'Red' letter day: India's Mars mission crosses halfway mark

Bangalore: Mangalyaan, India's maiden mission to Mars, crossed the halfway mark of its incredible journey today morning at 9.50 am.

Mangalyaan (Mars craft), which was launched on November 5, 2013 from the Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh, has travelled nearly 337.5 million km till now.

It is expected to rendezvous with the Red Planet on September 24, 2014, when it will become the farthest any Indian object has ever travelled.

At Rs. 450 crore, India's Mars mission is the cheapest inter planetary mission ever undertaken.

Mangalyaan aims to look for signs of life on Mars. It also aspires to fulfill India's covert desire to beat China in the race to the Red Planet.

The mission seems to be on track thanks to the nature of planetary forces and the precise orbit injection by the Indian Space Research Organisation.

A team comprising nearly 500 ISRO scientists had worked tirelessly to ensure that Mangalyaan was ready for its launch within a record 15 months.

Of the 51 missions to Mars launched from across the world till date, 27 have failed so far.

If Mangalyaan manages to reach Mars, India will become the first country to achieve the enviable feat on a spacecraft 's maiden flight.

Till date, only the United States, Russia and the European Space Agency have successfully managed to send a spacecraft all the way to Mars.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had announced the Centre's decision to undertake a mission to Mars during his speech at the Red Fort on August 15, 2012.

From simply being an ambitious idea by the Indian government to an actual inter planetary mission that has crossed its halfway mark, it has been quite a remarkable journey for Mangalyaan.

Microsoft rolls out Update 1 for Windows 8.1: Features improved app management, boot to Desktop, IE11

Windows 8.1 update 1 have been officially released by Microsoft and is now available for download from the official site. The company has made it mandatory for the Windows 8.1 users to install the Update 1 pack on their systems. This update comes just a day after Windows XP support was ended by the company.



This is the first update for Windows 8.1 OS, which was released late last year. The post from company’s official blog says, “Failure to install this Update will prevent Windows Update from patching your system with any future updates starting with Updates released in May 2014.” Most of these updates are aimed at making the operating system more user friendly for those who still prefer using a keyboard and mouse.



Windows 8.1 already have undergone changes prior these latest updates from Microsoft. These updates are a result of the user feedback that Microsoft claims to have paid heed to. It is no secret that the latest Windows 8.1 can be quite intimidating for any first time user. It is altogether a new ball game and has quite a steep learning curve. This is eventually ended up causing frustration and costing precious time.



Now users have the option of choosing which interface to boot into. You can pick between the traditional Desktop mode or the Windows 8 Start Screen. You can even open Windows 8 apps on the desktop for a more familiar experience.



With windowed mode for Modern UI apps users can open each app in a window, and move to the next app, without the need to completely minimise the current app and going back to the desktop screen. The familiar close and minimise icons are back for Windows 8 apps as well. In addition, shutdown options are presented on the Start Screen itself. The taskbar will also be visible on the Windows 8 Start Screen.



The updates also will give you an updated Internet Explorer 11 that will be free of compatibility issues it earlier had. Now IE 11 can now be installed on Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 operating systems.

World's first 3D fingerprint developed by Indian-American scientist

A team of Michigan State University computer scientists led by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur alum Anil Jain have built the first three-dimensional model of a human fingerprint.

What Jain, a University Distinguished Professor of computer science and engineering, and his team did was develop a method that takes a two-dimensional image of a fingerprint and maps it to a 3-D finger surface.

The 3-D finger surface, complete with all the ridges and valleys that make up the human fingerprint, is made using a 3-D printer. It creates what Jain's team called a fingerprint "phantom."

"In health care, a 3-D heart or kidney can be created," Jain said. "Because the dimensions are known, they can be put into a scanner and the imaging system can be calibrated."

While the 3-D model doesn't yet have the exact texture or feel of a real finger, it could advance fingerprint sensing and matching technology.

"Tools like this would help improve the overall accuracy of fingerprint-matching systems, which eventually leads to better security in applications ranging from law enforcement to mobile phone unlock," Jain said.

Members of Jain's team include Sunpreet Arora, a computer science doctoral student, Kai Cao, a research associate in computer science and engineering and research collaborator Nick Paulter at the National Institute of Standards and Technology

Jain, who has a B.Tech degree from IIT Kanpur and MS and PhD degrees from Ohio State University, has six US patents on fingerprint matching and has written a number of books on biometrics and fingerprint/facial recognition.

Additionally, Jain has also received a number of prestigious awards for contributions to pattern recognition and biometrics.

SOURCE

Fix for Nexus 5 battery drain due to camera bug coming soon, says Google

Google has acknowledged the battery drain issue in the Nexus 5 (our review) and is about to release a fix for it soon. The company claims the drain is due to high CPU usage of the ‘mm-qcamera-daemon’ process, which allows other apps to access the camera of the phone.



Once started, the process remains in the background, even if the app has been closed, thus consuming more power than it would otherwise. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) code discussion is buzzing with complaints about the issue. “Issue 60058: mm-qcamera-daemon cpu usage” has quite a lot of posts from developers and users who have faced the battery drain and there are quite a few solutions too, though we cannot vouch for how well they will work on all devices.



Explaining the issue, AOSP member Eino-Ville Talvala said, “We believe we have fixes for the current high CPU reports on N5 (Nexus 5) due to mm-qcamera-daemon, and they will be included in the next maintenance update.”



