This post is a summary of technology, gadgets, electronics news and items that I find interesting from different sources. You never know, something from this list may interest you too... Check it out...
Topics
1) Google does what developers always do, Copy and Paste...
2) Google working on improving the quality of its search
3) Google Offers comes after the failed attempt to acquire Groupon
4) India's $35 tablet delayed because of production trouble
5) Mobile Body Area Network (MBAN) technology can reach our home soon
Google does what developers always do, Copy and Paste...
Source: ArsTechnica
It has been raining news about Google in the last few days. It is old news that Oracle has sued Google for distributing code in Android, that has been picked from Java. While Google has given a vague clarification and response to it, a Patent reform activist Florian Mueller (whom Oracle should owe something now) has reviewed numerous source code in Android and identified more than 30 files that are being distributed with Android, even though they are copyrighted and marked confidential in Java.
While the news initially created bad press for Google, the article from ArsTechnica seem to give some clarification around the scenario. The source code that is claimed to be duplicate are actually coming from a company called SONiVOX, which is a member of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA). They develop the Embedded Audio Synthesis (EAS) framework for Audio that Android uses. Looks like the code archive distributed by this company, has those conflicting files but the files referred by the Activist are not actually used in Android.
It will be interesting to see if Oracle uses this find to substantiate its claim or not and more importantly on the response from Google for this.
Google working on improving the quality of its search
Source: Lifehacker
Google had become synonymous with search since the company set foot on the Search market. It has replaced Ask, Altavista, Yahoo and many others. Lately the relevance of search results from Google have been questioned by many users. Many tech savvy people understand the page ranking algorithm of Google and try to manipulate the search results to bump their site.
Google in its official blog has confirmed that they are constantly working on improving the results and had made some changes in the search algorithm already. While they have improved by filtering "pure webspam", they are facing challenge from the "content farms", which are sites with shallow and low-quality content. The Company acknowledged that they have a problem and are working to resolve that.
Google Offers comes after the failed attempt to acquire Groupon
Source: ArsTechnica
Google's attempt to buy Groupon for $6 billion and the fallout of the attempt is no secret. While Google has been constantly tried to increase its relevance in Social networks, the Groupon deal was supposed to give a huge advantage for the company. In an unofficial confirmation via Mashable, Google's response to Groupon has surfaced.
Google Offers as it is called is a Groupon competitor, which ties in the location based services to offer deals of the day to users and is powered by Google checkout. Google subsequently confirmed its plans and has said that it is communication with small businesses to enlist their support and participation in a test of a prepaid offers / vouchers program.
Looking at the state of the site, it appears that this has been in the works even before the Groupon discussion and the idea would have been to acquire Groupon and merge it with this service.
Can Google make it big and reach the success of Groupon, it needs to be seen...
India's $35 tablet delayed because of production trouble
Source: Engadget
Right after the announcement of iPad and tablets from all major manufacturers in 2010, Indian government announced $35 tablet, which was supposed to be distributed among students. While the prototype was demonstrated by the Indian minister Kapil Sibal with a launch date of Jan 15th, it looks like the tablet has hit some production problems.
HCL Technologies had bagged the contract for manufacturing the tablet, but has had issues in meeting the numbers because of production costs and has been dropped from the contract. Now the Government is claiming that the project is on track, but is seeking a replacement for HCL.
Hope this does not become like the $10 tablet, which is yet to materialize.
Mobile Body Area Network (MBAN) technology can reach our home soon
Source: Engadget
Mobile Body Area Network (MBAN) technology can revolutionize the Heath Care system and can even assist in making the Health Reform system feasible. This technology allows for remote patient monitoring system using disposable wireless devices, which means that the patients can minimize the trips to hospital.
The frequency used by this technology was clashing with Fligh Test radio frequency and hence not widely used. Now this has received the approval from Aeronautic industries. FCC is still to decide on the final rules for MBAN and after that can be deployed in hospitals.
We can definitely soon have residential application of this technology, where we will have our gadgets / entertainment systems to update our vital signs to the monitoring systems.
Author: Vinod
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