Social Networking-O-Sphere

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4G Technology

Under the Mobile Technology domain G is said to be the Generation and it covers the major advances in the range of 20-30 years. 1G technology involved the first widely available mobile phones. 2G technology, which started in the early 1990s, switched to a digital format and introduced text messaging. 3G technology improved the efficiency of how data is carried, making it possible to carry enhanced information services such as websites in their original format. The latest iPhone is the best known example of 3G technology. Meanwhile, just to mention, that iPhone 4 is Not a 4G phone !

Currently 3G networks still send there data digitally over a single channel, OFDM is designed to send data over hundreds of parallel streams, thus increasing the amount of information that can be sent at a time over traditional CDMA networks.

4G mobile is not yet established as an agreed set of standards, so its features are currently simply goals rather than requirements. As well as drastically increasing data transfer speeds, 4G mobile should use enhanced security measures. Another goal is to reduce blips in transmission when a device moves between areas covered by different networks. 4G mobile networks should also use a network based on the IP address system used for the internet.

Within the United States, there are two major systems offering 4G mobile technology. One is known as WiMax and is backed by Clearwire, a firm whose majority owner is Sprint Nextel. It began testing services in Baltimore in 2008 and was set to expand this into major new markets in 2009. Sprint intended to have 80 cities covered by the end of 2010.

The rival system, Long Term Evolution or LTE, is backed mainly by Verizon. It was expected to be ready for testing in 2010 but not available for widespread use until 2012. LTE’s backers hoped to overcome this disadvantage by offering faster speeds and producing cheaper equipment.

Unlike previous generations of mobile technology, 4G mobile will be widely used for internet access on computers as well as carrying cell phone communications. Customers in areas which have strong 4G coverage will be able to use it for a home broadband connection which doesn’t require any cabling to their household. It can also be used for accessing the internet on the move without having to be in a wireless hotspot such as those offered by some coffee shops, airports and libraries.

The 4G technology will be able to support Interactive services like Video Conferencing (with more than 2 sites simultaneously), Wireless Internet,etc. The bandwidth would be much wider (100 MHz) and data would be transferred at much higher rates. The cost of the data transfer would be comparatively very less and global mobility would be possible. The networks will be all IP networks based on IPv6. The antennas will be much smarter and improved access technologies like OFDM and MC-CDMA (Multi Carrier CDMA) will be used. Also the security features will be much better.

The WiMax lobby and the people who are working with the WiMax technology are trying to push WiMax as the 4G wireless technology. At present there is no consensus among people to refer to this as the 4G wireless technology. WiMax can deliver upto 70 Mbps over a 50Km radius. As mentioned above, with 4G wireless technology people would like to acheive upto 1Gbps (indoors).

WiMax does not satisfy the criteria completely. Also WiMax technology (802.16d) does not support mobility very well. To overcome the mobility problem, 802.16e or Mobile WiMax is being standardised.

The important thing to remember here is that all the researches for 4G technology is based around OFDM (Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing).

WiMax is also based on OFDM. This gives more credibility to the WiMax lobby who would like to term WiMax as a 4G technology. Since there is no consensus for the time being, we have to wait and see who would be the winner.

More Gs are awaiting as we progress in the path of connectivity… keep evolving !

Agile Methodology

Nowadays we hear much about Agile Methodologies, especially in the context when we want to jumpstart any development quickly without the documentation part and where requirements are not very clear at the beginning.

To put it in simple words, this methodology is another style of software development that has been characterized by quick start on development, less documentation, change driven and iterative.

In other words, Agile software development is a conceptual framework for undertaking software development projects that can get developed fast without the strict classic guidelines of maintaining the entire life-cycle of the project.

All Agile methodologies generally engage in an iterative workflow and follow an incremental way to deliver software in short time-boxed situations. An iteration could be a small release of software or results being achieved at short intervals. Naturally in these time-boxed development situations, things like coding, design and testing will run in parallel and Iterations are typically a fixed length and this length will depend on the chosen methods under Agile. Each iteration can be referred as a cycle in this context of Agile Methodologies.

