Asus has a big name for transforming mobile device. They have proven it with best selling Transformer series Android tablets and several notebooks with unique features. One of their amazing product line is PadFone. The original PadFone could transform in to tablet then to a notebook as well. Then in PadFone 2 they narrow down the focus only to Phone and Tablet.

The big news! Asus has done it again. We have PadFone infinity under the spotlight. Let’s go!

Insight for Asus PadFone Infinity

Design

Dimensions: Phone: 143.5 x 72.8 x 8.9 mm // PadFone Station: 264.6 x 181.6 x 10.7mm

Weight: Phone : 141 g // PadFone Station: 530 g

The package comes with Phone and PadFone station. Once you dock the phone in to station, display will switch dynamically and you get a tablet. The construction quality has improved and the device comes with Aluminum uni-body design like any other high end pricey Smartphone.

Power button and volume rocker is in right edge and other connectors are placed on top and bottom edge.

Display

Size: 5.0 // 10.1 inches

Protection: Corning Gorilla Glass

Technology: Super IPS+

Resolution: 1080×1920 px

Sharpness: 441 ppi

The phone display has improved to 1080p resolution to compete side by side with any other high end Smartphone available. Tablet also has same spec with larger display. This is a major value addition to previous PadFone.

Processor and Storage

Platform: Qualcomm Snapdragon 600

CPU: 1.7 GHz // Quad Core // Krait 300

GPU: Adreno 320

RAM: 2 GB LPDDR3

Internal Storage: 32/64 GB // 50 GB Asus web storage

Expandable Storage: No

The name Snapdragon 600 says it all. We have seen it’s power in HTC One already. Lack of expandable storage would be a major deal breaker though you have 50 GB of cloud storage.

Software

OS: Android 4.2 Jelly Bean

UI: Asus Customized

Off the box it has Android Jelly Bean awesomeness and it’s buttery smooth UI. In addition Asus has customized it lightly to enable dynamic display switching and embed few other Asus apps.

Camera

Primary: 13 MP // 1080p@30fps // 720p@60fps // 8fps burst mode

Front Facing: 2 MP // 1080p@30fps

Camera spec is pretty much standard. But you have 8 fps burst mode. This is something big for a mobile camera. Actually it’s a DSLR feature. That’s not all! You can record 720p videos at 60 FPS. In other words you can record true slow motion with this.

Connectivity

Mobile Network: 2G // HSDPA // LTE

Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/ac/b/g/n,

GPS: A-GPS // GLONASS

NFC: Yes

Bluetooth: 4.0

USB: microUSB 2.0

Connectivity technologies are standards and you need only one SIM card for both phone and tablet. Wi-Fi ac is here and it seems lots of manufactures are adopting so fast.

Battery

Type: Li-Po

Capacity: 2400 // 5000 mAh

Battery Life: 9 h (HD video playback)

Battery power is a very unique feature here. You have one battery in phone and another in docking station. So obviously you can enjoy longer battery life here. We have no much data about real life statistics. But you will be able to playback HD videos for around 9 hours with PadFone station.

Wrapping Up

This is a definitely a significant improvement to previous PadFone. There are lots of value additions such as 1080p display, uni-body design, 8 fps burst mode, 60fps video etc. With Snapdragon 600 and Android Jelly Bean this will stand strong in tight competition for sure.

The original PadFone supported a keyboard dock like transformer series. So far I could not find anything about such, but if Asus is going to release one it will be a Blast!

Tags: #Asus #Qualcomm #Smartphone #Tablet

You already know that with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean they have declared a war against lagginess and the outcome is pretty impressive. Frame rate of the UI transition has increased in 60 FPS with VSync with Triple Buffering. This is more valuable than feature improvement, for long term survival of Android among competitors.

Below video is recorded with RED camera with 300 FPS to show you the difference between UI transition in ICS and JB.

Quick Catch-up

• Story of Project Butter in Android Jelly Bean

Android Jelly Bean official update is not yet released and probably it will take couple of weeks or months. If you have manufacture themed version of Android it will take even longer. This would depend on your carrier as well.

In the meantime here is a quick tip for you to improve graphical performance in your Android ICS handset till JB comes out officially. However this will apply only for applications, not for home screen and other core OS functions.

