iPhone 6 to feature solar charging sapphire glass screen Report

Apple, a tech firm best known for its innovations, after introducing a fingerprint sensor in its iPhone 5s, is rumoured to be integrating solar panels into the sapphire glass screen on its next iPhone.

Matt Margolis, an analyst writing for Seeking Alpha, expects the solar-charging sapphire glass screen to be incorporated in the Apple iPhone 6, aimed at enhancing the battery life of the handset, the problem that is plaguing all smartphones.

Margolis concludes that the Sapphire Glass screen will be embedded with solar cells in the Apples new plant placed in Arizona. To support this news, Margolis gives an account of several events and patents over the past year.

It has been mentioned that Apple filed a patent back in February 2013 which included the use of touch sensors and solar panel. The patent however, failed to mention how the technology works in detail. A follow-up patent made it clearer, mentioning that the touch screen panel included a power management system that takes power from solar panels.

The firms opening for the post of Thin Films Engineer with solar experience further confirmed the news followed by Apples new manufacturing unit opened in Arizona in partnership with mineral crystal specialist GT Advanced Technologies Inc.

Apple also announced that it would spend $10.5 billion in capital expenditures, including "cutting edge lasers" that are being speculated to be used for "scribing" the microchannels on solar cells. An order of $68 million for solar cell coating equipment from Manz AG is also being attributed to either Apple or Samsung.

A recent report by PhoneArena states that Foxconn, a major manufacturer for several Apple products, has reportedly assembled 100 iPhone prototypes including with a sapphire glass screen. The firm is said to rely on two companies for its sapphire material which are responsible in providing material for the iPhone 5s rear camera and TouchID Sensor- Synopsys and Bern Optics.

With the patents, GT Advanced Technologies partnership and Foxconn prototype rumours, Apple is quite likely to use sapphire and solar charging in its devices in future, and one can expect the next iPhone or iWatch to come with the same in or around September-October 2014.

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Share and personalize your Google Goggles experience with Goggles 1 4

Since its launch, we have worked to make Google Goggles faster and more accurate when returning search results for a wide variety of images. Today, we are taking several steps to make Goggles a better and more personal experience. Goggles 1.4 for Android devices introduces an enhanced search history experience, the ability to suggest better results to Google if we are not able to accurately match your image, and improved business card recognition.

Enhanced search history
The new search history experience lets you search your Goggles results, make personal notes on specific results and share your results with friends. When you add a personal note to a Goggles result, the note will appear in your search history. I’m trying to learn more about wine, so when I taste something new, it’s easy for me to add a note to help me remember what I liked about the wine. Later, I can search my search history for words in my note to help me find that bottle that went so well with steak. Read more about how to enable search history for Goggles here.

To make a personal note, tap the pencil in the corner when viewing a search result.

Notes are intended to help you better organize your search history, so if you choose to share a result with a friend, your notes will not be shared. However, you can always add a personalized message to your friend when you share your results with them.

Share a result by sending a link to your friends.

Suggest a better result
We are constantly working to improve the accuracy of Goggles at recognizing certain categories of items, but visual recognition is still a complicated task. With Goggles 1.4, you are now able to suggest a better result when Goggles cannot find an image match, or the quality of the result is poor.

To send your suggestion to Google, tap “Can you suggest a better result?” on the results page. You can then select the relevant part of the image and submit a tag. Tags will be used to improve recognition in object categories where Goggles already provides some results, like artwork or wine bottles.

When suggesting a better result, you can crop the image and add a description.

Improved business card recognition
Business card recognition is one of the most popular uses of Google Goggles, so were rolling out some new updates to make the experience even quicker and easier. Additionally, instead of simply recognizing the content as text, Goggles now recognizes the information as a contact, making it easier to add to your phones contact list.

Call or add the person directly as a contact

Google Goggles is available for Android 1.6+ devices. Download it by visiting Android Market or by scanning the QR code below:

Posted by Jacob Smullyan, Software Engineer

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Snapchat CTO and co founder Bobby Murphy to appear at Google Cloud Platform Live on March 25

Bobby Murphy, CTO and co-founder of Snapchat, will be joining Google Senior Vice President Urs Hölzle on stage during the keynote of Google Cloud Platform Live. Bobby will be sharing his experience building one of the world’s most popular apps on Google Cloud Platform.



