Snapdeal, India Post partner to help artisans go online

 Online marketplace Snapdeal has partnered India Post to jointly work on bringing thousands of weavers and artisans from Varanasi through its website. 

Snapdeal has launched a pilot with India Post to set-up facilitation desks at Varanasi post offices to enable local weavers to sell on its platform. 

"This is an endeavour by Snapdeal and India Post to empower local artisans, small and medium entrepreneurs to sustain their livelihood by providing a platform to popularise their indigenous products," Snapdeal CEO and co-founder Kunal Bahl told PTI. 

Through this association, weavers will be able to access the national audience by listing their products on Snapdeal, at negligible cost, he added. 

The post offices will act as a dropping point for sellers, and India Post will deliver the goods to the buyers. 

a"India has a number of unique and highly specialised art forms and weaves. However, with the fast changing fashion trends and readily available products we are losing out on this rich heritage. If we don't act now, soon the rich designs and weaves will be extinct," he said. 

Through this partnership, Snapdeal will take the Banarasi weaves to customers in all corners of the country and extend this platform to include more weavers and artisans of the country, Bahl added. 

Snapdeal will also create an 'India Post' store to feature the associated sellers exclusively. 

Besides, the City-based firm will also share its expertise in fashion and market insights with weavers to help them create designs and products, which will appeal to a variety of customers across the country, he said. 

Previously, India Post had partnered with Snapdeal to reach out to the philatelists to offer stamps priced between Rs 300 and Rs 5,500. 

India Post is world's most widely distributed postal system with over 1.54 lakh post offices all over the country.

------------------------------------------------------------Source TOI

Truecaller to set up R&D centre in India

Phone directory app Truecaller, which has nearly half of its 100 million users in India, will expand its base in the country with a research and development (R&D) centre and more marketing personnel.

Started in 2009 by Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam, the Swedish company provides with an application that helps a user search for contact information (based on name, number or address), identify incoming calls, block calls one does not want to receive, and make personal contact suggestions based on time and place.

The free mobile application shows name of the person calling to a user even if the number is not saved in the phone.

"India is a very unique market and when one starts growing in India, one can grow really fast. We have an office in Gurgaon. We will be adding more people in India next year for our marketing team", said Mamedi.

"Right now we have one person in India. We are also planning R&D centres probably in Bangalore or Pune," Mamedi told PTI here.

Truecaller, he says, is installed in around 40% of smartphones in India. The country has over an estimated 115 million smartphone subscribers, behind only China and the US.

The app in most of the phones is pre-installed including Micromax in India. The company currently has 60 employees from nearly 40 nationalities in its head office here.

"Of them four are Indians. Seventy per cent of the staff are programmers, two of them are women from India," he said. Recently Truecaller set up office in Beijing. Next year, it plans to start offices in Dubai, Sao Paulo and in Kenya.

Truecaller also runs another app, Truedialer, which offers users details of a person before the outgoing call is connected.

God's worst punishment for Rajinikanth(Tamil Hero)

According to a wire service agency IANS, superstar Rajinikanth found romancing his leading lady in Lingaa quite tough. Talking about it in his inimitable style, Rajinikanth said that even when he faced the camera for the first time ever in his career he wasn't as nervous as he was when shooting duets with Sonakshi.

Speaking at the audio launch of Lingaa's Telugu version in Hyderabad, Rajini said, "The worst punishment god can give actors like me who are in their 60s is to sing duets. I found shooting duets with Sonakshi more challenging than doing stunts atop a moving train in the film."

He further went on to add, "Even in my first film, I didn't feel so nervous as much as I did when I had to romance her. I've known Sonakshi as a baby, and she has grown up together with my daughters," he said.

Flipkart - one of world's 5 biggest tech startups

The investment in India's e-commerce sector, which is projected to grow seven-fold to $22 billion by 2018, adds to QIA's spree of acquisitions. QIA has investments in Tiffany, Barclays, Credit Suisse and a $1.2 billion stake in India's biggest mobile phone carrier Bharti Airtel.

A Flipkart spokesperson offered no comments at the time of going to press.

