Cloud Computing Potential for E-Commerce

It’s no surprise that e-commerce and cloud computing are starting to gel together. As companies online are looking for more and more flexible platforms to sell to customers, cloud computing seems to provide the immediate answers. However, the platform comes with critical security risks.

Basic Definition Applied
An actual cloud computing platform does need to meet certain requirements for a retail website to qualify. These include:

• Consumer control. The customer is completely in charge of choices, selection, and navigation. This is usually provided via some sort of website control that the consumer can manipulate.
• Pay to Play Features. Any services a website provides are scalable to only charge the consumer exactly what he wants to use at the time and no more.
• Everything Involved is Automated. Consumers using the website are engaged entirely in an electronic, virtual environment. There is no need for human interaction from a service person at all.

A regular retail website does not meet this criteria set. Instead, it typically has infrastructure or personnel involved which in turn increases the operating cost for the business involved.

Scalability

The primary benefit online business enjoys the most from cloud computing is the clear scalability of the platform. Retail business doesn’t follow standard, predictable schedules of when consumers buy goods or services, and online retailing is no exception. Business goes up and down seasonally. A company maintaining a full-size retail website (like this one that sells wristbands) with personnel and system support year round is going to lose money during down-times. With cloud computing, this problem disappears.

Using a cloud platform, the retailer can scale up and demand additional services and support when seasonal traffic is climbing. Then, when the holiday depression kicks in and people’s wallets tighten up, the same business can trim off those same services without worrying about handing out pink slips and delayed reductions.

E-commerce Cost Savings

Online retailers also realize significant savings with a cloud system. Unlike the heavy season of the holidays, when great demand occurs and a business needs extra server capacity to handle the shopping, the non-holiday season can be considerably slower. Using the cloud, the business can offload the need for labor costs for system support personnel. Additionally, they’re no longer paying for ongoing large website infrastructure hosting, and can eliminate those costs as well. Websites such as Groupon (here's an example of their daily deals website in Australia-which is only a portion of their needs as they are present globally) that have large number of customers and affiliates will be the first in line to open up to the cloud.

The hardware expense is another big source of savings. Traditional websites within a business includes operating multiple servers, software, integrated networks, multiple Internet accesses, and tons of cabling. With the cloud system, all of this equipment is the cloud provider’s problem. The website business just needs to pay for and spell out the size of website desired at different times.

Security
The question of data and customer information security, however, creates a problem for retail cloud computing. The fact is, the store doesn’t actually control the information in a cloud system. Instead, the transaction information and sensitive customer data sits on a third party’s servers and storage system. While a cloud provider can make lots of promises, a retailer’s security of customer data will never be as completely secure as if the data was inside the business entirely.

Second, the exact location of consumer data within the cloud platform begins to get lost in big systems. Not only does the data sit on a third party’s system, the retailer loses the ability to track where it is saved even under the third party’s control. Unless a retailer specifically forces a cloud provider to specify how data is collected and saved, it’s quite possible a third party could farm out data storage outside of the country to save on costs.

HPCC System Architecture

The HPCC System Architecture incorporates the Thor and Roxie clusters as well as common middleware components, an external communications layer, client interfaces which provide both end-user services and system management tools, and auxiliary components to support monitoring and to facilitate loading and storing of filesystem data from external sources. An HPCC environment can include only Thor clusters, or both Thor and Roxie clusters. Each of these cluster types is described in more detail in the following sections below the architecture diagram

The diagram above illustrates a high level overview of the platform architecture and how the components all work together as a powerful solution for managing Big Data. A brief description on each component is detailed below.

Thor (the Data Refinery Cluster) is responsible for consuming vast amounts of data, transforming, linking and indexing that data. It functions as a distributed file system with parallel processing power spread across the nodes. A cluster can scale from a single node to thousands of nodes.

• Single-threaded
• Distributed parallel processing
• Distributed file system
• Powerful parallel processing programming language (ECL)
• Optimized for Extraction, Transformation, Loading, Sorting, Indexing and Linking
• Scales from 1-1000s of nodes

Roxie (the Query Cluster) provides separate high-performance online query processing and data warehouse capabilities.  

• Multi-threaded
• Distributed parallel processing
• Distributed file system
• Powerful parallel processing programming language (ECL)
• Optimized for concurrent query processing
• Scales from 1-1000s of nodes

ECL (Enterprise Control Language) is the powerful programming language that is ideally suited for the manipulation of Big Data.

• Transparent and implicitly parallel programming language
• Non-procedural and dataflow oriented
• Modular, reusable, extensible syntax
• Combines data representation and algorithm implementation
• Easily extend using C++ libraries
• ECL is compiled into optimized C++

 ECL IDE is a modern IDE used to code, debug and monitor ECL programs.

