Google Chrome and Microsoft Bing!!!!

Lets get our history right!!

Microsoft is the company which develops operating systems for personal computers from 1981. However in the 1990's something awesome happened to PC's , that was Internet!! It was so awesome that every customer started buying PC's just to use internet. Microsoft was more than happy to sell more of their products-mainly Windows and Office-on these PCs.

However as the number of Internet users increased the content on the internet also increased. Now everyone needed a tool to find what they wanted more quickly and accurately. Here comes the "Do-No-Evil" Google. Basically, google is a web search engine which searches the internet for what you queried. As the content grew, Google 'crawled' the web more and found results more quickly and Google too grew with time.

There were a lot of search engines before Google but none of them were better in searching millions (now billions) of web pages within seconds accurately to find what you want. One such 'other' search engine was 'MSN search' by Microsoft. But sadly it was very bad. Also some users went with other options like Yahoo , AOL etc... and all of these had one thing in common , that was, Google was better than them :P .

So, come 2005 Microsoft realized that they need a search engine which can compete with Google, hence they start developing a new search engine called 'Live Search' which eventually is re-released as 'Bing' in 2009. Now to the point why do Microsoft need Bing? Cant they tell everyone to use Google. Now there is a problem with that.

Now consider this scenario - One day Google gets very angry at Microsoft for some reason and decides to do something Evil. They decide to not allow people to search from Windows platform!! I know this is really evil of Google. But say if they allow Mac and Linux users to search but not Windows. Yes, Google will be losing a lot of market-share to its competitors but at the same time Microsoft will be losing its already slipping PC market-share.This is so unacceptable for Microsoft. So Microsoft put their own search engine product Microsoft Bing!

Though Bing was introduced with so much expectations it didn't deliver as expected . In short it was not a 'Google-Killer'. But it was not that bad either. Bing found a lot of fans (bing accounts 10% of searches). But this was more than what Microsoft signed on for. They wanted an alternative for Google and they got it. But as we say it wasn't a Google-Killer. The market-share of Bing is the lost market-share of other search-engines like Yahoo!.

Google too isn't an all happy enterprise! It has its fears. It also fears of Microsoft becoming Evil . Google as a search-engine company has built itself a huge Kingdom on the Internet. Now that can be pretty dangerous. Just imagine the plight of Google when ,say, the internet is down for a month (i said imagine, remember). Or, say users cant access Google's site because Internet Explorer crashes(something familiar huh? :P ) whenever the address bar reads anything Google . Now when we look at the statistics we see IE holds a large but decreasing market-share of nearly 70% browser market. If this ever happens then 70% of the world wont be using Google anymore which means 70% less money Google makes. Of course this is most horrible for Google. So what they do is develop their own web browser- Google Chrome!

Chrome was released with very simple interface, no cluttering, no crashes, faster searches and open-source. Chrome was an hit among browsers. Google stuck to their basic formula - do everything a little faster and simpler. Chrome starting gaining browser market-share steadily eating away the pie of IE.

Microsoft brought Bing against Google and it failed.But Microsoft understood that the Internet-search market cannot be underestimated once again. Hence it has partnered Yahoo! in order to fight the Giant G.

However Google Chrome is used by Google to emphasize the fact of openness and the use of better technologies on web like HTML 5.

Are YOU ready to Move?

For a long time video game consoles have been a important form of entertainment. The first home video game console was released as early as 1972 named Magnavox . From 1972 till date there has been constant improvement in this field pushing the recently released consoles to the Seventh Generation!!. The first of these consoles was XBOX 360 ,released in 2005. A year later Sony rivaled the XBox 360 with their Playstation 3. These two consoles actually was direct challenge to the game developers to publish games with better graphics, game-play and games with longer game time.

Amidst the release of these two HD-consoles there was the release of a console whose approach to games was very different. Nintendo entered back into the video game console market with the introduction of WII .Wii was very different from PS3 and XBox360. Wii uses a controller which looks like TV remote and the gamer uses the remote, to control the character, which is sensed using IR sensing Sensor Bar. This changed the thought of "how to game'' and simultaneosy brought in a lot of new customers into the gaming. Now gaming was no more just-for-recreation. It became way of exercising, doing your daily Yoga and many more. You didnt need a ThreadMill to show you how many calories you lost. All you wanted a Wii.