This is Flipkart's third fund-raise this calendar, taking the year's total mop-up to $2 billion. The domestic e-commerce leader, which is battling Amazon in an intense marketplace rivalry, has projected a $4-billion revenue run rate by March next year.

Have Intel and Microsoft Determined the Fountain of Corporate Youth?

Both Microsoft and Intel are listening to their partners and actually responding. The products coming to market reflect the fact that, once again, they both care about the people who build their components into products. In the past, OEMs complained that Microsoft blew them off, and Intel just told them what they were going to get. Now, they are striving to keep them happy and successful.

is has been an interesting quarter. After Andy Grove left, Intel often seemed to struggle with its place in the world and seemed at odds with the computing OEMs. Now, though, it seems more and more like it did when it was 20 years younger. It's not alone, either. Microsoft, which seemed to have forgotten why there were OEMs in the first place for the last 15 or 20 years, suddenly is acting much more like the firm we knew in the early 90s.

It feels like these companies have discovered the corporate fountain of youth, and a lot of the credit goes to both firms' new leadership.

I'll explore that phenomenon this week and close with my product of the week: a cool little Windows 8.1 convertible tablet in the US$200 price range. Yep, you heard right, $200 price range. This legitimately could be called a "Chromebook killer."

The Problems

One problem for both Intel and Microsoft was the incredible amount of power and market dominance both firms achieved. It clearly made the firms think they were invulnerable, and many of the folks working for them just didn't seem to think users or customers really mattered, except in the abstract.

Another problem was the age of the companies. The founders wandered off to do other things, and those that replaced them became more and more focused on internal politics and making sure that the other employees didn't outshine them. (I often have lunch with the employees who worked at Intel in the 1980s and early 90s.)

Likely at the core of the internal problems was a practice out of GE, called "forced ranking," that spread like a virus. It effectively destroyed collaboration and often has been cited as one of the primary reasons behind Microsoft's fall.

Compounding the problems was the executive leadership that followed, which seemed to lose track of what made each company great and focused on other things like selling to enterprises and keeping financial analysts happy.

These are all endemic problems that seem to happen to companies as they age -- particularly those that become dominant. They likely go to the heart of why companies that are dominant one decade are often not dominant by the end of the next decade, and why many eventually fail.

What Changed?

Competition likely had the biggest impact. Intel faced a massive influx from ARM vendors that created the impression that Intel was out of date and obsolete when it came to mobile devices. Microsoft faced a revitalized Apple, and Google came from nowhere to shift Microsoft's image from the company that couldn't be beat to the company that couldn't win.

Microsoft killed forced ranking and Intel basically had a "come to Jesus" moment when the different parts of the firm were brought together more tightly. The end result is that both firms appear to be working far better as companies then they have been for decades.

Both brought in people who seemed to have a better sense of what was needed. The biggest change occurred with Steve Ballmer's replacement. It likely should be said more often, but technology firms need to be led by subject matter experts. In fact, I expect this rule can be applied to all industries, because a CEO who doesn't have a fundamental understanding of how the product is built won't have a good understanding of which key internal decisions need to be made.

The Result

I just finished meeting with a number of the PC OEMs, and as we ramp up to Christmas, I've been looking deeply into the products in market. The OEMs report that their relationships with Intel and Microsoft are reminiscent of the old days (well, at least the folks who were around back then report this). Both firms are listening and actually responding to what they hear. The products coming to market reflect the fact that, once again, they both care about the people who build their components into products.

In the past, these OEMs complained that Microsoft blew them off, and Intel just told them what they were going to get. Now, there are real efforts to find ways to keep them happy and successful.

OEMs now are complaining more about Google, which seems to have the attitude that since they get Android and Chrome for free, they should just shut up and take what they are given. That attitude has many of them wanting to work more with Microsoft. Also, with Apple hooking up with IBM, both Microsoft and the OEMs are interested in finding ways to keep that powerful partnership from gaining more traction. A common enemy can do wonders for any alliance.

In market, we have some rather nice -- for the price -- under-$200 laptop products this Christmas, and an increasing number of very cost-effective under $100 tablets that use technologies from both companies. However, the best is yet to come.

