Google Brings Its Dart Programming Language To App Engine

Earlier this year at its I/O developer conference, Google quietly announced plans for supporting its Dart Programming language on App Engine. It’s taken a bit longer than many expected, but starting today, developers can run their Dart server-side application on Google App Engine’s Manage VMs.

Dart is often seen as Google’s answer to JavaScript and, hence, mostly meant to run in the browser. But as Lars Bak and Kasper Lund, the inventors of Dart, told me back at I/O, the idea behind Dart was always to create a general purpose programming language.

Using Docker, developers were already able to deploy Dart on Google Compute Engine. App Engine, however, gives developers easier access to a wider range of features out of the box, including Google’s Data Store and caching services, as well as monitoring and logging tools. All developers have to do — besides write their Dart apps — is upload their applications and App Engine will handle scaling and data storage as needed. It can even auto-scale your application for you in response to traffic.

Google says it will continue to improve Dart support on App Engine in the near future. This means adding support for more App Engine APIs.

WhatsApp voice calling in the works; Icons and screenshot leak

New Delhi: WhatsApp CEO, Jan Koum had commented earlier that the company would be launching the much-awaited voice calling feature some where in Q1 2015. Well, it seems like the things may almost be ready by now, but a couple of icons that will be used in the revamped app have leaked, along with one screenshot (an old one) that seems to be of an incoming call.

The leaked icons come from a dutch android website. They sport a flat look and seem to be a part of the dialer, while showing some similarities with the stock Android dialer app’s call log. As for the leaked screenshot, it shows an incoming call, but still appears to be an early unfinished version of the app.


Voice calling is indeed the only feature WhatsApp needs right now, that will make it bigger than the current competitors out there . Viber and Skype offer voice calling along with messaging features while WhatsApp only deals with messaging.

How to Use Your Phone as a Webcam

"Why would anyone want to use their phone as a webcam?" This was the most common reaction people had when we told them what we were trying to do, but there are actually some pretty good reasons to do this.

For one, you can turn an old handset into a security camera or baby monitor which you can use without buying a brand new standalone camera. And if your handset doesn't have a front facing camera, or if your PC doesn't have a webcam built in, then you can use the rear camera on the phone for video calls.

Security camera

One of the ways in which you can use an old phone is by setting it up as a security camera or a baby monitor. This is pretty easy to do with the right apps for both Android phones and iPhones. This is how you set it up:

Android

A quick search on Google Play throws up several webcam applications. We tried 5 of the top 10 results, but most didn't work properly. From the ones that didn't crash repeatedly, SmartCam failed to show the video, and DroidCam needs you to install an app on Windows to work.

IP Webcam is easily the best of the lot because it works through your browser, which gives it the cross-platform compatibility.

To set up a security camera on Android, follow these steps.

1. Connect your computer and the phone to the same Wi-Fi network.

2. Install the IP Webcam app on your smartphone.

3. Close all other camera apps. Force close them from the app switcher before you proceed.

4. Launch the IP Webcam app. Scroll to the bottom and tap Start server.

5. The app will now fire up your phone's camera and display a URL. Our URL was http://172.32.15.110:8080.

6. Enter this URL in any browser on your computer and hit Enter.

7. In the browser, you'll see a drop down menu next to Video renderer. Select Browser.

8. Below that, you'll see Audio renderer. Select HTML wav.

Now you'll see a live video feed in your browser. You can also record this footage via the browser. To do this, just press the red Record button under the video. This saves the footage as an MP4. There will be a slight lag if you enable HTML wav audio in the browser. You can select the Flash option (doesn't work on all computers) or open the same URL in VLC Media Player.

9. To do this, first download and install VLC from this website. Then in VLC, go to Media > Network Stream and enter the URL from the app as seen in step 5.

Once the app is running, you don't need to keep your phone's screen on. It works even when the phone is locked, but the video feed is slightly smoother when the screen is on.

