Real Time Google Map For Indian Railways

Indian Railways and Google maps collaboratively brings into action the new real time Google map for the Indian Railways. The online application called the RailRadar was developed by PSU Centre for Railway Information System(CRIS) in a tie-up with Rail Yatri.

The application tracks almost 6500 trains running across India, and gives the user current status of each of the trains. The details such as the live location of a train, the next scheduled stop, the expected time to reach the stations etc will also be available to the user. The map is also updated every five minutes so that the users get the most accurate results. If u choose a particular station it gives the details of which train is currently stopped at the station. Likewise if u choose a particular train to track the map highlights the route of the train and also gives you periodical updates of where the train has reached.
The map also gives you the total number of trains which are currently active in the country and also the percentage of them which are on time and delayed.And on the map, the trains marked with red are the delayed trains and those in blue are on time. There are also so many mind blowing features for the application.  Do check it out for yourself at, railradar.trainenquiry.com

Ada Lovelace: The first computer programmer

Charles Babbage is well known as the father of computer science. But there was also another hands that worked behind the development of this first, so called, computer. It was Ada Lovelace, who did the software part of this computer (though there was not much distinction between hardware and software during that time). 

Ada Lovelace was born in 1815. During her childhood itself her mother left his father, who was a poet, and a very bad man by character. Her mother was a mathematician and obviously Ada Lovelace was dragged towards mathematics and science in her early childhood itself.

It was during this time that Charles Babbage was building his difference engine, of which's logic, he thought nobody would crack. But Ada was able to understand the complexity of his invention and this lead to a healthy friendship to develop between them. This was how Ada was inspired to translate an article on analytic engine by an Italic Scientist in French. During translating, she was advised to add her own notes about understanding the working and functions of the engine. This resulted in creating a document which was several times larger than the original document. These notes comprises of ideas which, the world took another century to implement.

And during this time she created the first known program which was a set of instructions to calculate Bernaulli numbers. She was also the first one to foresee the idea of using computers are not just for calculations, but things like graphics and sound.

But all this was done just during a 35 year life span of hers. She died of cancer at an age of 35, being unable to complete working on the ideas she had about developing computers. Though the starting was marked by Ada and Charles Babbage, the world had to wait for centuries to make their ideas come into existence. After the introduction of Turing machine, things geared up much faster.

The computer language Ada, created on behalf of the United States Department of Defense, was named after Ada Lovelace. The reference manual for the language was approved on 10 December 1980, and the Department of Defense Military Standard for the language. And 24th March is declared as "Ada Lovelace Day" by social software consultant Suw Charman-Anderson in an attempt to use the Victorian countess as a poster girl for the contribution of women to technology past, present and future.

But being a woman from her era, it was brave from her part to come to this field. And being a woman, I feel proud to say about Ada Lovelace. 

SIGHT: Augmented reality explained to the core!!

How about when everything you see is fused with digital technology..Well this doesn't seems new with the introduction of augmented reality glasses by Google. But what if, instead of the glass that u wear, it is embedded in you head!! This is exactly what is explained in the short film "SIGHT", by  two students, Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo, at the Bezalel Academy of Arts in Israel. The short film, which demonstrates the extremities of augmented reality and Google glass, was done as a graduation project. 

The film is about a man who had a very bad luck with his date, yet another augmented glass implanted young lady. Everything, from dating to cutting vegetables is digitized and really gamified. You get apps for anything and everything. the film moves through a date, where u get to see a "Wingman" which is a very advanced application which uses all the latest technologies including face recognition and speech recognition etc etc to understand the date's emotional status and her likes, dislikes and everything u need to know!! It even checks the progress of your date and tracks you progress level from bronze to silver to gold and so on.  It "gamifies" each and every activity of yours and rate them by giving you rewards and medals. 

This short film is really a peep into the near future of technology and virtual reality. Things are really creepy and terrifying. 

Handwrite : Write your search on Google!

Google now lets you write on its home page what you want to search with this newly introduced search method called Handwrite. Handwrite is intended for smartphone users and is available on the Google home page itself when accessed form a smartphone and has to be activated in the mobile search settings. After enabling the search settings, you get a button on the botton right corner, which u can tap and start writing. The letters has to be clear and legible and preferably not italics.  There is also the auto completion option available. So no worries! Just tap it to search.

Google now display mathematical results on a calculator!!

Earlier when we had to get answer to a mathematical calculation, we type in the expression in the search box and we get the answer in the results page in bold letters as the first result. But now Google has introduced a virtual calculator on the results page which would display the result of our expression. And if we want further more calculations to be done, It can be done on this same calculator, as we use other calculator applications on our system.
This virtual calculator consist of the basic mathematical functions along with the trigonometric functions and logarithmic functions. It also works on mobiles, other web browsers as well as on ios and android.

