Google+ Users Estimated at 62 Million

An enthusiastic Paul Allen (not the Paul Allen of Microsoft fame, but founder of Ancestry.com) predicts continued adoption of Google+, the social network which launched earlier this year, saying that it is on track to reach 100 million users by the end of February 2012. Allen penned this forecast as part of a post on Google+, where he also released an independent estimate that the site now has 62 million users worldwide.

Allen, whose verified name on Google+ lists him as founder of Ancestry.com and "unofficial Google+ statistician," has reportedly been tracking the number of new users who sign up for Google+ and adjusting how he and his team count when Google releases official statements on the number of members. On October 1, Allen says his estimates pointed to about 38 million users; not two weeks later on October 13, Google pronounced the figure at more than 40 million.

Google+, which first appeared as a beta social network in late June of this year and finally opened up to the public in September, garnered a lot of early attention for its potential to become an alternative to Facebook. However, despite the numbers, activity on the social network hasn't lived up to expectations. While a small number of users seem to be use the site fervently, Google+ doesn't have as much social activity or connectivity as its primary rival—so far.

Another one of Allen's predictions for Google+ in the year ahead is that the Network Effect will take hold, meaning the more people use Google+, the more valuable the site will become for everyone on it. However, there's a big difference between using the site and joining, which has been the primary reason for lackluster response to date.

source : www.pcmag.com
By Jill Duffy

Laptop

A laptop, also called a notebook,^[1][2] is a personal computer for mobile use.^[3][4] A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device (a touchpad, also known as a trackpad, and/or a pointing stick) and speakers into a single unit. A laptop is powered by mains electricity via an AC adapter, and can be used away from an outlet using a rechargeable battery.
Portable computers, originally monochrome CRT-based and developed into the modern laptops, and were originally considered to be a small niche market, mostly for specialized field applications such as the military, accountants and sales representatives. As portable computers became smaller, lighter, cheaper, more powerful and as screens became larger and of better quality, laptops became very widely used for all sorts of purposes.

Mobile phone

A mobile phone (also known as a cellular phone, cell phone and a hand phone) is a device that can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile phone operator, allowing access to the public telephone network. By contrast, a cordless telephone is used only within the short range of a single, private base station.
In addition to telephony, modern mobile phones also support a wide variety of other services such as text messaging, MMS, email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications (infrared, Bluetooth), business applications, gaming and photography. Mobile phones that offer these and more general computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones.
The first hand-held mobile phone was demonstrated by Dr Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973, using a handset weighing around 1 kg.^[1] In 1983, the DynaTAC 8000x was the first to be commercially available. In the twenty years from 1990 to 2010, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew from 12.4 million to over 4.6 billion, penetrating the developing economies and reaching the bottom of the economic pyramid.^[2][3][4][5]

Nicolas Steno Google Logo Honors Geologist's 374th Birthday

Google's homepage logo on January 11 was transformed to celebrate the 374th birthday of Nicolas Steno (1638 - 1686), a pioneer in the fields of geology and botany.

This Google doodle features a stylized animation of the earth's layers, with green plant life and animals sitting atop sediment embedded with fossils.

The Washington Post explains how the logo reflects Steno‘s most famous contributions to science:

The strata illustrate Steno's "principle of original horizonality," which essentially says that rock layers form horizontally -- and only appear differently if later disturbances cause the deviation. And the fossils in the lower stratified rock help illustrate Steno's "law of superposition," which -- simply put -- says that the oldest rock layers are sequentially deposited on the bottom unless otherwise disturbed.

Born in Denmark, Steno began his professional career studying human anatomy. But it was his examination of shark teeth that led him to question science as the world knew it. He noticed that the teeth resembled shapes he had seen in rocks, and he concluded that those shapes were the remains of ancient animals. According to the University of Vermont's profile of Steno, his discovery marks the birth of modern geology.

"His observations contributed to the fundamental observations that bind together the study of geology, which over time provided the framework that would allow fellow scientists to use fossil evidence to examine how life evolved on Earth," writes UVM.

In 1667, Steno converted to Catholicism and moved on from scientific pursuits to religious study. "He was ordained as a priest in 1675," according to the University of California's Museum of Palentology. "In 1677, he became a titular bishop, and spent the rest of his life ministering to the minority Roman Catholic populations in northern Germany, Denmark, and Norway."

