Battle of the internet giants

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EU awards €2.48m to innovative Irish SME - Exergyn

Exergyn, an Irish SME, has been awarded €2.48m in EU funding to commercialise its Exergyn Drive engine, which turns waste hot water into electricity.

The specially-designed engine has been created with the application of using waste hot water created during the cooling process of manufacturing and, rather than letting it go to waste, or wasting valuable energy cooling it down again, they can use it to power their engine to create electricity.

The company, which was founded in 2012 by Alan Healy, Barry Cullen and Kevin O’Toole, has expanded to 15 staff and is targeting the European bio-gas sector as they believe that it represents an attractive commercial prospect for power generation.

The Exergyn Drive has already undergone trials and, as of the beginning of Q1 this year, the company is seeking partners to trial five 10kW engines in the bio-gas and power generation industries.

NASA successfully tests engine that violates the law of physics, uses no fuel

This is great news. NASA has successfully tested a space drive that uses no fuel and so does not use propellant. The drive called 'Cannae Drive' is apparently based on the work of a British scientist named Roger Shawyer called the EMDrive. It is said to work by bouncing microwaves in an enclosed chamber and thus creating thrust.

According to NASA :

"Test results indicate that the RF resonant cavity thruster design, which is unique as an electric propulsion device, is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and therefore is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma."

Line Following Robot

Beehive that Automatically Extracts Honey

The Flow Hive is a new beehive invention that promises to eliminate the more laborious aspects of collecting honey from a beehive with a novel spigot system that taps into specially designed honeycomb frames. Invented over the last decade by father and son beekeepers Stuart and Cedar Anderson, the system eliminates the traditional process of honey extraction where frames are removed from beehives, opened with hot knives, and loaded into a machine that uses centrifugal force to get the honey out.

A Solar panel on your arm (To monitor your vitals !!)

How wonderful !!

A team of engineers has developed a solar-powered, plastic armband that measures the wearer’s body temperature. You can set a threshold temperature for the device, so that an alarm goes off when your temperature rises too high. It works both inside and outside of clothing. The armband could be adapted to detect other vital signs, too, such as heart rate, the armband’s lead engineer, University of Tokyo professor Takao Someya, said in a statement.

Facebook purchases Instagram for $1million

Facebook has bought the Instagram for $1 billion. Instagram is one of the most popular social networking photos sharing application for iOS and Android. It has more than 30 million fans. This news came straightly from the Press release by the Mark Zeckburg, CEO of the world’s largest social networking website, Facebook and the CEO of Instagram, Kevin Systrom.

According to the press release, Instagram will remain as standalone app and service but Facebook may add some features to the Facebook App from Instagram. Here’s the complete press release:

“I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and their talented team will be joining Facebook.

For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

We believe these are different experiences that compliment each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.

We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.

These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features in our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.

This is an important milestone fro Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.

We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together.”

Instagram has done tremendous progress since last year. This app has more than 27 million Apple fans while 5 million photos are shared per day.

Amazing kid with amazing future

Thomas Suarez is in the 6th grade at a middle school in the South Bay. And while most of his peers are probably fussing over new soccer kleets or watching the Disney channel, he’s creating iOS apps and giving TED Talks.

Suarez, whose not even old enough to have a Facebook account, has been fascinated by computers and technology since before kindergarten. He’s established his own company, CarrotCorp and has made two iOS apps that are currently in the App Store: Earth Fortune, which displays different colors of Earth depending on what your fortune is and his most successful- Bustin Jieber, a Whac-a-Mole for Justin Bieber.

“A lot of kids these days like to play games, but now they want to make them,” he says. “And it’s difficult because not many kids know where to go find out how to make a program…And not many parents have written apps.” Suarez, inspired by Steve Jobs, started an App Club at school where any student can come to learn to design an app. In the future, Suarez wants to create more apps, more games and get into Android programming and development. He plans on continuing his app club and find other ways for students to share knowledge with others.

Knowing that human beings such as Suarez exist makes me really hopeful and excited for the future. Watch his TED Talk from the recent TEDx conference in Manhattan Beach here:

Apple Awarded Patent For 'Slide To Unlock'

If you remember the event when Steve Jobs revealed the first original iPhone back in 2007, you'll remember how the whole crowd was completely awestruck when Steve slided his fingers over the Slide To Unlock text to show off his greatest creation to the world. Now that tiny Slide To Unlock gesture is exclusive to Apple. 

