Tryllian.com

The Pros Of Mobile Agents

Frank — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 02:00:37 +0000

Mobile agents refer to processes that have the ability to migrate from one place to another with the data intact and fully efficient to perform the computation. These are software agents in the computer system and are vital for computer efficiency. These mobile agents make use of the technique of remote procedure call as it needs to save its current state and then migrate to the new location. After reaching the new location, it performs the needed computation while resuming from its saved state. In case of failure, the saving of old state ensures that databases can be rolled back to maintain consistency.

The various advantages of having such agents in a computer system are numerous. It helps the computer in executing parallel processing of various tasks and makes them tolerant to network faults as they can migrate from one location to another to resume any kind of necessary task which have a binding time constraint.

Hold the phone for vital signs: Researchers turn a smart phone into a medical monitor

lian — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:14:59 +0000

An iPhone app that measures the user’s heart rate is not only a popular feature with consumers, but it sparked an idea for a Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) researcher who is now turning smart phones, and eventually tablet devices, into sophisticated medical monitors able to capture and transmit vital physiological data.
An iPhone app that measures the user’s heart rate is not only a popular feature with consumers, but it sparked an idea for a Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) researcher who is now turning smart phones, and eventually tablet devices, into sophisticated medical monitors able to capture and transmit vital physiological data.

Read the full article here:
Hold the phone for vital signs: Researchers turn a smart phone into a medical monitor

The Pros Of Mobile Agents

Frank — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:16:32 +0000

Wearable depth-sensing projection system makes any surface capable of multitouch interaction

lian — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:58:51 +0000

OmniTouch, a wearable projection system developed by researchers at Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University, enables users to turn pads of paper, walls or even their own hands, arms and legs into graphical, interactive surfaces.
OmniTouch employs a depth-sensing camera, similar to the Microsoft Kinect, to track the user’s fingers on everyday surfaces. This allows users to control interactive applications by tapping or dragging their fingers, much as they would with touchscreens found on smartphones or tablet computers. The projector can superimpose keyboards, keypads and other controls onto any surface, automatically adjusting for the surface’s shape and orientation to minimize distortion of the projected images.
“It’s conceivable that anything you can do on today’s mobile devices, you will be able to do on your hand using OmniTouch,” said Chris Harrison, a Ph.D. student in Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. The palm of the hand could be used as a phone keypad, or as a tablet for jotting down brief notes. Maps projected onto a wall could be panned and zoomed with the same finger motions that work with a conventional multitouch screen.
Harrison was an intern at Microsoft Research when he developed OmniTouch in collaboration with Microsoft Research’s Hrvoje Benko and Andrew D. Wilson. Harrison will describe the technology Oct. 19 at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) in Santa Barbara, Calif.
A video demonstrating OmniTouch and additional downloadable media are available at: http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Research/OmniTouch
The OmniTouch device includes a short-range depth camera and laser pico-projector and is mounted on a user’s shoulder. But Harrison said the device ultimately could be the size of a deck of cards, or even a matchbox, so that it could fit in a pocket, be easily wearable, or be integrated into future handheld devices.
“With OmniTouch, we wanted to capitalize on the tremendous surface area the real world provides,” said Benko, a researcher in Microsoft Research’s Adaptive Systems and Interaction group. “We see this work as an evolutionary step in a larger effort at Microsoft Research to investigate the unconventional use of touch and gesture in devices to extend our vision of ubiquitous computing even further. Being able to collaborate openly with academics and researchers like Chris on such work is critical to our organization’s ability to do great research — and to advancing the state of the art of computer user interfaces in general.”
Harrison previously worked with Microsoft Research to develop Skinput, a technology that used bioacoustic sensors to detect finger taps on a person’s hands or forearm. Skinput thus enabled users to control smartphones or other compact computing devices.
The optical sensing used in OmniTouch, by contrast, allows a wide range of interactions, similar to the capabilities of a computer mouse or touchscreen. It can track three-dimensional motion on the hand or other commonplace surfaces, and can sense whether fingers are “clicked” or hovering. What’s more, OmniTouch does not require calibration — users can simply wear the device and immediately use its features. No instrumentation of the environment is needed; only the wearable device is needed.

Read the full article here:
Wearable depth-sensing projection system makes any surface capable of multitouch interaction

Social media study reveals unreported truths on the nature of street protests, experts say

lian — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:00:48 +0000

According to a recent study about the role of social media in street protests and riots, the social media is increasingly used by crime fighters and businesses to follow and deal with protests and crime. A ‘ witness testimony ‘ can sometimes be in contradiction of media reports of an incident. The use of social media in times of unrest has both positive and negative aspects. The government can censor social media during times of unrest.

Read the full article here:
Social media study reveals unreported truths on the nature of street protests, experts say

Professor uncovers potential issues with apps built for Android systems

lian — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:01:37 +0000

In the Android market, 86% of the top 20 most downloaded apps in 10 diverse categories use web view. With the goal of creating dynamic apps, Web view has enabled developers to embed browsers in their apps allowing users to have a more customized experience that provides opportunities to interact with the social media

There are two major issues addressed in his paper:

1. Which apps to trust. There are a limited number of web browers on the internet (i.e. Firefox, Explorer, Safari, etc. ).
As a result, users of these browsers can be reasonably assured that they are protected from malicious content.

2. Dealing with losing the protection of the sandbox. Internet browsers on computer have safeguards known as the sandbox, that protect user information and prevent personal information from unknowingly being shared throughout the web

Read the full article here:
Professor uncovers potential issues with apps built for Android systems

EBay to drive mobile commerce innovation with open system – Mobile Commerce Daily

lian — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 01:11:41 +0000

eBay has announced plans to improve online and mobile shopping by migrating to a new system, including better integration with both Paypal and Facebook. They estimate that they will do $5 billion worth of trading through this new app, and have further plans to bring in more services to offer more opportunites for developers.

Read the full article here:
EBay to drive mobile commerce innovation with open system – Mobile Commerce Daily

RIM buys NewBay to boost content strategy

lian — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:55:24 +0000

RIM looks to offerings deal to acquire NewBay. It provides cloud-based services for digital content. It enables to give BlackBerry users the ability to store music, documents, address books and video in the cloud. The price that RIM paid for the Dublin-based company is $100 million. Having a content back-up solution also allows doing all kinds of interesting things with marketing and social media. RIM is reacting to market trends, with more companies starting to offer their own cloud-based services. RIM reported that it shipped approximately 200,000 BlackBerry Playbook tablets during its fiscal second quarter, a lower-than-expected number.

Read the full article here:
RIM buys NewBay to boost content strategy

Facebook upends mobile landscape by opening doors to app developers

lian — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:34:52 +0000

Social media made lot easier for many application developers now that social networking giant Facebook. It is extending its platform into mobile. Facebook had been expected to make a big mobile strategy. Making of application on game is the expansion. Applications were built using HTML5 so they can work across iOS, Android and other mobile devices. Facebook said it will extend its support for more mobile platforms. This will make Facebook so successful on the desktop. The new iPad app from Facebook enables it to present photos, messaging.

Read the full article here:
Facebook upends mobile landscape by opening doors to app developers

Graphene’s ‘Big Mac’ creates next generation of chips

lian — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:36:53 +0000

The world’s thinnest, strongest and most conductive material, Grapheme has the potential to revolutionize material science. By sandwiching two sheets of graphene with another two-dimensional material, boron nitrate, the University of Manchester team created the graphene ‘Big Mac’ — a four-layered structure which could be the key to replacing the silicon chip in computers. Its remarkable properties could lead to bendy, touch screen phones and computers, lighter aircraft, wallpaper-thin HD TV sets and superfast internet connections,

Read the full article here:
Graphene’s ‘Big Mac’ creates next generation of chips