HP's Slate 500 tablet

Hewlett-Packard Co. released its Slate 500, for $800 price on Friday.

The Slate 500, which runs Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system and is aimed at workplace users rather than consumers.

The Slate has built-in front- and rear-facing cameras, including a three-megapixel higher resolution camera on the back.It has a USB port that allows it to work with a variety of plug-in digital accessories.

But HP's tablet, which is now available through its retail store and will ship in mid-November, is priced higher than Apple's entry-level $499 iPad, has half the advertised battery life (five hours instead of 10) and does not come with the option of a cellular wireless plan, like Apple's more expensive iPads. Instead, the Slate is limited to Wi-Fi Internet connectivity.

A press release advertising the device says it is "designed specifically for business, enterprise and vertical customers looking for the mobility of a tablet, the familiarity of Microsoft Windows 7 and the ability to run custom or corporate applications."

HP, which acquired Palm earlier this year, is also at work on a consumer device that will use the webOS operating system that runs on some of Palm's smartphones.

Source:hp.com and latimes.com

Hala - A Bilingual,bicultural Roboceptionist

The computerized "Hala" will be able to translate not just language but nuance when dealing with multicultural visitors.

Researchers at the University of Arizona and Carnegie Mellon University are working to create a robot receptionist. What makes the effort novel is that the "roboceptionist" is bilingual and bicultural – a computer with a face and a natural language interface.

Hala wll be more flexible in dealing with language input from users. And that is where the University of Arizona comes in. We will provide both the language-specific and inter-language-related cultural capabilities so that this robot can be not just bilingual, but bicultural."

It is a bicultural robot is not one that merely switches between English and Arabic, Hala's current format, but also has both modes simultaneously active in order to spot and deal with potential cultural ambiguities and misunderstandings.

"You may speak Arabic, but you may choose to converse with the robot in English. "You may be conversing with the sensibility and the cultural background and the idioms from the Arabic world. This robot needs to understand both."

The phrase "week after week," for example, "I'm looking for the group that meets week after week" means "every week" in English. But in some Arabic dialects it can mean "every other week." Only a robot that is simultaneously facile with both lexicons can compute that this phrase is subject to cultural variation and can ask the user for clarification.

Culture affects not only the syntax and semantics of an interaction, but also the structure of the interaction, from the way greetings and closings are performed, to the form of the language used to politeness strategies.

Hala, who has a built-in backstory and personality, will adjust responses based on cues from the visitor, essentially building a model of the user throughout the interaction: Is this person high-status? Is this person American? Is this person in a hurry?

Most natural language parsers – computer translators that check for correct syntax – are trained on what is known as a Treebank corpora, or parsed sentences, generally from newswire text. News stories, however, do not usually contain questions, greetings or dialog.

The possible applications of this work for other human-computer interaction systems is also driving the research. Fong thinks the technology could be applicable to computer help-agents, multicultural information kiosks, tour guides and automated international call centers.








Source: On This Page

The Samsung Transform review

The Samsung Transform has an attractive design with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard along with a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen and a front-facing camera. The phone is comfortable to hold and has excellent call quality.

On the downside, it has a low-resolution 3.5-inch HVGA screen at 480 x 320 pixels, an 800-MHz processor that gets bogged down easily by the software, and slightly slow load times on the web.

The Samsung Transform is one of the first Sprint ID Android phones, along with the Kyocera Zio and the LG Optimus S. This allows the user to switch between different profiles like EA Games, which lets the user demo games and use EA titles for your wallpaper, or The Big Apple, which has New-York-centric apps and wallpaper.

At $149, the Transform doesn’t price right and doesn’t fit well into Sprint’s competition. For those who want a low-end QWERTY Android phone, there is the Samsung Intercept for $99. If you can live without a keyboard
, the $199 HTC Evo 4G is a better deal. If you need a keyboard, the $249 Epic 4G is worth the investment, especially when considering the cost over two years.





Read more: On This Page

PayPal application for deposit checks using iPhones

A PayPal application that lets people deposit checks by scanning them with cameras built into iPhones was considered a budding success on lastweek

More than 100,000 dollars worth of checks were handled by a Mobile Check Capture feature in the 36 hours after it
.

The service, powered by BankServ, enables people to deposit money into PayPal accounts by using iPhone cameras to take pictures of checks made out to them.

Mobile Check Capture is one of the new features added to the recently released iPhone 2.7 application available online at PayPal.com/mobile or at the iTunes website run by Apple

Simply open the PayPal App, tap Tools on the bottom bar, choose Add Money From Checks and follow the prompts. The process consists of taking two pictures (front and back of the check) and entering the check amount -- much easier than trekking downtown.

Deposits take roughly six business days to appear in your PayPal account and the company recommends holding onto your checks for 15 days in case there's a problem. It's worth noting that you can't deposit more than $1,000 per day or $3,000 per month, so you might not be able to skip bank trips entirely -- unless you happen to use Chase or State Farm Bank, which have iPhone apps with a similar feature.

Source : On This physorg Page

HasWifi -To check your flight have Wifi

HasWifi tracks Inflight Wifi availability across thousands of daily flights and several major carriers through a combination of flight data mining and user contributions through a “You Tell Us” feature that allows visitors to vote Yes or No whether their latest flight had inflight internet available.