There are a number of agile software development methods, most of them give the same time-boxed iterations approach, which could typically last one to four weeks but again depends on the nature of the project. Each iteration is like a miniature software project of its own, and includes all of the tasks necessary to release the mini-increment of new functionality: planning, requirements analysis, design, coding, testing, and documentation.

The most popular Agile methodologies in use today appear to be Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, Feature Driven Development (FDD), Lean Software Development, Agile Unified Process (Agile UP or AUP), Crystal, and Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM).

Some of the principles behind the Agile are:

• Customer satisfaction by rapid, continuous delivery of useful software
• Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)
• Working software is the principal measure of progress
• Even late changes in requirements are welcomed
• Close, daily, cooperation between business people and developers
• Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication
• Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted
• Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
• Simplicity
• Self-organizing teams
• Regular adaptation to changing circumstances

Agile home ground:

• Low criticality
• Senior developers
• Requirements change very often
• Small number of developers
• Culture that thrives on chaos

Criticisms include:

• lack of structure and necessary documentation
• only works with senior-level developers
• incorporates insufficient software design
• requires too much cultural change to adopt
• can lead to more difficult contractual negotiations

Agile methods are sometimes characterized as being at the opposite end of the spectrum from “plan-driven” or “disciplined” methods. This distinction is misleading, as it implies that agile methods are “unplanned” or “undisciplined”. A more accurate distinction is that methods exist on a continuum from “adaptive” to “predictive”. Agile methods lie on the “adaptive” side of this continuum.

Some mistakenly believe that Agile methods avoid planning. This is a misconception, as Agile methods pay considerable attention to planning. However, Agile methods apply a planning process that is adaptive so as to accommodate inevitable change. Traditional, non-Agile methods tend to apply predictive planning that resists change and suffers the consequence of conflict between static plans and dynamic reality. Agile development has been widely documented as applicable to small, co-located development teams. Agile methods are more suitable when requirements are emergent and rapidly changing; they are less suitable for systems that have high criticality, reliability and safety requirements, though there is no complete consensus on this point.

New Epic Browser

It’s the browser which takes to the world of websites and makes our browsing experience better with the variety of add-ons stuff. No wonder, there is a competitive war with these browsers in the market to capture for web-audience. Since earlier days, when we had only 2 prominent browsers like Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, we have come across a long way and now have the options like Mozilla Firefox, IE, Google Chrome, Mac Safari and so on….

In this browsers domain, here is the latest entrant and that too from India. Hidden Reflex, a Bangalore based startup, came with another interesting ‘Indian’ browser, called the ‘Epic Browser’.

This has been developed based on Mozilla. This browser wants to capture the Indian audience with the service offerings like share market and Cricket updates, video streams and more.

It also has a built-in Antivirus solution to prevent malwares and Trojans etc. This bowser has over 1500 applications and also it supports Firefox add-ons. So to catch it live why don’t you try it …. You can download Epic browser from here.

Happy Browsing !

Fascinating research projects presented at Microsoft’s TechFest 2010

When brains at Microsoft Research Labs are at work, we can  definitely expect some path breaking techno developments. Techfest 2010 at Redmond witnessed many such demos on various projects. Lets have a look at some of them:

1. The Translating phone and The Transcriptor: Transcriptor generates a live transcript of the coversation we have over a call on a PC based communicator. The scripts are merged in email as well for searching.

The Translator is a wonderful concept that takes away the about the difference of language we might have over an important client call or anything like that. The translator translates the speech of the person on the other side of the phone to the language you want at real time. This 2-way translator also generates a live translated transcript. Find out more about the project @ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/transcriptor/default.aspx

2. Project Gustav: Project Gustav is a creative endeavor of Microsoft to make digital painting a perfect realistic experience. It is a realistic painting system prototype that simulates natural, real-world painting environment.

