GOOGLE IN NEPAL

Google Installs Cache Servers in Nepal

Google in association with Nepal Telecom, one of the largest Internet Service providers in the country has installed its cache servers in Nepal. A telecom official speaking to Nagarik News in Nepal revealed that the servers are still in testing phase and will be extended after successful months of testing in Nepal. Nearly after five months of continuous effort from NTC, the search engine giant has decided to test its servers in Nepal.

The Google cache servers have been installed in NTC office located in Jawalakhel in Kathmandu. Cache servers will help internet users in Nepal to access Google data faster. This means Google products and services such as Gmail, Youtube, G+ etc will now be accessed faster from Nepal. This will also help NTC by reducing its bandwidth access and thus reducing its cost.

A cache server, also referred as cache engine is a dedicated network server that saves Web pages or other Internet content locally. It places previously requested information in cache and a cache server speeds up access to data also reducing the demand on enterprise’s bandwidth. “After installation of Google server, Internet bandwidth use has been decreased. Even if NTC saves 1GB bandwidth, the company will save two lakhs dollars yearly” added another official at NTC.

Google engineers are in Nepal presently to install the cache servers and train NTC engineers and technicians to handle it. Previously NTC had installed Akamai Technologies server which made easier accessing Microsoft and yahoo services in Nepal.

Source :Nepaliblogger

Ball-shaped camera 'to help police and firefighters'

It's a common scenario for police and other emergency services. They need to enter a building but don't know what awaits them inside.

It could be a gunman or structures made dangerous by an earthquake.

A tennis ball-sized device made by US start-up Bounce Imaging could provide an answer. Six cameras instantly send a 360-degree picture to a smartphone.

The ball has a rubber shell that makes it bounce
 while taking pictures

The firm suggested it could sell the device for about a tenth of the cost of the cheapest rival devices.

However, a robotics expert said the technology had privacy implications.

Bounce Imaging's founder Francisco Aguilar said the device could have a range of uses. "Disaster search and rescue after an earthquake is currently left to highly specialised teams with sophisticated and very expensive equipment," he said.

"But we hope that with our technology it could be expanded to volunteers with low-cost units that could be tossed into air pockets and collapsed spaces in search of victims."

The technology is still a prototype, but it was named one of Time Magazine's Best Inventions of 2012.

'Different' tech

The Boston-based company is not the first attempt to create a ball-shaped camera; researchers around the world have been trying to make similar devices for years.

For instance, in the 1990s, scientists at Columbia University in the US developed 360-degree cameras for use in remote locations, but they depended on being attached to robots.

In 2008 Scottish company Dreampact announced it had begun work on a standalone sphere containing fish-eye lenses that could be fired from a grenade launcher - but it later abandoned the project.

The ball is equipped with various sensors, to send back other data along with photos

Others have been more successful but Bounce Imaging says they typically sell upwards from $5,000 apiece and are more cumbersome.

"The key to the design is ease of use and low cost - under $500 (£313) - relative to expensive robotic or fibre-optic alternatives that are too costly, classified, and complex," Mr Aguilar told the BBC.

He added that other similar devices required a skilled operator to manage the unit and data - but Bounce Imaging's technology was built following a "fire and forget" principle.

"After the ball is thrown, it sends whatever imaging and data it gathers back to a smartphone or tablet with an easy-to-use app.

"When you're a police officer under fire working with your tactical gloves on, it is very difficult to operate a complex, often briefcase-sized, remote terminal or viewing unit.

"It's much easier to just look on a smartphone strapped to your wrist."

He added that his company had already received calls from police, fire, industrial and mine inspection units, "even nature photographers trying to look inside animal holes".

"The unit has slots for other types of sensors - for example, smoke and temperature sensors in a firefighting model, methane or coal dust detectors in mine inspection units, and so on - so the ball can send back additional data along with the images," said Mr Aguilar.

To create a full panoramic image in the dark, the device captures light in the near-infrared range.

Paparazzi and criminals

But Noel Sharkey, an expert in artificial intelligence and professor of robotics at the University of Sheffield, said that the technology could have privacy implications.

"This could be brilliant from a photographic point of view, but it could be a further intrusion on our privacy," he said.

"You can throw it anywhere, into someone's garden for instance, and you'll be able to see everything that's going on - it's not much different from the use of a drone except that it's much more immediate.

