Alien Dalvik 2.0 brings Android apps to iOS devices

Since Android is an open source operating system, it isn't impossible to make other operating systems compatible with applications developed for it, and Myriad has done just that. In fact even on Android phones, applications run on a virtual machine called Dalvik that interprets Android applications that have been compiled to bytecode.

Myriad's Alien Dalvik technology allows Android applications to run on platforms they weren't created for by creating a compatibility layer that makes the devices resources available to the Android application as it expects them.

Now their 2.0 release promises to have Android applications running on "tablets, TVs automobiles and more", and most impressively on the iPad. This can effectively bridge the gap between different mobile platforms by making one alternative that is capable of working across devices. Another alternative is of course HTML5 /CSS3/JavaScript; open web technologies have been playing catch up with native technologies and for many applications they might be a better choice considering that such applications can bypass the limitations of the app stores.

For those wondering when they can get this technology on their non-Android phone and access the numerous Android applications out there, we're sorry to say it does not work that way. Alien Dalvik is a technology that device manufacturers can choose to integrate with their device in order for it to take advantage of the Android ecosystem; it does not work in running individual applications on individual phones.

Simon Wilkinson, the CEO of Myriad Group had this to say, "We have seen incredible momentum in Android adoption, but we are just scratching the surface. Digital screens such as Internet- enabled TVs and in-vehicle displays, along with other consumer devices like tablets and e-books are proliferating at an astounding rate. Consumers are driving multimedia evolution and are demanding more converged multi-screen services. With Alien Dalvik 2.0, we are creating a more flexible, consistent user experience by mobilizing content such as live sports, recorded TV shows and on-demand movies, so users can enjoy content seamlessly from one device to the next."

3g

3G refers to the third generation of mobile telephony (that is, cellular) technology. The third generation, as the name suggests, follows two earlier generations.

The first generation (1G) began in the early 80's with commercial deployment of Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) cellular networks. Early AMPS networks used Frequency Division Multiplexing Access (FDMA) to carry analog voice over channels in the 800 MHz frequency band.

The second generation (2G) emerged in the 90's when mobile operators deployed two competing digital voice standards. In North America, some operators adopted IS-95, which used Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) to multiplex up to 64 calls per channel in the 800 MHz band. Across the world, many operators adopted the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) standard, which used Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) to multiplex up to 8 calls per channel in the 900 and 1800 MHz bands.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) defined the third generation (3G) of mobile telephony standards IMT-2000 to facilitate growth, increase bandwidth, and support more diverse applications. For example, GSM could deliver not only voice, but also circuit-switched data at speeds up to 14.4 Kbps. But to support

mobile multimedia applications, 3G had to deliver packet-switched data with better spectral efficiency, at far greater speeds.

However, to get from 2G to 3G, mobile operators had make "evolutionary" upgrades to existing networks while simultaneously planning their "revolutionary" new mobile broadband networks. This lead to the establishment of two distinct 3G families: 3GPP and 3GPP2.

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) was formed in 1998 to foster deployment of 3G networks that descended from GSM. 3GPP technologies evolved as follows.

• General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) offered speeds up to 114 Kbps.

• Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution (EDGE) reached up to 384 Kbps.

• UMTS Wideband CDMA (WCDMA) offered downlink speeds up to 1.92 Mbps.

• High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) boosted the downlink to 14Mbps.

• LTE Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) is aiming for 100 Mbps.

GPRS deployments began in 2000, followed by EDGE in 2003. While these technologies are defined by IMT-2000, they are sometimes called "2.5G" because they did not offer multi-megabit data rates. EDGE has now been superceded by HSDPA (and its uplink partner HSUPA). According to the 3GPP, there were 166 HSDPA networks in 75 countries at the end of 2007. The next step for GSM operators: LTE E-UTRA, based on specifications completed in late 2008.

A second organization, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) -- was formed to help North American and Asian operators using CDMA2000 transition to 3G. 3GPP2 technologies evolved as follows.

• One Times Radio Transmission Technology (1xRTT) offered speeds up to 144 Kbps.

• Evolution Data Optimized (EV-DO) increased downlink speeds up to 2.4 Mbps.

• EV-DO Rev. A boosted downlink peak speed to 3.1 Mbps and reduced latency.

• EV-DO Rev. B can use 2 to 15 channels, with each downlink peaking at 4.9 Mbps.

• Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB) was slated to reach 288 Mbps on the downlink.

1xRTT became available in 2002, followed by commercial EV-DO Rev. 0 in 2004. Here again, 1xRTT is referred to as "2.5G" because it served as a transitional step to EV-DO. EV-DO standards were extended twice – Revision A services emerged in 2006 and are now being succeeded by products that use Revision B to increase data rates by transmitting over multiple channels. The 3GPP2's next-generation technology, UMB, may not catch on, as many CDMA operators are now planning to evolve to LTE instead.

In fact, LTE and UMB are often called 4G (fourth generation) technologies because they increase downlink speeds an order of magnitude. This label is a bit premature because what constitutes "4G" has not yet been standardized. The ITU is currently considering candidate technologies for inclusion in the 4G IMT-Advanced standard, including LTE, UMB, and WiMAX II. Goals for 4G include data rates of least 100 Mbps, use of OFDMA transmission, and packet-switched delivery of IP-based voice, data, and streaming multimedia.

Steave Jobs

The Mac, the iPod and iPhone, born out of his vision of marrying high technology to an elegant and simple form, are already recognised by designers as among the most iconic products of the digital age.

Creations from the founder of Apple not only changed the way people communicate, watch films, listen to music and shop on the Internet but large Mac screens and graphics-friendly Mac software also make life easier for architects, publishers, artists and fashion designers.

"One of the truly great designers and mentors," said British architect Norman Foster, known for working on major projects such as the Millennium Bridge in London, the Millau Viaduct in southern France and Swiss Re's headquarters in London dubbed "The Gherkin."

"Steve Jobs encouraged us to develop new ways of looking at design to reflect his unique ability to weave backwards and forwards between grand strategy and the minutiae of the tiniest of internal fittings," Foster added.

The iPod, Apple's big game-changer launched a decade ago, has a special place on the wall of fame of global consumer icons, alongside the Volkswagen Beetle, the Coca-Cola bottle, the Swiss Army pocket knife or the Olivetti portable typewriter.

Every country or culture can have its own consumer design icons -- Italy's Vespa motorscooter or America's Cadillac -- but only relatively few go truly global and endure.

Rarer still are those that change the way people do things.

"Steve Jobs has shown that breakthrough products come from taking intuitive risks, not from listening to focus groups. He was a master of semiotic design", said British industrial designer James Dyson, best known for the dual-cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner.

From its inception in 2001, the iPod spread like electricity and reshaped the music industry in a way its predecessor, the Sony Walkman, failed to do in a lasting fashion.

Apple is a computer company yet it was the first to successfully commercialise digital music on the Internet well before industry giants EMI, Warner Music Group and Sony Music and helped save the industry from slow death by piracy.

Hundreds of millions of iPods have been sold, each featuring a simple retro dial that bears the hallmark of Jobs' design philosophy of clean minimalism.

All over the world, iPods are tucked into the back of torn jeans and in the pockets of suits, strapped to the arms of joggers or entertaining commuters on tedious journeys home.

"Many credit Apple as probably the best advertisement for professional design and the role of design that we have ever seen," said Brandon Gien, an executive member of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design.

Then came the iPad, released in 2010, which changed the way people read newspapers and books, took notes, surfed the Internet, called each other on Skype and dealt with everyday practical problems thanks to hundreds of savvy applications.

At Paris Fashion Week, which ended on Wednesday, fashion buyers took photos of dresses with their iPad and once the show was over, they flicked through them as a catalogue they had just created and decided which ones they wanted to buy.

"We saw a lot of iPads on the front row," said Marigay McKee, Harrods Fashion,Beauty Director who was at Fashion Week.

"All the bloggers and a lot of the fashion editors diligently carried iPads," she added. Many luxury brands, including Louis Vuitton and Hermes (at a price of $1,400), make iPad holders as chic accessories.

The iPad is also getting the airline industry to rethink entertainment technology used on board. Airlines such as Australia's Quantas are looking into using iPads for in-flight entertainment to help trim costs and weight.

Professional designers regard Jobs not as one of them per se but as an innovator and businessman who recognised that form was as just important as function for a product's success.

They say there is no question Jobs directed the design fundamentals at Apple -- from the elimination of any unsightly screws in product casings to the type-face used to stamp them -- but he also relied on talented professional designers, from Hartmut Esslinger in the 1980s to Jonathan Ive who joined in the 1990s and still heads up product design at Apple.

Jobs was so obsessed with design that he hired Esslinger in 1982 on the then astronomical salary of a $1 million a year to create Apple's design strategy, which produced the "Snow White" design of all Apple products for the rest of that decade.

"Design was not a department that was buried in bureaucracy. He lifted that right up to where it rightfully belonged," said Gien, an Australian industrial designer based in Sydney.

FROM CALLIGRAPHY TO THE APPLE MAC

Jobs was inspired by design early on, having revealed in a famous 2005 speech to Stanford University students that one of his formative experiences was attending a calligraphy class at Reed College before finally dropping out of university himself.

"None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography," Jobs said at the time.

Museums around the world have been collecting early Apple and Jobs products, starting from the original Apple 1 developed in a bedroom in the 1970s by Jobs and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to the first NeXt computer, a magnesium "cube" developed by Jobs during a break with Apple in the 1980s.

Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, which collects icons of contemporary culture, has no doubt the iPod and perhaps the iPhone will one day also take their place alongside the greats of earlier eras, such as the Olivetti Lexikon 80 typewriter designed by Italy's Nizzoli Marcello or the Braun shaver developed by legendary German designer Dieter Rams in 1951.

"It (the iPod) may not be working in 20 years time but it will remain in that echelon of great designs for sure," said Campbell Bickerstaff, curator for the museum's information and communication technology collections.

Artificial Intelligence

When it comes to making complex judgement calls, computers can’t replace people. But with artificial intelligence, computers could be trained to think like humans do. Artificial intelligence allows computers to learn from experience, recognize patterns in large amounts of complex data and make complex decisions based on human knowledge and reasoning skills. Artificial intelligence has become an important field of study with a wide spread of applications in fields ranging from medicine to agriculture.

Expert Systems

Two of the most important and most used branches of AI are neural networks and expert systems.

An expert system can solve real-world problems using human knowledge and following human reasoning skills. Knowledge and thinking processes of experts are collected and encoded into a knowledge base. From that point on, the expert system could replace or assist the human experts in making complex decisions by integrating all the knowledge it has in its knowledge base.

Neural Networks

Illustration of Neural NetworkThis diagram represents an artificial neural network. A neural network is made of nodes arranged in different patterns representing the "intelligence" of the network. The line thickness indicates the strength of the connections.









The most important application of neural networks is in pattern recognition. Humans, through neurons in their brains, learn how to read human writing, recognize a bad apple from a good one or identify their children from a set of kids. Neural networks allow computers to use the same principles that neurons in the brains use to recognize and classify different patterns. So in a way, neural networks are a digital representation (although very simplified) of our brains. They are made of artificial neurons, connected by weights, which are indicative of the strengths of the connections. The neurons are arranged in layers, and depending on the complexity of the application, there could be a few of them or a very large number of them (hundreds or thousands). Iterative propagation of input from one layer of neurons to the next (training) is what enables the neural network to learn from experience.

Unlike humans, when a neural is fully trained, it can classify and identify patterns in massive amounts of complex data. It could do this at high speeds that can not be duplicated by humans.

Real-World Applications of Artificial Intelligence

Intelligent control is beneficial in many real world applications because it is good at solving complex problems. The flexibility inherent in AI techniques, makes the technology adaptable to fields as diverse as agriculture, business, and literature.

UGA scientists have used artificial intelligence in many different ways: monitor and adjust the climate in greenhouses and poultry production houses help forecast weather and predict crop development determine when vegetables are ripe identify molecules by their "chemical fingerprints" candle eggs to determine which have cracks and other defects.

Intro to tech gyan

Hey guys this is the first post of a cool blog about technology knowledge(gyan). Here you will get the cutting edge and general knowledge about technology especially information technology. Review of new gadgets ,advice in buying tech stuff ,DIY projects will be provided.So stay tuned and stay updated.

About me : I am an engineering student from India. Technology has been my passion from childhood.
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