Indian students make electric appliances operable via sms 

Bangalore: Your electrical appliances at home can soon be controlled by a simple SMS, thanks to a new 'low cost device' developed by the students at Zakir Hussain College of Engineering and Technology in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh.

The device, which was developed by Abdullah Azhar and Kamal Gupta, both final year B.Tech students of Department of Electronics, will enable users to operate electrical appliances at their home from anywhere in the world at any time at a very low cost, a college spokesman said.

According to him, existing technologies for home automation require internet, Bluetooth and wi-fi systems, which are comparatively expensive. The device has also won the second prize at the international exhibition of 'Electrical and Industrial Electronics' held in Mumbai recently.

Now, a software to translate as you speak on phone 

Bangalore: Internet giant Google, which has also made an entry in the mobile world with its own phone Nexus One, is working on a software which will interpret foreign languages as a person speak. The translation is done almost instantly and Google hopes to have a basic system ready within a couple of years, reports Chris Gourlay of Sunday Times.
Google has already developed an automatic system for translating text on computers, which is being polished by scanning millions of multi-lingual websites and documents. So far it covers 52 languages, adding Haitian Creole last week.
Recently Google also launched a feature where a user can search on the search engine by saying the key words instead of typing. Now it is working on combining the two technologies to produce software capable of understanding a caller's voice and translating it into a synthetic equivalent in a foreign language. The phone would analyse "packages" of speech, listening to the speaker until it understands the full meaning of words and phrases, before attempting translation. "We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years' time," said Franz Och, Google's Head of Translation Services.
Although automatic text translators are now reasonably effective, voice recognition has proved more challenging. "Everyone has a different voice, accent and pitch," said Och. "But recognition should be effective with mobile phones because by nature they are personal to you. The phone should get a feel for your voice from past voice search queries, for example."

Soon, Gmail to allow status updates like Twitter 

Bangalore: The rising popularity of status updates on Twitter and Facebook seems to have inspired Google. Google will soon allow users to share their status with other connections, just like on all popular Social Networking sites. Even though the news is not official, but the add-on is expected to be added as soon as this week, according to electronista.
Yahoo had done a similar revamp of its website to allow status updated. These updates also alerted users when their friends have uploaded photos to Flickr.
An unnamed informant says the new Google revisions will also allow users to share their YouTube and Picasa content. Gmail already lets contacts chat in the browser, set away messages and write short messages as their status.

Google shows off Chrome OS tablet ideas

Who could resist the months of hype that paved the way for Apple's iPad debut last week? Apparently not Google, which has shown its interest in tablet computing with its browser-based Chrome OS.

On Monday, Glen Murphy, a user interface designer for Google's Chrome browser and the Chrome operating system based on it, pointed to image and video concepts of a Chrome OS-based tablet that went live two days before the iPad launch. Apparently nobody noticed initially, because only now did Murphy tweet, "Apparently our tablet mocks have been unearthed."

The site also shows the array of devices Google envisions for Chrome OS.

"While its primary focus is Netbooks, Chrome OS could eventually scale to a wide variety of devices. Each would have vastly different input methods, available screen space, and processing power," according to the Chromium form factors site. Chromium is the name of the open-source developer project that underlies the branded Chrome product.

It's possible that Chrome OS could be an easier sell on tablets than on Netbooks, the class of device on which Google said it plans to launch Chrome OS. Netbooks often are used as general-purpose PCs, so the browser-based philosophy of Chrome OS is a more jarring transition.

Today's tablets, in contrast, tend to focus more on a collection of specialized uses such as reading books, surfing the Net, and chores that only require light typing. With that approach, Chrome OS' break from the PC world could be less jarring. The tablet market isn't as big as the Netbook market, though.

The ideas are only mock-ups, but Google has established itself as a real if not dominant force in the computing industry. Its Android mobile-phone operating system is increasingly influential, and its Chrome browser continues to steadily grow in usage.

NTT DoCoMo to show off 4G handset 

Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo is set to demonstrate a prototype handset based on high-speed wireless data technology LTE later this month, according to its handset partner, NEC.

NEC said on Monday that NTT will demonstrate the handset receiving streaming high-resolution video across an LTE network at Mobile World Congress, which kicks off February 15 in Barcelona. According to NEC, the handset uses an LTE chipset that was developed by Fujitsu, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, and Panasonic, and first sampled in October.

LTE, the "long-term evolution" of 3G, is the successor to HSDPA and is roughly 10 times faster, providing theoretical downlink speeds of at least 100Mbps and a theoretical uplink of at least 50Mbps.

Windows Azure finally ready for customers

Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud computing service became generally available on Monday with very little flourish. And that might be because this first wave of Azure offerings is frankly a bit odd.
I am sure Microsoft will eventually figure out how to give its users options that are more obviously appealing (perhaps using Amazon Web Services as the model?), but in the near-term the options are not as clear as they could be.
It's still a positive for cloud enthusiasts that Azure has finally reached a place where Microsoft is comfortable offering it commercially. And if you're part of the Azure team, you have to be glad to have any solidification of just what the offerings are.
In many ways, Microsoft is applying the same enterprise architecture principles to the cloud--with pricing variables for consumption, storage, and even integration with other applications. This may not actually be wrong over time, but it forces developers and users to think through the usage of the cloud components that they have no experience with.
I suspect this approach is due to the operating system-centric view that Microsoft takes of pretty much all technology. After all, they do call it a cloud operating system and it looks as though everything on top forms the stack, leaving users to not have to think about the OS. Again, not necessarily wrong, but the platform hasn't yet been explained or marketed well-enough to see the results.
That approach is in contrast to AWS EC2 or Rackspace, as Om Malik notes, suggesting that compared to "infrastructure-as-a-service providers such as Amazon with Ec2 or Rackspace with its CloudServers products, Azure attempts to handle more of the actual management and provisioning of virtual machines for a user."
I highly doubt that Azure will have much effect on Microsoft's near-term or even medium-term revenue (either positive or negative). What's important is that Azure has put a stake in the ground for Microsoft to be a part of enterprise cloud discussions as well as opening up Azure to the developer masses who provide invaluable testing and feedback.
Cloud computing in general needs Microsoft to be a part of the ecosystem. And while I am not convinced Azure is anywhere near right yet, Microsoft has plenty of resources to put toward the effort. Let's hope it does.

Ad Hoc Networks

Ad Hoc Networks Creating To create a new ad hoc network open Control Panel then Network Connections, or double click on the wireless icon in the system tray (by the clock). Click on the Wireless Network tab then the add button. A new window will appear.  Give your network a name, and check the two boxes near the bottom. Click OK to close that window and OK again.  If you try to View Wireless Networks, your changes may not be saved, so make sure to click OK first. Your ad hoc network is all set up now! Connecting Open Network Connections (via Control Panel or the wireless icon) and select View Wireless Networks.  The following window will appear. You should see the ad hoc network as a computer-to-computer network.  You may have to refresh the list. Click on the network then the Connect button near the bottom.  It may take a minute or two to aquire a network address. If you don't see your network, you may have to change settings to only connect to ad hoc networks. Click on Change advanced settings.  On the new window, click on the Wireless Networks tab, then advanced. Select the third radio button and click Close, then OK. Open Network Connections again, and follow the steps above to connect to the network.