Usage of Digital SLR cameras has increased in unbelievable rate in past few years. There are few main reasons for that like reduced prices, user friendliness and low cost maintain. And they offer many other cool features like instant display after shooting,  easy configuration, automated point and shoot if you need and ability of digital post production. If you go back in to analog SLR age, you have to wait days may be weeks to see how your photo looks like, cost per photograph was too high and in the case you need to do post production like color correction you have to go through complex, costly yet limited featured chemical procedure.

What Is a Crop Type DSLR

In the early stage of DSLRs, their image sensor size was very small relative to 35mm film. Hence, when it comes to professional photography, they never used DSLRs. They were limited to non-professional home usage. Down the time various different manufactures could come up with DSLRs with large image sensor like previous analog film, called full frame cameras. Their image sensor also was 35mm. However, if you consider the cost factor they were always many 1000s of dollars. Before those full frame cameras comes there were crop type cameras with smaller sensor, yet good enough for semi professional usage. Their image sensor size was like 23mm and around. With the technological improvements of image sensors they also could produce professional quality images, yet comes for affordable prices and quickly got popular among semi professional users.

There are many semi professional crop type cameras and specially designed focal length corrected lenses available for them in market. They have having exceptional image capturing capabilities and HD video capturing capabilities as well. Top of all most of them have total automated mode which convert your DLSR to point and shoot camera, which is good for most of home users. Lots of manufactures compete to get their market share and according to my study the best crop type DSLR camera you can find in the market it Nikon D7000.

Background

Nikon is Japan based electronic items manufactures and they produce array of optical equipments. Their most popular products are cameras. In the category cameras they have produces SLR cameras, DSLR cameras as well as point and shoot digital cameras. They were producing SLR cameras for decades and considered as one of the best manufactures. And their NIKKOR lenses considered as world’s best optical equipments not only limited to cameras, but extended to even military applications.

Back in 1999 Nikon introduced D1 which was a crop type DSLR. It only had 2.7 megapixel CCD image sensors, yet provided many other advanced features like any other modern DSLR. Nikon crop type sensor also called as DX format sensor. When you ate using lenses with DX format sensors, they behave differently that in Full frame sensors. In that case images seems little zoomed than normal. In order to solve that confusion Nikon has produced lenses for DX format cameras. With the time number of megapixels in the Nikon sensors got increased, CCD sensor changed in to CMOS and ISO performance got better. With all those improvement Nikon gave birth to one of their revolutionary DSLR, Nikon D90 back in back in 2008. It was having 12.3 megapixel sensor and Nikon D movies which is the movie recording capability was initially introduced with this camera.

With the extreme popularity of Nikon D90, the market demand for even better crop type camera which offer same and more functionalities than D90. As a result Nikon introduce the D7000, the best crop type camera ever produced.

Attractions in D7000

Image Sensor

The most attractive feature in the Nikon D7000 is its image sensor. Its dimension is 23.6 mm × 15.6 mm with 1.5 crop factor. It’s having 16.2 megapixels and capable of produce 4,928 × 3,264 sized images which are good for any professional application. Color space is RGB and bit per pixel is 14.  Same as D90 it’s using CMOS sensor which is having very much lesser noise than previous CCD sensor and having significantly improved low light capturing capabilities. The sensor in D7000 supports 100-6400 ISO range and with the additional ISO boost it could go up to 25600. However in the high ISO ranges image could be too much nosier. According to the most of reviews available in the internet D7000 is having the sensor with best ISO noise performance. You can find more details about D7000 image sensor on DxOMark.

Semi Magnesium Alloy Body

D7000 was introduced as an improvement to previous D90. One of the most significant improvements I can find here is its semi magnesium alloy body. D90 was having total plastic body. Most of the high end professional cameras bodies are built with magnesium alloy which ensure its maximum durability. Additionally it makes the camera weather shielded as well. In D7000, its top and real plates are built with magnesium alloy which called semi magnesium alloy body. This could be identified as effort that Nikon put in to this to inherit some of the high end professional features like in D300S in to D7000.

Auto Focusing System

Auto focusing system is one of the critical success factor in semi professional DSLR. When it comes to High end cameras it could be not that significant because professional photographers love to use manual focusing. But in here the users are mainly non professional home users. To make their life easier with D7000 it comes with 39 point autofocus system. Further it comes with single servo mode, continuous servo mode and total manual focusing if you need it. Additionally it equipped with 3D tracking more which comes handy when you shoot rapidly moving objects.