First Microsoft-Branded Phone ,Leaks in Chinese, US Regulatory Filings

New device is mid-range, between Lumia 630 and 730, comes in single- and dual-SIM variants, but lacks LTE

Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) smartphone market chief recently hinted that the first devices carrying Microsoft branding (rather than "Nokia" branding) were just around the corner.  Based on regulatory filing traffic, a document stream that's now carefully scrutinized by phone bloggers as an official source of near-release devices, the first Microsoft-branded smartphone carry the device IDs "RM-1089", "RM-1090", and "RM-1091.

 

Past Nokia-branded Microsoft smartphones have carried the RM-XXX or RM-1XXX branding.  For example:

• Nokia Lumia 630: RM-976 (single-SIM, HSPA+)
• Nokia Lumia 635: RM-974, RM-975, RM-977, RM-978, RM-979 (dual-SIM, LTE)
• Nokia Lumia 730: RM-1038 (dual-SIM, HSPA+)
• Nokia Lumia 735: RM-1040 (single-SIM, LTE)

Microsoft Offers Consumers Free Unlimited Storage with Office 365 Subscription

Not even Google or DropBox are bold enough to offer that to consumers, yet

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and its cloud-minded CEO Satya Nadella made a daring play on Monday announcing that Microsoft would become the first major internet services firm to offer an unlimited storage bucket to its cloud subscribers.

The new unlimited option will be slowly applied "over the coming months" to the OneDrive accounts of Office 365 subscribers.  The new perk will apply to all Office 365 subscribers including Home, Personal, and even University customers.



The announcement is sure to send shockwaves through the world of paid storage.  Companies like Dropbox have made decent profits from subscription services (Dropbox recently boosted its storage allotment to 1 TB for $9.99 USD per month). - See more at: 

Mozilla Announces FX10 Browser Built From Ground up For Web Developers

For web developers, page basic layout work is typically done in development environments provided by companies Adobes Systems Inc. (ADBE) or Microsoft Corp. (MSFT).  

But actual testing of sites and your scripts for them is often done in browsers.  Microsoft, the Mozilla Foundation, and Google Inc. (GOOG) (among others) have long offered developers tools of varying complexities to analyze websites, allowing debugging and tuning.  But such tools had always been cobbled onto the underlying consumer-aimed web-browsing product.   The Mozilla Foundation has offered up an interesting idea, revealing that it's about to launch a brand new Firefox family browser built from the ground up to cater to the developer crowd.  The new browser will be made available Nov. 10 and is being advertised on Twitter Inc.'s (TWTR) microblogging platform under the tag "#fx10".



Note, both Google (maker of the Chrome web browser) and Mozilla (maker of the Firefox web browser) had previously released browsers primarily targeted at developers (e.g. the nightly Chromium and Firefox Aurora channels, respectively), but those releases were simply early versions of upcoming consumer releases, designed to keep developers in the loop about upcoming standards support and features (and to ensure compatibility).
By contrast the new browser scraps the consumer design ethos and ostensibly will look to solely focus on browser-tools/interfaces that allow for faster web development, including compatibility testing.

Latest Brand Rankings Have Apple, Google at the Top; Facebook Surges in Valuation

Mobile continues to be the power broker of the brand world, lending cachet to market leaders Apple and Google

The top brand ranking indices -- Brandz™ "Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands", Forbes' "Power Brands", and InterBrand's "Best Global Brands" -- have weighed in on which company is the world’s most powerful brand.  And yet again firms that dominated mobile devices and internet services -- Apple, Inc. (AAPL), Google Inc. (GOOG), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), and International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) -- continue to dominate consumers perception.

I. Brandz -- Apple is Biggest Image Loser; Google and Microsoft are the Biggest Risers

The Brandz™ "Top 100..." index is the work of New York-based marketing, consulting, and market research firm Millard Brown, a subsidiary of Kantar, who in turn is a subsidiary of UK conglomerate WPP plc (LON:WPP).

