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Wireless charging - the future for electric cars

It's electric, and like all battery-operated automobiles needs regular charging. "The charging is done wirelessly, you park up, turn off the key and voila... charging starts automatically," says Anthony Thomson, CEO of HaloIPT, a UK company that has installed the technology. The process uses electromagnetic induction to transfer power from a pad built into the ground to another installed in the bottom of the car. The system could be installed in a supermarket parking place, garage floor or the ground at a special charging station. When a driver parks the vehicle, the two pads line up and with a flick of a switch, the charging starts.

Katy Perry leads MTV nominations

US pop star Katy Perry leads the way at this year's MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) with nine nominations. The singer's nods include video of the year for Firework, best pop video and best special effects. British singer Adele and Kanye West picked up seven nominations apiece. Other multiple nominees included Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and Bruno Mars. The VMAs are scheduled to take place on 28 August in Los Angeles and will be broadcast live in the US. Perry, who married comedian Russell Brand last year, was also nominated for best female video, best collaboration, best art direction and best cinematography.

Texas executes 9/11 'revenge' killer

A man who embarked on a shooting spree in what he claimed was retaliation for 9/11 has been executed at a prison in Texas. The lone survivor of Mark Stroman's attack on convenience store workers in late 2001, Rais Bhuiyan, originally from Bangladesh, unsuccessfully sued to stop the execution, saying his religious beliefs as a Muslim required him to forgive the man. Stroman claimed the shooting spree that killed two men and injured a third targeted people from the Middle East, though all three victims were from south Asia. It was the death of 49-year-old Vasudev Patel, from India, that put Stroman on death row. Stroman's execution was the eighth this year in Texas.

Mac OS X Lion pounces

As promised, Apple let Mac OS X Lion out of its cage this morning. Version 10.7 of the operating system has more than 250 new features, Apple said, but an installation disc isn't one of them: it's available today for $29.99 as a 3.49GB download only. Apple enjoys pushing the computing industry into the future by dropping technology it deems to be from the past-for example floppy drives missing from the first iMac-and those who want a real-world copy of the OS will have to wait until Apple releases it on a USB thumb drive next month for $69. The Mac OS X download, available through the Mac App Store, dovetails with Apple's new MacBook Air and Mac Mini Lion-based computers. These new models are updated with Intel's modern Sandy Bridge processors and a high-speed Thunderbolt data transfer port-and none has a DVD drive for the next OS upgrade.

Google+ For iPhone Now The Top Free App In iTunes

Google+ for iPhone hit Apple's App Store a mere 24 hours ago but it's being downloaded like wildfire as it currently sitting atop the heap as the most popular free app available from iTunes. This is big news considering Google+ is still invitation-only and only has 18 million users so far, compared to Facebook's 750 million. That said, Google+ users can now upload contacts from Outlook and Mac address books (not Facebook, though), which may result in even bigger Google+ adoption numbers.

Steve Jobs dismisses rumors of his successor

Apple CEO and cancer survivor Steve Jobs is not keen on discussing speculation about who will replace him when the inevitable happens. This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company's board of directors have been discussing plans about who will take over the position that has been held by Jobs since the late 1990s, and perhaps the title that some will always bestow upon Jobs and Jobs alone, once the man is no longer able to hold the position himself. The Journal said it had credible information that the board has already been meeting with headhunters and "at least one head of a high-profile technology company."

Showing posts with label 5. Show all posts

Two concepts of iPhone 5

May 1 holiday, took some time off and gave free rein to their imagination: Jon Ive two one-day published their concept of Liquidmetal iPhone. The first, the iPhone +, was designed by Antonio de Rosa and has an iPhone 4.3 "edge to edge whose body unibody is Liquidmetal, regardless of the impact on the final invoice.

This envelope, surrounded by a chrome rim, would contain a processor quad-core Apple A6, a 10 MP camera, and a pico-projector. The designer has incorporated into his concept of the hottest rumors in recent months, as a capacitive home button and dock connector reviewed and considerably reduced.

The concept of Antoine Brieux is not so different, except that the Liquidmetal is here used to form the internal chassis, and that design is closer to the current model - and particularly classy. Only difference with the previous model: here we find no pico projector, but instead an integrated SIM card.

The designer imagines that Apple can make the same choice as Google and remove the home button in favor of a virtual button displayed on demand: applications would not necessarily need to be rewritten, since part of screen of 4.5 "would be occupied by this button. But video playback for example, it would disappear, giving way to a movie in full screen 16:9.

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Top 5 features that make Android a better choice over iOS 5

The competition between iOS 5 and Android is getting more intensed day by day. With each update and head-to-head comparison between the biggies, striking similarities as well as dissimilarities have forced millions of gadget lovers to think twice over their smartphone of choice.

Check out the top five useful features of Android that will make it a better choice over Apple's latest build of iOS.

Flexible home screen and widgets
The beauty of Android home screen and widgets is that they are flexible and can be customized according to users' needs. You can easily customize your home screen, place widgets anywhere you want, and they will give you updates on features that matter. You can use widgets for weather updates, breaking news, emails, clocks, WiFi or even media playback controls. When it comes to iOS, users can only launch apps and create folders.

Customizability
You are free to customize almost anything on your Android. You can extend or replace almost every core Android feature by third-party apps. If you want more, the Android source code is there at your service. You can take the code and customize your ROM, by installing CyanogenMod or Gingerbreak. With Android you can change your default browser to Firefox or any other browser. But in case of iOS, Safari is your only option. If you want to customize your iOS, you need to jailbreak your iOS device.

Better voice control functionality
You just speak and Android brings you what you want. Yes, Android carries voice commands. You can easily search and find with voice search through Google. While listening to music, you just have to speak the title or the artist's name and Android lets you enjoy the music. You can also load third-party music apps like Pandora with the "listen to" command. But in iOS, the voice command options are limited. The music-by-voice feature of the iPhone is only linked to the iPod app.

Flash Support
Android can play Flash games and video, and iOS can't (and never will). It supports only HTML5 web apps. With iOS embracing HTML5 web apps, questions are raised on whether Flash offers what the industry really needs. According to numerous reports, most of the performance related issues have been rectified with Flash for Android Honeycomb.

Google Account Integration
iCloud is interesting. But it's just a cloud storage service. It stores your docs, pictures and apps. With Android, you'll have the benefit of Google Account Integration. You can edit your Google Docs no matter which device you are using, it can be your smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop. You can upload music to Google Music, and stream from the cloud to your phone. You even can do a VoIP call via Google voice. But with iOS, you neither get streaming music nor VoIP.

GPS Navigation
Voice-guided GPS is a service which has been there in Android phones as a standard component since October 2009. Although iPhone has some third-party apps that offer turn-by-turn voice guidance, with Android's built-in functionality, you can easily jump in to navigate from other apps. In case of iOS, users have to manually copy and paste the address into the app they want to use.