In single servo mode user can select the focusing point or he can let the camera to choose the best one possible. In the continuous mode camera continue to focus with the changes in frame. If 3D tracking mode is enabled it uses advance algorithm to identify the subject and keep it in focus. If the subject is not focused normally camera won’t allow you to shoot it, yet you can easily change this settings.

When you are using movie mode unlike in previous D90 you can use auto focusing with D7000. It give you array of options like wide area mode, normal area mode, subject tracking more as well as face priority mode. This gives you opportunity to focus while you shoot a video with much more accuracy. However if you are using built in microphone it will record auto focusing noise along with the video.

Full HD Video Recording

Nikon D90 launched the D movie mode with 720p HD video recording and it attracted the most of users who love to do cinematography with DSLRs. As the upgrade D7000 comes with 1080p HD video recording up to 24fps which give you opportunity to make cinematic movies. D90 didn’t offer you a manual move mode. Hence the exposure will be automatically controller. Sometimes this give you trouble when you try to balance the amount of light in the video. Once you reduce the environment light the camera automatically increase the exposure compensation. This could be solved by the exposure lock yet not the perfect solution.

In D7000 you have manual move mode which allow you to change the shutter speed, ISO and white balance even while you shoot video. The change you are going to do will reflect in the live view real time. However still it won’t low you to change the aperture while you record a video like in most of the latest Canon DSLRs. Additionally it doesn’t support high frame rates like 30fps and 60fps which help you to produce real slow motion.

There are several award winning short movies available in YouTube shoot with Nikon D7000 which shows its exceptional video capability. You can see some of them here.

Accessories and Lenses

There are various accessories that go with Nikon D7000. One of the most popular one is its Battery Grip also called as MD-D11. It allows the photographer to shoot portraits easily with the extension to the camera body and allow using extra batteries as well. And there is range of flashes available which you can use to night photography.  Same as Nikon D90, D7000 also having Nikon F mount which give your opportunity to empower your D7000 with any NIKOOR lens according to your requirement.

If you are going to do cinematography with D7000 there are various accessories, mainly camera stabilizers. Most of the standard DSLR equipments go with Nikon D7000.

Statistics

After the introduction of D7000 it attracted the most of the semi professional users as well as professional users. Most of the professional photographers started to use this Nikon D7000 as their back up camera. According to the statistic in Flicker, one of the most  popular photo sharing community usage is D7000 is continue to increase after it launch, yet D90 is having most number of users. There are 9,961,804 photos in Flicker which was captured by D7000 at this moment and 2314 average daily users.

According to its market share, reviews, technology and capabilities, Nikon D7000 has proved that it’s the best crop type camera in the world. Nikon cameras will continue to evolve with latest technologies and soon we will be able to witness another crop type camera which is suitable for semi professional usage, which will be better than D7000 and comes with affordable price. Since then, D7000 will rock the show.

Tags: #Camera #DSLR #Nikon

In last few years laptop computers made a huge leap. They were smaller and less powerful. But today they are even smaller but more powerful than most average desktop computers. However if you are planning to buy a Laptop and you seek a high quality device you have very few options.

There are various laptop manufactures in the market including HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo and many more. Most of their laptops are sold with Windows OEM license. They are popular, number of sales was increasing year by year, but I have noticed significant decrease in manufacturing quality.

Most of the Laptops were having poor design, thick and heavy. Failure rate of display was scary. Battery is the worst, in first few months you could enjoy 3-4 hours but gradually it’s getting decreased to 1-2 hours. Some of the laptops are not giving expected performance from day one. Market is flooded by many numbers of brands and models. So it’s a nightmare for average customer. It’s very confusing and very difficult to pick a right laptop for requirement.

Mac Branded Apple Computers

This environment made a good opportunity for Apple who manufacture desktop and laptop computers. They highly standardize their iMac, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air which gave them good competitive advantage. All those devices were carefully engineered in both hardware and software aspect to give optimum performance. Manufacturing quality was maintained at greater levels to make those devices highly durable.

In customers’ point of view, it’s an easy pick. If you need a desktop computer, it’s iMac. If you need laptop, it’s MacBook Pro and for netbook, it’s MacBook Air. All you have to do is go to Apple Store and select your Mac. Apple was gaining market share as well as a loyal customer base day by day and continues to improve their product quality and standards.