•  Access to shared source code repositories
• Complete development, debugging and testing environment for developing ECL dataflow programs
• Access to the ECLWatch tool is built-in, allowing developers to watch job graphs as they are executing
• Access to current and historical job workunits

ESP (Enterprise Services Platform) provides an easy to use interface to access ECL queries using XML, HTTP, SOAP and REST.

• Standards-based interface to access ECL functions
  
• Supports SOAP, XML, HTTP and REST
  
• Supports SAML and various security standards

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Why HPCC is a superior alternative to Hadoop (Part - I)

HPCC (High Performance Computing Cluster) is a massive parallel-processing computing platform that solves Big Data problems. The platform is now Open Source

HPCC vs Hadoop

The four key factors that differentiate HPCC from Hadoop

Enterprise Control Language (ECL)

• Declarative programming language: Declarative programming languages present numerous advantages over the more conventional imperative programming model. It essentially allows the programmer to express the logic of the computation without describing its flow control, and hence the expression: “tell the system what it should do, rather than how to go about doing it”. In addition to simplifying the design and implementation of complex algorithms, it also improves the quality of the programs by, for example, minimizing or eliminating the presence of side effects, which has a positive impact on code testing and maintainability. Programs are easier to understand, verify and extend, even by people who are not familiar with the original design, which also helps alleviate the learning curve for new programmers.


• Powerful: ECL has been designed specifically as a Data Oriented programming language from the grounds up. Unlike Java, high level data primitives such as JOIN, TRANSFORM, PROJECT, SORT, DISTRIBUTE, MAP, NORMALIZE, etc. are first class functions. Basic data operations can be achieved in a single line of code, which makes ECL ideal as a programming language because data analysis can be used to express data algorithms directly, avoiding long development cycle times writing specifications that software developers can use to write the programs. In essence, higher level code means less programmers and shorter time to deliver complete projects.


• Extensible: In ECL, as new attributes are defined, they become primitives that other programmers can benefit from. Thanks to code and data encapsulation (which data oriented languages like Pig and Hive don’t have) programmers can reuse existing ECL attributes without being concerned with the internal implementation of these attributes. This provides for code that is easier to understand, more compact, and simplifies future development.


• Implicitly parallel: Parallelism is built into the underlying platform and ECL provides a layer of abstraction over the architecture of the platform. The exact same ECL program will run in a single node system or in a 1000 nodes cluster. The programmer needs not be concerned with parallelization, and the optimizer ensures the best performance for the specific hardware platform.


• Maintainable: A High level programming language, no side effects and attribute encapsulation provide for more succinct, reliable and easier to troubleshoot code. ECL programs composed of dozens of lines typically express algorithms which would require thousands of lines in Java in the Hadoop MapReduce world. Moreover, imperative programming languages like Java, allow and even sometimes encourage side effects, make testing difficult as knowledge about the context and its possible histories is mandatory for the complete analysis of the software behavior; as a consequence, these programs are hard to read, understand and debug. ECL programs are easily readable and the lack of side effects makes them easily verifiable.


• Complete: ECL programs are complete and can express algorithms that span across the entire data workflow. Unlike Pig and Hive, which have been originally designed to write small code snippets, ECL provides for a mature programming paradigm, encouraging collaboration, code reuse, encapsulation, extensibility and readability.


• Homogeneous: ECL is the one language to express data algorithms across the entire HPCC platform. In Thor, ECL expresses data workflows consisting of data loading, transformation, linking, indexing, etc.; in Roxie, it defines data queries (the HPCC equivalent to stored procedures in traditional RDBMS). Data analysts and programmers need to learn one language to define the complete data lifecycle.

Roxie Delivery Engine

• Low latency: Even complex Roxie queries are typically completed in fractions of a second. Latencies are measurable and predictable across the environment simplifying the creation of Service Level Agreements. An outstanding property in Roxie is that latencies timings are maintained for a large range of loads. Built-in redundancy also ensure that latencies are not degraded when a single node is slowed down as it would happen, for example, when a hard drive fails.


• Not a key-value store: Unlike HBase, Cassandra and others, Roxie is not limited by the constrains of key-value data stores, allowing for complex queries, multi-key retrieval, fuzzy matching and more. Advanced capabilities provide for dynamic indices and other state of the art functionality. Roxie queries (equivalent to stored procedures in traditional RDBM systems) are exposed through SOAP, RESTful and JSON interfaces to ease integration with other systems.