At the moment HasWiFi can only search six U.S. carriers, but founder Anthony Petito hopes to expand that pool of data soon. He also plans to offer an API so that other sites like Expedia can search HasWiFi data, eliminating the need to find a cheap flight on one site, figure out if it has Wi-Fi on another, and then go back to the original to purchase your tickets.

GrubHub- New iPhone App

GrubHub, a service that lets you order food for delivery or take out from local restaurants online or by mobile phone, released a new iPhone app and an Android app in beta last week. The company also revised its native Web app to take advantage of HTML 5 features like geolocation and client-side storage.

The new apps feature a GPS-enabled restaurant search. Users can find the restaurants that deliver near their current location, or choose to manually enter a delivery address from their smart phones. The app will display restaurants in the GrubHub directory that deliver to that location.

The GrubHub geolocation features should make it easy for travelers to order take out when they’re camping at a client’s office and don’t know what’s nearby, or if they’re too tired to leave the hotel but don’t want room service.

The new apps also let users read menus, reviews, and ratings before placing an order; search by specific items, restaurants, or cuisines from the home screen. The iPhone app lets them: save multiple addresses, past orders and credit card info so they can order regularly from a home, office or local watering hole without re-entering all their info again.

How to convert video/audio files to iPhone on Mac

iCoolsoft iPhone Converter for Mac is a powerful and simple to use Mac iPhone video converter, which can convert MOV, AVI, MPEG, RMVB, WMV, ASF, MKV, FLV, 3GP and HD videos to iPhone MPEG-4, H.264 and MOV videos on Mac. This iPhone Converter for Mac can also convert audio file and extract audio from video to iPhone MP3, M4A, AAC files on Mac.

All generations of iPhone are perfectly supported, including iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3G S, etc. You can use this iCoolsoft iPhone Converter for Mac to convert nearly all multimedia resources to iPhone movies and songs. You are even allowed to customize encoding settings to adjust the iPhone video quality.

This iPhone converter for Mac also enables you to edit videos before converting to iPhone. You can specify any part of the video to convert, crop video to cut unwanted region, join multiple videos, adjust output effect, make text or picture watermark and so on.
Functions and Features
Designed for Mac iPhone users
For all Mac users who have iPhone, this iCoolsoft iPhone Converter for Mac is a must-have software. It works on Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6, supporting iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S.
Delight in all videos and songs on your iPhone
This powerful iPhone converter supports nearly all video and audio formats, including TS, M2TS, HD WMV, HD AVI, HD MOV, AVI, MPEG, FLV, MP4, 3GP, RMVB, MP3, AAC, M4A, WMA, WAV, OGG, FLAC, etc.
Customize the converting
You are allowed to choose Audio Track and Subtitle, set different formats for output videos, and adjust Video Encoder, Resolution, Frame Rate, Video Bitrate, Audio Encoder, Sample Rate, Channels, Audio Bitrate, etc. to customize the output quality.
Edit videos as you like
Powerful video editing functions are provided, such as trimming video length, cropping screen area, merge video clips, adjust effect, add text/picture watermark, etc.
Quick conversion speed
Integrating all professional codecs and fully supporting Dual Core CPU ensure the fastest converting speed. With simple and clear interface, this iPhone Converter for Mac only needs several clicks of your mouse to end the editing and converting.

Google Chrome Extension Highlight to Search

Google published a post on their Chrome Blog highlighting some of their favorite new extensions for the Chrome web browser. It’s called Highlight to Search. And it’s very useful.

It’s such a simple thing: when it’s installed, any word you highlight with your mouse cursor on any webpage will bring up a search magnifying glass icon below it. Clicking on that will open a tiny Google Search overlay box with that word already entered. An auto-suggest drop-down also populates just in case you’re looking for something related. And clicking on any of the suggested results will open the full query in a new Chrome tab. Again, so simple, so obvious, but so useful.

The truth is that you could sort of do something similar already with Chrome. If you highlight any word and then right-click, you’ll see an option to “Search Google for XXXXXX”. But the extension saves a right-click, gives users a much nicer interface, and gives you auto-suggestions.

Twitter terminates agreement with JustSpotted

Twitter said it has terminated its relationship with JustSpotted.com, a controversial new celebrity spotting website that is slated to launch next week.

JustSpotted plans to use a combination of Twitter feeds, Facebook updates, Foursquare posts and blog updates to plot a celebrity's location anywhere around the world in near real-time. A celebrity's position is plotted on a map of the world, with information about the restaurant or other venue where they'd been spotted -- but not the actual address.

Co-founder and Chief Executive AJ Asver said the celebrity gawking website, which launches Oct. 19, is intended to indulge fans' desire to get the latest updates about the stars they love, using publicly available information volunteered by celebrities.

But JustSpotted raised alarms among privacy advocates, who say it represents a new kind of intrusion on people's lives.

"Once a celebrity might have worried about someone with a camera and a flash," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Washington-based advocacy group, Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Now they have to worry about someone with a cellphone and a Twitter account."

JustSpotted is a new service from Scoopler, a start-up that got funding from Y Combinator in 2008. It had licensed Twitter's "firehose" data feed of all public updates for its real-time search engine, Scoopler.com.