Wrapping Up: Windows 10 and 2015

I've been testing Windows 10 for some time now, and it effectively eliminates all the things users found most annoying in Windows 8. Easier to use, it runs far better on lower-end hardware -- and we are mostly looking at just the plumbing now. The good stuff is yet to come. PC hardware is getting far more power-efficient, far cheaper and, in many cases, far better than we have seen before. This will become more evident when you see the hardware delivered with Windows 10.

Wrapped with ever-more-capable applications that run in the cloud, we should see a far less annoying, far more productive, far more capable, and far more attractive set of products, showcasing mobile offerings that have far more battery life. There is a chance we'll even see some of the excitement that used to define this industry -- and that truly would be a return to the good old days.

The One Really Important Apple Watch Thing

While the cellphone, with its constantly updated and accurate clock, nearly killed the wristwatch, the Apple Watch gizmo actually will revive it. In fact, I think the attention that the Apple Watch will bring to our wrists will spark sales of traditional watches. Why? I believe there is a latent desire to have a wristwatch -- to have the convenience of the time on your wrist without the need to pull out your smartphone and ignore the world around you. I think -- hope -- that the Apple Watch actually will lead people to slow down the movement of hand to pocket and pocket to face. Look Who's Here Right now, we're constantly engaging with people around the world through screens, but utterly ignoring those next us -- even our families. We check our weather apps before we think to look at the sky. Walk through a college campus, a park, a school -- and the dominant posture is of a human looking at a smartphone. A wristwatch, though, is somehow more rooted in the here and now, as well as in the past -- was it a gift? Yet watches also speak to the future. A sense of when. A reminder about when you'll be doing your next thing. The clock on a smartphone doesn't command this same effect. Maybe this is too subtle for a generation of kids, but I'm not so sure. Watches are part style, part talisman, part getting dressed for the day and having a broader awareness of what you're doing -- not what you're messing with on a bright and shiny screen. I am certain that some men, for instance, will look at the soft and gentle curves of the Apple Watch, at the bouncy emoticons, at the gentle bands, and instead will turn to a more traditional watch. They will choose a watch that is not smart -- one that is utterly utilitarian. They will choose one that has been crafted and created to exist as a watch and nothing more. Personally, I'm a huge Apple fan, and I'm already on the lookout for a watch that is not an Apple Watch. I'll know it when I see it. Surges vs. Throbs Meanwhile, something else is going on with the Apple Watch, and I'll end up buying one because of my job. Sure, I might have to replace the softly pretty bands with one that I have to hand-forge from barbed wire, but I'll buy one -- and I'll attempt to use it in all of its high-maintenance gotta-charge-it-every night way. That's because it's the real beginning of something radically new. So what is radically new? What is the innovation that truly matters? It's not Apple Pay through a watch. It's not tickets and passes through a watch. It's not maps on your wrist with turn-by-turn vibration directions. The most important thing doesn't have anything to do with HealthKit or the Health app or how many stairs you climb in a day. It won't even be the ability to monitor blood sugar, or access health or sickness indicators through your skin. The most important catalyst to come out of Cupertino will be communication. It has to do with bringing humans closer together through touch -- Apple's so-called Taptic Engine will be key. The Taptic Engine produces haptic feedback through taps and vibrations. The duration and strength of taps and vibrations will produce different kinds of recognizable sensations for different kinds of activities. If you press down on the display, you can feel the Apple Watch react. If you turn the Digital Crown in a particular app, you can feel something aligned with the action you're performing on the screen in an app. Apple has combined different kinds of engagement with subtle audio cues, too. It's this sort of haptic engagement that might keep a good many people from ditching their exercise efforts, for instance. Today, many people who buy fitness bands abandon them within weeks. If your fitness apps communicate through touch and vibrant sound, the Apple Watch has the potential to create sustainable habits. Think Pavlov's dogs for humans or Charles Duhigg and The Power of Habit. It has danger, of course, because walking by a Starbucks could produce a special little tickle and result in a surprising price on a new seasonal cup of coffee that then rewards you with a blast of sugar and caffeine. Pretty soon your coffee habit is even more powerfully connected to your life. Still, where there is darkness, there also is light. Communication. Apple is trying hard to turn the Apple Watch into a device people use to communicate with in intimate ways. The ability to send your throbbing heartbeat to a loved one is a good example of that -- at once cheesy and stupid... until your wife is laying in bed in a hospital far away while you're back at home taking children to soccer and struggling to keep the kids engaged with homework. This sense of remote touch has the power to connect us far more intimately than FaceTime, far more intimately than text and multimedia messages. Apple's little drawings that you can send to another Apple Watch user are silly right now, but what about in a few years, when you might be able to run your finger over the wrist band and send the feeling to your spouse while you're working late at night yet again? What if you could squeeze your wrist so your son could feel it before a big event while you're traveling on business? We are so far apart these days, and the Apple Watch will be a catalyst to bring us closer together. Love and Then Some Enough with the love, right -- there's far more at play with communication than simply missing someone. Imagine how Apple's Taptic Engine could be used to create sensations at a concert. You already can feel the energy in the air and sometimes the music itself, but what if you could feel the beat more directly, in tune with your eyes and ears? What if you go to a NASCAR race and can feel the thrum of your favorite driver's engine as the car dives into corners and throttles out to pass? What if your favorite hockey player's stick sent tactile feedback to thousands of fans as it tapped and controlled the puck before a powerful goal shot? Tap tap tap, the defense is raging, and BAM -- the goal shot. The Apple Watch is the start of feeling what fans are already seeing. This sort of immersive communication is far from the masses right now, but the Apple Watch will become the most important catalyst. At some point, a scary movie is going to reach out and touch viewers -- even in the comfort of their own homes -- to ratchet up the suspense. The key isn't retrofitting entire stadiums or movie theaters with vibrating chairs. It'll come from developers and the Apple app ecosystem, and the size of the Apple Watch market will become the least common denominator that will drive the experience and potential for profit