• Highly available: Roxie is designed to operate in critical environments, under the most rigorous service level requirements. The degree of redundancy is user defined, with a default setting of 2x, which could account for very stringent business operating standards. One key benefit that Roxie offers is the fact that the redundant nodes are part of the pool used to serve queries under normal conditions, providing for higher concurrency if needed, for example, to absorb transient load peaks that would not justify deploying extra systems under normal conditions. The absence of single points of failure (SPOF) is paramount to ensure uninterrupted operation under the failure of any component in the system.


• Scalable: Horizontally linear scalability provides room to accommodate for future data and performance growth. As data or load increases, additional nodes can be provisioned to add space for more data or computing power to support higher concurrent load requirements. Since the architecture is truly distributed, there is no single component that can become a bottleneck to the overall system performance.


• Highly concurrent: In a typical environment, thousands of concurrent clients can be simultaneously executing transactions on the same Roxie system. Thanks to the distributed nature of the Roxie architectural components, load is spread across the entire system, ensuring that no node or group of nodes is subject to load levels that could degrade the overall performance.


• Redundant: A shared-nothing architecture with no single points of failure (SPOF) provides extreme fault tolerance. Default redundancy is 2x (twice as many nodes as needed to store two copies of the data), but is user definable and higher levels of redundancy can be configured to tolerate even higher degrees of failure across the system, which could be required when operating in datacenter environments that can be easily serviced, for example.


• ECL inside: One language to describe both: the data transformations in Thor and the data delivery strategies in Roxie.


• Consistent tools: Thor and Roxie share the same exact set of tools which provides consistency across the platform.

Enterprise Ready

• Batteries included: All components are included in a consistent and homogeneous platform – a single configuration tool, a complete management system, seamless integration with existing enterprise monitoring systems and all the documentation needed to operate the environment is part of the package. HPCC has been designed with operability in mind, and includes all the required instrumentation to professionally manage and monitor the entire system. The fact that no additional third party components are required, simplifies the implementation and eliminates complexities that arise from heterogeneous platforms such as Hadoop.


• Backed by over 10 years of experience: The HPCC platform is the technology underpinning LexisNexis data offerings, serving multi-billion dollars critical 24/7 business environments with the strictest SLA’s. In addition to the internal experience, over the years we also sold several HPCC turn-key systems to traditional large enterprises, law enforcement and the intelligence community. While the HPCC platform itself is only 12 years old, LexisNexis has over 35 years of experience in the data and information services business, data analytics and scoring, full text storage and retrieval, entity extraction and resolution and data linking, which the HPCC platform has leveraged.


• Fewer moving parts: Unlike Hadoop, HPCC is an integrated solution extending across the entire data lifecycle, from data ingestion and data processing to data delivery. No third party tools are needed. This consistency reduces operating costs, increases overall availability and reliability, simplifies capacity planning and provides with a single view to the overall data workflow processes.


• Multiple data types: The HPCC platform supports multiple data types out of the box, including fixed and variable length delimited records and XML. The particular data model is open for the data analyst to define based on business needs without the constrains imposed by, for example, the strict key-value store models offered by Hadoop and NoSQL systems. Unlike Hadoop HDFS, HPCC prevents records from being split across nodes, which has a positive impact on performance, and since DFS (the distributed filesystem used by HPCC) is record oriented and not block oriented (unlike HDFS), it makes more efficient use of space and provides for better tolerance to data skews.

Beyond MapReduce

• Open Data Model: Unlike Hadoop, the data model is defined by the user, and it’s not constrained by the limitations of a strict key-value paradigm. As a consequence, the HPCC platform adapts more naturally to expressing data problems in terms of computational algorithms which reduces complexity and considerably shortens software development times.


• Simple: Unlike Hadoop MapReduce, solutions to complex data problems can be expressed easily and directly in terms of high level ECL primitives. With Hadoop, creating MapReduce solutions to all but the most simple data problems can be a daunting task. The majority of these complexities are eliminated by the flexible HPCC programming model, thanks to the fact that programmers are not restricted to just think in terms of Map, Shuffle and Reduce operations when designing their data algorithms.


• Truly parallel: Unlike Hadoop, nodes of a datagraph can be processed in parallel as data seamlessly flows through them. In Hadoop MapReduce (Java, Pig, Hive, Cascading, etc.) almost every complex data transformation requires a series of MapReduce cycles; each of the phases for these cycles cannot be started until the previous phase has completed for every record, which contributes to the well-known “long tail problem” in Hadoop. HPCC effectively avoids this, which results in higher and predictable performance and a more natural flow of data across the execution graph.


• Powerful optimizer: The HPCC optimizer ensures that submitted ECL code is executed at the maximum possible speed for the underlying hardware. Advanced techniques such as lazy execution and code reordering are thoroughly utilized to maximize performance. The ECL optimizer also re-orders operations to maximize the utilization of the specific hardware architecture and increase parallelization levels to shorten overall execution times

The New Love of India's Slum: Mobile Internet!

