6 technologies that will change PCs in 2015

Intel's RealSense 3D depth-sensing camera in action.

Laptops and desktops will be interactive, get 3D depth-sensing cameras and be wire-free

In an era of slick gadgets, PCs are the dinosaurs, ensnared in wire clutter, sporting tired 2D cameras and stricken with the occasional blue screen of death. Technology coming up in 2015, though, is set to make PCs more interactive, fun and perhaps nosier than you'd like them to be.

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Apple's iPad changed the way people viewed computers and spurred PC innovation. Hardware makers drew ideas from mobile devices, gaming consoles and even 3D printers to rethink the PC, and the resulting new technologies will have a profound effect on how laptops and desktops are used next year and into the future.

Perhaps the most interesting idea is Intel's "wire-free" PC, in which wireless technology will replace display, charging and data transfer cables. Chip maker Intel next year will show an experimental laptop that has no ports, and relies completely on wireless technology to connect to monitors and external storage devices.

Interactive computers will have 3D cameras that behave more like eyes, with the ability to recognize objects and measure distances. Sensory input through sound, voice and touch will help PCs respond to and anticipate our needs.

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And like every year, PCs will get thinner, faster, lighter and have longer battery life. Games and movies will look smashing with higher-resolution displays. The new technology, however, will come with a price.

Here are six disruptive technologies that could change the face of computing in the next year:

Wireless charging

Place a laptop on a table, and it'll automatically start charging. No wires needed, no need to carry a power brick. That's how Intel views wireless charging for laptops, which could become a reality next year. Intel wants to make wireless chargers as easy to find as a Wi-Fi signal, and wants to bring the technology to cafes, restaurants, airports and other public places so laptops can be recharged without power adapters. The first laptops with wireless charging could come out next year, and Intel has shown a few prototypes laptop being recharged on a table.

Mark Hachman

Intel plans to make the wire-free future of the PC a reality as early as the first quarter of 2015.

Intel is backing the Rezence magnetic resonance wireless charging technology, promoted by the Alliance for Wireless Power, or A4WP. The power flow will initially be limited, enough to wirelessly recharge ultraportables and hybrids. Plans call for increased power output to recharge mainstream laptops. But getting the technology to public places and entertainment spots could take some years. Some cafes and restaurants already provide wireless charging bases for tablets and smartphones, and are interested in adding laptops to the mix.

Beam the image, Scotty

It may also become possible to connect laptops wirelessly to displays, which could eliminate expensive HDMI or DisplayPort display cables. A wireless display will start working as soon as a laptop is within range. Intel envisions a laptop ultimately being able to connect to multiple wireless monitors, which could be useful in classrooms or meetings. One laptop will be able to stream to monitors on multiple desks. Intel is pushing the initial idea through a "smart dock" that connects a laptop to a wireless monitor.

Wireless displays will gain momentum with the growing adoption of WiGig, a faster version of Wi-Fi that can handle wireless 4K video streams without any lag. In addition to Intel, Qualcomm will bring WiGig to smartphones and tablets next year, so users will be able to stream Netflix directly from a smartphone or tablet to a wireless TV. Display makers will also build WiGig technologies into monitors and TVs in the coming years.

Creative desktops

From its origin as a dull white box, the desktop has become a hub of creativity and imagination, with technologies like depth-sensing cameras and 3D printing spinning off a variety of innovations. One example is HP's Sprout, which looks like a normal all-in-one PC, but packs the latest imaging and collaboration technology. At the base of Sprout is a giant touch pad called a Touch Mat, which is a dual-purpose digital canvas on which images can be scanned and also manipulated. A 3D depth-sensing camera lodged in Sprout scans the objects placed on the Touch Mat -- for example, if a coffee mug is placed on the canvas, the 3D camera will scan it to depth and size. A projector on top of Sprout can then reflect the scanned image of a coffee mug on the Touch Mat, which artists can then manipulate by touching the digital canvas. HP says the scanning and manipulation could be useful for creating objects that could be 3D-printed. But at $1,899, Sprout is considered an expensive experimental desktop.

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Otherwise, Dell has developed a "smart desk," with an all-in-one PC beaming a virtual keyboard onto a desk on which users can type. It's an interesting concept, but a proper keyboard may be a better idea.

