Google to Launch Its Operating System Next Week

By: Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

A while ago, the Internet world talked about a potential GooglePhone, especially created to fight with the Apple iPhone. At that time, the Mountain View company avoided commenting on the speculation; the only thing mentioned was that Google will remain a software firm and not a hardware one. So no GooglePhone; but in the meantime, the search giant released several new mobile flavors of its products. Take the example of Gmail, Google Search, YouTube, Google Calendar. Now, what do you understand from this: Google remains a software company, but it develops mobile versions of its products? That’s right, Google wants to conquer the mobile software industry but how else can you do it if not through a mobile operating system?

The most recent rumors sustain that the Mountain View company prepares a mobile operating system that is scheduled to be released very soon, maybe sometimes next week. The folks from Engadget claim that it might be entirely based on a Linux platform, because several Googlers are quite experienced in this domain. “At Google, Andy’s team has developed a Linux-based mobile device OS (no surprise) which they’re currently shopping around to handset makers and carriers on the premise of providing a flexible, customizable system — with really great Google integration, of course,” Ryan Block from Engadget wrote.

Obviously, the entire operating system would be bundled with Google’s technologies such as search, YouTube or Gmail. Actually, I think it would probably contain all sorts of shortcuts to allow the handheld owner to access the Google services in a matter of seconds if an Internet connection is available.

But the main question is: which mobile companies will implement the operating system into their devices? As you might know, Google signed deals with some famous phone producers such as Samsung, but there is no evidence that the Mountain View company might bring the OS on their devices. In fact, the entire operating system might be only pure speculation

Source: Softpedia

Computer Intelligence Will Outpace the Human Brain By 2030

 By: Bogdan Botezatu, Hardware Editor

The computers will become more intelligent than the human beings within the next 20 years, if the computer industry keeps up with the actual progress. Scientific futurologists claim that the next 50 years will bring 32 times more technical progress than the entire 20th century.

One of the most important achievements of the next 20 years will be artificial intelligence that will reach the human capacities. American computer guru Ray Kurzweil claims that the machines will rapidly become more intelligent than humans. The apocalyptic scenarios are out of discussion, and Dr. Kurzweil claims that their intelligence will be put to work in order to solve some of the most challenging problems of the 21st century.

Kurzweil is one of the computing pioneers that could be called a technology prophet. He is deeply related to multiple fields of computing, such as optical character recognition, optical storage and automatic speech recognition. The future he described is made of machines that are able to learn how to communicate, teach and replicate among themselves.

“The paradigm shift rate is now doubling every decade, so the next half century will see 32 times more technical progress than the last half century. Computation, communication, biological technologies – for example, DNA sequencing – brain scanning, knowledge of the human brain, and human knowledge in general are all accelerating at an ever-faster pace, generally doubling price-performance, capacity and bandwidth every year,” Kurzweil claimed.

While modern computing is based on two-dimensional chips built out of silicon. However, researcher are looking for viable alternatives that would allow them to achieve chips using biological molecules, as they are able to get miniaturized way beyond the metal-based processors.

“Three-dimensional, molecular computing will provide the hardware for human-level ’strong artificial intelligence’ by the 2020s. The more important software insights will be gained in part from the reverse engineering of the human brain, a process well under way. Already, two dozen regions of the human brain have been modelled and simulated,” he said.
It is true that the human brain cannot be compared to a, say, storage server, because it can not match the machine in memory speed and capacity, but it has the unique abilities of associating and interconnected pieces of information, to perform estimations and plan.

“Once non-biological intelligence matches the range and subtlety of human intelligence, it will necessarily soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge,” Dr Kurzweil said.

Source: Softpedia

AMD Starts Shipping Its Tri-Core Toliman Processors

By: Bogdan Botezatu, Hardware Editor

AMD has just started shipping its latest processor offering, comprised of triple-core Phenom processors, also known as Tolimans. At the moment, the chip manufacturer is only shipping the chips to OEM vendors and system integrators, but they are not available through AMD’s retail channels yet.

The chips are 65-nanometer processors that will power AM2+ motherboards supporting HyperTransport 3. They will be included in the Phenom X3 product family, comprised of quad-core chips that come with one of the cores disabled.

The chips are alleged to come with 2MB of L3 cache, but the chip manufacturer declined to offer further details about the processors’ technical specifications. However, top-tier PC vendors including Dell and Hewlett-Packard have already announced tri-core Phenom-powered computing systems.

