You are using Gmail at home but when you go to office or university are you still using it? Most of the people would say NO, I’m using Microsoft Outlook or some other installed mail client, But why? Of course in a professional environment it’s not only about receiving email and reply to them.

There you need advanced configurations like automated reply, signatures, tasks and event reminders. Can’t you have the same features in Gmail? Of course you can but most of the non-techy people are not aware of those.

Here comes the step by step guide to configure Gmail as a professional email service.

Professional Features

Vacation Responder

This is essential for any professional. It’s too bad to not to reply to emails even when you are out of town for a vacation. The best thing that you can do is set an auto responder. Here is how to do it in Gmail.

• Go to Settings -> General -> Vacation responder
• There you will be able to see below options.

• Here set the radio button to vacation responder on.
• Then select the data range, fill the subject and message.
• If you don’t want this responder go to all the people check Only send a response to people in my contacts.
• Click save changes, it’s easy as that.
• Now Gmail will automatically reply to the people who are sending you emails when you out of town.

Signature

It’s very important to make your email credible and authenticated. In a paper mails you always sign at the end. It’s not possible in digital world, but you can add some signature text or an image of your signature.

Most of the emails clients are having option to auto add signature at the end of each and every email you are sending. Being the best online email service of course Gmail also having it.

• Go to Settings -> General -> Signature.
• It will take you to below options panel.

• If you have many email account connected with Gmail, you can assign separate signatures for each account.
• In that case you will be able to see drop down menu with all the email accounts connected.
• In the text editor, design your signature.
• You can add image of your signature as well.
• Finally click save changes.
• Now Gmail will automatically add your signature to end of every email.
• When you are sending email as different account, Gmail will auto add different signatures as configured.

Auto Forwarding

Depending on your professional requirement you might need to forward all your emails to some other address as well. Most of the people do this for back up purpose. With Gmail you can easily set up auto-forward emails to another address.

• Go to settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP -> Forwarding
• Click on the button add forwarding address

• Enter the address and click next.
• Gmail will send a confirmation email with a verification code to forwarding address.
• After forwarding process complete you will be able to see the forwarding in settings page.

• Enter the code there and you are done.
• Now all your emails will be forwarded to given address.
• If you need to forward selected emails to another address, use Filters.
• In filter, after defining the search criteria set the action as forward it.

Now you can see that most of the extended service that provided by popular mail clients are also there in Gmail as well. In addition to those you can manage your task and event right here in Gmail with the support of Google calendar. Important Gmail tips about that coming up soon.

Tags: #Gmail #Google

If you want to move huge files between different hard disk drives, you know it will take a very long time. If it’s same HDD and different partitions there won’t be any problem, but think about two physical HDD. The situation gets even worse when you try to move many huge files to removable storage device such as a USB flash drive.

Sometime after you copy a file in to a removable storage and take it to another computer, it says that “Can’t open the file”. In other words the file has been corrupted during the copying process.

There is a nice solution for all the above problems you have faced. It is TeraCopy, a file copying software which will speed up the whole process ensuring the safety at the same time. The basic version of the software comes for free, only for windows platform and if you need advanced features you have to buy the pro version.

How to Use TeraCopy

Installation

• Click here to go to download page.
• Click on Download now link.
• Save the installation file in a known location in your hard drive.
• Launch the installation wizard and follow the steps.
• The installation wizard will require an active internet connection.
• Ask it to place a shortcut in desktop and launch the application.
• It will take you to below window.

• It has a very simple interface where you can do all your file copying and moving effectively.

File Copying

• Open TeraCopy.
• Drag and drop the file need to be copied or moved to main window.
• It will detect the file name.
• Click on Copy To or Move To button and give the destination.
• It will automatically start the copying or moving process and close the application on completion.

Replace Default File Copier

• TeraCopy replace the default file copier in Windows platform during the installation.
• In that case whenever you copy or move file, it will be automatically handled by TeraCopy.
• If this option is not enabled by any chance you can set it from More -> Menu -> Preferences -> Check Use TeraCopy as default copy handler.

Why is it Faster?

Normally when you are copying files to a physically separated media, the copy handler will have to do lots of work such as manage file allocation table and manage I/O buffers. The default file copier is giving maximum priority to other OS functions rather than copying function. TeraCopy gets more system resources and complete the file copying.

It dynamically sets the IO buffer sizes depending on the situation in order to minimize seek time. You might have experienced that when you try to move large number of files to a USB flash drive, it’s taking an unusually long time. TeraCopy will solve that problem for you. Furthermore this uses asynchronous file handling which again speed up the multiple file copying.

