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Predictive tools like Hawkeye and Snickometer may well turn out to be the next innovations that will improve umpiring decisions, just like the third-umpire. Fear of technology should not be the only reason for discarding them -- they deserve a fair trial.
Technology In Cricket:
I was watching Cricket Classics on television a few days back. For the uninitiated, Cricket Classics is a program that shows highlights of old cricket matches. Being a cricket fan since childhood, I have watched a few of those matches live on television. But now, when I watch those highlights, one thing that strikes me is, how much the live coverage of Cricket has evolved in the last few years: the action replays from multiple angles, the stump vision, the statistical information bytes, the third-umpire, the wagon wheel and other visual aids, frame-by-frame replays, etc. Many of these technologies have enriched the experience of watching the game on television. It is really hard to say how much they have contributed to the popularity of cricket telecasts, but surely, they're one of the factors.

More recent tools like the Hawkeye and Snickometer, are the center of controversy these days, with some of the former cricketing greats questioning their value to the game. More prominent being Dennis Lillee, the great Australian fast bowler, who slammed Hawkeye recently as:

"I have no problems with technology that assists in helping umpires adjudicate correctly on run-outs and stumpings, but I am afraid 'hawkeye' and his mate, the 'snickometer', are pure gadgetry."

Predictive Tools: The Next Step?
Hawkeye is different from other technologies used in Cricket, in that it is a predictive tool. The way Hawkeye is supposed to work is, it observes the trajectory of a delivery at various points, till say it hits the batsman's pads, and then predicts its trajectory past that point based on various additional factors, like speed, how it got off the pitch, etc. Now, I understand that there are limitations to the predictive curves that Hawkeye gives, that it's not 100% right, and probably won't be in the near future. But then before a gadget is discarded, we must measure its effectiveness -- both absolute and w.r.t. the alternatives!

How does one measure absolute effectiveness of a predictive tool? A simple way would be, to record trajectories of an assorted deliveries bowled by different kinds of bowlers in different condition -- without any batsmen there to play the deliveries -- which means the complete reference curves would be with us for comparison. Then we should simulate how Hawkeye would predict decisions, by invoking a Hawkeye simulator at random points in these test cases. Since we already know the results, we can measure effectiveness of the gadget. We should probably start with an a-priori consensus minimum performance requirements that we expect from the tool, to be considered effective judge (or a helper tool) of LBW decisions.

Now for measuring effectiveness w.r.t. the alternatives: what are the alternatives here? The on-field umpires who do the same prediction, in a split second! What is their success rate? Most experienced of the current umpires -- David Shepherd and Steve Bucknor -- missed plumb LBW decisions, in the India's tour to Australia that concluded recently, screwing up India's chances of winning a series down-under. LBW is probably the most misjudged decision in cricket, even on the international level. Few years back, run-outs and stumpings would have competed with it, but now thanks to the third-umpire, that's changed. Technology -- which was questioned in a similar manner when it was being introduced - has supplemented the umpires. Even with Snickometer, can the best (and I'm not even talking about the average) umpires beat Snickometer consistently in judging a thin edge (especially in noisy stadiums like Eden Gardens), or in distinguishing an edge from bat hitting the pad?

Mistakes: Honest and Dishonest
We must also consider that the umpires are, after all, human -- meaning they can be incompetent, or they can be plain biased! It's not uncommon for some teams to change the bowler's end just to get him from a more sympathetic end. It's not uncommon for umpires to be pressurized by bowlers, fielders and indeed the crowds. It's not uncommon for umpires to hold personal grudges against some players. All these factors affect their effectiveness. This, when cricket has become a high-profile game, viewed by millions. This when one mistake -- honest or otherwise -- can completely turn the outcome of the game!

It's surprising that former greats have reservations about such gadgets, even when they're being used only to judge the judges. Remember? These gadgets are used by the TV crews only to asses the umpiring decisions, which they will do anyways, based on visual/audio evidence). When third umpires were being introduced, there was a similar commotion in some ex-players. Maybe it's just their age and their archaic fears that bring out such knee jerk comments. Today no one doubts the value of the third-umpire. It's a valuable assistance to the umpires. Even visual aids like replays, can go long way in improving the LBW decisions -- did the ball hit outside the line of off-stump? Did it pitch outside the leg-stump? We don't need predictive tools for this! Visual evidence is enough; something which every television viewer has at his disposal! Umpires will be judged more and more in these televised days. It's cruel to leave them without the aids that can enhance their effectiveness. We should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater in case of predictive tools because of our implicit discomfort with technology. We must evaluate them objectively.

For months, there have been rumors that Facebook was working on turning the inboxes of its 500 million-plus users into a full-blown e-mail service.
Today, Facebook founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg formally unveiled the subject of the rumors--code-named "Titan" and officially named simply "Facebook Messages"--at an event in San Francisco. And he spent much of his time stressing that whatever this new thing is, it's not e-mail.

Instead, it's a massive update to Facebook's current messaging system, chat feature, text-messaging integration, and smartphone applications that mashes up all sorts of communications (including e-mail) into one unified stream. Zuckerberg and Facebook engineering honcho Andrew Bosworth mostly talked about the service rather than demoing it, but they said that it'll include features such as these:

• Every Facebook user will get an e-mail address: If your Facebook profile is located at facebook.com/yournamehere, your e-mail address will be yournamehere@facebook.com.
• If you're logged into Facebook, incoming e-mail will show up in the service's chat service; reply to a message, and it'll be sent as an e-mail.
• Similarly, the Facebook iPhone app will notify you of e-mail and let you receive and send messages. (An Android version will come along later.)
• In a feature that sounds a little like Google's Priority Inbox, you can organize the people you receive messages from into important folks (friends and family), others who aren't so vital (your credit card company, say), and Junk. The goal is let you see stuff you really want to see immediately, allow you to check in on less urgent messages once a day, and ignore spam.
• You can also choose to have messages from people not on your Facebook friends list bounced, period.
• Like e-mail, Facebook messages will be able to include file attachments; a deal with Microsoft will let you edit documents using the Office Web Apps online suite.
• The service will go beyond threaded-message interfaces such as Gmail's Conversations by letting you scroll back through all the communications you've had with a particular person via Facebook, all in one place. (You'll be able to opt out of this--or skip all the new features, period--but that presumably won't be enough to satisfy every privacy watchdog out there. In fact, I can hear them growling from here.)

Zuck and Bosworth explained that all this is in part a reaction to the needs of folks younger than themselves--Facebook-and-text-message-loving high schoolers who find e-mail too slow and too isolated from the rest of their communications. They seemed awfully confident that they've come up with something better than e-mail, in a way that left me flashing back to last year's launch of Google's spectacularly unsuccessful Wave. But while Wave suffered from having far too many features, Zuck says part of the goal with this new messaging service is to have fewer features than e-mail. And from what we saw this morning, it does indeed seem to have a minimalist, IM-like feel.

Three hundred and fifty million of Facebook's half-a-billion-plus members are active users of its messaging tools in their current form, and the service delivers four billion private messages a day. The company isn't going to spring all these new features on everybody all at once: Instead, it'll roll them out gradually over the next few months. Only a few folks will get them starting today.
In the end, all this sounds like...well, like another attempt to improve e-mail. And even though e-mail is rife with weaknesses, it keeps on keeping on even while supposedly better alternatives crash and burn.
The good news is every aspect of Facebook is subject to continuous revision; if you don't like this service in its initial form, just wait. Unlike Wave, which was an all-new effort, this is an upgrade to Facebook's existing messaging features, so it'll surely be around for the long haul.