Take a look at the doodle (below) and click through the slideshow to see our favorite doodles ever.

The Art of 3-D Printing

As part of our special report on manufacturing, we asked Neri Oxman, a professor at the MIT Media Lab and an internationally recognized artist whose work is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to create a sculpture that would illustrate the future of manufacturing. (See a gallery of images).

What she produced, in collaboration with MIT materials science professor Craig Carter, is a powerful demonstration of the possibilities of 3-D printing, using techniques that take advantage of the capabilities of 3-D printers in ways that conventional manufacturing techniques cannot.  

3-D printing encompasses a range of technologies—from inkjet heads mounted on gantries that can deposit plastics layer by layer to form intricate models, to more recent laser-based systems that sinter metal powders to make durable parts for airplanes. 3-D printers have mainly been used for prototyping, but they are becoming an option for manufacturing as well, and may eventually even be used to print buildings, Oxman says. But designers and architects haven't yet learned to take advantage of their capabilities.

Oxman, who trained as an architect, says buildings are designed today with an eye toward the components they can be made of—sheets of plywood, panes of glass, steel beams, and concrete columns. As a result, those designs are limited, in much the way Lego bricks constrain the shapes that children can build. There are similar limitations in conventional manufacturing; there are some shapes that simply can't be built with existing molds and machining tools, and designers have had to design with these limits in mind.

Oxman is exploring ways to break with conventional design thinking by looking to patterns and processes found in nature, and using equations that define these processes to generate new designs. The results are often surprising shapes and structures that can be made only with 3-D printers.

To help develop the algorithms needed, Oxman has teamed up with Carter and others. In some cases, the algorithms provide new aesthetics, but they can also have practical applications—such as varying the structure to help bear loads. For one sculpture—a model of a chaise longue reclined chair—Oxman combined algorithms taken from nature with a map of the pressure a body exerts on a chair. The result depends on where the algorithms determine the chair needs to be soft to provide comfort and where it needs to be stiff to provide support.

TECHNOLOGY BIRDS - Laptop - Mobile - Tablets PC - Facebook - Social Networks: Apple iPad 3 to arrive in March, followed by iPad 4 in October to fend off the Windows 8 slates

TECHNOLOGY BIRDS - Laptop - Mobile - Tablets PC - Facebook - Social Networks: Apple iPad 3 to arrive in March, followed by iPad 4 in October to fend off the Windows 8 slates

Apple iPad 3 to arrive in March, followed by iPad 4 in October to fend off the Windows 8 slates

Those talkative "component supplier" sources that are always feeding ideas to Digitimes, are rearing their heads again with the grand scoop that Apple will be outing iPad 3 in March, followed by an iPad 4 in October, which, if true, will shorten the upgrade cycle to half a year.

Not that we didn't hear rumors last year that there will be an iPad 3 with higher display resolution in the fall, which never materialized, but the sources say iPad 4 is necessitated by the fact that the first Windows 8 slates will be arriving then, which is much more believable.

The iPad 3 is said to come with QXGA (1,536x2,048 pixels) resolution, which we've heard numerous times, and longer battery life. We've also heard rumors that the high resolution required two LED light bars to be installed instead of one, which had made the slate slightly thicker than the iPad 2, but on the other hand it seems more room for a battery has been made, if the claim for a longer-lasting juicer is to be believed. The main goal here is to introduce the iPad 3 at the current iPad 2 price, which will be allegedly lowered to $399, to battle the influx of affordable Android and other tablets.

The iPad 4, on the other hand, is said to receive not only a more impressive hardware upgrade than the iPad 3 (quad-core A6 anyone?), but also to bank heavily on groundbreaking software side of things with some "integrated applications", whatever that means.

This one will have the first Windows 8 tablets to battle, both the ARM-based, and the ones with the new Clover Trail platform of Intel, which promises much better battery life than previous Intel mobile offerings, plus all the Windows programs you throw at it, of course, which is a major advantage. Both Acer and Lenovo are already said to out Clover Trail Windows 8 slates in Q3, so competition will be heating up in the tablet space this year, much to our delight.