Blue Bugle: Mobile, Desktop & Web Technologies

Have you noticed our PDF documents appearing on some of our blog posts? I create a PDF file (which may be a public speech or any other important document available in the public domain) and I upload that PDF to a storage service. I then make the file available in a blog post by embedding a specific piece of code. In this post, let me tell you ways you can embed PDF and by extension other files (spreadsheets, presentations, etc.) on your blog. Let me make a riveting thrilling story from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle available to you through a PDF embedded file on this post. As a first step, if your document is not in the PDF format, you need to convert it. You can use any of the freely available PDF converters out there. Some popular PDF printers are CutePDF , BullZip Printer , PDF Creator , etc. Once you have the PDF file ready, you can use any of these services to get it uploaded—Slideshare.net or a cloud storage service  like Google Drive or Dropbox. Slideshare Method Slideshare ...

All the time, these companies out there, Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and what not, come up with miscalculated product innovations and in some cases plain gaffes, and in the end, they end up apologizing to their customers for their mistakes. Let’s look at a few of the famous apologies in this post. We are not targeting regular apologies due to natural product failures, but outright gaffes and arrogant wrongdoings that caused companies to apologize. Apple iPhone, the Original & Its Price In 2007, Apple released its groundbreaking product, the iPhone for the first time and they set its price at 600 dollars. It should be noted that Apple iPhone became one of the hottest selling products in history, thanks to Apple fans that run into billions. Within two months, Steve Jobs, the deceased former CEO of Apple, slashed the price of iPhone from 600 to 400. The millions and millions who purchased iPhone for 600 dollars stood with gaping mouths and fingers up their brain. They fel...

WCIT (World Conference on International Telecommunications) is about to be held in Dubai, from 3rd to 14th of December, 2012. Next month, this conference, held by ITU (The International Telecommunications Union), a body of the United Nations, is widely believed to spell the end of the free Internet as we know it. Is there truth to this? Google firmly disagrees  this move by ITU and WCIT. Facebook should disagree as well, and so should YouTube! What is going on really? There are proposals in WCIT that may be passed and if done could cause catastrophic effects on online business as we know it. Three fourth of 193 participants (country governments) of the current ITU WCIT should agree on the proposals to make them official. The first edition of the conference was held in Melbourne in 1988, and it made the Internet that we know today—an entity not ruled by anyone anywhere in the world, a place where people have the freedom of speech and innovation. The new conference received a n...

If you are holding your Apple’s new iPhone 5, the latest entrant of Apple’s products, you may be wondering how slick and vibrantly modern the device is. iPhone 5, just as any Apple product, is designed like a next generation device and manufactured with the precision of a Rolex. Many have wondered why iPhone is so luxurious. Why is Apple iPhone so expensive? Only the details of the parts that make up the smartphone will reveal why it is so costly. In this edition of Blue Bugle, let’s look at the parts of iPhone 5 and see what each costs. iFixit has recently torn down the iPhone and studied its parts. A market research firm, iSuppli has published the details of various parts of iPhone with its price. The breakdown is as follows: the component Details 16 GB model 32 GB model 64 GB model The Touchscreen display 4 inch LCD IPS display panel $44 $44 $44 Memory (Flash storage memory) NAND Flash internal storage $10.4 $20.8 $41.6 Main memory 1 GB (LPDDR) RAM $10.4...

Doesn’t it look quite so difficult to believe if someone offered you cloud storage for hundreds of gigabytes absolutely free? Symform  is a cloud storage company that offers exactly that. You have to pay no money to get cloud storage from Symform; all you pay them is extra storage space available on your computer. Symform has created this revolutionary idea of storing others’ files right on your computer as a means of networked storage (which is known as cooperative storage cloud). I have got questions in my inbox from people asking whether this is really true or if any scam is involved. It seemed to most too good to be true. Let’s look at the details in this post. The Basic Idea It’s an interesting idea. Let’s assume you need 10 GB of cloud storage. To get that 10 GB free, you have to sign up with Symform and allocate 20 GB from your computer for the Symform network. That is a 2:1 ratio that you have to maintain. Symform takes twice the amount of space you need in cloud fr...

So, here it is: Android is an operating system (the software) that runs on a phone, and phone is just your regular smartphone. Now in detail… You know, even if something becomes insanely popular there will always be people asking what it is… Last week someone told me that they heard about a new company called ‘Google’ and the big thing about it was that it makes mobile phones. ‘Maybe made-in-china type dimwit phones,’ that someone told me. A lot of the phone users out there (smartphone users and regular mobile phone users) are readers of this blog. In that case, most people assume that people know what Android is, what iOS is, and so on. However, there are people who are new to this industry and are always wondering what these mobile technologies really are? Here is an introductory post into Google’s Android operating system telling you exactly what an Android phone is. In order for a phone to work, it needs hardware as well as software. Without software, a smartphone is essen...

