Technology and Mobile Gadgets to Crave Blog
A new generation of smart phones and tablet computers is redefining computing. Impressive processing and memory capabilities, sleek touch-screen interfaces, increasingly reliable wireless data networks, sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes, and new applications make it possible for people to use these mobile devices in ways that weren’t predicted even a few years ago.
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When Lotte Card, one of South Korea’s biggest credit card companies, wanted to create an augmented-reality app earlier this year, it faced a familiar conundrum: whether to develop a sophisticated custom app for each major mobile platform out there or produce a single less-capable Web app that works on any device via its browser. In the end, the company decided to do a bit of both.
With the help of mobile application platform Worklight, Lotte’s programmers created hundreds of HTML-based pages using standard tools—HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript—and then wrapped them up in native iOS and Android code so that the resulting bundle could be delivered, just like any other app, via the Apple and Android app stores.
The key advantage of Web apps over native mobile apps is cross-platform compatibility. They run in the standards-compliant browsers that are available on Android, Apple, BlackBerry, and Windows mobile devices, so (in theory at least) they have to be built only once. The disadvantages are that they lack access to such features of a device as the camera and the address book, they can’t use some of user-interface elements that are native to each platform, and they can’t be downloaded from Apple’s App Store or the Android Market.
Most native apps can tap into the device’s browser, in order to grab content from the Web. As the variety of mobile platforms grows, more companies may be drawn to using this capability, creating hybrid apps that use Web technologies but can be distributed via the usual app stores.
“The slickness of the user interface a developer can achieve in the native [app] model just isn’t worth the extra spending compared to the very nice level of user-interface experience they get from the hybrid option,” says Ron Perry, CTO of Worklight. Worklight uses the open-source PhoneGap platform to help developers package Web apps within native apps so that they can be downloaded from app stores.
The primary competitor to PhoneGap is Appcelerator’s Titanium Studio, a development environment that takes a slightly different approach. Instead of showing Web content within an app, this platform recompiles a Web app’s (JavaScript) code into native code that can access all the device-specific user-interface elements of iOS, Android, and BlackBerry’s platform. (It is not yet compatible with Windows Phone.)
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Intel’s decision to team up with Google comes as the search giant’s Android operating system has become the world’s bestselling smartphone software, accounting for 43% of the phones sold worldwide last quarter. By giving its Android software away freely to any manufacturer that wants it, Google has found that dozens of phone makers have built Android devices, including popular models from Samsung, HTC and LG.
At Intel’s annual developer conference in San Francisco, the two companies said Tuesday that Google's Android software would be optimized for Intel's Atom processors.
Last month Google agreed to buy Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. for $12.5 billion, the company’s largest acquisition effort to date. Motorola is one of the primary makers of Android phones, and if cleared by regulators, the purchase would allow Google to design and build its own phones. That could include the use of Intel chips.
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Looking for a 7″ Android Honeycomb tablet? As of this writing, the Acer Iconia Tab A100 is your only choice. The HTC Flyer/HTC EVO View 4G runs OS 2.3 Gingerbread, last year’s 7″ Samsung Galaxy Tab likewise is running 2.x , the 7″ Lenovo A1 runs Gingerbread and it looks like the upcoming 7″ Viewsonic will run Gingerbread as well. At the moment, it looks like the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 will be the only Honeycomb 3.2 competition (likely at a higher price). In the absence of competition, the Acer A100 certainly becomes much more appealing, but even if there were competition, this 7″ powerhouse tablet can hold its own. The Acer Iconia A100 packs all the features of 10″ Android Honeycomb tablets into a smaller, much more portable package that can fit in a large pocket or purse. It has the same 1GHz dual core Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU, a gig of RAM, 8 or 16 gigs of storage, HDMI, WiFi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth and a GPS with compass. At just $329 for the 8 gig model and $349 for the 16 gig model (both expandable via microSD cards), the little Iconia seems like a bargain. The tablet ships with Android OS 3.2 Honeycomb; the latest version of the tablet OS that has support for 7″ tablets and running Android OS 2.x apps in stretched screen mode.
Display
The A100 has a 1024 x 600 capacitive multi-touch display–that’s the same resolution as better quality 7″ tablets like the HTC Flyer and Galaxy Tab, and higher than most ultra-budget tablets that sell for $200 or less. The display is bright, extremely sharp and it has very high contrast. It looks absolutely great head-on, but viewing angles are oddly narrow when viewing from the bottom in landscape mode. Hold the tablet in front of you to watch a video and it looks great. Lay the tablet flat on a table and the video becomes unwatchable. If you hate narrow viewing angles, the tablet might drive you crazy. But there are workarounds: side viewing angles are wide, so those aren’t much of an issue. If you wish to lay the tablet flat on a table while viewing content in landscape mode, simply rotate it upside down (with the home button to the left), and the viewing angle will be sufficient. If you hold it directly in front of you with no angle of rotation, the upside down view isn’t as bright as the rightside-up view. Got that? Since this isn’t an IPS display and it is glossy like all tablets, it’s viewable outdoors but the display is harder to see.