"JustSpotted.com is not the product we licensed, and we have terminated their agreement," Twitter spokesman Matt Graves said in an e-mailed statement.

The website's Asver said in an e-mail response that its relationship with Twitter relates to Scoopler and not to JustSpotted, which would continue to aggregate updates from multiple sources including Twitter.
Source: On This latimes page

Sorting your Gmail Messages by Size

Gmail doesn’t offer a way to search and sort email messages.here’s an even simpler method now that won’t even require you download or install anything – it’s called findbigmail.com.
t will quickly find all the big email messages in your Gmail account that are taking up the maximum space. These messages are categorized with special labels like “Big Mail” or “Really Big Mail” to help you decide which of them should be removed to recover more space.

To get started, you simply connect your Gmail account with Find Big Mail using Google’s OAuth. It then scans all your messages for their sizes and send you an email notification once the scan is over.

You can then log into your Gmail account and act on messages marked as “Big Mails” to instantly reclaim space.

Since the mails are categorized in labels, you can use the usual search filters to find all the less-important email. For instance a query like label:big-mail has:attachment PDF will find the emails that have big PDF attachments and so on.

Internally, Big Mail connects to your Gmail account via IMAP and retrieves only the sizes and not the full content of the email messages. And since it uses a temporary token, it won’t have access to your Gmail account forever. That said, I think a lot of us will feel more comfortable using it if we know the team who is running the show.

Sony introduces the world's first HDTV incorporating the Google TV

The new Sony televisions (HDTV flat-screens) come in four sizes, and are priced as follows: 24-inch ($600); 32-inch ($800); 40-inch ($1,000); 46-inch ($1,400).
The TVs will be available starting Saturday through sonystyle.com. Best Buy will put them on sale starting Sunday.
Sony has unveiled its newest line of InternetInternet-enabled TVs, complete with the highly-anticipated Google TV software.

Sony’s new TV’s come preinstalled with the necessary software and therefore don’t need an additional connection other than to the Internet through a cable or Wi-Fi.
The technology takes into account the inevitable desire by consumers to multitask. People who open a Web page while watching football, for instance, can still keep an eye on the game in a small box near the bottom of the screen.

Users can also bookmark content that they want to see later.
The controller, which is about six inches across, includes an optical mouse for moving the cursor and a home button to return users to the basic start screen.

Facebook Introduces One-Time Passwords

Facebook provides a number of ways to help you protect yourself and your account, and today it announced new features to help make your experience on Facebook more secure.

First, Facebook launching one-time passwords to make it safer to use public computers in places like hotels, cafes or airports. If you have any concerns about security of the computer you're using while accessing Facebook, Facebook can text you a one-time password to use instead of your regular password.

Simply text "otp" to 32665 on your mobile phone, and you'll immediately receive a password that can be used only once and expires in 20 minutes. In order to access this feature, you'll need a mobile phone number in your account. Facebook is rolling this out gradually, and it should be available to everyone in the coming weeks.

Second, the ability to sign out of Facebook remotely is now available to everyone. These session controls can be useful if you log into Facebook from a friend's phone or computer and then forget to sign out. From your Account Settings, you can check if you're still logged in on other devices and remotely log out.

Under the Account Security section of your Account Settings page you'll see all of your active sessions, along with information about each session. In the unlikely event that someone accesses your account without your permission, you can also shut down the unauthorized login before resetting your password and taking other steps to secure your account and computer.
Lastly, when people log in to Facebook we will regularly prompt them to keep their security information updated. If you ever lose access to your account, having this information helps us verify who you are and get you back into your account quickly.

You don't have to wait for us to prompt you;
you can update your security information at any time from this page.

you can update your security information at any time from this page.

Posterous iPhone app

Posterous now allowing users to post, manage their settings, upload media and even geo-tag their updates.

The Posterous iPhone app does everything you want, from what we can see, aside from text formatting - but that's a relatively recent feature addition to Posterous that really took it beyond its roots anyways.

The app allows users to post publicly or privately to any number of different Posterous sites they control. In addition to multiple sites, the new app will let you choose whether or not you want to auto-post your content to 26 different sites, from Facebook to Twitter to Flickr to YouTube and more. Posterous can even be an entry way to a Blogger or Wordpress site.

You can download) here for yourself.

3G iPhone Features Upto Date

The 3G technology gives iPhone quick access to the Internet and email over cellular networks around the world. iPhone 3G also makes it possible to do more in more places: Surf the web, download email, get directions, and watch video even while you are on a call. With quick 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, support for enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange, and the new App Store, iPhone 3G puts even more features at your fingertips. Plus we all know that iPhone combines three products in one – a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device with rich HTML email and a desktop-class web browser.


The 3G iPhone Home Screen has instant access to whatever you need. The Home screen takes you to iPhone applications and Web Clips with a single tap – even when you are on a call. And no two Home screens are alike. That is because you can customize yours with whatever applications and Web Clips you choose. Plus, you can customize you Home Screen, Add Web Clips and no matter where you are on iPhone, one click of the Home button takes you to the Home screen. And you can go back to what you were doing at any time.



