Many people will be excited (and disgusted too) about the Royal Wedding between Britain’s Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton to be held on Friday, April 29, 2011.
The wedding ceremony has taken people from Britain and also the rest of the world by a storm. However, the invite list for the wedding is too small and the Royal family cannot fit in everyone for the wedding.
If you are disappointed by that fact, here is something to cheer you up. YouTube has announced that they will be partnering with the Royal Family to bring the Royal Wedding live to the masses with a live stream.
The entire Royal Wedding ceremony will be live streamed on the Royal Channel at http://www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel.
The live stream will begin at 10:00am BST (9:00am GMT, 2:00am PT, 5:00am ET) on Friday, April 29, and will follow the wedding procession, marriage ceremony at Westminster Abbey and balcony kiss. Alongside the live stream, The Royal Channel will also feature live blog commentary of the event to give timely updates and insights as the day unfolds. For those of you in different time zones, the footage will be reshown in its entirety directly following the event and will be available in full on the site to view afterward.
So if* you are eager to catch up the Royal Wedding, but can’t attend in person, head over to a computer to watch it live. You can also post congratulatory messages and well wishes to the Royal couple through a video guest book on the Royal Channel.
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YouTube To Live Stream Royal Wedding
White iPhone 4 Running Test Build Of iOS 5 Leaks
The folks over at Tinhte, who have earlier managed to get their hands on many of Apple products before its release, have come up with something again.
This time, the folks from Tinhte have got their hands on a white iPhone 4 which is arguably running a ‘test version’ of an upcoming iOS build. The white iPhone 4 has 64GB of on-board storage capacity.
The video uploaded by Tinhte suggests that the next version of iOS will feature a new multi-tasking UI.
Below is a video of the new multi-tasking UI in action –:
The new UI shows all the open apps in a similar way as HTC’s Leap View, with an ‘X’ icon for closing an app.
This leak from Tinhte more or less confirms that Apple won’t be launching the next generation iPhone at the upcoming WWDC. Instead, the company will announce a new and over-hauled version of iOS.
Sadly, this video does not show a new notification system or widgets for iOS. The notification system and the icons-only home screen of the current iOS version are heavily criticized by its users.
Hopefully, the final version of the next generation iOS will feature a new notification system and a home screen as well.
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Huge Triumph at Nano Scales: Ultra-Small, Super Fast Single Electron Transistors Crea
A team of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, collaborated with another team from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, to create a transistor, which is just an atomic diameter in size and can be switched on and off by just one or two electrons. These transistors can further be used as solid state devices, such as fast quantum processors (which might replace the current Si processors) and extremely dense memory devices.
Lead researcher Prof. Jeremy Levy of University of Pittsburgh further emphasized that these new materials might be used to create *substances like high temperature super-conductors.
A Single Electron Transistor. (The red part is the island for housing the electrons)
The Device: A Single Electron Transistor
The device is basically an island, 1.5 nanometers (nm) in diameter, which is made of metal oxide. This island can house zero, one or two electrons only allowing it to be in very specific quantum states. Such exotic materials have never been made. Nanowires, 1 to 1.2 nm thick, carry electrons across the island, thus allowing conduction.
Existent Single Electron Transistors (SET) generally have a size of about a micron, so the miniaturization is a thousand-fold.
The idea has been there for a long time. In order to build an SET, Graphene has also been tried. No real success has been achieved so far, primarily because Graphene doesn’t have a strict off state. This becomes crucial when considering transistors switched on and off by single electrons.
The SET as FET device (Earlier fabrication)
The wonder
The wonder of the device is its extreme sensitivity to the presence of an electric charge. Further, the oxide base is ferroelectric and can retain electrons even when the device is switched off. If the number of electrons in the island is controlled, the device can act as a memory device, in some state, 0 or 1. Stacking many such islands together can create an ultra-dense solid-state memory device, which can be altered by passage of minute amounts of electric current.
Fabrication in the pure state is a problem currently, but this is usually the case when a new solid state device is made for the first time ever. Today’s improved Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) Techniques allow engineers to fabricate materials directly on the nano-scale with high precision and this is the current line of attack.
If made on a commercial scale, these transistors can make a computer out of quantum processors, having unthinkable speeds, capable of performing calculations in a day, which are estimated to take hundreds of years on today’s supercomputers.
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Samsung Galaxy S Android 2.3 Gingerbread Update Pulled Back By Vodafone U.K!
It was just a few days ago that Samsung started rolling out the Android 2.3 Gingerbread update for the Galaxy S handsets in some regions of Europe. The company even released the Gingerbread source code, soon after.
Vodafone U.K. also started rolling out the update for the Galaxy S handsets just a couple of days ago. However, reports are flying in that Vodafone has now pulled back the Gingerbread update.
The reason cited by Vodafone for the update being pulled back is that the update has been suspended by Google. However, one of the most popular developers over at Galaxy S modding scene – supercurio – states something else.
He states that the update was pulled back because the Gingerbread update released by Vodafone U.K.was not the final build. The update was not supposed to be released by Vodafone U.K., but the carrier still pulled the plug and released the update.
Hopefully, Vodafone U.K. will get its act together and soon release the final build of Gingerbread update for the Vodafone branded Galaxy S handsets in the U.K.
