Xiaomi Mi 4i First Look

The Xiaomi Mi 4i is the latest smartphone that has been launched by Xiaomi in Delhi. This launch was carried out in the presence of founders Lei Jun and Bin Lin. The keynote master was played by Hugo Barra. Even though the price of the smartphone has taken everyone by surprise as being quoted at 12,999, a lot of details of the Mi 4i were already leaked out in the market much before its launch. These details included information about display, resolution, chipset, camera specs, and many more. Even though the smartphone does have many features similar to that of Mi 4, the phone comes with lots of improvements in terms of Android 5.0 Lollipop, light body and large battery and so on.

• Build and Design: 
The smartphone has a polycarbonate rear cover, which is completely non-removable as it wraps around the phone giving a completely cornered and smooth edges. This cover has a non grease coating giving it a fully soft touch matte finish. According the company the smart phone users will also be able to remove the stains that have been made with a permanent marker. Both the power or the standby button and the volume rocker have been made of steel and mounted on the right side of the phone. The left side of the phone has the dual Sim tray. The phone is about 130gm in weight and around 7.8mm in width. This makes the phone very comfortable to hold despite its 5-inch display. The company has used the One Glass Solution to enhance the slim factor.


• The Display:
The phone comes with a 441ppi pixel density with the feature of HD display however; the Sunlight viewing technology will help to balance the light in the sunlight.


• Storage and Connectivity:
The phone has 16GB of internal storage out of which a user is allowed to use 10.92GB. At present, the company has not provided an option of adding microSD.


• Chipset, OS and RAM:
The smartphone comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 SoC powered by an Octa core processor. Customers will get a quad core Cortex A53 that has been clocked in at 1.7GHz and 1.1GHz. The phone comes with Adreno 405 GPU paired with 2GB LPDDR3 RAM. The company promises that there will not be any lag observed during switching between different apps. The look is not very much different from the preceding phones. With the dual Sim facility, the phone can manage even 4G SIM cards in the slots.


• Battery:
According to the company, the phone has been powered with 3,120mAh battery, which is known as the highest capacity battery from the company to work in a 5-inch device. The company also claims that a single usage can go up to one and half day. The phones can get charged to 40 percent within an hour.


• Camera Quality:
The camera has been kept similar to that of Mi 4. It relies on 13MP Sony sensor and has a 5-element f/2.0. The front camera is about 5MP camera, making subtle changes to enhance the quality of the front camera.

Moore's Law: Beyond the First Law of Computing

Moore’s Law – Reflection of History of Computing Hardware

Moore’s Law is a reflection of the history of computing hardware and the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit that has increased tremendously every two years. This has been named after Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder of the Intel Corporation and Fairchild Semiconductor which in 1965 was defined doubling every year, the quantityof components for each integrated circuit.

It is not guaranteed that computer chips would keep growing smaller and more powerful though it would be getting near to capacity. The most powerful computing machine in the world could also be the most universal – the human brain which can perform computation on a scale which the most advanced super-computers would be unable to match.

The neurons tend to act on millisecond timescales, though slow when they are compared to the fastest processor and fail to activate. What enables the brain to function is parallel computing, the capability of solving problems at the same time with several different parts of the brain and the focus to imitate the brain’s potential to parallel compute is not only the promise of improvement in computing but also recovery from the imminent death of one of the laws in modern history.

Chips’ First Getaway – Apple Newton (1993) 

It is assessed that there are around 1.4 billion smartphones on the planet and though most of the prevalent devices have been designed in California or South Korea, the chips which power them are designed in Cambridge, England.

ARM, the company which is behind it all may not be compared to Intel but their chips are better than their U.S. rival, on energy efficiency as well as size that is crucial for smartphones. Supporting ARM chips is a simplified approach to computing, which was first considered at the University of Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley.

According to professor of computer engineering at the University of Manchester in England, Stephen Fuber, he states that `this is one case of U.S. academic research being taken up by a U.K. company very successfully’. In 1980, he had designed the ARM chip, at the present defunct ARM predecessor company, Acorn. The chips’ first getaway was in the Apple Newton in 1993 while the rest is said to be history. Fuber states that `then and now, the Apple brand was magic and opened doors’.

Inevitable Technological Progress

ARM, like all other companies has been dealing with the end of a trend which has provided more powerful computers every two years for almost half a century. The term Moore’s Law represents inevitable technological progress though it is a very explicit observation on computer chips. Gordon Moore, in his seminal 1965 paper, had predicted that the number of transistors on a chip would double every 18 months and the cost would fall off at the same rate.

