Hi Guys, we always talk about the tallest towers and buildings, but here's a tower that will change the trend....The World's First INVISIBLE Tower. Korean architectural studio GDS Architects has recieved the green light for its award winning 450 meter(1,476 ft) high Tower Infinity design. To be built just outside of Seoul, Tower Infinity will become the "world's first invisible tower" and third highest observation deck.

Tower Infinity's "invisible" facade will be equipped with an elaborate LED system(500 rows of LED screen) and 18 weather proof optical HD cameras which will acquire real time images and these images will be processed and be projected by the LED system, giving the pedestrians and passerby(from certain vantage points) the impression that the tower is invisible.With that being said, bird lovers must not fear, the architects have confirmed that the tower has been designed so as to remain visible to birds and air traffic.

The Tower will feature a number of steel support braces, while also being divided into 28 meter(92 ft) long triangular modules. The final result is a magnificent 453 high striking angular diamond shaped tower. GDS Architects original competition entry also included room for photovoltaic cells, a wind turbine and access to geothermal energy.(Firm is unable to comment on the sustainable energy features).

The Tower is primarily built for entertainment and leisure purposes. Its facilities include a 4-D theater, restaurants, a water park, Sky-Walk garden, cafes and bars, plus the soaring outdoor viewing roof deck located 397 meters(1,302 ft) above the ground. When the tower's invisible cloak is turned off the projectors may be used as a huge billboard for broad casting special events and advertisements, say GDS Architects.

"Having visited several observation towers of the world, we felt an urgent need to go beyond just providing a viewing platform, but create a series of interactive kiosks, displays and simulations to create a more fulfilling experience", says Michael Collins, Director at GDS."My personal favorite is the Sky-Walk Outdoor Garden that starts at 285 meters(935 ft) and takes people through an arboretum like environment till they reach 320 meters(1,050 ft) via the elevated circular ramp."

GDS Architects were unable to make any official comment with respect to the tower's construction schedule and project budget at this time.

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Hello People, discussing about the largest things in the world one might eventually end up at talking about the largest commercial jet, Airbus A380.

But thinking about this man made bird, we must keep in mind the material that supposedly used to build its cockpit glass, and wings. Although all the models of Airbus use the aviation glass, but A380 uses a glass known as GLARE ("Glass Laminate Aluminium Reinforced Epoxy") . 

The Emirates A380

So What is GLARE?

GLARE is a "Glass Laminate Aluminium Reinforced Epoxy", composed of several very thin layers of metal (usually aluminium) interspersed with layers of glass-fibre known as "pre-preg", bonded together with a matrix such as epoxy. The uni-directional pre-preg layers may be aligned in different directions to suit the predicted stress conditions.

Although GLARE is a composite material, its material properties and fabrication are very similar to bulk aluminum metal sheets. It has far less in common with composite structures when it comes to design, manufacture, inspection or maintenance. GLARE parts are constructed and repaired using mostly conventional metal material techniques.

What is Special about this Glass?

Its major advantages over conventional aluminium are:

·         Better "damage tolerance" behaviour (especially impact and metal fatigue, as the elastic strain is larger than other metal material it can consume more impact energy. It is dented easier but has a higher penetration resistance )

·         Better corrosion resistance

·         Better fire resistance

Its a FML (Fibre Metal Laminate)

 Fibre Metal Laminate (or FML) is one of a class of metallic materials consisting of a laminate of several thin metal layers bonded with layers of composite material. This allows the material to behave much as a simple metal structure, but with considerable specific advantages regarding properties such as metal fatigue, impact, corrosion resistance, fire resistance, weight-savings and specialised strength properties.

Being a mixture of monolithic metals and composite materials, FMLs belong to the class of heterogeneous mixtures (see below).

Examples of FMLs are ARALL (Aramid fibres) and GLARE.

 For Further Information

A video by National Geographic,

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About a few weeks back an article in Times Of India (TOI) flashed, 'Bitcoin now in India'. So gazing into the details it was also told that this on line currency is earned from solving some complex math puzzle, and the transaction value being $850 for a Bitcoin. So before all that, we'll look into what exaclty a Bitcoin is.

What is Bitcoin? 

