Nano-SIM Coming Soon

After Apple’s iPhone, iPad and some recently launched Nokia’s phones like Lumia 800 and 710, the micro-SIMs were just getting into the groove to be adopted by other manufacturers. The adoption of micro-SIM has paved the way for making our portable devices more compact and efficient. But it’s now time to change that and get our devices much more compact and more efficient than it is now.

A Mini-SIM and a Micro-SIM comparision

It’s now time to reduce the size of the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) once again. After nearly 20 years of producing the first ever SIM card, German manufacturer Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) is now presenting the world’s first Nano-SIM card. This new form of SIM is about 60 percent smaller than the current generation Mini-SIMs which indicates cell phone manufacturers having an advantage of additional free space to include, maybe, larger batteries or more memory or even making the device thinner.
The Nano-SIM will be 15 percent thinner and 30 percent smaller than the micro-SIMs. The SIM will be 12mm x 9mm in dimension. Various network operators worldwide have been given initial samples for the testing process and the Nano-SIM is expected to be standardised by the end of this year through ETSI. Which could mean Apple getting their fair share of the SIM for their next i-device which would be launched next year. There is nothing more to worry for older cell phone users as the Nano-SIM would be backward compatible by the use of an adapter solution for universal use.
Source: CNet

2018 Commonwealth Games go for gold

The Gold Coast has clinched the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

    The Gold Coast has beaten the Sri Lankan city of Hambantota in the competition to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Despite several other cities - Perth and Adelaide (Australia), Abuja (Nigeria), Auckland and Christchurch (New Zealand) and the Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago) - indicating their interest in hosting the games, it ultimately became a two horse race in 2010 when they failed to enter a bid.

Gold Coast Bid:

   The Gold Coast bid was officially launched on 22 August 2008 by Queensland Premier Anna Bligh.
    Ms Bligh and Gold Coast Mayor Ron Clarke, a former Olympian and Commonwealth Games athlete, both played major parts in the campaign.
  The bid was built around the tagline 'It's our time to shine' and the hope of being 'the greenest games ever held'.
    The Gold Coast leveraged their argument for hosting the games on its extensive experience in hosting large scale sporting events and its existing high quality and well located facilities.

Hambantota Bid:

  Hambantota entered the race as the underdog with a surprise, last-minute bid on 31 March 2010.
The underdeveloped coastal city is the capital of Sri Lanka's southern Hambantota District.
 It was hit by the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 and its games bid was linked to long term development plans for the area including remaking Hambantota as a 'sports city'.
  The tagline for its bid was 'Together: From the heart'.
  The bid was overseen by the Sri Lankan minister for sports, Mahindananda Aluthgamage and the governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Ajith Nivard Cabraat.

What is 3G Technology

3G Technology

If you want augmented bandwidth, multiple mobile applications and clarity of digital signals, then 3G (Thrid Generation Technology) is your gateway. GSM technology was able to transfer circuit switched data over the network. The use of 3G technology is also able to transmit packet switch data efficiently at better and increased bandwidth. 3G mobile technologies proffers more advanced services to mobile users. It can help many multimedia services to function. The spectral efficiency of 3G technology is better than 2G technologies. Spectral efficiency is the measurement of rate of information transfer over any communication sytem. 3G is also known as IMT-2000.

3G technology and 3g Technologies characteristics

3G technologies make use of TDMA and CDMA. 3G (Thrid Generation Technology) technologies make use of value added services like mobile television, GPS (global positioning system) and video conferencing. The basic feature of 3G Technology (Thrid Generation Technology) is fast data transfer rates. However this feature is not currently working properly because, ITU 200 is still making decision to fix the data rates. It is expected that 2mbit/sec for stationary users, while 348kbits when moving or traveling. ITU sell various frequency rates in order to make use of broadband technologies. Network authentication has won the trust of users, because the user can rely on its network as a reliable source of transferring data.3G technology is much flexible, because it is able to support the 5 major radio technologies. These radio technologies operate under CDMA, TDMA and FDMA.CDMA holds for IMT-DS (direct spread), IMT-MC (multi carrier). TDMA accounts for IMT-TC (time code), IMT-SC (single carrier). FDMA has only one radio interface known as IMT-FC or frequency code. Third generation technology is really affordable due to the agreement of industry. This agreement took pace in order to increase its adoption by the users. 3G (Thrid Generation Technology) system is compatible to work with the 2G technologies. 3G (Thrid Generation Technology) technologies holds the vision that they should be expandable on demand. The aim of the 3G (Thrid Generation Technology) is to allow for more coverage and growth with minimum investment.