Introduction of Ultrabook Standardization

While Apple increases the quality and standardization of their devices, most of the other laptops continue to fail in the market. There was no one single brand which customers could depend on. So most of the people started using Mac branded laptops.

Recently as a good competition to Mac, Intel introduced “Ultrabook” brand. However this brand is not manufacture specific like Mac. Any Laptop manufacture can get authorization to use this brand as long as their product meet the below standards.

Ultrabook Standards

• Processor: Sandy Bridge / Intel Core Series / CULV (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage)
• Maximum Weight: 1.5 KG
• Maximum closed thickness: 14.0” models 21mm
• Minimum battery life: 5 hours
• Maximum resume time: 7 Seconds
• Software: Intel Management Engine / Intel Anti-theft Technology / Intel Identity Protection Technology

Other than specification it indirectly forces the manufactures to include at least 4 GB of RAM and SSD. This would be required to keep the resume time under 7 seconds.

This is a great idea. If you see the Ultrabook branding in any laptop from any manufactures, it says the device complies with above standards. You don’t have to dig deep in to technical specification with techy jargons. This will be a good competition to Apple Mac brand in the market. However, still a MacBook Pro could make any Ultrabook looks like an antique.

Ultrabook standards are evolving according to improving technology and market demands. In future revisions you will be able to find standards for port such as USB 3.0. In addition there is a high chance for them to add standards ensuring durability such as display resolution, aluminum unibody and life span of battery. Hope Ultrabook will be able to give a solid competition to Mac in future market.

Tags: #Intel #Laptop #USB

If you go back to the early time of new millennium, it was the era of Personal computers. It became a standard option in any home worldwide and their cost and usability also improved dramatically. However, at that time laptop computers were far behind and limited to very few high end users.

You could not even compare the performance of a laptop computer and desktop computer by that time. The hardware used in Laptops was inferior, specially processor and display.

But after few years lots of manufactures came up with powerful laptop computers almost same as desktop that could be found in market. With all those advanced configuration they were only expensive than desktops by few hundred dollars.

Lots of people started purchasing laptops and within a very short period of time they became a day to day item. However still they were not able to replace desktop computers.

If you compare the configuration of laptops and desktops in year 2012 you will be surprised. Most of the laptop manufactures has come up with very advanced laptops and notebooks sometimes way faster than a conventional desktop. So I feel like now they are ready to replace your desktop. Today our study is about that.

Here we are trying to compare few factors of laptops and desktops.

Factors to be Considered

Processing Power and Storage

When you take a closer look in to processors and RAM in Laptops and Desktops you will clearly see that they are almost identical. In a mid range computer you can find probably Intel CORE i3 processor with 2GB RAM. In a performance tuned one you will find Intel CORE i5 or i7 processor with 4GB or 8GB RAM. Both desktops and laptops come in 64bit hardware platform.

When it comes to hard disk drives again it’s identical. You can find 500GB or 1TB HDDs in both desktops and laptops. However desktops have a slight advantage when it comes to expansion of storage. They can plug a number of HDDs as long as the mother board supports, which laptops can’t. The only thing that laptops can do is get an external HDD.

Display

With displays desktops always have significant advantage. However modern laptops are equipped with full HD displays with resolutions such as 1920 x 1200. And you can choose a laptop with 17 inches display as well. So today even if you compare displays, laptops are almost good as Desktops.

Connectivity

Most of the cases desktops are using LAN connectivity and DSL modem to connect to Internet. Laptops are way ahead. They comes with built-in HSDPA modems for internet connection on the go and LAN port in the case it’s needed as well.

Input Devices

Lots of people hate to use track pad in laptops. And yes it can never be efficient as mouse. But you can always plug a USB mouse in to Laptop.

Most of the latest laptops are even coming with full keyboard with number pad. Again you can plug a USB keyboard if you need.

Other

With the improvement of global standardization of ports such as USB you can attach any external hardware device to any computer and use it even without restarting. So you don’t have to worry about using printers like external devices with Laptop or even with any desktop.

Conclusion

It’s a clear cut fact that for a general user a Laptop can easily replace Desktop. In case if you are not happy with laptops screen and keyboard, you can attach external monitor, USB keyboard and mouse. If your laptop comes with HDMI port you can even plug a huge HD TV screen.

The best part in such a setup, you won’t have to worry about the portability of your data. You can save everything in your laptop and take it with you where ever you go. You never have to go through the trouble of moving files to your laptop from desktop.

Finally if you compare the prices of Laptops they are almost same as a Desktop and some time even cheaper.

In my opinion if you are planning for a personal computer, best option is to go for a Laptop and get an external monitor, USB keyboard and mouse rather than a conventional desktop.

Exceptions

If you are using your desktop computer as a server of course it won’t be able to be replaced by a Laptop. And if you are a 3D animation artist again you need stronger hardware muscle for rendering which never comes with laptops. In that kind of scenarios still laptops can’t replace desktop computers.

Tags: #Desktop #Laptop

LG introduced lot of innovative technologies to improve Android Smartphone. Back in 2011 they introduced a worlds very first Dual Core Smartphone as well as one with Glassless 3D display. In year 2012 they introduced a Quad Core Android device as well.

Later in year 2012 they have done it again by manufacturing world’s most powerful Android Smartphone. This is rumored to be next Nexus device as well. LG Optimus G is under NOG spotlight today.

Features Highlight

Design

LG Optimus G is having usual single block design with a huge display in the front. It’s having a very simple construction. This rectangular design with curved corners reminds me of Samsung Galaxy S II. It’s thickness is 8.5 mm and weight is 145 g. On the right edge you can find power button and left there is volume rocker. Back panel is having the shooter and its LED flash.

Display

Display is massive 4.7 inch True HD IPS panel behind a Corning Gorilla Glass with resolution 768 X 1280 which will give it 318 ppi pixel density. LG has included several brand new innovations in this display. So this is expected to be a blast in Smartphone market.

Processor and Storage

Here’s what made this a powerhouse – the processor. It’s having 1.5 GHz Quad Core Snapdragon S4 processor running on Qualcomm MDM9615/APQ8064 chipset with Adreno 320 GPU. This is highly energy efficient setup which is supporting LTE as well.

RAM is 2 GB, long awaited big improvement for Android phones and internal storage is 32 GB, non expandable.

Operating System

This device is originally coming with Android 4.0.4 ICS. Same as many other manufactures LG also has tweaked the UI in Android. They call it LG Optimus UI. If you like to taste latest Jelly bean with LG Optimus G you have to wait for a while.

Camera

Another major attraction in LG Optimus G is it’s shooter. Primary shooter is 13 MP (There is an 8 MP version as well) one with standard features which is capable of recording 1080p videos @30 FPS. Secondary camera is 1.3 MP which you can use for video calling.

Connectivity

If you like to enjoy LTE on a Quad Core Android phone you have very few options, and LG Optimus G is one of them. Other than that it’s having standard connectivity features such as GSM, HSDPA, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, GPS and microUSB 2.0.

Battery Life

It comes with 2100 mAh Li-Po battery. This is a well balanced capacity and it will give you more than 12 hours of talk time. However there is a huge difference in actual battery life and the one in spec. So we have to wait till it come to market to get a better idea.

Wrapping Up

If you take a look at currently announced Android phones, this would be the one with strongest hardware muscle. But still it’s not having latest and optimized Android 4.1 JB which is a major drawback. Once LG release JB update this will be unbeaten, for some time of course.

There was no phone which supported LTE with quad core architecture. Once LG Optimus G come to market you can enjoy lightning fast data connectivity in a powerhouse. However, according to most of the benchmarking Nvidia Tegra is performing better than Qualcomm. Only problem with NVidia is it’s not supporting LTE. Once it get that there will be devices way better than LG Optimus G.

If you like to carry around lot of movies, this device may not be yours. It’s not having microSD slot and has only 32 GB internal storage. It’s more than enough for a general user, but nearly not enough for a movie junkie.

This was announced in last August and expected market release is somewhere around October, probably few weeks away. Does this really deserve a place in your pants pocket? Tell us what you feel as a comment below.

Tags: #Android #LG #Smartphone

LINQ is an acronym for the Language Integrated Query which was released in year 2007 as a part of .NET framework 3.5. It makes possible to query data in .NET supported languages. It defines a set of Standard Query Operators that will make it possible to get the data on several sources. There is an API named as Standard Query Operator API, which defines the query operators. Select, where and Select Many are some of the frequently used ones among them. SQL syntax provides a short hand method for invocation.

Advantages of Using LINQ

There are four main advantages of LINQ. They are,

The availability of strong typed queries: The classes are auto generated according to the relations in relational databases. The language is very much easy to understand as in SQL.

The automatic join functioning in foreign keys: In normal SQL, the user has to join the tables if it is necessary. In LINQ, it provides the ability to join each function automatically when there is a foreign key reference.

The code size: There are many occasions that the users have to write long sentences for getting a SQL query. LINQ provides relatively short codes in such advanced occasions. It reduces the complexity of the code and makes it much easy for the program to read.

Code equality: One of the most advantages in using LINQ is that its availability over any .NET platform language such as C#.net, VB.NET and F#.NET.

LINQ to Objects and XML

The local query execution engine in LINQ can be used for the purpose of querying memory in collections. It allows IEnumerable collections to be queried locally while defining it in the sequence pattern. The currently available LINQ to Objects does not allow complex queries, but the simple and linear queries. The XML document is converted to the XElement objects through the LINQ to XML provider. The XElement objects are queried then against the local search engine.

LINQ to SQL

Both SQL Server Databases and SQL Server Compact Databases can use the LINQ to SQL provider. When the database is available in a remotely located SQL server, LINQ converts its queries to the SQL queries and then it is sent to the SQL server for the processing. LINQ is used as encapsulated data objects as the SQL server stores data as relational data. Those two should map each other with the support of LINQ to SQL mapping framework. There the classes being made according to the name of the database table. All or a part of the columns of the table are being taken as the data members. SQL defined attributes are used for the purpose of relating the other relational model attributes.

What LINQ Can Do More Than SQL?

Structured Query Language is designed for the purposes of querying data, updating, deleting or inserting from a database. What LINQ can do when compared to the SQL is very much. The users can call to several data sources not only a database, by using LINQ. It can take a single enumeration by calling to a database as well as a file system. Most important advantage of LINQ is the reduction of the code length. When executing a large query the length of SQL code is very much larger when comparing to the Method Based Query in LINQ.

LINQ to DataSet

The DataSets must be populated before using them. The way how data is loaded is not that important in this case. Two methods can be used for the purpose of loading data. The data can be retrieved directly from a database or the users can take the advantage of DLinq to query the database and then load the data that comes as the result into a DataSet. Either, you can use DataAdapter to querry data from the databases. Querying data is possible after loading them. There is an enumerate querried through the LINQ. The different between a normal enumeration and an enumeration that get from a LINQ query is that the LINQ querry gets an Enumeration of a DataRow object rather than getting a data set of a custom type. The DataSets can be devided into two main parts as typed and untyped. Typed DataSet declares the corresponding data type such as bool, int, date or etc.

TableAdapters are also can be used in case of querying. The TableAdapter is an adapter that is configured early and encapsulates the connection information, and the queries also predefined and exposed as methods that can be used for filling an already created table or creating a new table and working on it to fill.

There are number of custom operations can be made for the purpose of enabling LINQ queries over the DataSet.

Security Matters in LINQ

There are several matters both positive and negative that users have to concern when using LINQ. The security concerns vary from the reason and the place where the code is used.

LINQ to SQL

SQL injection attacks have been a very much popular threat than SQL always had with it. One of the recommended techniques that is said to use is that writing the code using parameters. LINQ is always used as parameter manner. That threat is reduced for certain extend.

LINQ to XML

Extensible Markup Language is used for the purpose of transporting data. So the security is very much concerned in this matter. According to the Microsoft releases it is not yet advised to use LINQ in places where security is concerned a lot. This application is not much for the server-side applications other than the programming convenience. If it is very much need to use LINQ to XML for such advanced scenarios, the only acceptable way is creating an instance of an xmlReader class that can filter out the XML DOS attacks.

When Not to Use LINQ

LINQ is a good implementation that could help lot of areas in a very convenient manner. In most of the LINQ make things much easy than the others. But using LINQ for small SQL queries might not be suitable at all. In addition when working with LINQ to XML, one of the major concerns should be avoiding the Denial of Service attacks.

References

Tags: #Microsoft #SQL

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World weather conditions are changing in an unpredictable way over last few decades. Large part of the reasons are damages that human civilization done to the nature and its natural balance. However, now there is no way for the human civilization to move on without their advance technology and machinery. Hence, live green came in to the picture having the objective of continue with the technological development with the minimum environmental impact.