Enable Force GPU Rendering

• Go to Settings -> Developer Options
• There you can see geeky options for android developer
• Check Force GPU rendering

Leave settings, try to open few applications and see whether there is any difference. For some applications you will notice some improvement in UI and transitions. If you feel like things got worse after enabling this, simply uncheck the option.

What is Force GPU Rendering?

GPU stand for Graphic Processing Unit which is a separate processing unit. The objective here is let the CPU to do general OS related processing while GPU is doing specific graphic related processing. If you are an Android developer you know that Software development Kit (SDK) is letting you to specify whether your app should use GPU if available.

Force GPU rendering is always using GPU to render application graphics regardless of above mention developer options. Even if developer disable GPU rendering for a specific app, still it will use it if you have enable Force GPU rendering and freed CPU to do other important work.

I know most of the general user never even touch developer options, but this is something worth trying.

Tags: #Android #Ice Cream Sandwich

Transportation is one of the success defining factors in human civilization. Every year billions of dollars invested having the objective of inventing better and convenient transportation methods. However human civilization is still relying on fossil fuel which is very limited resource and previously I was talking about the shape of world without fossil fuel.

Quick Catch-up

• World Without Fossil Fuel

Even though we invent an alternative fuel it will not solve the whole problem of transportation. We have to re think the organization of traffic as well.

Currently all the general vehicles are running on roads. With the increasing number of vehicles, we have to expand the surface of whole highway system. In this rate, in near future, we have to allocate whole surface of New York City to motor traffic and live on top of roads.

Layered Traffic

The only way to solve this problem “Layered traffic”. In other words have layers of roads. This is already there in most of the highway system up to a certain level. Especially in tunnels, there is a separate layer for public transportation and emergency service and another layer for general traffic.

Yes, we can have multiple layers of traffic in some places but not everywhere. If you try to expand this system in to entire road network there will be lots of practical issues. Further, there are a limitation in layers that you can have practically.

Personal Arial Vehicles

The nest best suggestion to solve the previous problem of layered traffic is Arial vehicle. Arial vehicles are mainly used to transport people between geographically apart destinations, but not as a urban transpiration medium. And technology in Arial vehicle are not sophisticated enough to use them domestically.

However, I have seen few conceptual designs of personal jet packs and some of them are in lab testing as well. So there is a hope for use to utilize Arial space to solve the problem of traffic. However, those jet pack designs need lots of polishing up and as it appears they are using highly inflammable fuel powered burners which is not safe at all for personal usage.

Thinking Out of the Box

I’m not ready to accept the fact that Arial vehicle must have inflammable fuel and burners or propellers though it’s the most common application today. I had few ideas in my mind which is going beyond the traditional frame and not even using traditional fuel sources such as fossil fuel and even hydrogen.

Previously I was talking about the possibility of using Gravitational field for future transportation. This is very pure form of energy and will be have rapid acceleration without crushing the passengers

Quick Catch-up

• Gravitational Field For Future Transportation

If future scantiest try to figure out more details and behavior of Gravitational field we will be able to easily utilize it to go for layered traffic management. Unlike in most of the previous suggestion this will be able to have many layers of traffic in Arial space with minimum separation.

If you dig deep in to historical facts, they give us hints about Arial vehicles which are using gravitational fields. Nazca lines in Peru could be a possible exchange for ancient Arial vehicles. Sri Lankan history is having vague facts explaining an Arial vehicle named “Vimana” which believed to be gravitational vehicle.

If we can bring back those technologies it will be the ideal solution for increasing problem of motor traffic by making possible Layered traffic management.

Tags: #Traffic

Smartphones are getting smarter day by day and getting stronger hardware muscles and sophisticated software. But the major problem you always have to face with Smartphone is its battery life. Practically you have to re-charge it every day and there is no other solution.

Previously I was talking about attaching solar panel to Smartphone to support the battery and increase the battery life. However if you apply the existing technology you won’t be able to find much improvement since  solar panels are generating small amount of electricity which is way lesser than the power consumption of a Smartphone.