Phone Calls – with 3G iPhone, making a call is as simple as tapping a name or number. All your contacts appear in a list you scroll through with a flick of your finger. And Visual Voicemail plays your messages in any order you want, just like email.



Email – on 3G iPhone looks and works just like email on your computer. With support for well loved email servers and providers – including MobileMe, Microsoft Exchange, Yahoo! Mail, Google Gmail, and AOL – and most industry-standard IMAP or POP mail systems, iPhone puts email in your pocket.



Internet – 3G iPhone features Safari – the most advanced web browser ever on a portable device. And with 3G and Wi-Fi, you can browse the real Internet really quick. iPhone also syncs your bookmarks from your PC or Mac and has Google and Yahoo! search built in.



iPod – With its gorgeous 3.5-inch widescreen show and Multi-Touch controls, iPhone is also one incredible iPod. Browse your music in Cover Flow and watch widescreen video with the touch of a finger.



SMS – With a chat-style view and an intelligent Multi-Touch keyboard that predicts and suggests words as you type, iPhone texts smarter than any smartphone.



Maps with GPS – Find your location, get directions, and see traffic all from your phone. Maps on iPhone 3G combines GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell tower location technology with the Multi-Touch interface to make the best mobile map application ever.



iTunes on 3G iPhone – Buy music over the air from the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store on iPhone. Find a Wi-Fi hot spot and tap the iTunes button. Then take your pick from more than 6 million songs.



App Store – The App Store is coming soon. And when it is here, you will find applications in every category, from games to business, education to entertainment, finance to health and fitness, productivity to social networking. These applications have been designed to take advantage of iPhone technologies such as Multi-Touch, the accelerometer, wireless, and GPS. And some are even free. You will download them wirelessly and be able to use them straight away.



Calender – iPhone makes it simple to make plans. The built-in Calendar goes with you anywhere, works with a tap, and syncs seamlessly to the calendar on your computer.



YouTube – iPhone keeps you entertained with a YouTube application that opens right from the Home screen, so you can watch YouTube wherever you are. Videos load quick over 3G or Wi-Fi. Find a video you like? Bookmark it or share it with a friend.



Camera – With a built-in camera and an advanced photo application, iPhone is the most photo-friendly phone ever. It takes snapshots, automatically syncs photos with your PC or Mac, displays albums with the flick of a finger, and posts pictures directly to a MobileMe Gallery.



Stocks, Weather and Notes – Get stock quotes and weather reports with a tap. Use Notes to jot down information you want to keep with you, remember for later, or share via email.



And last but not the least a calculator on 3G iPhone combines the simplicity of a pocket calculator with the power of a full-featured scientific calculator.

Microsoft Launches Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone 7 is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft, and is the successor to their Windows Mobile platform. You can expect a completely new finger-friendly User Interface. It also enables easy integration with Microsoft services Xbox Live and Bing. Also contains third-party applications like eBay, IMDB, Netflix, and some music apps.

You can also expect integration with social networking sites like Facebook. As of now Samsung, LG and HTC are powered by Windows Phone 7. There are nine Windows Phone 7 devices that will be available in the U.S. from top manufacturers like Dell, HTC, Samsung, and LG. Also there was a buzz like devices based on WP7 won’t support copy and paste, and tethering. People behind the Windows Phone 7 said the user experience is consistent and delightful, and also explained that “hundreds of thousands” of developers were working on applications for the OS.

Google Cars Drive Themselves

The Google car project, which has been working in secret but in plain view on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver.


With someone behind the wheel to take control if something goes awry and a technician in the passenger seat to monitor the navigation system, seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control.


The Google research program using artificial intelligence to revolutionize the automobile is proof that the company’s ambitions reach beyond the search engine business. The program is also a departure from the mainstream of innovation in Silicon Valley, which has veered toward social networks and Hollywood-style digital media.


It drove at the speed limit, which it knew because the limit for every road is included in its database, and left the freeway several exits later. The device atop the car produced a detailed map of the environment.


The car can be programmed for different driving personalities — from cautious, in which it is more likely to yield to another car, to aggressive, where it is more likely to go first.


The project is the brainchild of Sebastian Thrun, the 43-year-old director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a Google engineer and the co-inventor of the Street View mapping service.


Besides the team of 15 engineers working on the current project, Google hired more than a dozen people, each with a spotless driving record, to sit in the driver’s seat, paying $15 an hour or more. Google is using six Priuses and an Audi TT in the project.


The Google researchers said the company did not yet have a clear plan to create a business from the experiments. Dr. Thrun is known as a passionate promoter of the potential to use robotic vehicles to make highways safer and lower the nation’s energy costs. It is a commitment shared by Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, according to several people familiar with the project.


Source:On this nytimes page

La Cancion –The Adobe Museum of Digital Media

The Adobe Museum of Digital Media is the world’s first virtual art museum dedicated to digital art & innovation and will be live on Oct. 6. This video showcases the museum architecture in various locations around the world. If you’re interested in learning more, follow the link to become a member! http://www.adobemuseum.com/

How to Download Your Information from Facebook

One feature strangely absent from Facebook has always been the ability to download your pictures, videos, messages, and other information to your hard drive. Now, with a few clicks, your updates can be easily saved.