Snapchat’s users share over 400 million snaps everyday.



Google Cloud Platform Live is taking place 3 weeks from today. Bobby will be joining a great line up of other speakers, including Google Senior Fellow Jeff Dean. We’ll announce new features, take a deep dive on tips, tricks and technology, and share our vision for the future of cloud computing.



We are nearly at capacity in all our locations, but for people who are still interested in attending you can request an invitation to join us in-person in San Francisco or attend a livestream of the keynote at Google New York City, Google Seattle or Google London. And for those who can’t make it in person, you can always tune in online.



-Posted by Greg DeMichillie, Director

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Workday plans analytics push as PRISM fails to stop cloud use

The chief technology officer (CTO) of HR cloud provider Workday has said many IT chiefs appear unconcerned by government snooping and still see the cloud as vital to their enterprise software needs.
Speaking to V3, Annrai O’Toole said that while the PRISM revelations have certainly put data security and privacy back in the spotlight, it has not changed the market for most IT chiefs – a sentiment echoed by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff earlier this week.

“I don’t get the sense that CIOs are concerned about governments snooping on their data,” he said. “I think people are more concerned with making sure that they do things to make it very difficult for people, whoever they are, to look at their data.”

On this point, O’Toole said the global nature of data security and protection means many firms still see a dedicated cloud provider as a better means of keeping data secure.

“It doesn’t change what you need to worry about. If you have all your information on premise but it can be accessed across the world, then you’re into all sorts of data-protection regulations and making sure you apply the right policies,” he said.

“I think more and more people are realising they have these issues and vendors like Workday can do a good job as we put a lot of investment into being up to date with these regulations.”

As part of the ongoing push around its products and providing benefits to customers, the IT chief said pushing more analytical capabilities into Workday is high on the agenda for the next year.

"I think a big part of the whole cloud story is analytics. For me cloud itself isn’t so important, it’s the outcomes that it engenders. These are driven by analytics, which is allied to cloud computing, but it’s much bigger,’ he said.

Read the rest of this post --->

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App Engine and IPv6 Round 2

Back in March, we announced that all App Engine apps hosted on appspot.com would be reachable over IPv6, from ISPs enrolled in the Google over IPv6 program.

Today, were adding the same service to all domains hosted by ghs.google.com. If your App Engine app runs on your own domain name using Google Apps, then be sure to review our earlier blog post, which discusses the caveats of parsing client IP addresses, and how to use the SixXS Gateway to test your site over IPv6.

Currently, the Google over IPv6 program presents AAAA records only to ISPs within our whitelist. This helps ensure that our services remain reliable, by reducing exposure to clients with broken IPv6 connectivity. As the maturity of IPv6 deployment improves, we expect this whitelist to grow, eventually disappearing as it encompasses the entire Internet.

That said, we know that some of you are fans of IPv6 who would prefer to skip the whitelist, and offer dual-stack service to everyone immediately. To make your domain bypass the whitelist, just change your CNAME pointer from ghs.google.com to ghs46.google.com. Please note that, while ghs46 will cause your App Engine site to receive a larger fraction of its traffic over IPv6, our studies show that it may make your site slow or unreachable for up to 0.1% of clients across the Internet, so use this alternate domain with care.

As before, if you experience any problems with IPv6 serving and App Engine, please report it in the App Engine issue tracker or post about it in the App Engine discussion group.

Posted by Paul + the App Engine Traffic Team

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Announcing Google Maps Navigation for Android 2 0

(cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

Since 2005, millions of people have relied on Google Maps for mobile to get directions on the go. However, theres always been one problem: Once youre behind the wheel, a list of driving directions just isnt that easy to use. It doesnt tell you when your turn is coming up. And if you miss a turn? Forget it, youre on your own.

Today were excited to announce the next step for Google Maps for mobile: Google Maps Navigation (Beta) for Android 2.0 devices.