Smart companies tolerate security researchers who hack their products. Smarter companies pay them for it.
Put Google in that second category.
On Monday, the search giant announced on its security blog that it’s expanding its “bug bounty” program, a rewards system that offers payments of up to $3,1337 to anyone who can demonstrate a serious security vulnerability in its software. Instead of merely focusing on Chromium, the open source code behind its Chrome browser, those bounties now apply to the company’s Web application bugs, too.
Any hacker that finds an exploitable bug on a Google site that hosts “highly sensitive authenticated user data or accounts”–domains like Gmail, YouTube, Blogger or any other Google service–can tell Google about the issue privately and earn anywhere from $500 to $3,1337 for especially clever finds. (That 1337 signifies “leet”, semi-ironic hacker jargon for an “elite” practitioner of the digital dark arts.) If any researcher would rather donate their bug bounty to charity, Google is offering to match it.
On top of giving independent researchers an incentive to help eliminate vulnerabilities in Google’s code, the program may also help keep those bugs private before they’re fixed. Google’s rewards come packaged with restrictions on how the researcher can publicize his or her find. “We believe handling vulnerabilities responsibly is a two-way street,” Google’s security team writes. “It’s our job to fix serious bugs within a reasonable time frame, and we in turn request advance, private notice of any issues that are uncovered.”
Google is far from the only bug-buyer on the market: Firefox-creator Mozilla, Verisign’s iDefense, and HP’s Zero Day Initiative all offer bounties for vulnerabilities. (Last month a twelve-year-old earned $3,000 by exposing a bug in Firefox.) But those companies pay for bugs in traditional desktop applications, not Web-based apps. Google’s program doesn’t apply to its client programs like Picasa or Android, but opens the bounty field to common Web bugs like cross-site scripting and cross-site request forgery, weak points that Web-focused security firms like White Hat Security say exist in over 80% of sites.

 
StumbleUpon has just signed up its 12 millionth member according to a tweet from CEO Garrett Camp. Camp also indicated that the service is now seeing 500,000 new members join the site each month.

The milestone metric and the accelerating signup rate are especially telling given StumbleUpon’s roller coaster history — once an eBay-owned company, StumbleUpon returned to startup status in April 2009.
Since the dissolution of the eBay-StumbleUpon marriage, the company has worked to rebuild its stature with product enhancements, including a recent upgrade to its video product. These upgrades seem to be contributing to a renewed interest in the service.
At this rate, the serendipitous web discovery engine appears to be successfully transitioning from relic service to trendy startup — an impressive feat considering it launched in 2001.

 
Photo of Professor Jay Keasling courtesy of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

Some might call it luck, some might call it fate. Nevertheless, the day Professor Jay Keasling found out that a plant-based malaria drug called artemisinin was chronically in short supply – that was a very important day.
You see, back in 2000, Dr. Keasling was looking for an organic chemical to be a suitable focus for his research at the University of California-Berkeley into a new field of science known as synthetic biology.
Artemisinin is a fast-acting malaria drug that, when used in a combination therapy to prevent drug resistance, is the current standard treatment for malaria worldwide. Its precursor chemical, amorphadiene synthase, is derived from the sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua), a plant that is not grown in sufficient quantities compared to need. As luck or fate would have it, amorphadiene synthase is in the class of organic chemicals Dr. Keasling believed would be ideal for study. He envisioned synthetic biology techniques creating a high-quality, non-seasonal, economical supply of the target molecule, in this case, an important drug.
Synthetic biology takes genetic engineering to the next level: scientists use parts of DNA to create a new organism or to change what an organism does. In the artemisinin project, Dr. Keasling experimented with introducing the target gene into E. coli bacteria and a type of yeast. Working with the yeast proved to be the better way to go. Dr. Keasling and his team also found a way to alter the metabolic pathway of the yeast. In other words, he made this yeast create the target molecule as the by-product of its fermentation. As it digests the material it is fed (the feedstock), it creates amorphadiene synthase, which can then be converted to artemisinin.
By 2004, Dr. Keasling's lab was showing so much promise in creating amorphadiene synthase on a small scale that the university and a start-up company, Amyris (formed by some of the post-doctoral researchers), were awarded a $42.6 million, five-year grant from the Institute of OneWorld Health (iOWH). The grant, which originated from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation , was to perfect the technology for the commercial production of synthetic artemisinin. According to a university spokesman, Dr. Keasling completed his part of the development of the synthetic artemisinin for the university, and the Amyris researchers took over to complete the translation of lab procedures to a process suitable for the larger-scale operations of a drug manufacturer. Amyris completed its assignment in 2010 after partnering with drug maker Sanofi-Aventis in 2008. The iOWH contracted with Sanofi-Aventis to implement the synthetic artemisinin in its commercial production of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) and provided the company a $10.7 million grant that also originated from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Sanofi-Aventis is operating on a no profit-no loss basis, and the University of California-Berkeley and Amyris granted a royalty-free license to it for the use of their technology. The projected date for commercial distribution is 2012.
All involved hope that the efforts of these scientists and philanthropists will have a big impact on the deadly toll of malaria in developing countries. This story has many heroes: one is Dr. Victoria Hale, who founded the iOWH to focus on producing drugs and treatments for neglected diseases of the developing world. The iOWH is the first-ever non-profit drug partnering firm in the U.S. that matches neglected diseases with people who can create solutions and people who want to finance the effort. Although Dr. Hale has moved on to her "second generation" non-profit agency focused on women's and children's health problems, the iOWH continues it mission, targeting diarrheal diseases and visceral leishmaniasis in addition to malaria.
A good story should always have a good epilogue. With respect to Amyris, Inc., the company is making progress on adapting a microbially-produced hydrocarbon, Biophene (TM), to a number of uses, including a drop-in replacement for diesel fuel. The company, now headed by John Melo, a former BP executive, has imminent plans for building a facility adjacent to the world's largest sugar cane processor in Brazil. The company, which had attracted significant venture capital, had an IPO last year. According to its CEO, Amyris is generally hopeful regarding cellulose as a future feedstock for the company's fermenting technology platform.
As for Dr. Keasling, he is applying the knowledge and experience gained in developing artemisinin to focus on the metabolic engineering of microorganisms (that is, altering what the microbe produces from what it consumes) to create, for example, a liquid fuel to replace gasoline. His goal is to do this with cheap, resilient, renewable feedstock like tall grass species. Targeting complex sugars found in cellulose (e.g. plant stalks) is much more ambitious than using a simple sugar like corn or sugar cane. To this end, Dr. Keasling was made CEO of the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI, known as "j-bay"), which is one of three bioenergy research centers funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. He is also a faculty scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab's Physical Biosciences Division and the director of the SyntheticBiologyEngineeringResearchCenter. And while he serves as a professor for Berkeley's bioengineering department and the chemical and biomolecular engineering department, he enjoys the honor of being the Hubbard Howe Jr. Distinguished Professor of Biochemical Engineering.
Considering Dr. Keasling's contribution to synthesizing a potent malaria drug and the progress his lab is making toward synthetic, microbially-generated renewable fuel, one wonders how many of the world's challenges will he take on?