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment network and digital currency based on an open source protocol, which makes use of a public transaction log. Bitcoin was introduced in 2009 by pseudonymous developer "Satoshi Nakamoto". It is called a cryptocurrency because it uses public-key cryptography. When paying with bitcoin, no actual exchange takes place between buyer and seller. Instead, the buyer requests an update to a public transaction log, the blockchain. This master list of all transactions shows who owns what bitcoins currently and in the past and is maintained by a decentralized network that verifies and timestamps payments using a proof-of-work system. The operators of this network, known as "miners", are rewarded with transaction fees and newly minted bitcoins.

Sound's complex, eh? Well, the user friendly version is," Its simliar to bittorrent, and has the characteristics of the currency we use in daily life, except it can't be touched and felt. It can be traded similar to the real currency, and to earn it one must apply the process of "mining", or to solve the puzzle as discussed earlier."

A Cafe` in Georgia.

Alternative to national currencies?

Some have suggested that Bitcoin is gaining popularity in countries with problem-plagued national currencies, as it can be used to circumvent inflation, capital controls, and international sanctions. Bitcoins are used by some Argentinians as an alternative to the official currency, which is stymied by inflation and strict capital controls. In addition, some Iranians use bitcoins to evade currency sanctions.

Financial journalists and analysts have suggested that there was a link between higher Bitcoin usage in Spain and the 2012-2013 Cypriot financial crisis.

Criticism

Rise In Price Of Bitcoin

Bitcoin has been a subject of scrutiny due to ties with illicit activity. In 2013 the FBI shut down the Silk Road online black market and seized US$28.5 million worth of bitcoin. However, the United States is currently considered to be Bitcoin friendly compared to other governments. In China, new rules mean bitcoins cannot be exchanged for local currency, and the European Banking Authority has warned that Bitcoin lacks consumer protections. Theft of bitcoins can and does occur. Generating and storing keys offline mitigates such risk, however.

Commercial use of Bitcoin, illicit or otherwise, is currently small compared to its use by speculators, which has fueled price volatility. However, Bitcoin is also used to pay for products and services. Merchants have an incentive to accept the currency because transaction fees are lower than the 2-3% typically imposed by credit card processors. Notable vendors accepting Bitcoin include OkCupid, Reddit, WordPress, and Virgin Galactic.

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What is Google Fiber?

 Google Fiber is Google's fiber-to-the-premise service in the United States, providing broadband internet and television to a small but growing number of locations. The initial location was chosen following a competitive selection process. Over 1,100 communities applied to be the first recipient of the service. On March 30, 2011, Google announced that Kansas City, Kansas, would be the first community where the new network would be deployed. The network is being rolled out to Kansas City, Missouri, with plans underway for expansion to several other Kansas City area suburbs, as well as Austin, Texas, and Provo, Utah.

In July 2012, pricing for Google Fiber was announced. The service offers three options. These include a free broadband internet option, a 1 Gbit/s internet option for $70 per month and a version that includes television service for $120 per month. The internet service includes one terabyte of Google Drive service and the television service includes a two terabyte DVR recorder in addition to the Google Drive service. The DVR will record up to eight live television shows simultaneously. The television options also include a Nexus 7 tablet that will act as a remote control for the system. In addition, television service will also stream live program content on iPad and Android tablet computers. Neighbourhoods that receive the service will be selected based on demand.

Is it the fastest in the world?

Everybody hates wires, but if you want crazy speed, they’re the way to go. But maybe not anymore. A team of German scientists have developed record-setting Wi-Fi that cooks right along at 100 GB/s. You know, like Google Fiber but times 100.

The tech was developed by a joint team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF) and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and this isn’t their first record. They already set one for the world’s fastest Wi-Fi with a 40 GB/s connection a few months ago. These guys are legit.

Like the previous 40 GB/s tech, this new 100 GB/s version uses some super high-frequency signals (237.5GHz) that let you really pack in the data. At 100 GB/s, for instance, you can transmit a whole Blu-ray of data in two seconds flat. The catch is that high-frequency signals like this aren’t very good at going through walls like the low frequency ones your average router spits out. So you wind up with something less like a dome of coverage and something more like an invisible cable where the ends need to be able to see each other.

