Can you imagine being able to recharge your smartphone or tablet just by lying it out in the sun? Well scientists from the Nanyang Technology University (NTU) have created the next-generation solar cell material, which not only converts light to electricity but also emits light.

The solar cell has been developed from the wonder material Perovskite, which could prove to be the answer in producing a highly efficient, inexpensive solar cells. As well as lighting up when electricity is passed through them, the light can be customized to glow various colours.

The discovery came about almost by accident when NTU physicist Sum Tze and postdoctoral researcher Xing Guichuan shined a laser onto the hybrid Perovskite solar cell material. They discovered that when a laser beam was shone onto the Perovskite solar cell, it glowed brightly, which was unusual as normal solar cell materials absorb light but do not generate any.

“What we have discovered is that because it is a high quality material, and very durable under light exposure, it can capture light particles and convert them to electricity, or vice versa,” said Asst Prof Sum, a Singaporean scientist at NTU’s School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (SPMS).

“By tuning the composition of the material, we can make it emit a wide range of colours, which also makes it suitable as a light emitting device, such as flat screen displays.

Going  Green

What we have now is a solar cell material that can be made semi-translucent. It can be used as tinted glass to replace current windows, yet it is able to generate electricity from sunlight,” said assistant Professor Nripan Mathews from the School of Materials Science and Engineering.

This could radically change and improve so-called green buildings and the scientists are working on larger scale versions of the materials for use in large-scale solar cells.

Such a versatile yet low-cost material would be a boon for green buildings. Since we are already working on the scaling up of these materials for large-scale solar cells, it is pretty straightforward to modify the procedures to fabricate light emitting devices as well. More significantly, the ability of this material to lase, has implications for on-chip electronic devices that source, detect and control light,” said Dr Matthews.

There is a patent pending on the new material, which cost five times less than the current Silicon-based solar cells.

SOURCE: http://phys.org/news/2014-03-scientists-material-solar-cell-day.html

Usually the GDC is all about the games and related gaming technologies.  This year at the 2014 Games Developers Conference Intel had decided it was the time to talk about their new processor line-up. The 3 new and powerful chips that were unveiled by Intel this week are undoubtedly going to appeal to the PC gamer market.

I believe that the highest possible performance from a chip for a desktop PC that is available for purchase today, is an Intel Core i7 4770 chip. But all that is about to change.  In the next few months Intel will be releasing the new chip called ‘Devil Canyon’. This is a specially manufactured and unlocked Haswell Core i7 processor with an enhanced thermal interface and CPU packaging. What that fundamentally means is that it is going to be clocked higher and can be overclocked even higher.  The chip can achieve both whilst maintaining lower temperatures than existing Core chips.

Intel has also announced a spanking new Extreme Edition Core processor, which not only squeezes in 8-cores and thereby 16 threads, but it includes support for DDR4 memory. That should appeal to any user who always wants more performance form their memory bandwidth and works with video editing or 3D content.

And finally Intel has detailed what just maybe a budget over-clocker’s dream chip. Intel is releasing a multiplier unlocked Pentium processor.  They are doing this in recognition of the brand’s 20th anniversary. A user can tweak both the core and memory frequencies to their desired specifications. Obviously you will need adequate cooling for the variations in the tweaks you perform.

Although they have confirmed the release of this new set of power processors, Intel has yet to confirm what the final specification of each of these new chips will be. All eyes to Intel and the second half of 2014, as it is certainly going to be an interesting time period for the enthusiast and budget PC builders amongst you.

If you have any comments regarding this story, please leave your comments in the section below.

 Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang debuted new and upcoming graphics technology recently including a $3,000 high-end component for PC game enthusiasts and a cloud-computing partnership with VMWare.

With the personal computer industry losing steam and the chipmaker's move into mobile facing relentless competition, Nvidia is heavily promoting its graphics technology for a wider range of applications, including cars and data centers.

At the company's annual graphics technology conference in San Jose, Huang wowed close to 3,000 attendees with souped up chips for machine learning and a self-driving Audi, powered by an Nvidia processor, that drove onto the stage during his presentation.

Huang announced a new version of Nvidia's high-end Titan graphics card, its top of the line offering for die-hard PC gamers. The new Titan Z, which will sell for $2,999, boasts two Kepler graphics processors and follows the previous Titan chip that sold for about $1,000.

He showed the new Titan device intricately simulating the natural interplay between a solid block swinging from an elastic and smoke particles moving around it, all adhering to the laws of physics.