Readers should not blame Samsung for this update being pulled back. The main culprit is Vodafone U.K, who released the update without any confirmation from Sammy.
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Blackberry Playbook Now Available for $499
The Blackberry Playbook, which was announced months back, is finally available for purchase. The Playbook has been priced at $499 for the 16 GB version, $599 for the 32 GB version and $699 for the 64 GB version, just like the iPad 2.
The Blackberry Playbook was made available to many reviewers a week back, and most of them didn’t like it very much. Though it is a very good attempt, it just can’t beat the iPad 2 yet. The iPad 2 is not only bigger, but also offers about 65,000 apps, while the Playbook offers almost none.
Without a native calendar, email client or the promised Android app support, currently, it’s not a very good option. However, with some updates and more apps, it should offer a good alternative to the iPad 2.
The user interface is very good and fluid, and it excels at multi-tasking. Here’s a hands-on video of the Blackberry Playbook at CTIA 2011.
The Blackberry Playbook come with a 7 inch capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. It has a 1 GHz dual core processor and 1 GB RAM, and comes with a 5 MP primary camera which can record 1080p video and a 3 MP front-facing camera for video calls. It offers Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS support as well. Now only if it had a lot of great apps, it would be worth the price.
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Digsby Acquired By Tagged; Will Offer Standalone Client
Digsby, the popular multi-protocol IM and social networking client has been acquired by Tagged; a social discovery engine for finding new people.
The Digsby buyout is more of a talent acquisition than a client acquisition as the Digsby team will now worked as part of the Tagged team on their product. The Digsby will continue to support Digsby as a standalone product, however, they don’t have any long-term plans for Digsby right now. Digsby currently has over 3 million users.
They have also updated the Digsby installation to remove all bundled offers, so users will have to skip a lot less crapware installations while installing Digsby. It is not clear as to how much Tagged paid for Digsby.
Digsby has been improving the user experience of late, allowing users to disable ads in Digsby and improving their Twitter support. However, it looks like it is the end of road for future updates.
You can head over to the official Digsby blog to learn more about the acquisition
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Fedora 15 “Lovelock” Beta Released
Today the first beta of Fedora 15, codenamed “Lovelock” has been released. This is a very important release for the Fedora 15 development cycle because it represents the final feature list that will make it to Fedora 15, which is expected to be released in late May. From now on only bug fix updates will be released until the final release.
Fedora 15 Beta is a very significant release for the Fedora 15 development cycle in more than one way. One of the most significant changes in this release is GNOME 3. GNOME 3 was recently released and includes a completely new user interface called the GNOME Shell. With GNOME 3, Fedora 15 Beta now has a completely different user experience from earlier releases. If GNOME is not your Desktop Environment of choice, the Fedora spins with Xfce and LXDE have also been updated.
As we have mentioned earlier, Fedora 15 Beta still has LibreOffice as the default office suite instead of OpenOffice. Another new application that has been included in this release is BoxGrinder. Like LibreOffice, BoxGrinder was first included in Fedora 15 Alpha. BoxGrinder allows users to easily create appliances (virtual images) for various platforms (KVM, Xen, VMware, EC2) from simple plaintext application files. Fedora 15 Beta also includes a dynamic firewall. The dynamic firewall makes it possible to change firewall settings without restarting the firewall. This feature is particularly useful for persistent connections.
For the coders out there, the development tools that comes in Fedora 15 Beta have also been updated. It comes with GCC 4.6, Maven 3, OCaml 3.12, Python 3.2 and Rails 3.0.3. In fact Fedora 15 Beta has been built using GCC 4.6.
The users from India will also be glad to know that the new Indian Rupee symbol has now been included in Fedora 15 Beta by default.
If you want to test Fedora 15, you can download the ISO from here. However, remember that this is not a final release and bugs are expected. If you find any bugs, you can report it to make Fedora 15 better.
You can see the feature list here.
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Microsoft Safety Scanner Scans Your PC For Virus, Spyware and Malicious Software
Over the past couple of years or so, I have used Microsoft Security Essentials as my only virus and malware protection tool. The Free Antivirus tool from Microsoft is definitely worth installing on your PC.
If you are someone who does not like to install Antivirus on your PC or just want to check whether your current Antivirus is really working well, a new tool from Microsoft will come in handy.
Microsoft Safety Scanner is a free security software from Microsoft which provides users with on-demand scanning while allowing users to remove viruses, spywares, Trojans and another malicious software from their PC. Safety Scanner works along with your current Antivirus software, so you don’t have to uninstall your current AV protection to use it.
One of the bad things about Microsoft Safety Scanner is that it expires every 10 days. Users will have to download a new version to scan your system every ten days which could be annoying considering that it is around 70MB in size. A simple definition update should be added so that users don’t have to download new versions every 10 days.
Users must also note that unlike traditional Antivirus systems the Safety Scanner does not provide continuous protection and should not be used as a replacement for traditional Antivirus software. Microsoft Security Scanner should only be used to additionally scan your PC. If you intend to replace your current Antivirus you might check out our Free Antivirus section to find a suitable alternative.
Additionally, you may also want to read the following articles related to Online Security:
Download Microsoft Safety Scanner
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