QBurst

Articles on Google waves is flooding the web, trying to bring out a deeper understanding on this wave renaissance. There is so much of expectation generated now as people are anxiously looking forward to get their hands on it. With the little information revealed by Google, let us try to figure out something more on how this is going to work. In Google wave 1 we discussed about Google waves as a product. This time let us view Google waves in the perspective of a developer, that is, Google waves as a platform.

What is a platform?

Platform in software realms can be understood as an entity on which software can be made to function. A platform provider will provide APIs (Application Programming Interface) for software to be developed in his platform. Let’s take a few examples: Java, the product of Sun Microsystems serves as a platform and it comes with APIs like AWT, JDBC, JMF and so on. These APIs are also provided by Sun Microsystems. Apple Inc, owner of iphone had APIs confidential until October 2008 when the company open sourced and made it license free to develop software applications to be run on iphone. Lately, there is facebook API which is both powerful and popular.

What about Google API?

Google has promised to come up with a public API which can be used by any developer to create applications that run on the wave platform. There are 2 ways by which a developer can make his presence felt in Google waves. The first method is by building robots or creating gadgets. The other method is by embedding waves on third party websites. Let’s try to get some insight on these new terminologies.

Robots, Gadgets and Embed API

Robots are automated participants in a wave. Remember the robot in ‘Lost in Space’. It is a similar kind of simulation except that these robots will function inside the computer. A robot created inside a wave will be able to read, modify and delete blips and wavelets. A wavelet is a smaller wave that is resident inside a wave and a blip resides inside a wavelet. The diagram below will give you better picture.

The developer can create robots and perform interactive operations within a wave. What are the interactive operations? Well, that is left to the creativity of the developer. Learn more about robots here. Wave Gadgets are similar to the ordinary gadgets in its mechanism to get embedded as third party development applications. But there is more offered. A wave gadget can function within a live wave. An example Google gives to explain this is one which lets participants of a wave to vote on where to go for lunch. Learn more about gadgets here.

The second method using Embed API enables to bring waves into third party websites. There will be simultaneous updates in websites as and when an update is made inside a wave. Google has already come up with a few embeds. ‘You tube playlist discuss’ is one among them and is sure to gain so much popularity.  Learn more about embed APIs here.

As Facebook is dominating now with so much integration, it is certain that we can expect even more from Google waves. So if you are a developer, be informed about what is going on in Google waves and get ready to play with the tools as soon as you get them.

Links for further study:

http://code.google.com/apis/wave/

http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/

Pocket-sized Dell Mini 10V

The Arrival of Netbooks has turned the PC market upside down as diverse models and players are coming in short span of time. This segment triggered the competition when Acer introduced its first Netbook model Acer Aspire One in to the market. Dell took further long time for foraying in to Netbooks market. They started with Dell Inspiron Mini 9 then followed by Mini 10,12 and now the advanced Mini 10V.

The hapless performance of Mini 9,10 and 12 forced Dell to come up with a robust model, which can capture some market share in this segment. The drawbacks of the former models were the lack of good memory and hard drive space. Mini 12 was expected to become a leader however; its limited memory slot and hard drive pushed them out of the competition. (Dell Inspiron Mini 12 has 1GB DDR2 memory slot and 80 GB Hard Disk)

Mini 10V Tech specifications

Processor – Intel^® Atom^TM N270 (1.6GHz/533Mhz FSB/512K L2Cache)

Operating System – Microsoft Windows XP

Memory – 1GB,DDR2,533MHZ

Hard Drives – 160GB SATA HDD 2.5 inch 5400RPM

Display – 10.1″ Widescreen 1024 x 600 WSVGA (WLED)

Apart from these, Mini10V comes up with 1.3 MP webcam, Blue tooth module and for power there are 3 cell & 6 cell Li-lon batteries.

Battery Performance

With the 3-Cell battery , it gives a max of 3 hours and 6-cell battery exhaust after 6.5 hours.

Price – $375

Did you wish you were able to transfer digital pictures, video and large files between cell phones, laptops and other devices?

Then, the Bluetooth 3.0 is here to do just that.

April 21^st, 2009 saw the announcement by Bluetooth SIG of its new Bluetooth 3.0 + HS specification, dubbed as Bluetooth High Speed Technology. The new Bluetooth wireless standard builds upon the previous standards and is reportedly up to 160 times as fast as Bluetooth 2.2. This is good news for manufacturers of handsets and PMPs, expanding the range of possibilities to include Bluetooth media streaming and much larger file transfers. A technology like this has the potential to revolutionize the consumer electronics industry.

The standards and specification of this new technology will show makers of wireless electronics how to design these devices so that they can send and receive data using either the Bluetooth or 802.11 wireless data transfer protocols (sometimes known as Wi-Fi).

Bluetooth 3.0 also allows applications using 802.11 for connectivity, to use just a burst of 802.11 power to send data and then shut off the radio until it is required again. This ensures that it works efficiently and without draining power.

A notable achievement is that Bluetooth 3.0 is expected to deliver short-range wireless speeds of up to 480 Megabytes per second in close proximity, and 12.5 Megabytes per second at 10 meters. That makes high-quality streaming video a definite possibility. In fact the possibilities are endless – video cameras can stream video footage to Bluetooth enabled computers and televisions, a picture or movie can be transferred between your laptop and your smart phone, laptops can transfer presentations to a projector wirelessly, to name just a few.

Users will have no worries about interference from wireless networks and other devices as the high bandwidth (in the 6-9 GHz range) of Bluetooth 3.0 eliminates the possibility of interference of devices that use the 2.4 GHz range.

The new Bluetooth 3.0 standard is anticipated to remove not only wires, but all communication barriers between devices that have existed for years.