Stuck with a dumb display? AIRBAR brings touch functionality to any PC screen!

Touch-screen capabilities are widely appealing, but they still don’t come included with most laptop computers available today. A company called Neonode has come up with AirBar, a gadget that will bring touch-screen functionality to any PC. Without any heavy duty hardware adjustments or a single software update, AirBar could theoretically turn any computer screen into a fully responsive touch screen.

AirBar covers your dumb display with a blanket of invisible light that allows you to interact with the screen through touch. The discreet bezel bar sits below your PC display, and is ready to use as soon as you plug it into the USB port. AirBar recognizes the gestures you’re used to on other devices, like pinch, swipe, zoom, and scroll functions. 

And because the “touch” interactions are triggered by anything that crosses AirBar’s light field, you don’t have to use your fingers. You’ll be able to use AirBar with the most slippery gloves or even heavy work gloves, paint brushes, pencils, or anything you have nearby — no stylus required. As long as you cross the light field, AirBar will register “touch” gestures.

At its initial launch, AirBar will be adaptable for a limited number of machines. It will work with any Windows 7, 8, or 10 computer that has a 15.6 inch display, which narrows down the playing field considerably. Neonode says they are working on a Mac-integrated option for the future. And as long as they can pack in the technology, AirBar should be able to adjust for a variety of screen sizes.

AirBar will officially debut at CES in Las Vegas next month, but you can pre-order one of your own online. The 15.6 inch launch version costs $49 and is expected to launch in early 2016. Once Neonode expands the AirBar line to other sizes and computer platforms, any computer will be able to benefit from touch-screen capabilities without draining battery or compromising screen quality.

LiFi as internet breakthrough, 100 times faster than Wi-Fi!

Sorry, Wi-Fi. We had some good times together. 

Expect to hear a whole lot more about Li-Fi - a wireless technology that transmits high-speed data using visible light communication (VLC) - in the coming months. With scientists achieving speeds of 224 gigabits per second in the lab using Li-Fi earlier this year, the potential for this technology to change everything about the way we use the Internet is huge.

And now, scientists have taken Li-Fi out of the lab for the first time, trialling it in offices and industrial environments in Tallinn, Estonia, reporting that they can achieve data transmission at 1 GB per second - that's 100 times faster than current average Wi-Fi speeds.

"We are doing a few pilot projects within different industries where we can utilise the VLC (visible light communication) technology," Deepak Solanki, CEO of Estonian tech company, Velmenni, told IBTimes UK. 

"Currently we have designed a smart lighting solution for an industrial environment where the data communication is done through light. We are also doing a pilot project with a private client where we are setting up a Li-Fi network to access the Internet in their office space.”

Li-Fi was invented by Harald Haas from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland back in 2011, when he demonstrated for the first time that by flickering the light from a single LED, he could transmit far more data than a cellular tower. Think back to that lab-based record of 224 gigabits per second - that's 18 movies of 1.5 GB each being downloaded every single second.

The technology uses Visible Light Communication (VLC), a medium that uses visible light between 400 and 800 terahertz (THz). It works basically like an incredibly advanced form of Morse code - just like switching a torch on and off according to a certain pattern can relay a secret message, flicking an LED on and off at extreme speeds can be used to write and transmit things in binary code. 

And while you might be worried about how all that flickering in an office environment would drive you crazy, don’t worry - we’re talking LEDs that can be switched on and off at speeds imperceptible to the naked eye. 

The benefits of Li-Fi over Wi-Fi, other than potentially much faster speeds, is that because light cannot pass through walls, it makes it a whole lot more secure, and as Anthony Cuthbertson points out at IBTimes UK, this also means there's less interference between devices.

While Cuthbertson says Li-Fi will probably not completely replace Wi-Fi in the coming decades, the two technologies could be used together to achieve more efficient and secure networks.

Our homes, offices, and industry buildings have already been fitted with infrastructure to provide Wi-Fi, and ripping all of this out to replace it with Li-Fi technology isn’t particularly feasible, so the idea is to retrofit the devices we have right now to work with Li-Fi technology.

Research teams around the world are working on just that. Li-Fi experts reported for the The Conversation last month that Haas and his team have launched PureLiFi, a company that offers a plug-and-play application for secure wireless Internet access with a capacity of 11.5 MB per second, which is comparable to first generation Wi-Fi. And French tech company Oledcomm is in the process of installing its own Li-Fi technology in local hospitals.