Previously, IAF and KIT’s tech was tested to blast data between the peaks of skyscrapers, and this new version could serve as a bad-arse, cheap, and modular framework for patching holes in fiber lines and bringing high-speed internet to places where it’s too cost prohibitive or obnoxious to lay down a ton more fiber infrastructure. Which is to say, a lot of places.

But the best part is, this record probably won’t stand for long. 

When are you getting Google fiber?

Google’s one-gigabit service made a big statement, but what’s still far from clear is who actually uses it, and for what.

I was reminded of these questions last week, when Netflix said Google Fiber customers were getting the fastest service in the nation. Then there was the number: 3.8 megabits per second. Huh?  Well, that’s a measure of the performance of Netflix streams on the network, not of what your home link is capable of doing.    Google spokesman Jenna Wandres says Netflix servers can only process streaming video at five megabits per second for high definition content. So that explains the number. But it also serves as a reminder that you only need five-megabit speeds to get high-definition Netflix (assuming nobody else in the house is using the Internet). Keep that in mind next time your carrier tries to up sell you.  How much faster does anybody really want or need? One way to answer that would be to see how many people are actually signing up for gigabit service. Google’s not saying.

Google Fiber offers two different Internet speeds—a five-megabit service (for a one-time $300 construction fee) and a one-gigabit service. Wandres said Google won’t disclose how many people are taking which. So it’s still murky. A few months ago, there was the tantalizing suggestion that a recent bump-up in speeds in the state of Kansas, as measured by Akamai, might be due to Google fiber (see “Google Fiber’s Ripple Effect”).  And as Google rolls out the service in other cities, including Austin, Texas, and Provo, Utah, there’s evidence that competitors are starting to offer better deals. All of that is good.  And it’s also a great headline-grabber for Google.

But what’s still far from clear is any of us need gigabit service, how many people are actually taking it, and whether they can do anything with it (after, say, the first 100 megabits, allowing plenty of room for multiple video streams and Wi-Fi losses inside the home).

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'Evening Guys, yesterday I was trying out some DVDs from the US and but when I tried my DVD player showed, "INVALID REGION", I tried the rest and then decided to look for a solution on the net, then I got this piece of information which helped me understand it.

DVD REGION CODE

DVD region codes are a digital rights management technique designed to allow film distributors to control aspects of a release, including content, release date, and price, according to the region.DVDs may use one code, a combination of codes (multi-region), every code (all region) or no codes (region free). The Regions are as follows: 

Code	Area
0	Informal term meaning "worldwide". Region 0 is not an official setting; discs that bear the region 0 symbol either have no flag set or have regions 1–6 flags set. Region 0 is commonly referred to as "Region Free", especially when talking about DVD and Blu-ray Disc players.
1	United States, Canada, Bermuda, Caribbean, U.S. territories
2	Europe, Middle East, Egypt, Japan, South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, Greenland, French Overseas departments and territories
3	Southeast Asia, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau
4	South America, Central America, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea and much of Oceania
5	Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Africa (except Egypt, South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho), Central Asia, Mongolia,North Korea
6	China
7	Reserved for future use, MPAA-related DVDs and "media copies" of pre-releases in Asia
8	International venues such as aircraft, cruise ships, spacecraft, etc.
ALL	Region ALL discs have all eight flags set, allowing the disc to be played in any location, on any player.

DVD REGION ON THE MAP

What is the Purpose of these Region Codes?

One, purpose is controlling release dates. A practice of movie marketing threatened by the advent of digital home video is to release a movie to cinemas, and then for general sale, later in some countries than in others. This is common partly because releasing a movie at the same time worldwide can be prohibitively expensive. Videotapes were inherently regional since formats had to match those of the encoding system used by television stations in that particular region, such as NTSC and PAL, although from early 1990s PAL machines increasingly offered NTSC playback. DVDs are less restricted in this sense, and region coding allows movie studios to better control the global release dates of DVDs.

One other purpose of region coding is to prevent release of movies that could be offensive in such regions for cultural, religious, and political reasons. Region coding helps prevent release of such films in sensitive territories.

Finally, the copyright in some titles has different owners in different territories. Region coding allows copyright holders to prevent a DVD from being purchased from a region from which they do not derive royalties.

SO, WHAT'S THE FINAL REMEDY??