If you're in desperate need of a supercomputer that you need to fit under your desk, we have just the card for you," Jen-Hsun said.

Huang also announced an upcoming graphics processor unit, codenamed after French mathematician Blaise Pascal, with memory chips stacked one on top of each other to allow data to move faster and more efficiently.

Nvidia has been trying to push into tablets and smartphones but it has struggled to stake out market share due to stiff competition from larger Qualcomm Inc.

Now, the company is increasingly marketing its Tegra line of mobile chips as ideal for powering entertainment and navigation systems in cars. In January, Nvidia said it was broadening its relationship with Audi, which plans to use the upcoming Tegra K1 chip in more of its cars.

The Santa Clara, California company is also pushing for its graphics chip technology to be adopted in data centers providing web-based processing power to enterprise customers.

Huang said cloud-computing company VMWare would incorporate Nvidia's technology in its virtualization software, which helps companies save on server and storage costs.

Nvidia recently announced that its Tegra mobile chip and LTE modem would be used in a new version of Microsoft's Surface tablet. A previous version of the Surface using Nvidia chips failed to gain traction with tablets shoppers.

People Asked to Vote on New Space Suits

NASA is asking people to vote on their favorite design for the outer shell of the new Z-2 spacesuit.

While the Z-2 models may descend from their Apollo 13-style ancestors, there are some decidedly 21st Century twists. The "Biomimicry" design, for example, has a reptilian flare; "Trends in Society" has a more everyday look -- at least, as far as spacesuits go; and "Technology" has electroluminescent wire and exposed rotating bearings, among other features.

The Z-2, an upgrade on 2012's Z-1, features a new hard composite upper torso, "providing much-needed long-term durability," according to NASA.

[Source: NASA via https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZWTfyZjGN_4

At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft took the lid off its graphics API, DirectX 12. According to the company, developers will have more direct control over their visuals than ever, with more complex scenes and rendering features. And yes, these changes should translate to Xbox One games, in addition to a new focus across multiple platforms.

“Xbox One games will see improved performance and we’ll bring the same API to all Microsoft platforms,” said Microsoft's Anuj Gosalia during the GDC presentation.

Microsoft wants DirectX 12 to exist as a "console-like" API, making it easier for developers to work with higher consistency and predictability. Direct3D 12 will apparently spread performance across multiple cores, lowering overall strain on hardware, and creating an environment where your rig--or PC rig--will have more headroom for running high-end graphics. Microsoft says 40 percent of all DirectX 11 hardware will be ready for DirectX 12 on day one.

Chris Tector of Turn 10 Studios presented a demo of Forza Motorsport 5 running through Direct3D 12 on PC. Tector was quick to point out Direct3D 12 would allow developers to more efficiently handle resources, but it was difficult to see exactly how Direct3D 12 was really impacting the game's performance based on the demo. Overall, the game looked more or less the same as it does on Xbox One.

While GPU manufacturer AMD was present at the presentation--and were adamant DirectX 12 would offer improvements to performance--it's still a bit unclear as to what extent existing AMD graphics cards will take full advantage of DirectX 12. AMD did say its existing customers will "benefit."

Intel vice president Eric Mintzer said 4th-gen Core processors will be ready for DirectX 12 at launch, and the "most important" improvements may affect lower-power Intel CPUs, thanks to improved power management. Additionally, DirectX 12 will be supported on Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, and future Nvidia architectures, said Nvidia's senior vice president Tony Tomasi.

"Epic will be working closely with NVIDIA and Microsoft to create a world-class implementation of DX12 in Unreal Engine 4," said Epic Games' Tim Sweeney. "DirectX12 is a great step forward, exposing low-level hardware functionality through an industry standard API to give developers more control and efficiency than ever before."

DirectX 12 for Mobile

Interestingly, Qualcomm also gave a presentation extolling the virtues of DirectX 12 for mobile. According to company vice president of engineering Eric Demers, DirectX 12 could be the missing link between console and mobile. “We’re excited to see Xbox and PC titles move into mobile," said Demers.

As far as compatibility across Windows operating systems, Microsoft was a bit coy. While DirectX 12 will not support Windows XP, Windows 7 support is also a little unclear, with Microsoft only saying they weren't "discussing Windows 7 support today." Moreover, Microsoft stated 50 percent of all PC game rigs will be DirectX 12 compatible at launch. A preview of DirectX 12 is due out later this year.

Microsoft wants you to stop using Windows XP. Badly. How badly? They’ll actually give you fifty bucks right now to replace your outdated XP machine.