Advantages

It’s not only about faster file handling. It does its job safer as well. On completion it’s asking you whether you need to verify the files. This comes in handy when you are dealing with removable storage. You can permanently enable this from preferences menu by checking in always test after copy.

Additionally you can skip file, pause and resume during the file handling process. Finally you can tell the TeraCopy to either shutdown computer, eject the media or close the window on completion using below buttons on main window.

I tested this with several removable USB storage devices and it was super fast than with the default file handler. Currently I’m using TeraCopy as the default file handle in my computer. So far I could not test the performance of TeraCopy in different computers connected via LAN or WLAN.

Alternatives for Other Platforms

One major drawback in TeraCopy is its limited to Windows platform. If you are using other platforms TeraCopy is not for you at this moment. However there are some alternative software you can use. Here are some suggestions.

Let’s hope TeraCopy developers would come up with a Mac version too due to the increasing public request.

No doubt that this is a very valuable piece of software if you are a person who always deals with many number of large files and separate physical storage locations. If you try this once, I’m sure you will never use the default file handler in Windows ever again.

Tags: #Files #Tools #USB

In a series of articles I clarified most of the factors that you must consider before you buy a Smartphone. When you take a look at most of the Smartphone specification you will find lots of terms that we discussed here and many marketing jargons used in promotions as well. Now you are in good shape to shop for a Smartphone with solid knowledge about them.

Quick Catch-up

Here in the last article in this series I’m trying to focus the attention on Battery life of Smartphone. No matter how advanced they are, once the battery is gone it just become a piece of plastic. So having long lasting battery is very important factor that you must consider.

However, you won’t be able to get a good idea about battery life by just reading technical specification why there are lots of misleading and vague information. Most of the time actual battery life is way lesser than the value in technical specification.

What Decide the Battery Life?

There is no direct answer to this question and of course there are too many factors you have to consider. The worst part here is most of variables are interdependent, hence it’s a very difficult decision to make.

• Larger the battery, longer the battery life. It will be mentioned in technical specification as mAh.
• Powerful processors drain battery faster.
• Large displayed consuming more electricity.
• LCD display consumes more electricity than LED displays.
• GSM, HSDPA, Wi-fi and GPS are the biggest battery drainers.
• Usage style is also a major contributing factor.
• iOS consume lesser power than Android.
• Some applications also reduce battery life drastically.
• There are latest technologies to save battery life such as 4-PLUS-1 technology in Nvidia Tegra 3 Chipset.

These facts might give a good picture about battery life in Smartphone. However there is no way to know the actual battery life till you start using the Smartphone or ask a person who already using one.

The best way to find actual battery life in a Smartphone is ask a likeminded online group, may be in Facebook or a Forum.

Wrapping Up

The built quality of the battery is the major contributing factor for the battery life. The durability of the battery is also important factor. Some smart phones are having great battery life in first few months and then start decreasing rapidly.

According to my experience and social findings Apple iPhone is having one of the most powerful and durable battery. The hardware and software architecture in iPhone is very carefully designed to use the battery power efficiently.

Generally Android devices are having lesser battery power, yet with the latest Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset, they seems showing some improvements.

I’d appreciate if you can share your brand specific personal experience about Smartphone battery life and it will be great support for lots of people.

This is going to be the last article of this series and hope I could sharpen your knowledge about Smartphone and related technical terms and marketing jargons. Our discussion is always open for any further clarification or feedback.

Tags: #Battery #Smartphone

In the past few years Smartphone technologies skyrocketed. It’s practically started with Apple’s iPhone and then it became a “Smartphone Fever”. Lots of other competitors came in to the game such as HTC, LG, Samsung and Sony. Some of them were already in the game and accelerated their innovation to be the king in Smartphone world.

But for most of the customers, it’s a freaking nightmare. They can’t decide which Smartphone to buy. There are various brands and models with different marketing jargons. The worst part is there is a wide price range from $150 to $1200. It’s very difficult to figure out what is the Smartphone which fits for you and your needs.

To worsen things more, you buy a high tech piece of equipment just to follow the trend, but you don’t really need it for any of your day to day work. So after few weeks it becomes just another phone for you and a huge waste of money.

To save all the trouble for you, I decided to write this series of articles with the name Smartphone Buyer’s Guide to make it easier for you to pick a good Smartphone with good features for good price which exactly does what you need. Today I’m going to talk about Processing Power.