Interactive computers

Computers will become more perceptual with a combination of gesture, voice and visual recognition technologies being installed in PCs. Starting next year, 2D cameras in PCs will be replaced by Intel's RealSense 3D cameras, which will be able to recognize objects and even measure distances between items. The camera's Kinect-like gesture recognition capabilities will also make PC gaming hands free and interactive. Intel has lofty goals, aiming to combine visual, voice and sound input to recognize human moods and reading habits. While those won't happen in the coming year, the 3D camera will certainly make Skype chats more fun.

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Basic Networking Interview Questions with answer

• 
  
• When were OSI model developed and why its standard called 802.XX and so on?
• OSI model was developed in February1980 that why these also known as 802.XX Standard (Notice 80 means ==> 1980, 2means ==> February)
• What is Full form of ADS?
• Active Directory Structure
• How will you register and activate windows?
• If you have not activated windows XP, you can do so at any time by clicking the windows Activation icon in the system tray to initiate activation. Once you have activated windows XP, this icon disappears from the system tray.
• For registration
• Start ==> Run ==> regwiz /r
• Where do we use cross and standard cable?
• Computer to computer ==> cross
• Switch/hub to switch/hub ==>cross
• Computer to switch/hub ==>standard
• How many pins do serial ports have?
• In computer it's known as com port and could be available in 9pin or 25 pin. On router it have 60 pins.
• How will check ip address on 98?
• Start ==> Run ==> command ==> winipcfg
• How will you make partition after installing windows?
• My computer ==> right click ==> manage ==> disk management ==>
• select free space ==> right click ==> New partition
• What is IP?
• It's a unique 32 bits software address of a node in a network.
• What is private IP?
• Three ranges of IP addresses have been reserved for private address and they are not valid for use on the Internet. If you want to access internet with these address you must have to use proxy server or NAT server (on normal cases the role of proxy server is played by your ISP.).If you do decide to implement a private IP address range, you can use IP addresses from any of the following classes:
• Class A 10.0.0.0 10.255.255.255
• Class B 172.16.0.0 172.31.255.255
• Class C 192.168.0.0 192.168.255.255
• What is public IP address?
• A public IP address is an address leased from an ISP that allows or enables direct Internet communication.
• What's the benefit of subnetting?
• Reduce the size of the routing tables.
• Reduce network traffic. Broadcast traffic can be isolated within a single logical network.
• Provide a way to secure network traffic by isolating it from the rest of the network.
• What are the differences between static ip addressing and dynamic ip addressing?
• With static IP addressing, a computer (or other device) is configured to always use the same IP address. With dynamic addressing, the IP address can change periodically and is managed by a centralized network service
• What is APIPA?
• Automatic private IP addressing (APIPA) is a feature mainly found in Microsoft operating systems. APIPA enables clients to still communicate with other computers on the same network segment until an IP address can be obtained from a DHCP server, allowing the machine to fully participate on the network. The range of these IP address are the 169.254.0.1 to 169.254.255.254 with a default Class B subnet mask of 255.255.0.0.
• What are the LMHOSTS files?
• The LMHOSTS file is a static method of resolving NetBIOS names to IP addresses in the same way that the HOSTS file is a static method of resolving domain names into IP addresses. An LMHOSTS file is a text file that maps NetBIOS names to IP addresses; it must be manually configured and updated.
• What is DHCP scope?
• A scope is a range, or pool, of IP addresses that can be leased to DHCP clients on a given subnet.
• What is FQDN?
• An FQDN contains (fully qualified domain name) both the hostname and a domain name. It uniquely identifies a host within a DNS hierarchy
• What is the DNS forwarder?
• DNS servers often must communicate with DNS servers outside of the local network. A forwarder is an entry that is used when a DNS server receives DNS queries that it cannot resolve locally. It then forwards those requests to external DNS servers for resolution.
• Which command will you use to find out the name of the pc in networks?
• NSLOOKUP [192.168.0.1]
• [Ip of target computer]
• How will enable sound service in 2003?
• By default this service remain disable to enable this service
• Start ==> administrative tools ==> service ==> windows audio ==> start up type ==> automatic
• How will enable CD burning service in 2003?
• By default this service remain disable to enable this service
• Start ==> administrative tools ==> service ==> IMAPI CD burning com service ==> start up type ==> automatic

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Apple Awarded Patent for Hybrid VR Headset

Apple has been awarded a patent for a virtual reality headset that can use an iPhone or iPod as a display.