Major environmental impact which led world weather condition to this state is ‘Carbon Emission’ Most of the developed countries emit scary amount of carbon per year, with their industrial machinery. Not just that, entire countries emit massive amount of carbon every day as a result of transportation based of fossil fuel. There were lots of global concepts came to picture to minimize these environmental impact, like ‘carbon trading’ but none succeeded since there were lesser support from world’s biggest carbon emitting countries.

Even though we don’t mind emitting carbon, fossil fuel are very limited and the regeneration process will take centuries. At the current state we are burning them in a rate which might be many 1000s times greater than their regeneration. So we are in a mission to save fossil fuel as well as the environment.

Hybrid car technology is an angel came to save the world environment and entire human civilization by minimizing carbon emission in transpiration mechanisms. The name hybrid came since those engines are using two types of energy sources. They were using in industry machinery, Ari crafts, naval vehicles, heavy transportation vehicles as well as domestic vehicles. The Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) became popular with domestic vehicles and became an exponential trend in past few years.

Bit of History

The concept of hybrid vehicle was there in the academic world for so long. But, proposed mechanisms were too complex to implement and no good enough for domestic usage. When it comes to Hybrid Electric Vehicles, the major concern was its battery. It was too costly to replace and most of the cases not capable of holding enough power for decent long distance drive.

Technology continues to evolve for decades and as a result Japan produced world’s very first Hybrid Electric vehicle which was Toyota Prius back in 1997. Then Honda also came to the competition with their Civic in 1999. Those vehicles were having great fuel consumption as good as 50 MPG even in that time. However, there were performance issues as well as major issues with batteries.

Lots of vehicle manufactures came in to the competition, yet Toyota and Honda was the leading top sellers all the time. There was very advanced technologies introduced by Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, but they didn’t go much in to pubic manly due to their high cost. Most of the above mentioned issues were resolved and in 2004 there was 200, 000 Hybrid car sales in USA and in 2010 it went up to 1, 800, 000 displaying its great success.

Types of Hybrid Engines

Parallel Hybrid Engines

In these engines both the internal combustion engine and Electric motor is connected to transmission. Vehicle may be using internal combustion engine or power of electric power to depending on driving condition. Sometimes it might use the both. It uses regenerative braking to transform kinetic energy back to electric energy. Further they are capable of generate power from internal combustion engine and store them in batteries. Most of the case those vehicles are having smaller motor and batteries since they are not suppose to drive only with motor. They perform good in highways as well as city drives in traffic.

Series Hybrid Engine

They uses internal combustion engine only to generate power and store them in a battery. The drive will be only powered by batteries and deliver maximum comfortable smooth drive. They have smaller internal combustion engine and bigger battery and motor, you can guess why. They also support regenerative braking, so do well in city driving in traffic. However, they come with greater market price due to their bigger motor and battery.

Power Split Hybrid Engine

This is the most popular and most balanced type of hybrid engine. The magic is they can drive with motor and internal combustion engine, either, both or proportionality like in parallel hybrid. Yet, they can generate power from internal combustion engine and drive with only motor as well, like Series hybrid. Hence, they can select the most efficient mechanism depending on driving conditions. As an example, they can switch to parallel mode in high speeds since they are good with high speeds. And they can go to series mode, in low speed as well. Plus, they have regenerative breaks like in other models.

Obviously, this must be having average, size internal combustion engine as well as a battery and motor. They come with average price, higher than pure parallel engines, yet much lower than pure series engines. The top selling Hybrid car in the world, which is Toyota Prius is powered with a power split Hybrid engine, and now you can see why it became the top selling car.

Engine Components

Internal Combustion Engine

This is traditional type of internal combustion engine which transforms fossil fuel in to kinetic energy using pistons. They empowered our autos for century and still there in hybrid engines as well. However, in this application they will be using in very optimum way, burning minimum amount of fossil fuel. They are used to generate electric power and drive in high speed.

Electric Motor

Electric motor power mainly in low speed drives and yet supports the internal combustion engine in acceleration in high speed drives. It converts electric energy in batteries to kinetic energy, then transfer them to vehicle through its transmission. Some of the Hybrid cars provide a ‘Zero Emission Mode’ which driver can select only the electric motor to power up the drive. This might be useful to drive your car in to ‘No Carbon Emission Zones’.

Generator

This is one of the magical concepts in hybrid engines. Generally, when braking, the kinetic energy in vehicle will be taken out as thermal energy and potential energy in suspension. But, hybrid engines can’t just waste energy like that. It uses this generator to convert the kinetic energy back to electric energy when braking and store them back on batteries. This called as ‘Regenerative Braking’.