All you need to do is go to Account, Account Settings, then to Download Your Information. From there, you can download a zip file containing all your profile information, including your photos, wall posts, messages, videos, friend lists, and other content. If you unzip the file, you can actually view a simple HTML page of your profile, with simple links to all of these things. It doesn't look like there's currently any way to re-import that information back to Facebook.

Google Used Video in Their Logo For the First Time Today

Google is getting even more daring with their doodles, with today's logo celebrating John Lennon's 70th birthday being their first to feature video. It's a clever embedded YouTube of Imagine, one of the greatest songs ever written.

Hopefully the logo has appeared on all international Google search pages, with the message in Imagine about world peace being relevant to all.

Logitech Revue With Google TV

Logitech's Revue, their set-top-box Google TV machine on the device’s website with more detailed explanation about its features. The device is capable of streaming videos at a 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second. It also contains a TV Cam for video conferencing, HDMI, Ethernet, two USB ports, and connectivity with Logitech Harmony as well as a number of current wireless mice and keyboards from the company. The Revue even comes with a compact keyboard with integrated remote and touchpad.
The Revue is now available for preorder for US$299.99

Features Of The New Facebook Groups

Group Notifications
One of the most significant features that Facebook groups used to have was the ability for administrators to message members of the group directly. Now Facebook has made it so that all messages (or any other objects) posted to the wall in within groups will generate notifications. These notifications drive users back to the group, however users can also opt-out of these notifications by clicking on the “Edit Notifications”.
Group Chat
Group chat is probably one of the most significant features of the new Facebook Groups product. All members of a group have the ability to engage in a single chat window. The one downside of this is that it group chat rooms can become pretty noisy. This is a major upgrade however in that Facebook now has “chat rooms”, something that the classic AOL was infamous more. Don’t call it that though! The primary difference between a traditional chat system and the Facebook group chat system is that unless your group is “Secret” (and undiscoverable in search), your real identity is being used.
In AOL Chat, IRC, and other open chat platforms, users would use their aliases as a way to mask their real identity.
Docs
One other feature of Facebook’s new groups product is the ability to post “Docs”: basic text documents with a minor amount of markup available (bold, italics, and lists). Documents also have a revision history which users can navigate back through. While this is no Google Docs product in terms of robustness, it’s definitely a useful feature.
Groups Have Become An Integral Component Of Facebook
Facebook groups are now an integral component of the entire Facebook experience. Between group chat, docs, and an eventual groups developer platform, Facebook is aiming to become a more significant communications and collaboration platform.

Facebook announcement

Facebook announced three new features that the company says will give its users more control over the information they share and receive on the social networking site.
Now,The 500 million users of Facebook will be able to group their friends so they can share specific information with specific groups, be it work friends, college friends, family, etc.

Under the new feature called Groups, users can create sets of friends and share information solely with that social circle. He said the solution stems from what Facebook has done with Photos, where 95% of users on Facebook are tagged in Photos as a result of friends tagging them
This same "social solution" principle will apply to Groups,where a small proportion of users would create a group, allowing all their friends to benefit from their work.
There will be another feature called "Download Your Information" where users (after their identity is verified) will be able to download a log of all their activity of Facebook, including recent wall posts, photos shared, comments made and messages sent.

"Philosophically, that's a core thing that people want from Facebook. "People want to be able to easily take their information to another service and do that in safe way."

And lastly, a new dashboard that allows users to see all of the apps that they use on one page was unveiled. It will also allow users to monitor and manage all their Facebook tools, like privacy settings and deleting unwanted apps.

Cisco unveils Umi consumer video conferencing system

Cisco's announced the consumer-level HD video conferencing system that's been rumored for a while now. Called Umi, (you me) the system consists of a 1080p camera module, remote, and a separate set-top box. Cisco says Umi will allow for full 1080p video calls with 720p/30 recording, with a fallback to 720p / 480p if bandwidth is constrained. The camera itself has a glass lens with an optical zoom, autofocus, auto exposure and auto white balance, as well as motorized pan, tilt, and zoom. There's also a motorized privacy shutter, which is a nice touch. The service is compatible with Google Voice and Video Chat, and Cisco says it's looking into FaceTime integration as well

Cisco says it'll be demoing Umi on Oprah and launching an ad campaign with Ellen Page in the runup to a holiday launch, but none of that will distract from the required $24.99 monthly / $275 annually Umi service plan and $599 MSRP

How To Hide Your Phone Number On Facebook

There are two options: remove it from your profile or use Facebook’s privacy settings. The problem with not entering your phone number is that Facebook actually uses the number to verify that it’s your actual account. As such, I don’t recommend using this model. Instead, go to the privacy settings area and click on the custom tab on the left, and then on the “Customize Settings” link, as pictured below.

After you’ve landed on the custom privacy settings page, scroll down to the “Contact Information” area. In that area you’ll see settings for each of your contact items including your phone, address, IM screen name, and any email addresses you have added to your account. You can customize who can view each piece of information by clicking on the drop down box next to “Mobile phone” or “Other phone” and then select “Custom”. Once you do that, you should see the following dialog box:

Ultimately it’s up to you how you set your phone number visibility, however I have limited my number to friends only. If you want to get really specific with the people who can view your phone number you can select the option “Specific People…” and then manually type in the name of each person who can have access to your phone number. Alternatively, you can block anybody on the site (including your friends) from seeing your phone number by selecting the option “Only Me”.

