Technology

Meet Facebook’s oldest registered user who just turned 107

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Facebook’s oldest registered user, who will turn 107 in January 2015, earned the distinction when her friends at the medical aid charity signed her up for an account on her 105th birthday.

Santa Barbara resident Edythe Kirchmaier , who was born in 1908- that’s 49 years before the Internet was invented, now has nearly 55,000 followers on her Facebook page, ABC News reported.

Kirchmaier said she embraces social media because it allows her to check in daily with friends and family. She’s also used her status to raise awareness for causes she believes in, such as Direct Relief.

Now, read audio clips on Facebook messenger

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Social networking site Facebook has launched a new feature for its messenger app that automatically transcribes any file sent as a voice recording and lets the people send voice clips to each other.

To send an audio clip, just tap the microphone icon, record the message and send.

The tool listens to the full audio clip and posts a typed version below the audio, media reports said.

The tool has been presently rolled out for a test group.

Mysterious `cosmic radio burst` captured in real-time for first time ever

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Australia astronomers have, for the first time, captured cosmic radio burst in real-time by using CSIRO’s 64-m Parkes radio telescope.

Researcher Emily Petroff from University of Technology in Melbourne said that these bursts were generally discovered weeks or months or even more than a decade after they happened and they’re the first to catch one in real time.

Banking that she’d spot a “live” burst, Petroff had an international team poised to make rapid follow-up observations, at wavelengths from radio to X-rays.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft gets close-up view of its target dwarf planet Ceres

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NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has got a close-up view of its target dwarf planet Ceres, obtaining navigational images of more than half of Ceres using its framing camera.

Scientists at the Planetary Science Institute and elsewhere have been studying these images and have been able to discern all of the albedo features identified by Hubble over that portion of Ceres observed by Dawn.

Indian-American boy floats firm to sell low cost Braille printer

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Thirteen-year-old Indian-American Shubham Banerjee from Santa Clara, California, who developed a low cost Braille printer called Braigo using the Lego robotics kit last year, has opened a full-fledged company to develop the machines for the masses.

Banerjee’s start-up Braigo Labs has got funding from Intel Corporation, among others, said his website.

The invention was featured at the first ever “White House Maker Faire” in June last year to “celebrate a nation of makers and help empower America’s students and entrepreneurs to invent the future”.

Facebook enabled global economic impact of $227 bn, 4.5mn jobs

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With over 1.3 billion users, world’s largest social networking firm Facebook has enabled global economic impact of USD 227 billion and 4.5 million jobs around the world in 2014, according to a report by consultancy firm Deloitte.

The report titled Facebook’s Global Economic Impact, analyses how Facebook’s marketing, platform and connectivity
effects have facilitated growth and jobs around the world.

Commissioned by Facebook, the study estimates that the company, with an approximately USD 8 billion cost base,

Google confirms it is working on Glass 2

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As the world remains in sort of shock over the news of sudden Google Glass demise, Google has confirmed it is actually working on an upgraded Google Glass 2.

While announcing the closure of its Google Glass Explorer programme and taking the original wearable device off sale, the company in a Google+ post revealed that “you will start to see future versions of Glass when they are ready.”

Now, ‘smart mirrors’ that lets you virtually try on clothes

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New “smart mirrors” have recently been developed that allows people to virtually try on clothes, it has been reported.

Created by MemoMi, the mirrors allows people to virtually try on clothes, digitally change the colours of the garments and share their choices with friends via email and social media, Stuff.co.nz reported.

People can even record 7-second videos of themselves and compare them side-by-side so they can see which pair of jeans made their butt look bigger.

Gold worth millions of dollars can be found in sewage sludge

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Scientists have recently revealed that metals including gold, silver worth millions of dollars can be found in sewage sludge.

Scientists at Arizona State University stated that there could be as much as 13 million dollars worth of metals in the sludge produced by a city of one million people each year, including 2.6 million dollars in gold and silver.

Meet Facebook’s oldest registered user who just turned 107

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Facebook’s oldest registered user, who will turn 107 in January 2015, earned the distinction when her friends at the medical aid charity signed her up for an account on her 105th birthday.

Santa Barbara resident Edythe Kirchmaier , who was born in 1908- that’s 49 years before the Internet was invented, now has nearly 55,000 followers on her Facebook page, ABC News reported.

Kirchmaier said she embraces social media because it allows her to check in daily with friends and family. She’s also used her status to raise awareness for causes she believes in, such as Direct Relief.

Apple likely to launch stylus alongside 12.9 inch display iPad

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According to an analyst with a solid track record, Apple is likely to launch a stylus along with a larger version of the iPad with a 12.9-inch display.

KGI Securities’ Ming-chi Kuo said that the stylus will be arriving in the second quarter of this year, reported the Verge.

The analyst believes the first iteration of the stylus to be relatively simple in technical terms.

He also said that the stylus will be charged with a lightning connector.

However, it cannot be said if the stylus will be compatible with other versions of the iPad .

(ANI)

Mysterious `cosmic radio burst` captured in real-time for first time ever

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Australia astronomers have, for the first time, captured cosmic radio burst in real-time by using CSIRO’s 64-m Parkes radio telescope.