The low income youth have taken enthusiastically to the mobile internet. Internet is viewed not simply as a resource to be acted upon but one with consequences for everyday behaviors. A recent survey by Microsoft Research India revealed that Mobile internet is used for entertainment by teenagers in a slum in Hyderabad.

The survey captured the rich experience of technology in the everyday life of poor urban youth. It also brought to fore, if certain needs, like good health, education and stable employment are more fundamental than other needs, such as social interaction, entertainment or religion for positive development impact.

The survey was conducted among 20 randomly selected teenagers living in Hafeezpet in Hyderabad between the ages of 15-19. Hafeezpet was chosen for the survey for two reasons: one, as it fits to a typical unauthorized and informal urban settlement referred to as slums; second, due to its proximity to the vast public infrastructures in the IT hub of Hyderabad, a growing global IT city of India.

As the mobile internet infused into Hafeezpet through teen adoption and as more joined the hub of users, it transformed into a viral obsessive activity. Indeed, the presence of hubs in street corners and mobile stores throughout the neighborhood that made it clear that the internet is not only a mobile but an interactional social platform

Entertainment usages make up a significant portion of everyday internet use, transforming the technology experience of users that have had no previous experience with the internet. At the time of the research, twelve out of twenty profiled teenagers were using the internet on their mobile phones and the remaining eight teens occasionally accessed the internet on a borrowed phone in their schools, at cyber café or at a friend‘s home. None had a technical understanding of the internet but knew a few of the things it could enable them to do. For most, the internet was a pathway to games, music and video, driving behaviors to search, browse and identify content on the web.

These young Internet users were non-elite, marginally employed and with a limited education that they struggled to obtain and leverage in the down-market environment of an urban slum. The ubiquity of mobile internet services and its reasonably priced, pay-per-use access, offered a new capacity to manage and monitor expense and use.

The study further threw light on the ways in which an internet resource is managed, used and integrated into the routines of everyday life among underprivileged teenagers and to understand how Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools are used

A number of teenagers offered consistent pictures of how they fit the internet into their lives, and what they gained as a result of these practices. Many described straightforward sets of functions that the internet allowed them to carry out, not just as a technical tool but as a social tool that enabled talking to friends, interacting with other people, chatting with friends/family, listening to music, playing games, watching movies and video clips; and having fun sharing unique experiences fashioned by this new entity called internet.

While the teenagers spoke of using technologies as a means of finding comfort, a way of managing and building personal technology infrastructures as an important element in conducting their own lives, they termed it as ‘Doing the internet’. It included gaming, audio-visual content viewing, download, and other non-instrumental uses of technology

IT and Technical Job Market Trends for 2012

In 2012, 14 percent increase in job placements or assignments are anticipated, according to some excerpts from their upcoming Job Market Intelligence Report for 2012, recently released by ExecuNet. We have already witnessed that today the number of technology-related positions in the healthcare and manufacturing segments have grown immensely. Therefore, it’s quite obvious that the Top 3 growth industries or sectors are estimated to be Healthcare, Technology, and Manufacturing, reports Stephen Van Vreede on Secrets of the job hunt Website.

Besides, a 2012 computer world survey highlights that nearly 30 percent of respondents in the survey expect to increase technical staffing during this summer. Mainly the focus is anticipated to be in the fields of application development, project management and business analysis, technical support for new mobile platforms, networking and data center management for virtual and cloud-based solutions, business intelligence (BI) and data analytics, IT/network security, and unified communications.

For the upcoming year it is a very good indication for low- and mid-level IT and technical professionals. Amongst candidates with executive levels, 52 percent thought on a job switch over the past 12 months.

SoftwareTesting : The Old and the New

Software testing has evolved considerably over the last decade from single dimensional test approaches to multi-dimensional ones. Testing now encompasses broader aspects such as test management through push button test environment creation on the Cloud to dedicated tool evaluations for each kind of testing. There is general consensus worldwide though, on the need for flexibility and creativity in testing and the need to treat testing as more than just another phase performed towards the end of the project.

Traditional software testing that focused on code-level testing has evolved with Distributed and Web Service architectures. Security takes on more importance as there are now multiple integrated systems and multiple interfaces, internal and external. In this context, I would like to deliver more into the details of testing Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and SOA based solutions, a subject close to my heart!