The push is on to move everyone they possibly can away from XP before pulling the plug on security updates once and for all. Microsoft knows it’s been a great decade-plus for XP, but they’re doing everything they can to get people to upgrade to a supported OS “before it’s too late.” April 8th is the day the patches stop coming.

Microsoft has a few other carrots to dangle, too. If a $50 credit for the Microsoft store was enough to pique your interest, but you’re nervous about making the switch, they’re also offering 90 days of premium support at no extra charge. You can call and chat 24 hours a day if you want, and if you’ve been living with XP that long you might feel like you need that kind of assistance to figure out Windows 8.

There are also plenty of nice Windows desktops and laptops on sale in the Store. You can pick up a touchscreen notebook for as little as $249 — not a high-end one, but plenty of machine for just over $140 more than it would cost to buy Windows 8.1 in a retail box. If you’re looking for a tablet, the 32GB Dell Venue 8 Pro has been marked down to $229 (maybe use the $50 GC to pick yourself up a nice keyboard for it).

And the best part? None of the systems Microsoft sells in their online or brick-and-mortar stores has any of that annoying bloatware you find on retail boxed machines that other big-name stores are selling.

Will the promo actually get anyone to dump XP? Maybe, but since the $50 rebate doesn’t require any kind of proof (like an old XP CD-key) to be provided, the impact will probably be fairly minimal. $229 or $249 is still more than $0, and that’s what some XP users feel like spending on a new computer.

Buyers Now Only Have 14 Days To Return iPhones To Apple

There’s an old saying somewhere that goes something like this: give anything enough time and it will eventually change. That statement is proving true especially lately as Apple has reversed a long-standing policy that had allowed customers to try out iPhones for up to 30 days. And, on the off chance they decided they didn’t like the phone, they could return it within that 30 day window and get a refund. Not so anymore.

Apple recently posted a change to this policy on their website and made it effective immediately. Now, instead of having a return window of 30 days, customers only have 14 days to try out their new iPhones before deciding if they want to keep them or go with something else. It should be noted that this is the same policy which has already been in effect for other Apple products such as iPods and iPads.

What Is  Apple Intention?

Obviously, some people will be up in arms about this policy change, stating that 14 days isn’t really enough time to get to know an iPhone. But what are you going to do in 30 days you didn’t already do in 14 days? Honestly, I think you know if you like the iphone within the first few hours of using it, and it shouldn’t take days to come to a final decision – but that’s just me.

What do you think? Do you think this is ultimately a good business decision for Apple, or do you think they’ve made a mistake somewhere along the line? All one can do is encourage would-be-buyers to do their best to try out all the features on the iPhone before the 14 days is up and they’re all out of luck.

LG Invent Energy Saving Air Conditioner

Let’s just get it out of the way now and say it – those with access to central heat and air conditioning might just be a tad bit more fortunate than those without it. There are of course other ways to compensate for not having central air conditioning – ceiling fans, tower fans, you name it. Perhaps the most popular method is to use a window air conditioning unit, but on its best day it doesn’t do much more than halfway cool down the room it’s occupying. And, not to mention, sometimes those things are a little too tricky to install in the first place – and no matter what the box says, some of them do not seem all that energy efficient when the electric bill arrives.

Say you do manage to get it to fit correctly inside the window – it still doesn’t do anything to increase the decor value of your home. But that’s only because it’s not the new ArtCool Stylist air conditioner from LG – a revolutionary new breed of cooling units.

For Those Who Like Stylish Design

As you can see from the image above, LG’s ArtCool Stylist looks more like a speaker system than an air conditioning unit – and that’s exactly the point. It’s different from your average AC unit in a couple of ways. First, it doesn’t simply shoot air directly out in front of it; instead, it releases cool air in 3 different directions, making sure it cools the whole room. The ring surrounding the middle of it also changes colors depending on whatever mood you’re in at the time. When’s the last time your air conditioner changed something based on your emotions? (To be clear, it comes with a touchscreen remote which enables you to change its color).

LG also claims that this unit is more energy efficient and is also quieter than other units.

If I didn’t already have central air, I’d be tempted to give it a try. How about you?

LG has not paid me for advertising their product on my blog, what do you think?

SOURCE: http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/lg-just-made-best-looking-air-conditioner-youve-ever-laid-eyes/#!ACreK

The Asphalt 8 Airborne Android and iOS apps have just received an update that brings new game improvements and changes to this hugely popular game. 

The arcade racing game features luxury cars and exotic locations and these latest additions to the game are likely to be a big hit with fans.