Quick Catch-up

Read Technical Specification

It’s really important for you to read technical specification of the Smartphone rather than going after marketing materials. There you can find important features of the gadget which decide whether it fits for you. But the next big question is, most of the people doesn’t know the meaning of half of the words which is there in technical specifications published in manufactures websites.

So we are trying to break them down and understand one by one. As I mentioned before today our focus is processing power which is the most important factor in any Smartphone.

Processing Power

When you are reading the technical specification of processing power there are four main things you have to pay attention to.

• Chipset: Platform that processor runs on.
• Clock Speed: How much work that processor core can do in one second.
• Core: How many processor cores are there.
• GPU: What is the processor dedicated for graphical functionalities and here clock speed and cores come to the picture again.

The most powerful Smartphone would be the one which is having latest and advanced chipset, very high clock speed, maximum number of cores and most powerful GPU. One example is shown below.

• Nvidia Tegra 3 Chipset and 1.5 GHz Quad Core Cortex A9 with GeForce GPU.

Above example is having Nvidia Tegra 3 chispet which is the latest and most powerful, then 1.5 GHz clock speed which is very high. It’s having 4 CPU cores which give you 4 times of power and GeForce GPU which is having 12 graphic processing cores.

If you are a heavy gamer you have to go for a Smartphone like this. But if you are mainly doing web browsing, email checking and eBook reading this is way too much for you. In that case consider below specification.

• Nvidia Tegra 2 Chipset and 1GHz Dual core cortex A9 with any average GPU.

Nvidia Tegra is the most popular and stable chipset, but there are more.

• Apples A5 and A5X comes with iPhone
• Exynos comes with Samsung Galaxy S II
• Snapdragon comes with Asus Smartphone

GeForce is the most popular GPU in android world, but again there are more.

• Adreno comes with Asus products
• Mali-400MP comes with Samsung Galaxy S II
• PowerVR comes with Apple iPhone

When it comes to processors you should know only about ARM. All the above mentioned phones come with that. Normally in technical specification it will state like Cortex A9 etc. Only thing you have to worry about is its Clock speed and number of cores.

I hope this explains you most of the marketing jargons in Smartphone processors. Now you can make a list of things that you would do with your Smartphone and find out the processing power needed to perform them. Then you can decide what sort of Chipset, Clock Speed, Number of Cores and GPU you need.

If you still are feeling lost, drop a comment here and get good help from Notes of Genius community. We are here to help you to buy the best Smartphone which is an exact fit for you, your needs and your pocket.

See you soon with next article which is Storage options in Smartphone.

Tags: #Smartphone

In the past few articles I was talking about important things that you should analyze when you are buying a Smartphone. The main objective was to educate you about how to read and understand a technical specification resolving various marketing jargons.

Quick Catch-up

Today I’m going to focus your attention on Connectivity which is one of the most important features. You are buying a phone as a communication tool. Connectivity is letting you to turn the hardware in Smartphone to communication device by connecting you to service providers.

2G

This is the most primitive yet most important type of connectivity. This is letting you to make conventional voice calls and send SMS. In technical specification this will look like below.

• GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900

This says that your Smartphone can connect to any GSM network in given frequency ranges, in other words to any GSM network available. Since this is supporting four frequencies, this would call as quad band GSM device. Most of the modern Smartphones are quad band and I’m pretty sure you won’t face any problem with 2G connectivity.

GPRS is another extension to 2G networks also called as 2.5G which is letting you to connect to data services. Using that you can connect to internet with up to 48kbps speed. This technology is hardly ever used in modern Smartphones.

3G

This plays a big role in any Smartphone. Using this data service you can check your email,  browse internet, download and install application etc. Most of the interesting things that you will do with Smartphone will have a close relationship with its 3G connectivity. So you have to pay close attention to this.

In technical specification it will looks like below.

• HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100
• HSDPA, 21 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps

Same as in GSM this is explaining operation frequencies and the technology used which is HSDPA. In the 2^nd line it explains the maximum data transfer speed this device supports.

Most of the modern devices will have similar looking specification. If the device you are looking for is having lesser data transfer speed no matter how fast data connection you get, you won’t be able to utilize it. So pay close attention to data transfer speed.

4G/ LTE

This is one of the latest technologies which is letting your Smartphone to connect to network with the data transfer rate up to 100mbps. However most of the Smartphones doesn’t have this technology yet while most of the service providers started to introduce this technology.

In technical specification it will looks like below.

• LTE 700 MHz Class 17 / 1700 / 2100

Same as before it’s explaining what is the operation frequency and speed would depend on your service provider.

