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Windows Phone 8 + Nokia Lumia Series

Elyas Kashfi / January 1, 2013 / Android, Software, Technology, Windows Phone / Permalink

In the coming few days I will be going over Microsoft’s latest mobile OS (Windows Phone 8) and Nokia’s WP8 flagship phone, the Lumia 920.

Just to give a bit of an introduction. I have recently (only a couple of weeks) moved away from the openness and flexible mobile platform, Android, to a (hopefully) more stable and predictable OS, Windows Phone 8. I decided to go all out and got myself the hyped Nokia Lumia 920.

Given that I have been using Android since Froyo (2.2), rooted my phone, installed non-stock ROMs (like AOKP), bricked it once and developed a few Android apps (published and unpublished), I am definitely going to be biased in my views of Windows Phone. Or at least for now.

Hope you enjoy the series of posts coming up ! And of course, Happy New Year!

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Upcoming Technological Trends in Artificial Intelligence

Guest Post / August 23, 2012 / Guest Post / Permalink

During the time of Star Trek, robots were simply a fiction that was far believed to come to reality. This also appeared in Greek myths that resemble the human likeness. These robots, not only resemble human physically, also have the human intelligence. Nowadays, unforeseen during those times, it is coming to life. The idea a creating a stand, thinking machine was so far-fetched. However, with the breakthrough in technology, it was made possible. The notion that led to this development was the fast rising technology with computers. The continuous advancement of computers has led to the realization of Artificial Intelligence.

There were several attempts for the Artificial Intelligence projects that have failed. However, in the early 1980’s, Artificial Intelligence research was revived. By 1985, the market for A1 had soared into billions of dollars. However, in 1987, it collapsed once again.

Artificial Intelligence’s greatest success was in the 1990s. This is where A1 was usedfor data mining, medical diagnosis and many other areas throughout the technology industry. On May 1997, the first computer chess playing system named Deep Blue, beat reigning world chess champion, Gary Kasparov. In 2005, a Stanford robot won the DARPA Urban Challenge.

As time passes on, research on A1 has changed over time. Today, A1 is back and is in receipt of serious interest from NASA. This goes with Google, as well. The idea of creating smart machines with human or greater intelligence is back on track once more. Now, they use A1 to automate and replace some human activities and functions with computer driven machines. These machines were designed to see and hear, respond to questions and instructions, and even solve problems on their own. This shift would soon lead to the huge acceleration in technological enhancement of different kinds.

In 2007, computers were designed to be adept at detecting human faces and recognizing them from different views. These were also designed for recognizing people or simulate as they age or grow hair or beards. These computers could also form geometric models of objects and determine a 3D structure of a scene.

Today, there are several ongoing projects. One of which is Cyc. Cyc is 22 year old project, aimed at generating knowledge and acquiring common sense based on symbolic reasoning. This has accumulated knowledge to be able to learn new things on its own just like a human being. Cyc is also designed to communicate with people via Internet to get new knowledge from them. There were also several ongoing projects, aimed at creating a full featured thinking machine that could perform human functions.

For the future, they will continue to improve on different fields such as speech recognition until it reaches human level. Thus, making computers and machines able to communicate with humans. They intend to recreate parts of the human body such as the brain in silicon. This was already experimented on rats. There were two major projects that aimed for human brain simulation. These two projects were CCortex and IBM Blue Brain. They also aim to have robots to take over human jobs and functions.

This post is written by John Lewis and he works at PriceCollate as a writer. You can visit pricecollate to find and compare various type of ballet flats for women at great prices.

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Forcing Google Chrome to Use a Specific Google Engine

Elyas Kashfi / June 27, 2012 / Software / Permalink

Something that I found a bit annoying with Chrome is how it somehow detects your installation location and then installs using that country as the default Google search location. For example, install from Bahrain and it will force the .com.bh engine on queries from the Omnibox (aka the address bar). If you don't care about that and just want English then you just need to click on "English" on the Arabic page. What if you want to use .com in the Omnibox? Visiting http://www.google.com/ncr (no country redirect) doesn't affect the Omnibox and for some reason, adding an engine in Chrome (plus its extra parameters), stops the Omnibox from suggesting keywords.