Patent number 8,957,835 was awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to Apple for a "head-mounted display apparatus for retaining a portable electronic device with display." The abstract describes a device similar to the Gear VR, which weds a Samsung Note smartphone to a headpiece designed by Oculus.

In its description of the patent, Apple explains that the head-mounted display system would allow users to couple and decouple a portable electronic device with a head-mounted device so the two devices would temporarily act as a single unit.

The portable electronic device -- such as an iPhone -- and the head-mounting device would be able to communicate with each other, the patent explained, and each device may be allowed to extend its features and services to the other to enhance, increase and eliminate redundant functions between the devices.

Quin C. Hoellwarth is listed as the inventor on the patent, which was filed in September 2008.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The Hybrid Advantage

While it's possible to connect a portable device to a headset via a cable, Apple explained in its patent "a wired connection may be inconvenient and cumbersome for the user in certain situations."

"In addition to being unwieldy," it continued, "the coupled system often utilizes redundant features, which are not necessary when using the devices together. By way of example, each device utilizes a display screen, which adds cost, size, weight, and complexity to the entire system."

"Accordingly, there is a need for an improved head-mounted display system, particularly a system that temporarily integrates or merges both mechanically and electronically a head-mounted device with a portable electronic device," it added.

Currently, Samsung sells a similar hybrid VR headset for its Note 4 phablet. Priced at US$199, the Gear VR uses software written by Oculus, a VR headset maker purchased by Facebook last year for $2 billion.

One advantage a hybrid headset has over more conventional VR offerings is mobility, observed Eric Smith, an analyst in the digital consumer practice at Strategy Analytics. "It gets rid of the bulky game console or PC that one-piece headsets have to hook up to," he told TechNewsWorld.

"You're mobile," he said. "You're not tied down to something in the living room."

Realism Versus Mobility

Ross Rubin, the principal analyst with Reticle Research added, "It lets you leverage a relatively powerful processor in the smartphone that's mobile so you can enjoy the VR environment anywhere."

There are other advantages, too. "Because it's a connected device," Rubin told TechNewsWorld, "you can bring in things relevant to where you are or what time it is or engage in real-time communication with people around you."

As powerful as the processors in top-of-the-line smartphones are, they still pale in comparison to the chips in gaming systems or PCs, he noted. "The realism of the experience may not be as strong as it is with the Oculus Rift or Sony Morpheus," Rubin said, "but what you give up in power and quality of experience, you make up for in mobility and accessibility in terms of price."

"Since we've seen so much gaming go mobile," Rubin continued, "this is chance for game developers to take advantage of virtual reality without having to develop for a PC or PS4."

That could take some time, though, noted Smith, of Strategy Analytics. "It's going to take awhile for developers to get their minds around developing for VR and finding the one or two killer apps that will drive the experience forward," he said.

Hybrids Gaining Acceptance

At this point in their development, hybrids headsets like the one described in Apple's patent and the Gear VR sold by Samsung are very similar.

"It's such low tech," observed Brian Blau, a research director at Gartner. "Some may be more comfortable than others, some connect to only certain devices."

"They're probably going to try and differentiate on smartphone apps," he told TechNewsWorld, "and some will issue their own APIs so developers can build things for them."

Even in their current nascent form, Blau does see the acceptance of hybrid headsets growing. "These devices are going to become popular," he said. "They're going to range from very cheap or free to a more sophisticated accessory."

"Because of what they are," he continued, "they're not going to be as good as a more native virtual reality experience. I'm not saying they're going to be bad. They're just not going to be equivalent to their wired counterparts."

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Azure Machine Learning Aims to Convert Data to Information

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Microsoft on Wednesday announced new data services running on its Azure cloud in what it has positioned as a bid to bring big data to the mainstream.

Those services include the HDInsight Apache Hadoop-based service; Storm on HDInsight, which lets users use Hadoop and Storm to create distributed, real-time data processing solutions in Azure; and Azure Machine Learning, a managed cloud service for advanced analytics.

Azure Machine Learning lets users build and deploy apps and conduct predictive analyses, among other things.

Those tasks are facilitated by the Machine Learning Marketplace, or MLM, which offers analytics services, algorithms and APIs users can plug into their solutions.

Microsoft also has signed up several partners for Azure, such as Informatica and Ziosk.