Is Open Source an Open Invitation to Hack Webmail Encryption?

"When you have a lot more people using something day to day, developers are more inclined to work on it," said Cameron Camp, a senior researcher at Eset. "When you have lots of interested people looking at the code, that usually makes for better code than a team working in private that don't know what they don't know."

In a move influenced by Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA's email snooping, Yahoo and Google last week announced that they were cooperating on end-to-end encrypting their webmail products.

"We will release source code this fall so that the open source community can help us refine the experience and hunt for bugs," said Yahoo Chief Information Security Officer John Stamos.

While the open source approach to software development has proven its value over and over again, the idea of opening up the code for security features to anyone with eyeballs still creates anxiety in some circles. Such worries are ill-founded, though.

One concern about opening up security code to anyone is that anyone will include the NSA, which has a habit of discovering vulnerabilities and sitting on them so it can exploit them at a later time. Such discoveries shouldn't be a cause of concern, argued Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP, the encryption scheme Yahoo and Google will be using for their webmail.

"If someone does find a bug and sits on it, someone else will find the same bug and not sit on it," he told TechNewsWorld. "That's why you want to have a lot of people looking at the code."

Assume Nothing Secret

Although secrecy and crypto systems are commonly believed to go hand in hand, Zimmerman maintains that's not the case at all. "You have to assume your opponent has the source code," he said, "but you don't care who else knows it. The only thing that you have to keep secret is the private key."

In a system like PGP, there's a public key -- which anyone can hold -- and a private key -- which only you hold. Messages scrambled with the public key can only be unscrambled with the private key paired to it.

"Open source has been how we create good crypto for a long time," Zimmerman noted. "PGP source code has been published since I released it in 1991. How do you expect people to trust it unless they can see for themselves that there are no backdoors?"

However, an open source project is only as good as the community that forms around it.

"When you have a lot more people using something day to day, developers are more inclined to work on it," Cameron Camp, a senior researcher at Eset, told TechNewsWorld.

"When you have lots of interested people looking at the code, that usually makes for better code than a team working in private that don't know what they don't know," he added.