At first Sony and Microsoft snubbed aside Wii since Wii didn't play games as-they-knew-it. But sales of Wii surprised everyone. And Wii currently holds the record for the Most Consoles sold in a single month in the US.

Motion sensing gaming has picked up so much frenzy that both Microsoft and Sony have released their own alternatives to Wii -XBox Kinect and Playstation Move. The PS Move is just like a Wiimote, comes as a addon to the existing PS3 console. Move has a glowing Orb which is sensed by the PS Eye camera .Sony already has a long list of HD games supporting this new addon. This is real direct competition for the Wii , actually the Wii is on the back foot now. Bad online experience and not so many 'games' on the Wii have given a little edge to Playstation Move which already has a well established PS Network and a long list of HD games to be 'Moved'

On the other hand Microsoft have gone a step ahead. They have removed the Controller itself :) .Your "Body" is the new controller. There is a console , a Display (HD is good :) ) and there is you!!. How do they do this? They use a sensing device similar to the Sensing Bar of Wii. The sensing device basically maps different but many body-points to recreate the 3D image of the gamer to pinpoint the exact position of the player. So as you move body the character on the screen moves. Sounds fascinating doesn't it ? With the popular XBox Live ,Kinect also has social advantages. You can video chat with another Xbox Live subscriber or your friends using MSN video chat. The camera on sensing device is pretty cool as it changes its position(to a limit) as the user moves in front of it. Kinect too has a 19 games already compatible with it.

Now, we have 3 consoles fighting for supremacy. Nintendo already know the motion sensing gaming well while Sony and Microsoft are yet to completely dive into moption gaming. But everyone agrees that Motion is going to be the battle field for the next year or so.

So Are you ready to Move ?

Touch!!

Whether you like it or not Touch-phones are here to stay. Who needs buttons? You touch to send an email; you touch to message your buddies ; you even touch to pump nitro into your NFS car;

when you can do so much through touch who needs buttons?

But what really happens when your fingers makes contact with the screen? Magic? nah, in that case Cris Angel would have unveiled the iPhone rather than Steve Jobs :D

Well latest screens are equipped with touch sensing technology.

Basically all pinpoint the movement of your finger but in a different manner.

There are two broad types of touch screens - 1) Resistive 2) Capacitive.

Resistive screens are the earliest of the technologies to be incorporated in the mobile phones. They consist of two metallic electrically conductive layers separated by a small gap. When we touch the two layers join to allow current to flow through. The amount of current flowing gives the position of the pointed finger.

Well this is really cool , everyone wanted it back in 2000's , well not everyone want this now. The reason:Capacitive Touch-Screens!!!

Capacitive screens are a little complex and advanced to the resistive screens. Capacitive Screens consist of a protective layer, a glass substrate and between these layers there are couple of layers which contain the electrodes (self-capacitance) or Capacitors (mutual capacitance).

The Self-Capacitance screens have electrodes, instead of capacitors, which are arranged in X-Y grid manner. These screens are not so accurate as the ones which use mutual capacitance.

Mutual capacitance has capacitors placed at every junction. While current is passed through horizontal lines , voltage is measured on the vertical lines. When we touch the screen the difference in the voltages at each intersection gives the exact position of the finger. This also allows us to implement the Multi-Touch feature. Multi-Touch allows us to use two fingers to interact with the phone.You can zoom in/out of pictures(web pages) by "pinching " the screen.

Mutual Capacitance based screens have high accuracy and can sense the slightest of touch action by the user. The responsiveness of the screens is high for mutual capacitance based screens while the durability and stability of the screens belongs to Resistive Types screens.

Now to the question of which screen suits you?? well the answer is simple : Try all the options available and then choose. First try.

Some people feel capacitive screens are all crap because it is too sensitive but kinda like the resistive screens .

However the capacitive screens are the most popular these days.