If you are using the Internet Explorer, Office Excel, True Type Fonts, IIS, or the now out-of-date Windows Briefcase, your computer may be subjected to security attacks. No sooner has Microsoft released its Windows 8 and RT versions than the security flaws of this OS were revealed. At the beginning of this month, Microsoft’s Security TechCenter  revealed the possible security flaws on Windows 8 and has released necessary patches. Here is what you need to do to immediately secure your Windows computer. If you wish to get notifications on any of the latest Windows security issues, subscribe to this newsletter . Most of these issues cause ‘remote code execution’ that helps an attacker, such as a hacker or a virus, work on your system like it belongs to him. On computers, the attack by a virus occurs when you start a program, and this program is an executable file (one with the file extension .exe or .dll in some other cases). When a program is executing on your computer, i...

Apple, in the beginning of the year, created its own maps application, Apple Maps that proved to be a fiasco. It was riddled with mistakes—missing areas, low-quality pictures, poor choice of colors, incorrect information, etc. It has been a tremendous shame to an innovative company like Apple. After its decision to create a map to provide better navigation to its customers, Apple probably had too little time to develop a full-fledged application from ground up (despite the fact that there was Apple Maps since the first iPhone, they decided to create Maps from the ground up). A few days ago, Apple CEO, Tim Cook apologized  to the customers regarding the inferior mapping tool. What Is Wrong With Apple Maps? A lot is wrong with Apple Maps. Here are a few gaffes: Ireland’s BreakingNews.ie reported this: Airfield House is a farmland in Dublin, Ireland, and Apple Maps identifies this as an airport. BBC has reported: Search for Manchester United Football Club, and you will b...

You have been hearing a lot about Long Term Evolution (LTE) these days, haven’t you? From AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and other carriers, there are a lot of LTE smartphones today. This is 4G mobile broadband service promising data speeds of nearly 200 mbps, much greater than the current infrastructure allows. And this may be the reason why the US government has based its nation-wide broadband network known as Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN) on LTE. NPSBN uses LTE technology in order to keep the people of the country secure. However, there is a recent filing done by Virginia Tech Wireless [[wireless.vt.edu]] to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) that informs how unsafe and prone to attack an LTE system could be. Find the filing here: Virginia Tech's response to FirstNet NOI provided by Blue Bugle As soon as the file has been released, it has gained the attention from blogosphere on technology. This is something we f...

QR code is a type of two dimensional code. Haven’t you seen barcodes on products that you purchase from a supermarket? These one dimensional codes contain a small bit of information identifying the particular product. They are called UPC (Universal Product Code). These codes can contain only a limited amount of info up to 20 characters or so. When information such as a website address, a small text description, an image, etc., had to be stored, we needed better barcodes, thus the two dimensional codes came about. QR code, also known as Quick Response code, is one of the most widely used 2-D codes. QR code was invented by a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan called Denso that manufactured automobile equipment for Toyota and other manufacturers. It is interesting to note that the QR code was invented by them for quick scanning of such items as car air conditioners, windshield wipers, horns, airbags, etc. Later on, the technology became known far and wide and manufact...

Page 1 -   Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4 My readers have been asking me around about the company known far and wide as Microsoft and how it came to be the top-most in computer technology. I thought it apt to make a post here detailing the story of Microsoft through its developmental stages. Two tech geeks, Paul Allen and Bill Gates, both dropouts from their respective universities, have managed to create this giant in computer software. Here it is, the history of Microsoft as a software company. I found a lot of information published by Wikipedia and other such sites to be wrong. I have managed to get the dates and events as accurately as possible here. The story of Microsoft begins when Popular Electronics published an article about the first personal computer. The First Year—1975 January 1 st 1975: The advertisement of the first ever personal computer—MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) Altair 8800 appears on the Popular Electronics magazine. This is a d...

Page 1 -  Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4 Here continues the story of Microsoft… The Age of Windows: 1985 Jan 1985: Microsoft has created MacEnhancer that gives Apple Macintosh support for a number of peripherals used in IBM PC. This is an indication of the acceptance of Macintosh along with DOS-powered IBM PC. Aug 1985: Microsoft and IBM get into an agreement to create computer operating systems and other basic software. Also, Microsoft has started development of its new headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Sept 1985: Microsoft has its first production facility in Ireland. During this time, Office products like Excel were released for Apple Macintosh as well. November, 1985: MICROSOFT WINDOWS RETAIL VERSION GETS RELEASED! This is probably the most important product ever from any software company in the history of the world. Windows 1.0 had non-overlapping programs A Public Company: 1986 Feb 1986: MS moves to its new headquarters in Redmond, Washington. [[i...