If applications like these and the Velmenni trial in Estonia prove successful, we could achieve the dream outlined by Haas in his 2011 TED talk below - everyone gaining access to the Internet via LED light bulbs in their home.

"All we need to do is fit a small microchip to every potential illumination device and this would then combine two basic functionalities: illumination and wireless data transmission," Haas said. "In the future we will not only have 14 billion light bulbs, we may have 14 billion Li-Fis deployed worldwide for a cleaner, greener, and even brighter future."

18-year-old’s life saved by Siri (Apple’s famous little artificial intelligence assistant)

Siri, Apple’s famous little artificial intelligence assistant, saved the life of an 18-year old in an incident 2 months back and turned out to be a life-saver(quite literally) for the poor teen.

Sam Ray, a resident of Murfressboro, Tennessee U.S, was tweaking with his truck which was held up by a jack when suddenly, the jack gave way and the truck fell over him. With no one near to call for help, Ray was stuck beneath the truck in shock. He tried to shimmy his way out but he was in a really bad shape, with his left arm above his head and the truck’s exhaust resting on his body (it caused some serious burns), but then comes the heroic Siri. While trying to move his body, he managed to somehow press the home screen button of his iPhone which was lying close by, and ended up activating Siri.

As soon as Sam Ray heard Siri’s voice, he started screaming, “Call 911!” and the genius little assistant managed to catch those words(on its fourth-fifth try from what Sam says) and then he kept on yelling loudly as the call was picked up. Eventually, the 911-emergency managed to track him, for which the credit again goes to iPhone. The law-enforcement agency tracked the phone and managed to save the teen’s life.

According to Sam, he was stuck beneath that truck for an excruciatingly painful 40 minutes and suffered some serious burns on his arms along with a bruised kidney, concussion, some broken ribs. He would have been in a critical condition had it not been for Siri, because according to the chief of trauma and surgical care at Vanderbilt University, Ray was incredibly lucky to be okay and recovering easily. He also mentioned that such injuries could be fatal.

From what he told WKRN, Ray was terrified to death after this ordeal,

‘It was kind of the realization that what in the world just happened! Oh my Gosh, this could be the end.’

Apple’s iOS has had a feature that lets you long press the home button from anywhere in iOS (including the lock screen) that launches Siri instantly, and this is what turned out to be a miracle in disguise for Sam Ray. Siri is Apple’s variant of an artificial intelligence assistant and comes built-in with every idevice these days. It is capable of doing quite a lot but apparently even Apple isn’t aware about its best feature: it saves lives!

AirConsole Is A Browser-Based Gaming Platform Where Your Smartphone Is The Controller

Gamers with a penchant for old school gaming have another platform to add to their entertainment mix: AirConsole is a recently launched browser-based games platform that re-purposes players’ smartphones as controllers.

There’s no need to download any games or apps — or indeed, hunt out your Nintendo 64 and remember where you left the controllers… For a local multiplayer gaming session AirConsole is super simple to use — you just go to AirConsole.com on your computer and smartphone, entering the link code that’s shown on the bigger screen on your smaller screen — et voila, your phone becomes the touch pad to control the goings-on on the other screen. Neat.

The number of games is pretty limited at this nascent stage, but the team behind AirConsole is currently running a competition for devs to port titles (they say any browser-based game or Unity3d game can be ported).

In the meanwhile titles include TicTac Boom, Hit Parade and PolyRacer. There’s also an NES emulator, plus card games such as poker and Cards Against Humanity.

Of course AirConsole is not going to entice pro gamers. But it’s not trying to; it’s squarely targeting the casual social gaming crowd. Add to which, it’s cross platform and cross device — so you don’t need specific hardware to get a gaming session up and running.

The platform has been bagging early attention on Reddit — where one of its game developers describes it thus:

…it doesn't need a lot of hardware: An average laptop will do. You won’t be able to play the newest AAA games with it, but that’s also not really what we’re all about. AirConsole is to play a few quick games with friends while having a beer. Think Mario Party. Except it’s really annoying to carry an N64 with 8 controllers (or a big gaming PC with 8 gamepads) somewhere, while AirConsole just needs a laptop or TV with a couple of smartphones, and you’re all good to play with as many people as you like.

