Google is retiring two influential projects: Google Health and PowerMeter. Neither project attracted enough users to make it worthwhile supporting them, the company said.
Google Health, a free service that stores your personal health information, will end January 1, 2012. All its data available for download for a year following the shutdown. PowerMeter, another free tool that helps monitor your home energy usage, will end September 16, 2011.
The company says it will attempt to make it simple for people to gather their data stored on these services and transition to other, similar services.
Currently, users can grab their Google Health data as a PDF, HTML file, ZIP file or in one of several formats. Also, Google will soon allow users to “directly transfer your health data to other services that support the Direct Project protocol, an emerging open standard for efficient health data exchange.” PowerMeter data will be available only as a CSV file for current PowerMeter users.
“While they didn’t scale as we had hoped, we believe they did highlight the importance of access to information in areas where it’s traditionally been difficult,” wrote Aaron Brown, Google senior project manager, in an official blog post.
“By helping people make more informed decisions through greater access to more information, we believe Google Health and PowerMeter have been trailblazers in their respective categories,” Brown added. “Ultimately though, we want to satisfy the most pressing needs for the greatest number of people. In the case of these two products, our inability to scale has led us to focus our priorities elsewhere.”
Read the views of online Certification Experts, which provide the real questions and correct answer and explanation for the students / professionals who are seeking or enhancing their level of expertise. more at certkingdom.com
June 27, 2011
Microsoft Beefs Up Lync Before Office 365 Official Launch
In addition to the anticipated launch of Office 365 on Tuesday, Microsoft recently announced Lync Power Pack, which has six applications to enhance the Lync user experience.
Lync is part of the Office 365 suite and provides unified communications for organizations, integrating Instant Messaging (IM), VoIP, presence, and conferencing. Lync also features extensive Outlook integration including single-click meeting scheduling.
Lync Power Pack is part of the Lync Adoption and Training Kit, which provides resources such as primers, templates, user education and training. Applications include:
* IM an Expert: A tool that helps people in an organization ask questions and find experts within their company. The tool categorizes user questions into topic areas, finds experts best able to answer, and then forwards the questions to those experts.
* Conversations Analyzer: Reviews a user's Lync IM conversation history. It then scores for use of trust-building language. The analyzer applies trust rules to determine the occurrence of words and phrases that have a positive or negative effect on trust.
* Conversation Translator: Provides real-time translation for Lync IM for up to 35 different languages.
* Information Dowloader: Provides current information about a contact's location such as date, time, whether a user is calling the contact during regular working hours, the weather in that location, and news feeds pertaining to the location.
* Tabbed Conversations: Give users a tabbed conversation window for viewing multiple IM conversations in a single window.
* Group Chat Stress Tool: Helps users verify Lync Server 2010 and Lync Server 2010 Group Chat hardware deployment. It's comprised of two applications: Group Chat Stress Tool and Group Chat Loaders. Using the stress engine in the Stress Tool, users can create the configuration files for the loaders and distribute the binaries to remote machines that will run the loaders. Group Chat Loader is used to apply specific load parameters on the Group Chat Server.
The Lync Power Pack is available to Office 365 customers as a download.
Lync is part of the Office 365 suite and provides unified communications for organizations, integrating Instant Messaging (IM), VoIP, presence, and conferencing. Lync also features extensive Outlook integration including single-click meeting scheduling.
Lync Power Pack is part of the Lync Adoption and Training Kit, which provides resources such as primers, templates, user education and training. Applications include:
* IM an Expert: A tool that helps people in an organization ask questions and find experts within their company. The tool categorizes user questions into topic areas, finds experts best able to answer, and then forwards the questions to those experts.
* Conversations Analyzer: Reviews a user's Lync IM conversation history. It then scores for use of trust-building language. The analyzer applies trust rules to determine the occurrence of words and phrases that have a positive or negative effect on trust.
* Conversation Translator: Provides real-time translation for Lync IM for up to 35 different languages.
* Information Dowloader: Provides current information about a contact's location such as date, time, whether a user is calling the contact during regular working hours, the weather in that location, and news feeds pertaining to the location.
* Tabbed Conversations: Give users a tabbed conversation window for viewing multiple IM conversations in a single window.
* Group Chat Stress Tool: Helps users verify Lync Server 2010 and Lync Server 2010 Group Chat hardware deployment. It's comprised of two applications: Group Chat Stress Tool and Group Chat Loaders. Using the stress engine in the Stress Tool, users can create the configuration files for the loaders and distribute the binaries to remote machines that will run the loaders. Group Chat Loader is used to apply specific load parameters on the Group Chat Server.
The Lync Power Pack is available to Office 365 customers as a download.
June 26, 2011
Writing Tech In Outer Space
One of the great myths in writing technology is that when humans went into outer space, one of the biggest challenges was to find a way to write in conditions of zero gravity. The myth continues that NASA threw all its considerable weight into research in this regard and spent millions of dollars to develop a special space pen, while the Russians found a simple solution -- they just used pencils.
Well, this is totally incorrect. Both US and Russian astronauts (or cosmonauts, as the Russians called them) used pencils to write in outer space, although NASA was criticised severely for purchasing special mechanical pencils that cost almost USD 125 per unit in 1965.
The competing superpowers apart, a lot of money was spent on research for a pen that could write in outer space. But not by NASA or the Russians. The Fisher Pen Co. spent over a million dollars and came up with the famous Fisher Space Pen. It could be used effectively in space - it came with a pressurised ink cartridge, and could work in a zero gravity environment, underwater, in other liquids, and in temperature extremes ranging from -50 F to +400 F. NASA tested it extensively and then started using it for its flights after 1967. Even the Russians were so impressed by the Fisher Space Pen that they ordered a consignment for their cosmonauts.
Well, this is totally incorrect. Both US and Russian astronauts (or cosmonauts, as the Russians called them) used pencils to write in outer space, although NASA was criticised severely for purchasing special mechanical pencils that cost almost USD 125 per unit in 1965.
The competing superpowers apart, a lot of money was spent on research for a pen that could write in outer space. But not by NASA or the Russians. The Fisher Pen Co. spent over a million dollars and came up with the famous Fisher Space Pen. It could be used effectively in space - it came with a pressurised ink cartridge, and could work in a zero gravity environment, underwater, in other liquids, and in temperature extremes ranging from -50 F to +400 F. NASA tested it extensively and then started using it for its flights after 1967. Even the Russians were so impressed by the Fisher Space Pen that they ordered a consignment for their cosmonauts.
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