The V-Model
For Web Service architectures and SOA, the V-Model is typically a suitable test methodology that enforces testing discipline throughout the project lifecycle. The project starts with defining the Business User Requirements. The V-Model would recommend that the Business Acceptance Test Criteria for these defined requirements are defined and agreed before moving to the start of the technical design phase. Before moving to the next phase/level of technical design, the model recommends test criteria defined for that level of technical requirements, and so on. The V-Model is simply encouraging the project team to continually determine how they would successfully test the project deliverables.The V-Model is a suitable test methodology to deliver SOA projects for the following reasons:

1. It encourages a top-down approach with respect to defining the business process requirements, high-level functional technical design, security etc.
2. It then encourages a bottom-up test approach - test individual functions within a service, test an individual service then test a composite set of services through to testing an integrated process and finally testing a complete business system. SOA is loosely coupled services and that is why a bottom up test approach is recommended.
3. The levels reflect different viewpoints of testing on different levels of detail.
4. The V-Model encourages testing throughout the entire Software Development Life Cycle.

Challenges
Some of the new challenges in testing SOA solutions as opposed to the traditional applications, typically are:

1. Services that do not have a user interface
2. Data driven business logic within services
3. External services to the organization
4. The quality of service software will be vital to promote reuse and facilitate business agility. Services that have known bugs and quality issues will not be reused by the development teams. A significant increase in testing activities and test assets (functional, performance and security regression suites that include sophisticated harnesses and stubs) will be required at a service (program) level
5. Predicting the future usage of services to assist with performance, load, stress, scalability
6. As your SOA evolves, security testing will have a higher priority and profile within your organizations test strategy in SOA, Services are based on heterogeneous technologies.

No longer can we expect to test an application that was developed by a unified group, as a single project, sitting on a single application server and delivering through a standardized browser interface. The ability to string together multiple types of components to form a business process requires unconstrained thinking from an architect’s perspective, and test planning and scheduling complexities from a tester’s perspective.

In SOA, application logic is in the middle-tier, operating within numerous technologies, residing outside the department, or even outside the company. We know that to test SOA, you need to go far beyond merely testing a user interface or browser screen. Web Services (WSDL/SOAP) will be an important component for many SOA’s, but if you are only testing Web Services, you are not likely to test the entire technology stack that makes up the application. What are the transactions happening at the messaging layer? Is the right entry being reflected in the database? In fact, many perfectly valid SOA applications will house business logic entirely outside of the Web Services.

To address the above challenges, organizations need to review and enhance their current test methodology. Many Test Tool vendors have now recognized the new SOA test challenges and have developed a new breed of tools to help organizations to plan, manage and automate SOA functional, performance and security testing.

Testing SOA solutions
How do you test SOA architecture? You dont. Instead, you learn how to break down the architecture to its component parts, working from the most primitive to the most sophisticated, testing each component, then the integration of the holistic architecture. In other words, you have to divide the architecture into domains, such as services, security, and governance and test each domain separately using the recommended approach and tools. SOA is loosely coupled with complex interdependencies and a SOA testing approach must follow the same pattern.

You can broadly categorize SOA testing into the following phases:

1. Governance Testing
2. Service-component-level testing
3. Service-level testing
4. Integration-level testing
5. Process/Orchestration-level testing
6. System-level testing
7. Security Testing

Test Tools
As discussed earlier, tools are key in every phase of testing. SOA requires a comprehensive test tool strategy. Some of the commercial and open source tools available in the market that could be explored for SOA testing initiatives would be:

Commercial
1. Green Hat GH Tester
2. Mercury Suite of products
3. Parasoft SOAtest
4. AdventNet QEngine
5. Borland SilkPerformer SOA edition
6. iTKOs LISA product suite

Open Source/ Freeware
1. SOAP UI
2. PushToTest TESTMAKER
3. AutoStub (an internal tool developed by Torrry Harris, belonging to the SOAizer™ stack)

Conclusion
As conclusion, a few key recommendations for testing SOA initiatives would be:

1. Design your SOA project test approach alongside the definition of business requirements and high level technical design. Ensure the test teams are involved right from the start.
2. Static test techniques such as formal inspections are a must to ensure the business requirements and technical designs are defined to standards and are complete. Strong governance and discipline are essential to successfully delivering SOA.
3. SOA is driven by business and not technology. The test team will have to ensure the key business stakeholders and users are actively involved throughout the project life cycle and not just at the start and the end.
4. The Test team must be aligned to business domains not technologies. This will enable a successful implementation of a Risk Based approach to testing. The test team must also be technical and be able to white box test the entire SOA platform.
5. Security assessment and testing must take place throughout the entire project life cycle.
6. Many organizations will need to perform a leap of faith. The majority of testing activities now need to be performed during the business requirements analysis, design and service build phases. To achieve delivery agility and true service reuse, each individual service must be delivered to the Integration and UAT test phases with well-defined functional test coverage and guarantees on performance, scalability and security. Simply put, services must come with a Quality statement!
7. Test Tools are now a must. Organizations must invest appropriately in a test tool strategy.