GE appoints Munesh Makhija as MD of India technology centre

GE appointed Munesh Makhija as managing director of GE India Technology Center and chief technology officer of GE India effective immediately. 

Makhija succeeds Gopichand Katragadda, who is joining Tata Sons. 

Makhija, who will be based at the John F Welch Technology Center in Bangalore, will lead GE's R&D efforts in India and carry forward the technology legacy of the centre, the company said in a statement. 

"Under Gopichand Katragadda's leadership, we have successfully been able to position the GE India Technology Center as an asset for the company, developing technologies to improve the quality of life in India and the world," GE senior vice president and chief technology officer Mark Little said. 

Google celebrates Father’s Day with a doodle

Google has marked Father's Day with a doodle that also continues the internet search titan's celebration of the Fifa World Cup. 

Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June every year in India, as well as in several other countries. It is celebrated to mark fatherhood, the bond of a father with his children as well the influence of fathers in a society. 

The doodle by Google depicts a father holding his son's hand as they go watch a football match; the son is holding a football in his right hand. The father and son are portrayed by the two 'Os' in the Google logo.

Computers replace humans reading weather reports

Two outpost offices of the National Weather Service in Alaska are finally ending what has been a bygone practice for most of the nation for almost two decades — using real human voices in radio forecast broadcasts. 

The Nome and Kodiak offices are switching to computerized voices that nationally go by the names of Tom, Donna and, in some parts of the country, Spanish-speaking Javier. It's an idea first hatched in the mid-1990s as part of a move to modernize the weather service, an agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

Local weather forecasts are a big deal to many people in Alaska because, more than in some other parts of the United States, the forecasts can be a matter of life and death. The forecasts are broadcast on NOAA's weather radio network. 

In Nome and Kodiak, weather reports are crucial for many because of the severe weather that can affect fishing vessels in far-flung regions, including the Bering Sea (think of the violent storms on the cable television show "The Deadliest Catch") and the Gulf of Alaska. 

Knowing what the weather will do is also extremely important to pilots and passengers needing to get to larger cities. Kodiak is on an island, and Nome is on the western coast with no roads to link it to another major Alaska hub city. 

The weather forecasts are so important that they are also broadcast over radio stations in Nome, including KNOM, which first reported the changes. 

The Nome office briefly activated the technology this week through the Fairbanks office, one of three forecast offices in Alaska. Other smaller outpost offices scattered throughout the state have already gone the digital voice route. 

A technological kink, however, prompted the Nome office to go back to local weather service employees reading the forecasts until the problem is rectified in the near future, officials said. 

It's a job that meteorological technician Robert Murders dreaded when he first moved to Nome, an old gold rush town about 550 miles northwest of Anchorage. Then he got to enjoy reading the forecasts. He was watching the Discovery Channel reality show, "Bering Sea Gold," last season when he heard one of his own broadcasts in the background. 

"That was kind of cool," Murders said. 

But he also recognizes the speed and efficiency of using the automated voices, which are updated immediately, even if no one is in the office. 

There is no target date for making the switch at the service office in Kodiak, located on the island of the same name. Angel Corona, with the weather service's data-acquisition branch in Anchorage, said work is underway to patch that office with the Anchorage forecast office for the broadcasts. 

The Nome and Kodiak offices are being brought into the digital-voice era as part of a national initiative involving improvements to the system, Corona said. Alaska is the only state that still has such smaller outposts, while similar offices were closed long ago in the lower 48. 

Other sites to be converted later to digital voices are in the US territories of Guam, American Samoa and Northern Mariana islands, officials said. 

Wherever the digital voices are deployed, they can be customized to pronounce locations accurately. 

Tom, Donna and Javier are a huge improvement over the first voice introduced so long ago. There was some dissatisfaction with that voice, dubbed Paul, who sounded like a Scandinavian robot. The voices used today have been better received. 

"It sounds pretty good," Corona said. "It sounds like a computer, but you can understand it." 

That's all that matters to Lucas Stotts, the Nome harbormaster. That and getting weather updates as quickly and accurately as possible, he said. 