If you have a requirement to access high speed internet, make sure your Smartphone support LTE technology.  However, this will cost you extra $$$.

Wi-Fi

I’m pretty sure any Laptop user must have used Wi-Fi. It’s a short range data technology and you can find free wi-fi hot spots in many places in your town. I consider this as a essential feature for any smart phone.

In technical specification it would looks like below.

• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot

This explains the types of wi-fi networks this device supports. In addition it says that it support DLNA which is multimedia streaming technology which is letting you to connect your Smartphone wirelessly and wi-fi direct is this device is capable of setting up device-to-device wi-fi network, finally wi-fi hotspot means the device can set up its own wi-fi hotspot and letting other device to connect.

Any Smartphone you are buying must have at least basic version of wi-fi.

GPS

If your Smartphone is having in built GPS unit you can connect to GPS satellite system and get the exact coordinates of your location for free. This could be used to find locations in map and driving assistant applications.

Same as wi-fi this is also an essential service, make sure your Smartphone have this as well.

Wrapping Up

Connectivity is fairly less complicated topic for most of the general users since it’s pretty much standardized and mobile service providers are taking care of the technical issue. All you have to do is make sure the device you are going to buy is having required connectivity support. Below set up would be ideal for most of the people.

• GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
• HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100
• HSDPA, 21 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot
• GPS

I’m always here to solve any specific problem you have when you are buying a Smartphone. Drop a comment with your problem and I will give you a timely help and Notes Of Genius community is also here to help you.

Meet you soon with the discussion about Operating System and Battery life in Smartphone.

Tags: #Smartphone

Android mobile operating system was a hot topic among mobile application developers as well as general community in past few years. It attracted developers since it a total free and open source operating system which is JAVA programming language based and due to the availability of free applications, it attracted general users. There are various smart phones which are having the Google android as its operating system and most of them were manufactured by well known companies including HTC, Sony Ericson, Samsung and Motorola. Those sophisticated devices were gaining the popularity among the other market competitors with their smooth snappy performance. Now the Google android OS is taking its steps to deal with the new trend of ‘Tablet’ mobile devices.

Android OS

History

The development of Android OS was started by Android Inc in 2005. Then the company was taken over by Google after that by Open Handset Alliance. The core of the Android OS is a modified version of Linux Kernel and it provide platform to develop it using JAVA Programming language. The first announcement of Android Distribution was made on 5^th November of 2007. At this moment there are so many industry giants working in Android project including Google, HTC, Intel, LG, Samsung, Nvidia and Sony Ericson.

Features

The most attractive feature in Android OS is its GUI. It provides highly comprehensive extensible GUI to the user with Open GL based 3D graphics. It supports all the modern wireless connectivity technologies. When it comes to the storage the developer can use relational database in the mobile device like in a personal computer with the aid of SQLite. When it comes to the multimedia it provides encoding to all the common media formats. The multi point touch screen enhances the user experience along with advance voice recognitions system. Most importantly it supports JAVA programming languages with multitasking. The SDK is released to developers for free. Therefore users can install freely available millions of applications on it.

The ‘Tablet’ Trend

The ‘Tablet’ trend was initially started with laptop computers couple of years ago. Those laptop devices provide 180 degrees rotatable LCD display with multipoint touch screen. Therefore it could be used as a traditional laptop computer as well as a tablet PC when the screen it rotated. The well known manufactures for these devices were HP and Samsung. After that the laptops and tablet devices were going on different specialized paths. Most of the tablet devices introduced after that was having a single-block design with large multi point touch screen. The trend of tablet devices was further stimulated with the mobile Gaming industry. The traditional mobile phone screen was way too smaller to play games and Laptop is not enough portable for that. The tablet devices gave a perfect solution for this problem with the improvement of 3D rendering hardware infrastructure in them. Furthermore people don’t like to read a book on a Computer screen. It never gave the real sensation of reading a real paper book. With the trend of Tablet devices the era of E book reborn with new energy since the readers could have almost a ‘real book’ like device to read e books. With the arrival of Apple iPad the tablet trend was a day to day hot topic among every one.

Features Of Android Tablets

Acer Prototype

One of the most noticeable prototypes has been demonstrated by Acer. The article about this was made online by Shufflegazine. According to that the device 7 inches display with 2GB memory. Most importantly as seen in the photographs of demonstration it’s equipped with a real physical keyboard. This will be good news for many people who don’t like to use on screen touch keyboard.

Samsung Galaxy Tab

According to another unofficial sources Samsung also about to release a Tablet PC. The market of the device appears to be ‘Samsung Galaxy Tab’. Furthermore it will be having high resolution 7 inches TFT display and front facing camera.

Dell Mini 5

There is an official report about another Android powered tablet device which is ‘Dell Mini 5’. It’s having 5 inches display with multi point touch sensor. The wireless connective will be provided through SIM card, so it appears to be supporting all the modern wireless technologies. In addition to that its having Wi-Fi connectivity as well.  The Android OS versions used for this prototype is 1.6. Most importantly when it comes to image capturing, the device is equipped with 2 cameras, One 5 MP camera on rear panel and front VGA camera for video calling.

Archos 5 Android Internet Table

Archos 5 Android Internet Tablet is already available tablet device in market. It’s available in 2 versions which is having 16GB and 32GB. The processor is 430MHz ARM Cortex-A8 and display size is 5 inches. This is having highly portable design and having great multimedia capabilities including 720p high definitions video playback. Additionally it is having built in GPS receiver as well.

The Android mobile OS provide a versatile platform for all the above Tablet devices to deliver those exceptional features to the user. In near future there will be even greater devices with further improved hardware capabilities. Most importantly there will be improved 3D graphic and it will support advance gamming on Android Tables. Furthermore due to the JAVA programming language support there will be even wider free and open source application range. Most importantly the Android OS uses an advance mechanism to run JAVA applications without the support of traditional JVM, so it will save the devices battery life.

Competitors

The most significant competitor to the Android OS is Apple mobile OS which comes with iPhone and iPad. It was gaining its popularity due to the highly improved user interfaces and great multimedia capabilities. Furthermore in Apple app store there are more than 200, 000 of applications available to download.  Even with all these Android OS can gain the advantage due to few reasons. The main reason is its free and open source. Due to that there will be millions of applications available written using JAVA programming language. Apparently the GUI in Android OS is almost good as Apple interface. In this moment Apple seems to be the market dominant tablet device OS. But in near future Android OS will take that place due to its limitless capabilities of free and open source development.

Next Chapter

All the open source development gets mature with the time. So the next chapter of Android mobile OS is pretty unpredictable. It’s already having the entire comprehensive featured required for a Tablet devices as well as any mobile device. Furthermore it has special mechanism to reduce the power consumption when it’s running third party JAVA applications. The next expected development would be the performance improvement and it will be a continuous process. Since most of the mobile devices have limited hardware resources, this will be a curtail factor for the success of Tablet OS. Other than that the next most important factor would be wireless security. Even in current versions Android OS provides advance encryptions and secured protocols to transfer data. Since the devices are always connected to various wireless networks this may need to be further improved. The gaming support of the OS is another expected development in future versions. The revolution of Android powered Tabled devices is upon us. The next surprise of Android OS is not so far as it seems.

References

• Android, C. (2010, February). Dell Mini 5 Android Tablet gets FCC approved. Retrieved June 2010, from canadianandroid.com: http://www.canadianandroid.com/b/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/dell-internet-tablet-slate-announced-6.jpg
• Edgar, J. A. (2009, November). Archos 5 Android Internet Tablet: First Impressions. Retrieved June 2010, from phandroid.com: http://phandroid.com/2009/11/11/archos-5-android-internet-tablet-first-impressions/
• Hannaford, K. (2010, June). Leaked Photo of Samsung Galaxy Tab Shows 7-Inch Android Tablet. Retrieved June 2010, from gizmodo.com: http://gizmodo.com/5554446/leaked-photo-of-samsung-galaxy-tab-shows-7+inch-android-tablet
• Nystedt, M. (2010, May). Acer CEO shows off 7-inch Android tablet. Retrieved June 2010, from www.shufflegazine.com: http://www.shufflegazine.com/2010/05/27/acer-ceo-shows-of-7-inch-android-tablet/
• Perez, A. (2010, January). Dell Announces Android Powered Tablet. Retrieved June 2010, from phandroid.com: http://phandroid.com/2010/01/08/dell-announces-android-powered-tablet/

Tags: #Android #OS #Tablet

Asus name is very popular in Android world and they were focused on manufacturing high performance Tablet devices. If you are an android user probably you might have noticed that they are having top score in most of the benchmarking tests.

The previous version of Eee Pad Transformer attracted lots of customers with its unique features. It’s the first Android tablet which could transform in to a note book with a QWERTY key board and extended battery life. This astonishing design won various awards as well.

As a continuation of this trend they introduced two new tablets in Mobile World Congress 2012. They are Asus Transformer Pad Infinity and Asus Transformer Pad 300.

