Bump for Android now transfers photos directly to your PC

Mumbai: Bump is one really handy wireless data sharing software app, available for iOS and Android platforms. Now the creators of Bump have announced yet another nifty feature for the Bump Android app which allows direct photo transfer to PCs. Hence now you don't need to physically connect your Android smartphone or tablet to your PC to transfer images.

Facebook hiring Apple engineers to work on smartphones - report ..........

Adding to the recent rumours of a Facebook phone, The New York Times is reporting that the social giant, which recently went public, is expanding its efforts to create a smartphone. This is not the first time that we are hearing such rumours. Both TechCrunch and AllThingsD have reported in the past that Facebook is building a smartphone, even if the company was working, the handset never made it to the market.

Fresh from its IPO, Facebook is reportedly exploring more opportunities to earn revenue and making smartphones is one of these. According to NY Times sources, most of whom include Facebook employees and several engineers sought by Facebook recruiters, the social giant has hired more than half a dozen Apple engineers who worked on the iPhone and iPad.

These engineers have joined the company's already existing mobile team, which is working on a smartphone, code named Buffy. The device which is based on a modified version of Android, was first revealed by tech blog AllThingsD last year.

With mobile being the biggest growth area right now, Facebook seeks to extend its mobile presence going beyond apps. "Mark is worried that if he doesn't create a mobile phone in the near future that Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms," a Facebook employee told NY Times.

Famous Scientist ( Harald Cramér )

-: Harald Cramér :-

Harald Cramér

Harald Cramér (September 25, 1893 – October 5, 1985) was a Swedish mathematician, actuary, and statistician, specializing in mathematical statistics and probabilistic number theory. He was once described by John Kingman as "one of the giants of statistical theory".

Harald Cramér was born in Stockholm, Sweden on September 25, 1893. Cramér remained close to Stockholm for most of his life. He entered the University of Stockholm as an undergraduate in 1912, where he studied mathematics and chemistry.

During this period, he was a research assistant under the famous chemist, Hans von Euler-Chelpin, with whom he published his first 5 articles from 1913–1914. Following his lab experience, he began to focus solely on mathematics.

He eventually began his work on his doctoral studies in mathematics which were supervised by the famous Hungarian mathematician, Marcel Riesz, at the University of Stockholm. Also influenced by G.H. Hardy, Cramér's research led to a PhD in 1917 for his thesis "On a class of Dirichlet series".

A large portion of Cramér's work concerned the field of actuarial science and insurance mathematics. During the period from 1920 to 1929, he was an actuary for the life insurance company Svenska livförsäkringsbolaget.

His actuarial work during this time led him to study probability and statistics which became the main area of his research. In 1927 he published an elementary text in Swedish Probability theory and some of its applications. Following his work for Svenska livförsäkringsbolaget, he went on to work for Återförsäkringsaktiebolaget Sverige, a reinsurance company, up until 1948.

He was also known for his pioneering efforts in insurance risk theory. After this period, he remained as a consultant actuary to Sverige from 1949 to 1961. Later in his life, he was elected to be the Honorary President of the Swedish Actuarial Society.

Cramér remained an active contributor to his professional career for an additional 20 years. Following his retirement in 1961, he became extremely active in research, which had been slowed due to his Chancellorship.

During the years from 1961 to 1983, Cramér traveled throughout the United States and Europe to continue his research, making significant stops at Berkeley, Princeton, and at the Research Triangle Institute of North Carolina. His academic career spanned over seven decades, from 1913 to 1982.

Following his PhD, he served as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Stockholm University from 1917 to 1929. Early on, Cramér was highly involved in analytic number theory.

He also made some important statistical contributions to the distribution of primes and twin primes. His most famous paper on this subject is entitled "On the order of magnitude of the difference between prime numbers", which provided a rigorous account of the constructive role in which probability applied to number theory.

Harald Cramér married Marta Hansson in 1918, and they remained together up until her death in 1973. He had often referred to her as his "Beloved Marta". Together they had one daughter, Marie-Louise, and two sons, Tomas and Kim.

Yahoo seeks to shake up search, Web browsing

Joining the battle to redefine Internet search, Yahoo is taking aim with a new browser enhancement it calls "Axis."

It alters browsers made by other companies to display search results in a more convenient and visual format.

The troubled Internet company Yahoo Inc. released Axis in Apple's app store late Wednesday. That version will work only on Apple's iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The software also can be installed as a plug-in on most major browsers used on desktop computers and laptops. Apps for other mobile devices are in the works.

A device running Axis can display search results in a panorama of visual thumbnails that can be scrolled through above a Web page. It's a departure from search engines' traditional presentation of a list of staid Web links that require more navigation and guesswork.

"Searching through links has outlived its utility," said Shashi Seth, a Yahoo Inc. senior vice president. "Users are demanding more now because we are all short on time."

All the major search engines are adopting new formats intended to make it easier for users to find information without clicking through to page after page.

Two weeks ago, Microsoft Corp. previewed an upcoming change that will spread Bing's search results in three columns, including one devoted to personalized recommendations pulled from Facebook, Twitter and other social networking services.

Last week, Google unveiled a new search feature called a "Knowledge Graph" that seeks to provide more immediate answers by highlighting information from a database containing more than 500 million entries about people, places and other commonly requested things.

The biggest challenge facing Axis may be overcoming the perception that Yahoo stopped innovating in search when it joined forces with Microsoft and started relying on Bing.

"If it's good enough and cool enough, people will go out of their way to get it," predicted IDC analyst Karsten Weide.

Yahoo is counting on Axis to reverse its steadily declining share of the Internet's lucrative search market and bring it more traffic from among the growing number of smartphone and tablet users.

Its greatest appeal figures to be on mobile devices because users with the app installed can see their search results at the top of the screen just by flicking on whatever page is displayed. The relevant results appear in a ribbon of Web page snapshots, making it easier for users to find the right information.

Much like Google's Knowledge Graph, Axis draws its results from a custom-built index. Most of the data in the Axis index resides on Yahoo's own services. If Axis can't find answers there, it presents links from Bing's search index.

Yahoo has relied on Bing's technology since 2010 as part of a decade-long partnership formed to lure users away from Google. So far, most of Bing's gains have come at Yahoo's expense, but Yahoo was losing search traffic well before it began leaning on Bing.

Yahoo's share of the U.S. search market stood at 13.5 percent through April, down from nearly 25 percent five years ago, according to the research firm comScore Inc. Bing holds a 15.4 percent share, up from 9.4 percent five years ago when Microsoft operated a search engine under a different name and system. Google's share has climbed from 56 percent five years ago to more than 66 percent now.

Yahoo's alliance with Microsoft gives it the flexibility to offer unique search features, such as Axis, that Bing doesn't have. Getting people to use its search engine more frequently is important to Yahoo because it keeps 88 percent of the revenue generated from requests made on its service, but none when a query is entered directly on Bing.