This new feature comes with everything youd expect to find in a GPS navigation system, like 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting. But unlike most navigation systems, Google Maps Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of your phones Internet connection.

Here are seven features that are possible because Google Maps Navigation is connected to the Internet:

The most recent map and business data
When you use Google Maps Navigation, your phone automatically gets the most up-to-date maps and business listings from Google Maps — you never need to buy map upgrades or update your device. And this data is continuously improving, thanks to users who report maps issues and businesses who activate their listings with Google Local Business Center.

Search in plain English
Google Maps Navigation brings the speed, power and simplicity of Google search to your car. If you dont know the address youre looking for, dont worry. Simply enter the name of a business, a landmark or just about anything into the search box, and Google will find it for you. Then press "Navigate", and youre on your way.

Search by voice
Typing on a phone can be difficult, especially in the car, so with Google Maps Navigation, you can say your destination instead. Hold down the search button to activate voice search, then tell your phone what you want to do (like "Navigate to Pike Place in Seattle"), and navigation will start automatically.

Traffic view
Google Maps Navigation gets live traffic data over the Internet. A traffic indicator light in the corner of the screen glows green, yellow or red, depending on the current traffic conditions along your route. If theres a jam ahead of you, youll know. To get more details, tap the light to zoom out to an aerial view showing traffic speeds and incidents ahead. And if the traffic doesnt look good, you can choose an alternate route.

Search along route
For those times when youre already on the road and need to find a business, Google Maps Navigation searches along your route to give you results that wont take you far from your path. You can search for a specific business by name or by type, or you can turn on popular layers, such as gas stations, restaurants or parking.

Satellite view
Google Maps Navigation uses the same satellite imagery as Google Maps on the desktop to help you get to your destination. Turn on the satellite layer for a high-resolution, 3D view of your upcoming route. Besides looking cool, satellite view can help you make sense of complicated maneuvers.

Street View
If you want to know what your next turn looks like, double-tap the map to zoom into Street View, which shows the turn as youll see it, with your route overlaid. And since locating an address can sometimes be tricky, well show you a picture of your destination as you approach the end of your route, so youll know exactly what to look for.

Since theres nothing quite like seeing the product in action, we made this video to demonstrate a real-life example:



The first phone to have Google Maps Navigation and Android 2.0 is the Droid from Verizon. Google Maps Navigation is initially available in the United States. And like other Google Maps features, Navigation is free.

Click here to learn more and browse a gallery of product screenshots. Take Google Maps Navigation for a spin, and bring Internet-connected GPS navigation with you in your car.

Posted by Keith Ito, Software Engineer

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Nvidia G Sync module kills gaming monitor tearing

via- Engadget

NVIDIA has revealed G-Sync, a new module for gaming monitors that, when used with a GeForce GPU, helps avoid tearing and skipping. The new hardware, shown off by NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang at the company’s Editor’s Day in Montreal, works around the limitations of V-Sync, the system by which monitors currently deal with changing refresh rates, by setting up a path of direct communication between display and graphics card and synchronizing the refresh rate of both together.

As gamers know, frame rates during play can change considerably, and that can leave monitors looking blurry or tearing. V-Sync currently works by effectively locking the graphics card to a single refresh rate depending on the capabilities of the display itself: so, if the display is running at 30Hz, and the frame rate is 30fps, then the GPU won’t push any new data to the panel until it knows it has cleared the old cycle.

This, though, can lead to judder or input lag, and also means gaming monitors and GPUs are limited to a small number of refresh rates. NVIDIA’s new G-Sync module, however, works around that by dynamically adjusting the refresh based on the capabilities of both screen and GPU, doing so in real-time to effectively remove any stutter and significantly reduce lag.

The new module will be added to monitors by ASUS, BenQ, Philips, and ViewSonic initially, with NVIDIA name-checking all four brands during its event. However, the company is hoping that it becomes more commonplace in general, though of course you’ll need an NVIDIA GeForce GPU – based on a Kepler chip – in order to actually take advantage of it. SlashGear

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