If you want to force whatever Google localized engine or the regular .com engine try these steps:

Google usually installs in your user's account folder, inside is a file called "Local State". The path to the file is usually: C:\Users\<User Account Name>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Local State (replace <User Account Name> with your Windows account name). I believe there is also a similar file in Linux, but I can't remember its exact path.
Edit the "Local State" file, right at the beginning of that file look for 2 lines: "last_known_google_url" and "last_prompted_google_url".
In my case, the above 2 lines contained "http://www.google.com.bh/". Just change both to whatever other Google URL you want such as "http://www.google.com/" for regular Google or, "http://www.google.co.za/" if you wish to use Zimbabwe's .
Save and restart your browser, it may prompt you the first time you search if you want to keep using the current engine or switch back. You know what to click.

Hopefully this more hard coded way of changing your Google engine in Chrome give you a permanent fix to your Omnibox Google localization issues.

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The Environmental Impact of Googling

Elyas Kashfi / May 17, 2012 / Internet / Permalink

I've always wondered: is Google a burden to the environment? Think about it, Google is an Internet services company. In order to provide us with accurate search results, amazing email, social entertainment and networking they need computers. Many, many, many computers (aka servers) that are powered on 24/7! Then comes the actual building housing these servers, Google have many around the world (here are a few "official" ones) that require not only power for servers, but for cooling, lighting, staff work etc… So every time you use some Google service (or any other service for that matter) your carbon footprint is actually a bit bigger. There is even a market for green search engines: Gigablast (green power) and Blackle (black background = lower energy) to name a few.

Like any other ethical company, especially one as large as Google, they have to run their stuff efficiently and in an energy conscience manner. If you think about it, being green does not only save the environment but also money, and money = more profits.

As a result, Google have decided to share some information about how they continue to provide great services without impacting negatively on the environment through Google Green. On the front page they state some interesting facts: they have ELIMINATED their environmental impact since 2007, their datacenters use 50% less energy, they've invested almost $1b in renewable energy and the most interesting: the impact of a business using Gmail is 80 times less than not using Gmail.

The most interesting page is the "The Big Picture" page. Did you know that the average annual carbon footprint of a Google user is only 1.46 kg of CO2? Or what about 3 days of YouTube is the same as making and delivering a DVD? Oh and you know when you threw a message in a bottle! That's about a year of Gmail (so use Gmail, its quicker and more efficient than that bottle )!

You will find much more interesting information about Google's greenness in the rest of the Google Green site. I will sure be less guilty sending an email or watching Keyboard Cat.

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Google Drive: Too Late or Innovation?

Elyas Kashfi / May 14, 2012 / Android, Internet, Review, Software, Technology / Permalink

It has been a few weeks since Google launched their new service, Google Drive and I decided to give it a try. I actually found out about it a week after it was launched. The signup process is painless if you already have a Google account since all you need to do is sign in. At the time I signed up however, the signup was not immediate and it told me that the service was not widely available yet but I would receive an email once I get "invited". A day later I checked my email and it confirmed that I could now use Google Drive, not as bad as other Google services when they launched (remember Google+ ?).

It might be surprising to see Google decide to launch Google Drive these days since there are a plethora of services that basically do the same thing as Google Drive: Dropbox, SugarSync, Wuala just to name a few (check out my Wuala review here). There was a rumor going around about Google Drive for many years.since 2006 (6 years, an eternity on the Internet!). Note, Google Drive has nothing to do with GMail Drive (not officially from Google) which is a Windows application that can be used to store files on your GMail account. So is it too late for Google to be joining the online storage and sync market?

The Good Stuff About Google Drive

1. They are giving away 5 GB worth of storage for free. Other services offer considerably less, though you can earn more storage if you invite your friends to use as well. Odds are your friends are already using such services making it difficult to get storage through referrals. This is already a big plus compared to the others.

