Notes Of Genius is an online tech magazine that provides you an insight on latest achievements, trends and issues related to cutting edge technology. Since the founded day, 1st January 2010, NOG has come a long way and has gained a great deal of popularity among readers of all kinds.
The best thing about NOG is, we share first hand information as well as tried-and-tested solutions in a way that could be perceived by all readers irrespective of their technical competency.
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Couple of decades ago mobile phones were having physical keyboard to operate it. It worked so well for a long time. It was designed to dial a number and with 2G technology type text messages as well. After some time with complex features in mobile operating systems handset manufactures included direction pads and joystick as well.
In early time of new millennium mobile phones leaped ahead and became Smartphone. Most of the Smartphone get rid of conventional physical controllers and move towards touch inputs. Using them they could let the user to use very complex features on modern mobile operating system effortlessly.
Today Smartphone are having processing power as good as desktop computer and multi touch displays. Millions of handsets are being sold with advanced touch input and it has become a day to day item in general public. Next generation of human civilization will never know a mobile handset with actual physical buttons. This is the evolution of mobile handset from physical buttons to touch input.
The next question which comes to you mind is, what is the next big step in mobile handset evolution? There are several thoughts coming to mind as answers to this question. Among all my favorite idea and most probable implementation is “Holographic Displays”.
What is a Holographic Display?
Generally Holograms are 2D canvas which can display 3D objects. You can find them in many places in real life such as your credit card and driving license. There you can see 3D object in 2D sticker and depending on the angle you look at it you can get different views, same as in real 3D object. Those holographic stickers are difficult to reproduce and used to indicate originality of products.
Using the same underlying fundamental concept laser devices can create 3D images in thin air. This is a brand new experience to us. Every time we see a reproduced image its 2D and there is a screen. Even if you experience Wi-Max 3D, still there is a screen. But with Laser hologram there is no physical screen. It juts appear 3D objects in air.
However the technology is not yet sophisticated enough to generate complex graphics and created images are not realistic enough to use for commercial purposes.
How to Use Holographic Display in a Smartphone?
Normally in a Smartphone we see images in 2D display and touch responsiveness is also limited to 2D surface. Yes, some applications are capable of displaying 3D images, but still they are virtual 3D and displayed on 2D surface.
The day engineers equipped a Smartphone with a Holographic display, the images stuck in 2D display will pop out of the phone as real 3D objects. Smartphone home screen will spread out in air and menu item will start floating near them. Once this becomes reality it will be the next big thing in Mobile handset evolution.
Display real 3D images in air won’t be adequate to deliver a great user experience. There has to be motion sensor which can understand hand gestures and control the UI accordingly. When you combine this kind of motion sensor to a Holographic display, you will be able to actually touch a 3D object which popped out from your phone and turn it around with your fingers. Same concept will work even better with large screens in tablets.
Technical Challenges
Smartphone displays are mainly used for information presentation such as web browsing, multimedia application and Games. In those case color reproduction need to be accurate and frame refresh rate need to be greater. And the holographic display should be able to display 2D images whenever necessary.
Current laser hologram technology needs to go a long way to meet the above requirement. Current state is color reproduction quality is very low and refresh rate is average. When it comes to hardware, it’s not ready to live in tiny Smartphone body. If you consider the power consumption laser hologram will kill the most powerful Smartphone within seconds. Therefore we need to polish up hologram display technology before it’s plugged in to a Smartphone.
When it comes to 3D motion sensors, the situation is way better than holographic display. Technology already produced few 3D motions sensors and some of them are already in the market such as Microsoft Kinect. Still the technology needs lots of polishing up to miniaturize the hardware to place them in Smartphone body.
In our life we have experienced speed of technology many times. Back in 1990s we were using 2G mobile phones for sending text messages. After 10 years we have Smartphone with multi-touch displays, high speed data connectivity, GPS and HD displays. Today it might sounds like a day dream to embed holographic displays and 3D motions sensors in Smartphone, but technology will surprise us within couple of years with way advanced technology for sure.
Short message service came in to mobile phone world with the era of 2G technology. With in very short time it went viral and became day to day activity for most people. With this trend mobile handset manufactures also came up with smart ideas to let the people type text in their mobile phones.
Predictive text was there for very long time and BlackBerry made a huge market for physical QWERTY keyboard. With the development of capacitive touch screens QWERTY keyboard became on screen. But it was never like typing in real physical keyboard.