There are many sites offering hacks and help to change the DVD Region of your player, like 
www.multi-region.net is an excellent site!

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Want X-­ray vision like the man of steel? A technology that lets you see behind walls could soon be built in to your cell phone.

Researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed what could become low-cost, X-ray vision. The system, known as "Wi-Vi," is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging, but rather than using high-power signals, this tech uses reflected Wi-Fi signals to track the movement of people behind walls and closed doors.

When a Wi-Fi signal is transmitted at a wall, a portion of that signal penetrates through and reflects off any humans that happen to be moving around in the other room. Since only a tiny fraction of the signal passes through the wall, with the rest being reflected, the researchers had to devise a technology that could cancel out the arbitrary reflections, and keep only those reflecting from moving human bodies.

Dina Katabi, a professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and her graduate student Fadel Adib have tuned a system that uses two transmission antennas and a single receiver. The two antennas transmit almost identical signals, except the second antenna's signal is the inverse of the first, resulting in interference.

This interference causes the signals to cancel each other out. Since any static objects that the signals hit create identical reflections, they are also cancelled out by this effect. Only the reflections that change between the two signals, like moving bodies on the other side of the wall, arrive back at the receiver, allowing the system to track the moving people.

Adib says, "So, if the person moves behind the wall, all reflections from static objects are cancelled out, and the only thing registered by the device is the moving human."

Previous attempts to see through walls in this manner have done so using an array of spaced antennas, which capture the signal reflected off of moving people in the room. Such systems, though effective, would be too cumbersome and expensive for use in a handheld device. By using just one receiver, the new system effectively measures the time it takes for signals to reflect, leading to a calculation of location.

Relying on low-cost Wi-Fi technology, the Wi-Vi system could be utilized in everything from disaster recovery to gaming. Because the device can detect action behind a wall, the system could be used as a gesture-based interface for controlling appliances or lighting.

Here’s a small video of how WiVi works:

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If you're out shopping for a computer, depending on your needs, you can pick a desktop PC, a notebook, a netbook, or even a tablet. Now, as if to complicate things further, you'll also find something known as a Chromebook-a lightweight, portable device that's been launched by Google and its hardware partners.

SO WHAT IS A CHROMEBOOK?

A Chromebook is like a netbook. It lacks an optical disc drive and is designed for use on the internet. In some ways, it's also like a tablet and comes with its own web store the carries over 30,000 apps. These are powered by the Chrome OS, developed by engineers at Google. 

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH A CHROMEBOOK?

If, you spend all your time on the internet, then the Chromebook will work for you. this device relies on cloud-based services-that is, apps on the internet- for most of common computer tasks. This means you have to carry( like, to use Docs for word processing, Pixlr Editor for image editing and so on) Google drive.

When it comes to storage, the Chromebook has only 16GB, or a 32GB solid state drive(SSD), because it relies heavily on virtual storage available on Google Drive.

WHAT CAN'T YOU DO WITH IT?

You can't use apps designed for Windows or Mac OS platform. So no browser life Firefox, no VLC, no Photoshop, no Microsoft Office. Its not a right choice to go with this machine if you are a tough gamer playing demanding 3D games like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto.

Due to its internal storage, it can't store hundreds of videos. And, it can't play DVDs. But it can play media from a pendrive or an external mass storage. MKV, FLV, WMV files may not run. Also, support of cameras and smartphones is limted.

DOES IT REQUIRE 24x7 INTERNET CONNECTION TO WORK?

Throughout the discription you might have felt that 'No internet, No Chromebook'. But that's not the case. You can access your mailbox offline, create documents using Google  Drive.You can use offline apps, and even play some games. But without net, this device has limited utility.

BOTTOMLINE?

If you're the one concerned with Boot time then this must be your foremost preference. But to run intensive apps, games and software, pick a Windows Laptop.

Specifications

• 14'' 200 nit display with 16:9 aspect ratio
• 1.85 kg, 21 mm thin
• Up to 9.5 hours of active use1
• New Intel Processor
• 100 GB Google Drive Cloud Storage2 with 16GB Solid State Drive

Bluetooth®4.0 Compatible

• Built-in dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, 3G modem (opt)
• HP TrueVision HD Webcam
• 2x USB3.0, 1x USB2.0
• Full size HDMI Port

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