For instance, Dell has listed the technical specifications of its OptiPlex 740 business desktop systems, that will come with a tri-core CPU featuring 1.5 MB of L2 cache and 2MB of shared L3 cache. Dell’s tri-core update to the OptiPlex 740 family will start shipping during the second quarter of the year.

Hewlett-Packard is currently working on a desktop system powered by the Phenom 8600B tri-core processor that is alleged to reach core frequencies of 2.3 GHz. The 8600B chip will also feature 1.5 MB of L2 cache and 2MB of shared L3 cache.

UK-based PC vendor Mesh Computer has already unveiled its tri-core CPU-powered desktop systems. Both the Matrix XXX Plus and the Matrix XXX Pro computer models are built around the same AMD’s Phenom 8600 tri-core processor.

Advanced Micro devices is touting its new tri-core offering as being a better choice than dual-core chips, as the third core will bring additional horsepower in performing mundane, yet CPU cycles-consuming tasks, such as antivirus scanning. However, there are a few problems that need AMD’s attention. First of all, the tri-cores will be built on the already buggy B2 silicon stepping, that will require a BIOS patch in order to work normally. This means that the chip will lose 15 percent of its computing power to ensure its stability.

Previous rumors claim that the three-core processors will be available to OEM vendors only, so it’s going to be a long time until you see boxed versions of the Phenom 8400 running at 2.3GHz and the 8600 running at 2.3 GHz.

Source: Softpedia

Microsoft Windows Mobile 7.0 Preview or Simple Mockup

By: Cosmin Vasile, Communications News Editor

This article is based on a leaked concept, posted by Natahan Weinberg on blognewschannel, although we’re not sure if it’s a fake or Microsoft’s future Windows Mobile 7 will actually include at least some of the features described below. With the iPhone seriously taking the lead on the mobile market, Microsoft intends to ‘clone’ all Apple’s new techs included in their handset, then improve it and add even more of these. That’s no news as both companies, Apple and Microsoft, ‘borrowed’ some of their innovations from one another. How much utility and functionality will bring the new Windows Mobile 7.0, and how fast and stable will it be? These questions will get their answers no later than the next year (2009), when Microsoft intends to launch the 7th sequel of its operating system. Unfortunately, the upcoming version 6.1 that will be officially launched next month is almost an updated version of the 6.0, thus it doesn’t come up with any real changes.

Anyway, what’s Windows Mobile 7.0 after all? Nothing short to an entirely new reshaped operating system that will blow you mind the moment you start using it. At least, that’s what Microsoft intends to do with this new OS that will totally change the way we are using our mobile devices (less iPhone users?:). WM 7 will strongly focus on touch and motion gestures, but to a degree that will not leave too many things to add, keeping it to a certain level of simplicity, just like Apple did with iPhone’s interface. How much they will succeed remains to be seen the moment we have something official and not some photoshop-ed screenshots (even if made by Microsoft’s designers).
It seems that one of the goals of the “mockup” OS is to support devices that doesn’t feature touchscreen and stylus, but also those that feature both or those that are touchscreen dedicated (referred as ‘iPhone compete’:). The new user interface won’t be optional for old applications, but rather the applications will get support for the new interface. There’s also a promising “game mode”, that will make games ‘miss’ UI requirements and use similar movements for different actions, thus allowing user to control the game much easier than a standard application.

Microsoft took it to the next level and intends to make a research that has the size of the ‘average fingertip’ as subject, just to make touchscreen devices without a stylus more easy to control. That way users will be able to scroll up and down with no fear of doing something else. Tap drills down in a list, but some lists will have you tab once to select, once again to drill down the list. Scrollbars, corner elements, icons, title bar and status bar will all be stylized and resized, so it will be easier to tap on them. It seems that, in Windows Mobile 7, scrollbars will rather float as transparent visual elements on top of any application, rather than being part of the screen. They will only be used when necessary.

Furthermore, there will be gestures for scrolling, task and menu access, press and hold controls, list items, press and drag, and launching shortcuts. The device will be able to detect finger velocity, scrolling further if the user’s finger moves faster. Even more motion gestures will be included like those codenamed Pivot and Spinner. In a Spinner, you have a single item with left and right buttons next to it, but instead of hitting the left and right buttons, you can just swipe to change the option. The device will also ‘clone’ the locking feature of the iPhone with slider control. The same motion gestures will be able to start various applications or simply execute a wide range of commands, depending on the number of “shakes”, the track of the movement or simply by the duration of the motion. Some of these commands include: changing a song into the media player or the change of a picture in a slideshow (from left to right or vice versa). You can zoom in or zoom out a picture when in full-screen, by simply moving the device forward or backward.