"The Azure solution is much more intuitive than existing network and platform management solutions, especially for nontechnical people," noted Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

Microsoft and Machine Learning

Azure Machine Learning can be set up using a Web browser. Users make drag-and-drop gestures and create simple flow graphs to set up experiments.

Users can pull sample experiments, packages written in R and Python, and best-in-class algorithms from Xbox and Bing -- or they can write their own custom code in R or Python.

Algorithms such as "Learning with Counts" let users learn from terabytes of data on Microsoft's servers.

Users can easily update the models they build and return them to production. They can share their solutions with the Azure Machine Learning community in the product gallery, or monetize and brand them for sale in the Azure MLM.

Big Data, Machine Learning and Microsoft

Machine learning comes from intelligent recognition of patterns by complex algorithms. Those algorithms have to work on large datasets, so big data "is critical" to machine learning, McGregor told TechNewsWorld.

However, Microsoft's machine learning "seems more like object-oriented design than machine learning," he pointed out.

"While there is no set definition as to what level of intelligence constitutes machine learning, the Azure solution appears to stretch the term beyond what most would consider true machine-level intelligence," McGregor said, because the algorithms appear to really be networking models.

Microsoft "alludes to learning through data analytics, but doesn't provide any details," McGregor remarked.

Nevertheless, Microsoft's tools let users "quickly and easily define and configure cloud-based resources without the need of dedicated IT personnel," he pointed out. Viewed that way, Microsoft offers "a very interesting and useful platform."

However, those tools don't eliminate reliance on IT staff, because IT professionals would be needed to configure solutions effectively, McGregor cautioned, especially when custom code is required.

Transforming Data Into Information

The next wave of IT is going to be information technology, where people will work interactively with their devices, predicted Mike Jude, a program director at the Stratecast service of Frost & Sullivan. Services such as those Microsoft introduced play into that.

"What we've had so far is the data age," Jude told TechNewsWorld. "We've learned how to generate and store data -- but so far, automation hasn't been able to turn that into information, which is data in context. That's why you need cognitive computing, machine learning and heuristics, and stuff like that."

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Hack Your Life: The Hottest Lifestyle Startup Trends for 2015

The hottest lifestyle startup trends for 2015 take some of the most routine parts of your day and give them a digital makeover. Whether it’s breathing, reading, shaving, doing laundry or getting to know your city better, the next wave of innovations for 2015 are here to help.

This week, the Slush 2014 conference has been showcasing the best and brightest startup ideas. Each year, Slush brings together entrepreneurs, investors, business and political leaders, innovators and dreamers to the Finnish capital Helsinki. Founded in 2008, this was Slush’s biggest extravaganza so far, with more than 1200 entrepreneurs from 80 countries among the 13,000+ attendees: including the Prime Ministers of Finland and Estonia, the Chinese Vice Premier, and scores of C-level business leaders from global corporations.

The opening show of Slush 2014 in Helsinki

Some of the hottest trends emerging this year at Slush were life-enhancing technologies, and here are five that caught my attention:

Beauty & Grooming

“On average, men use six cosmetics products daily like shampoo or shaving foam, and women about 12 cosmetics products daily” says Teppo Hudson, lead mobile developer for Finnish startup Cosmethics. The company’s app lets you scan the barcode of your favourite grooming, beauty and cosmetics products to see if they contain harmful ingredients, and suggests a different, less toxic or damaging product you might want to use instead. “The product ingredients are in Latin, or really hard to understand the chemical names, so we make that easier or transparent” explains Hudson. Cosmethics only launched a few months ago, but has already generated media buzz in Europe. Their initial target customers are likely to be ethical shoppers, or people choosing to buy organic or whole food products. ”We think it’s important for people to know what you’re using in the cosmetics products” says Hudson. The app is free, and Cosmethics makes its profit from the product referral service.

Scan and select your “Cosmethical” products / Credit: Cosmethic

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'World Of Warcraft' Tops 10 Million Subscribers Following 'Warlords Of Draenor' Expansion

World of Warcraft has once again proven itself the king of MMO hill.

The long-running massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) saw its fifth expansion launch last week, and according to publisher Activision-Blizzard the numbers are looking good.

In the first 24 hours after launch, the expansion sold over 3.3 million copies through to customers. At $49.99 for the Standard and Digital copies (and higher price tiers above that) we’re talking about serious sales, comparable to a full PC release.