"So if you throw it over someone's private property, it could be used, for instance, by the paparazzi or by criminals who could just throw it over the roof and get lots of images in between."

Source: BBC

New Technology Let’s You Edit Real World Paper Drawings Using Computer

You draw something on paper and it gets modified or erased through a computer – the concept that has been materialized by the engineers at the University of Tokyo, the Naemura Group. Calling the “paper computing technology”, this new system let’s users automatically erase, copy and print hand-drawn sketches on paper using a laser and UV light. What you’re essentially doing here is converting an ordinary paper into a display. Never before have we been able to control what’s on paper through a computer in real time. In a video compiled by DigInfo, you can see that a user will be able to create 3D-like text by leaving only the edges of hand-written characters or simply draw a figure by hand and it gets automatically.

The setup includes a pen that uses Frixion thermo-sensitive ink, which gets erased to a high level of accuracy, at intervals of 0.024 mm. The paper used here is coated with a photochromic material and there is DMD-driven UV projector with a 1024 x 768 pixels resolution that prints the image onto the paper. So, what we’re looking at could be a paper-based version of Google Docs in the future. We will dynamically edit a real-world paper while sitting in two different countries. Sounds great, doesn’t it? 

Usability An integral part of the guest experience

 We often joke that a hotel having a frustratingly “unusable” website is the Internet-equivalent of giving a guest the wrong room key and then closing the front desk.

As hotel websites become increasingly interactive, some guests will accept frustrating online experiences as inevitabilities; growing pains in the evolution of the web. Yet, as users’ patience wanes and they spend less time on frustrating sites, it’s time we start seeing usability for what it is: a business concern.

It’s just business

Time has proven that the brands that will win in the long-term are those that are willing to approach the interplay between technology and the customer experience pragmatically and creatively. Strategic marketers understand that digital is a two way street, and they take calculated risks with emerging technologies to gain valuable first-move advantages. Today, as the hospitality industry recovers, these advantages are more important than ever.

Users are so judgemental

Now, with the web being accessed from ever more places, a user’s subjective experience on your site has become part of the perceived quality of service. Your website is often the first employee your customer meets, so it helps if it’s easy to get along with.

Yes, your customers are unfairly judgemental, but how long do you spend on a site that makes you download a plug-in first? Worse, one that tells you it “wasn’t built for your device”. What about a site that expects you to read three paragraphs of text written for Google’s algorithm (5 years ago)? Give some thought to your own browsing habits over the next few days and you’ll see what I mean. We are constantly confronted by bad user experiences online. And more often than not, we’ll move on to find a site that’s easier to use.

Usability defined

ISO defines usability as “the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use.”

• Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
• Memorability: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
• Efficiency: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they re establish proficiency?
• Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
• Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

2 reasons people visit your website:

1. They are curious about you and want to find out more.
2. They want to solve a problem.

Each group has a distinct set of objectives when visiting your site which will, no doubt, impact their respective ideas of what constitutes a “good user experience”.

Curiousity

If they are curious about your business, engage them in a clear way, entice them, give them something to share, make them want what you’re selling, and let them know why you’re different than the hotel down the street. Don’t bombard them with every creative idea you’ve ever had. They’ll get frustrated and leave. Worse yet, it will make you look desperate.

Problem solving

If they just want to book a room, find their meeting, or make dinner reservations, let them do it as quickly as possible. Don’t tell them about your meeting space when they’re trying to give their cab driver directions to the hotel. They are trying to solve a problem, they’re late for something, the kids are yelling, let them get on with life.

What can you do?

So the scope of the guest experience has expanded. Guests expect a higher level of service and they expect it to begin earlier in the hotel selection process, which starts online. The primary goal of a good hotel site should be to provide accurate and accessible information in a compelling way. This goal should inform the entire design process.

Zuckerberg admits: If I wasn’t the CEO of Facebook, I’d be at Microsoft

STANFORD UNIVERSITY, Palo Alto, Calif. — Entrepreneurs flocked to Stanford today to hear Mark Zuckerberg, the T-shirt wearing chief executive of Facebook, open up about the company’s early days.

Since the social networking giant’s initial public offering in May, this is one of only a handful of public appearances he’s made. It proved to be a rare window into the mind of Facebook’s young CEO, who spoke for 45 minutes before rushing off to the wedding of a close friend and fellow Facebook employee.

Zuck was interviewed on stage at Startup School, an annual conference, by the outspoken founder of Y Combinator, Paul Graham.