Google Goggles now available on iPhone in Google Mobile App

Today google announced that Google Goggles is now a feature of Google Mobile App for iPhone Google Mobile App already lets you speak your queries, and it can also use your phone’s location to give you more relevant search results.

In the new version of Google Mobile App just tap on the camera button to search using Goggles. Goggles will analyze the image and highlight the objects it recognizes


Computer vision is a hard problem and Google Goggles is still a Labs product. It works well for things such as landmarks, logos and the covers of books, DVDs and games. However, it doesn’t yet work for some things you might want to try like animals, plants or food.


Google Mobile App with Google Goggles is now available in the Apple App Store. Just search for “Google Mobile App” and download the latest version - it’s free. It will gradually be appearing in all App Stores around the world starting from today.


Goggles is enabled only for English-speaking users, and since it requires an auto-focusing camera it is supported only on iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 running iOS 4 or above. Visit google Help Center to learn more or send us your feedback and questions in google Help Forum


So step away from your computer, get your Goggles on, and search the world around you.

HOW TO: Get Google TV

Google TV is a software platform for set-top boxes and HDTVs based on the Android OS. It is co-developed by Google, Intel, Sony and Logitech. This project was officially announced by Google and its partners on May 20, 2010.
Google TV will also have Google Chrome web-browser (along with Adobe Flash). People can access the web and online video content, similar to Desktop and other devices. It also has support for services such as YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, and Hulu. You can use your Android phone or iPhone to control your Google TV instead of using a remote control. You can also use your voice to search, and even use multiple phones to control the same TV.

There are only two possible ways to get this Google TV, you need to get a standalone smart TV [Sony Internet TV] or get a separate box to use with your current TV [Logitech Revue]. Mostly probably they both will be on sale this fall.

The Sony Internet TV provides richer internet access so you can browse the web just like you would from a computer. Seamlessly navigate between websites and TV channels or enjoy both at the same time. On the same screen.

The Sony Internet TV makes searching for content faster and simpler than ever before. Whether you’re looking for a channel, show, or website, it’s never been easier to find what you want.
After months of collaboration between Logitech and Google, the Google TV project was announced at Google I/O 2010. Logitech Revue will act as a separate box through which you can access Google TV.

If you want to know when this products will be launched or if you need further information about them,here is the Link

Google Acquires BlindType

Google has recently acquired mobile typing company BlindType.

The company blog for BlindType has recently announced that it has just been acquired by Google. The main reason for the acquisition may be yet be known, but Google may be in the process of further improving their Android OS for smart phones. Better virtual typing features may be just one of them.

BlindType is a start-up company known to be developing a more improved mobile-device typing. Since most smart phones today are increasingly relying on virtual keyboards featured on touchscreen displays for typing, acquiring BlindType may be a way for Google to further improve this feature on its Android OS for mobile devices. Who knows if Google may also be developing a new smart phone or a similar device that would be using a feature that will come out of this new partnership.

Google Insight For Search

Google introduced Google Insight For Search . it is a Search Tool is still in the beta phase, you can take a look at it.

It will give you a LOT more information than is available from the older Google Trends tool. It will tell you whether interest is growing or decaying for your keywords and keyword phrases -- plus tell you the words and phrases that are really hot for your topic.

Play with the tool and its many features for a few minutes and you'll be amazed at what you can learn about your topic.

Make sure to scroll to the bottom of the Google Insights page and take a look at the list of Top Searches words and phrases and the list of Rising Searches. This will give you a direction to follow for future posts.

7 Reasons Why Google Should Not Buy Twitter

Twitter would require an obnoxiously large amount

Twitter has a ridiculous valuation right now without really having the revenue to show for it. In order to purchase Twitter, Google would probably need to write a check for $5 Billion at the minimum. If you think about the idea of the purchase price being 10X revenue, that you mean that Twitter would need $500 Million in revenue. I don’t think anyone has heard of any revenue estimates for 2010 anywhere near that number.

Twitter has not proven to be stable

Twitter continues to be unstable over the long term. Does Google really want to deal with those problems? If Twitter could be more reliable over the long term, they would not need Google’s help. So stability is more of a catch-22.

Twitter’s revenue plans are not in line with Google’s

Twitter revenue has been in promoted trends and promoted tweets so far. This is basically just fancy advertising so it would seem to be in the same arena as Google’s revenue. However, Google’s properties make a point of the advertising not being in the content.

Twitter’s infrastructure is nothing like Google’s

Supposedly, Google likes their acquisitions to port their code to the Google infrastructure. I am not sure how much of this is true, but Twitter has been known to use Java, Ruby, Scala, and almost anything else that will work at the time.

Just because they have the cash

I have seen the reason that Google should buy Twitter because Google has enough cash to do it. That is like saying I should buy a new car because I have the cash to do it. Do I need the car? Why would I buy something, just because I have the money to do it.

Just to compete with Facebook

The other reason that seems to be popular is that Google needs to compete with Facebook somehow, so buying Twitter is the best option. How does Twitter help you fight Facebook? Twitter does not know how to fight Facebook, and even tries to avoid comparisons to Facebook.

Buying Facebook is a better idea

If you are really looking to make a big purchase, why not buy what really makes sense. Buy Facebook for $30 billion. You really do not want to compete with Facebook, but their revenue, estimated to be over $1 Billion in 2010, would be a great addition. You can leave Facebook completely alone to run their business, and just reap the long term benefits.

Author: Louis Gray

Google TV Updates

Google TV is a new way to think about TV: it’s a platform that combines your current TV programming and the open web into a single, seamless entertainment experience.

One of our goals with Google TV is to finally open up the living room and enable new innovation from content creators, programmers, developers and advertisers. By bringing Google Chrome and access to the entire Internet, you can easily navigate to thousands of websites to watch your favorite web videos, play Flash games, view photos, read movie reviews or chat with friends—all on the big screen.

Turner Broadcasting has been hard at work optimizing some of their most popular websites for viewing on Google TV, including TBS, TNT, CNN, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, available anytime through Google TV.

NBC Universal has collaborated with Google TV to bring CNBC Real-Time, an application that allows you to track your favorite stocks and access news feeds while enjoying the best financial news from CNBC directly on the TV screen.

HBO will bring access to hundreds of hours of programming to Google TV with HBO GO. Authenticated subscribers will soon be able to access all of their favorite HBO content on-demand in an enhanced website for Google TV.

NBA has built NBA Game Time, an application that lets you follow game scores in real-time and catch up on the latest highlights from your favorite team in HD.
In addition, google partnered with some of the leading premium content providers to bring thousands of movie and TV titles, on-demand, directly to your television. Amazon Video on Demand offers access to over 75,000 titles for rental or purchase, and Netflix will offer the ability to instantly watch unlimited movies and TV shows, anytime, streaming directly to the TV.







Google is also working with some leading technology and media companies to optimize their content for Google TV, including news sites like The New York Times and USA Today; music sites like VEVO, Pandora and Napster; information networks like Twitter; and online networks like blip.tv. And with YouTube Leanback, we can offer the best experience for you to watch your favorite viral videos and personalized channels on the television.


Today Google also launched a new website that provides more information about these apps and all of the other great features of Google TV. And if you want to stay up to speed on the latest developments from the Google TV team, check out our new blog.

Facebook Allows High Resolution Photos, Bulk Tagging, and Makes More Improvements to Photos

On october 1st Facebook begins rolling out multiple improvements to its photos product. Users will be able to upload and download high resolution photos, quickly view photos in a pop-up light box view without leaving the page they are currently viewing, utilize two bulk tagging features to tag one person in multiple photos simultaneously, and use a streamlined and more reliable Flash uploading tool. Despite the monetary cost, Facebook has made the changes to keep the world’s most popular photos product technologically competitive.

Five months ago Facebook acquired photo sharing startup Divvyshot, who’s founder Sam Odio product managed these changes. Odio tells us “We took a fresh look at the photos product, built a new vision, and this is first step towards that vision. Facebook is building out a larger photos team, photos are becoming a priority within the company, and it’s something we felt like we should be doing for our users.” The new changes will only go live for a small random subset of users later today because of the 100 million photos Facebook takes in a day. However, barring any significant problems, the changes will be rolled out to 100% of the user base over the next few weeks.

High Resolution Photos

Users will now have the option to upload photos at 2048 pixels along the largest side as well as Facebook’s standard 720 pixels. This 8 times improvement in quality will cover the resolution of photos taken by most consumer cameras. Larger photos, such as those shot with DSLRs, will be re-sized down to 2048 pixels, or roughly 6000 kilobytes, on the user’s side just before the upload occurs. This means that if you try to upload a 6 megabyte photo, you won’t have to wait for that large file to be sent to Facebook. Users will still have to be patient, however, as the uploader notes high resolution photos take up to 10 times longer to upload.

Anyone will be able to view the print quality, high resolution photos on Facebook’s web interface, and there will be a link below them to initiate a download of a .jpg of the photo. The high resolution will allows users to print 5×7 inch photos at 300 DPI, or perhaps even 8x10s, without any degradation of the image. High resolution photos will also be available through the API, opening opportunities for print products, and high resolution photo experiences on HD televisions. Odio says he’s excited to see what the API partners come up with.

Facebook will still be using its Haystack storage infrastructure for high resolution photos. The significant drop in storage costs over the last five years makes the high resolution feasible, but it will still cost millions of dollars. Odio says, “Zuckberg made the decision. He though users would appreciate high resolution. He looked at the tab and said ‘Let’s do it.’” Odio explained that all the other major photo sharing sites offer high resolution, including Divvyshot, and while Facebook had previously been focused on sharing memories, not pixels, Facebook is ready to “get with the times”.

Light Box View Of Photos

Soon, you will be able to click a photo anywhere on site, on the news feed or within albums, and the photo will load over a darkened background of the content you were viewing. You can then browse to adjacent photos, or click out or hit escape to close the light box and resume viewing the page you were previously looking at. The view will also include comments and Likes below the photo, only one advertisement instead of two, and the total amount of other text and distracting graphics will be minimal.

Light box view will also help photos load faster. Instead of sending a get http request for a whole new page which would have to be generated by the server and sent back, now Facebook will just construct the light box over your current page and immediately start downloading the image. The image may appear first, followed by the comments and Likes a tiny fraction of a second later.

The change should help users keep their desktops tidy. Previously when users wanted to retain their place in Facebook but view a photo, they would typically load the photo in a new tab. Odio say, “This seemed like a clumsy experience. The funny thing is that everyone is tracking page views. This change will probably cause a significant hit to page views, but we but we think it’s better. It loads much faster and you don’t lose your context in the content you were interested in.”

Bulk Tagging

When you go to any album page, you’ll be able to click “Tag photo”, enter a friend’s name, click the face of that friend in multiple photo thumbnails, and hit save to simultaneously tag that person in all of those photos. “People were doing an incredible amount of tagging, but it seemed like a terrible user experience to have to tag each individual photo separately”. Odio says it might sound difficult to pinpoint faces in thumbnails, but it’s actually quite easy.

The original uploader of photos will have access to an express bulk tagging system. Facebook will recognize the same face being present in multiple photos, and temporarily the group photos with the same face together making it easy to tag that person in all those photos simultaneously. This should alleviate uploader tagging fatigue, which frequently resulted in users leaving their friends to tag themselves.

Flash Uploader and Streamlined Flow

Facebook is implementing a new Flash uploader which increases reliability and takes advantage of the greater market penetration of Flash. Facebook has experimented with Java clients and browser plugins over the years, but rewrote the uploader in Flash for its ability to select multiple photos at once. The upload flow has also been streamlined. When you hit “upload photos” you’ll immediately begin selecting photos, and not be first asked to create and name an album as you were before.

Reliability is measured by how many users who at first click “upload” actually end up with new photos appearing on the site. Facebook expects at 5-10% increase in reliability thanks to the Flash uploader and streamlined flow. While users in the US with modern computers and fast connections might not see much difference, users in countries like Indonesia with older computers and worse connections will have a much improved upload experience.

Free Entertainment Apps for iPhone

Now get your favorite Comcast® services on your iPhone and iPod touch with this free Comcast mobile application.
Category: Entertainment
Updated:Jul 26, 2010
Current Version:2.2
Language:English
Seller:Comcast Cable Communications
Requirements:Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later.

Avaya A175 Business-oriented Tablet

Avaya has introduced new business-oriented tablet that is recognized as Avaya A175,expected to cost between $1,500 and $2,000, this 11.5-inch enterprise tablet is designed primarily to be used at a cubicle, doubling as a SIP phone and tripling as an office collaboration tool. Dubbed a “Polycom killer” more than an iPad killer, this unit relies on Aura 6.0 and the newly designed Flare user interface (detailed in the video past the break), which enables touchscreen operation and supports multi-user video calling, email, web browsing and support for Android applications. Specs wise, it’s “slightly thicker than an iPad,” has a trio of USB 2.0 ports, inbuilt WiFi, 3G / 4G WWAN support and an integrated battery for those days when you simply have to clock in from the comfort of Venice Beach. Hit that More Coverage link for a live report at the device’s unveiling, and feel free to start hassling your manager to order up a few dozen of these. Or use that money for office-wide raises — whatever floats your boat.

UEFI -A replacement to BIOS

New PCs could start in just seconds, thanks to an update to one of the oldest parts of desktop computers.

The upgrade will spell the end for the 25-year-old PC start-up software known as Bios that initialises a machine so its operating system can get going.

ios' replacement, known as UEFI, will predominate in new PCs by 2011.

The acronym stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface and is designed to be more flexible than its venerable predecessor.

UEFI frees any computer from being based around the blueprint and specifications of the original PCs. For instance, it does not specify that a keyboard will only connect via a specific port.

The first to see the benefits of swapping old-fashioned Bios for UEFI have been system administrators who have to oversee hundreds or thousands of PCs in data centres or in offices around the world.

"Conventional Bios is up there with some of the physical pieces of the chip set that have been kicking around the PC since 1979," said Mark Doran, head of the UEFI Forum, which is overseeing development of the technology.

Before now, said Mr Doran, getting those machines working has been "pretty painful" because of the limited capabilities of Bios.

By contrast, he said, UEFI has much better support for basic net protocols - which should mean that remote management is easier from the "bare metal" upwards.

For consumers, said Mr Doran, the biggest obvious benefit of a machine running UEFI will be the speed with which it starts up.

Source: On This Page

Tweetbeat -The Best of Twitter in RealTime

-Tweetbeat scans more than 90 million Twitter updates each day, using semantic technology to pick out the most interesting people discussing the most interesting topics, in real time. The Mountain View start-up bills the service as "the end of hashtags" because its users would no longer have to tag an update.

Tweetbeat is a real-time source for what people are saying about any major event.

• LiveFollow event streams to see up-to-the-minute reactions from fans, experts and celebs.
• Replay tweets from earlier events.
• Watch Firsthand commentary from key people and players at the event.
• Read Headlines about the event from top news sources.
• Get Recommendations for people to follow who share your event interests.
• Search for events happening right now.

Kosmix, which officially released its Tweetbeat product Wednesday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco.

TweetBeat Website http://tweetbeat.com/about