The expansion has also helped revitalize World of Warcraft’s flagging subscription numbers. The game was already the king of MMOs, but was dipping into the 7 million range. At 10 million subscribers it’s still well below the glory days of 15 million subscribers. And while it’s the top dog in its genre, other online games like League of Legends are growing fast.

Still, as Paul Tassi reported earlier this summer, in 2013 World of Warcraftstill commanded 36% market share and was bringing in over $1 billion a year.

While the release of Warlords of Draenor has been rocky—Activision-Blizzard has given out free game time as an apology for over-taxed servers—the expansion is still one of the best-selling games of the year. It brings updated character models, a higher level cap, and tons of new content to the table, and it avoids the addition of giant pandas, which many players were unhappy with in the game’s previous expansion.

(Yes, I know they were Pandarens, brewer-monks, which I actually liked, but whatever.)

Warlords of Draenor launched November 13th. It will be interesting to see where subscriber numbers are six months from now. Can the expansion bring people back to the game for long? Is this proof that the subscriber model really can work, at least for established brands?

I think, if nothing more, it’s proof that the subscription model can work for World of Warcraft. It might be viable for a handful of other MMOs—Final Fantasy XIV is doing well apparently—but beyond that the future of the genre is free-to-play. Games like Wildstar and Elder Scrolls: Online face an uphill battle.

I also think the future of MMOs is casual. The next big hit will be the equivalent of Hearthstone. I wouldn’t be surprised if it came from Blizzard.

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How Graph Analytics Can Connect You To What's Next In Big Data

Everything in our digital universe is connected. Every single day, you wake up and start a series of interactions with people, products and machines. Sometimes, these things influence you, and sometimes you play the role of the influencer. This is how our world is connected, in a network of relationships and influence among people, products and technologies. Understanding connections is the realm of graph analytics and its what’s next in big data.

The better we can understand connected networks, the more knowledge we have to proactively enrich numerous aspects of everyday life and work – to better understand things like traffic patterns, consumer behavior, weather anomalies, and to make predictions about business, crime or disease trends. It is no longer enough just to consider the content of a specific analytic entity, whether that’s a customer or a network; we also have to understand the context of connections between customers and among networks to unlock the insight and value that comes from charting relationships between entities that influence outcomes.

Sounds great, right? So, why hasn’t graph analytics caught on like wildfire, like you’d expect. Typically, the problem has been complexity and scale. As you can imagine, once you move beyond statistical analysis of single entities as they relate to a mean, and start looking at relationships between hundreds, or even thousands of individual entities, the data processing load increases by several magnitudes.

Thus far, graph analytics has been difficult and expensive, requiring specialized systems, unique, hard-to-find skillsets and a patchwork of algorithms to discover these intertwined relationships. And, as a result, the use cases have been relatively limited. But, all that is changing. And, today’s engineered solutions offer a set of advanced, contextual analytics delivered economically and at massive scale on large multi-structured data sets. And, as that happens, these systems for analyzing connections in networks of data will open up new ways of looking at big data, and many new use cases.

Analysis of connections in networks will combine traditional statistics, machine learning and sentiment analysis with influencer analysis to examine customer satisfaction and pinpoint the customers who hold the most influence within a network of people. The ability to track influencers who have the most direct and indirect impact on product purchases can also help inform things like proactive viral marketing campaigns. It will allow companies to detect, in near real-time, the cyber-threats hidden in the flood of diverse data generated from IP, network, server and communication logs – a huge problem, as we know, that exists today.

The ability to track relationships between people, products, processes and other “entities” remains crucial to breaking up sophisticated fraud rings.  If you only use a content-based decision model, you can get stuck the minute a fraudster creates a new identity, or changes their behavior. We’ll be able to understand the behavior of connected devices, using sensor data to more efficiently modulate electricity, and power smarter cities. We’ll analyze traffic patterns and driving behaviors, particularly as more connected and self-driving cars start hitting the roadways. In healthcare, providers will be able to quickly scan through network graphs of patients to discover therapies used with other patients with similar characteristics (such as age, clinical history, associated risk factors, etc.) that have the most positive outcomes.

Our own imagination, and those of our data scientists only limit the possibilities when it comes to analyzing relationships and influence among people, products, processes and devices for new insights. As I alluded to earlier, graph analytics is also the future of big data analytics, because everything is connected.

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