300 series came as budget tablet with few scale down versions yet compared to available other tablets it could still be considered as a high performance tablet. This makes it the best budget and features balance point in Android tablets.

Spotlight Features

Processor and Storage

Asus Transformer Pad 300 powered with 1.2 GHz Quad Core processor running on Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset with 4-PLUS-1 technology and GeForce GPU. This is very popular configuration in most of the tablet devices. Of course this setup will make this a good gaming platform.

Same as most of the other tablets this also comes with 1GB RAM and 16GB internal storage. You can always extend this up to 32 GB via microSD slot.

Operating System

Device is made live with Android Ice Cream Sandwich version 4.0. And this comes with Asus Waveshare UI, one of the best themed versions of Android.

Display

This device comes with 10.1 inches display with resolution 1280 X 800 which makes the pixel density 149 ppi. The display technology used here is IPS LCD to improve the viewing angle.

Connectivity

According to the specification tables supports 3G and 4G LTE data connectivity. In addition as standard options it supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and USB connectivity.

Camera

Primary camera is 8MP and supports auto focus and geo tagging. Secondary camera is 1.2MP and could be used for video conferencing. When it comes to video recording no surprise it supports 1080p HD.

How Come This Be a Budget Tablet?

After taking a look at these futures you will ask this question for sure. How come this be a budget tablet? There are several reasons.

• Back cover is built with textured plastic, not with Aluminum Alloy.
• Processor is clocked at 1.2 GHz compared to Transformer Pad Infinity’s 1.6 GHz.
• Display resolution is 1280 X 800 compared to Transformer Pad Infinity’s 1920 X 1200.
• Display is IPS LCD, not 600 nits IPS+.
• Internal Storage is only 16GB.
• Camera is not having LED flash.
• Device is relatively heavier and thicker.

Wrap Up

After considering the reasons for this to be budget tablet, the feeling that came in to my mind was “Yeah! They have removed all the unnecessary features from this tablet”.

Textured plastic is good for radio communication and let you choose few colors as well. Lower clock speed of course emits lesser heat and save battery life. Display resolution is same as my laptop monitor. Though I have super bright display I have to reduce the brightness for serious usage. LED flash never worked for me.

All these things make Asus Transformer Pad 300 a real Android tablet with real features. This is planned to release to the market with $399 price tag and extra $150 for QWERT keyboard. If you need a good tablet for your serious mobile computing needs, this could be your pick.

Tags: #Android #Asus #Nvidia #Tablet

Anti-lock brake system, commonly known as an ABS, is one of the most significant safety advancements of modern automobiles. The primary objective of the ABS is preventing vehicle from skidding when applied brakes in any road condition keeping the vehicle speed and wheel speed at a same level. It helps the driver to head the nose of the vehicle to a desired location even when full brakes are applied. This comes in handy when the road is slippery due to snow or rain fall. Some of the experienced drivers pedal the breaks in such a situations to prevent the vehicle from skidding, yet it’s highly risky to depend on human behavior since anything can happen within few seconds. Hence ABS has become a standard option in most of the automobiles in today’s market. Let’s take a deeper look in to ABS, how it works, the underlying technology and its evolution.

Energy Transformation in Braking

The common misunderstanding in braking is that the kinetic energy in the vehicle will be transformed in to thermal energy due to the friction in brake pads and the drum. It’s true that part of the kinetic energy will be transformed in to heat, but a large part of it will be transformed in to potential energy in front suspension. You definitely must have noticed that, the front suspension system gets compressed and vehicle leans forward whenever you apply breaks. That’s the actual transformation of Kinetic energy in braking process.

Kinetic Energy –> Potential Energy in Front suspension and thermal energy

The above power transformation will depend on the friction between the road and the wheel. If it was lesser than the friction between brake pads and the drum, wheels get locked and vehicle starts to skid. This is the reason why vehicles skid in slippery roads. Further in the case, front suspension gets totally pressed and when it has no capacity to store any more potential energy, the same thing will happen.

Why Do We Need ABS?

When you apply breaks on a road, part of the kinetic energy will be transformed in to thermal energy as usual and part will transform in to potential energy in suspension depending on road friction. If the road is slippery or in other words having less friction, vehicle has a lesser chance of transforming kinetic energy in to potential energy. Hence there will be a greater chance of vehicle getting skidded. If the vehicle stars to skid, there is no way to control the nose direction using the steering wheel.

