Thursday, June 16
Saw Lunar Eclipse On gOOGLE :: See the list of all Doodles this Month ::
Les Paul's 96th BirthDay
Dragon Boat Festival - (China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan)
Jun 05, 2011
Richard Scarry's 92nd Birthday - (US)
Republic Day - (Italy)
Birthday of Ibn Khaldun - (Middle Eastern Countries)
Africa Day - (African Countries)
Jordan Independence Day - (Jordan)
Day of Slavonic Alphabet, Bulgarian Enlightenment and Culture - (Bulgaria)
Emile Berliner's 160th Birthday - (Germany, Austria, Switzerland)
Doodle4Google US Winner - (US)
100th Birthday of Annie M.G. Schmidt - (Netherlands)
Dame Nellie Melba's 150th Birthday - (Australia)
120th Birthday of Mikhail Bulgakov - (Russia)
May 14, 2011
Paraguay's Independence Day - (Paraguay)
Martha Graham's 117th Birthday. Animated by Ryan Woodward, choreographed by Janet Eilber, and danced by Blakeley White-McGuire. - (Global)
Israel Independence Day - (Israel)
May 10, 2011
May 09, 2011
May 08, 2011
May 02, 2011
May 02, 2011
Canada Federal Elections - (Canada)
Queen's Day - (Netherlands)
The Wedding of Prince William of Wales and Catherine Middleton - (Selected Countries)
Freedom Day - (South Africa)
Vallenato Festival - (Colombia)
226th Birthday of John James Audubon - (Global)
90th Birthday of Karel Appel - (Netherlands)
120th of Birthday of Sergey Prokofiev - (Russia)
129th Birthday of Monteiro Lobato - (Brazil)
Apr 16, 2011
122nd Birthday of Charlie Chaplin - (Global)
Apr 13, 2011 Songkran Festival - (Thailand, Cambodia, Laos)
240th Birthday of Richard Trevithick - (UK)
Peruvian Elections - (Peru)
Italy's Culture Week - (Italy)
Apr 04, 2011
100th Birthday of Vaclav Ctvrtek - (Czech Republic)
Children's Day - (Hong Kong, Taiwan)
119th Anniversary of the First Documented Ice Cream Sundae - (Global)
These Pics Show Guys @ Google R really creative . Post ur suggestions as Comments
Tuesday, June 14
Motorola prepping a quad core powered iPad 3 competitor
According to a report from Fudzilla, shared by Android and Me, Motorola is working on a Honeycomb based iPad 3 competitor that may go live in the month of August.
:: Fake Antivirus Targets Firefox ::
Firefox users have targeted by a new scam that tries to load a user's PC with fake antivirus software using a passably convincing version of the Windows Update page.
Fake antivirus scam are legion,, and ones using bogus update pages of one sort of another are also an established trick. The oddity of the latest incarnation of the attack, discovered by Sophos, is that it triggers only when encountering Windows users of Firefox pushed to it through a page redirect.
The first big giveaway? Windows Update can only be started as a background activity in Windows or through Internet Explorer.
The pege itself is a copy of Windows Update Page offering an "urgent" 2.8MB download which will turn out to start a useless security scan plugging fake antivirus software. The technique is clever. Users who agree to the update without being entirely sure that it is genuine will be more easily convinced that a PC has been infected with the non-existent malware later detected by the bogus program.
"Users need to be more vigilant than ever before as bogus security alerts pop-up in their browsers," said Graham Cluley of Sophos. "Fake anti-virus attacks are big business for cybercriminals and they are investing time and effort into making them as convincing as possible."
"Malicious hackers are using smart social engineering tricks more and more often, and the risk is that users will be scared by a phoney warning into handing over money to fix problems that never existed in the first place," he said.
Attacks targetting Mozilla Firefox users seem to be a mini-fashion right now. Last week, the company reported a separate scam that throws up bogus security warnings that ape the browser's security alerts as yet another method of pushing the same useless scareware products.
Neither are entirely convincing to an experienced user but they probably don't need to be to satisfy a business model that delivers decent rewards simply for tricking a handful people into installing a fake antivirus system
Monday, June 13
Know About :: Dr. Watson (debugger) ::
drwatson.exe, drwtsn32.exe or dwwin.exe depending on the version of Windows. It is named after Doctor Watson of Sherlock Holmes fame, the idea being that it would collect error information (symptoms) following the problem. The use of the word "Watson" has since been expanded to include general end-user feedback services.The original name of this diagnostic tool was "Sherlock".
The information obtained and logged by Dr. Watson is the information needed by technical support personnel to diagnose a program error for a computer running Windows. A text file (Drwtsn32.log) is created whenever an error is detected, and can be delivered to support personnel by the method they prefer. A crash dump file can also be created, which is a binary file that a programmer can load into a debugger. Dr. Watson can be made to generate more exacting information for debugging purposes if the appropriate symbol files are installed and the symbol search path (environment variable) is set.
