How to block game requests from friends on Facebook ?

Are you tired of your friends sending you game requests? Well, then here are the steps for you to block the games and applications :

1. On your Facebook "Home" page, go to Apps and Games which is on the left side-bar under APPS.
2. There is a section "Invites from friends" on the top.
3. Try to close/cancel one of the invites you don't want.
4. After you confirm it, you'll be asked to block the app permanently.

For eg:

            You hid a  Empires and Allies  request sent by Chris Angel
             Block Empires and Allies?
             Ignore all requests from  Chris Angel?

5. Click on  "Block Empires and Allies" or whatever the name of the application is.
6.You'll be asked to confirm.

Walaaaaa!!!! No more requests !!!  :)

Sony introduces floating touch!

Here is another revolutionary feature introduced by Sony. With the floating touch, you can use your finger as if it was a mouse cursor, i.e. to hover and do similar activities that we normally do with a mouse-cursor on our computers.

SWYPE

Swype is an input method for touchscreens developed by Swype Inc. Swype was first commercially available on the Nokia N9 smartphone running Linux MeeGo. In October, 2011, Swype Inc was acquired by Nuance Communications.



Swype allows users to enter words by sliding a finger or stylus from letter to letter, lifting only between words. It uses error-correcting algorithms and a language model to guess the intended word. It also includes a tapping predictive text system in the same interface. Swype is designed for use on touchscreen devices with a traditional QWERTY keyboard.


The software has a size of less than one megabyte, and is as small as 500–900 kilobytes in most cases, such as on devices running the Windows Mobile operating system according to the product page. The recent beta comes with a large number of languages and software and can easily exceed 10MB in size on the Android operating system platform.


Swype consists of three major components that contribute to its accuracy and speed: an input path analyzer, word search engine with corresponding database, and a manufacturer customizable interface.


The creators of Swype predict that users will achieve over 50 words per minute, with the chief technical officer (CTO) and founder Cliff Kushler claiming to have reached 55 words per minute. On 22 March 2010, a new Guinness World Record of 35.54 seconds was set for the fastest text message on a touchscreen mobile phone using Swype on the Samsung Omnia II, and reportedly improved on 22 August of the same year to 25.94 using a Samsung Galaxy S. The Guinness world record text message consists of 160 characters in 25 words and was typed in 25.94 seconds, which corresponds to a speed of nearly 58 words per minute, or 370 characters per minute.


Swype currently ships on the Nokia N9, Nokia N950, Samsung wave s8500, Motorola CLIQ, Motorola CLIQ XT, Motorola DEFY, Motorola Atrix 4G, HTC HD2 (T-Mobile USA version,) T-Mobile G2, T-Mobile MyTouch 3G 3.5 mm Jack and myTouch Slide 3G (the latter both by T-Mobile USA). It also ships on the Omnia II mobile handset, manufactured by Samsung and distributed by Verizon Wireless. The most recent additions include the Samsung Galaxy S GT-i9000 and Nokia C7, as well as the Samsung Droid Charge and the Samsung Stratosphere. Swype has also recently become available for Windows 7 based tablets from certain manufacturers, including HP and ViewSonic.

World's Richest People List

      Forbes has published its list of world's richest persons and once again Carlos Slim Helu is on the top of the list for the third successive time. The Mexican billionaire is said to have around 69 billion $USD.


    World famous Bill Gates is second on the list with his property worth 61 billion $USD. Here is a list of top twenty richest people on earth according to Forbes magazine:

World's Smallest Petrol Engine

Scientists have created the smallest petrol engine in the world (less than a centimeter long not even half an inch),small enough to power a watch or any small gadget.The mini-motor which runs for two years on a single squirt of lighter fuel is set to revolutionize technology associated with it. It generates 700 times more energy than a conventional battery. It could be used to operate laptops and mobile phones for months doing away with the need for charging.

Experts believe it could be phasing out batteries in such items within just six years. The engine, minute enough to be balanced on a fingertip, has been produced by engineers at the University of Birmingham. At present, charging an ordinary battery to deliver one unit of energy involves putting 2,000 units into it. The little engine, because energy is produced locally, is far more effective.

One of the main problems faced by engineers who have tried to produce micro motors in the past has been the levels of heat produced. The engines got so hot they burned themselves out and could not be re-used. The Birmingham team overcame this by using heat-resistant materials such as ceramic and silicon carbide.

Try these different smileys and emotions to share your feelings/mood on Facebook chat

Here are a few emoticons that we can use in facebook. Try these during any chat:

:42:          The number 42
(y)           Facebook like button
(^^^)     Shark with sharp teeth out.
<(")        Penguin looking to the left.
:|]           Robot face.
:)           A happy smiley face.
:(           A sad and frowning smiley...
:P          Sticking tongue out.
:D          A big grin and laughing.
:O          Shocked and surprised.
;)           Winking.
B)          Nerdy smiley with glasses.
B|           Cool smiley wearing glasses.
>:(          Upset and angry.
:/            Unsure or doubtful emoticon..
:'(           Crying emoticon with tears.
3:)          Laughing devil emoticon.
O:)          A blushing angel with a halo...
:*           Girl sending a kiss and a wink.
<3          A red heart emoticon...
^_^         Kekeke happy emoticon....
-_-         Annoyed, sighing or bored...
o.O         Confused or WTF emoticon...
>:O         Upset, angry or shouting.....
:v            A Pacman emoticon.
:3            Cat faced smiley.
:putnam Christopher Putnam, an engineer of facebook who made the livechat feature!