3G technologies (Third Generation Technologies) 

 

There are many 3G technologies as W-CDMA, GSM EDGE, UMTS, DECT, WiMax and CDMA 2000.Enhanced data rates for GSM evolution or EDGE is termed to as a backward digital technology, because it can operate with older devices. EDGE allows for faster data transfer than existing GSM.EDGE was introduced by AT& T in 2003.EDGE has increased the GSM coverage up to three times more. EDGE is a 3G Technology (Thrid Generation Technology); therefore it can be used for packet switched systems. Universal mobile telecommunications systems .UMTS conforms to ITU IMT 2000 standard. It is complex network and allows for covering radio access, core network and USIM (subscriber identity module). It is a relatively expensive technology for the network operators because it requires new and separate infrastructure for its coverage. The GSM is the base of this technology. CDMA is also referred to as IMT-MC. this technology is close to 2G technology GSM because it is also backward compatible. Digital enhanced cordless telecommunications (DECT) is another 3G Technology (Thrid Generation Technology). DETC was developed by European telecommunications standards institute; however it is now widely popular in the other countries of the world as well. It runs over a frequency of 1900Mhz. WiMax is a 3G Technology (Thrid Generation Technology) and it is referred to as worldwide interoperability for microwave access. It is a wireless technology. It transmits variety of wireless signals. It can be operated on the multi point and point modes. it is portable technology. This technology is based on the wireless internet access. Name of the WiMax was developed in 2001 by WiMax forum. This technology removes the need for wires and is capable enough to provide 10mbits/sec. it can connect you to hotspot.

International Conference on Advanced Computing during 14-16, Dec'11

ICoAC 2011 (Third International Conference on Advanced Computing) seeks to bring together international researchers to present papers and generate discussions on current research and development in latest trends in IT. The conference will feature a range of presentations on latest research as well as stimulating talks and keynote addresses.

ICoAC 2011 is an international conference in the field of Computer Science and Communication focusing to address issues and developments in advanced computing. It is hosted by Department of Computer Technology annually during December. The First and Second editions of ICoAC have been held during 13-15 december 2009 (ICAC) and 14-16 December 2010 (ICoAC) . Information Society is facing challenges due to the complexity of its structure in terms of networking, middleware, peer to peer applications, ubiquitous computing, pervasive computing with diverse usage in commercial, personal, communal and public domains, posing various critical issues to be addressed and solved.

The ICoAC 2011 is to provide a forum for International community to discuss and debate on the developments in the cutting edge technologies of computing.The conference will feature peer-reviewed technical paper presentation with short-papers and posters, tutorial, student paper presentation and stimulating keynote talks.

Objective:

ICoAC 2011 seeks to bring together international researchers to present papers and generate discussions on current research and developments in latest trends in computing.

Theme of the conference is “ Computing Trends For Educational Society”.

International Conference ICRTIT (during 19 - 21 April 2012)

About Conference

 Information Technology plays an important role in convergence of computing, communication and all other computational sciences and applications to satisfy our ever-challenging needs. In the past few decades, Information Technology has influenced and changed every aspect of our lives along with cultures. This technology will also persuade the future world in various areas which includes Science, Engineering, Industry, Business, Law, Politics, Medicine, and so on. ICRTIT� 2012 welcomes research papers from practicing Engineers and Technologists, Scientists from R & D Institutions, Faculty members of engineering colleges, Research scholars and Post graduate students from Information Technology, Computer Science and Communication fields all over the world. Our conference is intended to foster the dissemination of state-of-the-art research in all future IT areas, including IT models, services, and novel applications associated with the utilization of Information Science and Technology. 

Venue

Venue of the Conference: Rajam Hall, Madras Institute of Technology, Anna University, Chromepet, Chennai - 600 044, Tamil Nadu, India.