 
"Power density is the Holy Grail of engine design." That is the mantra of Professor Peter Hofbauer, the chairman and chief technical officer of EcoMotors International.
Power density increases when there is more power with less weight. Professor Hofbauer's new opposed-piston opposed-cylinder (opoc) two-stroke engine has unprecedented power density: according to a company spokesman, this breakthrough engine design is 50 percent lighter, is half the size, and is at least 15 percent more efficient in the diesel version now under development. (It can use gasoline, ethanol, diesel – any liquid fuel.) However, EcoMotor's most powerful model to date achieves fuel economy that is 45 percent better than the current, state-of-the-art conventional turbo diesel engines.
Because the opoc(TM) has fewer components (13 versus 40 in an inline-4), it is less expensive to manufacture. Because it is a redesigned standard engine needing no new infrastructure, it can revitalize American manufacturing. Indeed, an EcoMotors handout proclaims, "that means real jobs, real soon."
The opoc(TM) has been in development for eight years, supported by public and private research funding. Professor Hofbauer, a 20-year veteran of Volkswagen, is the founder of EcoMotors, a three-year-old company in suburban Detroit. He explains that the opoc(TM) engine is a hybrid of the boxer engine – the type of flat engine in VW Beetles – and the famous Junkers (pronounced "yoonkers") diesel aircraft engines.
The boxer engine features a central crankshaft and the flat, opposed-cylinder design, but it has cylinder heads and valve train components. The Junkers engine features opposed pistons, but it has parallel crankshafts geared in tandem. In designing the opoc(TM) engine, Professor Hofbauer combined the benefits of the central crankshaft and the opposed cylinder design of the boxer engine with the advantages gained by having opposed pistons sharing a single injection of fuel mixture and eliminating cylinder heads and valve train components. Having two pairs of cylinders as they are laid out in the opoc(TM) engine represents a more balanced design and results in smoother operation.
If one engine with four cylinders is good, wouldn't adding another four be great? Indeed, the EcoMotors engine is designed to be a modular unit that can be teamed with additional units. At present, there are two engine models under development, the EM65 and the larger displacement EM100, and they are each regarded as a power module. Each of them can be paired up with a second unit to double the horsepower. If a vehicle equipped with a dual-module version of the EM100 (for example) is being operated at low speed or on flat terrain, it may not need the additional 325 hp that would be gained from the second module. When more power would be needed, though, that second module would be engaged with an electrically controlled clutch that would essentially shift the engine into a more powerful operating mode much like an automatic transmission. This mechanism would eventually reverse to decouple the second module to return it to more economical operation. EcoMotors terms this "modular cylinder displacement," an obvious enhancement to fuel economy that was promulgated by the EPA more than a decade ago. The spokesman for the company notes that Mercedes, for example, offers a comparable fuel-savings feature by taking half of its engine cylinders offline, but these unfueled cylinders still move and impact operation, if only slightly. With the EcoMotors' clutch, the module is completely detached and has no impact on the drive train. As mentioned previously, the modular cylinder displacement feature for a dual-module configuation of the EM100 makes fuel efficiencies of up to 45 percent attainable.
Another feature that enhances the EcoMotors engine is its electro-mechanical turbo-charger with no lag time in its power boost. This provides the advantage of instantaneous torque that is an appealing feature of electric motors.
Professor Hofbauer owns some of the more than 100 patents that protect the opoc(TM) engine design and the company owns some of them. The patents are for the engine designs and encompass designs using any fuel – gasoline, diesel, or ethanol. At present, EcoMotors is working with Eurocopter, as power density is extremely important in aviation.
It's natural to think of automotive applications when it comes to internal combustion engines, but in fact, the EcoMotors engine design is deliberately versatile, or, as they like to say, "application-agnostic." For those who like specs, the EM100 dual-module engine weighs 296 pounds, is just under 23x42x19 inches, has 325 hp at 3,500 rpm, and a power density of 1.1 hp per lb.
EcoMotors International has some impressive funding partners in Khosla Ventures and Bill Gates, and expects to have engine models ready for production by 2013. While the company has partnered with Eurocopter on one diesel engine project, it is presently consulting and communicating with other manufacturers about prospective partnering projects. Esquire Magazine, which featured the opoc(TM) two-stroke engine as its "Innovation of the Year" in last October's car-of-the-year spread, speculates that the powerful little 40-pound prototype motor – it can power a house – that CEO Don Runkle hauls out of a case when he goes to a meeting may be enough to convince many industry decision-makers "that the Engine That Changes Everything may have finally arrived."
We know Professor Hofbauer believes the challenge of greater power density is specifically his Holy Grail in engine design. For auto executives catering to the American market, that translates to an engine that could power the popular SUVs and light trucks that still accounted for more than half of passenger vehicle sales in 2007. Moreover, in today's economy, jobs in the U.S. auto industry might also be considered the Holy Grail of engine design.
Any way you look at it, though, before you know it, the Holy Grail of engine design may be coming to a showroom near you.

A Pakistani games development company, announced today that it is developing the Official Game for the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, an event followed religiously by over a billion fans around the globe.

The game, “Cricket Power” ( www.cricketpower.com ), is set to be the most advanced 3D browser cricket game developed to date.
It will feature all 14 official teams along with official players, stadiums and kits. The game will be powered by a superior cricket engine at its core, coupled with a pick-up-and-play interface to appeal to casual and core gamers alike.
“We are extremely excited about developing the official game for ICC’s Cricket World Cup 2011″ said Babar Ahmed, CEO Mindstorm Studios. “Cricket has long been a subject closely linked to our organization and we are thrilled to take it to the next level.”
The game will be published by ADMC (Abu Dhabi Media Company) and is set to launch in January, 2011 and will be available at www.cricketpower.com.
Mindstorm Studios is a young startup company from Pakistan. All the software professionals, coders, designers and the management are Pakistanis. It has received no outside funding. The team is self-taught. It has managed to cross all hurdles, conquer all challenges and emerge as a champion.

Vodafone UK have posted on their official Twitter account news of an upcoming launch for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in their network. This means that for now they will be the only operator to offer it in the UK.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 made its first steps in the mobile world just two days ago and we already have news for upcoming availability. Seems Samsung will push this bad boy strong into the tablet war.
Vodafone's Twitter stream promises "more info soon!", so we'll have to wait.

Now you can charge your cell phone with your coat or your pants - as long as the sun is shining.


Silvr Lining has released a range of clothing with solar panels in the pockets. Each of the panels functions independently, and can also be removed and used as a self contained charger. The power output is tailored for charging mobile electronic devices, and the panels are USB compatible.

When applied on a tower's windows, the SolarWindow could generate 300 percent more energy than solar panels mounted on the roof.


Developed by New Energy Technologies, the film is 1/10th the thickness of current films, which allows glass to remain transparent, and can generate electricity from both natural and artificial light. The film is sprayed over solar cells that are smaller than a grain of rice, which allows it to be applied at room temperature and greatly reduces manufacturing costs.

Lexmark's new concept combines style, speed and elegance into one single all in one inkjet printer, termed the Genesis.


Utilising Flash Scan technology, the Genesis produces prints incredibly quickly and switches between print and scan functions in the blink of an eye. The scanning process is said not to last any longer than three seconds, based on the premise that your Operating System is up to date, your PC is equipped with an up to date specification in terms of hardware and the usage of character recognition software.

The Lexmark Genesis looks smart in its upright position, made even more slick by posessing a 4.4 inch color touch screen. The printer comes wirelessly enabled allowing you to access web technologies quickly, without the need for booting up your PC also. Browse through Twitter feeds, look through Facebook all from the printer itself, and upload scans to wherever you wish. This really is a printer for the current generation, which makes most other printers on the market look a bit cheap and dated.

If it's a classy, up to date and intuitive printer you are after to replace an old one, then look no further than the Lexmark Genesis. It really is a SmartSolution.

Acer has announced the Iconia Tab A500, a 10.1-inch tablet that Android will support Verizon’s 4G LTE mobile broadband connectivity.

The engineering sample exhibited at the 2011 CES show running Android 2.2, but the final version is expected to Android 3.0 Honeycomb rotate. On top of OS, the device runs a customized UI Acer 4.5 user interface.
The tablet is based on the Nvidia Tegra 2 platform, support for 1080p video playback, while the display shows “10 point multitouch input. Acer’s Iconia TAB has a reversing camera, HDMI output, USB port like on Samsung 2233SW 21.5-Inch Monitor, Micro USB port, Micro SD card and SIM card slots, and a dock connector. 4G LTE connection was not enabled on the display unit. There is no information on pricing and availability.

G73SW-A1 Asus gaming notebook with the latest Intel quad core processor is now in stock at Excaliber PC, while the 3D version of the same laptop – the G73SW-3RD – is available for pre-order.

The G73SW 3RD-A1 and features the Intel Core i7 CPU 2630QM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M video card 1.5GB, 8GB RAM, dual 500GB Hybrid HDD / SSD drives for 1TB, Blu-ray combo drive, full HD display LED backlighting, Windows 7 Home Premium operating system, one-click “overclocking functionality, and an F117 stealth bomber inspired design with a rubber mat.
Asustek 8-pound gaming machine sports an 8-cell battery, integrated stereo speakers and a subwoofer, TNX TruStudio audio technology, backlight keyboard, a 2 megapixel webcam with microphone, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Gigabit LAN, three USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 port, HDMI and VGA outputs, and an 8-in-1 memory card reader. The 3D edition has a 120Hz screen like on Samsung 2233SW 21.5-Inch Monitor and includes 3D Vision 3D glasses. The Asus G73SW G73SW-3D-A1 and both come with a gaming mouse and backpack and are priced at $ 1,849 and $ 1,939 respectively.

 
Like several laptop makers and system suppliers have, CTL Corp., the Classmate PC supplier also recently announced its first notebook Sandy Bridge at CES 2011 in Las Vegas, called CTL TWh.

CTL TWH notebook packs a 15.6-inch screen, up to 8 GB of RAM, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity like on Samsung 2233SW 21.5-Inch Monitor. There is no comprehensive list of the hardware details at the moment.

Sony has unveiled its new mobile 3D experience is the Sony VAIO F 3d at CES 2011. Sony VAIO F 3d is formed on Intel’s new height and Sandy Bridge is bundled with a span of 3D active glasses, and has built-in 3D sync transmitter provided improved 3D experience.

The Sony VAIO notebook has an F 3D brings 3D 16-inch LED-backlit display with 120Hz refresh rate and full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution, an S-Force Front Surround-3D system, Blu-ray combo drive, an HDMI output and the ability to instantly switch between 3D and 2D at the touch of a button. Sony will even let you convert videos and 2D movies into 3D.
Incoming Sony VAIO F 3D is powered by an Intel Core i7 2630QM quad-core 2.0 GHz to 2.9GHz (Sandy Bridge generation) comes with Turbo Boost, a 7200rpm hard drive or SSD and 640 GB combined capacity to 8 GB RAM and a GeForce 540 GT card like on Samsung 2233SW 21.5-Inch Monitor with 1GB dedicated memory. Blu-ray and a multiformat memory card slot also inluded.
Dimension of the Sony VAIO F 3d are 398.5 x 271.5 x 34-75.4 mm, is pre-installed with Windows 7 Home Premium OS and is equipped with WLAN 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, USB 3.0, HD web powered by Exmor-and S-Force 3D Inbox with bass-reflex speakers. The new F-Series VAIO notebook PC 3D will be available late February 2011 for the base price of $ 1.700.

Some of people never try LG Chocolate Touch VX-8575 Phone. This happen because they never knew what is best features in the phone.
Only the owner of the phone know the truth of LG Chocolate Touch VX-8575. I’m very hard to please, and I also have owned two other LG music phones but didn’t liked either of them. This phone is unique: it’s the best phone I’ve ever owned.
It has every feature I need in a phone, in a beautiful package that is very user-friendly.
Simple to use to master and simple to operate. The touch screen is logical and is easy to navigate without ever looking at the manual. I simply wish I bought it thru Amazon and not VZW website. I’d have saved $$$. One drawback: This doesn’t appear to be compatible with my Mac. I cannot download songs from my iTunes to the phone. But I’ve my iPod for music, and really didn’t need the phone to play music.
- Great battery life
- Great quality of sound
- Good speakerphone
- A 3.5mm audio jack
- FM radio
- Music player that has a well-designed user interface
- Great photo and video viewer
- USB data cable integrated (!)
- The ability to plug-and-sync automatically, even with non-Rhapsody music players(!) such as Windows Media Player or MediaMonkey (which supports podcasts

Huawei, the company which launched the cheapest Android phone – the Huawei Ideos – in 2010 has been trying to make its presence felt on the Android scene.
So far, it has been completely overshadowed by the likes of HTC, Samsung and Motorola. Even the announcements of the Huawei Ideos X5 and the Ideos X6 failed to make any major impact.
Now, images of an Android tablet and a new Android smartphone by Huawei have been leaked on its official Flickr account, just a week before MWC.
The Huawei Ideos S7 Slim is an Android tablet which has a 7 inch capacitive touchscreen display. From the images, it seems to have a front facing camera and keys for Home, Menu and Back. We don’t have any other details yet. We can expect it to run Android 2.2 Froyo at launch, with a Android 3.0 Honeycomb upgrade coming later. It will likely be priced much lower than the current crop of Android tablets.

The other leaked device is the Huawei Ideos X3 Android smartphone. It will be a budget phone and will likely have a 3.2 – 3.5 inch display. Both these devices will be launched at the Mobile World Congress in a week.

What if someone else sneaks into your Facebook account? Well, this could be a quite serious situation. In this article we will cover some simple steps you should follow in such situation.
But before that let’s see how to find out if someone else is using your Facebook Account.

• Login to your Facebook account.
• Click Account >> Account Settings >> Security.
• Watch carefully and compare the devices, browsers, locations, and timings of your previous logins , if they mismatch then someone else has sneaked into your account.

If such a situation arrives then here are some immediate-basic steps you should take:

• Change the password of your account.
• Go to Account >> Account Settings >> Security.
• Click on “end activity”, in case you see other suspicious active accounts.
• Check “Send me an email” and “Send me a text message”, and click “Save”.

Now you will get an email and SMS alert every single time anyone login to your Facebook account.
Here is a video tutorial for some advanced Facebook security features:

Note: At the moment one time password and secure browsing features are only available in US.

There is a new Nikon model in the market – the Nikon Coolpix P100. It’s really quite extraordinary, you have many shooting options which are built around a high-speed CMOS sensor, and a 26x megazoom lens.
With this camera, you get photo and video shooting on high speeds, and the opportunity to play around with fun modes, plus you can experiment as much as you want. Add to that the fact that you get 1080p HD-quality movie recording. The Nikon Coolpix P100 has easy-to-operate controls; you just need some time to get used to them by reading the manual. The camera itself costs a fair amount, approximately 400 dollars – quite a large sum of money for many people. It weighs about 17 ounces, is of 10 megapixels, and comes with a 3-inch LCD screen.

So how’s the P100 different from the P90? Well, the zoom has been extended to 26x (so you can see really far ahead of you), and while the P90 had 12-megapixel CCD sensor, this particular model has a backside-illuminated 10-megapixel CMOS sensor. This improves the speed of shooting, and the level of noise in low-light photos is considerably reduced. In fact, you also get the option of a few specialty shooting modes. The feel of this P100 camera is rather good; it’s also a compact model. It’s a good grip, and the camera itself has sensor-shift image stabilization, which Nikon refers to as Optical VR. This stabilization minimizes the level of blur, and if you combine this with Nikon’s Best Shot Selector, you stand a much better chance of a sharp shot of a stationary subject.
The Nikon Coolpix P100 also has a rather good electronic viewfinder, and if you want to frame up your shots, then that too is possible with a vari-angle LCD. This pulls out of the body, and can be tilted up or down, but it doesn’t swing out from the body horizontally. The controls of the camera are responsive and also comfortably placed. You’ll find the Mode Dial, power button, and the shutter release with zoom ring on the top. At the left of the EVF, you’ll find the button for moving from information viewing on the EVF or LCD and a  diopter adjustment dial.
On the right of that is a Display button which allows you to change the information you view on the display, there is also a Movie record button which a switch, that allows you to choose what kind of video you would like to shoot – high speed or regular. There is also a horizontal dial which allows you to change aperture settings and shutter speed; you can also zip through images and videos in playback.
The P100 is a decent buy because you get many shooting options – right from full manual and semi-manual options with shutter speeds from 8 seconds to 1/2000 second, and an aperture range of 10 steps of 1/3 exposure value. You also get many scene modes, as well as auto scene recognition and subject-tracking autofocus meant for moving subjects.

Google is looking to develop the features of its Street View and further enhance it by refreshing the images every year from now on. This decision was prompted by the fact that urban landscapes are in a state of flux at all times. To be able to keep up with this constant changes happening in the cities, this move was decided upon by Google.

In the same vein, the European Union is reviewing certain regulations concerned with the way Google is trying to make images of the cities of the world available on the World Wide Web for everyone to see. The EU want to know more about Google’s retention policy concerning the Street View Image.

According to Google, the Street View Images should be retained for a year. However, according to the European Union, the officials think that the period of one year is too long and want it to be shortened to six months. Also, the EU wants Google to put out notices in the media so that people know when the company will send their Street View cameras to take the pictures of the cities in general.

 
As inflation in Pakistan climbs to sky high rates, more and more people are looking for alternatives to make money to make ends meet.
Many of these people turn to the internet as a source of income and majority of them get caught up in a web of deception spun by scammers and con artists. In fact a study claims that the top cyber crimes in Pakistan are financial crimes.

Why is it so attractive?
Making money via internet is attractive for a number of reasons.
The comfort of sitting at home and generating income is massively appealing. Add to it that the only investment is a computer and an internet connection and you’ve got yourself a potential goldmine.
Scammers count on this desire to make a quick rupee, to achieve their goals. Everyday one gets hammered by an unending stream of emails trying to part you from your cash. But now that most people are aware of the risks of junk email, scammers are turning to more inventive ways to cheat people out of their money.
Scamming has reached new heights these days with the saddest development being this trend spreading fast in Pakistan with our own people trying to cheat us out of our own money.
Check following ads appearing in our main stream newspapers:



Minting Money in the name of Registration Fee!
One example is the now defunct rozzgar.tk. This website claimed to be an advertising agency with connections to various companies in Pakistan. They tried to lure people into the concept of free cash, namely, by offering money to display ads on websites and blogs even if they received zero traffic.
Too good to be true? Well, yeah. The catch was that they had a registration fee. They offered different packages, with the expensive ones offering more money to host ads on your blog. You might be rolling your eyes on how could one fall for such an obvious scam but estimates suggest that they managed to acquire around 4 million rupees in the space of one month, before shutting down. Thousands of people lost money and when the scam was reported, they just disappeared with all the money.
Trapping in the name of Adsense:
Undoubtedly, if you have interesting content to offer and you wish to generate some money from your efforts, Google Adsense is your best friend. It has been referred to as the online moneymaking machine. In a sense, it is just that. Blogs with high traffic are generating significant amounts of money through Adsense.
But with it comes a generation of scammers hoping to exploit its popularity. And surprise surprise, this seems like a popular way to commit fraud amongst our fellow country men. Some rely on fake checks they claim they received from Google, and offer information on how others can do the same by visiting a specific site or signing up with a program which costs money or it could just be a link to earn the scammer in question some money. Take this for example:
Scammers use various techniques to get your attention, few being:

• They claim to increase ones Adsense earning many folds by unraveling the “Adsense secret” for a meager amount of money. But the truth is that there is no secret to that.
• They offer lists of certain golden keywords which they claim can help to generate more traffic and clicks. And it can help to earn more revenue per click. But Google itself offers these lists to facilitate the process.

Not only this, one can come across banners of people offering up to 30,000 Rs for working only a few hours a day using Adsense. Alarmingly, even our newspapers are starting to display these scam ads (given above). Most of
these scams hit people who are new internet users or particularly the jobless.
Get Verified Google Adsense Account in Rs 500: Another Fake!
Keeping in light the amount of fraud committed by countries like India and Pakistan,
Google has complicated the process of obtaining an Adsense account. It requires unique content, your own domain, and that your blog be older than 6 months to get an account.
Sadly, now that an Adsense account is not easy to obtain, exploiters are now offering “verified Adsense accounts” in a few hours for money. It’s a scam. Don’t fall for it.
Ahsad Javed did a detailed post on Google Adsense Verified Account fraud here
Implications:
Google has strict security policies and when it uncovers the amount of corruption being done in Pakistan in its name, it may ban Adsense which would badly hit thousands of people in Pakistan, specially our bloggers.
As I draw to closing this post, I’d just like to say that be smart forget about the notion of easy money. And don’t fall prey to the vultures in wait in the cyber world, it only spurs them on and gives our country a bad name.
Here are a few websites you can read to help you understand the nature of cyber crimes and how to stay clear of them. These sites also offer tips on recognizing scams.

Here are a few websites you can read to help you understand the nature of cyber crimes and how to stay clear of them. These sites also offer tips on recognizing scams.

• http://www.webworkshop.net/adsense-ready-websites-scams.html
• http://www.listmyfive.com/94d846fa/The-Top-Five-Ways-to-Avoid-Being-Scammed-on-the-Internet
• http://factoidz.com/10-signs-you-are-being-scammed/
• http://www.computercourage.com/2008/10/03/phishing-how-to-avoid-being-scammed-via-email/
• http://www.hoax-slayer.com/

How to Earn Money Online?
Okay, this is also a fact that earning money online is possible. But believe me that’s not as simple as these newspaper ads suggest. If you want to money, keep following things in mind:

• You can earn money, if you have a skill that others may get benefited of over the internet. For example, development, design, data-entry, proof reading, writing content and so on.
• If you want to earn through adsense, then be informed: Adsense only favors highly visited website. So now its in your hands on how you make your website popular. Maybe by adding very very interesting and useful information, so that every other web user come to you website.

We recently wrote on how to report to Google the copyright infringements for those who think their genuinely written unique content is aggressively copied over the web.

Well, to all those legitimate bloggers/ webmaster you may not need to report websites for copy/pasting any further.
Actually here’s a good news, at same time a death warrant for those scamper bloggers who copy/paste content on their website, and the news is:

“we (Google) are evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.”, Matt Cutts, Head of SPAM at Google
Via: mattcutts.com

In simple words, all those websites which reproduce content from elsewhere on the web will be ranked lower or will be marked as SPAM and won’t appear in search engines at all.
So if you are working on a blog idea, which will reproduce content from other websites, straight away forget it. If you are already doing this then start looking for other ways to earn money.