As a solution some of the experienced drivers pedal the break is such situations. I have seen some drivers using the same technique to stop the vehicle in a shorter distance, without losing control in slippery roads. What exactly happen there is once the vehicle starts skidding they release the break pedal, so that the front suspension gets a chance to release its potential energy. After that the driver applies the break again so the suspension can store potential energy again.

ABS is an electronic braking system which can perform the above mentioned task more accurately and efficiently. The main objective is to maintain the vehicle speed and wheel speed at the same level. If wheel speed is ’0′ and vehicle speed is more than that, it means the vehicle is skidding. The simple technique used in ABS is, once the wheel speed reaches ’0′ it releases the break to measure whether there’s any vehicle speed left yet. If that be the case, wheels will start again, and front suspension will get released from its potential energy. Then ABS automatically applies break and will continue the same procedure till the vehicle speed and wheel speed both become 0.

Advantages of ABS

The main advantage is you will be able to stop the vehicle in a shorter distance since it utilizing the energy transformation to the maximum level. And it won’t let the vehicle to skid understanding the road conditions. Therefore you can apply full break in any road condition without any hesitation. As long as wheels are not getting locked, driver can head the nose of the vehicle to desired location while applying full brakes. This will reduces the driving stress significantly since we don’t have to concern about the amount of break we apply in any road condition.

Evolution of ABS

In the early stage of ABS it had very few signals to control its behavior. It calculates the wheel speed and captures the vehicle speed by releasing breaks while wheel speed is 0 through the same speedometer. And it treats all 4 wheels the same way. This system worked fine in general road conditions yet there were identified problems. In the case of vehicle is driving down a hill, the vehicle speed will never be 0 while it release the break to capture it due the energy transformation from potential energy to kinetic energy. Hence there was no way to totally stop a vehicle which is driving down the hill by using break paddles. The problem were quickly solved using a simple logic that if wheel speed were less that certain level it will be locked by break till the driver releases the break paddle.

Additionally, if all four wheels are not in same road conations, this kind of break system yet result a skid. If two wheels are on snow and others on clean road, once the driver applies break it will turn the vehicle in an uncontrollable manner no matter it has ABS. Having the objective of solving this problem modern ABS systems collect data separately from all four wheels and apply ABS accordingly.

In traditional ABS systems collect the vehicle speed data from the same speedometer while uses to collect wheel speed data which is not always an accurate a mechanism. It always requires releasing the breaks and letting the wheels to spin to capture the relevant data. Modern ABS system are been designed to capture the vehicle speed using GPS data which could be identified as a proper mechanism, yet it could be less accurate. However, it doesn’t require releasing the break to capture vehicle speed.

Advanced Application

Security has become one the major concerns in modern vehicles. In order to provide maximum safety, braking plays an immense role. The main objective is to leave no chance to human errors on the road. Therefore Anti-lock braking systems will continue to evolve. The modern ABS algorithm and computers collect wide set of data to control the behavior of the ABS functionalities. In the early stages it was just wheel speed and vehicle speed. Modern ABS systems are equipped with many sensors in brake pedal, all four wheels and the accelerator as well. They could be designed to capture weather conditions as an input signal to the algorithm to make it even accurate. The Electronic stability control which could be identified as an extension of ABS, applies breakings separately to each wheel using advanced algorithm which helps the driver to keep the vehicle on the track at greater speeds and on sharp corners. Recently ABS systems are plugged in to motorcycles and result was more than 40% lesser accidents.  If your vehicle is also equipped with ABS and it’s well maintained, you don’t have to worry about skidding or controlling it when you apply breaks. All you have to do is just push the break paddle. ABS computer will do the hard part for you, and ensure maximums safety for your baby vehicle.

References

Tags: #ABS #Traffic

Few days ago I started writing “Smartphone Buyer’s Guide” a series of articles to make it easier for your pick one Smartphone which is exact fit for your needs and price. Here mainly I’m trying to clarify marketing jargons which is the major barrier for many people to understand the specification of those gadgets.

In the previous article I was talking about Processorwhich is the main contributing factor for the strength of the device. Here comes the explanation of “Storage Options” the next factor you should consider.

Quick Catch-up

RAM

RAM or Random Access Memory is a direct contributing factor for the speed of your Smartphone. Lesser the RAM, lesser the performance. All the applications you are opening will consume RAM to store different data required to function.

Generally any Smartphone would have 512MB of RAM. If you take a look at high end Smartphone there will be 1GB of RAM. In addition to size of RAM you will have to consider the speed of RAM as well, which will be indicated as DDR2 or DDR3 etc. However most of the Smartphone specifications do not mention speed of RAM.