Skype security flaw can expose a user's location

Jim Giles, consultant
Skype is known for being cheap and extremely secure, but the reputation of the internet telephone service has taken a knock after researchers revealed how to covertly track the location of people who use it.
The problem lies with the service's peer-to-peer technology, which establishes a direct connection between the two people participating in a call. Stevens Le Blond of the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Wartburg, Germany and colleagues worked out how to probe that connection to reveal the IP address of the person they were contacting.
IP (Internet Protocol) addresses identify individual computers and can be used to locate a device in the city, and sometimes even the specific building, where it is being used.
Le Blond's hack is doubly worrying because it can be executed without alerting the victim. His team showed that they could initiate a Skype connection and scoop up the IP address without the person's Skype account ever registering the call.
What's more, a malicious hacker could scale the process and automatically track many users at once. Le Blond and colleagues demonstrated this by showing that they could check the location of 10,000 Skype users on an hourly basis. Location information can be potentially embarrassing or even dangerous: stalkers could use the hack to pursue victims and employers could check up on the location of employees.
Le Blond says that he notified Skype of the problem in May, but that the security hole remains open. Skype's Chief Information Security Officer, Adrian Asher, told PC World "through research and development, we will continue to make advances in this area and improvements to our software."
Le Blond will present his work next month at the Internet Measurement Conference in Berlin, Germany.

Brain-training games stop depression before it starts

• 11:00 01 November 2011 by Justin Warner
• For similar stories, visit the Teenagers and Mental Health Topic Guides

It may be possible to stave off depression before it even appears using brain-training software so simplistic in its design that even the psychologist testing it once bet it wouldn't work.

Ian Gotlib's group at Stanford University, California, studies girls aged 10 to 14 years whose mothers suffer from depression. Such girls are thought to be at higher-than-normal risk of developing the condition themselves, in part because they may inherit their mothers' tendency to "amplify" unpleasant information. Although none of the girls has yet experienced a depressive episode, Gotlib has found that their brains already overreact to negative emotional stimuli – a pattern they share with their mothers and other depressed people.

Gotlib is studying whether these young subjects can use interactive software and brain-imaging hardware to "rewire" their brains by unlearning this negative bias. In a pilot experiment, eight girls used a neural feedback display to learn how to control activity in a network of interrelated brain regions that have been linked to depression – these include the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

The level of activity in this network was measured using an functional MRI scan and displayed to the girls in the form of a thermometer on a computer screen. The girls were shown sad or negative pictures that might ordinarily raise their "temperature", and tried to lower that "temperature" by adopting more sanguine mental states. They were then advised to try to recreate that mindset in their daily lives.

A control group unknowingly watched someone else's scan output instead of their own, so they didn't actually learn how to control their brain activity.

Accentuate the positive

Another set of girls in the pilot experiment received their training through a simple computer game instead. In this game, a pair of faces appeared on a screen every few seconds: they would be either neutral and sad, or neutral and happy. Then a dot replaced one of the faces, and the "game" was to click on the dot. For the eight girls in the control group, the face replaced by the dot was selected at random, but for eight girls in the experimental group, the dot always replaced the more positive face in the pair. Over a week of playing this game daily, these girls were in effect being trained to avoid looking at the sad faces.

Gotlib himself originally found this concept, called attentional-bias training, so simplistic that he bet Colin MacLeod, a psychologist at the University of Western Australia in Perth who pioneered the technique, that it would not alter psychological symptoms. Gotlib lost his bet.

In his pilot study, both kinds of training significantly reduced stress-related responses – for example, increases in heart rate, blood pressure and cortisol levels – to negative stimuli. These stress responses are a key marker of depression, and they diminished one week after training. The girls in the experimental groups also developed fewer defensive responses to negative faces, such as startled blinking. Control groups showed no such improvement.

Jill Hooley, head of Harvard University's clinical psychology programme, was impressed by the findings despite the small sample size: "This is highly innovative work," she said. "Ian is breaking new ground here."

Gotlib is adding more subjects to the training programme and plans to compare their long-term mental health with a parallel cohort of 200 girls, half of whom have depressed mothers, who aren't participating in the study.

He presented his results at the annual meeting of the Society for Research in Psychopathology in Boston in September.

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