Quick Catch-up

So far solar panel is the best shot we have, yet it’s insufficient to achieve the ultimate goal which is a ‘self sustaining Smartphone’. Still there is hope as technology always gives us hopes and in future there will be solar panels which can generate greater amount of electricity even with lesser surface area.

I have no plan to stop dreaming and another solution came in to my mind suddenly. This is a narrow shot and need lots of polishing up before applying as a power source for Smartphone. Let’s take a close look and here we are trying to look in to possibilities where we can convert kinetic energy to electricity.

How to Convert Kinetic Energy to Electricity

You might have seen self winding wrist watches. Rolex is a very popular one. If you are using such a wrist watch, most of the cases you won’t have to wind it manually. What is the secret behind self winding?

Those wrist watches are having a mechanical components inside which can convert kinetic energy to potential energy in the main spring. Your watch is on the move most of the day and it will never run out of energy.

Of course there is a possibility that engineers can apply the same technology to Smartphone. Same as wrist watches, most of the time Smartphone is also on the move, when you are walking and even when you are using it hand held.

In wrist watches they store the motion of the gadget, the kinetic energy as potential energy in the main spring. In Smartphone, instead of potential energy it can be easily converted to electricity stored in the battery.

How Practical is This?

Wrist watches need very lesser amount of power to function, may be electricity or potential energy in a spring. But Smartphones need greater amount of energy which is incomparable with a wrist watch. Therefore, as same as with the solar panels, amount of electricity generated with movement of the device would not be sufficient to achieve the ultimate goal, a ‘Self Sustaining Smartphone’. Compared to solar panels, subjected movement to electricity method would generate way lesser amount of electricity.

Wrapping Up

If you consider the capabilities of existing motion to electricity converters, the technology need lots of polishing up to blend with a Smartphone. The issue was same with solar panel, even though we have transparent solar panels already available.

Basically, this technology needs to be optimized to convert the kinetic energy in movement of Smartphone to electricity with maximum efficiency. I don’t see any problem of having battery, solar panel and motion charging in same Smartphone. This kind of hybrid approach would be ideal to achieve the ultimate goal of our discussion.

The answer is in future! Engineers will have to work on Smartphones which work with lesser electricity first and there is an improvement with the technologies such as 4-PLUS-1 technology. Along with them there will be a high capacity battery, high efficiency solar panel and motion-to-electric converter to function the whole system.

In addition there is another probability for us to generate electricity from variable magnetic fields. I will talk about that in next article.

Tags: #Smartphone

So far I was talking about possible alternative power source for Smartphone having the objective of solving the major problem they face which is the battery power. Ultimate perfect solution would be self sustaining Smartphone which you never have to recharge.

My previous ideas were solar panels and motion charging. Applying existing technology it’s going nowhere near the ultimate objective, yet they are good leads to work toward that.

Quick Catch-up

Today, I’m going to talk about another narrow shot same as previous motion to electricity conversion. This is already existing application in spy bots. The concept is to generate electricity using variable magnetic fields.

How to Generate Electricity with a Magnetic Field?

Back in 1831 Michael Faraday invented the Dynamo. It’s a device that generates electricity using constantly moving conductor in a Magnetic field. The very first dynamo was having a copper plate rotating in between two powerful magnets.

Today whole human civilization is powered with this invention. In hydro power stations, diesel generator and most of the electricity generating device, the base technology is dynamo.

To generate electricity with a magnetic field and conductor, there are two ways. Either you can move the conductor in the static magnetic field like Faraday’s original design or you can keep a static conductor in a variable magnetic field.

How to Apply this to Smartphone?

We are always surrounded by lots of magnetic fields. Some of them are static and more of them are variable. Air conditioner, Computer monitor, fluorescent lamp and many other devices generates magnetic fields, mainly variable magnetic fields.

Though they are not variable magnetic fields, when you are using your Smartphone it’s moving. Best part here is you will never find a environment without magnetic field, why earth is a huge magnet.

In order to generate electricity using those variable magnetic fields all what engineers should do is embed specially designed copper coil in to Smartphone. Then it will generate electricity and store them in battery.

In a ideal environment where you can find strong variable magnetic field, such as near a monitor Smartphone would be able to generate significant amount of electricity. Though the magnetic field is static, still it Smartphone can generate electricity when it’s moving relative to that. In the worst case, it will generate small amount of electricity when you are moving with the Smartphone in earth’s magnetic field.