While there’s no estimate for when the fix will arrive, Talvala said that until it arrives “rebooting the phone is the only way to stop the high CPU usage/lack of camera function once it starts.” He also touched upon the latest update for the Skype app, which seems to have exacerbated the issue. While Talvala says that Skype itself has no bug, the app seems to “access the camera regularly from its background service in some way that triggers this bug”



“Other camera-using applications may trigger this bug as well, but that’s been relatively rare. Most applications also do not access the camera when not in the foreground, so they will only trigger issues when actively used,” he added.



Some users were complaining of this issue even when using other phones that have Qualcomm processors. For this Talvala said, “Instances of high CPU use of mm-qcamera-daemon on other devices besides the N5 (Nexus 5) need to be reported to their manufacturers. While those devices also use a Qualcomm chip for their camera processing (and thus have a mm-qcamera-daemon process), each has differences in their software and issues with them do not necessarily mean the N5 has the same problem, and vice versa.”



Hopefully, all manufacturers will take note of Google’s word and roll out a fix for the issue as soon as it’s added by Google.

Source

Windows 8.1 closes in on Vista among desktop OS users

The newest version of Windows is behind Vista by just a hundredth of a percent, based on the latest stats from Net Applications.

Windows 8.1 will soon outscore Vista as the fourth most common desktop OS, according to Web tracker Net Applications.

For December, Windows 8.1 sliced off a 3.6 percent share of all desktop OS traffic recorded by Net Applications. Just a breath ahead, Windows Vista snagged a 3.61 percent share. By the time February rolls around, 8.1 will surely have outpaced the 7-year-old and much maligned Vista.

Combined, Windows 8.1 and Windows 8 snagged 10.5 percent of all desktop OS traffic in December, up from 9.3 percent in November and 9.25 percent in October. A free upgrade to Windows 8 users, Windows 8.1 debuted in June as a preview edition before officially launching in October.

Windows 7 continues to gain more users, capturing a 47.5 percent share last month, up from 46.6 percent in November. And Windows XP continues to lose more of its audience, ekeing out a 29 percent share in December, down from 31.2 percent the prior month.

The distance in Web traffic between Windows 7 and XP will likely ramp up over the next few months. Microsoft has vowed to cut off support for XP starting April 8, 2014. That means no more security patches, bug fixes, or other updates. As such, businesses and organizations have been scrambling to upgrade from XP before the deadline arrives.

Who 'invented' the sound bar speaker?

Back in the day, budget-priced 5.1-channel home theater-in-a-box systems ruled, but that was before sound bars totally obliterated that product category.

The classic home theater setup -- with front left, center, and right, surround speakers, and a subwoofer -- was the de facto sound standard. High-end home theater buyers still use multichannel systems, but the multichannel home theater-in-a-box system is almost dead. Up until recently, I reviewed 12 or more home theater-in-a-box systems every year for CNET, but now sound bars are the most popular solution.

Altec-Lansing introduced the very first sound bar/subwoofer system -- the Voice of the Digital Theatre -- in 1998. Even today, it still looks like a fully contemporary design, but as far as I can tell, Altec didn't follow up with other models. I recently chatted with Zvox founder Tom Hannaher about the history of the category, and he recalled the Cambridge SoundWorks TVWorks 250 'bar from the late '90s, but that one also flopped.

SoundMatters introduced the MainStage in 2003, and when I reviewed it I wasn't terribly impressed with its sound. Another company, Niro, made a few 'bars starting in 2003. They were very expensive and sounded pretty good, but Niro dropped out of sight after a few years.

Home theater-in-a-box systems were big sellers, so the market wasn't ready for a single speaker solution in the early 2000s. A lot of HTIB owners of the era lined up their five tiny satellite speakers in a row, making do-it-yourself sound bars!

The first 'bar to eventually catch on was the $199 Zvox 315, and in 2003 that speaker sounded amazing. It was a breeze to hook up; bass power was so good a sub wasn't required; and dialogue intelligibility was excellent. Sales were slow, so Hannaher's startup faced rough times early on. But since he was the company's only employee, and he wasn't drawing a salary, Zvox stayed the course. Looking back, you might wonder why it was so hard -- all of the 5.1 channel HTIBs came with a bunch of wires, and hooking up those systems was always a time-consuming ordeal.

Zvox went on to introduce a range of sound bars that were favorably reviewed here at CNET and elsewhere. Zvox is still in the game, and still making superb 'bars.

In retrospect, it looks like it was Zvox's winning combination of easy setup and excellent sound that separated its speakers from the competition's. I'm amazed that, even today, most TV buyers put up with the lousy speakers built into their sets. And thanks to the market's insatiable appetite for ever skinnier TVs, their built-in speakers are worse than ever. Apparently buyers never choose TVs based on sound quality, so manufacturers have zero incentive to make better-sounding displays.

I'll credit Altec with inventing the sound bar, but Zvox was the first to perfect it. If you have memories of early sound bar systems, share them in the comments section.

RIP Symbian! Nokia ends support for apps, updates

Months after selling its mobile business to Microsoft, Nokia has officially ended support for Symbian and MeeGo apps. The Finnish company has abandoned the two home-grown mobile operating systems in favour of Microsoft's Windows Phone.

The Symbian Signed Team announced the end of support for Symbian and MeeGo apps via Twitter. The tweet said, "That was it; we are officially closed. Thank you all for the past years!"

Following the agreement with Microsoft in October, Nokia had posted on its developer blog that Symbian and MeeGo content in Nokia Store will remain available for download to customers and developers would continue to receive download and revenue reports and payouts for downloaded content. However, developers would no longer be able to publish new content or update existing content for Symbian and MeeGo operating systems from January 1, 2014.

Nokia had said that it had decided to focus its support and investment in new content towards Asha, the company's feature phone platform, and Windows Phone.

With this move, Nokia has finally bid farewell to its old software platforms.