Advice to entrepreneurs: Take your time, “bake the product”

Don’t believe everything you hear in the hit flick, The Social Network. Zuck told the audience that he was in favor of online ads in the early days, and gave Eduardo Savarin (one of Facebook’s cofounders) full control. He said that the ads provided sufficient revenue for the team to purchase servers. This was the revenue that supported the startup’s protracted growth.

“Whenever we had money, we got another $85 server,” said Zuckerberg. “We never spent money.”

None of the founders had any startup experience, but they were highly strategic. Zuck specifically chose to bring Facebook to colleges that were already using social networks, such as Friendster or a university-owned service. It was evidence that the community was ready to share and connect online.

From the beginning, the founders were convinced that there had to be more than a simple profile page. They were always willing to devote time and resources to building out sharing features like integrating course catalogs, even if it proved to be an obstacle to growth.

“Facebook did grow quickly but it took a year for us to get a million users,” he said. “It wasn’t as quick as a lot of things grow today. Having that time to bake was valuable for us.”

In that first year, Facebook was just a hobby

It was a shock to hear that if Facebook hadn’t worked out, Zuckerberg would have joined a tech giant, rather than a startup. “I probably would have taken an engineering job…[and] always had a lot of respect for Microsoft,” he said. “A lot of people from Harvard went to work there.”

He admitted that a huge part of Facebook’s success was in its timing. People were already beginning to embrace sharing online through sites like Wikipedia. In addition, Friendster had a scaling problem, but had experienced skyrocketing growth. Graham wondered whether, if Zuckerberg had been a few years younger and Harvard’s own social network had taken off, Facebook would exist today.

Zuckerberg is convinced that going forward, we will continue to voraciously share their photos, ideas, and status updates. That’s how Facebook will remain relevant. “Ten years from now, people are going to be sharing a thousand times more a day,” he said. “Our continual mission is to build the next big thing — that’s what we live for at Facebook.”

He never intended to drop out of Harvard

“My life is a long history of people thinking I would drop out of school long before I did,” Zuck told the audience.

He recalled his decision to spend a summer in Palo Alto. After flying into San Francisco Airport, he rented a car to drive down the Highway 101. Aside from being impressed by the perpetually sunny weather, he was awed by the technology companies he spotted along the way.

At that time, Zuck said he was not convinced that Facebook would be a legitimate company.

“I thought it would be neat to be around some of these great companies,” he said. “One day we will find something [an idea] but surely this isn’t it.” Zuck said that he was honest with investor, Peter Thiel, that he did not intend to drop out of Harvard. Thiel called bullshit, and cut Facebook’s founders their first big check.

Zuck’s parents always knew he would drop out of college. He had the audience chuckling when he described a bet with his younger sister Donna on who would finish college first.

Still, the Facebook founder recommended that young entrepreneurs use their time in college to explore and develop new interests. He criticized Harvard for not encouraging innovation (this off-hand remark was met with boo’s from the audience), but admitted that this is slowly changing.

He was a psych major with a passion for Latin and Greek

Zuckerberg was fascinated by the intricacies of the human mind, and the study of classical languages. However, he admitted that he was a keen programmer at college, and rarely studied or went to class.

The hacker-filled audience was in hysterics when Zuck told the story of how he aced an art history final. He coded a quick and dirty website with about 200 images, and emailed “the study tool” to the class asking for their thoughts on the significance of each image, which was filled with information in a matter of hours. “So you crowdsourced studying,” joked Graham.

This zeal for psychology has carried over into his work at Facebook. Zuck argued that Facebook is responsible for augmenting human relationships, and is not keeping us from developing friendships in the real world.

“Humans have the capacity to maintain empathetic relationships with about 150 people,” he said. “Facebook extends that.”

Dynamic vs. Static Web Sites

Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of Web sites: those with static content and those with dynamically generated content. These are also called static Web sites and dynamic Web sites, or Web sites with static pages versus Web sites with dynamic pages.

What is Web content? Content is everything that can appear on a Web page: text, graphics, form fields, hyperlinks to other pages, navigation buttons, menus, etc.

What are static and dynamic websites?

There are many static websites on the Internet, you won’t be able to tell immediately if it is static, but the chances are, if the site looks basic and is for a smaller company, and simply delivers information without any bells and whistles, it could be a static website. Static websites can only really be updated by someone with a knowledge of website development. Static websites are the cheapest to develop and host, and many smaller companies still use these to get a web presence.