Wrapping Up

This seems a great idea, yet same with Solar panel and motion charging this also generates way lesser electricity which is nowhere near sufficient to achieve the objective of “Self Sustaining Smartphone”. The answer is still in future technologies. No matter what this is a good ground to start innovating.

As I mention before, if we can think of hybrid power sources, battery, solar panel, motion charger and magnetic field charger in one Smartphone that might show some significant improvement to battery life. The main problem would be this will add extra weight to the device which is a greater minus point.

In next few years most of the Smartphone manufactures will focus more on battery power rather than hardware muscle improvement. I believe we will be able to witness amazing technological outcome in near future.

Tags: #Smartphone

When you are dealing with internet, IP addresses contain lots of information. Every computer directly connected to internet having its own unique IP address. However in day to day operations IP addresses are not exposing. They are hidden with Host names for better user experience.

There are lots of online tools where you can collect information about IP addresses, their related host names, owners and geographical location. In the case you want to find distance between two IP accesses all you have to do is get individual IP’s location and measure distant between them.

This information could be very useful for a webmaster to performance optimize hosting insfrastructure and make strategic decision about infrastructure improvements. However, manually meaning distance between IP addresses won’t be that simple though you know their actual location. There are very lesser mapping tools which will let you measure distant between two different points.

In order to solve this problem I could find few online tools which is letting you compare two IP addresses and measure distance between them. Among them ipdistance.com is the tools which game me quick response and clear details.

How to Use Ipdistance.Com to Measure Distance between Two IP Addresses?

• Go to IP distant tool in ipdistance.com
• There you have two text boxes to enter IP addresses.
• If you enter a Host name instead of IP address, it will translate it to IP address and give you the result.
• Then click on get the distance.
• It will open up network information panel and display information about IP address including their latitude and longitude.
• Down there you can see a map marked with locations of IP addresses.
• At the bottom of network information panel you can find the distance between two IP address.

You could use this to measure distance between two web servers or may be find distant from your location to another server. If you want to know your IP address to give it as an input, you can see it in the header.

Tags: #Online Tools #Web

Every day you must be sharing many web pages with your co workers and friends. It could be a web journal or may be a Wikipedia page. But most of the time, only part of page is important to you and the one you sharing it with. Is there any way for you to mark the content and then share it?

You can always convert the web page in to PDF format, highlight the important part and share it. This is too lengthy process and once you send it the web page is not responsive. If the recipient wants to explore more, he has to manually open the page in Browser. To solve all the problem there is a simple online tool, Awesome Highlighter. It’s allowing you to highlight web content, add a note of you need and share it as a shorten URL.

How to Use Awesome Highlighter?

• Go to Awesome Highlighter Home page.
• There you can enter the URL of web page which you need to highlight and share. Proceed with that.
• Then it will take you to given web page.
• There you will notice that mouse pointer turn in to highlighter. Select required text to highlight them.
• In top menu bar you can change the color of highlighting and add sticky note.
• Finally click on the button Done.
• It will take you to another page where you can see the short URL.
• There you can directly share it via email or social media.
• Once you share the URL, recipient will be able to see the highlighting and sticky notes you added on top of original website.
• In addition he can jump to highlights and pass the page on to someone else.

Awesome highlighter is truly simple tool and serves it purpose like magic. Best part, you don’t have to visit their website to perform highlighting and sharing. You can use this Bookmarklet. Drag and drop this in to your bookmark menu, and then you can access all the operations instantly by pressing it. If you are using Mozilla Firefox browser, there is a plug-in which you can install to get the same thing done.

Awesome Highlighter developer, your tool is really awesome yet it could use some polishing up and your backbone needs to be strengthened. Few times I got database errors and reliability of tool is below my expectation. You may pay attention to those issues and make this tool perfect in future development.

Tags: #Share #Web

DropBox is well known for cloud storage service which is giving you wide array of features. Most of you guys must be DropBox users already. I wrote many articles about DropBox here in Notes Of Genius. But DropBox is getting bigger day by day and offer you many more features.