When a program error occurs in Windows, the system searches for a program error handler. A program error handler deals with errors as they arise during the running of a program. If the system does not find a program error handler, the system verifies that the program is not currently being debugged and considers the error to be unhandled. The system then processes unhandled errors by looking in the registry for a program error debugger for which Dr. Watson is the default. A third-party debugger can also be used in place of Dr. Watson. The Watcom C compiler includes a similar crash-analysis tool named "Dr. Watcom".
Starting with Windows Vista, Dr. Watson has been replaced with "Problem Reports and Solutions". On some versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 it may be available by typing 'drwatson.exe,' into the command prompt box or in the 'Search programs and files' box in the Start menu in Windows
Android 2.2 Froyo found running on Nokia N900
As N900 is a pack in a strong hardware in a small frame. The cell phone is generation old but powerhouse with 600Mhz ARM Cortex A8 inside and Operating system is Linux based Maemo, porting another Linux based OS on the N900 is easy rather on a symbian based handset.
Check out the video in which guy has ported Android Froyo which is the latest version running on N900.
Microsoft Windows 8 details appeared on the scene!
After gone though screen shot you can notice that there is no Start Button or Program icon, instead will be a title that navigates you to other services.
According to Steven Sinofsky president of Windows division at Microsoft while speaking at D9 conference at Computex 2011 in Taipei:
“What we tried to do with Windows 8 is really re-imagine how to work with the PC, we looked from the ground up at how you interact with Windows, the kind of programs you can run and how you get those programs.”
“We were doubling the system requirements for a base-level Windows with every release, which turned out to be every three or four years. We looked at the ARM processor and what was available and we looked at the Windows codebase and realized they were in sync. When you look at the RAM usage, number of processes or disk blueprint, those are all the same as what you see on the current crop of slates.”
GAGAN – making GPS more accurate:: An Achievement of ISRO
Use of GPS in civil aviation demands higher accuracy and reliability in determining position than a mobile phone user would need.
Space sojourn: India's GSAT-8 satellite being checked prior to launch from the European spaceport at French Guiana in South America.-PHOTO: ARIANESPACE
These days, anyone who wants to find out exactly where they are can turn to their mobile phones. Phones that pick up signals from orbiting U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites are now commonplace. The phone uses that information to work out the location and display it on a map.
In a similar fashion, the GPS signals can be used to assist aircraft during take off and land as well as in flying shorter routes to their destination.
But, as there can be hundreds of passengers in a single aircraft, the use of GPS for such purposes in civil aviation demands higher accuracy in determining position than a mobile phone user would need as well as greater reliability in doing so.
One important way to meet the demands of civil aviation has been through what is known as a Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS). Satellites in geostationary orbit, where they match the earth's rotation and therefore remain over the same place on the globe, are used to supplement the GPS signals.
The first such SBAS was the U.S. Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) that became operational in 2003. The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) began working in October 2009 but was officially declared available for aviation use only in March this year. The Japanese have a system known by the acronym MSAS.
India is establishing its own system, the 'GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation' (GAGAN), a joint effort by the Indian Space Research Organisation and the Airports Authority of India.
The ground segment for GAGAN, which has been put up by the U.S. company Raytheon, has 15 reference stations scattered across the country. Two mission control centres, along with associated uplink stations, have been set up at Kundalahalli in Bangalore. One more control centre and uplink station are to come up at Delhi.
The space component for it will become available after the GAGAN payload on the GSAT-8 communication satellite, which was launched recently, is switched on. This payload was also on the GSAT-4 satellite that was lost when the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) failed during launch in April 2010. Two more satellites carrying the same payload are to be launched in the coming years.
The reference stations pick up signals from the orbiting GPS satellites. These measurements are immediately passed on to the mission control centres that then work out the necessary corrections that must be made. Messages carrying those corrections are sent via the uplink stations to the satellites in geostationary orbit that have the GAGAN payload. Those satellites then broadcast the messages. SBAS receivers are able to use those messages and apply the requisite corrections to the GPS signals that they receive, thereby establishing their position with considerable accuracy.
But as with any SBAS, GAGAN needs to do more than simply provide the corrections. Not less important is ensuring the system's integrity. “Integrity is a measure of trust that can be placed in the correctness of the information supplied by the total system,” observed S.V. Kibe, who was at the ISRO Headquarters till his retirement.
It included the ability to provide timely and valid warnings to the users when the navigation system was not performing as required, he noted in article on the GAGAN system published in a recent issue of the specialist magazine Coordinates.
Currently, aircraft from must fly from one place to another along predefined air routes marked with ground-based navigation aids. Planes with SBAS receivers will, on the other hand, be able to take shorter routes, saving both time and fuel.
