android mobile operating system, reported Xinhua.
Yahoo considers selling Asian assets: Report
San Francisco, Dec 22 - Yahoo's board is expected to meet Thursday to discuss selling its holdings in China's Alibaba Group and its Japanese affiliate back to their majority owners in a transaction valued around $17 billion, US media reported Wednesday.
Under the current proposed terms, Softbank, Yahoo Japan's majority owner and Alibaba would create new legal entities consisting of both cash and certain operating assets. Yahoo would swap out most of its stake in Alibaba and all of its stake in Yahoo Japan for these entities to sell those holdings, the New York Times reported.
AT&T drops bid for T-Mobile
New York, Dec 20 : AT&T Inc. abandoned Monday its $39 billion bid for T-Mobile USA, a deal that sparked opposition from the US government and consumer groups.
The Dallas-based giant said it decided to withdraw its offer for the US wireless unit of Germany's Deutsche Telekom after a thorough review of the options.
"The actions by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice to block this transaction do not change the realities of the US wireless industry," AT&T said in a statement.
Apple, Google working on wearable devices
San Francisco, Dec 20 - Apple and Google are working on wearable technology that would send data to their smartphones, US media reported Monday.
Researchers in Google's secret Google X lab, a facility where Google is reportedly working on projects pertaining to future technologies, have begun working on peripherals that would communicate information back to Android smartphones when they are attached to one's clothing or body, said Bits, a technology blog of the New York Times, citing sources.
Facebook shifts to new headquarters in California
Washington, Dec 20 - Facebook has announced that its final wave of employees have moved into its new headquarters in the one million-square foot Menlo Park city of California.
The world's largest social network is now officially headquartered at 1601 Willow Road in Menlo Park, Xinhua reported.
The new campus consists of 10 eco-friendly buildings with no private offices and cubicles. Over 2,000 local employees moved to the campus from its previous location in Palo Alto, California, US.
"This morning, the final wave of employees walked through the doors of the new Facebook Menlo Park campus," said the company Monday in its official blog.
Amazon sells over one mn Kindles per week
San Francisco, Dec 16 - US online retail giant Amazon announced Thursday that it has been selling over one million Kindle devices per week for the third week in a row.
According to the company's press release, Kindle Fire, Amazon's latest tablet computer, has been the No. 1 bestselling product on Amazon. com since its launch 11 weeks ago.
The company noted Kindle Fire is the most successful product it has ever launched and is "building millions more to meet the high demand", reported Xinhua.
Microsoft announces automatic upgrades for Internet Explorer
San Francisco, Dec 16 - Microsoft Thursday announced that it will automatically upgrade the Internet Explorer (IE) to the latest version to give Windows customers more protection against malicious software.
According to the company's blog post, starting from Australia and Brazil next January, users of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 will get the IE updates if they have turned on automatic updating via Windows Update.
Epic `God particle` discovery now ‘closer than ever’
Washington, Dec 14 : Holy Grail of high-energy physics — the predicted but elusive Higgs boson — is almost within reach, according to CERN Physicists.
CERN, the international agency in Geneva that oversees experiments in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), announced Monday in a progress report the news of mounting experimental evidence for the existence of this critically important speck of nature.
Computer simulated image of a cutaway section of the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) depicts a Higgs particle as it decays.
New data transfer record paves way for high-speed network technology
Washington, Dec 14 : An international team of high-energy physicists, computer scientists and network engineers has set a new world record for data transfer, paving way for the next generation of high-speed network technology.
The team transferred data in opposite directions at a combined rate of 186 gigabits per second (Gbps) in a wide-area network circuit at the SuperComputing 2011 (SC11) conference in Seattle during mid-November.
The rate is equivalent to moving two million gigabytes per day, fast enough to transfer nearly 100,000 full Blu-ray disks—each with a complete movie and all the extras—in a day.
Flexible, stretchable ‘plastic electronics’ come closer to reality
Washington, Dec 14 : A new reasonably priced technique for fabricating large-scale flexible and stretchable backplanes shows promise to revolutionize a number of industries, making smart applications for ‘plastic electronics’ almost omnipresent, researchers say.
Among the applications that have been envisioned are electronic pads that could be folded away like paper, coatings that could monitor surfaces for cracks and other structural failures, medical bandages that could treat infections and food packaging that could detect spoilage.