But no doubt, the best way to type message is computer keyboard. But can you really send a SMS using full size keyboard. Yeah, some computers come with GSM SIM card slot, but it’s a very rare case. If you have a android phone with you, by simply installing and app, you can make it happen. The app you have to install it MightyText and it’s under NOG spotlight today.
How to Setup MightyText?
On Your Android Smartphone
As the first step you have to go to Google play and Install MightyText on your Android Smartphone.
On installation you have to grant required permissions as well.
This mobile application work as client to link your phone to computer.
If you go to settings you will be able to see three options, better to check them all.
Now your phone is ready to work with your computer. Now move to your computer.
On Your Computer
On your computer you have several options depending on your browser.
For Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox there is a browser plug-in.
For above two and Safari you can use web application. According to my experience this is the best way.
Same as the mobile application you have to use your Google sign in and grant required permissions.
Now you are good to go and MightyText will take you to it SMS panel.
In left panel you will be able to see all the SMS threads in your phone.
Sync Google contacts to see the names along with SMS threads.
You can compose new SMS by pressing the button at the left top. SMS will be sent through your phone.
Through web application you can start voice conversation, get notified for incoming as well.
MightyText work for MMS as well.
MightyText works as a remote controller for your phone and letting you to control SMS through web interface. The best part here is you can use full size physical keyboard to type SMS. This would be great news for SMS junkies.
The web interface is carefully designed and work as a rich internet application. So you can put it in a SSB (Site specific browser) for better performance.
Quick Catch-up
Try this great application on your Android Smartphone, enjoy typing SMS on your computer keyboard and never forget to share your MightyText experience with NOG community.
Almost all of the Laptops are coming with Wi-Fi adapter inbuilt. Using that, you can easily access internet when you are in Wi-Fi hotspot. It’s not only about accessing internet, you can transfer files and various other communications through Wi-Fi. Sometimes you may be using wireless broadband with USB dongle. In that case can’t other devices connect to your laptop through Wi-Fi and share internet.
Unfortunately Wi-Fi doesn’t work that way. It requires Wi-Fi access point to connect two compatible devices. Your next question, “Can’t I turn my laptop in to Wi-Fi access point?”. Yes! You can since hardware in Wi-Fi access point is pretty much similar to one in your laptop. But you will need special software running on your Laptop. This is where Connectify comes to the picture.
Connectify is piece of software which can convert your laptop in to Wi-Fi access point or a hotspot. Then you can connect any other Wi-Fi devices in to your laptop, share internet, transfer files or run any other Wi-Fi application.
How to Setup Connectify?
Download and Install Connectify
After installation wizard will ask you to reboot the computer. Proceed with that.
Once reboot completed it will show you a windows with steps that you have to do to configure Connectify.
It will ask you to add Connectify to windows firewall as exclusion. If you have any other firewall installed you will have to do the same there.
There will be an icon placed on system tray. Click on that.
It will open a panel where you can enter hotspot name and password.
Then you can select the source of internet if you need to share it.
Finally click start hotspot.
It will take some time and it will notify you once it started working as a Hotspot.
Now Connectify Wi-Fi hotspot is activated. Any other Wi-Fi device can now connect to your laptop through Connectify.
All you have to do is go Wi-Fi settings in device you want to connect to your laptop, search for Wi-Fi networks, locate Connectify hotspot by given name, enter password and connect.
If you share your internet connection it also will be shared among connected devices.
Wrapping Up
This is a perfect solution for you to setup personal area network with couple of Wi-Fi enabled laptops without having Wi-Fi router. All you have to do is install and setup Connectify in one Laptop and it will act as the access point for all the other laptops. Same way you can share internet as well. In that case you have to plug a Broadband dongle to the Laptop which is acting as Wi-Fi access point. It’s simple as that.
Recently I introduced an android application which let you to control your computer through your Smartphone. It uses Wi-Fi and in the case you are not using Wi-Fi router, you can use Connectify to let the Unified Remote to connect to computer.
Quick Catch-up
Unified Remote – Control Your PC with Android Smartphone
Connectify is a commercial software application, so you can use only the Lite version for free. If you need advanced features such as Drag and drop file transfer, repeater functionality and premium support you must purchase the PRO version. Hats off for the development team for adding most of the important features to Lite version.
There could be lots of creative applications of Connectify. Try this piece of software and share your experience with NOG community.