Latency can be a slight issue with the link between computer and smartphone, depending on the device you’re using as a controller (AirConsole claims the experience is better using Android phones than iPhones — noting that devices that support WebRTC having latencies of between 1 and 10 milliseconds, while those without WebRTC support lag between 40 to 120 milliseconds). But given the old school gaming vibe it’s not necessary a big deal to have sporadic delays in gameplay.

N-Dream, the Zurich, Switzerland based startup behind AirConsole, started work on the concept back in January, with just under $1.4 million in initial capital — going on to launch the platform early last month (just before Apple took the wraps off its new Apple TV, which includes a touch-sensitive remote that doubles as a game controller).

‘The Inbox Is Out And Messaging Is In’: LinkedIn Previews Project Voyager, Its New Mobile App

LinkedIn, the social network for professionals with over 380 million members, is working hard to bring its brand and its platform into the 21st century to make it more relevant to how people do business today. As part of that, company CEO Jeff Weiner — who happens to also be the company’s head of product — previewed a new version of its flagship mobile application today. Code-named Project Voyager, the new app could be going live in a matter of weeks, he said.

Weiner’s preview was delivered at the company’s TalentConnect event in Anaheim, a confab focused on one of the company’s biggest-paying user bases: recruiters. As Weiner described it, one of the company’s most important sets of users is as good a place as any to debut where the company is going. Here’s a rundown of what’s in store:

The first section Weiner described was, fittingly, Home. Home, he said, will be a seamless onboarding process, where the app will be able to weed out what you are interested in and what you are not.

This will essentially be a rebuilt news feed where people can click on news items but also “discard” those that are less interesting, he noted.

“We don’t just want the feed to be about information and news,” Weiner said. It will also include conversation threads and will sort them according to whether people are in your network and  how much you communicate with them.

The next feature, Me, will be a kind of notifications center, “a dashboard experience” where LinkedIn will provide analytics about how much your profile is viewed and who is tagging you or reading your content.

There seem to be big plans for Me. Weiner hinted that it could be looked at as a way of managing your “whole” professional life, which theoretically could bring in work correspondence or other software. Me is also where you can manage your profile.

The third new area, Messaging, Weiner noted, is “clearly the medium where people prefer communicating. Welcome to the 21st century, LinkedIn!” He joked. This is a pretty revolutionary area for LinkedIn, where it is trying to lighten up a little with more human features, such as stickers.

“The inbox is out and messaging is in,” Weiner noted.

My Network, the fourth area of the new LinkedIn app, will give users a run-down of activities of people you know who are on LinkedIn. This will eventually also include a calendar feature, Weiner said, which will “anticipate your needs.”

It’s similar to LinkedIn’s Connect features that essentially push contact information to you on the go when people are in your vicinity, and here it will focus first on areas like pre-meeting updates after you’e synced your calendar to the app. “I can get information before a meeting, but I can also ask for information in real time,” he said.

This is also where connection requests will be hosted.

Search will be another key part of the new app. The experience, Weiner said, will be 300% faster than LinkedIn’s current search experience. “We’re playing a game to see how few letters we can put in before we get the answers to our searches,” he said. The concept here seems to be implementing some AI into the process, tracking what kinds of things you’re already looking at in LinkedIn (and perhaps elsewhere) and using that to anticipate what it is that you will want to look for in the search window.

This will also include an entirely new and very dynamic set of search results, containing features like videos, and the ability for businesses to customize how their search results appear.

Finally there will be an app launcher incorporated into the experience, using LinkedIn to link out to other apps like Lynda.com more seamlessly. This is an example of how deep linking technology is now becoming ever more mainstream, with the feature eventually being able not only to link you to an app, but to a specific section within it. (For example, a particular lesson or training in LinkedIn rather than the app’s main landing page.) “Over time the launcher will get more intelligent,” Weiner said.

More generally, LinkedIn has been making a lot of efforts to expand its profile globally, which has led it to some interesting partnerships such as a deal with Didi Kuaidi, the “Uber” of China. Today Weiner was very focused on his concept of the “economic graph,” which seems to grow in ambition every time I hear it mentioned.

“We would like for 3 billion of people to have a profile on LinkedIn,” he said. “We’d like a digital representation for every job opening. We’ll have a profile for every educational organization, and we’re developing a publishing platform for those to share knowledge to do so.”