2. You can use Google Drive on a wide range of devices: Windows, Mac, Chrome OS (the OS in Chromebooks) and Android at the moment. A Linux version is coming soon (3rd reply down by Teresa Wu), so is a version for iOS for iPhones and iPads. Depending from which device you visit, Google Drive will let you know if there is an application for your OS:

3. Easier sharing and integration with other Google services. Once your Google account is Google Drive approved, you will no longer have Google Docs since it turns into Google Drive. Google are eventually going to convert Docs accounts into Drive (as shown on the Docs login page). Additionally you will have all and more of the collaboration features that were available on Docs.

4. Feature rich web interface. The interface is quite similar to GMail's default theme and you can use it to upload files AND entire folders if you need to. On some services it can be quite a pain uploading several files (you might need to do it individually) or have a folder upload feature.

5. Developers, developers, developers, developers… Google Drive has created a new ecosystem of applications for the Google Chrome browser. At the moment there are several applications in the Chrome Web Store developed by 3rd party services that allows integration between their stuff and Google Drive.

The Possibly Bad Stuff About Google Drive

1. Privacy. Google Drive shares Google's single privacy policy. Some aspects of the policy includes what they do with the data, how they can use it, who they share it with and more. It is well known that GMail emails are scanned in order to show relevant ads. Some people slam the policies while others say it is similar to those in other services. You be the judge and read the fine print.

2. Some features are missing. Other services allow you to sync multiple folders, perform scheduled backups and more. Though Google Drive is still new and we will see what comes down the road.

3. Related to privacy is encryption. The link between your computer and Google is encrypted, however the files are likely sent as it is to be stored in Google's servers. Wuala for example, encrypts data on YOUR computer before being sent for storage on their servers, making it impossible for them to decrypt the data, unless you give them your password.

4. Loss of data control. When you store data on your computer you know exactly where it is, on your drive. Once you start using cloud based storage you basically no longer know where your data may be stored. Remember that Google have many data centers spread across the world. Is your data in the US or India now? Does Google need to disclose data in those countries?

5. Due to points 1, 3 and 4 I would not store anything sensitive on Google Drive. Actually I would go as far as saying if you value the privacy of your data do not store it online at all!

Although it may seem that Google has joined the cloud sync/backup market a bit late, I believe they have the potential (and money) to improve Google Drive's functionality and features. Time will tell.

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Six Things to Consider When Searching for a New Internet Service Provider

Guest Post / March 1, 2012 / Guest Post, Internet / Permalink

There is little doubt that several ISPs currently serve your area, with each company offering a particular type of Internet service, such as DSL, satellite Internet, mobile Internet, cable Internet or even an old-fashioned dial-up connection. Because so many options are available, you may find searching for a new Internet service provider to be overwhelming — especially if you are not particularly savvy when it comes to computers, electronics, and Internet techno-speak.

Television Advertisements May Not Reflect Your Best Reality

As a result, many folks may end up relying on flashy TV ads put out by the larger companies — in fact individuals with limited expertise frequently are drawn to these larger companies just for this reason. Oftentimes, though, it is possible to find superior service and better rates with a smaller, less well known company.

With a little bit of research, you can determine which one of the available ISPs will be able to provide the best service for your needs at the best price. But what is it you should look for when searching for the best Internet service providers?

Here are six important things to consider when you’re searching for a new Internet service provider:

Availability of Service. If you live in a major city, availability will not be a problem. If you live in a rural area, however, your choices may be limited. Obviously, before you can make a choice, you need to size up all of the available ISPs that serve your geographical location.

Connection speed. It is quite common among ISPs for each company to advertise that they alone offer the fastest Internet connection speeds. Here is the truth of the matter: Companies that offer the fastest speeds must have up-to-date equipment. When an ISP routinely keeps its equipment updated this is a major plus. Keeping current assures not only consistently faster connection speeds, but also provides customers with the latest Internet technology.