Besides, he said, some humans read those reports in monotone voices anyway. 

Security enthusiasts seek revival of TrueCrypt encryption tool

A team of security experts may seek to restore and improve a popular computer encryption system after its developers mysteriously shut it down, claiming "unfixed security issues," a leader of the effort told Reuters. 

TrueCrypt, one of a number of programmes that encrypt all of a user's hard drive, had gained popularity after fugitive former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden praised it and law enforcement officials complained of their inability to crack it. 

The software's code has been publicly available for years, but its developers have not spoken publicly and their true identities are unclear. After Snowden's revelations, supporters contributed some $70,000 to an effort to verify the security of the code. 

TrueCrypt had passed the earliest testing, so it shocked many technologists when the TrueCrypt website recently announced it would discontinue encryption support and urged users to move to rival software. 

"WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues," the notice said."You should migrate any data encrypted by TrueCrypt to encrypted disks or virtual disk images." 

Speculation has mounted over the cause of the reversal, with some suggesting that the developers had tired of the decade-long project and others guessing that US authorities had demanded a back-door key from the programmers, as happened with anonymous email provider Lavabit. 

As that debate raged, an audit team funded by the $70,000 was preparing to announce that it would continue its quest to determine the security of TrueCrypt and would seek to fix legal issues with the license to the code, said Matthew Green, a Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor helping lead the effort. 

If the license issues are resolved, the group could continue to develop and improve the software, though Green said "we're not going to commit to a `fork' yet." A fork is a split in development, where code can be steered in a new direction. 

Super-Capacitor : Breakthrough in battery technology could fully charge a cellphone in minutes

The supercapacitor, also known as ultracapacitor or double-layer capacitor, differs from a regular capacitor in that it has a very high capacitance. A capacitor stores energy by means of a static charge as opposed to an electrochemical reaction. Applying a voltage differential on the positive and negative plates charges the capacitor. This is similar to the buildup of electrical charge when walking on a carpet. Touching an object releases the energy through the finger.

We group capacitors into three family types and the most basic is the electrostatic capacitor, with a dry separator. This capacitor has a very low capacitance and is used to filter signals and tune radio frequencies. The size ranges from a few pico-farad (pf) to low microfarad (uF). The next member is the electrolytic capacitor, which is used for power filtering, buffering and coupling. Rated in microfarads (uF), this capacitor has several thousand times the storage capacity of the electrostatic capacitor and uses a moist separator. The third type is the supercapacitor, rated in farads, which is again thousands of times higher than the electrolytic capacitor. The supercapacitor is ideal for energy storage that undergoes frequent charge and discharge cycles at high current and short duration.

Faradis a unit of capacitance named after the English physicist Michael Faraday. One farad stores one coulomb of electrical charge when applying one volt. One microfaradis one million times smaller than a farad, and one pico-farad is again one million times smaller than the microfarad.

Engineers at General Electric first experimented with the electric double-layer capacitor, which led to the development of an early type of supercapacitor in 1957. There were no known commercial applications then. In 1966, Standard Oil rediscovered the effect of the double-layer capacitor by accident while working on experimental fuel cell designs. The company did not commercialize the invention but licensed it to NEC, which in 1978 marketed the technology as “supercapacitor” for computer memory backup. It was not until the 1990s that advances in materials and manufacturing methods led to improved performance and lower cost.

The modern supercapacitor is not a battery per se but crosses the boundary into battery technology by using special electrodes and electrolyte. Several types of electrodes have been tried and we focus on the double-layer capacitor (DLC) concept. It is carbon-based, has an organic electrolyte that is easy to manufacture and is the most common system in use today.

All capacitors have voltage limits. While the electrostatic capacitor can be made to withstand high volts, the supercapacitor is confined to 2.5–2.7V. Voltages of 2.8V and higher are possible but they would reduce the service life. To achieve higher voltages, several supercapacitors are connected in series. This has disadvantages. Serial connection reduces the total capacitance, and strings of more than three capacitors require voltage balancing to prevent any cell from going into over-voltage. This is similar to the protection circuit in lithium-ion batteries.

