Benefits of Free Licensing @ Microsoft

After yesterday’s Windows 10 unveiling Microsoft took the time to talk about its device strategy for the foreseeable future.
                                   Talking to Re/code’s Ina Fried, Terry Myerson said Microsoft has seen great success with their strategy of giving Windows away for devices smaller than 9 inches. This strategy was revealed early this year at

Android L release date update: Latest OS set to release with Nexus 9 in October

After Apple announced the release of its latest line of iPhone 6 devices last week, Android users will also get good news as the Android L is set to be launched sometime soon.
According to the news posted by Tech Times, Google tapped HTC to build

Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram

A bioengineer and geneticist at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have successfully stored 5.5 petabits of data — around 700 terabytes — in a single gram of DNA, smashing the previous DNA data density record by a thousand times.

                              The work, carried out by George Church and Sri Kosuri, basically treats DNA as just another digital storage device. Instead of binary data being encoded as magnetic regions on a hard drive platter, strands of DNA that store 96 bits are synthesized, with each of the bases (TGAC) representing a binary value (T and G = 1, A and C = 0).
To read the data stored in DNA, you simply sequence it — just as if you were sequencing the human genome — and convert each of the TGAC bases back into binary. To aid with sequencing, each strand of DNA has a 19-bit address block at the start (the red bits in the image below) — so a whole vat of DNA can be sequenced out of order, and then sorted into usable data using the addresses.

Scientists have been eyeing up DNA as a potential storage medium for a long time, for three very good reasons: It’s incredibly dense (you can store one bit per base, and a base is only a few atoms large); it’s volumetric (beaker) rather than planar (hard disk); and it’s incredibly stable — where other bleeding-edge storage mediums need to be kept in sub-zero vacuums, DNA can survive for hundreds of thousands of years in a box in your garage.
                                                                        It is only with recent advances in microfluidics and labs-on-a-chip that synthesizing and sequencing DNA has become an everyday task, though. While it took years for the original Human Genome Project to analyze a single human genome (some 3 billion DNA base pairs), modern lab equipment with microfluidic chips can do it in hours. Now this isn’t to say that Church and Kosuri’s DNA storage is fast — but it’s fast enough for very-long-term archival.

Just think about it for a moment: One gram of DNA can store 700 terabytes of data. That’s 14,000 50-gigabyte Blu-ray discs… in a droplet of DNA that would fit on the tip of your pinky. To store the same kind of data on hard drives — the densest storage medium in use today — you’d need 233 3TB drives, weighing a total of 151 kilos. In Church and Kosuri’s case, they have successfully stored around 700 kilobytes of data in DNA — Church’s latest book, in fact — and proceeded to make 70 billion copies (which they claim, jokingly, makes it the best-selling book of all time!) totaling 44 petabytes of data stored.
                                       Looking forward, they foresee a world where biological storage would allow us to record anything and everything without reservation. Today, we wouldn’t dream of blanketing every square meter of Earth with cameras, and recording every moment for all eternity/human posterity — we simply don’t have the storage capacity. There is a reason that backed up data is usually only kept for a few weeks or months — it just isn’t feasible to have warehouses full of hard drives, which could fail at any time. If the entirety of human knowledge — every book, uttered word, and funny cat video — can be stored in a few hundred kilos of DNA, though… well, it might just be possible to record everything (hello, police state!)
It’s also worth noting that it’s possible to store data in the DNA of living cells — though only for a short time. Storing data in your skin would be a fantastic way of transferring data securely…

MinION USB stick gene sequencer finally comes to market

When it comes to DNA, France has always been behind the times. Never mind the hefty fines and prison sentence a man apparently can get for trying to order a paternity test, it seems that just knowing your own genetic sequence is offensive enough. Now that the much anticipated MinION USB stick genome sequencer has finally been rolled out, it’s going to be a whole lot tougher for the gene police.
The MinION took a little longer than we originally reported. Even now the

Microsoft creates a keyboard for iOS and Android tablets

One Keyboard All Devices 

Microsoft has created a keyboard designed for iOS, Android, and Windows tablets. It’s the latest in a series of moves that underlines the company’s focus on providing software, services, and even hardware for rival platforms to Windows. The new Universal Mobile Keyboard

Nokia 3310 given 41-megapixel camera upgrade on April Fools' Day

ust when one thought that Nokia will launch even more products in its Nokia X family running Android or new Lumia devices based on Windows Phone 8.1, April Fools' Day comes and Nokia announces its heritage 3310 in a new avatar.