To help pilots land their aircraft in bad weather and poor visibility, several airports in the country are equipped with ground-based Instrument Landing Systems (ILS). Such ILS equipment is expensive. Consequently, even in airports that have it, only one runway and that too one end of a runway may have the ILS capability.
An SBAS, on the other hand, can provide guidance on both ends of all runways that fall within its coverage area. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has, for instance, published the approach procedures that aircraft equipped to receive the WAAS signals can use to access 2,300 runways in over 1,200 airports in poor weather conditions.
“WAAS will provide an equivalent level of precision approach service to that of the Category 1 ILS when fully deployed,” according to the FAA. (There are three ILS categories, with those in Category 3 being able to help aircraft land in conditions with the worst visibility.)
When GAGAN becomes operational, it would provide close to Category 1 services across much of India, observed one official associated with the project. In due course, the Indian system would be upgraded and improved to meet Category 1 requirements.
During the technology demonstration phase when GAGAN was tested in 2007 with just eight reference stations and a leased transponder on the Inmarsat 4F1 satellite, the position given by a stationary SBAS receiver during a 24-hour period varied by only two metres to three metres. An ordinary GPS receiver, on the other hand, varied by as much as eight metres to 20 metres during the same period. Moreover, when aircraft fitted with SBAS receivers were flown, the GAGAN was found to provide very good position accuracies.
Once the GSAT-8's GAGAN payload becomes available for use, the full system can be thoroughly tested. However, certification of the system for safety-critical use in aviation will be taken up only only after the second GAGAN-equipped spacecraft becomes operational. The certification will be carried out by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
Since all augmentation systems follow common standards laid down by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, aircraft with SBAS receivers can use any of those systems.
India's GAGAN has a reach well beyond the country, from Africa and Middle East on one side to the Bay of Bengal and South-East Asia on the other other. It will therefore fill a gap between Europe's EGNOS and Japan's MSAS systems.
Moreover, as has already happened with GPS receivers, the uses for GAGAN will no doubt go well beyond aviation. Those involved in surveying and map-making will obviously benefit from the better accuracy it provides, as can the transportation sector and marine operations, not to mention recreational applications.
Starwatch: Lunar eclipse
Wednesday's total eclipse of the Moon may be the most striking for years but observers in Britain must be content with a view of only the closing act of the drama. The Moon stands over the southern Indian Ocean as it passes through the central dark umbra of the Earth's shadow, plunging deeper into the shadow than during any eclipse since 2000. This may well result in an unusually dark eclipse, with the Moon's disc turning a deep reddish-brown as all direct sunlight is blocked
In fact, the umbra is never black. A little light must reach the Moon from the parts of the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, that are not hidden by the Earth. But more sunlight is refracted and scattered around the edge of the Earth by our planet's atmosphere. Just as sunsets and sunrises appear orange or red, so this light is predominantly red.
The umbra is not illuminated evenly, though, since less of this indirect light penetrates to its core and the amount reaching different zones of the umbra is affected by varying atmospheric conditions. In particular, dust thrown up by major volcanic eruptions can render the atmosphere less transparent and the eclipsed Moon so dark that it practically disappears.
Our image shows the previous total lunar eclipse as viewed from Florida last December. On that occasion, the Moon traversed the northern part of the umbra and its southern regions, which just missed the shadow's core, are relatively dark. This week, the Moon passes about a half Moon's-breadth farther southwards with respect to the shadow, so it will be interesting to discover just how dark and colourful it appears.
Wednesday's eclipse begins when the Moon's eastern limb begins to enter the penumbra of the Earth's shadow at 18:25 BST. While within the penumbra, some direct sunlight falls on the Moon but little darkening of the disc will be noticed until a few minutes before the Moon begins to enter the umbra at 19:23. Totality, with the Moon entirely within the umbra, lasts from 20:22 until 22:03 with mid eclipse at 21:13. The Moon's W limb has withdrawn from the umbra by 23:02 and finally exits the penumbra at 00:01.
For Britain, other than the far NW, the Moon rises in the SE during the latter half of totality. Observers in SE England may just glimpse the end of totality, but most of us may see nothing until it begins to emerge from the umbra. From London and Manchester, for example, the Moon stands less than 5° and 3° high respectively at 22:03 BST, with the Sun only a little way below the NW horizon and the sky brightly twilit. The Moon should be more obvious another 5° higher in a darker sky by 23:02.
Sunday, June 12
Microsoft loses U.S. Supreme Court patent case against i4i
Microsoft has lost its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in a long running legal battle against i4i, the small Canadian company that sued them claiming willful infringement of its patents in Word 2003 and 2007. Specifically, the dispute centered on some custom XML tagging features used by the software for encoding and displaying information, which had already cost the Redmond giant a sales injunction on Office last year and now almost $300 million in fines.