Design and Ergonomics
The Acer Iconia A100 is more rectangular than most 7″ tablets. If you have smaller hands, you’ll find it easier to hold in portrait mode when reading a book, and widescreen movie watching is perfect with little or no letterboxing on this 16:9 aspect ratio display. The tablet weighs 0.92 lbs., similar to the 7″ Galaxy Tab and BlackBerry PlayBook. When using it as an ebook reader, my arms didn’t tire as they do with 10″ tablets, and the tablet worked well with Aldiko, Barnes & Noble Nook but not the Amazon Kindle app. It seems we’ll need an updated version of Kindle that works with 1024 x 600 Honeycomb 3.2 tablets. In the meantime, older versions of Kindle (2.05 is the latest of older versions floating around the Net) work on the Iconia A100.
The Iconia Tab A100 has a blue plastic back with a geometric pattern that reminds me of laptops from a few years back. It’s not bad looking, but it’s dated and it attracts fingerprints like crazy (a damp paper towel with a tiny bit of soft soap clean it best). The front is dominated by the display, and the corners taper to escape pure rectilinear boredom. The end caps are gloss black plastic, and they house small and not very loud stereo speakers, a micro USB port (not USB Host), micro HDMI port, charging port, reset hole and docking connector (right side) and power button and 3.5mm stereo jack (right). The power button illuminates in orange when the tablet is charging and turns blue when fully charged. The A100 uses the same 12 volt/1.5 amp charger with a small barrel connector as the Acer Iconia Tab A500 10.1″ Honeycomb tablet.
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Google is the first major Web company to reveal exactly how much energy it uses—information that will help researchers and policy makers understand how the massive explosion of Internet usage and cloud computing is contributing to global energy consumption.
Google uses 260 million watts continuously across the globe, the company reported on Wednesday. This is equivalent to the power used by all the homes in Richmond, Virginia, or Irvine, California (around 200,000 homes), and roughly a quarter of the output of a standard nuclear power plant.
By far, the majority of Google’s energy use is tied up in its data storage centers, according to Jonathan Koomey, a professor at Stanford University and a researcher who focuses on energy and IT. He says that roughly 220 million of those watts are used solely by the company’s data centers, based on figures Google showed him. Most of this energy is used in cooling data center systems. Google custom builds many data centers, such as a new one in Finland that uses a seawater cooling system, to cut down on electricity.
This has enabled Google to be relatively energy efficient, says Koomey, who estimates that the company owns about 3 percent of servers worldwide and uses only 1 percent of electricity for data centers worldwide. “They’re operating more efficiently than other data centers,” he says
Other Web giants, including Amazon and Facebook, probably operate their data centers with similar efficiency due to hardware and software customization, and innovative cooling equipment, Koomey says. However, the majority of data center power use comes from non-IT companies running their own data centers less efficiently.
In its report, Google compares the energy usage of companies’ in-house computer systems to the energy used by its cloud servers. It estimates that running Gmail instead of an in-house e-mail system can be almost 80 times more energy efficient. Google says that 25 percent of its energy was supplied by renewable fuels—such as from wind farms—in 2011, and plan to increase that to 30 percent this year.
Sherif Akoush, a researcher at the University of Cambridge who studies IT energy consumption, points out that Google could be even more energy efficient, and notes that the company’s environmental footprint will continue to rise. “Google tackles this problem mainly by using power purchase agreements from green sources, which offset basically the emissions from its data centers,” says Akoush. Instead, “it should just try to implement more radical solutions like green energy and be a zero-carbon company instead of pumping waste then trying to clean it up.”
Bruce Nordman, a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, notes that most IT-related energy usage occurs from homes and offices, and not major data centers.
Google says that an average search uses .3 watt-hours of electricity. But Nordman points out that cutting back on Google searches is not going to save a significant amount of energy. “Something like having your display go to sleep a little faster would probably save more energy,” he says.
He adds, “since there’s more consumption [in homes and offices], there’s potentially more savings and yet that’s not what gets the attention.”
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| SECRET PRANK |
| Change closed caller group (settings >security settings>user groups) to 00000 and your phone will sound the message tone when you are near a radar speed trap. Setting it to 500 will cause your phone 2 set off security alarms at shop exits. Try this secret trick if you can handle the unexpected. Note: This secret trick wont work with all phones Models. |
| THE DETECTIVE TRICK (Mobile Spying) |
Now you can spy on anyone using your cellphone. Just do the following.
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The 4th gen iPod Touch is now the latest Apple product to fall victim to ColorWare. This time around, the iPod Touch’s body, home Button and earbuds can each be painted the colors of your choice for $165. Or you can buy an iPod Touch directly from them with a ColorWare paint job for $395
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App stores are exploding with programs designed to help people monitor their health using a smart phone. But the majority of these apps merely make it easier for patients to record health measures, such as weight or blood pressure. It’s unclear if they actually significantly improve health behavior.
Joseph Cafazzo, a biomedical engineer at the University Health Network, in Toronto, and collaborators have developed apps that do much more. Their apps interface wirelessly with medical devices—including a blood-pressure monitor and a blood-sugar monitor—and offer suggestions based on the readings. They found that people using the programs lowered their blood pressure and were more vigilant about monitoring and testing their blood sugar.
One of the most interesting findings was that doctors seemed to play no role in the change. “It was solely patients becoming responsible for their own care,” says Cafazzo, who heads the university’s Centre for Global eHealth Innovation.
Cafazzo’s efforts were partly a result of the growing use of smart phones as medical tools, as well as an increase in remote and home monitoring devices that are moving medicine outside the doctor’s office.
But unlike many existing monitoring systems, Cafazzo sees his work bringing greater responsibility to the patient. “The goal of classic home monitoring is to collect information and deliver it to the doctor, who has to analyze and act on it, then return that information to the patient,” he says. “It’s not really self-care.”
In a yearlong clinical trial of the system involving 110 patients with diabetic hypertension, Cafazzo and colleagues had some people use the app and a home blood-pressure monitor, while others used only a monitor. Those who used the app had a drop in systolic blood pressure of 10 millimeters of mercury, on average, which would reduce the risk of cardiac events by about 25 percent. Those who used just the conventional pressure monitor saw no reduction in blood pressure.
Physicians didn’t significantly alter patients’ medication or treatment regimens during the course of the study, so researchers say any changes in health must have been solely due to the monitoring app and related changes in patient behavior, such as new eating patterns and better medication compliance. “Just giving the monitor isn’t enough,” says Cafazzo. “Active telemonitoring keeps patients engaged.”
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According to a new consumer study conducted by research firm Information Solutions Group on behalf of casual games publisher PopCap Games, 57% of AT&T wireless subscribers play mobile games.
The advent of the iPhone and its App Store have made the download and usage of mobile games easier than ever, and the mobile gaming industry is expected to grow more than 10% per year to hit $6.3 billion in user spending by 2011, according to a report from Gartner.
52% of gamers cited “distraction from daily life issues” as the top benefit derived from mobile gaming, followed by “relaxation and stress relief” (40%) and “improved mood” (12%)–in addition, 52% of gamers said they play mobile titles during work hours, and 14% selected “during my work day, when I need a short break” as the time when they most often play games on their phone.
60% of all mobile gamers cited “while waiting for an appointment” as a time when they play mobile games, with “during the day on weekdays” selected by 34% of respondents and “when traveling on vacation” and “on the weekend” tying for third at 25% each.
The Information Solutions Group study reports that 59% of AT&T gamers play games on their phone at least once a month, and 40% said they play weekly or more often–41% said they played less than once per month. 91% of mobile gaming sessions last fewer than 30 minutes, and 62% extend fewer than 15 minutes. In all, 71% of mobile gamers play games on their phone for less than an hour per week, although 52% of those who play daily said they play for three or more hours per week.
Asked to name “games you enjoy playing on your cell phone,” 20% of AT&T gamers cited Tetris, followed by Bejeweled at 18% and Solitaire at 17%. Puzzle games topped popular genres at 66%, followed by card/casino titles at 51%–board games earned 15% of the vote, with action/adventure trailing at 11%.
86% of mobile gamers also play video games on one or more other devices, with 76% of gamers playing on computers, 41% on consoles and 24% on handheld game devices.
17% of mobile gamers consider their mobile handset their primary gaming device.
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The Nokia N8 is a new smartphone that will give you a lot more customization than what many phones offers. With this phone you get easy access to the people, services and places that are important to you. You can create your own content with the Nokia N8, easily access social networking, plus much more. There is no doubt that when you choose to get an N8 Nokia, you’ll get a handset that focuses on you, the user.
With multimedia being one of the most important mobile features for users these days, a lot of people are looking for mobile phones that can offers them good call options, as well as a quality camera and more. The Nokia N8 features a 12-megapixel camera with lots of extras, such as Carl Zeiss optics, as well as Xenon flash. This camera not only takes photos that are digital quality, but you can also record HD quality video too.
Along with a great camera, the Nokia N8 comes with a media entertainment system that is better than what you would expect for a mobile device. With this phone you get HD quality video, as well as Dolby surround sound. Another option that comes with the N8 is that this phone has the capability of plugging into your home theater system. If this isn’t enough, the N8 Nokia also gives you access to Web TV so you can watch channels, such as CNN and National Geographic, right from your mobile phone. Even while on the go you can enjoy some of the best entertainment available, right from your mobile phone.
You will also get some great social networking features with the Nokia N8; with a single application located on the home screen you can view feeds from Twitter and Facebook, as well as update your own profile and upload photos. Storing your multimedia files won’t be a problem as the N8 comes with 16 GB of built in storage, plus you can expand this up to 48 GB with a microSD card.
For travel the Nokia N8 comes equipped with free global Ovi Maps that covers over 70 different countries. No matter where you are going, you will be able to find what you are looking for with your mobile phone.
The battery life of the Nokia N8 is rated for 12.5 hours of talk time and 400 hours of standby, which is really very good for a smartphone.
The Nokia N8 is a top of the line smartphone that was made for people that want to enjoy using their handset; you get a number of high quality features, and you get them packaged in a stylish, compact design. The many Nokia N8 deals that are available make this phone an even more attractive option.
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