For a better knowhow of the project visit the official page on Project Gustav.

3. Skinput: Skinput is a technology that favors the skin of our body to be used as an input device. Various signals like location of finger taps are collected by sensors worn as armbands. To know more about the Skinput check out http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/gustav/default.aspx

4. Mobile Surface: It aims at making any surface around you as a touch interface surface by linking together a mobile device, camera and a projector. It allows you to project an image on any surface and interact with it even without touching the image.

Click on http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/mobilesurface/default.aspx for more information.

An altogether new world of technologies. Exciting!! Isn’t it?? Lets wait and watch how these project finally turn out. Till then keep reading and commenting.

Service Oriented Architecture or SOA can be explained as a collection of many services in a network which communicate with each other and this involves data exchange with service coordination and SOA is used for the development of loosely coupled distributed applications. Though earlier the concept of SOA was based on DCOM or Object Request Brokers (ORBs) but nowadays SOA is based predominantly on Web Services.

SOA is also a flexible and standardized architecture which focuses business-centric approach that supports integrating business as repeatable tasks or linked services to design and develop flexible IT solutions which enable business process components to be orchestrated and assembled in a more efficient manner to deliver distinctive business capabilities and services for high performance. It unifies business processes by structuring large applications as an ad-hoc collection of smaller modules called services. Here it’s worth explaining the term Service. A service is nothing but a function or some processing logic or business processing that is well-defined, self-contained, and does not depend on the context or state of other services. Example of Services are Loan Processing Services, booking a flight ticket online etc which can be self-contained unit for process the Loan  Applications or could be Weather Services, which can be used to get the weather information. Any application on the network can use the service of the Weather Service to get the weather information and SOAs build applications out of such services.

Instead of services embedding calls to each other in their source code, there are protocols defined which describe how one or more services can talk to each other. This architecture then relies on a business process expert to link and sequence services, in a process known as orchestration, to meet a new or existing business system requirement. XML is used extensively in SOA to create data which is wrapped in a nearly exhaustive description container. In the communication process with services data exchange are typically described by WSDL, and communications protocols by SOAP, discovery and publishing by UDDI and data representation by XML. In a SOA environment independent services can be accessed without knowledge of their underlying platform implementation.

Interoperability between different systems and programming languages is the key for integration between applications on different platforms through a communication protocol. One example of such communication is based on the concept of messages. Each SOA building block can play one or more of the three main roles of Service Requester, Service Broker and Service Provider. Interoperability, Compliance to standards (both common and industry-specific), reusability, modularity, composability, componentization, Services identification and categorization and monitoring and tracking are some of the guiding principles which forms the ground rules for development, usage and maintenance of SOA.

The deployment of a SOA requires the conversion of existing systems into services. The tasks involved in achieving this can be repeated for each system and a common set of components may be needed to provide additional functionality (such as security and auditing). An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) helps in converting existing systems into services. This ESB generally provides an abstraction layer on top of an implementation of an enterprise messaging system, which allows integration architects to exploit the value of messaging without writing code. Using ESB, an application can communicate via the bus, which acts as a message broker between applications. The primary advantage of such an approach is that it reduces the number of point-to-point connections required to allow applications to communicate.

With the increasing demand for SOA and with the increasing momentum of Web 2.0 which is called “second generation” of web sites, together they can add lot of value in enterprise computing in the coming years as Gartner predicted the SOA business with grow to $50 billion in next 5 years. Web 2.0 will leverage the next generation sites with collaboration and sharing in terms of Social Networking as part of Semantic Web. Hence, Web 2.0 applications will extensively use Web services and may include Ajax, Flash, or JavaFX user interfaces, Web syndication, blogs, and wikis. With increasing demands businesses use SOA and Web 2.0 to reach new markets, with improved efficiency, in a faster time to market, with lower TCO and other advantages. I will keep you posted with the changes in and around SOA in the coming days.