Gmail is the most popular and best online email service which is offering you complete set of features. Now most of the individuals and organizations have stopped using installed mail clients due to capabilities in Gmail.
But one of the major missing features in Gmail is scheduling. If you need to send a email in a given time, there is no inbuilt feature to get it done. Previously I introduced you Boomerang and Web browser plug in which is adding feature Schedule email to Gmail.
Quick Catch-up
Add Scheduling to Gmail with Boomerang
Today I’m going to introduce you another tool which is going beyond email scheduling and offering your Email tracking as well. This comes as a web browser plug-in same as Boomerang and its name is RightInbox. This plug-in is specially designed to work with Gmail and after successful installation it will add new options to Gmail mail composer.
How to Install RightInbox?
Go to RightInbox from your browser. It supports only FireFox, Chrome and Safari.
Click on install now there.
Proceed with the installation step by step and finish installing it.
After the installation you will have to grant required permissions for RightInbox.
Now you are done and you can start using RightInbox with Gmail.
After installation refresh your Gmail page.
Click on compose you will be able to see two new options in the mail composing window.
Fill the other fields as usual and click Send later button.
It will give you few options to select the time of sending.
Choose available shortcuts of specify the exact time.
Once you select the time it will go to drafts with altered subject indicating scheduling details. Don’t worry, only the original subject will be send to recipient.
Before the scheduled time you can go to drafts and alter the scheduled time, change email or discard it as you want.
Go to Gmail composer to fill the other field of email.
You can find check box right next to send later button labeled as track. Check it in.
Then send the email to recipient. You could use send later feature as well.
Once the recipient opens the email you will get notified by another email from RightInbox.
Once recipient click on any of URLs in the email, you will get notified again.
This is the first question that came to my mind once I tried RightInbox. I won’t be able to tell you what is the exact underlying technology they are using, but I have a good guess. For the email scheduling they must be using details in email subject. Once you schedule it alter the subject with sending time and save in draft. RightInbox could come in to my drafts and send it in given time. That’s why we have to grant access permissions in the first place.
When it comes to tracking they are using very simple technology.
They are inserting html img tag at the end of each tracking enabled email. Once the recipient open the email, img tag will get interpreted and given src URL will get accessed. The URL is unique and through that they can figure out the opened time of email. Since HTTP request contain IP adddress of origin RightInbox can get that data and give the location of recipient. Then they generate email notification and send it to you. Entire URLs in the email also modified to go through RightInbox server, so they can track them easily as well.
Wrapping Up
The RightInbox plug-in worked great with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. I didn’t test it with Safari, yet I expect the same. The additional options are getting integrated with Gmail seamlessly. You will never feel that they are not original options in Gmail.
Reliability of scheduling and tracking are at its optimum level. This comes in hand for many business people to schedule their email and even track them. RightInbox email tracking is not only for opening, but for clicking on its links as well. So you can get a very clear picture about recipient actions.
However, the free version of RightInbox is giving you limited number of emails per month to schedule and track, If you need unlimited version you must purchase the PRO version.
Try this great plug-in to schedule and track your email and never forget to share your experience here with NOG community.
Whenever you try to perform an action in Android OS, it’s giving you the option to select the application which you need to complete the action with. Down there you can see the check box to make this option the default option. Then it won’t show you the dialog box. Instead it will open the default application straightaway.
After sometime you need to change the default application for a specific action. Most of the applications are instructing you to go to Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications to change defaults. If you are using latest Android 4 ICS when you go to Settings surprisingly there is nothing call manage apps. Instead there is a section call Apps, but it’s only listing downloaded, running and all applications in the section running application, there is an option for you see the cached application as well.
How to Change Default Applications?
Seems in the apps section in settings, there is no option to change default application. But you came to the right place and here is how to do it. In this example, let’s assume that you set Chrome browser as default over android browser. Now you need to set Android browser again as default.
Go to settings -> apps and then go to tab all.
There you can see a list of applications which are installed on your Smartphone.
Find chrome and tap on it.
Then find the section Launch by default. If you have no default action related to this application this part would be deactivated.
Click on the button clear default.
Then go to some other application and click on URL. Now it won’t directly go to Chrome and again it will ask you to select the application.
This is how you have to change default applications in Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Did you ever have the need to control your computer remotely? Yes you will need this so seriously when you are watching movies and listening to music. As a solution you might try a wireless keyboard, but it’s too bulky to carry around. Some laptops are coming with inbuilt remote controller, but with limited capabilities.