Researcher Emily Petroff from University of Technology in Melbourne said that these bursts were generally discovered weeks or months or even more than a decade after they happened and they’re the first to catch one in real time.

Banking that she’d spot a “live” burst, Petroff had an international team poised to make rapid follow-up observations, at wavelengths from radio to X-rays.

65m-yr-old ankle bones reveal Earth`s earliest primates were `tree-dwellers`

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A new study of 65-million-year-old ankle bones, discovered from the sites in northeastern Montana, has revealed that Earth’s earliest primates lived in trees.

Paleontologists at Yale University found that Purgatorius, a small mammal that lived on a diet of fruit and insects and is a part of an extinct group of primates called plesiadapiforms that first appears in the fossil record shortly after the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs, was a tree dweller.

Dawn gets close-up view of its target dwarf planet Ceres

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NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has got a close-up view of its target dwarf planet Ceres, obtaining navigational images of more than half of Ceres using its framing camera.

Scientists at the Planetary Science Institute and elsewhere have been studying these images and have been able to discern all of the albedo features identified by Hubble over that portion of Ceres observed by Dawn.

Scientists identify new ‘fear controlling’ neural circuit in brain

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Scientists have discovered a new pathway in the brain of a mouse, that controls fear, memory and behaviour.

A team of researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) described a new circuit in the mouse brain, offering mechanistic insight into how anxiety disorders may arise. They found that fear was stored within a distinct region of the brain.

Associate Professor Bo Li, who led the team of researchers, explained that in their previous work, they had discovered that fear learning and memory were orchestrated by neurons in the central amygdale.

Pakistan occupies top slot in Google’s list of most porn-searching countries

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Pakistan tops the list of most porn-searching countries and leads the way in porn searches for animals like pigs, donkeys, dogs, cats and snakes, according to the data released by Google.

The data also showed that six of the top eight porn-searching countries were Muslim states with Egypt ranking second in the list followed by Iran, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Turkey at numbers four, five, seven and eight, respectively, reported The Express Tribune.

The sale of pornographic material is prohibited in nearly every Arab country except Lebanon and Turkey, the report said.
ANI

24 million Twitter users never tweet

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Nearly 24 million out of 284 million Twitter users do not tweet at all, reveals the latest data filed by the micro-blogging site with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

This means that nearly 8.5 percent of Twitter users could be robots who never use the service, ValueWalk reported.

The document pointed to mobile applications that the users connect “with no discernible user action involved”.

How stars, galaxies formed in early Universe

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A new study has provided a deeper insight into how stars and massive galaxies formed in the infancy of our Universe.

Two teams of astronomers led by researchers at the University of Cambridge have looked back nearly 13 billion years, when the Universe was less than 10 percent its present age, to determine how quasars – extremely luminous objects powered by supermassive black holes with the mass of a billion suns – regulate the formation of stars and the build-up of the most massive galaxies.

Researchers to send seeds to Mars

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A team of young researchers will send seeds to Mars in 2018 to grow the first plant on the Red planet.

The Seed team has won a contest on the best designs for experiments on Mars organised by Dutch non-profit Mars One.

“We are excited to announce the winner of the Mars One University Competition: Seed. The winning payload will fly to the surface of Mars on Mars One’s 2018 unmanned lander mission,” the company said.

Cybercriminals targeting LinkedIn users, says Symantec

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Cybercriminals are now targeting LinkedIn users by scamming them into sharing their credentials by sending out mails claiming to be from the support team of the world’s largest professional networking firm, security software firm Symantec warned today.

Founded in 2003, LinkedIn has over 300 million members globally, of which more than 26 million users are in India (as of June 2014).

Symantec said that over the last week it has observed an increase in phishing emails claiming to be from the US-based firm’s support team.

Twitter appoints Taranjeet Singh to head India business

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Taranjeet Singh has been appointed the India Business Head of Twitter as the micro blogging site looks to enhance revenues from one of the world’s biggest Internet markets.

India is also one of the fastest growing markets for the social networking platform.

Taranjeet’s responsibilities include increasing commercial opportunities for Twitter in India and to work closely with brands and agencies to maximise value of real-time marketing, the US-based firm said in a statement.

Google to roll out Glass 2 soon

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As the world remains in sort of shock over the news of sudden Google Glass demise, Google has confirmed it is actually working on an upgraded Google Glass 2.

While announcing the closure of its Google Glass Explorer programme and taking the original wearable device off sale Monday, the company in a Google+ post revealed that “you will start to see future versions of Glass when they are ready.”

New incurable eye disorder gene discovered

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A team of researchers have discovered a new gene tied to an incurable eye disorder called retinitis pigmentosa.

According to an examination led by scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth, it is a family of eye diseases that affects more than 200,000 in the United States and millions worldwide.

Google to halt sale of Google Glass

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Google is set to discontinue the sale of its smart eyewear Google Glass, but the tech giant plans to release new, consumer-friendly versions of the device in the future.

Google has announced that it will no longer sell its experimental first version of Glass which went on sale in the UK last year priced at 1,000 pounds.

The company said that the Glass project would not be scrapped, with development continuing towards the creation of a viable consumer product.