Here is what Steve Jobs said about Slide To Unlock back in 2007:

To unlock the phone, I just take my finger and slide it across. Wanna see that again? We wanted something you couldn’t do by accident in your pocket. Just slide it across – BOOM

Head of iOS Scott Forstall is named as one of the inventors alongside a slew of other Apple engineers including Imran Chaudhri, Bas Ording, Freddy Allen Anzures, Marcel Van Os, Stephen O. Lemay and Greg Christie.

The patent application for Slide To Unlock was filed by Apple in December 2005, over an year before the original iPhone was revealed in 2007. Now no other company will be able to use this gesture unless and until this patent is said to be invalid by court.

Boeing 787

Boeing's first 787 Dreamliner made its first commercial flight today. After years of delays the future of aviation has arrived. And according to reviews, it was a totally pleasant flight. Even if the 787 can't totally fix flying, it might make it a whole lot better.

Okay, so all that happened is that a plane took off from Tokyo and landed in Hong Kong. Happens every day. But passengers aboard the Dreamliner's inaugural commercial flight found themselves actuallyenjoying the experience. The Telegraph's Peter Hughes positively gushed about the plane's creature comforts. And who can blame him: The Dreamliner has higher ceilings and bigger windows and increased cabin pressure, along with softer LED lighting. The 787 is in many noticeable ways a more comfortable aircraft. It sounds awesome.

A lot of people are understandably excited about the plane—Hughes reports that one American fanboy shelled out $31,781 on eBay for a ticket. The plane is much cheaper to operate than its predecessors. Even if the savings aren't passed on to us, passengers will see more non-stop flights on lower-demand routes, which means fewer connections and ameliorated congestion at huge regional hubs.

On top of all of that, it's nice to hear first hand that the plane is a plush ride. Congratulations to the engineers at Boeing for building a commodious and technologically-advanced flying machine. [The Telegraph; Image: Boeing]

India’s $35 Aakash Android tablet lands in America

The Indian government thinks the $35 Aakash Android tablet has the power to change the world. The device (whose name means “Sky” in Hindi) was produced entirely in India — a point of pride for the Indian government.


The 7-inch Android-based device will be distributed at a government subsidized price of $35, making it the world’s cheapest Android device. The general retail price will be $60, which is still remarkably cheap for such a powerful device. A contract between the Indian government and Canadian development partner DataWind, should put between 10 and 12 million devices in the hands of students across India by the end of 2012, according to Computer World.




And next month, the first Aakash tablets will go on sale throughout India, and millions of children will be able to join the tablet revolution that is transforming education, communication and entertainment across the world.

Indian IT companies battle fake job offers

Indian IT firms are facing a major threat in the form of fake job offers being sent to prospective jobseekers in the name of companies and their representatives.

Industry giant TCS says that this is an industry-wide problem and is stepping up efforts to battle the situation.

“We have posted a detailed note on job sites apart from our own website. We also create awareness through announcements in national and regional media and have a toll free service line for assistance,” said Ajoy Mukherjee, global HR Head at TCS.

TCS is one among several IT firms who are facing a similar problem of online job frauds. Other names such as Wipro and L&T Info Tech are also in the list with L&T Info Tech alone receiving several such complaints.

Experts foresee it as a growing trend in the IT industry, and consider fresh job seekers as an easy target.

“Spam Mails is a growing trend especially in the IT industry. These jobs are majorly for fresher's who are ready to do anything to get the job. These fake sites thrive on getting money and the databases, so candidates should not get lured into the trap,” said Vandanaa Pannaswami, associate director at ABC Consultants.

"The industry's requirements are high and at the same time increasing dramatically. The projected requirement for next year is significantly higher than this year," said Som Mittal , president of Nasscom. As the companies look to move to smaller cities for hiring, this is a problem that could need urgent attention.

Indian IT majors are leaving no stone unturned to reduce the growing concern of online job frauds. While Analysts foresee it as a growing trend, IT companies consider Awareness as the key to the problem.