You should not be surprised that many of the recommendations outlined in this paper are not new. Many of them are already defined as best practices. SOA demands strong governance, well-defined standards, processes and disciplines. If Quality is at the heart of your SOA, then the promises of SOA will be delivered.

10 Futuristic Technologies to Debut Soon

 

A number of technological innovations that we only saw in comics and sci-fi novels have come to see reality in the past decade. But if you wonder whether anything could be done to make the present more futuristic, this collection is one that you will have to see to believe.

Here are some of the most futuristic products, according to Mashable, that are in development right now, and could be hitting markets as early as this year.

 

1. The Invisible Car: Mercedes Benz designed a car that was “invisible” to the environment (i.e. had zero emissions) and had an astoundingly low impact on the environment. To promote the concept of its invisibility, the company actually made the car invisible. Mercedes says the car is good enough to see the production of its series, but it is expected to only be made available to markets in 2014, according to Mashable’s report.

 

2. A Space Elevator: Japan aims to build an elevator to space; one that will reach out to a space station 22,000 miles above the earth by the year 2050. The space elevator will contain living quarters and other tourist attractions on board, and will travel from the ground spaceport to the space station at 125 kmph, according to the report. The elevator’s passenger car will be capable of carrying 30 passengers who will reach the space station 8 days later.

 

 

3. Driverless Cars: Google received the patent for this technology last year and is expected to use it in cars in the near future. Currently, the technology is being tested at Nevada in the US. The car, on a test, was claimed to be “like cruise control on steroids,” by Tom Jacobs, chief public information officer at the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

 

4. Robotic Assistants: Robotic assistants have helped improve lives, from helping paralyzed patients walk, to picking up tools and assembling heavy machinery. Now although the main paradigm behind robotic sciences is that knowledge of how to program robots is limited to computer scientists and experts in robotic sciences, but a study by the Georgia Institute of Technology in the States predicts that every home will have a robotic assistant to help with everyday tasks, especially since scientists are working on new learning algorithms for machines that could be based on everyday language

 

 

5. Flying Cars are here: Flying cars used to be a part of spoofs in sci-fi movies, especially because of the size of the notion, but Terrafugia, a company aimed at providing innovative solutions to solve challenges facing personal aviation. The car will be available at the 2012 New York auto show for its pre-sale curtain-raiser.

 

6. Lab-grown meat: Dutch scientists are looking into the possibility of generating lab-grown meat that will be cultured from stem-cells of animal-muscle-tissue. They say it will increase efficiency by 35 percent since the inch-long strips of meat can mashed together to form a fillet, or a patty. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) hopes to generate the same result with chicken by the end of June this year.

 

 

 

7. A Moon Base: Space agencies are planning to build a permanent base with regard to the moon by establishing a station on its surface, or launching a station to orbit it. They hope to further explore life on the moon by doing so.

 

8. Mind-reading technology: IBM’s last 5 in 5 prediction revealed the possibility of developing mind-reading technologies, but the blue giant is working towards the development of a computer that responds to signals from your brain. The person controlling the device wears a headset that detects and transmits your thoughts and 7. sends them to a computer which instructs the machine about what to do. The computer will also be able to read patterns in your thoughts so the machine can learn and adapt to your thoughts specifically.

 

 

9. Flying Drones: US President Barack Obama is reported to have already signed legislation that allows the Federal Aviation Administration to allow US police agencies to use remotely controlled drones in a few months. The drones could be especially helpful for surveillance, but drone makers are also currently researching the use of nonlethal weapons such as tear gas, and stun guns which could be fired from the aerial drones.

10. Wireless Electricity: Companies are researching the possibilities to make wireless charging of cellphones a thing of the present, with wireless electricity. Other devices, according to Mashable are expected to follow the trend, so one can expect wireless electricity like Tesla’s demonstration to shock devices and people watching.

Lost In emails

The age old problem of emails is now being finally addressed by many companies across the globe. Employees were spending long hours just checking their emails, finding them and replying to them and in the process, losing out on productivity. It is time to think differently.

Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos was in news lately for banning emails in office and replacing it with social media tools, the telephone and face-to-face conversations. It is quite interesting when you dig deep into this. He cited, how emails waste time:
The "deluge" of information that plagues organizations .The need to review "useless" emails and the time it takes to get focused again on important tasks

The "pile" of email that employees end up sorting through after hours and the associated drain on employees’ personal time .If you agree with what he said, I feel you wouldn't agree less that communication management is of utmost importance to any internal communication or while communicating with clients and the outside world. However, not really brought to light or paid significant attention with always too much to do and too little time for it.

Some companies have changed mindset and organised all communications into projects and tasks using various project management solutions that are available on net. They beautiful manage all their work thinking that even communication problem is addressed but emails still exit and a pain point.