Fuel Tank and Batteries

As usual, same as in traditional cars fuel tank will provide required fuel type to internal combustion engine. The battery pack will be there to power up electric motor whenever it required. Additionally, internal combustion engine may be recharging batteries. Plus, regenerative braking also will be re charging batteries when the vehicle brakes.

Transmission

The transmission has to be very special and somewhat complex since it has to handle two source of power. Basically it uses general transmission mechanism with clutch and all. Yet, it will be using variable transmission ratio to make it more efficient and cope up with different driving conditions, by selecting optimum source of energy for the situation. However, in the Parallel and series hybrid vehicles, transmission will be much similar to traditional transmission, yet in Power split hybrid must have much more complex mechanism, in order to select the optimum power source as well as power ratio.

Solar Panels

This is anotehr magical concepts in Hybrid Electric vehicles. Most of the time vehicle will be driving and parking in broad day light and why not convert it in to electric energy and store in batteries. In order to do that some special version of HEVs are having Solar panels, mostly in sun roof and rear windscreen. They are suppose to pump more electric power to batteries which will definitely lead to less carbon fuel burning,

Continue to Part 2…

Tags: #Hybrid #Vehicles

So far we talked about how to setup Google Drive, the latest cloud storage service, configure local file syncing client and manage privacy and sharing.

Quick Catch-up

• Getting Started With Google Drive
• Privacy and Sharing in Google Drive

Here we are in the last episode and focusing our attention on File Management and Document Editing. File management and version control is pretty much standard features in any cloud storage. But online document editing is something new and unique to Google Drive. Let’s see how they work.

Manage Revisions

You need Photoshop project to be stored in Google Drive. All you have to do is drag and drop it in to local Google Drive folder and then file syncing client will automatically upload it to cloud. After that you can continue to work on the Photoshop project and every time you save it, it will be updated in the cloud.

Oops! You just made a wrong modification in Photoshop project, saved it closed it. Yeah, you can undo to a certain level, but it’s not going to be a good solution. All you need now is the previous saved version of the Photoshop project.

Same as most of the other cloud storage services, Google Drive is also giving you version control for entire files online. You can easily go back to the previous version of the document with few clicks.

• Go to Google Drive Web.
• Locate the file in online file browser and right click on it.
• Right click on the file -> Go to mange versions
• There you can see a list of versions and the person who created that version if the file is shared.

• By clicking on the link there, you can download previous versions of the document.
• By clicking on the cross you can remove the related version.
• Google Drive will keep only last 100 versions of files newer than 30 days. If you want a version of file to save forever, you can check do not auto delete.

Document Editing

This is the unique feature in Google drive which probably let it stand tall among other competing cloud storage services. Previous Google Docs is now integrated with Google Drive. That means you can create, edit and share document online right there in Google Drive.

• Go to Google Drive web.
• Click on the create button
• From the drop down menu select the desired file type.
• Then it will take you to the online document editor.
• There you will have almost all of the common document editing tools.

• You don’t have to manually save the file, its automated. Check the status message next to main menu to verify the status.
• A copy of the file will get synced to your local Google Drive folder as well.

Google drive, the new entrant to the Cloud storage war, seems rocking the show. Most of the people are already using Google services and it will be a great advantage to Google Drive to grow.

Drop a comment here with your experience with Google drive and share it with Notes Of Genius Community.

Tags: #Cloud Storage #Google

The Cloud Storage war is on! Dropbox – good old buddy, Microsoft SkyDrive – a good deal and new entrant Google Drive from WWW giant is facing each other in the battle field. Everyone is offering lots of cool functions to users with their advanced web interfaces and file syncing clients.

No matter how tight the competition is, no matter what kind of features they offer, I believe Dropbox is still the best Cloud storage service. I’m pretty sure most of you will agree with me if you have tried SkyDrive and Google Drive.

Quick Catch-up

• Dropbox – Backup and Share Files

Let’s take a closer look and figure out why Dropbox is the best.

What are the Things I Love in Dropbox

Right Click Menu

Dropbox is giving you a file syncing client same as other competitors. But the beauty here is once you Drag and drop some files in to local folder it’s getting specific right click menu items. Using that you can get lots of things done such as share a folder, get previous version of the file, get public link for file or folder and browse the content in Dropbox web.