The changes include a new Asian-inspired racing location dubbed the Great Wall, which offers 6 new tracks to enjoy and celebrates the Year of the Horse. 

The iOS version also includes a new Twitch live streaming broadcasting feature. This enables users to connect with others in the Asphalt community via Twitch.tv to share gameplay, stunts and check out the skills of rivals.

There are also new cars on the way that will include the Ferrari Testarossa, 2014 McLaren P1, Dodge Challenger and 2014 Ford F-150. If you haven’t yet downloaded this free app you can get Asphalt 8: Airborne for Android devices at Google Play, or the iOS version for iPhone and iPad at the App Store.

Mark Shuttleworth who is the CEO of Canonical has revealed more about the upcoming Linux-based smartphones.

The Ubuntu mobile operating system is set to cost between $200 - $400. The Canonical Supremo said the devices are set to come in at a mid to higher range in terms of pricing.

"We're going with the higher end because we want people who are looking for a very sharp, beautiful experience and because our ambition is to be selling the future PC, the future personal computing engine."

 The smartphone project wants to produce something that can act as a smartphone and can also work as a PC when the item has been plugged into a monitor. Shuttleworth said this is something that audiences found to be attractive.

Canonical has teamed up with Meizu and BQ, companies that are smartphone makers, in order to create the device. This followed what Shuttleworth said was a spectacular failure to raise $32m to build the Ubuntu Edge Smartphone. He also called it a success though in terms of the amount of attention that it brought to the project and the effect that it could have on the industry as a whole.

He said that the firm is not targeting users of Apple products who he feels have an emotional connection to the Apple ecosystem of products. Instead they are targeting Android users. Shuttleworth believes that Android initially wasn’t built to be a personal computer so they have an advantage of starting late and really taking their time and thinking about it deeply before getting it going.

"I think as people get more and more excited about having a personal computing device that can be a TV or a piece of wearable computing, they'll be more excited about being part of Ubuntu's mobile story.”

Android has served its purpose for sure, but perhaps it's time for something new. If you really look at the heart of Google's business model I don't think it totally depends on Android, because they have great services."

The firm is looking to get the phones on sale this coming fall. We will see then if this new type of smartphone can gain any traction in this already saturated market.

Please leave us a comment below and we will get back to you.

The good thing about having an Android smartphone or tablet is that you can personalize every nook and cranny imaginable. For those who don’t want to mess around with rooting, modding andcustom ROMs, you can easily install free apps from the Google Play Store to change your wallpapers, ringtones and other awesome things. Here are the apps that we like for giving your smartphone a new personal touch.

mobile9

mobile9 is the bread and butter of ''wallpaper, ringtones and more'' apps and it just received a nice update bringing a new UI, content feed and other nice additions to the overall user experience. The app supplies themes for all the most common launchers, like Go Launcher and Apex, wallpapers (HD and live ones), ringtones to use for the various noises on your Android, videos to stay entertained, special occasion messages to send to your friends and chat stickers for when you get bored of the normal ones!

mobile9 ringtones & wallpapersINSTALL

Zedge

Again, this is a behemoth of an app, providing a huge array of various wallpapers, both HD and live options, as well as ringtones. There are over 300 million different ones, so you won’t have to use the same ones twice. Ringtones can be set for individual contacts, and wallpapers are optimized to match your screen size. It also comes with a widget in which you plop all of your games in one organized and customizable area.

ZEDGE™ Ringtones & WallpapersINSTALL

PolyFauna

Now from super massive databases of wallpapers, we are shrinking the scope down to bring you one very unique and weirdly beautiful app which was made in collaboration with the band Radiohead and Universal Everything. The images you see on the wallpaper are ones that come from the music video Bloom by the band. The live and interactive wallpaper plunges you into a new surreal world that is certainly really unique.

PolyFaunaINSTALL

Mountains Now Free Wallpaper

This is another artsy-fartsy live wallpaper that screams serenity now. Basically, it takes after the Google Now mountain theme where you watch boats travel along the river in front of some mountains. Using the gyroscope, the wallpaper puts to use the 3D parallax effect, which makes various parts of an image on one screen move at different speeds to create an interesting optical effect, a common Google design trait. The app is supported on tablets as well.

Mountains Now Free WallpaperINSTALL

Dragon Strike FREE Wallpaper

Finally, the tiny nerd inside me made me add this to the list. Dragon Strike FREE Wallpaper, might use a lot of your battery, but for such cool imagery, it’s nice to have it on your phone for a while, even if it means charging more often. The virtual dragons move around at random, they attack castles and have varying powers per breed. The dragon battles happen when you least expect it, so there’s always a surprise around the corner. This all happens in both portrait and landscape mode, switching automatically to follow the action, depending on the orientation of your phone. There’s also background battle music or natural sounds.

