Technoholik

Social networking has long been Google's white whale. The company has done plenty of dabbling in the space, releasing Orkut, which has failed to catch on in the US, and rolling out Buzz to the relative indifference of its massive user base. Announced today after seemingly endless leaks, Google+ represents a major push for the software giant. The service began showing itself to a smattering of users last night, as a black bar across the top of various of the company's properties. A "+You" button on the far left of the bar currently brings you to the service's landing page, offering a tour of the many features that fall under the Google+ umbrella. Get to know the services better after the break. 

We know what you're thinking -- you like the idea of Google Apps, but the Mountain View crew kind of creeps you out. Well, don't worry, Microsoft has your back. After making its beta debut last year, Office 365 is officially ready to spread its wings and offer its productivity web app wares to the business-minded masses. For $6 per-user, per-month small businesses get access to Microsoft Office Web Apps, Exchange, SharePoint and Lync video conferencing and can take advantage of the suite'sintegration with WP7 once Mango lands. Larger, enterprise plans start at $10 per user while adding support for desktop Office products and Lync VoIP solutions as you climb the pricing ladder. Really there's not much more to say except, check out the full PR after the break.

Tumblr, the combination blogging platform and social network, has been growing rapidly of late — so rapidly that it is now racking up about 8.4 billion pageviews a month, according to a blog post from president John Maloney. One of the big drivers for this growth appears to be teenagers, who are using the site as a kind of combination of Facebook and Twitter, to share photos and other Internet “memes.” But will Tumblr ever figure out how to make money from this massive user base? Other social networks have grown just as large and still failed.

Google has recently launched its latest project of social network which is pronounced as Google Plus, Google+’s biggest competitors are Facebook and Twitter, that has already got millions of users availing their services.

Folks over at the University of Exeter have demonstrated what they call the memflector – an optical equivalent of the memristor. Built using advanced semiconductor materials capable of phase-change, the team has constructed a processor that can compute and store data simultaneously. This is quite unlike today’s computers, which have separate components for memory and processing, but is supposedly very similar to what our brains, or biological computers do.

The team is calling their advancements a large step forward in computing, potentially leading to much faster, cheaper, and more power efficient computers. The work is also a big step toward achieving another milestone in the field – ‘brain-like’ computing. The memflector-based processor demonstrated synaptic-like functionality, with each phase-change cell mimicking the “integrate and fire” mechanism of a neuron. The processor is also capable of reliably executing the four basic arithmetic functions.

From being just a fad, Facebook has grown to the point where users are being afflicted with FAD (Facebook Addiction Disorder). And children are as vulnerable as adults.

A standard nine student of a reputed city school had to miss a term because he was in depression. He would make up excuses to miss school, grew listless and would spend a lot of time locked up in his room. Concerned by his behavior, his parents took him to a psychologist and that’s when he divulged the cause of his angst. They found out that his depression was not due to academics, but because his friends from school had taken to teasing him about his weight on a social networking site. After sessions of counseling, coupled with intervention on the part of the school teachers, he finally came out of his depression.

A matter of great concern was that he was targeted on a social networking site, which is a public forum. This is not a one-off occurrence; many such incidents have come to light in recent years on social networking sites, and looking at the ever increasing number of kids signing up at social networking sites, it will be a serious issue in the coming years.

Memristor! Well, erm... what's for dinner?

We get it, that will be the primary expression for most of you. So before we start with what's what, let's take a brief overview about Memristors.

If you are familiar with any of the terms- resistance, capacitance or inductance then you know they are the three properties which an electric circuit is bound to have. In the late 60's last century, a prediction was made for yet-another circuital property, then dubbed as Memistance.IEEE confirmed the property renaming to memristance (and the circuital element showing the property are called memristor) in 1971. The invention was revolutionary for some reasons (which we will explain afterwards), and memory chip makers are drooling over it since.

Android is leading the pack in global mobile phone sales for two quarters in a row -- roughly one in three smartphones sold in Q1 2011 were Android phones. Why shouldn't they be, allowing customers to buy handsets at virtually every price segment? But all isn't well, according to a study conducted by WDS: Android phones also have a higher tendency of hardware faults compared toBlackberry, iOS, and Windows Phone devices.

Most of you will have a desktop PC or laptop just lying around simply because it’s either too old for daily use and the resale value is too low for you to bother with it. Why not convert it into an HTPC (home theater PC) for use in your living room or bedroom? You don’t need any large capacity hard drives, high-end graphics cards or even an expensive operating system for the HTPC conversion. All you would need is your bank of media files either stored on the hard drive, external storage or on a DLNA/UPnP compatible NAS.

US videogame giant Electronic Arts (EA) on Friday revealed that hackers had looted user data in "a highly sophisticated" attack.

HTC's new tablet, the Flyer, is the latest iPad competition in India. It will launch today at a relatively high price point of Rs 39,890.
 
Disappointingly, the 7-inch 1024 x 600 resolution tablet does not run on Google's tablet specific Honeycomb OS but on Google's mobile OS Gingerbread skinned with the latest version of HTC sense instead.
 
A 1.5GHz single core processor powers the Flyer. It also features HTML 5 and Flash 10 support. This is a deviation from tradition in a tablet market dominated by the NVIDIA Tegra 2 1GHz dual core processor. It offers 32GB storage and 1GB of RAM.  The back of the device houses a 5MP camera and the front has a 1.3MP camera for video chat.   
 
Uniquely, the tablet allows the use of a stylus-like pen to draw and write. With the pen, you can take notes, sign contracts, draw pictures, or even write on a web page or photo. There is no way to stow the stylus in the device itself, but you could use the provided carry-case. It is easy enough to lose styli even when housed inside a phone or tablet, and without a good stowing mechanism you might have to buy a new stylus more often than you like.
 
The HTC Flyer tablet also introduces HTC Watch, HTC's new video download service.  The HTC Watch service enables on-demand progressive downloading of High-Definition movies from major studios.
 
The Flyer seems like a well-built device, but does it justify the price tag of Rs. 39,890? Stay tuned for the compete review, coming soon. 

The iPhone 3GS, 8GB version, will now be available for just less than Rs 20,000. It will be unlocked and come with an Indian warranty.

ust few days back, the renowned Taiwanese laptop makers Asus has launched its U36 model in UK, which is the world’s first thinnest ultraportable laptop to use a standard-voltage processor.

The Asus U36 ultraportable laptop which is designed to be ultra-slim and powerful, features:

Intel Core i5-460M (2.53GHz) Processor, 13.3″ HD 16:9 (1366 x 768) LED Display, 4GB DDR3 1066MHz Memory, 500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive, NVIDIA G310M 1GB DDR3 + Intel GMA HD Graphics Card, and USB 3.0.

The above mentioned hardware of the machine is housed in a magnesium alloy body that is just 19mm thick. Surprised? Not only this, but the machine is also impressive enough to run for almost 10 hours because of using the Super Hybrid Engine Battery Conservation Technology, which means despite being thin, the Asus U36 manages to provide a longer battery life.

Asus U36 with Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit is available both in stores and online for only £699. You can watch the video of the laptop below: