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Growth of Mobile Commerce in Recent Times





Mobile commerce has recently experienced a fantastic growth spurt. And why not? The drop in the price of handsets and the reduced tariffs has contributed largely to the growth of mobile commerce worldwide. Earlier, the usefulness of mobile commerce applications was brought under the scanner. But with almost every retailers coming up with an app of their own, there is no doubt that m-commerce is here to stay.

The online luxury retailer The Gilt Groupe has launched an app for iPad and within just 3 days the app was responsible for generating 3% of the total sales. Officials at Gilt had predicted that the app would become popular, but they had not anticipated that it would happen so quickly. The mobile shopping application developed by Gilt will soon become one of their main revenue earners.

But a recent survey conducted among 400 online retailers has shown that almost 80% of them still don't have any mobile commerce application for the convenience of their consumers. The difficulty lies in the factor that just optimizing their e-commerce sites are not enough. The m-commerce strategy has to be built up on an entirely new foundation after considering the requirements of customers. It should always be" What do the customers want while using an on-the-move shopping application?" A mobile commerce strategy should be available for all mobile commerce platforms such as Blackberry, iPhone or Android. As a retailer you should not confine yourself to one platform because it limits your reach to prospective customers on other platforms.

The Mobile Marketing Association had partnered with Luth Research and conducted a survey in mid 2010 which showed that about one in five mobile owners in the United States have used atleast one m-commerce app. The figure is expected to rise much higher in 2011 with people becoming more tech-savvy and of course due to the convenience and ease of usage of the apps.

Research companies predict a greater growth curve in the coming years. Coda Research Consultancy predicts that mobile commerce sales will soar up to a record 23.8 billion dollars in 2015 and will comprise 8.5% of the e-commerce revenues. This is a significant and noteworthy rise from 1.2 billion dollars in 2009 and 2.42 billion in 2010. The reason for this success is due to lots of creative and user-friendly apps coming up in the market on a regular basis and the familiarity of people using mobile Internet.

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 460

Tailor made to hit the gamers’ sweet spot, NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 460 delivers revolutionary levels of price/performance. With up to 4x the DirectX 11 tessellation performance of the competition*, GeForce GTX 460 packs highly detailed visuals into your games - without sacrificing high frame rates. And with NVIDIA® 3D Vision™, PhysX®, and CUDA™ technologies, GeForce GTX 460 powers all the incredibly realistic effects that your games can throw its way.



DX11 Done Right
Treat your eyes to incredible visual details without sacrificing frame rates. With up to 4x¹ the geometry processing power over competing GPUs, you get incredibly detailed characters, terrain and game environments with blazing fast performance.
© 2009 THQ Inc. Metro 2033 is based on a book by Dmitry Glukhovskiy. THQ and the THQ logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of THQ Inc. All Rights Reserved.



Just Cause 2 image captured on NVIDIA GPU. Provided by Square Enix		 Enter a New Dimension
Breakthrough the boundaries of your screen. Games, Blu-ray movies, videos and photos enter a new dimension to delight your senses with 3D Vision technology.



Mafia II image captured on NVIDIA GPU. Provided by 2K Games.		 Bang For Your Buck
Get the perfect blend of power, performance, and price, without sacrificing your gaming experience. Blow away your enemies in full DirectX 11 graphics with NVIDIA PhysX® effects so realistic that you’ll have to remind yourself it’s just a game. Repeat: It’s just a game.
¹ GeForce GTX 460 has 4 times faster FPS versus Radeon HD 5830 in Microsoft DirectX 11 SDK subd11 tessellation test with maximum tessellation level set.


Features :
  • Microsoft® DirectX® 11 Support
    DirectX 11 GPU with Shader Model 5.0 support designed for ultra high performance in the new API’s key graphics feature, GPU-accelerated tessellation.
  • NVIDIA PhysX® Technology
    Full support for NVIDIA PhysX technology, enabling a totally new class of physical gaming interaction for a more dynamic and realistic experience with GeForce.
  • NVIDIA® 3D Vision™ Ready*
    GeForce GPU support for NVIDIA 3D Vision, bringing a fully immersive stereoscopic 3D experience to the PC. A combination of high-tech wireless glasses and advanced software, 3D Vision transforms hundreds of PC games into full stereoscopic 3D. In addition, you can watch 3D movies and 3D digital photographs in eye popping, crystal-clear quality.

  • NVIDIA® 3D Vision™ Surround Ready**
    Expand your games across three displays in full stereoscopic 3D for the ultimate “inside the game” experience with the power of NVIDIA 3D Vision and SLI technologies. NVIDIA® Surround™ also supports triple screen gaming with non-stereo displays.
  • NVIDIA CUDA™ Technology
    CUDA technology unlocks the power of the GPU’s processor cores to accelerate the most demanding tasks such as video transcoding, physics simulation, ray tracing, and more, delivering incredible performance improvements over traditional CPUs.
  • NVIDIA SLI® Technology***
    Industry leading NVIDIA SLI technology offers amazing performance scaling for the world’s premier gaming solution.
  • 32x Anti-aliasing Technology
    Lightning fast, high-quality anti-aliasing at up to 32x sample rates obliterates jagged edges.
  • NVIDIA® PureVideo® HD Technology****
    The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video.
  • PCI Express 2.0 Support
    Designed for the new PCI Express 2.0 bus architecture offering the highest data transfer speeds for the most bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications, while maintaining backwards compatibility with existing PCI Express motherboards for the broadest support.
  • Dual-link DVI Support
    Able to drive industry’s largest and highest resolution flat-panel displays up to 2560x1600 and with support for High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP).
  • HDMI 1.4a Support*****
    Fully integrated support for HDMI 1.4a including GPU accelerated Blu-ray 3D4 support, xvYCC, deep color, and 7.1 digital surround sound including Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD. Upgrade your GPU to full 3D capability with NVIDIA 3DTV Play software, enabling 3D gaming, picture viewing and 3D web video streaming. See www.nvidia.com/3dtv for more details.


Specification :


GPU Engine Specs:
Graphics card versionGTX 460 1GB GDDR5GTX 460 768MB GDDR5GTX 460 SE
CUDA Cores336336288
Graphics Clock (MHz)675 MHz675 MHz650 MHz
Processor Clock (MHz)1350 MHz1350 MHz1300 MHz
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec)37.8 37.8 31.2 
Memory Specs:
Graphics card versionGTX 460 1GB GDDR5GTX 460 768MB GDDR5GTX 460 SE
Memory Clock180018001700
Standard Memory Config1 GB GDDR5768MB GDDR51 GB GDDR5
Memory Interface Width256-bit192-bit256-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)115.286.4108.8
Feature Support:
NVIDIA SLI®-ready*2-Way
NVIDIA 3D Vision Readyyes
NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround Ready***yes
NVIDIA PureVideo® Technology**HD
NVIDIA PhysX™-readyyes
NVIDIA CUDA™ Technologyyes
Microsoft DirectX11
OpenGL4.1 
Bus SupportPCI-E 2.0 x 16 
Certified for Windows 7yes


Standard Graphics Card Dimensions:
Height4.376 inches (111 mm) 
Length8.25 inches (210 mm) 
WidthDual-slot 
Thermal and Power Specs:
Maximum GPU Temperature (in C)104 C
Maximum Graphics Card Power (W)160 W
Minimum Recommended System Power (W)450 W
Supplementary Power Connectors6-pin & 6-pin 

Cooler Master Launches Mid-Tower Gaming Chasis

Cooler Master has launched its new mid-tower gaming chassis, the HAF 912 Advanced. Targeted at gamers, this new chassis brings the most appreciated features of our HAF (High Air Flow) series to mid-tower cases.

The new Cooler Master HAF912 Advanced is a no-compromise chassis that offers the perfect balance between size, space, cooling and cost. Whether you are looking for a gaming chassis with all bells and whistles or an affordable option, the new HAF 912 delivers on every count. Belonging to our HAF (High Air Flow) range, this chassis offers unmatched cooling and sets a new benchmark amongst mid-tower cases.

The HAF 912 Advanced offer plenty of space for your system to grow as you upgrade. It has room for no less than four 5.25-inch drives, six 3.5-inch internal drives and two 2.5-inch drives in its standard configuration. However, one of the 5.25-inch drive bays come pre-fitted with an adapter so that it accepts 3.5-inch drive. A section of the 3.5-inch cage that holds up to four drives can be rotated 90 degrees, or removed to fit graphics cards longer than 320mm. The bottom mounted 2.5-inch drive cage can also be mounted on top of the bottom half of the 3.5-inch drive cage if more room is needed at the bottom of the case. This modular approach puts you in total control and its something you wont find anywhere else.