LinkedIn’s Messenger Revamped: Introduces Chat-Like Inbox!

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network with over 300 million users has finally decided to update its long outdated messaging experience to a much better chat like user experience.

LinkedIn just introduced a new threaded-messaging experience that is much more casual than the old way, and is also aimed towards the young crowd. Chat services are clearly on the rise, and the professional social network has finally recognized the need for a better chat experience. Thread like chat experience has been greatly appreciated in networking applications. Facebook was among the most successful ones to fully utilize its potential by removing messenger from the main application and introducing a standalone Facebook messenger. After the launch of Facebook messenger for Android in 2014, the messenger has been downloaded by over 1 billion android users.

LinkedIn has long since used a boring and un-intuitive mail-like messaging features for its users to interact with each other, which is not very convenient for short conversations. But now things have changed, as the network for professionals has embraced the modern standards for social networking by being much better at messaging. The new design has a minimalistic-look and feel and has a clean and attractive look. By the looks of it, LinkedIn’s messenger looks a lot like Facebook’s Messenger for desktop browsers, and that is not a bad thing.

Along with a much better design, it also natively supports emoji and GIF images along with the usual picture and documents. The good thing about the service is that it is available to all users with or without premium. These new features are already being trickled out to all the desktop users and updates for mobile users should be hitting the app stores for Android and iOS soon enough.

Download LinkedIn for Andriod or iOS.

Reference : LinkedIn

Islam 360 as an app at its excellence!

According to Google, Zahid Hussain is the first person in the world who has made this type of Searchable Hadees project. He is an IT Consultant by profession and his keen interest in religion compelled him to carry out this extensive research work single handedly and took him around five years to come up with this amazing and easy to use Search Engine Application for holy Quran and holy Hadees.

For the ease of the users and readers, he has made the application in such a way that, not even an Hadees or topic, but even a single word from whole Sahih Bukhari can be searched and within a blink of an eye, it gives you all the references from the Holy Book.

Owing to the growing popularity of the Quran Search Engine, Zahid Hussain has been invited to several TV channels during prime time and morning shows, as well as some socio-political talk shows to promote his work and let the common man know about his work.

On 19th August,2015 (last night), he was invited in a socio-political talk show on Pakistan TV Channel. A must listen show, please go through the link below:

Zahid Hussain Interview

Design a smartphone app for NASA & Win $1500 prize money

NASA is calling all aspiring developers to build a smartwatch app for astronauts. The announcement was made over the weekend via The NASA Tournament Lab (NTL) on Freelancer.

“We (NASA) are interested in the emerging world of smartwatch technology and are looking to leverage this technology to create a smartwatch app that could be helpful to astronauts. The challenge is to design the general user interface for smartwatch applications for use on the International Space Station”, NTL wrote in the competition description on Freelancer.

NASA’s astronauts currently use laptops, tablets and iPads for communication, work and day to day tasks. According to the NTL, they want a smartwatch to assist astronauts in their tasks by providing a timeline of the past, present and future. They want the app to have the following defining features:

1. It should display an agenda view of the timeline as well as a way to easily navigate to another day in the past or future.
2. It should display color coded cautions and warnings.
3. It should tell whether or not the vehicle is currently able to communicate with the ground through either voice/video.
4. It should also have the ability to set timers for upcoming activities.

NTL is looking for all these functionalities in a single high-functioning app. It should also give appropriate feedback, innovatively displayed, for tasks which should be visible on a small Samsung Gear screen.

The deadline for the task is September 9. So, if you’re interested you have 3 weeks time. To enter the competition head on over to Freelancer.

NTL is the result of a collaboration between NASA and Freelancer. In the hopes to finding a solution, via this platform NASA is crowdsourcing some of the most complex problems faced by astronauts. However, this is not the first time NASA has opted for crowdsourcing. In May, they held the NASA Space Apps competition, which they have each year. The main aim is to find solutions that could be beneficial for not only astronauts but the people on earth.

NTL has already hosted several contests on Freelancer which you can still join. For more details, visit here.

What To Expect From The iPad Mini 4

Multiple recent leaks have indicated that Apple is working on a major new version of the iPad mini. You can expect a more powerful, thinner iPad mini, and it will let you take advantage of all the latest features in iOS 9.