Customer Service. Do the necessary research to find out which ISPs in your area give the best customer service. This should include response time to technical problems as well as billing problems. Find out if the support they provide is available on the phone (which most folks prefer) or if it is done strictly via email or live chat.

Modem Ratio. If you are looking for a high-speed Internet connection 24 hours a day, it’s important to know if there will be a lot of other users who will be “sharing” your connection. For instance, when you are on a cable or DSL connection your speed will be faster during non-peak hours than it will be during peak hours. Why? Because during peak hours many other users will be sharing your bandwidth. The less people downstream, the faster your connection will consistently remain. Remember, though, that not all users are online at the same time.

Price. Generally speaking, most Internet service providers offer pricing that is structured upon the features you select. Usually the higher the connection speed, the higher the cost. If you choose a package with lots of bells and whistles, you will end up paying for them. When choosing a package make certain that you select only the options you need and will use. In this way you can find the best value for your individual circumstances.

Website Provisions. Something many people don’t consider when selecting an ISP is a personal website. If you plan to open a website, and especially multiple sites, find out from your ISP if they offer web hosting and technical support. You may find that these services are offered without additional charge. if so, it can result in a substantial savings when compared to using an outside hosting company.

This article has hopefully given you some food-for-thought if you are searching for the best Internet service providers. The six points above should help you in making your selection. The key is to choose the company that provides you with the connection speed you need and the services you want — all at a fair price.

Guest blogger Bob Brownell enjoys writing about technology, especially in the area of Google fiber optic internet.

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Topic Specific Search Engines

Elyas Kashfi / February 16, 2012 / Internet, Technology / Permalink

The search engine has been around for more than 20 years. Since then many have come, gone or lost popularity. Today the king of all engines is the big G or Google. It has become so popular that we no longer say "search it" but instead opt for "Google it". There are many people that are no longer entering URLs directly in their browser's address bar, but rather searching for it and hitting the first result!

Google is a very powerful engine, no question about it. You can search for pages, images, news, videos, locations, locations, books, patents, products, applications, discussions, academic journals and more, all from a single page. You can even convert between currencies or use it as a calculator!

Google isn't everything, there are alternative engines (here is one I reviewed called DuckDuckGo) that may not be as big as Google, but rather cover a certain topic or specialty. Here are some I found (and used):

Traditional Search Engines

DuckDuckGo: A competitor to the other popular engines out there such as Google, Bing, Yahoo! etc… The difference is that they do not collect information on your searches like the others. Offers better privacy and no bubbling (basing results on your previous searches).

Metasearch Engines (looks up multiple engines)

Dogpile: I once used this engine many years ago. It searches on Google, Bing and Yahoo! Next to the URL of each result, it mentions from where it pulled the result.

Health and Medical Stuff

WebMD: You can search for the disease you are suffering from, or by symptoms if you don't know what's wrong. It looks more like a portal rather than engine, with links on the home page itself. You can also find doctors (US only), drugs (the medical kind…) and health tools.

Blogs

Technorati: This one is one of the best blog search engines (apart from Google blog search) that has been around for quite some time. You can search or just surf through the links to search for blogs by category or tags and so on.

DIYs / Tutorials

eHow: This one constantly comes up on search results that may be related to a tutorial of some kind. You get an article written by a contributor on how to do something.
wikiHow: Similar to eHow and also one that pops up regularly on results page of engines. Here is a dangerous article!

Computational Knowledge Engines

WolframAlpha: I believe it is the best engine publicly available in this category. Unlike regular engines it will usually come up with a single result for queries. You do not exactly enter a question or a bunch of keywords. Rather ask it what you want to know, try these keywords for example: pi, blue+yellow or any of these hundreds of examples they have.

