Your smartphone is a Desktop too with Ubuntu OS for smartphones.

Today smartphones have become more powerful than ever before. We have smartphones which have high clock speed Quadcore processors, upto 2gigs of RAM and also a great deal of storage, well that's a lot of processing power in the palm of your hands. But all people end up doing with it hardly utilizes the full potential of the hardware they paid for. Practically  its just a waste of hardware resources. Although that's not the users fault, Its the industries fault, The top three smartphone operating systems, the Android from Google, iOS from Apple and Windows Phone from Microsoft also have a separate PC OS. Why didn't these IT giants never though of developing an OS that works for/on both the devices or rather, just getting a Smartphone to do the work of an entry level PC. 
Well Apple and Microsoft in the recent past made some effort and big talks about the Desktop-Mobile convergence but never made serious effort towards it, may be the industry was never ready enough for it cause they were already making good money by kinda fooling people.

That being said Ubuntu backed by Canonical may have set a spark to revolutionize the IT industry for good, by just doing that, Building an OS that works both on smartphones and PC, rather a smart phone that's also an efficient desktop computer when connected to a screen, keyboard and a Mouse. 

In a recent announcement Ubuntu backed by canonical announced a new smartphone OS that's just the same as the PC OS, just with a Mobile friendly interface. What that means is you can convert your smartphone into a PC by just connecting it to a Screen, keyboard and a Mouse. Ubuntu is already available for Android Smartphones with a Dual core processor for free. What that means is you can run the full PC Ubuntu OS on a compatible smartphone.

A Homemade Spacecraft (DIY Tech)

Hey guys your host Akib here, I came across this really interesting short documentary about how amateur Engineers and entrepreneurs Kristian von Bengston (worked at NASA) and Peter Madsenin in Denmark are working on a project to build a suborbital spacecraft to carry a human into space and then release a capsule to return the passenger back to safety.

The Team calls themselves Copenhagen Suborbitals, a not-for-profit  which started off  in 2008 and now comprises of  20 plus specialists determined to create the first homemade, manned spacecraft to go into suborbital flight.  The idea is to prove that fact that rocket technology is not something beyond the reach of a common individual. The rockets that are undergoing testing are made from off the shelf components that are easily available to anyone. The project is completely open sourced you can have all the access to information and designs if you want to create your very own spacecraft.

Hexacopter and hexapod union looks like a robotic insect

Hexacopter and Hexapod are amongst  the latest and the most popular remote control robotic toys out there. How about combining them together to create a new walking and flying-walking hybrid machine. I bet you never though of that before. That's what the guys at Mad Lab Industries (MLI for short) have come up with. MLI is a  fresh start up that sells robotic components online and on the side they do cool stuff too.

So the basic idea behind this unnamed project is to integrate a remote controlled Hexapod Robot with a remote controlled Hexacopter. With this idea, they received a PhantomX AX Hexapod kit from Trossen Robotics.

The PhantomX AX Hexapod

Now the integration wasn't an easy task, considering the fact that the PhantomX was originally designed to be tough and was quite heavy to be  taken to the air. So it had to undergo a lot of surgery, the frame originally made of ABS plastic parts had to be replaced with lighter carbon fiber parts. Despite the fact, it was still heavy for it to be taken in the air by a quadcopter. Rather it needed a Hexacopter which has a much greater lifting force and was much stable than a quadcopter. A quadcoptor would have been cheaper considering the fact that it would have reduced the cost of 2 BLDC motors and ESC (Electronic Speed Controller).

MSI N550 GTX-TI unboxing/review on Intel Pentium 4 PC

Hey guys this is the first ever GPU unboxing review on Tech Center, I m not a PRO. at reviewing graphics cards, so please bear with me. I would like to tell you first hand that this is not a GPU review that you might find all across the internet its more of a GPU review on an old desktop computer.

My desktop computer is now over 6 years old and I really needed to upgrade it to gain some performance improvements. My desktop wasn't even able to play HD videos smoothly with the age old on-board graphics. With my tight budget, I did not go for the processor and motherboard upgrade, cause that would be like buying a new computer that would end up being only a little better than the existing one.

Keeping in mind that I would buy a new computer in like one year, I had to go for a graphics card that would not only fit my budget but; improve my existing machine and also be useful in the new computer that i plan to buy a year later. So after quite a bit of research and looking at benchmark results online I went for  the MSI Nvidia N550GTX-TI Cyclone II (1GB DDR5).

Lewis Hamilton burns some rubber on the streets of Mumbai.

Formula 1 McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton was in Mumbai this past Sunday night at Bandra-Kurla Complex. The run up was flagged off by Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan in the presence of Public Works Department and Tourism Minister Chhagan Bhujbal, among other dignitaries.

With the Singapore Grand Prix just a week ahead, Lewis Hamilton made this skilful burnout in the  Vodafone McLaren Mercedes MP4-27 race car. Lewis Hamilton told that he is really looking forward for the Indian Grand Prix scheduled on 26-28 October later this year.

My cousin brother Rahil was able to capture the run up and burnout up close. Probably the best amateur footage available on YouTube.

DARPA's Cheetah Robot and the LS3 taking quadruped robot tech to new highs

DARPA in collaboration with Boston Dynamics has been brewing up some really awesome legged robot technology over the past few years. The various legged robot projects have been under constant update and improvement over the years. The list of the state of the art legged robots from Boston Dynamics includes the The Big Dog, Cheetah, Petman and the latest of the pack, the LS3. Each robots have been designed for a own unique purpose and have significant differences.

The latest updates however are from the Cheetah and the LS3.

The Cheetah

The Cheetah has been under development since 1989 under MIT and later under Boston Dynamics. It has been developed and funded under DARPA's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program. A recent video update on YouTube shows The Cheetah running at 28.3 mph (45.5 km/h), breaking it previous record of 27.78 mph (44.7 km/h) which it achieved back in 2009. This makes it 0.5 mph faster than Usain Bolt.

Now that being said, The Cheetah has a lot of advantages over Usain Bolt, It runs on a high speed treadmill; plus, it is powered by an off board hydraulic pump and uses a boom-like device to keep it running in the center of the treadmill. Overall, significant improvements for the speeds have been made in the algorithms and a more powerful pump have been added. Although Boston Dynamics plans to test a free running Cheetah in the open environment by next year.

Not much details about the technology have been made public.