Ventilation is important in any computer, but more so in a gaming PC and the HAF 912 Advanced chassis is designed for unhindered air flow. Cable management and routing has been made easy by providing access holes where theyre most needed. The motherboard tray has notches for proper fastening of cables using cable ties, which help in keeping the interiors neat and tidy. Removable dust filters are also pre-fitted to the front of the case as well as the PSU air intake at the bottom.

One of the most important aspects of a gaming chassis is for it to keep the components cool and the HAF 912 Advanced sets a new benchmark in its class. The HAF 912 Advanced comes with two 200mm fan one top mounted and the other at the front. Theres one 120mm at the back and provisions have been made for adding either a 120 or 140mm fan on the sides. The HAF 912 Advanced has been designed to accept an external, top mounted, dual 120mm radiator liquid cooling system. Three pass-through holes with rubber grommets for the tubing are pre-cut.


The HAF 912 Advanced is priced at an MRP of Rs 7,300 and carries one year warranty. The product is available ex-stock. The Cooler Master HAF 912 Advanced will be distributed by Acro Engineering Company.

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Combine your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with this super Web site that aggregates all your information from these sites in to a nice little customised Web page 

Biotic video games

Scientists create a gaming machine that uses real live single-celled organisms in an experiment that aims to make learning about microscopic living creatures fun

Mumbai Mirror Bureau mirrorfeedback@indiatimes.com


Video game designers are always striving to make games more lifelike,but theyll have a hard time topping what Stanford researcher Ingmar Riedel-Kruse is up to.Hes introducing life itself into games.Riedel-Kruse and his lab group have developed the first video games in which a players actions influence the behaviour of living microorganisms in real time while the game is being played.
These biotic games involve a variety of basic biological processes and some simple single-celled organisms (such as paramecia) in combination with biotechnology.

HAVING FUN WHILE STUDYING

The goal is for players to have fun interacting with biological processes,without dealing with the rigor of conducting a formal experiment,said Riedel-Kruse,an assistant professor of bioengineering.
We hope that by playing games involving biology of a scale too small to see with the naked eye,people will realise how amazing these processes are and theyll get curious and want to know more, he said.
The applications we can envision so far are on the one hand educational,for people to learn about biology,but we are also thinking perhaps we could have people running real experiments as they play these games.
Applying their lab equipment and knowledge to game development,Riedel-Kruses group came up with eight games falling broadly into three classes,depending on whether players directly interact with biological processes on the scale of molecules,single cells or colonies of single cells.
The results have been published in the journal Lab on a Chip.

UPGRADING FROM PAC MAN

Initially,Riedel-Kruse said,the researchers just wanted to see whether they could design such biotic games at all,so this first round of development produced fairly simple games.
We tried to mimic some classic video games, he said.For example,one game in which players guide paramecia to gobble up little balls,a la PacMan,was christened PAC-mecium.Then there is Biotic Pinball,POND PONG and Ciliaball.The latter game is named for the tiny hairs,called cilia,that paramecia use in a flipper-like fashion to swim around and in the game enables kicking a virtual soccer ball.

HOW IT WORKS

The basic design of the games involving paramecia the single-celled organisms used in countless biology experiments from grade school classes to university research labs consists of a small fluid chamber within which the paramecia can roam freely.A camera sends live images to a video screen,with the game board superimposed on the image of the paramecia.A microprocessor tracks the movements of the paramecia and keeps score.
The player attempts to control the paramecia using a controller that is much like a typical video game controller.In some games,such as PAC-mecium,the player controls the polarity of a mild electrical field applied across the fluid chamber,which influences the direction the paramecia move.In Biotic Pinball,the player injects occasional whiffs of a chemical into the fluid,causing the paramecia to swim one direction or another.
The game on the molecular level involves a common lab technique called polymerase chain reaction,or PCR,an automated process that lets researchers make millions of copies of an organisms DNA in as little as two hours.
In this game,called PolymerRace,the player is linked to the output of a PCR machine that is running different reactions simultaneously.While the reactions are running,the players can bet on which reactions will be run the fastest.The game PolymerRace is inspired by horse races,where you have different jockeys riding different horses, Riedel-Kruse said.There is a little bit of bio-molecular logic involved and a little bit of chance.