Advantages of static websites

• Quick to develop
• Cheap to develop
• Cheap to host

Disadvantages of static websites

• Requires web development expertise to update site
• Site not as useful for the user
• Content can get stagnant

Dynamic sites on the other hand can be more expensive to develop initially, but the advantages are numerous. At a basic level, a dynamic website can give the website owner the ability to simply update and add new content to the site. For example, news and events could be posted to the site through a simple browser interface. Dynamic features of a site are only limited by imagination. Some examples of dynamic website features could be: content management system, e-commerce system, bulletin / discussion boards, intranet or extranet facilities, ability for clients or users to upload documents, ability for administrators or users to create content or add information to a site (dynamic publishing).

Advantages of dynamic websites

• Much more functional website
• Much easier to update
• New content brings people back to the site and helps in the search engines
• Can work as a system to allow staff or users to collaborate

Disadvantages of dynamic websites

• Slower / more expensive to develop
• Hosting costs a little more

 Please note that static and dynamic content has nothing to do with page animation.

Computer Shutdown after Restart (system failure)

Like all other pieces of technology, a computer also suffers from various issues from time to time which are very hard to attribute to one single cause. There are so many components embedded inside a machine that it is very hard to predict what can go wrong at any given time, and even when something does go wrong, it is very difficult to find the exact cause. People who are clued up about the workings of a computer and people who are professional computer repairmen follow a fixed and orderly method of checking problems, since this is the only way to ascertain the actual issue.   

One of the most annoying things that can happen to a computer is that it simply refuses to shut down. This is a problem that Windows XP users, more than anyone else, have faced over the years and this ultimately leads to simply turning the power source off which can result in loss of data and other issues. If you find that your computer restarts after shutdown then you need to take the situation very seriously, since the underlying cause of the problem can inevitably lead to more serious problems as well. People who do not know much about the workings of a computer may not be able to do much about this problem, but the causes mentioned here can be investigated by someone who is not completely ignorant about such things.

Causes of Automatic Restart 

Common causes of computers restarting by themselves are computer viruses, computer overheating, computer hardware defects, computer hardware incompatibility and computer driver problems. All of these issues have their own specific solutions that must be applied in order to fix the problem. You should install an antivirus software or update the existing one, you should use the computer in a cool rool and avoid keeping it on for days at a stretch, fix or replace any defective hardware peripherals and reinstall device drivers respectively. Hopefully, each of these solutions will solve your problem, but if you still see that your computer keeps rebooting itself, then you need to visit a computer technician immediately.

Solutions to Automatic Restart          

In some computers, the settings make the computer restart automatically when it is shutdown. These settings can be altered in the following manner.  

    Right click on My Computer and then click on Properties.     
    Click on the tab that says Advanced and then click on the Settings button under the Startup and             Recovery option.          
    Under System Failure uncheck the box next to Automatically Restart.

After doing this, your computer will not restart automatically upon shutdown unless there is some serious defect inside. All Windows based machines have this option checked by default, so that the computer restarts and does not lose any data in case there is some kind of 'Stop Error' while it is functioning. You may also like to learn what to do when the computer restarts during startup.     

Some more possible solutions to try out in case your computer restarts after shutdown are as follows. Please note that none of these solutions are guaranteed to work for you, but there is no harm in trying them out, since there is no way to determine the exact nature of the problem without physically inspecting the machine.       

    You should visit the BIOS of the machine when it is booting up, and then look for programs or devices that cause the machine to startup automatically. In order to reach the BIOS you will have to press one of F1, F2, F10, DELETE or ESC when the machine is starting up, and it will specify which key you need to press. You should look for an option called Wake up on shutdown in the BIOS and then disable it.
    You should attempt cleaning up your Windows registry. In order to achieve this you need to go the Start menu, then click on Run, then type regedit and press Enter, then delete entries from the various options that open. These options are HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_USERS and HKEY_CURRENT CONFIG. Doing so will also speeden your machine up, and hopefully it will also solve your problem of 'computer restarts when shutdown'.

The problem of 'computer restarts after shutdown' is not a very uncommon one, and there are many people who regularly complain about the same. Following some fixed solutions should fix the issue in most cases, but if the trouble persists, then it is probably best to take the machine to a computer repair store and show it to a certified technician. This may take more time and money, but ultimately it will be worth it.