The specific energy of the supercapacitor is low and ranges from 1 to 30Wh/kg. Although high compared to a regular capacitor, 30Wh/kg is one-fifth that of a consumer Li-ion battery. The discharge curve is another disadvantage. Whereas the electrochemical battery delivers a steady voltage in the usable power band, the voltage of the supercapacitor decreases on a linear scale from full to zero voltage. This reduces the usable power spectrum and much of the stored energy is left behind. Consider the following example.

Take a 6V power source that is allowed to discharge to 4.5V before the equipment cuts off. With the linear discharge, the supercapacitor reaches this voltage threshold within the first quarter of the cycle and the remaining three-quarters of the energy reserve become unusable. A DC-to-DC converter could utilize some of the residual energy, but this would add to the cost and introduce a 10 to 15 percent energy loss. A battery with a flat discharge curve, on the other hand, would deliver 90 to 95 percent of its energy reserve before reaching the voltage threshold. Table 1 compares the supercapacitor with a typical Li-ion.

Function	Supercapacitor	Lithium-ion (general)
Charge time Cycle life Cell voltage Specific energy (Wh/kg) Specific power (W/kg) Cost per Wh Service life (in vehicle) Charge temperature Discharge temperature	1–10 seconds 1 million or 30,000h 2.3 to 2.75V 5 (typical) Up to 10,000 $20 (typical) 10 to 15 years –40 to 65°C (–40 to 149°F) –40 to 65°C (–40 to 149°F)	10–60 minutes 500 and higher 3.6 to 3.7V 100–200 1,000 to 3,000 $0.50-$1.00 (large system) 5 to 10 years 0 to 45°C (32°to 113°F) –20 to 60°C (–4 to 140°F)

Table 1: Performance comparison between supercapacitor and Li-ion

Courtesy of Maxwell Technologies, Inc.

Rather than operating as a stand-alone energy storage device, supercapacitors work well as low-maintenance memory backup to bridge short power interruptions. Supercapacitors have also made critical inroads into electric powertrains. The virtue of ultra-rapid charging and delivery of high current on demand makes the supercapacitor an ideal candidate as a peak-load enhancer for hybrid vehicles, as well as fuel cell applications.

The charge time of a supercapacitor is about 10 seconds. The charge characteristic is similar to an electrochemical battery and the charge current is, to a large extent, limited by the charger. The initial charge can be made very fast, and the topping charge will take extra time. Provision must be made to limit the initial current inrush when charging an empty supercapacitor. The supercapacitor cannot go into overcharge and does not require full-charge detection; the current simply stops flowing when the capacitor is full.

The supercapacitor can be charged and discharged virtually an unlimited number of times. Unlike the electrochemical battery, which has a defined cycle life, there is little wear and tear by cycling a supercapacitor. Nor does age affect the device, as it would a battery. Under normal conditions, a supercapacitor fades from the original 100 percent capacity to 80 percent in 10 years. Applying higher voltages than specified shortens the life. The supercapacitor functions well at hot and cold temperatures.

The self-discharge of a supercapacitor is substantially higher than that of an electrostatic capacitor and somewhat higher than the electrochemical battery. The organic electrolyte contributes to this. The stored energy of a supercapacitor decreases from 100 to 50 percent in 30 to 40 days. A nickel-based battery self-discharges 10 to 15 percent per month. Li-ion discharges only five percent per month.

Supercapacitors are expensive in terms of cost per watt. Some design engineers argue that the money for the supercapacitor would better be spent on a larger battery. We need to realize that the supercapacitor and chemical battery are not in competition; rather they are different products serving unique applications.Table 2 summarizes the advantages and limitations of the supercapacitor.

Advantages	Virtually unlimited cycle life; can be cycled millions of time High specific power; low resistance enables high load currents Charges in seconds; no end-of-charge termination required Simple charging; draws only what it needs; not subject to overcharge Safe; forgiving if abused Excellent low-temperature charge and discharge performance
Limitations	Low specific energy; holds a fraction of a regular battery Linear discharge voltage prevents using the full energy spectrum High self-discharge; higher than most batteries Low cell voltage; requires serial connections with voltage balancing High cost per watt

Table 2: Advantages and limitations of supercapacitors

jv16 PowerTools 2014 released!