TaskTrek is a communication management solution that is available. It collaborate all communication via email and messages grouped under projects and tasks into one. Doing this, seemingly a transition takes place from emails to a more seamless communication (both internal and external) activities wise.Very natural and effective system to help collaborate on work related matters, and in turns helps save time, no duplication of work and more accountability.

Wouldn't it be fabulous if a user gets to view all messages sorted by 'message read but not replied to' or 'messages sent but no response yet' or the 'response time linked for any message'. What if these options are made available to every employee and to managers to view individual reports or team reports from a single window. My answer is, it would definitely shoot up the service levels for any service industry. It is not just email problem but a communication management problem that needs attention, and perfection of this kind that I'm hoping it would come around soon.

You would have never imagined how personal computers, smart phones and the Internet would have impacted your life. To me, technology should be to simplify life. As newer technology presides , there are better ways to do business and compliant ones too. It is natural for us then to unlearn old, and unleash new technologies with the pace of changing times to manage work relationships in our favour.

Certainly, there will be a majority supporting the need for communication management in any office but equally large number of critique to banning of e-mails. This is bound to happen but best is to investigate what sort of tools we could use to replace internal emails and also what sort of management practices we should put in place to ensure normal way to behave in a company

8 Dissatisfactions in New iPad

Apple made its followers wait for a whole year to come up with the third generation of iPad. The ‘New iPad’ was finally launched a few days back with some amazing features like Retina display, superb HD display, new processor, better camera and new voice-dictation feature, but still it disappointed its perfection loving fans as the device missed out many features which topped their wish list. Here is a list of things which this so called the world’s best tablet missed out.

1. Why no ‘Siri’?

Apple's well-liked voice-controlled personal assistant software ‘Siri’  which came into life with iPhone 4S last year is one of the truly missed feature in New iPad. The ‘Siri’ which can do lot of startling stuffs  like taking dictation for text messages, entering calendar appointments to answering general knowledge questions was the major success factor of iPhone 4S.

The New iPad only has a half grown technology with its voice-dictation feature that adds a microphone icon on the keyboard to write email, send text, search the web and create a note as you say, but the full-flung brains of Siri cloud have been added for the betterment of New iPad.

2. Battery Life Same:

Apple’s Retina Display fetches more computing power as the screen resolution is nearly quadrupled, but the batter life of the New iPad remains the same, 10 hours. Apple has done a great job by nearly doubling the capacity of the battery to 42Wh in the New iPad from 25Wh in iPad 2, even if there is a 70 percent increase in the capacity the users expectation was for a device which holds juice for a longer duration of time.

3. Screen Size also Same:

The speculations were that the third generation iPad will be available in more than one screen sizes, but the New iPad features the same 9.7 inches screen as the iPad2. There were lots rumors that Apple is working on a mini iPad, it seems like they were just rumors. However, the Retina Display of this New iPad is a wonder in itself.

4. Near Field Communication (NFC) Absent:

The era of mobile shopping is in the growth phase and this NFC technology is the one which converts your gadgets into a digital wallet. But this technology is missing in the New iPad causing a lot of disappointment. NFC technology allows the users to pay for retail goods and services by just waving their devices across a reader. This new technology which is supposed to redefine the way we use gadgets and the way we shop in future is not all there in New iPad, it’s such a sad news.

5. Still Dual-core, All Others are Quad-core:

Many competing tablet makers have come up with high performing Quad-core processor in their tablets, but still Apple’s new iPad is stuck with Dual-core processor. It was expected that the New iPad will be having a new A6 quad core processor, on the country Apple came up with a new Dual-core Apple A5X custom-designed chip with quad-core graphics. The detail about the RAM of the device is not disclosed by the company, it is expected to be doubled therefore will be around 1GB.

6. Thicker n Heavier, not Thinner n Lighter:

New iPad measures 9.4 millimeters which is 0.6 millimeters thicker when compared with the 8.8 millimeters thick iPad 2. New iPad weighs 1.44 lbs for the Wi-Fi version and 1.46 lbs for the 4G iPad, while the iPad2 weighed only 1.33 lbs. The blame goes to the superior and more powerful due to which the New iPad became more fat and heavy.

7. USB, memory card slot = Not at all!

It seems like Apple doesn’t like to expand their device’s memory with a SD memory card. iPad2 also lacked this feature and the coming iPad was pondered to have this feature. Above this, it seems like Apple will never add a mini USB port in iPad to make transferring of files more easy for its users

8. Lesser storage with Better Features:

Apple didn’t consider to have better storage of 128 GB when the new device have better processor, better graphics, superior back camera and faster LTE connectivity. The reason might be that the device will become too costly to push it into the market. It is still pretty good to have a 64 GB iPad with all such advanced features, the 32GB is manageable but the 16GB model owners will be quite crippled in the storage area.

