MIT's camera can see around corners

Imagine a house on fire, and a camera helping the rescue team to locate exactly where the person is trapped in a room from a distance far enough. Researchers at MIT have been thinking on similar lines; they have been using the innovative femtophotography poses. So, basically, this technology sends quick laser pulses, which bounce back showing the hidden scene or say giving you a glimpse of what you otherwise wouldn’t be able to see directly, owing to the situation. The imaging device is developed by the MIT Media Lab’s Camera Culture group along with Bawendi Lab in the Department of Chemistry at MIT.

This is how femtophotography works

The incredibly quick laser pulses are measured in quadrillionths of a second. The bursts of light bounce around off ordinary doors or walls or floors and reflect back in the same way to the picosecond-accurate detector at the camera (picoseconds = trillionths of a second), which then records the elapsed time and does all the math to calculate the light bursts traveled. The light burst travel in different routes, while the system runs this drill multiple times in just a second or so, to offer a complete 3D image. Reportedly, this photography technology is all about algorithms and has been happening on a small scale currently. 

Reportedly, the 3D images aren’t portrait quality, but good enough and recognizable in some situations, like helping someone who is navigating in dangerous environment, avoiding collision of cars and so on. Going way past the traditional photography technology, the new femtophotography could work wonders, if the imaging device hits markets. We can foresee several buyers to queueing to own the device.  MIT researchers will be revealing all about this new innovative technology of locating hidden objects in the journal Nature Communications. In 2010, researchers at MIT had put forth another interesting technology called NETRA which allowed testing eye sight using mobile phones.

Upcoming Micromax feature phone to have a solar panel

Globally, Micromax may not be a frequently heard of brand. However, in India, the brand has a wide audience and the brand is very popular for their handsets, mainly because they cater to a very wide consumer base. With their tag line, ‘Nothing like Anything,’ the brand in the past have launched a range of handsets with neat features, such as dual SIM capabilities, handsets that feature above average battery life and other interesting attributes. As per an exclusive report by The Mobile Indian, it appears that the brand is going to introduce a new feature on their upcoming and yet unnamed handset by adding a solar panel that allows one to charge the phone easily.

Solar charging handset from Micromax coming soon

As per the report, Rahul Sharma, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Micromax has stated, “We have been at the forefront of innovation. We were the first to launch long battery life phones, dual SIM phones and many more. Our next innovation is to get rid of the mobile phone charger by including a solar panel in our next phone. This solar charger will top up the charge in 3 hours to support 1.5 hours of talktime." 

As of yet, no other details have been let out about this upcoming handset, but Rahul Sharma has informed the Mobile Indian that it will not be a smartphone and will instead be a feature phone. For those not in the know how, feature phones are basically mobile phones by manufacturers that are not considered to be smartphones. They may possess various features and capabilities that are not found in general mobile phones, but additional features put them slightly above basic mobile phones. They usually have a JAVA-based operating system, as opposed to Android or Windows Phones and are generally cheaper than most smartphones. 

This is not the first mobile phone to implement a solar panel as a means of charging as in the past, Vodafone have released the VF 247 priced at Rs.1,500. The launch of the Micromax handset is scheduled to take place within a week and when it is announced all the features of the handset will come to light.

Could Airtel be the first to launch 4G in India?

Back in October last year, we heard rumours of Reliance planning on launching 4G in India, sometime in January, but that didn’t happen. Then, early last month, we heard that Nokia Siemens would be responsible for building and handling the 4G network for Bharti Airtel. We’ve now learnt that Kolkata will be the first city to receive the 4G broadband network. "We will be launching LTE TDD in Kolkata this month," said Bharti's CEO - India and SAARC, Sanjay Kapoor at a press conference. We don’t have any further details at this point, but it appears that 4G will be a reality much sooner than expected.

4G coming this month?

Airtel will become the first mobile operator in the country to offer 4G (LTE TDD) services in the country. Currently, the mobile operator holds BWA (Broadband Wireless Access) licences in four circles – Punjab, Maharashtra, Kolkata and Karnataka. Other companies who own BWA licences, include Reliance Industries Ltd, Tikona Digital Networks Pvt. Ltd., Aircel Ltd, Augere Holdings and Qualcomm Inc., and they are yet to make any announcements as to when they’ll launch the service. When it does launch, one could expect massive speeds, simply because there won’t be many on the network rightaway. Also, expect the rates to be hitting the roof, but if anything, at least it should help curb the prices of 3G and make it more affordable, so the sooner it launches, the better it is for all of us.

Along with the roll out, one can expect more phones and tablets offered by Airtel to take advantage of the faster speed. Airtel have said that they will be launching 4G in April, but haven’t given a time frame as to when this will actually take place. With most of the newer smartphones supporting 4G speeds and most of the content moving online in the form of videos, it’s high time we got a faster and more reliable network.

Firefox for Windows 8 development progresses; screenshots out

We talked about Firefox for Windows 8 a while back and mentioned how developers were working hard trying to get it to run. Brian Broody, one of the key developers at Mozilla updated his blog, and is talking more about how development has been on for the new browser. There are also some early screenshots that have been made public. They’ve clearly been able to get Firefox to run on Metro. It’s said to look and function in a way that is similar to the Firefox browser on the Android platform, as of now. The browser in its current state lets users create tabs, add bookmarks, play around with the Preferences and a bunch of other things, just like the Android browser. 

Development on in full force

The Firefox browser for Metro isn’t ready just yet, and while there’s a roadmap for Firefox for Windows 8 ready, the browser itself is still away from its targets for Q2 2012. The current browser works on the Fennec code and the user interface is based on the one used for Android devices. File support for the browser under the Metro interface is already implemented, so loading and writing files using the interface is now possible. 

Brian also spoke of the issues regarding support for browsers, under the Metro interface in the past. This time around, he talks of the importance of a browser being the default one on the Metro browser. A browser that is made default on Metro will also be the default browser on the conventional Windows desktop. There’s a lot of focus from Mozilla’s end to make the Firefox browser impressive for the Windows 8 Metro interface for a number of reasons. There’s great scope to recover market share by providing an excellent experience on the Metro user interface, which means the user will also use it on the traditional Windows desktop. Firefox, in recent times has been slipping, while Google’s Chrome browser picks up pace. Google themselves haveofficially announced that they would be working on the browser to make it compatible with the tile-based Metro user interface.