The Nokia 3310, which was initially launched in 2000 and is one of the most successful phones ever released by Nokia, has made a modern-day comeback.

The Finnish giant has introduced its 3310 sporting a

NOKIA 3310 GETS 41-MEGAPIXEL, WINDOWS PHONE MAKEOVER

Heritage, much-loved and foolproof handset brought back from the ashes with powerful PureView imaging capabilities.

Initially released in the year 2000, the Nokia 3310 went on to be one of the most successful mobile phones ever. More than 125 million were sold and, thanks to a small group of Nokia fanatics, this cult handset is making a modern-day comeback.

Staying near-true to the original design, the Nokia 3310 with

Microsoft officially welcomes the Nokia Devices and Services business

Microsoft and the Nokia Devices and Services business are coming together as one to deliver a family of devices and services that will delight consumers and empower businesses.

Satya Nadella(L) & Stephen Elop(R)  together

 Microsoft Corp. announced it has completed its acquisition of the Nokia Devices and Services business. The acquisition has been approved by Nokia shareholders and by governmental regulatory agencies around the world. The completion of the acquisition marks the first step in bringing these two organizations together as one team.
“Today we welcome the Nokia Devices and Services

Transparent iPad Concept: See-Through Future of Tablets?

 

There are entire online communities dedicated to guessing which designs Apple might release next, but some designers go ahead and make their own rather than waiting to see the official versions. Designer/digital artist Ricardo Afonso created this transparent iPad to show what future generations of the wildly popular tablet computer might look like.

 

The transparent concept is way more stylish than the

Water Surface Interface Puts a Computer in Your Bathtub

 

The typical amount of time a person spends in the bathtub in a day isn’t much, but it’s enough to make us miss our phones and laptops for a while. Thankfully, we have to suffer no more: the Aquatop is a system that involves a Kinect camera and a projector mounted above the tub; a pair of waterproof speakers and a PC round out the setup to create an immersive touchscreen out of the surface of your bath water. Bath salts have to be added to the tub to

LG launched world’s first 84-inch Ultra HD TV in Pakistan

• Muhammad Sufyan Ali
• Gadgets
  

 LG today introduced the world’s first 84-inch Ultra HD TV in the Pakistan market. The Ultra HD TV introduces a number of new smart features with the aim of providing

Thinking Thin: Paper-Thin Batteries Usher in e-Paper Era

As great as we think e-paper and other thin, flexible, ultra-portable gadgets are, the one problem that has foiled more of these projects than anything else is the power source. Most batteries require some amount of bulk, making them impractical for use in flexible and lightweight objects. But

ePaper Tablets: Future Computers Light + Flexible as Paper

The one main drawback of tablet computers – their awkward carrying size – won’t be a problem for future generations of the gadgets. That is, if a team consisting of Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab, Intel and Plastic logic has its way. These groups came together to create a super-thin, super-flexible high resolution display that will revolutionize the way we look at tablets. As thin an as flexible as paper, the technology is known as Paper Tab.

Paper Tab would work much like actual paper: in groups. Each “sheet” would run just a single app, but many sheets together would give you the functionality of a traditional tablet. Of course, this might mean that you would need to leaf through your apps before you leave the house and grab just the ones you might need that day, then run the risk of being without an important one. But the technology is still in its infancy, so hopefully a streamlined and sensible method of use will emerge to make these futuristic, flexible tablets just as simple to use as the bigger, heavier ones we carry around now.

Get it Together: Puzzle Keyboard Has Endless Configurations

 

Have you ever wondered why the keyboard has to be such a standard, boring design? Different shapes and form factors are available, but the keys are always in the same configuration. Until now, that is – designer Wan Fu Chun has totally rethought the way keyboards work by inventing the Puzzle Keyboard.

 

 The Puzzle Keyboard design lets you remove the keys you don’t use often, move the keys you DO use into more convenient locations, and altogether customize your typing experience. The shape of the keyboard can be shifted to accommodate a more ergonomic design, as well.

The Puzzle Keyboard could not only make things easier for people who use their keyboards constantly; it could also help to make typing possible for people with certain disabilities. Those who have arthritis or hand injuries can arrange just the keys they need in the most convenient setup for them. The creative Puzzle Keyboard was a 2012 Red Dot Design Award winner.