Google opens world's first 'pop-up' store in London

Google, the world's most popular search engine, has opened its first small 'pop-up' store in London.
The 'Chromezone' is a shop within a branch of Currys and PC World on London's Tottenham Court Road, and is being used by Google to trial a new way of selling its own 'Chromebook' laptops, The Telegraph reports.
Earlier these laptops were only available online, but Google now believes its consumers will benefit from being shown the product in real life.
"Specially trained Chromebook experts will be on hand to offer guidance and advice to shoppers", the company said in a statement.
According to the paper, the launch was low key compared to Apple's massively hyped opening of its first London shop in 2004, but the search giant has claimed that it will experiment with the format and could open more retail outlets in the future.

Forget 3G , 5G is round the corner

The days of waiting for smartphones to upload video may be numbered thanks to Rice University researchers who have invented a new "full-duplex" technology allows wireless devices like phones and tablets to both "talk" and "listen" to wireless cell towers on the same frequency something that requires two frequencies today.

"Our solution requires minimal hardware, both for mobile devices and networks, which is why we've attracted the attention of every wireless company in the world," said Ashutosh Sabharwal, a professor at Rice. "I expect people may see this when carriers upgrade to 4.5G or5G in just a few years."

Sabharwal along with Achaleshwar Sahai and Gaurav Patel have set records with a signal quality at least 10 times better than any other. "We've shown that we can add full duplex as an additional mode on existing hardware. Device makers love this because real estate inside a phone is at a premium, and it means they don't have to add new hardware that only supports full duplex," Sabharwal said.

How is full-duplex possible?
To explain why full-duplex was long thought impossible for wireless networks, Sabharwal uses the analogy of two people standing far apart inside an otherwise empty arena. If each shouts to the other at the same time, neither can hear what the other is saying.

The easy solution is to have only one person speak at a time, and that's what happens on two-way radios where only one person may speak at a given time. Phones achieve two-way speech by using two different frequencies to send and listen.

Rice's team overcame the full-duplex hurdle by employing an extra antenna and some computing tricks. In the shouting analogy, the result is that the shouter cannot hear himself, and therefore hears the only other sound in the arena - the person shouting from far away.

"We use antenna tech called MIMO, which are common in today's devices," Sabharwal said. "MIMO stands for 'multiple-input multiple-output' and it uses several antennas to improve overall performance. We took advantage of the multiple antennas for our scheme, which is the main reason why all wireless carriers are very comfortable with our tech."

Hidden dangers of Facebook

Over the last few years, Facebook's growth has been phenomenal. The world's no. 1 social networking site also sometime back beat Google to become the most visited Web site in the US for an entire week at a stretch. However, the site has also lately being receiving lot of flak for its privacy policies.
An expert in online privacy drew attention to the five dangers of sharing information on social networking site Facebook. Joan Goodchild, senior editor of CSO (Chief Security Officer) Online, said that marketing efforts by the company often results in a compromise on account holders' privacy.
Goodchild noted five risks of using Facebook. They are:
1. According to Facebook policy last updated on April 2010, "When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends' names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. ... The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to "everyone." ... Because it takes two to connect, your privacy settings only control who can see the connection on your profile page. If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection."
2. In March, private e-mail according to a Gawker report, private email addresses that many Facebook users wanted to keep hidden were revealed publicly on a multitude of Facebook profiles. The glitch was later resolved by Facebook.
3. Recently, a Facebook event invitation was reportedly sent to some over 2,300 friends of Jim Breyer, Accel Partners venture capitalist who sits on Facebook's board of directors, asking "Would you like a Facebook phone number?" However, the message was actually a scam and the users who entered their passwords in response to the message in turn sent the whole thing to their friends lists too.
"This was a phishing scam and Jim's account appears to have been compromised," read a statement from Facebook as provided to venture industry news site PEHub.
4. On May 6th, the popular social network patched a major security bug that allowed users to snoop on their friends' private chats, and view their pending friend requests. The exploit forced Facebook to temporarily disable chat.
5. Earlier this week, 15 privacy and consumer protection organizations filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that the site manipulates privacy settings to make users' personal information available for commercial use.

falling character code in c

#include<stdio.h>
#include<conio.h>
#include<dos.h>
#include<string.h>
void main()
{
         int i,j,l,t;
         char y[20];
         clrscr();
         printf("Enter a string\n");
         gets(y);
         l=strlen(y);
         t=1;
         for(j=0;j<l;j++,t++)
         {
          for(i=3;i<=24;i++)
          {
           clrscr();
           puts(y);
           gotoxy(t,i);
           printf("%c",y[j]);
           delay(100);
          }
         }
         clrscr();
         getch();
}

See, what hackers eyeing now

Hackers have broken into the cellphones of celebrities like Scarlett Johansson and Prince William. But what about the rest of us, who might not have particularly salacious photos or voice messages stored in our phones, but nonetheless have e-mails , credit card numbers and records of our locations?

Android app 'Is your son gay' creates controversy

Popular search engine Google has landed in a soup after launching a smartphone app that helps parents determine their son's sexuality.

The Android program 'Is Your Son Gay?' has recently hit the market and has outraged gay-rights groups, with one brandishing the app 'ridiculous and horrifying'.

The controversial app asks parents 20 questions, including 'does he like to dress well?', 'does he like football?', 'does he like musical comedies?' and 'does he like Madonna?' to help them discover the sexuality of their son.

Once the quiz is completed parents receive one of two answers- 'You have nothing to worry about, your son is not gay.' Or it informs parents: 'Your son is gay. Accept it and know it's not his choice.'

Meanwhile, the French developer of the app insisted that the concept was meant to be a humorous approach towards helping moms accept their sons' homosexuality.

However, Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Educational Network in the U.S., has denounced the app.

"The questions in this app are horrendous stereotypes that would be completely laughable if they weren't so dangerous," the Daily Mail quoted her as telling CBS New York.

"The implication, one, is that there is one way to be if you're gay and, two, that there's sort of blame to attach to parents," she added.