NO PAIN INVOLVED

Riedel-Kruse emphasised that paramecia,being single-celled organisms,lack a brain and the capacity to feel pain.We are talking about microbiology with these games,very primitive life forms.We do not use any higher-level organisms, he said.Since multiple test players raised the question of exactly where one should draw this line,these games could be a good tool to stimulate discussions in schools on bioethical issues.
Riedel-Kruse wants to maximise the educational potential of these games to enable lay people to contribute to biomedical research.The team hopes that by publishing his groups initial efforts,other researchers in the life sciences will be prompted to explore how their own research could be adapted to biotic video games.
Left: A screengrab of one of the games
Top: A small camera (white object with green circuit board on top),poised above the fluid chamber in the centre of the stand,transmits images of the paramecia as they swim about in response to changes in the fluid chamber made by the game player using a laptop computer

iPad 2 in April, iPhone 5 in Summer

Here's good news for Apple fanatics out there!
A report from Engadget says that Apple's eagerly anticipated upgrade of the iPad will probably be released in April this year. The site's highly reliable sources said the iPad 2 will be a slimmer, sleeker tablet that will have a new screen technology similar to iPhone 4's Retina Display and will be "super high resolution". The device will still be 10 inches and will feature front and rear cameras, confirming earlier speculations about it. 

The Ipad 2, according to Engadget's sources, will have a built-in dedicated SD slot and will feature a dual GSM/CDMA chipset by Qualcomm, This means that Apple will likely veer away from Infineon and will make Qualcomm its chipset maker for all of its mobile devices. The dual-mode chipset was most likely adapted so Verizon and AT&T can offer the same iPad simultaneously.


iPhone 5, on the other hand, will be a completely redesigned handset which is set to launch this summer. The phone, according to the sources, will also feature a Qualcomm chipset that does triple duty as the GSM/CDMA/UMTS baseband processor.


Customers can also purchase accessories for the iPad, though shipping times are currently varied. The iPad Case, which runs $39, and the iPad Dock, for $29, are both expected to ship by April 3. The iPad Keyboard Dock is scheduled to ship in mid-April and costs $69.



The $29 iPad 10W USB Power Adapter ships in late April, while the $29 iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter ships by April 3. Finally, the Apple In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic, which cost $79, ship within 24 hours.

Bio Robot Refrigerator

As promised, here are the details on the Electrolux Bio Robot Refrigerator, a concept that has been making quite a splash in the blogosphere! In lay terms, the fridge is a concept where the Bio Robot cools biopolymer gel through luminescence. A non-sticky gel surrounds the food item when shoved into the biopolymer gel, creating separate pods. The design features no doors or drawers, and the food items are individually cooled at their optimal temperature thanks to the robot. And since it can take any orientation (hung vertically, horizontally, and even on the ceiling), and can be modified in size, you can fit it in any apartment.
More details in the images…
Designer: Yuriy Dmitriev
bio_robo
bio_robo2
Electrolux Bio Robot Refrigerator by Yuriy Dmitriev
Electrolux Bio Robot Refrigerator by Yuriy Dmitriev
bio_robo5
bio_robo6

Blackberry Empathy Concept Phone by Kiki Tang

For their sponsored project held by RIM Blackberry at the Art Center College of Design, designers Kiki and Daniel had to incorporate an interface that integrates human emotions with the concept of social networking. The result of this exercise was the Blackberry Empathy concept. The phone is used in conjunction with a biometrics ring that is worn by the user to collect “emotional data”. Spec-wise it features a transparent OLED screen that becomes transparent when not in use and opaque during interaction. The front is all touch surface, while on the back there is a physical keyboard.
As Daniel describes the interface:
It is of course touch based and all the user’s connections are shown graphically so you can see who is connected to whom. Each contact has an avatar that is encompassed by two colored rings. The inner colored ring shows the contact’s previous emotional state, and the outer ring represents the contact’s current emotional state. It is important to show the shift in emotions in order to see how an event has affected that contact.
Another important feature that we felt was important was the “Emotional Health Chart”. This chart would monitor the user’s emotional health through an indefinite period of time. One would be able to see how a certain event, or phone call/ message has affected the user. Obviously, if the chart shows someone is always upset, there would be a problem… If permitted, a user would be able to view other user’s charts as well.
Designers: Kiki Tang & Daniel Yoon

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