Macotakara and @OnLeaks revealed that the iPad mini 4 will look like a smaller iPad Air 2. Of course, many called the iPad Air a bigger iPad mini, but the current iPad mini 3 is still a bit thicker than the iPad Air 2.

This should change as the iPad mini 4 should be 6.1mm thick (down from 7.5mm), exactly the same thickness as the iPad Air 2. In order to make the tablet thinner, Apple may switch to a fully-laminated display. Other than that, the device will be 3mm longer and the mute/rotation lock switch should disappear.

When it comes to the iPad mini 4’s computing power, 9to5mac found some interesting hints in the beta version of OS X El Capitan. Safari 9’s developer tools show how your website will look like on an iPad mini with a split view.

As a reminder, during the WWDC keynote in June, Apple introduced split-screen multitasking for the iPad in iOS 9. But there was an asterisk. While many iPads will get slide-over, letting you temporarily open another app in a drawer menu, only the iPad Air 2 will get true multitasking — if you have an iPad Air 2, you’ll be able to create a split screen and interact with two apps at the same time.

This is due to the iPad Air 2’s A8X chip and its 2GB of RAM. So today’s leak may indicate that the iPad mini will get an updated system-on-a-chip as well as more RAM, making it at least as fast as the iPad Air 2.

The current iPad mini 3 has lagged behind when it comes to specs. Last year, Apple only added a Touch ID fingerprint sensor. Everything else remained identical, from the A7 chip to the camera.

Yet, Apple wants to differentiate the iPad as much as possible from the iPhone in order to boost its tablet sales. That’s why upgrading the iPad mini to support true multi-tasking is a great differentiating factor.

Usually, Apple unveils its new tablet lineup in a dedicated event in October. But rumor has it that Apple may introduce the new iPads during the iPhone keynote, which should happen on September 9th.

Microsoft's Windows 10 begins rolling out on 29 July!

This month, Microsoft is finally releasing its long-awaited new operating system, Windows 10, featuring a new user interface, a new browser, and the return of the all-important Start menu.

The new Start menu is split in two, with a list of commonly used applications and settings on the left hand side and Windows 8-style "live tiles" on the right, optimised for touch-based computing.

The new Edge browser is aimed squarely at consumers, and includes a number of nifty features like Read Mode and Web Note, allowing users to read and interact with web pages in the way they want.

With Windows 10, there is now a button on the taskbar that gives you a zoomed-out view of all the apps you have running, and lets you select the one you want, or create multiple virtual desktops.

Micrsoft's personal assistant, Cortana, also learns about you over time, such as the music you like and the sports teams you support, and proactively highlights relevant news and information from the web.

Unlike with previous versions of the operating system, Windows 10 works across all Microsoft devices, including PCs, tablets, smartphones. The software automatically detects whether there is a keyboard attached and selects the most appropriate mode.

Read also : Why Windows 10 is the 'last' version of Windows!

Windows will be available as a free upgrade for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users from 29 July. Everyone else will have to pay $119 (£99) for Windows 10 Home and $199 (about £131) for Windows 10 Pro.

Mastercard will use Selfies as a security measure for Payment!

Mastercard, a world leader in credit cards, is looking to take advantage of selfies to help enrich your shopping experience. Credit card security is still one of the biggest problems facing the banking industry, but this new measure could help reduce fraud charges to a large extent, and give people a whole new excuse to take a selfie.

Mastercard, however, feels confident in the ability of their application being able to be used for more productive purposes. They are also considering using fingerprint and password recognition, but the company has learned from the problems faced by “Smart Unlock” on Android devices and chosen to improve upon it. Ken Munro, a security researcher at Pen Test Partners says:

“Mastercard will want this to be secure because they’re dealing with money. But there is a case for adding extra layers of security,” said Mr Munro. “If an ordinary password gets compromised you can simply revoke it or change it. What happens if your facial recognition data gets stolen? You can’t change your face.”

Mastercard is in hopes of combining the checkout / payment process by making the end user submit a selfie at the time of checkout, along with a pin code. Each security measure is not without its security flaws but combined, they go hand in hand.

“Ideally I’d like to see facial recognition used in conjunction with a Pin. Both systems have flaws, but work brilliantly when you combine them.”