Ford Motor Company has unveiled its all-new Focus Electric - the company's first-ever all-electric passenger car. The zero-CO2-emissions, gasoline-free version of Ford's popular small car is the flagship of the company's growing fleet of hybrid, plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles coming to North America and Europe by 2013. "Focus Electric is the flagship of our new family of electrified vehicles, showcasing our commitment to offer consumers choice when it comes to fuel-efficient or fuel-free vehicles," said Derrick Kuzak, Ford group vice president for Global Product Development.
"Its advanced powertrain will deliver significant energy efficiency advantages and zero CO2 emissions without compromising driving enjoyment. And its suite of smart driver information technologies will transform the way customers think about energy usage and their transportation needs."
The Focus Electric will launch in late 2011 and is designed to offer enough range to cover the majority of daily driving habits of Americans. It will offer a mile-per-gallon equivalent better than Chevrolet Volt and competitive with other battery electric vehicles.
A full recharge is expected to take three to four hours at home with the 240-volt charge station -half the charge time of the Nissan Leaf.
Focus Electric introduces new features and technologies - including a unique version of the MyFord Touch driver connect system especially for electric vehicles, a new value charging feature powered by Microsoft and a smartphone app called MyFord Mobile that helps plug-in owners control their vehicles remotely.
The sleek and stylish five-door hatchback leverages Ford's global C-car platform shared by the gasoline and diesel-powered Focus models, which debuted at the 2010 North American International Auto Show and were launched at the Paris Motor Show in September.
Both Focus gasoline and electric variants to be sold in North America will be built at Ford's Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Mich., with production powered in part by one of the largest solar energy generator systems in the state.
For European markets, a decision on where the Focus Electric will be built is currently being finalized.
Focus Electric is one of five new electrified vehicles included in Ford's electrification strategy. Initial deliveries of Transit Connect Electric began in North America at the end of last year and the vehicle will be launched in Europe later in 2011.
A real car Not only is Focus Electric designed to provide outstanding energy efficiency and reliable operation, it also delivers real driving enjoyment. The all-electric powertrain and single-speed transmission provide immediate responsiveness and smooth acceleration when the driver pushes down the accelerator, up to a top speed of 84 mph (136 kph).
Much of Focus Electric's steering, handling and braking feel is shared with the agile, sporty, fuel-powered Focus models upon which it's based, making Focus Electric a dynamic driver's car. At the same time, the absence of a gasoline or diesel engine and outstanding aerodynamics lead to a remarkably quiet, comfortable in-car experience.
"More than any other electric vehicle on the market, Focus Electric loses none of the dynamics and quality of driving a traditional car," said Sherif Marakby, director of Ford's electrification programs and engineering.
"It shares many of the same premium components and features as its gasoline-powered counterpart, while delivering distinct efficiencies and a uniquely exciting driving experience."
Focus Electric offers a host of standard safety and security features including six airbags and electronic traction control, along with hands-free SYNC telephone connectivity and MyKey for North America. Extensive eco-friendly materials, such as bio-foam seat cushions and recycled fabrics also are featured in the vehicle.
Other standard features on Ford Focus Electric for North American customers include a unique execution of MyFord Touch driver connect technology, 15-spoke 17-inch aluminum wheels, a 60/40 split rear bench seat, push button start, AM/FM/CD/MP3 Sony Audio with nine speakers, Sirius Satellite Radio with Travel Link, HD Radio and voice-activated Navigation System.
Plug and play Future owners of the Focus Electric will likely recharge the car's advanced, Ford-engineered lithium-ion battery pack at home on a daily basis, using the recommended 240-volt wall-mounted charge station that will be sold separately or the 120-volt convenience cord that comes with the vehicle.
When plugged in, the Focus Electric onboard charger converts AC power from the electric grid to DC power to charge the liquid-cooled/heated battery pack.
"We're very excited about the potential of Focus Electric in the marketplace. With so many of us accustomed to recharging mobile electronics on a daily basis, we're confident our customers will take to the vehicle recharging process just as easily, because that's exactly what it is - easy," said Nancy Gioia, Ford director of Global Electrification. "Not only have we made the practice of plugging in simple and straightforward, we're working with leading technology companies and the utility industry to make the EV experience empowering and engaging."
An empowering experience Focus Electric owners will be provided with a suite of driver information systems - on-board and off-board - designed to help them manage the recharge process, manage the most eco-friendly route on-board, monitor battery state of charge and maximize energy efficiency to optimize their driving range. This carefully engineered set of tools is designed to give Focus Electric the edge over competitive products, providing new electric vehicle owners the information they need to enjoy all the freedom gas-free driving has to offer.
Among these tools is a unique execution of MyFord Touch driver connect technology. Thoughtfully developed for electric vehicle owners, it offers innovative presentation of vehicle information, such as battery state of charge, distance to charge point, the corresponding range budget and expected range margin. The system's MyView feature allows drivers to access even more vehicle data including the electrical demands of vehicle accessories such as air conditioning, which can impact driving range.
Just as the growing leafy vine of first-generation SmartGauge with EcoGuide represents fuel efficiency in the Ford Fusion Hybrid, the cluster display in Focus Electric uses blue butterflies to represent the surplus range beyond one's charge point destination - the more butterflies there are, the greater the range.
Ford designers were inspired by the phenomenon known as "the butterfly effect," in which a small change, like choosing to drive an electric vehicle, can have an enormous impact. To reinforce the message, at the end of each trip a display screen provides distance driven, miles gained through regenerative braking, energy consumed and a comparative gasoline savings achieved by driving electric.
The cluster is also integrated with the MyFord Touch map-based Navigation System using the vehicle's center stack 8-inch touch screen. After adding their driving destinations, including their next charge point, into the vehicle's Navigation System, the vehicle will coach drivers on how to achieve the desired range - or if travel plans need to be adjusted. The on-board Navigation System provides an EcoRoute option based on characteristics of efficient EV driving.
Remote control Off-board, Focus Electric owners in North America will be able to maintain constant contact with the car anywhere they have mobile phone access using the Ford-developed MyFord Mobile app.
MyFord Mobile is an app that enables access via a smartphone or web-based interface to: + Receive instant vehicle status information
+ Perform key functions remotely
+ Monitor the car's state of charge and current range
+ Get alerts when it requires charging or has finished charging
+ Remotely program charge settings and download vehicle data for analysis
The feature also allows the owner to program the vehicle to use electricity from the grid to heat or cool the battery and cabin while plugged in - called preconditioning. For example, during hot summer months, owners can preprogram the car the evening before to be fully charged - and fully cooled to a particular temperature - by a certain time the following morning. Users can also locate the vehicle with GPS, remotely start the vehicle and remotely lock and unlock the car doors.
Working with MapQuest, MyFord Mobile can communicate charge station and other points of interest to Focus Electric using SYNC's Traffic, Directions and Information (TDI). Turn-by-turn guidance is provided by the in-car map-based Navigation System. Drivers can also get up-to-date charging station information in their vehicle directly through SYNC TDI simply by connecting to SYNC Services.
Value charging The new Focus Electric offers a unique value charging feature, powered by Microsoft, to help owners in the U.S. charge their vehicles at the cheapest utility rates, lowering the cost of ownership.
"Value charging allows our customers to reduce their electricity costs by taking advantage of off-peak or other reduced rates from their utility without a complicated set-up process," said Ed Pleet, manager, Ford Connected Services Organization. "This is a 'set it and forget it' approach for the customer to reduce energy cost."
The tool is designed to help customers avoid unnecessary expense by providing an optimized charge. In the future, these smart charging habits will help utility companies understand and better manage the demands placed upon the electric grid because of electrified vehicles.
Getting charged up Focus Electric owners are likely to handle one of the vehicle's charge cord connectors two or more times each day. That's why Ford worked with supplier Yazaki to provide an industry-standard five-point plug that is ergonomically comfortable to hold as well as durably and distinctively designed.
The plug handle uses a matte-finished black rubber that allows for a comfortable, non-slip grip. The plug head is shielded with a protective glossy white plastic.
When the cord set connector is plugged into the vehicle's charge port, which is conveniently located between the driver's door and front wheel well, it activates a light ring that loops around the port twice in acknowledgement of connectivity.
The light ring then illuminates in quadrants as the vehicle charges. Flashing quadrants represent charge in progress and solid-lit quadrants show stages of charge completion. In the unlikely event of a fault, the entire ring will flash. When the entire ring is solidly lit, the vehicle is fully charged.
Batteries included Focus Electric will be powered by an advanced lithium-ion battery system engineered by Ford in cooperation with supplier LG Chem. The battery system utilizes heated and cooled liquid to help maximize battery life and fuel-free driving range.
Thermal management of lithium-ion battery systems is critical to the success of pure electric vehicles. Focus Electric uses an advanced active liquid cooling and heating system to precondition and regulate the temperature in its larger, more complex lithium-ion battery system.
The active liquid system heats or chills a coolant before pumping it through the battery cooling system. This loop regulates temperature throughout the system against external conditions. On hot days, chilled liquid absorbs heat from the batteries, dispersing it through a radiator before pumping it through the chiller again.
On cold days, heated liquid warms the batteries, gradually bringing the system's temperature to a level that allows it to efficiently accept charge energy and provide enough discharge power for expected vehicle performance.
"Focus Electric is the culmination of years of research and development," said Kuzak. "More importantly, it's the start of an exciting new era for Ford and our customers."

Rocketing smartphone use could drive mobile operators into losses in three years unless they rapidly adopt technology to capture more revenue from data services, according to a US network company.
Rising investment costs to handle exploding data traffic combined with lower revenue per unit of data could begin to drive some operators into the red in as soon as two years, Tellabs said it calculated based on independent analyst data.
"Carriers can spend themselves bankrupt well before users run out of hunger for capacity," said Tellabs chief executive Rob Pullen.
"Our study shows that simply adding dumb capacity is unsustainable. To avoid the 'end of profit', carriers must bring intelligence to their networks -- it is critical to carrier survival," he was quoted as saying in a statement.
A number of industry players expect mobile data traffic, driven mostly by smartphones, to nearly double each year for the next several years.
While operators are investing heavily to add capacity and roll out fourth-generation networks, they are having difficulty earning money from data transfer and forecasts see falling revenue per unit of data transferred if current trends continue.
Dozens of companies such as Tellabs are offering mobile operators solutions to manage network traffic, reducing needed investments and opening possibilities to capture more revenue through priority services.
"Mobile carriers face a stark choice about their business models: it's either the smart mobile Internet or an unsustainable dumb-pipe business," said Vikram Saksena, Tellabs' chief technology officer.
Tellabs' findings come days before the mobile industry holds its annual gathering in Barcelona, where a smartphone-driven boom in data traffic overwhelming networks and capturing revenue from data are set to be at the top of the agenda.
Tellabs did not analyse specific mobile operators, but used a model that generalised costs and revenue structures in three major regional markets.
It found that operators in North America were most vulnerable to changes wrought by mobile Internet and that some could plunge into unprofitability as soon as the beginning of 2013, others at the end of that year based on median cost and revenue assumptions.
For developed Asia-Pacific markets, operators would enter the red from the third quarter of 2013 to the third quarter of 2014.
Western European operators are forecast to enter unprofitablity from the beginning of 2014 or 2015.

The global warehouse for Internet addresses ran empty on Thursday.
The non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) doled out its last five batches of "IP" numbers that identify destinations for digital traffic.
"A pool of more than four billion Internet addresses has been emptied this morning," ICANN chief Rod Beckstrom said at a Miami press conference.
"It is completely depleted. There are no more."
He brushed aside fears of modern life being devastated by an "IPocalypse," saying Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) worldwide will be doling out remaining addresses to support a shift to a bountiful new "IPv6" format.
"It is like running out of license plates," said Internet Architecture Board chairman Olaf Kolkman. "Driving on the road the next day would not change."
The touted solution to the problem is a switch to an "IPv6" format which allows trillions of Internet addresses, while the current IPv4 standard provides a meager four billion or so.
The effort and expense of changing to IPv6 would fall mostly on Internet service providers, websites and network operators that have to make sure systems can handle the new online addresses and properly route traffic.
"If an ISP (internet service provider) gets its act together, it shouldn't be a massive problem," Trefor Davies, chief operating officer of British ISP Timico, told AFP.
"We really should see this as an historic event," he continued. "The very nature of the Internet has changed with the transition."
Beckstrom expected the full switch to IPv6 to take years with potential overall costs in the billions of dollars, some of which could be factored into routine replacement of equipment.
"We are talking about billions of dollars here globally, not trillions of dollars," Beckstrom said.
Consumers, for the most part, should remain oblivious to the switch since complex IP numbers would still appear to them as words and domains, such as icann.org.
"My mother, my neighbor, my kids -- they should never notice," Kolkman said.
Some people might need to update routers or modems that connect computers to the Internet.
"All conditions are in place for a successful IPv6 transition," Beckstrom said. "The future of the Internet and the innovation it fosters lies within IPv6."
Registries could begin running out of IPv4 addresses as early as next year, according to US computer scientist Vint Cerf, who is revered as one of the "fathers of the Internet."
"Today's ICANN announcement marks a major milestone in the history of the Internet," Cerf said. "IPv6, the next chapter, is now under way."
ICANN has been calling for a change to IPv6 for years but websites and Internet service providers have been clinging to the old standard since the birth of the Internet.
With about seven billion people on the planet, the IPv4 protocol doesn't allow for everyone to have a gadget with its own online address.
The situation has been equated to not having enough telephone numbers for everyone.
The number of addresses that IPv6 allows for amounts to 340 "undecillion" (followed by 36 zeroes); enough for a trillion people to each be assigned trillions of IP numbers, according to Beckstrom.
IPv4 addresses were expected to run out first in Asia, where demand has been highest as people and businesses in emerging markets embrace online lifestyles.
Once RIRs run out of IPv4 addresses, they will turn to IPv6.
The formats have been likened to different languages, with translation needed for systems to handle both.
Computers and other gadgets that don't get the new format might have to start sharing instead of having unique identifying numbers.
"The Internet won't stop working; it will just slowly degrade," Google engineer Lorenzo Colitti said of not making the move to IPv6. "Things will get slower and flakier."
Google, Facebook and other major Internet players will add IPv6 addresses to their systems in a one-day trial run on June 8 to let all parties involved check for trouble spots.
"We need to kick the tires on it at a global scale and see if there are some unforeseen problems," Colitti said. "There is really a rallying cry element to it. No single player can do it alone; we need to work together."
World IPv6 Day will start at 0001 GMT on June 8.
Adoption of IPv6 is vital to preventing the Internet from becoming "balkanized" with localized addressing frameworks, according to Internet Society chief technology officer Leslie Daigle.

A Facebook security vulnerability discovered by a pair of doctoral students at Indiana University Bloomington's School of Informatics and Computing that allowed malicious websites to uncover a visitor's real name, access their private data and post bogus content on their behalf has been repaired, Facebook has confirmed.
The vulnerability discovered by Rui Wang and Zhou Li enabled malicious websites to impersonate legitimate websites, and then obtain the same data access permissions on Facebook that those legitimate websites had received.
Wang and Li said the vulnerability occurred when a user informed Facebook of his or her willingness to share information with popular websites like ESPN.com or YouTube. Whenever a website makes such a request to Facebook via the user's browser, Facebook passes a secret random string called an authentication token back to the requestor for identification. Whoever holds that authentication token can convince Facebook that they are, say, ESPN.com and then gain unfettered access to the shared data.
Facebook confirmed the discovery and in a statement said the problem was repaired and that the belief was that no sites had been compromised.
"Researchers at Indiana University reported a vulnerability in our Platform code to us, and we worked quickly with them to resolve it. It was fixed shortly after it was reported. We're not aware of any cases in which it was used maliciously," the statement said. "We thank the researchers at Indiana University for bringing this to our attention, and for demonstrating the value of responsible disclosure."
The researchers identified a flaw in the way the token was transmitted using two Flash objects: one inside Facebook's iframe passes the token to the second, which in this case would be embedded at ESPN.com. The transfer mode can be selected through "transport='flash'" with the security guarantee being that both flash objects are supposed to come from the same domain (i.e., Facebook) before they can talk.
The researchers found, however, that such a same-domain assumption is not always valid because Adobe Flash allows cross-domain communication with an unpredictable domain name that is prepended by an underscore symbol in the connection name. This allows an attacker website to steal an authentication token by choosing the transport='flash,' replacing the receiver flash with its own and then initiating a cross-domain communication with the flash inside the Facebook-controlled iframe to get the token and send it to the attacker's flash.
"This vulnerability has several implications," Wang said. "Basically, any user with a valid Facebook session loses anonymity and privacy to any website, even one with embarrassing or sensitive content."
Facebook allows some websites like bing.com to directly access a user's public data without explicit consent. This enables the malicious website impersonating that site to do the same. Moreover, if the user has ever granted any website, such as The New York Times, YouTube, Farmville or ESPN, the permission to connect to their Facebook account, further damage can be inflicted, including disclosure of private data that the user does not want to share with others, and impersonation of the user to post bogus news or comments on friends' walls. This form of propagation resembles the famous MySpace worm released in 2005, they said.
"Our attack utilized a feature of Adobe Flash called unpredictable communication, and an important distinction between an unpredictable communication and a normal communication is that the former is done through a connection where the name starts with an underscore symbol," Li said. "Therefore, Facebook could check for this symbol to determine if a potentially malicious website tries to do unpredictable communication."
And that is exactly what Facebook started to do once they were alerted to the problem by Wang and Li, who were working under the supervision of School of Informatics and Computing Associate Professor XiaoFeng Wang and Shuo Chen, a researcher in Microsoft Research's Internet Services Research Center.
XiaoFeng Wang, the students' adviser, said Facebook relies on same-domain communications that allow websites to specify Adobe Flash as the communication mechanism.
"In a normal situation, two flash objects can only do same-domain communications, and, in fact, security of Facebook's authentication crucially depends on same-domain restrictions," he explained. "However, Facebook allowed the Adobe Flash communication mechanism but did not disallow the unpredictable domain names. This is how a malicious website could establish a channel to enable two flash objects in different domains to communicate."
To portray the seriousness of the vulnerability, the team made a video demo that can be viewed here.
Facebook officials noted that a contact form at both the Facebook Help Center and from the "Whitehats" tab on the Facebook Security Page are available in the rare instances in which vulnerabilities are found.
"We also recently rewrote our responsible disclosure policy to make it even easier for researchers to let us know when they find a vulnerability, so we can fix it quickly and before it's exploited. Our new policy was praised by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a recent blog post here," the statement said.

European leaders launched Friday a trillion-euro bid to slash dependency on Middle East oil and Russian gas, clearing the way to place nuclear power at the centre of 21st century needs.
At a summit shaken by instability over Egypt's popular revolt and soaring oil prices, the European Union moved to reclaim control over energy supply for the rest of the century with reforms designed to unlock private investment.
The EU is the world's largest regional energy market -- 500 million people and 20 million companies.
Governments committed to a broad sweep of market reforms, linking national and regional electricity grids and gas pipelines by 2014 to allow power to circulate freely and cheaply, from those who produce it and have surpluses to those who don't and need it.
"No EU member state should remain isolated from the European gas and electricity networks after 2015 or see its energy security jeopardised by lack of the appropriate connections," read summit conclusions whose adoption was announced by EU president Herman Van Rompuy on Twitter.
"Beyond the management of today's crisis, we're also laying the ground for a sustainable and job-creating growth," Van Rompuy tweeted.
Island states Cyprus and Malta, as well as Baltic countries whose infrastructure remains tied to the former Soviet Union, feared their needs may be considered too insignificant for the big energy players to invest in costly transmission networks.
But the EU agreed that pooled public money could underpin completion of this so-called 'supergrid' -- although ballpark sums will not be produced until the summer.
Initial European Commission estimates suggested that some 2.5 billion euros ($3.4 billion) could be diverted from unspent EU budgets.
While one EU diplomat said it was "doubtful" that Britain would back such an approach, Prime Minister David Cameron was comfortable with allowing "some limited public finance to leverage private funding," as the summit conclusions specified, provided it comes from cuts elsewhere in the EU budget.
The network development cost over the remainder of the decade is tipped to exceed 200 billion euros.
The other big change, at the instigation of France but firmly backed by the government in London, was to reposition domestically-produced nuclear energy at the heart of the bloc's long-term suppplies.
In a carefully-worded shift in emphasis, alongside investment in renewable energy technologies, EU states will also promote "safe and sustainable low-carbon technologies" -- this including nuclear -- under climate action goals.

This came under attack from ecologists and Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the head of the Party of European Socialists, as: "Old leaders, with old ideas, simply proposing old energy methods for Europe’s future." Brussels-based NGO Energy Strategy Center also saw a missed opportunity given a "significant shift currently underway in the climate and energy debate."
It pointed out that, yet again, "China is rapidly becoming a global leader in the technologies of a resource efficient, low-carbon economy."
France maintains it is not trying surreptitiously to reclassify nuclear alongside wind, wave, solar or biomass energy production as Europe tries to meet three-pronged commitments to combat global warming by 2020.
These are to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent compared to 1990 levels, to raise renewables production to 20 percent of consumption and to make energy efficiency savings of 20 percent.
However, nothing is set in stone after 2020 -- and the political mood now, amid greater questioning of scientific evidence, is for a more substantial use of the nuclear alternative.
"Nuclear is not a renewable source," said a senior official under commission head Jose Manuel Barroso of post-2050 guidelines, but "the make-up of national energy mixes is a matter of national choice."
The volume of gas used to generate electricity requirements in the EU has trebled over the past 15 years, with some three quarters of all gas imported into the bloc between now and 2020 coming from Russia, Algeria and non-EU Norway -- ensuring a close link to the price of oil.
To that end, the EU must also develop "a reliable, transparent and rules-based partnership with Russia," leaders also concluded.

Canada's industry minister vowed Thursday to overturn a regulatory ruling that effectively put an end to small Internet service providers offering unlimited downloads.
"It is unacceptable that this decision stands and we will reverse this decision," Industry Minister Tony Clement told the House of Commons.
"It is important to protect consumers, innovators and creators, as well as small and medium-sized businesses," he said.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, ruled last week that telecommunications giant Bell can charge wholesalers that lease bandwidth on its network based on usage.
Many of these smaller service providers offered their customers unlimited Internet access at set rates, relying on bandwidth Bell and other big operators are required to lease to them.
Major telecommunications firms Bell and Telus, as well as cable companies Rogers, Shaw and Videotron do not offer unlimited plans and Bell suggested those offered by smaller service providers were congesting its networks.
Nearly 360,000 Canadians signed an online petition calling for the decision to be overturned, fearing it could lead to higher prices as consumers download more and more data such as high resolution movies or play games online.
Earlier CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein defended the ruling, telling a parliamentary committee: "Ordinary Internet users should not be made to pay for the bandwidth consumed by heavy users."
He noted that a very small percentage of consumers are heavy Internet users.
According to the CRTC's Communications Monitoring Report, Canadians used on average 15.4 gigabits per month in 2009.
Likening the Internet to a public utility, von Finckenstein added the CRTC's view remained "that usage-based billing is a legitimate principle for pricing Internet services."
Clement told reporters he felt the CRTC's ruling "would have a huge impact on consumers and would hurt small businesses, would hurt innovators and creators."
He said he understands that bandwidth capacity is a problem, but usage-based billing "is the wrong way to do it."
The CRTC "must go back to drawing board," Clement also tweeted.