Google Doodle

Google today came out with its new doodle to pay tribute to the great Russian jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé. It was his 166th birthday today.


Peter was well known for his easter eggs known as Fabergé eggs. He made these eggs by using precious metals and gemstones.

Facebook - The IPO Story

The leading social network is going all guns blazing since their new beginning with their Initial Public Offering. 

Before the IPO, to raise the hoopla around them, Facebook bought Instagram at a staggering $1 biilion. This when Instagram only had 13 employees in the company. But most importantly, the photo sharing application was being used by over 30 million users worldwide. That's what caught their eye. The reach that Instagram had gained with their photo sharing app. And now with FB having integrated Instagram, the count has got doubled.

But the start was not actually what they thought it would be. The share prices dropped. Regularly. With a massive floatation of stocks from FB, and with a starting price of $38 per share, recovery was always going to be difficult.

Such may be the pressure, that FB is actually planning to develop a smartphone now. The smartphone would have Text messaging, the FB photo sharing, Chat and other FB provided software features. I mean the people who always hook up on FB would simply love it, but what can people expect from a social networking website bringing a smartphone in the market. I mean FB does not deal with hardware. They do not have genuises around them like Apple, Google or Microsoft. So introducing a smartphone would not be the easiest and the most smart thing to do now. 

Apple apart from it's smooth and sophisticated interface can recover their money from iTunes and then there's the ever so popular and amazing Apple App Store. Google has its Android. But FB does not have these things. People nowadays lookout for interesting apps, features, hardware competency, apps stores, basic features like Radio, Bluetooth etc etc and a whole lot of etc. Even if FB is trying to pull-in some hardcore techies from Apple, executing a smartphone will be a tough ask to meet people's expectations.

In a recent news, FB was trying to include E-Commerce features onto its website. People come on FB to make new friends, share their personal moments and stay in touch. So driving people onto shopping may get a thumbs down eventually. It was also in the news that FB was not generating enough moolah from mobile advertising citing which General Motors withdrawn their advertising deal with FB.This may have triggered their thoughts to developing a smartphone.

They are even trying to buy out the Opera browser. Instead of standing on one point and executing it till the finish, it seems they are trying to execute n number of things all at the same time which may get haphazard. The strategy it seems is to convince people to not to use FB, but to live FB.

FB started with a simple and a highly sophisticated web interface that eventually persuaded people to leave Orkut. But with mounting pressure to keep its IPO running high, FB is slowly and steadily killing itself.

Google Knowledge Graph

Well what is it? The Knowledge Graph (KG) is actually a box that appears next to the search engine. Not any ordinary box though :)

Google say it's a kind of revolution that they have brought for the search engine. It will contain humongous amount of data that connects places, people and things and their relation with each other. It will lead you to your exact required search that you need to gather information about. It can be used to further enhance your search result.

The Knowledge Graph can understand the difference if the search may have different meanings and accordingly provide you the results that you are looking for.

The knowledge graph will not only provide information about the search you are asking for, but it will also provide information and links about subjects related  to the search that you have given in the search box bar. For example, if you search about 'Earth' the planet, it may also give you information about the other planets in the Solar System. They will only refine the search results by analyzing what people are often looking for the same search that people give on the search bar so that you will probably get the desired results only for your search.

This means you can also see key facts about the search that you have given based on the questions other people have asked on the search.

This feature will also be available on smartphones, desktops, laptops so that you can discover more information and other features at the go and at your fingertips.

This will mean less amount of wastage of time and effort for your search and spending the same amount of time for your further analysis. How nice that would be.

The KG provides answers and not just links. A knowledge engine then may be the right word rather than a search engine.

You can look for the demo here.

Watch the video, they make it so good :)

Universe Scale Flash Website

I found a website recently. One of the best that I've ever seen.

It's completely made of Flash and it looks super cool. The website gives information about different man-made creations, inventions, discoveries and naturally occurring objects around the world. Not only around but ranging from the largest to the smallest objects that exist in the universe.

A scroll bar is present at the bottom that lets us move from the smallest to the largest objects and vice-versa. Clicking on the objects will then display a small window at its side. The window will give information about the object like where it was found/discovered/invented/exists etc. It's dimensions are also displayed and also the significance of the object can be read on the window.

The size of the state of the object can be viewed just above the scroll bar at its right. It would be 10 to the power of a number. The number would be positive or negative going by the size of the state of the object. The sizes vary from billions and billions of metres from +ve to -ve. (Never even heard of one size called yottameter which is 10 power 24 meters). This and many many other types of information has been given out from this website.

The link is here.

Robot Asimo I

ASIMO is a robot which was developed by HONDA in Japan in the year 2000. The name Asimo stands for 'Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility'.

It is humanoid in nature. It means that it has features and behavior that resemble a human body. It allows interaction with made-for-human tools or environments. It is designed to operate in human environment i.e. to run on two feet at good speeds or walking independently or climb stairs. It can help around people with various different chores. He's the first in himself to do these things.

Like a human, it can understand voices, spoken commands, gestures, faces, moving objects etc. It can carry objects, push things, turn switches on and off etc. It can recognize a handshake, people waving their hands and then it responds accordingly. It can do a whole lot of other things too.

I will give detailed information in my subsequent posts.

Website of the day - Apple

The website of the day goes to .........

 

APPLE

It's self explanatory what you can find it in there :)

Google Lunar. The breakthrough initiative

Google Lunar is an initiative by a non-profit organization named X-Prize foundation which has joined forces with Google. The project is called "Moon 2.0". It is to bring about path-breaking innovations in the fields of science and technology. To come up with solutions not possible  They have introduce large-scale prized competitions with an ultimate aim to promote research and development in these fields. The even ultimate aim is to send a robot to the moon.

They have been able to garner the support of top companies, individuals and groups. This includes space agencies like NASA, ESA and JAXA. Moreover, the renowned James Cameron and writer Arthur C. Clarke have also extended their support to this cause. A statement on its webpage says "The $30 million competition for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon". How cool is that.

The prize goes to the team who will be able to send a robot to the moon, make it travel a distance of about 500 metres and make it send images, videos and other corresponding data back to Earth. Phew talk about competition. The closing dates for this competition have already gone by and the teams are now preparing for the same. Total of 26 teams from around the world have been identified and approved for this humongous task. Participants are put into high-profile sub-competitions which is a step further to win the grand prize. 

Google has been pro-actively taking this task to a new level. With backing of some of the blue-chip companies, funding for this project should never be a problem. They have been constantly updating about the latest happenings in the quest to reach the moon. Talk about sky being the limit.

The webpage is GoogleLunar. And the following video provides a good idea of their goals.

Siri's new feature on iPhone 5

A new video is doing the rounds on the web that has gained a lot of attention. Sadly it is only a concept phone. But it looks brilliant in the video.

The video shows Siri application shutting down if say a thief were to enter wrong password for phone unlock mechanism. Siri would shut down the phone after taking a backup of the phone data onto iTunes from where it can be downloaded back to any device. 

The phone disabling effect is really cool though. After saying that the password entered was incorrect, it says a goodbye and shuts down the iPhone. And then it gives a cracking screen effect on the phone. Never seen anything like this before. The day ain't far when devices would start cracking on nonacceptance ;)

Well here is the video. Enjoy :)

iPaid Lol

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