Seeing how there is only a handful of smartphones that offer fingerprint sensors, Facial Recognition is definitely the best avenue for this. Most modern phones offer some top quality front camera in even budget price ranges.

Reference : RCRWireless

Smashing Stereotype: Meet the designer behind Fruit Ninja & Jetpack Joyride

Gaming zone is a NO-GO AREA for women especially in Pakistan where gender discrimination occurs behind the veil of customs and traditions. 

It’s time we break the stereotype, hence, Amna Mishal (Blogger - Digital Marketer - FB developer) reached out to the very talented Naiha Raza who is an internationally recognized digital artist. She has worked on many casual games like the popular Fruit Ninja, Blades of Battle, Order of Elements and Jetpack Joyride. All of these games have received recognition in both local and international markets. Lets have the meeting session in words of Amna Mishal as below:

I was glad to have this opportunity to sit down with a great game designer and a creative person so I peeled back the layers of experience and got down to the nitty-gritty details of the passion that ticks her inspiration. We agreed on how well women are at games both as a player and as a designer. Now, men are amazing gamers too but women are no less, they can do equally good.

Naiha’s work has been reviewed by highly acclaimed artists like Tom Woodruff Jr (the artist working on titles like Alien vs. Predator, The Terminator, Jurassic Park, Jumanji and more) from Stan Winston School of Character Arts and one of her pieces was picked up for a live drawing by the talented Artgerm (Cofounder of Imaginary Friends Studios) from Singapore. She is also working as a freelance artist for one of the highly praised magazines in the digital art industry, Imagine FX based out of London.

The story of Naiha Raza

We met over coffee at her place. Naiha is qualified as an architect from BNU, why if you must ask? She told me that she was always a creative person yet had the urge to become a scientist since she was experimental and enjoyed her lab classes. When it came down to picking a course; she chose to study architecture. From her perspective, stereotypes abound when it comes to art schools as well. People in our society have this notion that art school isn’t real work and is for students who couldn’t excel in other disciplines. There’s a misconception that painting and drawing are most definitely not as difficult as studying engineering or becoming a doctor. She indicated how there are a lot of stigmas attached to any art field in our society.

“Architecture is a combination of art & science which influenced my decision. Towards the end of my program, I realized that there was something else I enjoyed even more, which was games. I have always been a gamer girl, ever since I was a kid.”

With great enthusiasm, she continued telling me that the first game she played was an 8-bit game called Alley Cat. Interning at an architectural firm, Naiha decided to turn away from it in search for a new direction and a new career path. She tried all sorts of things, from graphic designing to web designing, but nothing really took a hold of her. One day, in a general conversation with a friend, while playing video games, it suddenly clicked her that she has good passion for gaming, could design graphics and create interactive architectural environment. This is when she started looking for a place where she could make video games. Another hardcore gamer friend told her about Caramel Tech which is a premier game development studio. “I never knew Pakistan took games so seriously, without wasting any time I sent in my resume and took a shot. In my interview, I met Saad Zaeem – CEO Caramel Tech who stated his vision regarding the company and took an exam.” Fortunately, enough she was offered a job at Caramel Tech where she began her career as a ‘Game Tester’.

“Saad is a smart level headed guy. It was sheer luck of mutual connection and somewhat how well I performed on my test which landed me to this opportunity. Caramel Tech provided an atmosphere to explore a comparatively nascent and exceedingly vibrant medium. Everyone on my team has sporadically been mentors to me. I own them a great deal for being where I am today.”

We might think that a game developer or designer just spends time having fun playing the good games. Naiha reveals how it is essential to play the not-so-good games as well.“If you want to be a good game designer you need to play the bad games first to know the ‘don’ts’. This is your core research work. You need to constantly keep looking critically of what other substitutes or rivals are developing in the industry to avoid failure and gain a competitive edge.”

Learning through inspiration

“Learning also occurs when you take inspiration from the best.” She takes most of her spur from Feng Zhu who is good with environments and Artgerm aka Stanely Lau since he is meticulous and goes into tiny details. Darken and Karl Kopinski are also amazing illustrators to learn from.

Naiha explained how game designing is a dedicated process just like any other designing progression. “It is a constant feedback loop. First off designers need to decide what the game is going to be, for instance, a car game. You need to list down details like how many cars are going to be there and what they might look like etc. Then designers conceptualize, research, build mood boards etc. Studying competition and existing games of the same genre is of highest importance. Then, it goes into production where a game is developed, it is continuously modified till desired end result is achieved.”