The last but the most interesting one is that you can show the profile pic of any user during chat simply by typing the username of the person you want to show in between [[ and ]] , i.e. [[username]]

(Note: If you don't know how to see a person's username, you can simply go to their profile and see the url, For e.g: https://www.facebook.com/username or maybe https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1231231242 )

Please comment if I have missed any smiley!!

Why is China preferred over USA by Apple?

The reason Apple makes iPhones and iPads in China is not just about money.

Manufacturing an iPhone in the United States would cost about $65 more than manufacturing it in China, where it costs an estimated $8. This additional $65 would dent the profit Apple makes on each iPhone, but it wouldn't eliminate it. (The iPhone average selling price is about $600, and Apple's average gross margin is about 40%. So Apple's gross profit on each iPhone is probably in the neighborhood of $250.)

The real reasons Apple makes iPhones in China, therefore, are as follows:

    1. Most of the components of iPhones and iPads — the supply chain — are now manufactured in China, so assembling the phones half-a-world away would create huge logistical challenges. It would also reduce flexibility — the ability to switch easily from one component supplier or manufacturer to another.

    2. China's factories are now far bigger and more nimble than those in the United States. They can hire (and fire) tens of thousands of workers practically overnight. Because so many of the workers live on-site, they can also press them into service at a moment's notice. And they can change production practices and speeds extremely rapidly.

    3. China now has a far bigger supply of appropriately-qualified engineers than the U.S. does — folks with the technical skills necessary to build complex gadgets but not so credentialed that they cost too much.

    4. And, lastly, China's workforce is much hungrier and more frugal than many of their counterparts in the United States.

10 startup clouds to watch out in 2012

Cloud.....as we all know is starting to get famous and it may have a big role in the way internet is used in future. So, here are some of the cloud companies that have launched in 2011 and must be watched in 2012 :

1.Zillabyte:

Zillabyte was co-founded by two former google engineers and a former intel engineer.Zillabyte is still operating in its Beta version. Basically, zillabyte wants to provide users with data stes as well as algorithms needed to process them. Usually data sets do not come with algorithms and a processing backend on the internet.The service is initially focused on web data and text-based algorithms but there's plenty of growth to see in future.

2.Solidfire:

Solidfire wants to target the large enterprises who want to run mission-critical applications on the cloud. The company targets cloud providers with SSD-based storage systems that make it possible to store virtual machine images in the cloud and still deliver high performance. Cloud providers using Solidfire can host a lot more relational databases and other applications that presently remain in house.

 3.ScaleXtreme:

These days we need server-management software, but not all can get the expensive software from traditional market vendors. ScaleXtreme provides the facility to manage both physical and cloud based servers. It has attracted many cloud providers recently with this idea.

4.Parse:

Parse is aiming to be a PaaS specialist for mobie apps . There are big contenders for Parse at the moment such as Heroku and Appfog, but still it seems to have the right idea to give a competition to them. It has a frontend designed for mobile developers and a backend focused on the needs of mobile applications.

5.Nebula:

Its founded by a former NASA CTO Chris Kemp and the investors are David Cheriton, Andy Bechtolsheim and Ram Shriram.Nebula is a company publishing a commercial version of the open-source OpenStack cloud computing software. Nebula ties OpenStack to an optimised hardware platform designed to make building public clouds a plug-and-play experience.


6.Kaggle:

Kaggle is a crowdsourcing platform for solving big data challenges. Its all about the hottest thing going in big data right now. Here's how it works : Although not everyone has data scientists in the house, there are plenty of them floating around the world. They are happy enough to put their skills
to work on a problem for cash prizes and a little bit of credit. It takes a lot of computing power to host hundreds of teams on any given competition, as well as the data sets, which is why Kaggle utilizes Microsoft Windows Azure cloud.


7.CloudSigma:

The company is all about giving customers high performance and lots of control. CloudSigma sits in the impressive SuperNAP data center and offers 10 GbE interconnects as well as solid-state
drives, and developers can buy and manage resources with the granular control normally found in co-location.The Infrastructure-as-a-Service space is a tough racket to enter because it means competing with the likes of Amazon Web Services and Rackspace.



8.Cloudability:

Cloudability provides a simple service with a lot of value: it monitors customers’ spending on cloud computing resources. It might uncover something as commonplace as cloud-server sprawl because so many employees are spinning up instances, or it might find something nefarious such as hackers using a company’s instances serve boatloads of network traffic. As use of cloud services proliferates, companies will need an easy tool to help them keep track of what they’re spending and where.


9.Bromium:

Little is known about Bromium other than that is plans to use virtualization technology as a tool for securing the myriad endpoints (e.g., desktops, mobile phones and tablets) that connect to enterprise networks. While securing cloud servers, as other startups such as CloudPassage attempt to do, is important, the advent of consumerization means endpoints need security. Among Bromium’s founders is Simon Crosby, who co-founded XenSource and served as virtualization CTO at Citrix Systems.


10.AppFog:

AppFog is one of a handful of Platform-as-a-Service startups to launch in 2011, but AppFog is unique because it leverages the open-source Cloud Foundry code as its core. The switch to a Cloud Foundry foundation over the summer resulted in a name change from PHP Fog, as the company was immediately able to support numerous new programming languages. Going forward, AppFog can ride Cloud Foundry’s development wave, while focusing its own efforts on building the best user experience.