The original verdict in 2009 required Microsoft to remove the infringing XML feature from Word and pay a $200 million fine. Soon after losing the initial case Microsoft filed an appeal asking the court to re-think its decision. Nevertheless, a panel of judges upheld the initial ruling in December 2010, and having failed to modify its software in time, one month later Microsoft was forced to remove all versions of Office from its online store.
Following its failed appeal the company was slapped with some extra fines, including a $40 million fine for "willful" infringement, taking the damages up to $290 million. Microsoft promptly removed the incumbent feature from Word in order to keep selling its software and decided to challenge the verdict one more time at the Supreme Court level.
In its defense Microsoft was hoping to challenge patent law itself and introduce a lower standard for challenging patent lawsuits -- legal jargon courtesy of ComputerWorld: "Under current practice, an accused infringer must show 'clear and convincing evidence' that the patent in dispute is invalid. But Microsoft had argued that the burden of proof bar should instead be lowered to 'a preponderance of the evidence.'" Companies including Apple, Google, EMC, Cisco Systems and the Electronic Frontier Foundation had all filed documents with the court in support of Microsoft's argument.
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled against Microsoft, though, suggesting that companies such as Microsoft will have to take the issue to Congress if they want to change patent law. The decision is a setback for big tech companies who feel they are often targeted by so-called patent trolls. On the other hand, by requiring extensive proof it also protects small patent holders against big corporations with large legal teams whenever their patents are challenged.
Watch How Facebook Affects Your Relationships
Do you know that last year, around 37% of Facebook users changed their relationship status to “single” and only 24 percent remained “In a relationship”?
Facebook is a place where many users set and display their relationship statuses. According to an infographic from Online Dating University every six out of ten (60 percent) users on Facebook show their relationship statuses at all, and surprisingly among them Jordan have the highest percentage of users displaying their status as single.It really hurts when two lovers break their long relationship with each other, but it is indeed more painful when that relationship appear to end in front of a large audience.
Previously we showed you, women uploading more profile pictures than men – infographic, also that world without Facebook – infographic, and today we are going to demonstrate the infographic of - The Facebook Effect On Relationships:
How does Facebook affects your relationship? Has Facebook played any positive role in building your relationship or not? Please share your views about the topic in the comment box.
Droid X Review: A gigantic Android sensation
Motorola Droid X smartphone was launched by Motorola for providing users a gadget that can help them a lot in their communication. Here is a comprehensive Droid X Review just for your guidance and information.
Motorola Droid X is released to compete well with the HTC Evo 4G and iPhone 4 Smartphone. The features and specs of it are quite interesting however somewhat less attractive when compared with the features of latest smartphone. It is designed with a 4.3″ inch touch-screen that boosts up the resolution of 854 X 480 pixels. This smartphone comes with a stylish and comfy keyboard which makes it feasible for the users to type your messages in a relaxing manner. It provides enough memory option in the form of 512MB RAM and 8GB Flash ROM.
Droid X provides good performance just because of its 1 GHz TI-OMAP 3630 processor. It is running on Android 2.1 Éclair operating system at the time when we have Gingerbread power handsets such as Google Nexus S, HTC Desire S, and HTC Wildfire S etc. An 8 MP snapper is there to allow the user to capture video and still images nevertheless the flash light of its camera is a little bit weaker than that of iPhone 4G Smartphone. The brightness of still pictures is really great in comparison with other smartphones.
Excellent connectivity is assured through various options such as Bluetooth, USB tethering mode and wireless functions with WPA2-protected, 802.11g Wi-Fi hotspot. Perfect voice and sound quality is provided by this handset to the users.
Facebook is bringing a new feature called ‘Happening Now’
Facebook has always come up with the new ideas to uphold the social network. Currently the company is testing a real-time feature called “Happening now” which is designed to display things like adding new friends, liking and commenting activities, its an attention-grabbing feature exposing sharing activities of your friends on Facebook.
We don’t know if Facebook will implement this feature in coming days or not but this is what the company told TNW about its new testing feature:We are currently testing a feature within the news feed that gives people the ability to see what their friends are commenting on and liking, as these actions are being taken on Facebook.This test includes a small percentage of Facebook users, just a fraction of a percent. In the coming weeks, as we learn more from this test, we’ll keep making improvements and may expand it to more people.
‘Happening Now’ was first discovered by Amit Misra, a writer for Dazeinfo. The feature seems similar to Twitter Friend Feed though it doesn’t include status updates but it does display comments and likes from friends.
See below, the image of Amit Misra’s profile showing this new feature situated at right hand side of the News Feed on Facebook:
So, did you like the idea of Facebook testing this new feature pronounced as Happening Now? Does this idea grab your attention? Please share your views in the comment box below.
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