Future goals

Naiha strongly wishes to build a school in Pakistan where she will be able to impart all the knowledge she has gained. She sees huge potential in Pakistan’s gaming industry with companies like GeniTeam, We R Play, Caramel Tech and Top Chart games like Whacksy Taxi, Mafia Farm, Fruit Ninja and more. “These hard-core game developers need a place which offers professional courses like animation, design, illustration, and visual communication, digital painting etc. The idea is to put Pakistan in the gaming world. There are no mentors available in Pakistan, so make most of what you have. DO not miss out on your technical art classes and self-study constantly.”

Naiha concludes with an advice for all the striving girl designers, “Laugh off when people give you that look where you feel like a mythical creature. Never get discouraged, get over it. There are almost as many “gamer girls” as there are gamer boys. For some reason, female bashers seem to feel threatened by women increasingly getting into a field they incorrectly consider as male-only. To be impartial, as much as female gamers get distraught many times male gamers are bashed as well.”

From real life experience, Naiha states that sometimes it becomes difficult to convince your parents that this industry is serious business and this is a real job. “If you have the love and passion go for it. Let’s not put all the people trying to discourage you in the same band and create another stereotype, look for people who encourage you and never give up.”

Find one more blog related to her here.

Why Windows 10 is the 'last' version of Windows!

Microsoft just said in plain English what it's been talking about for months: Windows 10 will be the last major launch for the Windows platform.

Speaking at Microsoft Ignite, the company's multi-day event for connecting with the IT crowd, Jerry Nixon, one of the company's developer evangelists, broke the news.

"Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10," he said.

Microsoft is calling it quits on Windows? Um, no.

But the real meaning is almost as momentous: Windows 10 represents a shift in the way the company thinks about Windows. As several Microsoft executives have said — and inferring from all the updates to the current Windows 10 beta program — it's shifting the software to a "Windows as a service" model, as opposed to a piece of software you buy and more or less leave alone until the next model.

All this started at a moment during one of CEO Satya Nadella's early earnings calls, when he talked (a bit confusingly) about his vision for "one Windows" running across all devices. That vision came into much sharper focus when Microsoft officially unveiled Windows 10 in the fall, where the company announced a new kind of public beta program for testing the software, with direct feedback from users as well as regular updates.

Then, in the new year, Microsoft presented its Windows vision to consumers; clearly, it meant what it said about Windows 10 on all kinds of devices when it unveiled the exciting HoloLens wearable. And last week, amid the launch the latest Windows 10 beta during the Build developer conference, the company stated the software would get many feature updates even after its launched.

Now it's clear those updates will be perpetual. Windows will be, going forward, more akin to Google Chrome, which was one of the first big consumer-facing examples of software as a service, in the modern sense. For Chrome users, updates typically happen in the background and features are added or get turned on as they roll out.

Updates can even include big changes that are invisible to users. Chrome replaced its entire browser engine (from the open-source WebKit to its homegrown Blink) a couple of years back, but users didn't even notice. To them, it's still just Chrome, not Chrome 42, which is technically the current version number.

At its recent events, Microsoft has pledged Windows 10 will arrive in the summer. However, when asked about an official "release to manufacturing" RTM launch — the point in the release cycle when Microsoft sends the software to PC manufacturers — Microsoft Corporate Vice President Joe Belfiore essentially said it wouldn't be as big a deal this time around.

That's because Windows 10 won't ship with every promised feature at launch; many will be "lit up" at a later date. For example, extensions in Edge, the new browser, won't arrive until a little while after launch.

While these kind of feature updates are the norm in the app realm, for Windows, it's a big change from previous generations. Yes, the OS gets patches and bug fixes all the time, but feature upgrades are handled differently. With Windows 8, there were really only two major upgrades (Windows 8.1 and the Windows 8.1 Update), and the original release was back in 2012.

Switching to the Windows-as-a-service model is a significant change to Microsoft's business model, even more so because Windows 10 will be a free upgrade to anyone running Windows 7 or later. Traditionally, Microsoft has charged a nominal upgrade fee for existing Windows users, but now the model appears to be, "You buy once, you're in forever."