The erosion in Yahoo's Internet market share has been a major factor in a financial malaise that has caused the company's stock to slump for years and contributed to the management turmoil that has taken Yahoo through four CEOs -- including two interim leaders -- during just the past nine months, when it was working on Axis.

Famous Scientist ( Elias Magnus Fries )

-: Elias Magnus Fries :-

Elias Magnus Fries

Pierre Jean George Cabanis (5 June 1757 – 5 May 1808) was a French physiologist and materialist philosopher.

He was born at Cosnac (Corrèze), the son of Jean Baptiste Cabanis (1723–1786), a lawyer and agronomist. At the age of ten, he attended the college of Brives, where he showed great aptitude for study, but his independence of spirit was so great that he was almost constantly in a state of rebellion against his teachers and was finally expelled. He was then taken to Paris by his father and left to carry on his studies at his own discretion for two years.

 From 1773 to 1775 he travelled in Poland and Germany, and on his return to Paris he devoted himself mainly to poetry. About this time he sent to the Académie française a translation of the passage from Homer proposed for their prize, and, though he did not win, he received so much encouragement from his friends that he contemplated translating the whole of the Iliad.

At his father's wish, he gave up writing and decided to engage in a more settled profession, selecting medicine. In 1789 his Observations sur les hôpitaux (Observations on hospitals, 1790) procured him an appointment as administrator of hospitals in Paris, and in 1795 he became professor of hygiene at the medical school of Paris, a post which he exchanged for the chair of legal medicine and the history of medicine in 1799.

Partly because of his poor health, he tended not to practise as a physician, his interests lying in the deeper problems of medical and physiological science. During the last two years of Honoré Mirabeau's life, Cabanis was intimately connected with him, and wrote the four papers on public education which were found among the Mirabeau's papers at his death, and were edited by the real author soon afterwards in 1791. During the illness which terminated his life Mirabeau trusted entirely to Cabanis' professional skills.

 Of the death of Mirabeau, Cabanis drew up a detailed narrative, intended as a justification of his treatment of the case. He was enthusiastic about the French Revolution and became a member of the Council of Five Hundred and then of the conservative senate, and the dissolution of the Directory was the result of a motion which he made to that effect. His political career was brief. Hostile to the policy of Napoleon Bonaparte, he rejected every offer of a place under his government. He died at Meulan.

His body is buried in the Pantheon and his heart in Auteuil Cemetery in Paris.

A complete edition of Cabanis's works was begun in 1825, and five volumes were published. His principal work, Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme (On the relations between the physical and moral aspects of man, 1802), consists in part of memoirs, read in 1796 and 1797 to the Institute, and is a sketch of physiological psychology. Psychology is with Cabanis directly linked on to biology, for sensibility, the fundamental fact, is the highest grade of life and the lowest of intelligence.

He was a member of the masonic lodge Les Neuf Sœurs.

Samsung launches Galaxy Tab 2 310 in India....

Samsung has launched a new addition to its Galaxy Tab range in India. Called Galaxy Tab 2 310, the seven-inch tablet runs on Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich. Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 310 is priced at Rs 23,250.

Unveiled at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 310 weighs 345gm, measures 193.7 x 122.4 x 10.5mm and runs on 1GHz dual core processor. It has 1GB RAM and 16GB internal memory which is expandable upto 32GB. The 7-inch PLS display has 1024 x 600p resolution.

The tablet sports a 3MP rear camera and a VGA front camera. On connectivity front it supports, 3G, Wi-Fi and HSPA. The device has 4000mAh unremovable battery.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is sixth Android tablet from the company to be launched in India. The other five Samsung tablets launched in India are Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Tab 750, 730, 680 and 620.

Facebook Offers......

Offers are a way to receive discounts from businesses, brands and organizations. They're available in limited beta to specific countries at this time and we'll launch globally soon.

New iPhone application called KLiK reveals identity in photos.....!

TORONTO: Imagine taking a snapshot of a group of friends and having your smartphone instantly reveal the identity of everyone in the photo.

A new iPhone app called KLiK performs real-time facial recognition to automatically identify and tag friends in photos.

"It's our most recent evolution of both the platform and the consumer product that we're offering," said Gil Hirsch, the CEO of the facial recognition technology platform Face.com, which launched the app.

"We noticed that at parties or events there were many photos being taken but only a few were actually getting tagged."

By connecting with Facebook, the app scans friends' photos to develop a facial profile of everyone in a user's network. The app identifies people by matching faces in photos taken with, or uploaded to, the app to these profiles.

Because the app relies on the connection to Facebook, only friends in a user's network can be identified.

"It's not like you can point this at someone on the street and make it work," said Hirsch.

But the app does include a learn mode to use for friends who are not on Facebook. It allows users to teach the app who someone is by pointing the camera at them and manually entering their name.

"It's all private and on your device only," explained Hirsch, adding that the person will then be tagged automatically.

"I use it to tag my children so that I can later search for all the photos I took of them."

Users can also apply Instagram-style filters and share photos via Facebook, Twitter or email.

Although the app is only able to identify Facebook friends, or people entered manually, some critics are concerned about privacy issues.

"This system has been engineered from the get-go to preserve privacy and also deliver a social fun value and nothing creepy," Hirsch responded.

The company, which was established in 2009, has created several other apps, including Photo Finder, a Facebook app that scans friends' photos to identify photos of you that were never tagged.

The company also provides technology for facial detection, which is distinct from recognition because it reveals information about subjects in a photo without revealing identity. The technology can reveal gender, mood, and even age.

"We provide a minimum and maximum and approximate age guesstimate, only using the facial information in the photo -- nothing else," Hirsch said.

Famous Scientist ( Oskar Klein )

-: Oskar Klein :-

Oskar Benjamin Klein

Oskar Benjamin Klein (September 15, 1894 – February 5, 1977) was a Swedish theoretical physicist.

Klein was born in Danderyd outside Stockholm, son of the chief rabbi of Stockholm, Dr. Gottlieb Klein from Homonna in Hungary and Antonie (Toni) Levy.

He became a student of Svante Arrhenius at the Nobel Institute at a young age, and was on the way to Jean-Baptiste Perrin in France when World War I broke out and he was drafted into the military.

From 1917 he worked a few years with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen and received his doctoral degree at the University College of Stockholm (now Stockholm University) in 1921.

In 1923 he received a professorship at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and moved there with his recently wedded wife, Gerda Koch from Denmark.

Klein returned to Copenhagen in 1925, spent some time with Paul Ehrenfest in Leiden, then became docent at Lund University in 1926 and in 1930 accepted the offer of the professorial chair in physics at the Stockholm University College, which had previously been held by Ivar Fredholm until his death in 1927; Klein retired as professor emeritus in 1962. He was awarded the Max Planck medal in 1959.

Klein is credited for inventing the idea, part of Kaluza–Klein theory, that extra dimensions may be physically real but curled up and very small, an idea essential to string theory / M-theory.

The Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture, held annually at the University of Stockholm, has been named after him.

The Oskar Klein Centre for Cosmoparticle Physics in Stockholm, Sweden is named in his honor.

Google officially acquires Motorola Mobility.......!

After waiting months for the go-ahead to say so, Google CEO Larry Page today announced that his company now officially owns Motorola Mobility.

Google announced plans to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in August. Upon doing so, the companies had to clear regulatory hurdles to get the deal done. Regulators in both the U.S. and the European Union approved the acquisition back in February, but the companies were forced to wait for China. Over the weekend, China approved the deal, paving the way for Google to close it.

As part of the acquisition, Page announced today that Motorola Mobility chief Sanjay Jha has stepped down from his post. In his place, Google has named "long-time Googler" Dennis Woodside to be the mobile firm's new chief executive.

"I've known Dennis for nearly a decade, and he's been phenomenal at building teams and delivering on some of Google's biggest bets," Page wrote in the blog post. "One of his first jobs at Google was to put on his backpack and build our businesses across the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia. More recently he helped increase our revenue in the U.S. from US$10.8 billion to US$17.5 billion in under three years as President of the Americas region."

It has been widely believed that the main reason Google acquired Motorola Mobility was for its patents. The search company and its vendor partners are currently waging legal battles around the world with a host of companies over claims that Android violates patents. Motorola Mobility holds thousands of patents and patent applications that could come in handy for any future legal proceedings.

For Motorola Mobility, the deal made perfect financial sense. The company is not the leading Android vendor, and has faced some trouble competing against Apple. When Google came along with a US$40-per-share offer, representing a 63 percent premium on its share price at the time of the deal, it just made sense.

Google has made it clear that Motorola will operate independently from its own operation, and the search giant/Android maker will not show any favoritism. However, according to reports, China was not so convinced of that, and forced Google to agree to keep Android open and free for a period of five years to ensure it didn't change its stance and give Motorola preferential treatment.

Still, Motorola's competitors haven't expressed any displeasure with the deal. In fact, J.K. Shin, Samsung's mobile head, said back in August that he was pleased with the acquisition, and believed that it "demonstrates Google's deep commitment to defending Android, its partners, and the ecosystem".

But what about Motorola employees? TechCrunch reported yesterday, citing sources, that Google is planning to launch a "listening tour" at Motorola to see what the mobile company's employees actually do. Based on that information, the company could decide to lay off some Motorola employees. Although TechCrunch didn't say how many employees might be terminated, its sources said that the layoffs could come down "imminently".

Google declined CNET's request for comment on the matter, and Page made no indication in his blog post whether layoffs would be coming. Instead, he touted Motorola's success over the last several decades.

Android mini computer selling for just $74

The MK802 is slightly larger than a thumbdrive and has a microSD card slot to add to its built-in 4GB flash storage. Wi-Fi is also supported.

Enthusiasts of embedded computing seem to be spoiled for choices nowadays.

A Chinese-made computer that's slightly larger than a typical thumbdrive can now be purchased online for just $74.

The MK802 is similar to the Cotton Candy computer-on-a-stick. Both are powered by ARM processors and support Android or other ARM-compatible Linux operating systems. It comes with a Mali 400 GPU that enables it to output 1080p video through HDMI.

Despite its small size (it weighs just about 7 ounces), the MK802 has a microSD card slot to add to its built-in 4GB flash storage, together with a full-size USB port and a micro-USB version. Wi-Fi is also supported.

Bob Moog gets a musical tribute by Google doodle

Google has come out with another interactive doodle to celebrate the 78th birthday of Robert Arthur "Bob" Moog. The doodle consists of playable recordable Moog synthesizer.

Users can create music by clicking the keys of this virtual synthesizer with their mouse/touchpad or via the number keys. There's an option to fiddle around with various settings of this keyboard in order to get the best audio output. If that was not enough, the doodle also offers users the option to record their musical creations and play them back. If you are happy with what you hear and want to share with friends, then Google gives an option to share the recorded compositions through Google+.

This is not the first time that Google has come out with a playable doodle. It had done that on June 9, 2011 to celebrate the 96th birthday of Les Paul, a famous American guitarist and song writer, who has a guitar famously named after him.

Coming back to today's doodle, Robert Moog is best known for his invention of the Moog Synthesizer. It was one of the first electronic instruments that allowed musicians to mimic any musical instrument, voices or natural sounds by flipping a switch or twisting a dial.

NFC Mobile Payment System......

Samsung has partnered with Visa to promote mobile payment system. Samsung is now rolling out phones with built in NFC to support this new easy payment system. Watch the video to see it in action.

Soon, an ‘unprinter’ to remove ink from papers.........

LONDON: Scientists claim to have developed a new technique that can remove ink from printed papers so they can be reused in printers and photocopiers.

The technique, developed by a team at the University of Cambridge , uses short pulses of laser light to delete words and images printed on paper. The laser vaporizes the toner ink without damaging the paper and opens up the prospect of future computer printers and photocopiers having an 'unprint' function to allow paper to be reused, the researchers claimed.

Julian Allwood, who led the research , said it could drastically reduce the number of trees cut down to produce paper and even provide a cheaper alternative to recycling.

"The process works on a wide range of toners. It does not damage the paper so the feasibility for reusing paper in the office is there," Allwood was quoted as saying by the Sunday Telegraph.

He added that he has now been approached by several commercial firms expressing interest in producing the first 'unprint' devices.

The researchers, who detailed their work in the journal Proceedings of The Royal Society A, found they could remove toner ink from a range of printers and photocopiers by heating it with short pulses of laser light lasting for just four billionths of a second. This removed the ink without causing any physical damage to the paper or discolouration. Filters can be used to capture the vaporized ink, which is given off as a gas.

Allwood and colleagues estimate it would cost £19,000 to build a prototype unprinter but that the costs would come down as technology improves and it is commercialized.

Sony to release Hayabusa LT29i in second half......

Sony LT29i Hayabusa gets design and even hardware cues from recently announced LTE enabled Xperia GX.

An international version of Sony Xperia GX, a device that was recently announced by the company for the Japan market, is reportedly in the works. This came to light after images of a new Sony smartphone, called LT29i Hayabusa, was spotted by the Taiwanese website ePrice.

Sony Mobile recently announced Xperia SX and Xperia GX for the Japanese market. The all new Sony Xperia SX is the lightest LTE smartphone and weighs about 95 grams; while Xperia GX is a repackaged Xperia Ion smartphone with a slightly different design and Exmor R camera. Both handsets will be available in Japan during the second quarter of the year and there is no word on whether these devices will be launched globally.

It is now being assumed that LT29i Hayabusa is the international version of Xperia GX.

Sony Xperia GX smartphone has Xperia Ion like hardware inside. It features a 4.6 inch touchscreen display and houses a dual core 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile processor. By default the display supports 1280 x 720 pixel resolution and features a Mobile Bravia engine for better visuals. This smartphone runs Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich.