While they are speculating on why transistor density has followed this exponential path, its effect is doubtful. According to professor of complexity economics at the University of Oxford, Doyne Farmer, he states that `it has been a windfall’. The laws of Physics tend to threaten to end that windfall.

 In other words, transistors have to be made from atoms and as the transistors shrink to pack it in a chip, one ultimately reaches a limit where there is shortage of atoms and before running out of atoms, the reliability of tiniest transistors tend to fall while the cost increases due to the increased complexity as well as the difficulty in producing them.

Google Changing its Influential Search Engine

Google is planning to change the way its influential search engine endorses websites on tablets and smartphones which is expected to control where most of the individuals shop, eat and obtain information. The formula to be revised is scheduled to be released soon and would be favouring websites which Google considers as `mobile friendly’.

Websites that do not tend to fit into the description would be demoted in Google’s search results on the tablets and smartphones and those qualifying for the same would be more likely to appear at the top of the rankings which will be a prized position enabling them to translate into more visitors and money.

Though Google’s latest formula would not be affecting searches on the laptop and desktop computers it would be having a large effect on how and where individuals spend their money, now that most of them have been relying on their smartphones while comparing products in stores and in locating restaurants. Hence, Google’s new rating system is being billed by some of the search experts as `mobile-geddon’.

According to CEO of websites building service Duda, ItaiSadan, comments that `some sites will be going to be in for a big surprise when they find a drastic change in the amount of people visiting them from mobile devices’.

A Substantial Change to Its Mobile Search Rankings

As per Matt McGee, editor-in-chief for Search Engine Land, this could be the most substantial change which Google Inc. has made to its mobile search rankings, a trade publication which follows every tweak that the company makes to its secured guarded algorithms. A little more information on why Google is doing it and what is happening –

• Websites need to be designed in order to load quickly on mobile devices to stay in Google’s good style. The content also needs to be accessible easily on scrolling up and down without the need to swipe left or right. It would also be helpful in making purchases or taking other functions on the website could be seen easily and touched on small screens.
• Websites, if designed only with PC users in mind, graphics would take long time to load on mobile devices where the columns of text would not accommodate on the small screen making the reading a bit uncomfortable. Google has been advising websites to cater to mobile devices for several years since it is where individuals are progressively navigating for information
• The strength of mobile searchers in the U.S. has increased by around five percent wherein inquiries on PCs have been decreasing as per research firm comScore Inc. It estimated that around 29 percent of most of U.S. search requests, about 18.5 billion, in the final three months of last year, were made on mobile devices. The bulk of searches was processed by Google with two thirds in the U.S. and more in many other countries

Websites to Comply with Google’s Mobile Standards

Google has revealed its plans almost two months back, to reduce complaints. It also created a detailed guide and a tool to test compliance along with the new standards. The company faced disturbance over the past changes in its search formula.

In 2011 and 2012, two of the bigger revisions done were focused on clearing out misleading websites. Though the attempt sounded reasonable, several websites complained that the company’s changes unfairly demoted them in the ranking and made their content difficult to locate. Though most of the major merchants as well as big companies have websites which tend to meet up with Google’s mobile standards, it is considered that the new formula is likely to hurt millions of small businesses which do not have the money or incentive to familiarise their sites for smartphones. McGee is of the opinion that `a lot of small sites do not really have reason to be mobile friendly till now and that it would not be easy for them for these changes’.

Search Formula – Variety of Factors 

The Search formula comprises of a variety of factors in determining the rankings of its results. One being the most important consideration is that whether a site contains the most relevant information pursued by the search viewer. New striking order in Google’s mobile search could demote some sites to the back pages of the search results inspite of their content being more relevant to a search request than the other sites which tend to be easier to access on smartphones.

White Andrews, Gartner analyst states that this could be a very unfortunate significance though justifiable since the viewer would not be inclined to view other sites which would take a long time to open or difficult to read on mobile devices.

He adds further that `availability is part of relevancy and a lot of people are not going to think something is relevant if they cannot get it to appear on their iPhone’. Neil Shah, research director for devices and ecosystems with Counterpoint, a technology market research firm comments that `in the end, Google is an advertising platform company and its success is based on the success of its digital marketing customers’.