With that membership, you'll get keep getting upgrades as long as your hardware supports them. This is just like Chrome, your apps, and other operating systems like iOS operate. There will still be launch events for certain feature packs (and you can be sure the term "beta" will become more common on Windows features), but it'll all still be Windows 10. I suspect the version number will eventually fade to the background, and it'll just be referred to, colloquially, as "Windows."

In other words, Windows, as a service, will never go to 11.

Lenovo's projector phone beams a touchscreen onto any surface!

Smartphones with built-in projectors -- well, just the two from Samsung, really -- haven't exactly been a huge hit so far, but Lenovo thinks it's finally got the right use case for this combination: beaming a touchscreen or virtual keyboard onto your desk. Announced at the Lenovo Tech World conference today is the Smart Cast, the world's first smartphone with an integrated focus-free laser projector, as opposed to the DLP tech on existing pico projectors. In addition to the usual wall projection mode, there's a "surface mode" that requires twisting the projector cap at the top (to enable reflection), propping up the phone with its kickstand, and then you'll have a projected touchscreen -- be it a virtual piano, a virtual keyboard or even Fruit Ninja -- right in front of you. Alas, that's all the info we've got so far, but you can check out the pictures leaked below to stay entertained.

Vivint Launches A New Home Automation System Complete With A Tiny Doorbell Camera

Home security and automation starts and ends with the front door. It needs to keep the bad guys out yet let the good guys in without hassle. Either a system gets it right or it doesn’t, and, until now, I had yet to see a system that’s truly impressive. Meet the Vivint Sky Smart Home — a home security and automation system that offers a tantalizing glimpse into the future but is available today.

When a person approaches the door, the Vivint Sky Smart Home’s inconspicuous doorbell cam starts recording. Ring the doorbell, and the homeowner gets a live video feed (with 2-way audio) through a smartphone app or on the system’s wall panel installed in the home. If the person inputs the correct code on the deadbolt, the system disarms and performs any number of set actions from turning on lights to adjusting the climate control.

Like good technology, the experience is magical.

The Vivint Sky Smart Home is pricey but it’s more complete than anything offered by Google, Samsung or ADT.

Many have tried the new system. They say, 'It works as advertised'. The doorbell is the most impressive part of the system, too. It’s tiny, and unlike most doorbell cameras, the video doesn’t look like it was shot through a fishbowl. It takes about 8 seconds to load the live video after the phone receives the alert. Vivint tells us that within a couple of months, the camera will be able to authenticate faces and unlock the door and disarm the system within seconds.

The Vivint Sky Smart Home is a compete security system with window sensors, motion detectors, additional cameras, smart climate control, and a connected smoke detector. The system is inclusive and comprehensive, which makes it so special. Home owners and installers can pick the parts needed for each situation.

The company designed everything to work harmoniously. It’s not cobbled together or reliant on a collection of apps or online recipes to perform certain functions. The inherent downside is that everything comes from Vivint itself; a homeowner cannot buy most components at Best Buy.

Right now there are two ways to automate and secure a home. Either piece together a system, item by item, from makers such as Google, Samsung or countless startups. In this scenario the homeowner buys the items, many of which were designed independently of each other, and cobble them together into a single workable system. But there will be holes in the shield. Often homeowners are authenticated by a Bluetooth or RFID device, but what if the phone is left inside the house by accident or a child needs to gain entry?

APX Alarm Security Solutions re-branded as Vivint in February 2011 in an effort to be more than just a home security system. A year later Blackstone purchased a controlling interest in the company for $2 billion. From what I can tell, the company didn’t just change its name and get new management; it overhauled its business. The company recently opened a large tech lab in Utah and has steadily rolled out innovative products since becoming Vivint.

Vivint is not alone in its quest to expand past home security. ADT, Comcast and Verizon offer similar home automation and security systems. I’ve tried these as well and they’re comparable to Vivint’s offering prior to launching this latest platform. With the new Sky Home System, Vivint is the closest a company has come to truly automating a home in a meaningful and harmonious way. Security and authentication should not be dependent on a device or key fob. Homeowners should be able to walk up to their home and have the system unlock and disarm automatically.

Until recently, the front door was secured only by a lock and a key. Then came keypads and smart locks. The next chapter in home security will do away with everything extraneous and it seems Vivint is helping write it.