Gabe Newell calls Windows 8 an extremely large scale disaster!!

Gabe Newell, the co-founder and managing director of the video game development and online distribution company Valve Corporation, has reportedly mentioned the latest Windows product, Windows OS 8 a "catastrophe". This makes them give a much more priority for Linux. According to him, Linux is now a step backward only in the case of Games. So the Valve Corporation is now giving much more importance in developing for Linux. 

In the mean time there had been other reviews coming from different people about the drawbacks of windows 8. Earlier this year, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell wrote an article for Kotaku about Windows 8's issues. Wardell called the new operating system a "usability nightmare." If all the PC users derive at this kind of a conclusion, definitely it would draw more and more users to the Linux community!! 

Facebook implements a new feature to know the total views of your post

Not getting a like or comment on a post that you put doesn't always mean that you posts are not viewed by anyone. There wasn't any other way to know whether if at least someone who is too lazy to put a comment or like on a post has viewed it, till this time. 
But now, Facebook comes up with its new feature to let the users know how many people have actually seen a post they posted somewhere. This is right now implemented for the posts inside an group. The number near a check symbol under each post indicates how many people have already seen you post. And anyone who can view the post can also see this number and see how may people has viewed it. So go forth a post your updates on any group and see how relevant your posts are...!!

YouTube trying to make their users more disciplined???

YouTube is now making the users link theri google+ profile to their YouTube accounts. They are urging the users to actually enter their full name in place of the fake usernames and pen names that you used to give earlier. And guess what, your full name appear wherever you post a comment, or upload a video!!


It is quite disturbing for atleast some of the users out there. It prevents you from putting any unwanted, abusive or negative comments on the videos because the world sees it with your own full name along with you Google+ photo!!


The video sharing website now asks you for the full name when leaving a comment. If you decline to give the full name, or reveal the identity, you certainly owe an explaination....!! They give you variety of options for why you resist to give the name, like,  “my channel is for a product, business or organization” or “my channel name is well-known” etc. 


“We’ll help you review your YouTube content before your full name starts to display,” YouTube says in a message. “And if you change your mind, you can switch back to your username.”

And they also give you a chance to review the content you had posted earlier. You can go around and delete every single negative comments you've made so far. They provide a more simpler way for this actually. 

This may make the users and the video sharing website more cleaner and disciplined than before, i hope!!

Ubuntu-On-Air!!!

This is a great opportunity provided by the Ubuntu development team to actually discuss your issues and problems with the real developers of Ubuntu!! Doesn't that seems cool!! Its made possible through Google hangout. 

You could watch a hangout of the Ubuntu developers along with other prominent guests such as

- Barton George from Dell who  will be dropping by to talk a little bit about Project Sputnik, Dell’s new developer laptop initiative

- Leann Ogasawara, Canonical Kernel Team – For all your kernel-related questions
- Chris VanHoof Canonical Hardware Enablement Team – Chris will answer all your hardware questions, including how we roll with nVidia, Intel, and AMD

- Robert Carr, Canonical Web Applications Team – Robert will be answering all your questions about web applications

- Brian Murray, Ubuntu Defect Analyst, Foundations – Brian will be available to talk about how the Ubuntu teams manages your bug reports.

You can really have a chat with these people and come up with your questions and get the answers!! You can even discuss about the future developments in Ubuntu and the features and so on. 

For further more details on this check the Ubuntu on air website :http://ubuntuonair.com/

GIT!! A tool for version management

Version management has always been a matter of concern for the software developers. Git is a simple command line tool somewhere similar to the online code hosting site bit bucket. Git was a product of the conflict that arose between the two development teams: that is the bit bucket and the famous linux development team lead by Linus Torvalds. It actually came to existence in 2005.


Talking about Git, Git is a space for you where you can store all your code, watch others code, and clone a copy of another developer and start adding your own features to it. This all happens in one place. This becomes more useful when multiple developers are working on the same project. It is a powerful, sophisticated system for efficient version management.


[PS: It can even serve as a good seminar topic for your academic presentations, as it did for me...!! A report and the ppt of it will be uploaded soon!!]

Markupwand: A tool to make web desingning much easier than any time before!!

Now people with least knowledge in html and css can even get into the feild of web designing with this newly published website by the  Goyaka Labs. With a little creativty and knowledge in photoshop, u can create the layout of a beautiful webite in minutes. All you have to do is create a layout of the website in the form of a psd file, Upload the copy of it on this website and here you go. They'll create the html and css form of your psd file. That is your psd file is converted to html and css. Simple as that!! The various guidelines for doing all the procedures is given in the website. The users has to login through their google account. And the rest is all according to your creativity. We dont know the complexity involved in the process of convertion. But definitely this is goin to be of great use!!! 


Website link: www.markupwand.com