If you need to run lots of applications simultaneously of course you need lots of RAM. It’s same with Gaming. But if you are a light user, mainly doing email checking, web browsing etc. an average size RAM would be enough for you.

RAM is a serious contributing factor for price of Phone. Most of cheap devices are having lesser and lower speed RAM.

After considering general applications of most of Smartphone I recommend you to go for device at least having 512BM of RAM.

Internal Storage

This is persistent storage space you have where you can store applications and other data. Normally any Smartphone would be having at least 2GB internal storage. Same as RAM this is also a price factor, so most manufactures introduce different version of same devices having different internal storage such as 16GB, 32GB or 64GB.

In most of the Smartphones all your contacts, SMS and calendar notes will be saved in internal storage. In addition some of the applications also will be installed to internal storage and use part of its space to function. Therefore you must buy Smartphone with considerable amount of internal storage. For contact, SMS and calendar notes only 2GB would be enough.

If you are a heavy multimedia user of course you need lots of internal storage. In that case you better go for largest possible internal such as 64GB. However having large internal storage is not a good solution for heavy multimedia users. You need expandable removable storage options as well.

Expandable Storage

Expandable storage in your Smartphone is letting you to plug external storage medium. It normally comes as MicroSD card slot and you can separately purchase and plug in to expand the storage.

Best part here is most of the Smartphones are having hot swappable card slots. That means you can change the card without restating device. This comes in handy for the people who are watching lots of movies on the run.

For most of the general Smartphone users just the internal storage would be enough. But if you have specific requirement for extra storage make sure the device you are going to purchase is having expandable storage options.

Wrapping Up

For most of the average Smartphone users below configuration would be ideal.

• 512MB or 1 GB RAM
• 16 GB Internal storage
• MicroSD card support up to 32GB

Same as processor, storage is a cost factor, a serious one. So before you buy the device, plan what sort of activities that you will be doing and how many different types of storage need to perform them. Then you can buy the best device with optimum level of storage which saves lots of money for you.

In the next article I will be talking about the Display which is the most confusing feature in Smartphone.

Tags: #Smartphone #Storage

In WWW page load time has become a very important factor. Sometimes ago when we were using Dial-up internet with very low throughput, yes it was important than today. Even today with all the high speed broadband internet still it plays a important role.

The main importance of minimum page load time is better user experience. That’s the major contributing factor for the Google’s success. Since it’s giving a better user experience, it’s a SEO factor in most of the modern search engines as well.

If you think beyond user experience, it’s good for your server as well. High performance web pages are consuming lesser bandwidth and processing power. So at greater level of performance optimization you will be able to save lots of server resources as well.

Previously I was talking about use different browser plug-ins to identify web page performance and how to fix them step by step.

Quick Catch-up

• Website Performance Optimization

Today I’m going to introduce you a very important tool that you can use to measure the performance level of your web pages. This comes from famous Google with the name Page Speed Online.

How to Use Google Page Speed Online?

• Visit the Google Page Speed Online
• There you have a text box to enter the page URL which you need to analyze
• Enter the URL and press the button Analyze
• Within few seconds it will give you the performance report.
• By default it comes for Desktop Browsers and you can change it to Mobile Browsers by liking Mobile at top right corner.
• As the first thing in the report it indicates the page speed score. Pages with good performance optimization will get higher score out of 100.
• Then you will be able to see the suggestion summary. There it shows the improvement you can do according to the importance.
• By clicking on the suggestion you can get more information about it.
• When you go to the detailed page of suggestion there you can see a Learn more link. Following that link you will be able to find specific instruction about how to fix the issue.
• In the right hand side navigation panel you can navigate to issues easily.
• Interestingly it shows the already done optimization as well.

The best thing about Google Page speed online is you don’t have to install any browser plug-in to measure the optimization level of your web pages. Unlike any other tool, it’s giving descriptive information about the issues according to the priority and clear information about how to fix them.

Note to Webmasters

When you analyze your website most of the cases you will find out that major performance bottle necks are 3^rd party plug-in and widgets you have used. The sad story here is you have no control over the performance optimization of those widgets. All you can do is only use highly required widgets such as social connectors.

Other major issues which you will see are excessive Java script usage and uncompressed images. Those issues can be easily solved unless they are in a widget you have used.

I suggest you to get the maximum out of this free online tool, fix performance bottle necks to deliver maximum user experience to your visitors and achieve great ranking in search engines.

Tags: #Google #Performance #Web