There are also different motion gestures that are meant to wake up the device. How can that be possible? The new user interface will be able to recognize a specific gesture, which should be kept very simple and very easy to identify, that will wake up your phone from the ’slumber’. The difference stands in the actual transition from the sleep mode to awake mode, which looks like nothing we ever saw before coming from Microsoft.

Other highlights of the supposedly Microsoft Windows Mobile 7 include: a gesture to dismiss an on-screen notification by shaking it off the screen, a gesture to automatically take you to a Smart Search notification panel, turning the phone like turning a key to unlock it, pivoting by gesturing the phone sideways, moving through lists by shaking the phone up or down, switching the camera into black and white or other modes by shaking it down, adjusting the camera aperture and shutter speed by rotating the camera, sending a file by “tossing” it to another device. These seem to be listed as “exploration” by the leaked document, so they may or may not be actually integrated in the final version of the operating system.

For more in-depth coverage of the subject please see Nathan Weinberg’s original post on blognewschannel. Source: Softpedia

GNOME 2.22: A Truly Amazing Desktop!

 

Every six months, the GNOME team prepares a new and revolutionary release of the ever popular GNOME desktop environment. Today, we are proud to introduce you to the latest and greatest features of an 100% FREE and open source desktop. Whether you are on a Solaris machine or the latest Ubuntu distribution, GNOME is there and with every new release it makes your life… Simply Beautiful!

Let’s have a look at the new features of GNOME 2.22:

The Cheese software – a brand new application designed to “take care” of your webcam. It allows you to make photos and record videos using your little… webcam! Say… cheese!

image courtesy of the GNOME Project

Window Compositing – a brand new technology introduced in GNOME 2.22, which will offer drop shadows on windows, live previews when hitting the Alt+Tab key combination and some very nice transparency effect. All this, without Compiz!
DVD or DVB? – why not both?! Because, starting with the 2.22 edition of the GNOME desktop, Totem will have improved support for DVD playback and digital television (DVB). Moreover, support for the popular MythTV and the Youtube service is also present in GNOME’s Movie Player.

GVFS – this new network-transparent virtual filesystem layer for GTK+ is here to make your desktop sessions much pleasant. How? Why? Well, for example: do you remember that simple file transfer/copy/move window that appears (yes! the one with the progress bar and remaining time)… well, because of GVFS, it’s now able to show you more than a progress bar! It can also remember the login credentials and be more resilient to failures! But wait, that’s not all, as with this technology, all GNOME users will have access to new protocols, such as: cdda:// (used to show the audio tracks of an inserted Audio-CD), gphoto2:// (used to access a connected digital camera’s photos).

International Clock – a new function “injected” into the clock applet, which can display multiple timezones from around the world!

image courtesy of the GNOME Project

More Evolution Improvements – with the amazing Google Calendar support and custom message labels (tagging) for your emails, better spam filtering and making error dialogs less intrusive on your desktop session by using the status bar rather than popups!

image courtesy of the GNOME Project

Remote Desktop Viewer – yet another new application that can be found in the 2.22 edition of the GNOME desktop. It complements the existing remote desktop server support and has the ability to discover computers on your LAN (local area network) and bookmark them! Isn’t that cool?

image courtesy of the GNOME Project

Simplified Keyboard Settings – with the redesigned “Keyboard Preferences” window, which now combines the old “Keyboard Layout” and “Keyboard Accessibility Preferences” dialogs. All the keyboard settings in one place… yeah baby!

image courtesy of the GNOME Project

Other noticeable features that can be found in GNOME 2.22 are:

• magnification and screenreading improvements;
• new mouse accessibility features;
• PolicyKit integration;
• better system tools;
• you are now able to directly open Evolution contacts in Deskbar;
• Gedit, the GNOME’s text editor receives printing improvements;
• The Chess game has now network multiplayer support;
• Epiphany brings you download notifications;
• The Archive Manager tool received LZMA (7-zip) support;
• inhibit automatic hibernation and suspend while burning CDs;
• Evince, the document viewer, is now much faster, uses less memory and it’s able to support page transitions in PDF slideshows;
• Tomboy is able to organize your notes into notebooks from now on;
• Sound Juicer supports more metadata, including disc number and year;
• extensive improvements to Calculator’s precision and usability;
• Seahorse is the new sheriff in town, as it completely replaced Keyring Manager.

Source: Softpedia