As of now, there is no clarity on whether the LT29i Hayabusa will have a 13.2 megapixel rear camera, same as the Xperia GX, or not. The other hardware features will most likely remain the same. Sony Mobile LT29i Hayabusa will feature a 2200 mAh battery, which would be good for long runtime. By default, the battery will come with 32 GB on-board storage and will also feature a micro SD card slot.

Huawei Ideos X5 video:-

This is the new Huawei ideos x5 which is an upgrade to old X5. The new version comes with an updated processor clocked at 1ghz, the Huawei Cloud+ service and FM radio. Watch the video for more details.

Anchor Text Usage After the Penguin Update.

just the Google penguin update. Even before the penguin update was rolled out on April 24th , there were several sites whose rankings went down because of the overuse of “exact match” keywords as anchor texts. After the implementation of the penguin update, usage of keywords as anchor texts needed to be redefined.

 According to this case study, sites which used minimal percentage of “exact match” keyword anchor texts had successfully gained rankings after the penguin update. Based on our research at SIM labs, we were able to find the same as well.

According to our research, anchor texts play an important role in search engine ranking and all the conventional linking practices must be revamped. This infographic on anchor text usage would help strategize your linking plans.

Zoho Corporation deploys website builder to target small and medium businesses......

Zoho Corporation, the acclaimed cloud-based software solution provider, last week unveiled a do-it-yourself website builder, Zoho Sites, which will help people with no knowledge of coding build and run professional-looking websites.

Targeted at small and medium businesses looking to expand their online presence, Zoho Sites makes website creation a simple exercise of dragging and dropping various elements, forms and widgets in an interface no more complex than a word processor.
Design templates

Users can pick a look and feel for their website from a collection of design templates and also integrate elements like YouTube, Google Apps, Google Maps, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Picasa.

The new service, developed by Zoho's software team at its development facility in Chennai, comes in two iterations: the free edition includes two websites, with each containing two forms, one blog and unlimited pages. The professional edition, priced at $39 a year (roughly Rs. 2,120), includes six websites, with each containing 10 forms, one blog and unlimited pages.
Dynamic content

In an interaction with The Hindu, Hyther Nizam, vice-president, Product Management, Zoho, said Zoho Sites had some key differentiators in the way it leveraged its strengths from a pool of already popular services such as CRM (customer relations manager), Creator (for forms) and Apps. “For us, it [Zoho Sites] completes the missing piece of the jigsaw any business would require,” Mr. Nizam said. “We already offer other important services that any small and medium business would require out of an IT department.”

Websites constructed with Zoho Sites come with a mobile device optimisation (something that Google Sites does not offer), and with options for dynamic content creation through its Zoho Creator database. That essentially rules out the need to make changes to the static webpages.

Zoho is also expected to add a ‘campaigns' plugin soon to Zoho Sites.

While the free websites created with Zoho Sites will be automatically hosted as sub-domain under zoho as username.zohosites.com, there is also the option for users to host the site on their own domain. Zoho also offers users, through a tie-up with GoDaddy, to get their domain address registered.

Zoho, a division of Zoho Corporation (previously AdventNet), has been one of the pioneers of cloud-based collaborative applications. Their office suite has received acclaim from international agencies, some of which have rated it even better than Google Apps.

Zoho Sites has already hit it off. Renowned technology blog TechCrunch has given it a positive review in an article last week titled: “Watch out Google, Zoho just launched a better DIY website builder.”

Zoho has more than five million customers and has offices in California, Austin, New Jersey, Singapore, Tokyo and Beijing, apart from Chennai.

Mr. Nizam said the bulk of Zoho's small and medium business customers were in the U.S. and Europe, and the company hoped to break through further in Indian markets with Zoho Sites. “With Zoho Sites, several Indian small businesses will be able to make their entry into online space. We are counting on that.”

Facebook set to lift ban on under-13s joining

Facebook looks set to relax a ban on children using its site in a move that could see millions more sign up.

A senior employee of the company said the decision to lift the restriction could come about after admitting a large number of under 13-year-olds join up anyway.

The announcement follows Facebook's floatation on the stock market for a price of $38 a share - a valuation that puts the company's worth at over $100billion.

Famous Scientist ( Eva Ekeblad )

-: Eva Ekeblad :-

Eva Ekeblad

Eva Ekeblad (10 July 1724 – 15 May 1786), née Eva De la Gardie, was a Swedish agronomist, scientist, Salonist and noble (Countess). Her most known discovery was to make flour and alcohol out of potatoes (1746). She was the first female member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1748).

Eva De la Gardie was born to statesman count Magnus Julius De la Gardie (1668–1741) and the amateur politician and salonist Hedvig Catharina Lilje: sister of Captain Carl Julius De la Gardie and Hedvig Catharina De la Gardie and the aunt of Axel von Fersen the Younger. Her brother was the spouse of the famous Cathérine Charlotte De la Gardie and the brother-in-law of the royal favourite Hedvig Taube.

Eva was at the age of 16 (1740) married to the statesman count Claes Claesson Ekeblad, and became the mother of five children. The couple had a residence in Stockholm and an estate in Västergötland and belonged to the very highest circles of the Swedish nobility.

Her spouse was often absent, and Eva was responsible for the management for the estates and supervised the bailiffs and the country-assemblys of Mariedal and Stola Manor. In Stockholm, she hosted a culturel salon and was described as "one of few aristocratic ladies whose honour was considered untainted". The first concert performing the mass music of Johan Helmich Roman where performed in her salon at the Ekeblad palace.

Ekeblad discovered how to make flour and alcohol out of potatoes (1746). She thereby made potatoes, a plant introduced in Sweden in 1658 but until then only cultivated in the greenhouses of the aristocracy, a part of the basic food supply. This greatly improved eating habits and reduced the hunger epidemics. Previously, alcohol had been made by wheat, rye and grain, but now, more of that could be saved to make bread instead.

She also discovered a method of bleaching cotton textile and yarn with soap (1751), and of replacing the dangerous ingredients in the cosmetics of the time by making powder from potatoes (1752). She was said to have advertised the use of potatoes by using the flowers of the plant as hair ornaments.

Eva wrote to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences about her first discovery in 1746, and in 1748, she became the first woman elected to the Academy, although she never took part in any of the Academy's meeting. After 1751, the Academy came to refer to her as an honorary rather than a full member, as the statutes confined membership to men.

HTC Desire - First Look

Take a first look at HTC Desire, the superphone you have been waiting for. The 3.7-inch AMOLED display presents you with an unmatched viewing experience. The 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor delivers superfast web browsing and amazing multimedia. All of this power is wrapped up with the most intuitive user experience - HTC Sense.

Famous Scientist ( Arvid Carlsson )

-: Arvid Carlsson :-

Arvid Carlsson (born 25 January 1923) is a Swedish scientist who is best known for his work with the neurotransmitter dopamine and its effects in Parkinson's disease. For his work on dopamine, Carlsson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000, along with co-recipients Eric Kandel and Paul Greengard.

Carlsson was born in Uppsala, Sweden, son of Gottfrid Carlsson, historian and later professor of history at the Lund University, where he began his medical education in 1941. In 1944 he was participating in the task of examining prisoners of Nazi concentration camps, who Folke Bernadotte, a member of the royal Swedish family, had managed to bring to Sweden.

Although Sweden was neutral during World War II, Carlsson's education was interrupted by several years of service in the Swedish Armed Forces. In 1951, he received his M.L. degree (the equivalent of the American M.D.) and his M.D. (the equivalent of the American Ph.D.). He then became a professor at the University of Lund. In 1959 he became a professor at the University of Gothenburg.

In 1957 Carlsson demonstrated that dopamine was a neurotransmitter in the brain and not just a precursor for norepinephrine, as had been previously believed.

While working at Astra AB, Carlsson and his colleagues were able to derive the first marketed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, zimelidine, from brompheniramine.

Carlsson developed a method for measuring the amount of dopamine in brain tissues. He found that dopamine levels in the basal ganglia, a brain area important for movement, were particularly high. He then showed that giving animals the drug reserpine caused a decrease in dopamine levels and a loss of movement control.

These effects were similar to the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. By administering to these animals L-Dopa, which is the precursor of dopamine, he could alleviate the symptoms. These findings led other doctors to try using L-Dopa on patients with Parkinson's disease, and found it to alleviate some of the symptoms in the early stages of the disease. L-Dopa is still the basis for most commonly used means of treating Parkinson's disease.

Carlsson is opposed to the fluoridation of drinking water. He took part in the debate in Sweden, where he helped to convince Parliament that water fluoridation should be illegal due to ethics. He believes that water fluoridation violates modern pharmalogical principles, which indicate that medications should be tailored to individuals.

Karbonn announces dual-SIM KT-21 Express with push mail

Karbonn Mobiles has announced the launch of dual-SIM KT-21 Express, which is a touch and type handset. Featuring Smart Mail and Karbonn Instant Messenger (KIM), it has been priced at Rs. 4,490.

'Karbonn Smart Mail' is a push mail service, which will enable Karbonn users to send and receive mails in real-time fromKT-21. This feature is powered by Emoze that allows users to securely access both enterprise and personal email accounts, synchronise email contacts and calendar, and view office attachments.

Company has also included its own instant messenger KIM on the phone, which supports GTalk and Facebook accounts.

Karbonn KT-21 features a 7.1cm TFT QVGA capacitive display, 16GB memory support, Java applications, PC Sync, Bluetooth, GPRS, 3.5mm universal audio jack, 3.2 MP camera and a 1000 mAh Li-ion battery. IT also comes with NexgTv that allows users to watch 50+ Live TV Channels on the phone.

Google Revamps Search, Creates Knowledge Graph :-

The new feature is designed to make it easier for users to find what they're looking for and to offer additional related information.

Google on May 16 began rolling out the latest generation of its dominant search engine, introducing what officials are calling the Knowledge Graph.

The Knowledge Graph is designed to offer users an improved search experience by not only doing a better job of finding exactly what they are searching for, but also by then presenting the users with more information related to their searches. If a user searches for Leonardo da Vinci, they not only will get information about him, but information about his paintings and other works, and information about other Renaissance figures.

“The Knowledge Graph enables you to search for things, people or places that Google knows about—landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more—and instantly get information that’s relevant to your query,” Amit Singhal, senior vice president of engineering at Google, said in a May 16 post on the search giant’s blog. “This is a critical first step toward building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the Web and understands the world a bit more like people do.”

Google’s unveiling of Knowledge Graph comes at a time when there is a lot of focus on the Web 2.0 market. Microsoft on May 11 rolled out a revamp of its own Bing search engine, which included the ability to feature social results from Facebook and Twitter in searches. Microsoft also made changes to Bing designed to make it easier to use.

Google continues to be the dominant search engine, with 66.5 percent of search results in April, according to numbers compiled by comScore. Microsoft’s Bing was a distant second, at 15.4 percent, with Yahoo in third at 13.5 percent.

Google’s move also comes the same week that social networking giant Facebook, a growing rival of Google’s for Internet ads, launches its initial public offering (IPO) of stock, an event that could shoot the company’s value to close to $100 billion. The Knowledge Graph, which reportedly has been talked about in the industry for months, could be seen by some as a way for Google to remind the industry that despite the hype around the Facebook IPO, it is still a significant innovator.

According to Singhal, Google is leveraging a database of more than 500 million objects, and more than 3.5 billion facts not only about those objects, but also the relationship between them. Google engineers have gone back and looked at what users have searched for and what they have been asking about for each item. “For example, people are interested in knowing what books Charles Dickens wrote, whereas they’re less interested in what books Frank Lloyd Wright wrote, and more in what buildings he designed,” he wrote.

Google search users in the United States should start seeing the Knowledge Graph in their searches over the next few days, according to Google officials. When they start their search by entering a query, the Knowledge Graph for their query will show up to the right of the search results. One example Google used was of the name “Taj Mahal,” which could refer to the ancient temple in India, the blues singer or the casino in New Jersey.

Once Google determines which Taj Mahal is being searched for—for example, the musician—the Knowledge Graph will list various other relevant topics, possibly from albums Taj Mahal has released to other singers in the same musical genre. Click on one of those singers, and related information to that person is then displayed.

“We’ve always believed that the perfect search engine should understand exactly what you mean and give you back exactly what you want,” Singhal wr,,ote. “And we can now sometimes help answer your next question before you’ve asked it, because the facts we show are informed by what other people have searched for. For example, the information we show for Tom Cruise answers 37 percent of next queries that people ask about him.”

It’s also a natural evolution for the company, according to Johanna Wright, product management director at Google.

“We’re in the early phase of moving from being an information engine to becoming a knowledge engine,” Wright said in a video about the Knowledge Graph.

Google reportedly was able to leverage the technology it inherited in 2010 when it bought Metaweb, which had developed a knowledge base, dubbed Freebase, in developing Knowledge Graph.

Famous Scientist ( Lise Meitner )

-: Lise Meitner :-

Lise Meitner

Lise Meitner, FRS (7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian, later Swedish, physicist who worked on radioactivity and nuclear physics. Meitner was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission, an achievement for which her colleague Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize.  Meitner is often mentioned as one of the most glaring examples of women's scientific achievement overlooked by the Nobel committee. A 1997 Physics Today study concluded that Meitner's omission was "a rare instance in which personal negative opinions apparently led to the exclusion of a deserving scientist" from the Nobel. Element 109, Meitnerium, is named in her honour.

Meitner was born into a Jewish family as the third of eight children in Vienna, 2nd district (Leopoldstadt). Her father, Philipp Meitner, was one of the first Jewish lawyers in Austria. She was born on 7 November 1878. She shortened her name from Elise to Lise. The birth register of Vienna's Jewish community lists Meitner as being born on 17 November 1878, but all other documents list it as 7 November, which is what she used. As an adult, she converted to Christianity, following Lutheranism, and being baptized in 1908.

Inspired by her teacher, physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, Meitner studied physics and became the second woman to obtain a doctoral degree in physics at the University of Vienna in 1905 ("Wärmeleitung im inhomogenen Körper"). Women were not allowed to attend institutions of higher education in those days, but thanks to support from her parents, she was able to obtain private higher education, which she completed in 1901 with an "externe Matura" examination at the Akademisches Gymnasium. Following the doctoral degree, she rejected an offer to work in a gas lamp factory. Encouraged by her father and backed by his financial support, she went to Berlin. Max Planck allowed her to attend his lectures, an unusual gesture by Planck, who until then had rejected any women wanting to attend his lectures. After one year, Meitner became Planck's assistant. During the first years she worked together with chemist Otto Hahn and discovered with him several new isotopes. In 1909 she presented two papers on beta-radiation.

Hahn and Meitner met privately in Copenhagen in November to plan a new round of experiments, and they subsequently exchanged a series of letters. Hahn and Fritz Strassmann then performed the difficult experiments which isolated the evidence for nuclear fission at his laboratory in Berlin. The surviving correspondence shows that Hahn recognized that fission was the only explanation for the barium, but, baffled by this remarkable conclusion, he wrote to Meitner. The possibility that uranium nuclei might break up under neutron bombardment had been suggested years before, notably by Ida Noddack in 1934. However, by employing the existing "liquid-drop" model of the nucleus, Meitner and Frisch were the first to articulate a theory of how the nucleus of an atom could be split into smaller parts: uranium nuclei had split to form barium and krypton, accompanied by the ejection of several neutrons and a large amount of energy (the latter two products accounting for the loss in mass). She and Frisch had discovered the reason that no stable elements beyond uranium (in atomic number) existed naturally; the electrical repulsion of so many protons overcame the strong nuclear force. Meitner also first realized that Einstein's famous equation, E = mc2, explained the source of the tremendous releases of energy in nuclear fission, by the conversion of rest mass into kinetic energy, popularly described as the conversion of mass into energy.

The Future Of Nokia 2013 

Motorcycle Technology - Bike Tires :-

-: Motorcycle Technology - Bike Tires:-

Sony Xperia P :-

The good: The Sony Xperia P has a beautiful design and good build quality, with a brushed-aluminum chassis and a bright 4-inch display.

The bad: The Xperia P only runs Gingerbread (Android 2.3) and the battery isn't removable. There's no expandable memory slot and its reception suffers from a "death grip."

The bottom line: The Sony Xperia P is one of the better handsets from Sony Mobile this year. It has great build quality and the display is bright enough to use outdoors.


Features : Unlike the smaller Xperia U, the Xperia P has built-in NFC, which will allow you to make full use of the Sony Xperia SmartTags the company is touting. With the programmable tags you can quickly launch apps and services by simply tapping a tag with your Xperia P. Unfortunately, though, no SmartTags are included in the package. See our Xperia S review for more about this feature.

Other connectivity features include HSPA, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. The handset comes with 16GB of onboard storage, though only 13GB is available for use. Unfortunately, the phone doesn't have an expandable memory slot.

mercedes - benz City bus all set to woo commuters:

After bringing in their long distance coaches Mercedes-Benz has now come out with their City commuter. We get aboard the brand new City Bus

Urban commuters can now look forward to a bump free ride, thanks to the new low access flat platform, rear engined, air-conditioned, Mercedes-Benz bus. This bus has been assembled at the company's sophisticated Chakan plant. Mercedes Benz are the world leaders in passenger bus manufacture, with applications suitable for different road conditions and requirements in different countries. The history of making buses by Mercedes-Benz can be traced back to the early decades of the twentieth century. What they made then and what they are making today is a great and commendable evolution in passenger transport. Today a passenger bus isn't an enclosed sheet metal container having 40 plus seats and an adequate powerplant to propel it at a reasonable pace between two points in a city.

Unlike other bus bodies, the Mercedes-Benz bus side panels are pasted to the structural frame and then painted. The fit and finish is unbelievable, the rear-engined bus' passenger compartment is totally devoid of noise and vibrations. The modern bus has to be good looking, comfortable but also needs to be air conditioned and cool. This is achieved in the Benz buses with well insulated and acoustic material on the interiors.

The large window/glass area also gives a bus a pretty look and the tinting on the glass ensures the glare is evaded. All in all a lot of emphasis has been given to passenger comfort. This bus is also capable of accepting a wheel chair passenger due to its low floor pan and wide doors opening hydro-pneumatically. The suspension comprises of air bags with hydraulic dampers making for the smoothest of rides. The bus is capable of 100km/h plus speeds and braking is handles by multiport and large ventilated disc brakes.

The comfort mode is not restricted to the passenger cabin. The driver's seat sports multiple adjustments and dampers and the auto transmission does away with the clutch and allied hassles. The comfort level on a passenger bus is largely supported by a well operating suspension system with really good damping for all kinds of road surfaces. In this particular bus it is achieved by the popular Airmatic suspension which Mercedes-Benz also uses in their passenger cars. It basically involves multiple air bags to act as springs and hydraulic dampers to arrest the oscillation set in by the air bags.

ZTE India CEO determined at building strong LTE ecosystem in India :-

With 4G slowly making its mark in the Indian terrain, Reliance recently revealed its plans to focus on other technologies, along with LTE. Airtel lately became the first telecom operator in India to offer LTE 4G services and ZTE is now prepping for a stronger LTE base in India after helping Airtel dish out its 4G services in Kolkata.

 ZTE India CEO, Cui Liangjun revealed that the company is determined at building a stronger LTE 4G ecosystem in India, reports Telecom Lead. The ZTE CEO revealed it at the LTE India 2012 International Conference.

"LTE offers a scintillating experience for mobile broadband users and participates in the country's economic growth by supporting several government initiatives and schemes in sectors like health education and governance," said Cui Liangjun, Chief Executive Officer, ZTE India.

Movicel is said to launch a commercial LTE network in Angola, in association with ZTE, which be based on ZTE's Uni-RAN and Uni-Core solutions. ZTE will provide LTE equipment for key Movicel markets across the country and also upgrade Movicel's current 3G core network to support LTE services. It is said to provide management and maintenance for the network.

According to DoT member technology, JK Roy, DoT member said that future 4G LTE roll outs will improve connectivity in rural India. "For an effective utilization of the possibilities which can be offered by LTE, back haul is one of the most important components.

 The optical fiber network which is being put in place by the Government of India will close this gap and there will be range of opportunities in the rural areas which can be availed by LTE technology providers," said J.K Roy, Member Technology, Ministry of Communications & IT. LTE is the preferred and easily deployable network technology. Abhay Savargaonkar, Chief Technology Officer - mobile services, Bharti Airtel points out that the major drivers for LTE and its superiority were lowest cost per bit, use over a wide range of spectrums and flexibility regarding bandwidth. He believes that LTE is the only technology that will sustain the level of telecommunication demand in future.

"The more you begin to use broadband, the greater is the progressive self-discovery involved broadband. Service providers should go for technologies that increase spectral efficiency to enable the huge growth in voice, data and video that was emerging as this self-discovery process progressed. LTE has the most spectral efficiency," said Robert Sewell, Head of Technology solutions, Aircel.

Famous Scientist ( Sofia Kovalevskaya )

-: Sofia Kovalevskaya :-

Sofia Kovalevskaya

Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya, was the first major Russian female mathematician, responsible for important original contributions to analysis, differential equations and mechanics, and the first woman appointed to a full professorship in Northern Europe. She was also one of the first females to work for a scientific journal as an editor.

There are some alternative transliterations of her name. She herself used Sophie Kowalevski (or occasionally Kowalevsky), for her academic publications. After moving to Sweden, she called herself Sonya.

Sofia Kovalevskaya (née Korvin-Krukovskaya), was born in Moscow, the second of three children. Her father, Vasily Vasilyevich Korvin-Krukovsky, was Lieutenant-General of Artillery who served in the Imperial Russian Army. Her mother, Yelizaveta Fedorovna Schubert, was a scholarly woman of German ancestry and Sofia's grandmother was Romani. When she was 11 years old, the wall paper in her room had differential and integral analysis, which was her early preparation for calculus.

They nurtured her interest in mathematics and hired a tutor, (A. N. Strannoliubskii, a well-known advocate of higher education for women) who taught her calculus. During that same period, the son of the local priest introduced her to nihilism.

That year, with the help of the mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler, whom she had known as a fellow student of Weierstrass', Kovalevskaya was able to secure a position as a privat-docent at Stockholm University in Sweden.

The following year (1884) she was appointed to a five year position as "Professor Extraordinarius" (Professor without Chair) and became the editor of Acta Mathematica. In 1888 she won the Prix Bordin of the French Academy of Science, for her work on the question: "Mémoire sur un cas particulier du problème de le rotation d'un corps pesant autour d'un point fixe, où l'intégration s'effectue à l'aide des fonctions ultraelliptiques du temps".

Her submission included the celebrated discovery of what is now known as the "Kovalevsky top", which was subsequently shown (by Liouville)[citation needed] to be the only other case of rigid body motion, beside the tops of Euler and Lagrange, that is "completely integrable".

In 1889 she was appointed Professor Ordinarius (Professorial Chair holder) at Stockholm University, the first woman to hold such a position at a northern European university.[citation needed] After much lobbying on her behalf (and a change in the Academy's rules) she was granted a Chair in the Russian Academy of Sciences, but was never offered a professorship in Russia.

Kovalevskaya wrote several non-mathematical works as well, including a memoir, A Russian Childhood, plays (in collaboration with Duchess Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler) and a partly autobiographical novel, Nihilist Girl (1890).

She died of influenza in 1891 at age forty-one, after returning from a pleasure trip to Genoa. She is buried in Solna, Sweden, at Norra begravningsplatsen

Google Doodle Hugs Itself for Mother's Day :-

If you haven't yet called your parents for Mother's Day – and we apologize in advance if that's not an option for your particular situation – Google's doing its part to tug on your heartstrings should you try to search for things on the Web today.

That's right – it's time for a new Google doodle.

Blink and you'll miss the short animation, which starts off with a pearl necklace-wearing "Mama g" waiting around an empty room. The door slowly cracks open and in run her two "o" children – we'll call them "Red" and "Yellow." They tackle her with flying hugs (or try to, at least), and give her a pretty purple flower to commemorate the day.

As the little Google letter family stand there, either hand-in-hand or with their little letter arms around each other, the rest of the Google logo fades in. No coloration or normal font faces this time: The focus of the scene remains on mom and kids when the animation officially ends.

Cute and simple – or so you might think. In actuality, the time, effort, and animation required to build the Doodle aren't the only complexities surrounding Mother's Day drawings. Namely, Mother's Day isn't a universally agreed-upon holiday.

Famous Scientist ( Oskar Klein )

-: Oskar Klein :-

Oskar Klein

Oskar Benjamin Klein (September 15, 1894 – February 5, 1977) was a Swedish theoretical physicist.

Klein was born in Danderyd outside Stockholm, son of the chief rabbi of Stockholm, Dr. Gottlieb Klein from Homonna in Hungary and Antonie (Toni) Levy. He became a student of Svante Arrhenius at the Nobel Institute at a young age, and was on the way to Jean-Baptiste Perrin in France when World War I broke out and he was drafted into the military.

From 1917 he worked a few years with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen and received his doctoral degree at the University College of Stockholm (now Stockholm University) in 1921. In 1923 he received a professorship at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and moved there with his recently wedded wife, Gerda Koch from Denmark.

Klein returned to Copenhagen in 1925, spent some time with Paul Ehrenfest in Leiden, then became docent at Lund University in 1926 and in 1930 accepted the offer of the professorial chair in physics at the Stockholm University College, which had previously been held by Ivar Fredholm until his death in 1927; Klein retired as professor emeritus in 1962. He was awarded the Max Planck medal in 1959.

Klein is credited for inventing the idea, part of Kaluza–Klein theory, that extra dimensions may be physically real but curled up and very small, an idea essential to string theory / M-theory.

The Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture, held annually at the University of Stockholm, has been named after him.

The Oskar Klein Centre for Cosmoparticle Physics in Stockholm, Sweden is named in his honor.  

Microsoft Bing goes social in search war with Google :-

Computerworld - Microsoft's move to boost Bing's social networking feaures could finally give it an opportunity to truly take on Google's dominant search engine, analysts say.

The updated Bing search engine, unveiled on Thursday, can now include the user comments, likes and activities posted in popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, agreed with Microsoft's contention that the redesign is "the most significant since Microsoft launched Bing three years ago."

"The Bing redesign really is a search revolution and the biggest change I have seen from them in years," Moorhead said.

"Bing could revolutionize social search by tapping into Facebook's and Twitter's capabilities. Unlike Google, Bing and Microsoft aren't vying to create their own social media destination, so they can access the best-of-breed social media sites like Facebook and Twitter," Moorhead added.

Bing's new interface, which is expected to move from a private to a public beta test period soon, offers users a sidebar that focuses on people in the user's social networks and their opinions and search queries, Microsoft said.

For instance, a user might search for a local bike shop. Along with the usual search results, there will be a "people you know who may know" social sidebar that offers up bike shops that friends have "liked" or commented on.

The social sidebar also is designed to let users ask their friends questions about their query topic, and those friends can respond either through Bing or Facebook, Microsoft said.

"Contrary to their history of unnecessarily overcomplicating software, Microsoft has shown a knack with Bing for boiling down functionality to a useful level," said Brad Shimmin, an analyst at CurrentAnalysis. "I think if anything, it will entice consumers to try Microsoft Bing."

Since Microsoft first launched Bing in the summer of 2009, the company faced a daunting task in taking on Google's dominant search engine.

And Google has remained dominant. Despite all of Microsoft's efforts, including an upgrade in 2011, Bing simply hasn't been able to take a significant bite out of Google's market share.

Now, Microsoft is hoping that its social search capabilities can become the game-changer the company needs in the battle against Google.

Facebook tests 'pay to promote post' tool :-

 Facebook has started testing a system that lets users pay to highlight or promote posts.

By paying a small fee users can ensure that information they post on the social network is more visible to friends, family and colleagues.

The tests are being carried out among the social network's users in New Zealand.

Facebook said the goal was to see if users were interested in paying to flag up their information.

Money maker

The tests of the "pay to promote" system were discovered by a Facebook user in Whangarei, reported New Zealand's news magazine Stuff.

At first, said Stuff, the user thought the offer to pay to promote a post was a con trick.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to the BBC the offer was genuine.

"We're constantly testing new features across the site," said the spokesperson. "This particular test is simply to gauge people's interest in this method of sharing with their friends."

Different methods of highlighting posts were being tested, said the spokesperson. These would see a range of charges being levied to make posts more visible. Comments on the tests suggest the highest price being charged was £1.25 ($2) while others cost 25p or 50p.

Payments could be made via credit card or PayPal.

The spokesperson said some of the methods it was trying out would incur a charge but others would highlight a post for free. The spokesperson would not be drawn on when the test would end or if it would be tried in other territories.

"We're going to see a lot more ideas like this where they are testing out different ways to try to make money," said Ian Maude, internet analyst at Enders Analysis.

Both Facebook's imminent stock market flotation and a recent slowdown in revenue growth were helping to concentrate its attention on ways to make money, he said.

"In the last few years their overall revenue has grown much more quickly than their audience," he said. However, he said, that rapid growth had slowed in the last six months and had perhaps prompted it to experiment.

The flotation will add more pressure, said Mr Maude but he added that the way the stock would be split could lighten that burden a little as Mark Zuckerberg would be left 57% of the shares.

Famous Scientist ( Vagn Walfrid Ekman )

-: Vagn Walfrid Ekman :-

Vagn Walfrid Ekman

Vagn Walfrid Ekman (3 May 1874 – 9 March 1954) was a Swedish oceanographer.

Born in Stockholm to Fredrik Laurentz Ekman, himself an oceanographer, he became committed to oceanography while studying physics at the University of Uppsala and, in particular, on hearing Vilhelm Bjerknes lecture on fluid dynamics.

During the expedition of the Fram, Fridtjof Nansen had observed that icebergs tend to drift not in the direction of the prevailing wind but at an angle of 20°-40° to the right.

Bjerknes invited Ekman, still a student, to investigate the problem and, in 1905, Ekman published his theory of the Ekman spiral which explains the phenomenon in terms of the balance between frictional effects in the ocean and the Coriolis force, which arises from moving objects in a rotating environment, like planetary rotation.

On completing his doctorate in Uppsala in 1902, Ekman joined the International Laboratory for Oceanographic Research, Oslo where he worked for seven years, not only extending his theoretical work but also developing experimental techniques and instruments such as the Ekman current meter and Ekman water bottle.

From 1910 to 1939 he continued his theoretical and experimental work at the University of Lund, where he was professor of mechanics and mathematical physics. He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1935.

A gifted amateur bass singer, pianist, and composer, he continued working right up to his death in Gostad, near Stockaryd, Sweden.

BMW K 1600 GT and GTL

Nokia's massive launch of local mapping services for India

Nokia’s mapping service NAVTEQ has steadily but quietly added powerful features like indoor mapping, natural voice guidance in regional languages, and search using points of interests that make it a valuable navigation product.

Indoor maps have been around for a while with Bing and Google offering maps for malls and airports. Last year, Nokia owned mapping service NAVTEQ introduced indoor mapping called Destination Maps for navigation beyond the front door.

NAVTEQ is the first major mapping service to bring indoor mapping to India. The product is being launched with indoor maps for 150 malls in 17 cities. (An impressive launch number.) In another announcement the same day, NAVTEQ talked about their entire suite of products for the Indian consumer.

Unlike the US, mapping in India is more challenging, every building does not have a specific number and neither is every address in the same format. Nokia faced this challenge and explains that, for India, the company has introduced a feature called Points of Interest and Points Addressing. The features enables users to search for their destination by searching for points of interest around the area. NAVTEQ says they already have nearly 6.25 points of interests in their database.

The other service Nokia is bringing to India is known as Natural Guidance. (Probably the coolest in my opinion if it can do what it says.) The description of the product is pretty straightforward, instead of robotic directions like “Right after .25 Miles,” the GPS device will give you more natural directions like, “Go right from the Green building.” This would be very cool to have.

Introduced for 14 cities, Natural Guidance will use landmarks and signs like traffic signals to announce directions. The fun and localization does not stop there. The company says they are bringing these features in regional languages like Hindi, Tamil and Gujrati.

Nokia is going through a transition and even though India considered to be Nokia’s backyard, the company has some catching up to do. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop believes location services are a natural step for the company and they have been focusing on location services like restaurant recommendations.

Windows Phone Development Is A Little Less Harder Now :-

With the introduction of the Lumia series Windows phones, Microsoft has had a fair impact on the smartphone market.

Without losing any time, and rightly so, Microsoft is aiming to further its hold by providing developers with every possible tool to enhance the platform.

 A number of pre-built mobile app components, open-source projects, and SDKs for Windows Phone development have been recently launched by the company, via its marketplace for mobile applications, Verious.

Nokia Lumia had been receiving accolades for its user-friendly interface, popular as the Metro UI, yet most developers didn’t seem to be enthusiastic to contribute owing to the relatively unstable state of the platform. News of the underachieving performance of the Lumia series had planted seeds of doubt in everyone’s mind. Add to that, shareholders suing the company for the underperformance wasn’t helping their case either.

But Verious’ components, which are a product of some serious planning with Microsoft have cut down the development time by a good margin. The Verious Windows Phone collection comprises of a number of collision detection systems, physics engine for games, a large collection of Metro style icons, Silverlight UI controls for reducing development time and mapping and charting tools, to name a few. Also, Verious is releasing a decent number of HTML5 goodies as an effort to bring in cross-platform developers.

How Verious would transform Windows OS share in the market is yet to be known but allowing developers freedom to tinker and tweak is probably a good decision for now.