Previously I told you DropBox could act as a web host or extension to it. Today I’m going to tell you more details about how to use DropBox as a fully featured web hosting service. You will be surprised to know that it could do lot more thing that a usual web hosting service.

In order to use DropBox as a web hosting space we are using 3^rd part service call DropPages. It’s providing the entire domain name mapping and other related background service.

How To Use DropPages For Dropbox Web Hosting?

• For a start download basic theme at DropPages.
• You may like to start with other available theme as well.
• Extract it and put in any location in your drop box.
• Rename the folder in format [YourDomainName].droppages.com. (Ex: notesofgenius.droppages.com)
• This naming is very important since this is going to be your web sites public URL.
• Now right click the folder -> DropBox -> Click on Share this folder. It will take you to DropBox online interface.
• There you should share this folder with [email protected].
• It will take some time to approve the sharing request. Once it done you will get an email.
• After successfully completing all the above steps you will be able to access your web site in given URL. (Folder name)
• Go to www.notesofgenius.droppages.com see an example.

Usual Webhost vs DropPages

Whenever you want to update your web pages, you have to access them through FTP client, update them and upload to server. With DropPages, all you have to do is open the files in your DropBox folder, edit them and save it. No need of FTP clients, sign in to web servers or anything.

If you need collaborative editing for your web site, you will never have to share login details. If your friend wants to edit your website, all you have to do is share website folder with him. Then he also can access and edit it right in his DropBox folder.

In usual webhosting environment, if you need version control, you have to purchase those services separately. With DropBox you have no such worries. It keep version of entire files and you can easily access them, restore them in DropBox web. And you have no reason to worry about back up procedures. You have one copy at your computer and it sync with DropBox as well.

Those are the benefit comes with DropBox features. At the same time DropPages also adding value to this service. They minify, Gzip and enable Cache for your pages. And it rewrites URLs too. So you will have super speedy SEO friendly website.

If you take a closer look in to their template structure, it has clear separation between design and content. So you can simply edit content without even touching the HTML design.

When Not To Use DropPages?

This system works perfectly as long as your web pages are having static content. If you want to change the content only option is to change txt files which contain your content. You can edit the template manually too. But if you need dynamic content in your web page, this system won’t work. You have no way to execute server side scrip here. So you won’t be able to implement any functions in your web pages such as login and registration.

If you have that kind of advanced requirement best way is the enterprise webhosting service and an appropriate content management system.

Wrapping Up

DropPages is great service to host web pages with DropBox. It provides most of the background services such as URL rewriting, caching and GZip. It manages your domain name related activities as well. In the free version it’s giving you only a sub domain. If you need to use a top level domain, you must purchase the PRO version.

A must try service which proves creative application of DropBox. It would be a great hosting environment for your personal website. Try it and never forget to share your experience with NOG community.

Tags: #Dropbox #Web

Few decades ago computers were limited for very specific usage and only computer scientist had access to them. With the introduction of personal computers, everything turned upside down within a few decades. Now computer has become an essential part of everyone’s life.

When you purchase a computer you have to pay very close attention to its technical specification. Especially what type of CPU, RAM and GPU it comes with? Normally you can find all those details in computer’s technical specification booklet. But is there any way for you to confirm you really got the computer with exact same technical specification.

If you are on a Windows platform, one option is to right click on my computer and go to properties. There you can see details of processor type, RAM etc. But it’s only a higher level overview. What if you need in depth details of hardware? Here comes the solution!

How to Use CPU-Z?

• Click here to download CPU-Z and install it.
• It’s a small piece of software which you can use to retrieve computers hardware specification with just one click.
• It will take few seconds to retrieve your computer’s hardware specification.
• Then it will open a small window where you can find all the details about your CPU, Main board, RAM and GPU.
• If you take closer look, you will figure out it’s not only displaying the type of hardware. It’s showing about your hardware and current functional status in detail.
• In the about section you can dump entire technical details in to a txt file of html file.

• Hardware: Intel Core i5 2nd Gen // 4GB DDR2
• OS: Windows 7 Home Premium // 64 Bit

Now you can cross check the provided technical specification of your computer with CPU-Z. Not only that if someone ask you details about your newly bought computer, you can simply dump the CPU-Z details in to HTML file and share it.

Tags: #Tools