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Effects of SOPA on non-Americans

Elyas Kashfi / February 6, 2012 / Internet / Permalink

Few weeks ago, after small and major web sites blacked out in protest of SOPA, the US congress decided to pause it. Note, they did not throw it out completely but until they can come up with changes to make it pass. So the battle is not exactly over, even though the Internet won the first round. Those outside the US may think that American law does not affect them, but in reality it does, directly and indirectly. The latest victim was the file upload service Megaupload that was used both legitimately and illegitimately by users. The owner lived in New Zealand, had servers in many locations including places that were considered to be "safe" such as the Netherlands. They were also incorporated in Hong Kong. If you visit Megaupload (and its associated services) you will come across the following on its page (known as an ICE take down):

So how does SOPA affect those outside of US jurisdiction?

If it does pass in the US, what prevents it from spreading to other countries? DMCA take downs are even enforced by hosting providers outside the US with no business ties in the US.
People will stop being creative. No more video, music and images sharing to name a few. The mentality will be "if it looks illegal it probably is" even though it might be completely original content that publishers are willing to share.
A large portion of services used in the US are used by those outside. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit and much, much more.
Do you have a website? There is a chance you are hosting it on an American web hosting company. Something you put on that is not illegal in your country, might be in the US. This blog is hosted in the UK, but the company providing the service is incorporated in the US, thus coming under US jurisdiction.
Do you own a domain operated by a US entity? .com and .net are run by Verisign (a US based company), .org is US based as well. Look at what the Department of Justice did to Megaupload's page. All it takes is a change in the nameservers.
If you use something like PayPal to receive payments, you may have your account suspended and frozen. Even if you were selling stuff legal in your country or region.
Search engines could start censoring results. Google provide search results based on location, but come under US laws, so they may not show you results to services legal in your country but illegal in the US.

This is by far not an exhaustive list. The list goes on and on and on. So in case SOPA comes up again, think how it might affect you living outside the US. Every little bit of support helps.

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Duck Duck Go a Google Contender?

Elyas Kashfi / January 22, 2012 / Internet, Review, Technology / Permalink

On my quest to find a good Linux OS I decided to give Linux Mint one more try. One thing I noticed when I fired up Firefox was that the default engine was not Google (the usual with FF) but one I haven't heard called Duck Duck Go. I ended up ignoring it since I use Google Chrome as my web browser.

As I was going through the Mint blog, I came across this post. Explaining the partnership between Linux Mint and Duck Duck Go. In it a few advantages are mentioned of using DDG: they don't track you searches and they do not do something called bubbling (personalizing results based on previous searches, locations, sites visited etc…). They even have a website for each of these features donttrack.us and dontbubble.us. They also source their results from multiple engines and resources (over 50 according to them) in addition to their own crawler.

I decided to set DDG as my default engine in Chrome and give them a try for the rest of the day. The results are most of the time good (note I haven't said very good or excellent). Given it's relatively new compared to Google (only few years vs. more than a decade) there is still some room for improvement. They seem to have figured that might be the case and as a result added some short codes to redirect your query to one of your other preferred engines. For example, if you want to search for "tech blogs" on DDG and would rather have Google's result your search query would look like "!g tech blogs". They have a complete list of !Bang codes here.

Results are loaded as a single page rather than multiple pages like Google. Sponsored links are, in my opinion, much more clearly marked. They also have an interesting feature called a "0-click box", which is basically a box at the top of the results page with what they think is useful information related to your query.

Is Duck Duck Go going to take over Google soon? Unlikely, but they are an adversary that the big G needs to consider (remember even Google was a startup), even though all they offer right now is search.

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Google Maps LOTR Easter Egg

Elyas Kashfi / December 22, 2011 / Internet / Permalink

Google are well known for the doodles they place on special occassions, funny April fool's pranks (TiSP – Toilet ISP anyone, which is actually used these days) and easter eggs (type in "let it snow" in Google and see what happens). I just happened to come across another neat easter egg (through WHT) in Google Maps.

1. Visit Google Maps: http://maps.google.com

2. Click on "Get directions".

3. Choose walking, it's the human walking button, right above location A.

4. In location A, type in: "The Shire".

5. In location B, type in: "Mordor".

6. Click "GET DIRECTIONS".

7. Notice the warning ?

If you didn't notice, the warning is: