Qwiki - Smart Information

Information Experience as Doug Imbruce calls it, is at its best at QWIKI.com. Learning things or getting to know things has just got better and more entertaining. Thanks to QWIKI which transforms huge articles into fun presentations.

Qwiki was launched in the alpha testing mode on 24th of January, 2011. Type a popular topic in the Qwiki box and a computer generated audio-visual presentation is ready in no time. I consider this a big new step in Information Presentation. The website links a computerized reading of selected text summary from Wikipedia with moving images from Wikipedia, Flikr and Panoramio. The text is read with subtitles option and the related pictures are displayed in a way the user would understand better. This wonderful websites was built by Doug and AltaVista founder Louis Monier.

This alpha stage site is now busy extending its arms into every kind of data. I'm a lot impressed with the Alpha release and can't imagine the final product. Like Doug calls it.. Its Information Experience at its best!!!!

Qwiki at TechCrunch Disrupt

Android 2.3 (Ginger Bread)

Even though its Summer its time to say good bye to Froyo !!!Because its all about Ginger bread now . Yes, its Android 2.3 !!

It's hard to believe this is what Android looked like two years ago. This is exactly what Google would’ve wanted it to be!

Main highlight of this version is that it has a Bold and Beautiful Text Input interface. The keys themselves are reshaped and repositioned for improved targeting, making them easier to see and press accurately, even at high speeds.

They have also worked on Improved power Management which takes an active role in managing apps which consumes power and closing inappropriate apps which helps for better battery life .

The irony, of course, is that most of the careful design work that's gone into Android 2.3 won't ever be seen by a large portion of Android users. The definitive Android design won't be experienced by people who own phones covered in custom software. There's only a handful of Android phones in the US where you'll be able to get the real Android experience—Nexus One, T-Mobile G2 and the Nexus S—even though it's unquestionably better than anything phone makers are conjuring up themselves these days.

Whatever it may be Gingerbread is here to stay and it will !! its sharper stronger and smoother (not taller) than 2.2 !!

Author : Shashank R Nadig

Razer Switchblade gaming concept to launch in China

The Razer Switchblade portable gaming PC concept set to launch in China.

Unveiled at CES in January, the US based company confirmed at an Intel Developer Forum in Beijing that the dual 7-inch screen laptop is set to take on the Nintendo 3DS and the Sony NGP for the portable gaming crown.

Chinese internet company Tencent will be working in collaboration with Razer to develop games for the platform of which four titles will be pre-installed on the device.Commenting on the decision to enter the Chinese market first, Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan said, "We think we have a phenomenal opportunity in China," adding, "I think that our focus is on China, and then we'll explore the rest of the world."

Specs-wise we know so far that Razer has been working with Intel, so we can probably expect some Atom processor technology packed inside. Strongly focused on PC-style gaming, the lower screen incorporates changing keys, which take on different functions depending on what game you’re playing.

Razer have set no release date as yet, but we can expect further announcements later this year. With the 3DS already out and the possible arrival of the Sony NGP (PSP2) before the end of the year, portable gaming fans look like they have plenty to look forward to in 2011.

Apple iPad 2 disappoints buyers

The new Apple iPad2 released a month ago has been a huge disappointment to its buyers. Looks like the people had expected too much from Apple this time. After all the problems in iPad2, there is a NO STOCK board in every store. This is truly the power of the big brand.

These are the some of the reasons why one should wait for the new release of the tab instead of buying the iPad2.

• The iPad2 is not equipped with the 4G connectivity. Motorola Xoom and the Blackberry PlayBook have 4G in them being the chief competitors to the Apple iPad.
• The iPad1 had the largest screen last year having no competition. This time its Motorola Xoom with a 10.1 inch screen beating the 9.7 inch Apple pad.
• Customers are disappointed that the iPad doesn't come with the high quality Retina display. The pad has just 132 pixels per inch where as the iPhone 4 has 326 pixels per inch.
• The pad comes with just 1 MP rear camera while the Xoom has a 5MP camera.
• The FaceTime integration has a few problems and a software upgrade can set it right.
• The tablets microphone and speakers are much better on the wifi version than the 3G version of the device.
• Few customers complain of a backlight leak from the edges of the screen while some of them complain of a yellow tinge appearing at few places.
• After all these problems, its out of stock and takes weeks for the product to get delivered.

All these are not at all negligible. Few don't even like treating the product as the second version of the Apple iPad. With competition from Blackberry, Motorola and Samsung Galaxy, I'm sure Apple will consider releasing a perfect tablet the next year.

Pirate Hard Drive

Chinese are the best at duplicating things!!!! From Apple pads and the PSP's to the smallest like DVD's and pen drives, they have the duplicate versions of all. In days of the release of original's, the Chinese make their own imitation of the product. They have the pirated versions of every movie released, and sometimes before the release too. The title Pirate Kings, suit them the best!!

A Chinese iPhone might look all good on the surface, until u get a chance to check its OS. Improving the quality of duplicates could trouble the business of a lot of companies, and I hope it doesn't happen. The Chinese have come up with a new INFINITE CAPACITY HARD DRIVE. Sounds interesting, isn't it?? Imagine a drive that can store everything and anything you dump into it!! I would love to have one of this kind.

The casing of the infinite capacity drive reads "SAMSUNG". Every one who bought this product had a problem. When you copied a movie to the drive, only the last few minutes of the movie was copied. When several files were copied, the drive showed all the files getting copied with just the basic information of the file like the name, memory, icons. When these where clicked on another computer, they don't respond.

When this product reached an engineer who cracked open the drive was puzzled to know the secret behind its working. The picture above shows two huge metal nuts, just to increase the weight of the drive and had a 128 Mb flash drive in it.The drive cleverly sucks data in from the host computer until it’s full and then starts dumping data until all it’s left with is the last part of the file. All other files on the drive stay intact and the file size of the now incomplete file is reported correctly.

And so, as James Franco says in "127 hours"..... Never buy Chinese goods!!!!

Google’s Graveyard : Flop and Fail Products Till 2010

“Failures are the pillars of success” rightly demonstrated by Google. Since its inception in 1998, Google has been very successful company generating more than $24 billion in revenue. But success doesn’t come with comfort, there are always some pitfalls. For Google, the pitfalls are the products that failed to impress and/or generate interest. The WordStream team has compiled all these failures into a giant infographic (portmanteau for Information Graphics) as displayed.

Gmail Motion : A new way to communicate

With touch the UI took a jump-start, thanks to Apple for marketing the idea well. But we all knew that it was the motion sensors that would really change the way interact with computers. An interface that is closest to the human instincts and easiest to adopt. But even the most optimistic technological forecasters had predicted a span of 5 years for the idea to really catch up.

But googles gmail motion beta comes as a pleasant surprise and has got the technical circles buzzing. For more details check out google help page


We at social-bucket are yet to try out this feature. In the mean time if you have used this feature do share your experiences.

What behind Google's name ??

In 1995, Larry Page and Sergey Brin met as students at Stanford University, where they began to collaborate on a search engine called BackRub.

Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they name it Google .

Would you believe me, if I say that the name was the result of a small spelling mistake by one of the close associates of Larry Page? I know you wouldn’t. But you better do, as it is unbelievable, yet true! I In 1996, it so happened, that Larry Page and Sean Anderson, a graduate student working with him, were seated in their office brainstorming on the name of the search engine. They were thinking of naming it as something related to the voluminous data the search engine indexed. Then they came up wit a name ‘Googol’ which was coined by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta, nephew of the American mathematician Edward Kasner. (Googol is a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. 1 googol = 1.0 × 10¹⁰⁰)Sean was quick to search the Internet domain name registry database to see if the newly suggested name was available.

Interestingly, Sean misspelled ‘googol’ as ‘google’ and found that it was available. Larry Page liked the name and soon got it registered in the registry database. And this very powerful search engine of the day got its name. The Google search engine was registered as ‘google.com’ in September 1997.

The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.

Author : Shashank R Nadig

Use iPhone as credit card machine

Digg’s Kevin Rose is the newest investor in the Square iPhone payment system unveils by which you can accept credit card payment using iPhone. The combination of credit card readers and the iPhone could soon mean almost everyone can take credit cards, from hot dog stands to homeless people begging for change.

A cool new startup has come up with a handy dongle-plus-app combo that lets you authorize, accept, and process credit card payments anywhere, directly on your iPhone.

The process is simple enough, using an accessory which will connect to your iPhone using audio input jack just swipe the card you want to charge and then an app takes information from the swiper, and transmits it out for an actual credit card payment, with a finger doing the signature.The app, as Kevin says, will even upload GPS information, so you can make sure that payments are happening in the right place. Square is going to launch it’s beta version shortly this year.

Unfortunately, what he doesn’t mention is the actual price to get payments up and running. Square’s website says that there’s “no contracts, monthly fees, or hidden costs,” but they’ve got to pay for the system somehow, so you’d expect there to be a fee for setup, for the accessory, and then a fee per charge through the system, but we haven’t heard what any of those will end up being yet.

Author : Thejas