There are lot of actions you can do right there in your file browser without visiting Dropbox web such as Copy public link for a file in “Public” folder and Copy gallery link for a folder in “Photos”.

Public and Photos Folder

You need to create a public direct link to a file in Dropbox. It’s just few clicks away. All you have to do is to move the file in to “Public” folder and it’s automatically getting public direct link. Using that link any one can download the file without going to any web page.

If you need to share images with public as a gallery, all you have to do is move the folder to “Photos”. By right clicking on the folder you can get the public gallery link.

The auto generated gallery in Dropbox is having very clean interfaces and lots of user-friendly operations. Anyone can view it even without having a Dropbox account.

Web Hosting

In the previous section I mention that all the files in “Public” folder are getting a direct public link. If you think out of the box you can use your Dropbox public folder as a extension to your webhost. It’s easily possible since you are getting publicly accessible direct links.

Get Public Link to Any Folder

If you want to share an entire folder with public, again it’s possible with Dropbox with just one mouse click. Right click on the folder, go to drop box and click on get link. Dropbox will create a public view for that folder and take you there instantaneously.

If you don’t want the public link anymore, you can easily remove them in Dropbox web.

Quick Catch-up

• Get Public Link for Any DropBox Folder

LAN Syncing

If you are syncing files between different computers in same LAN or WLAN you don’t have to travel a round trip in internet. Dropbox is utilizing LAN or WLAN between computers to Sync files which is called as LAN sync.

Of course this is way faster than syncing files through internet and you are saving your bandwidth as well.

Quick Catch-up

• Working With DropBox LAN Sync

Storage Expansion

By default Dropbox comes with 2GB space. If you need more space you have to pay and be a pro Dropbox user. But if you are social savvy user, there is another way.

You can join Dropbox referral program and introduce new people to Dropbox. For every person who starts using Dropbox, you will get extra 500MB up to 16GB. Dropbox is very interesting tool and you wont face much trouble introducing it to your friends.

Quick Catch-up

• Get 16GB Storage Space in DropBox

Wrapping Up

If you closely take a look at the things I love in Dropbox you will easily figure out that no other cloud storage service is giving you that variety of features. However, in the case you want to buy extra storage Dropbox is costly than others. But if you compare features its clearly unbeaten and standing tall.

Tags: #Cloud Storage #Dropbox

I was using DropBox for years and now I have 14.8GB by introducing new people to DropBox. The best thing about DropBox is its easy file sharing. If you need public link all you have to do is move the files to “Public” folder. Then from the right click menu you can get the public sharing link instantly.

Same with the images, all you have to do is move your image folder to “Photos” folder. Then by right clicking on folder you can get the public gallery link.

If you need advanced read and write sharing, you have to go to DropBox web and invite the specific people by entering their email addresses.

Quick Catch-up

Now DropBox has taken this sharing to next level. With this new feature “get link” you can share any folder in DropBox with public in a read only manner. Let’s take a closer look in to this.

How “Get Link” Work?

• If you are not using DropBox yet, read this Article. It will help you to setup and configure DropBox in your computer.
• Drag and Drop few files and folder in to DropBox.
• Every file and folder in DropBox folder having right click menu item.
• Using that you can visit DropBox web and share this folder with any of your friend.
• Now there is a new menu item saying “Get link”

• Using that you can create read only public link for the folder or file.
• Any one will be able to access the file, preview it, and download it even if he is not a registered DropBox user.
• DropBox will create a specific web page for the created link containing folder listing or file.
• You can get the same thing done using DropBox web.
• Visit DropBox web and in front of every folder and file listing you will be able to see icon to get link.

• Clicking on that you can directly visit the public view of the folder and in address bar you can find the public link.
• If you feel like you no longer need public link for some folder or file, you can remove them in links section in DropBox web.

These files and folders in public links are non searchable and non editable. It allows only browsing, previewing and downloading. If someone wants to access it, he must have the specific link shared by you. After you remove the public link DropBox will automatically disable the public viewing of the folder or file ensuring the maximum security.

Same as me most of the people today are big cloud storage fans. Practically, it’s like you are carrying your files wherever you go. Age of email attachment is gone and people are only sharing public link for the file that is in cloud storage.

Previously in DropBox you have to move the file to Public folder to share a public link. Now they have get rid of that limitation and with “get link” you can publicly share any folder.

Tags: #Cloud Storage #Dropbox