New PowerTools 2014 software delivers over 20% improved benchmark scores and Windows startup times

With its super charged system cleaning engine, the new jv16 PowerTools 2014 software improves performance and cleans errors from Windows-based systems with ease. The 2014 version was released alongside a benchmark studywhich revealed that this latest edition reduces system startup time from an average of 100 seconds to 47 seconds. The study also shows that the program increases the PCMark 7 benchmark score from 1166 points to 1472 points.

“PowerTools 2014 delivers epic results,” said Jouni Flemming, lead developer at Macecraft Software. “Instead of focusing too much on adding new features, we took all the things that were great in the 2013 edition – speed, safety and accuracy – and made them better. And to back everything up, we ran benchmarks to actually show everyone what this product can do.”

We took all the things that were great in the 2013 edition – speed, safety and accuracy – and made them better. And to back everything up, we ran benchmarks to actually show everyone what this product can do. PowerTools 2014 delivers epic results!

The main changes included in the 2014 version are:

• Supercharged new system cleaning engine that will clear more junk from your system than ever before.
• Improved ability of the Registry Cleaner and the Clean and Fix My Computer tools to remove protected and locked registry data and files. And if they do fail to remove data, they will automatically set up the data to be removed during the next system restart.
• Addition of a new feature in the Software Uninstaller called Forced Uninstall. This will perform a software uninstallation on system restart to allow complete removal of even the nastiest software. If this feature cannot uninstall software, probably nothing can!
• Clean and Fix My Computer can now set up a Registry Compact to be performed during the next system restart.
• Highly improved new software leftover detection engine introduced in the Software Uninstaller.
• Hundreds of small fixes, performance tweaks and user interface improvements!

A fully functional 60-day free version of jv16 PowerTools 2014 is available for immediate download. This version is not feature limited in any way. It can be downloaded from: http://www.macecraft.com/download/jv16-powertools-2014/

Supported operating systems include: Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 2000. The product fully supports both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows.

Installation instructions: Install jv16 PowerTools 2014 to a new directory, or uninstall the previous version first. Do not install over any previous version of PowerTools.

Program ships with the following languages: English, Czech, Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

Pricing: The price for new customers is only $29.95. Customers who bought the 2013 version in August 2013 or later are entitled to a free upgrade (your existing license will work with the new version). Customers who have previously bought any product from Macecraft are entitled to upgrade at a discounted price of $5.95. To buy at the discounted upgrade price, please go to: http://www.macecraft.com/upgrade-pt2014/. jv16 PowerTools 2014 is a free upgrade for all Platinum VIP license owners.

iOS 8, OS X 10.10 Release Date, Details: New Apple Software Should Be Unveiled in June 2014

The iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 should be launched in June 2014.

Apple announced that the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2014, which is Apple’s annual event for software developers for iOS and OS X products, is set to take place from June 2-6.

Given that the revamped iOS 7 software and OS X Mavericks update were revealed at last year’s WWDC, and that past iterations of the event revolved around Apple’s software products, it is likely that the new iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 will be unveiled at WWDC 201

iOS 8 is expected to look visually similar to iOS 7. Siri and Apple Maps should be upgraded, and there will be a handful of new features, such as HealthBook and split-screen multitasking for the iPad.

The HealthBook fits Apple’s new strategy of focusing on health and fitness. 9to5Mac has speculated that the HealthBook app will be able to monitor and store fitness statistics such as steps taken, calories burned, and miles walked.

Meanwhile, split-screen multitasking is a feature that Apple users have been requesting for a while. Such a feature would allow users to open multiple apps on a screen for simultaneous usage, which makes multitasking much more convenient. Currently, iOS users can only open and use one app at a time, a software limitation that Microsoft has pointed out in its Surface tablet ad.

Little is known of the upcoming Mavericks update. GottaBeMobilespeculates that OS X 10.10 will see an iOS 7-like redesign.