Google is one of the biggest gainers on Brandz' list, rising 40 percent since 2013.  Its brand is now estimated at $158B USD.  Brandz was also a fan of Microsoft's direction, suggesting it gained 29 percent in a year (~$20B USD) to rise to fourth place, an impressive comeback after it dropped to seventh in 2013.  The Microsoft brand, according to its rankings, is at its highest value in over half a decade.



Of the three firms, its report was the most interesting, as it alone valued Google above Apple.  By its estimates Apple lost 20 percent of its brand value this year.  It believes Apple has shed over $35B USD in brand value since 2012.  As a result it's lost its top ranking from 2012 and 2013 to Google.

Gmail 5.0 App With Outlook, Yahoo Support Now Available for Android Devices

Coming soon: a Gmail Android app that will support for Microsoft's Outlook and Yahoo Mail. Product manager Matthew Izatt said the app will initially be available for devices running Google's Android mobile operating system.

 

"(W)e know some of you have email addresses that aren’t Gmail (it’s okay to admit it). The updated Gmail app now supports all email providers, which means you can now set up a separate inbox for, say, your Yahoo Mail or Outlook.com addresses using POP/IMAP," Izatt . He also said there is now a convenient Reply button at the bottom of every message, so a user can "continue a conversation when ... on the go."

 

Users accessing the Gmail app on an Android tablet will also find it easier to switch between accounts and different inbox categories, he added. For now, Izatt said the updated Gmail app will support devices running Android 4.0 and up.

 

But for those who could not wait for the Gmail 5.0 app to reach Google Play, they can download its APK, enthusiast site Android Police said. Android police cited the new Gmail app's support for corporate/exchange accounts as, "a capability that obviates the stock email app and promises to unite all your inboxes under one roof (unless of course you're using Inbox, which supports neither exchange nor Google Apps accounts)."

 

The APK files are signed by Google and can upgrade an existing app. A separate report on 9to5google.com said the interface has been reimagined with Material Design, the theme for Android Lollipop.

Dropbox, Microsoft Announce Partnership, Tight Integration

Dropbox will be placed as second storage bucket alongside Microsoft's own OneDrive

Storage giant Dropbox announced today a new partnership with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT).  The deal tightly integrates the pair's products, even as these elder statesemen of the cloud storage market continue to compete for users.

As one of the first fully storage-centric cloud services, Dropbox has grown by leaps and bounds over the past half decade.  A 2012 usage study by Gigaom claimed that Dropbox was second to only Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) iCloud service in usage, ahead of Google Inc.'s (GOOG) Google Drive and Microsoft's OneDrive (then known as SkyDrive).  By November of last year it had hit 200 million users.



Microsoft has long expressed admiration for the success of the Dropbox startup, which launched one year after Microsoft's SkyDrive, in 2008.  In a Jan. 2013 interview with Bloomberg, then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer commented on Dropbox's growing success, "I'm not beating on Dropbox. They're a fine little startup and that's great." 

Latest Technology:- Driverless Cars For Everyone Within 10 Years and drive anywhere

Driverless cars could be within the price range of the average person in just ten years, Australian researchers claim.

This will be made possible by a new 'eyes and ears' technology developed by researchers from Curtin University in Perth. The technology comprises a dozen different sensors installed in an average car, paired with an algorithm that processes the large amount of data received. This creates meaningful information which tells the car the nature and location of obstacles, researchers said.

Associate Professor Dr Ba Tuong Vo, from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, said this autonomous car, created through a joint project between Curtin, Daimler (the research arm of Mercedes Benz) and Ulm University in Germany, would be commercially viable because it does not need to be connected to internet and can be produced at a low cost.

"Our goal was to use affordable sensors, radars, lasers and computer technology that is already available on the market, so the car is more likely to be accessible for people, unlike the small number of driverless cars that currently exist costing hundreds of thousands of dollars each," Vo said.

"At the moment our autonomous car can drive in a straight line and sense what is around it. The next step is to give it a 'brain' or the computer systems which can tell how to react to what is around it and also what to do when an object comes in its path.