If none of that work for you, then you have to make up your mind to buy expensive hardware. But wait! There is a totally free solution. You can turn your android Smartphone to universal remote controller for your PC. This magic comes with little piece of Android application, Unified Remote. Let’s take a closer look in to this.
How to Use Unified Remote?
Setting Up the Server
Before you start using Unified remote you must have the server running on your computer. Android application gets access to your computer through the server. For this server could use Bluetooth or Wi-fi.
Visit the official download page
Go to on your computer section and download the setup file or zip file of the server, then install it.
If you don’t like to take the trouble of installing, get portable version. Personally I prefer portable vision.
Before you start running any version you must have .NET Framework 4. Download it from here.
Now run the server and it will place an icon in system tray.
Default settings would work for many people. If you want to change any setting right click on the system tray icon and go to settings.
Setting Up the Android Application
Go to Google play and Download Unified remote.
There are two versions and I gave you the link to free version. If you need extended features, get full version here.
Now you can open the application.
As the first thing you have to add the server to Smartphone application. Then only you can connect to computer and control it.
For that go to Servers in the main dashboard and click add, then select automatic.
Application will automatically list the available servers and your computer also will be listed there.
You can add it simply by taping on it. Now you are good to go.
Go to remotes and there you can find several remotes which you can use to control different actions of your computer.
For testing purpose, go to basic input. It will let you to move your mouse using Smartphone’s touch screen. If it’s working well, you can use any other remotes listed.
There are various different remotes which you can use to move mouse, type letters and numbers, control media files, manage power and there is one especially for PowerPoint presentations.
You can have more remotes, even custom remotes and voice commands in full version.
When installing server all the operations are highly simplified and any one can get it done with few clicks. If you get the portable version it’s even easier. Configuration is also minimum and most of the case you will never have to touch the configuration panel.
Installation of Android application is also easy as always, you can directly send it to your phone through Google Play. In initial running adding the PC server to application is just few taps away, no serious configurations. You can simply start using the applications with your computer. All the remotes are carefully designed to give the maximum conformability to any type of user.
When you go to application settings, you can change the theme and visible remote controllers list. There is an option for you to use the application full screen as well.
You can use the application with Wi-fi or Bluetooth. If you have a Wi-fi router you can simply connect to the compuer through that. If not you can make your computer a Wi-fi hotspot using a application such as Connectify. If none of those work you can use Bluetooth.
Try the application and I’m sure this will solve most of your remote controlling requirement totally for free. Never forget to share your experience with NOG community.
If you are a Nokia fan, you know how difficult to move to another platform. For years, those magical devices gave us a great service. But according to the today situation, you have no option but move to Android or may be iOS. When you are moving, one of the major problems you will face is how to move contact list.
In Symbian OS there was no universal way to sync your contact in cross platform version. True, you can sync them using PC suite, but it will work only with another Symbian device. There are several applications which is letting you to sync contact online, but none work for me in a smooth manner.
You can copy all your contact to SIM card and move them to new phone, but unfortunately there you can store limited number of contacts. Other than that it supports only phone numbers, not other related details.
Finally I tried very basic old school way or migrating contact from a Symbian phone to Android and it worked like magic. If you have the same problem, here is what you should do step by step.
Process of Contact Migration
Go to contacts in your Symbian phone.
Go to options and Mark all the contacts.
Then go to options -> Create backup -> Phone to memory card.
This will create vCard in your memory card one per contact.
You can find those vCards in others -> Contacts in your memory card.
Move the contact folder in to android phone memory card.
Then open People app in Android phone, go to options -> Import/export -> import from storage
It will search for vCards in your SD card and offer you three options to import one vCard, slected vCards or all vCards.
Click OK to proceed and all the contacts will be successfully imported to people widget.
You can see the same contact list when you open the phone application as well.
This process is simple and you don’t even have to install any application on your Android phone or Symbian phone. Once you import contact to your Android phone, I’m pretty sure that you will never have to face such a trouble to migrate contact since all of them are synced with your Google account. Even if you move to another Android phone you can easily get them from Google account. To be on the safe side, keep your contact folder as well with all the vCards in it.
The magic in all Google products is they are interconnected. This inter-connectivity goes beyond online services. If you are using a Smartphone, tablet and a PC you can connect all of them together via Google services regardless of the software platform they use. This makes Google a complete product suite for everyone.
However they have some limitations as well. Here’s one example. You may be using Google Drive and Gmail. Just think you got an email with attachment, a huge one, when you are away from your PC. You need to store it in Google Drive to check it out later.
What you can do is download the attachment and upload it back to Google Drive. Buts it’s time and bandwidth consuming. Actually the file is already in Google server. All you need is to transfer it in to another service. There has to be a one click solution. Finally I found it, a Chrome extension called Gmail attachments to Drive. Let’s take a closer look.
How to Use Google Attachment to Drive?
Add Gmail Attachment to Drive in Chrome App store.
As usual it will take couple of seconds and you will get notified once it done.
This extension won’t make any visible change to Chrome tool bar, not even a new button. Because it works behind the screen.
Now you are ready. Go to Gmail, sign in and open an email with an attachment.
Scroll down to attachments section and see the difference.
Normally you have view, share and download options. But now you have additional Save to Drive option as well.
Once you click on Save to Drive it will open anther window. There you will be able to see the message that file has been added to Google Docs (Message is not yet updated. It’s supposed to mean Google Drive)
That it! No downloading and uploading. You just transferred Gmail attachment to Google Drive within couple of seconds.
Go to Google drive to see or download transferred files.
This is a good solution for you to save important email attachment in Google drive with one click and couple of seconds regardless of its size. I tried this with various different file types. They all worked perfectly. Google Drive can edit Microsoft office files and preview PDF and even ZIP files. It adds more value to this integration.
If you travel back few years, the most popular mobile computing hardware platform was Apple AX. It was there in iPhone, iPad as well as iPod Touch. Then Android started emerging and many manufactures came up with Android powered device.
Nvidia Tegra was a very popular platform for high end gaming devices and Samsung had their own Exynos platform. With the time and technology they came up with dual core and quad core architecture as well as high end multi core GPU.
When I was observing specs of latest Smartphone, especially Windows Phone 8 devices such as Nokia Lumia 920 and HTC 8X, the name of Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 continue to popup. It’s rumored to be in the next LG Nexus 4 as well.
This amazingly powerful mobile computing platform managed to dominate Smartphone and Tablet world in an exponential rate competing with others. Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 platform is under NOG spot light today.
Versions of Snapdragon S4
Play
This uses 45mm semiconductor technology and support up to 1.7GHz dual core ARM Cortex A5 CPU and Adreno 203 GPU capable of handling WVGA videos. Has in built 3G radio and good fit for average performance devices.
Plus
This is using 28mm semiconductor technology and support up to 1.7GHz dual core ARM Cortex A15 CPU, single channel RAM, and Adreno 305 GPU capable of handling 1080p videos. It has built in 3G and 4G radio as well as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS.
Pro
This is using 28mm semiconductor technology and support up to 1.7GHz quad core Cortex A15 CPU, dual channel RAM, and Adreno 320 GPU capable of handling 1080p videos. Same as in Plus, this has all the radios built in.
Prime
Entire specification is same as S4 Pro, yet this doesn’t have built in radios.
Advantages of Snapdragon S4 Pro Platform
Better Power Consumption
28mm fabrication and ARM Cortex A15 architecture is highly optimized to consume lesser power and do more work. And there is a special technique to under clock CPU cores when they are performing background tasks. This is something similar to NVidia 4-PLUS-1 technology, yet much better.
Maximum Processing Power
Snapdragon S4 platform support up to 1.7 GHz quad core processor and latest Adreno 320 GPU. This will turn any Smartphone in to powerhouse fit to perform heavy load of tasks, especially 1080p HD graphics.
Built in Radio
This platform has built in 2G, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC and LTE radios. This opens Snapdragon S4 powered devices to a whole lot of latest lightning speed data networks.
Wrapping Up
If you try to benchmark Qualcomm dual core platform with Nvidia Tegra 3 and Exynos Quad Core platform, of course Quad core would win, yet in some aspects of Qualcomm will win. When you benchmark Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 quad core platform with other competitors, it will kick off everyone else.
Here are some links to benchmark results.
GSMarena
Engadget
Slashgear
It’s a very powerful, energy efficient and secured platform which will define future mobile computing. Most of the high end devices are already using Snapdragon S4 platform and it’s going viral. I’m pretty sure this will be a huge challenge to famous Nvidia Tegra 3 and Samsung Exynos.