Twitter Cuts Off DataSift To Step Up Its Own Big Data Business

In the recent push to generate the more revenue, leading micro-blogging site Twitter is building up its own business in the areas such as; commerce and advertising however; on last Friday company sets its move in another area which is big data analytics. Whereas; twitter has announced that soon it is going to terminate the agreements with all other third parties to resale the Firehose data, which is complete stream of Tweets which is related to metadata.

Not onwards Twitter, will use its own in-house based team for big data analytics, which is developed after the acquisition of Gnip in the year 2004, and now seek to develop the direct and most effective relationship with big brands, data companies and others to measure the latest market trends and the analysis of consumer sentiment with other trends which can be better understood by tracking the online behavior of users.

DataSift is one of the biggest companies which will be affected by the latest move of Twitter services, unfortunately this move is quick and DataSift was unable to post their own reaction on the issue of termination.

However; NTT Data, which is one of the company which deals in the Tweets of Japanese language is still listed as the Firehorse partner of Twitter at the time of announcement, but after few days the sources of Twitter has confirmed that NTT Data will be also affected by Friday’s announcement.

As per the statement of Nick Halstead, who is CEO of and founder of DataSift, My company was blindsided by Twitter’s announcement and this announcement was without any warning to DataSift. The more he added that we are discussing the renewal of the deal however; after being the Firehorse partner of Facebook and Twitter’s, it will not impact the business discussions.

However discussion is still I the middle of negotiations as Twitter wants them to be the partner of an open ecosystem. The all you can analyze by the last year move of Twitter when it has acquired the Gnip, which is one of the Firehose reseller and now competed against the DataSift.

The main reason behind the acquisition of Gnip was that Twitter believes that the best way to support the distribution of data of Twitter is to have its data customers with direct data relationships as most of the big data analysis is using the Twitter’s data and its analysis for developing the analytic solutions. Acquisition of Gnip was the first step of Twitter to develop he direct relationships with its data customers.

It’s clear that now social networking platforms are looking for more clear ways to use the data for analytics that seems an obvious process to do that. Still DataSift can work with Twitter. If any of the third party will buy data of Tweets from Twitter and they can supply it to DataSift to develop the new algorithms. Currently, company is in the process to raise a series of new funding as till now they have raised about $ 78 million.

Facebook Blames 'Bug' for Tracking Non-Users

Recently, Facebook made it clear that they could have tracked the non-Facebook users who are visiting the third party websites and links through the “Like” button of Facebook as it can embed without the permission or knowledge of those web users who are not using Facebook, but it was just due to “Bug” which is now being fixed.

The issue comes in existence when an academic report of Belgian Privacy Commission was commissioned by calming that Facebook, is violating the law of European Union as they are using the tracking methods and other contract terms.

According to blog post of Richard Allan, Vice President of at Facebook for Eurpian policies, At Facebook we are totally dedicated to dispute the recent findings of Belgian report that claims the Facebook is not providing a legitimate way for its users to opt out of being shown different advertisements to them on the platform of Facebook’s personal behavior techniques.

A team of privacy engineers and experts that analyze the recent findings of Belgian researchers stated that, we have find that report has get wrong on multiple points in analyzing and asserting that how Facebook is collecting and using the user’s personal information to provide better and relevant advertisements to more than billions of users in all over the world.

However; in response to claim that Facebook want to use the Social Plugins to add the files of cookies on the browser of people who are not using the Facebook website in any form, Allan stated that after a research Belgian researchers identified “datr” and thought that it is cookie, which we are using to track the non-Facebook users whereas; later they identified it as Bug.

He said we are not interested to track the non-Faccebook users as it’s not our practice, but researchers found that these bugs may have sent the files of cookies to some of the users who are not on Facebook.

As per the Facebook officials, this is not our practice to attach the cookies on the browsers of those people who are not using the Facebook and neither visited Facebook.com for sign-up purpose, but they has visited the Facebook site with Social Plugins.

However; Allan claimed that Belgian report has a number of misstatements such as; We provides an opportunity to opt out for behavioral and social advertising, while report is claiming that its misleadingly and tracking and violating the standard Web impressions.

However; most of the social networks use the cookies in three main ways, which is to personalize the Facebook platform for real time experience for existing users, to enhance the user security and for the purpose of advertising practice. Facebook is transparent about its cookie polices and they have long disclosed the use of cookies which meant to improve the real experience of users.

Facebook, Google and other major internet platforms has come under more scrutiny that how it tracks users to serve the ads for online products and services as they have got the more refined techniques with the help of purchasing and browsing behavior of any internet user.