5 Things to Know About 'New iPad'

Apple unveiled its most anticipated third generation iPad in San Francisco. This new generation iPad will be simply called as ‘New iPad’ and not as iPad 3 or iPad HD as expected. The New iPad looks identical to the iPad 2, but comes with an improved display with ‘Retina Display and better communication with ‘4G’. Look at most significant improvements in the New iPad.

1. Retina Display

Finally the New iPad got the retina display as expected. The retina display has doubled the resolution from 1024x768 to 2048x1536 and has quadrupled the amount of clarity. With such huge resolution it has 264 pixels per inch with a total of 3.1 million pixels, it means more than full 1080p HD. The retina display will make a great variation for everything whether it is images, videos or texts.

2. LTE Wireless

The New iPad will have a built-in LTE modem available for Verizon and AT&T. This is one of the notable features in New iPad, because LTE is not available on any of Apples product till now. The LTE can reach upto a download speed of 73 Mbps which is actually an awesome broadband speed for tablets.

3. New A5X Processor

Apple upgraded its processor to boast the big display. It has doubled the processor with new dual core chip and a quad core GPU which makes the device even stronger in terms of performance and graphics. The A5X processor is especially made for the New iPad; the new chip boost high multimedia performance and allows for smooth operation for high resolution retina display.

4. Voice Dictation

It was highly anticipated that Siri will debut in the New iPad, but Apple has planted something different in this device. Apple New iPad has the ‘voice dictation’, a feature you will notice as a microphone icon while typing. Tap the icon and you can dictate to the New iPad

5. iSight Camera

The New iPad comes with an iSight camera which has 5 MP camera featuring autofocus, tap to focus, backside illuminated sensor, 5-element lens, IR filter and face detection. The new camera will support 1080p HD video recording along with video stabilization feature.

Rahul Dravid's Master Strokes

 

The ‘Wall of Indian Cricket’ Rahul Dravid has announced his retirement from international cricket. He grew along with the Indian cricket greats like Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly. In his 16 year cricket career, he achieved the most remarkable 13288 test scores in 164 test matches and 10889 ODI runs in 344 matches.

The Wall made his debut in 1996 during India’s tour of England. He scored 95 runs in his first test at Lords stadium in London. In his parting speech, he declares his retirement from international and domestic first class cricket and says “No dream is ever chased alone. As I look back, as one does at such a time, I have many people to thank for supporting me, teaching me and believing in me.”

From 1996 he has done an extraordinary job in Indian cricket and had gained the title of being ‘The Wall’ which credited many Indian victories.  Here are the best knocks of his career.

January 1997

In January 1997 it was his first highest test score against South Africa in Johannesburg. He scored 148 runs in 362 balls along with 21 boundaries in this innings.

January 1999

In 1999 Rahul became the third Indian batsman scoring centuries in both innings of the test match. In the match against New Zealand in Hamilton he scored 190 runs in 354 balls with 31 boundaries. Vijay Hazare and Sunil Gavaskar were the other two Indian players who achieved this feat. In this test match

May 1999

Dravid was the only Indian player to score back-to-back centuries in the 1999 World Cup matches. One prominent match among them was against Sri Lanka in Taunton. He scored 145 runs in 129 balls and also become the top scorer of the series with a total score of 461 runs.

March 2001

In 2001 Rahul scored 180 test runs in 353 balls (not out) against Australia in Kolkata. He with the partnership of Laxman made a huge score of 376 runs. This huge score was the greatest comeback victory in Indian cricket

August 2002

One of the most notable matches against England, where Dravid scored total of 602 test runs in the series which got him the man of the series award. His highest score in the series was 148 in 307 balls.

September 2002

Rahul once again earned the man of the match title against England in London, scoring 217 runs in 468 balls.

December 2003

In 2003 India tour of Australia Rahul scored total 619 test runs in the series and got the man of the series award. His outstanding score in the series was 233 with a partnership of Laxman it was a huge score of 303 which become a danger for Australians to win the series.

April 2004

In 2004 against India tour of Pakistan in Rawalpindi, Rahul earned the player of the match. He scored 270 runs in 495 balls along with 34 boundaries and won the innings by 131 runs

January 2008

In 2008 test match against Australia, Rahul was a life saver. He scored 93 runs in 183 balls and we won the match by 72 runs. This is not a big score but every other Indian player scored less than 29 runs in the innings.

June 2011

Dravid once again became a life saver wall when other batsmen failed to score not more than 28 runs against West Indies. He scored 112 in 274 balls and leading Indian to the victory by 63 runs.