Dragon Strike FREE WallpaperINSTALL

If you can suggest an equally cool life wallpaper or source, then please do so in the comments below!

Dr Katie Hall is developing ways to transfer power without wires. As part of a crude experiment, she filled a tiny room with gigantic copper refigerator coils. In the middle of the room was a light bulb. Incredibly it lit up the room despite the fact that there were no wires attached to it.

“Let’s work on this. This is the future,” she said at the time. Now Chief Technology Officer at WiTricity, Dr Hall is working to develop wireless “resonance” technology.

“We’re going to transfer power without any kind of wires,” says Dr Hall. “But, we’re not actually putting electricity in the air. What we’re doing is putting a magnetic field in the air.”

WiTricity has developed a “Source Resonator”, which is a coil of electrical wire that can generate a magnetic field when power is attached. When another coil is brought into close proximity, an electrical charge can be generated in it.

“When you bring a device into that magnetic field, it induces a current in the device, and by that you’re able to transfer power,” explains Dr Hall. And that is how the light bulb is able to light up.

These magnetic fields are just the same kind that are used in WiFi routers and therefore are perfectly safe. In the future we could see our houses completely free of wires.

Goodbye To Wires and Plugs

WiTricity plans that one day smartphones will charge whilst in your pocket or bag as you walk around, you will watch your favourite program on a TV that has no wires and that electric cars will refuel without the need to be plugged in.

Hall imagines the endless possibilites of life without the constraints of wires.

“We just don’t think about it anymore: I’m going to drive my car home and I’m never going to have to go to the gas station and I’m never going to have to plug it in.

“I can’t even imagine how things will change when we live like that.”

“The idea of eliminating cables would allow us to re-design things in ways that we haven’t yet thought of, that’s just going to make our devices and everything that we interact with, that much more efficient, more practical and maybe even give brand new functionality.”

It didn't take long, but all the tools you need to transform your Galaxy S4 into an S5 are already available. In this tutorial we'll show you how to get the Quick Settings, notifications shade, settings menu (in both round icon and list view), wallpapers, icons and the new Galaxy S5 apps. You'll even get access to the impressive new Download Booster option.

Things you need

You'll need a rooted S4 running on Android 4.4.2 and a few file downloads we'll move onto in a minute. You'll also need a root explorer like ES File Explorer or Total Commander.

ES File Explorer File ManagerINSTALL

Total Commander - file managerINSTAL

Notification shade and Quick Settings

All you need to do for this is go into your root explorer of choice, and head into the root folder, hit System and scroll down to build.prop and open that up. You'll see a ton of information about your device. All you need to do is locate the ro.product.name and ro.product.device entries and change them to SM-N900S. Save your changes and reboot. You'll now have the new icons in the notifications shade and your Quick Setting will look like those on the S5.

Galaxy S5 apps

These were recently leaked on XDA Developers forum so all you need to do is head over there and grab the APKs for the apps you want. Of course, you're rooted so just delete the previous bloatware versions that you want to replace and grab the new ones you want and install as you would any other APK. Of course, you need to have ''Unknown Sources'' enabled in your security settings first.

S5 wallpapers and icons

The Galaxy S5 wallpapers you can grab with a quick and easy app install from the Play Store. I checked early last week and the offerings were pretty slim (and inaccurate) but they've improved a lot in a short time. There's also a decent-looking Solo theme that'll also get you the Galaxy S5 flat icons.

Galaxy S5 WallpapersINSTALL

Galaxy S5 ThemeINSTALL

Settings menu with list view

All you need to do to get your Settings menu looking like those on the Galaxy S5 is to grab an APK and replace an existing root file with the new one. So head on over to this XDA Developers thread and grab the APK, then open your root explorer and copy that APK into the System/priv-app folder. Once you've done this you need to rename the APK to something easy like SecSettings2.apk and change its permissions to look like those in the screenshot. Once you've done this you can simply remove (but don't delete) the original SecSettings.apk and SecSettings.odex (if you're odexed) and then reboot.

You'll now have two settings icons in your app drawer. One will take you to your old Settings menu and the other to the Galaxy S5-style menu. Some settings will crash, like the fingerprint scanner module for obvious reasons, but you'll have access to Download Booster and other cool features. If you don't like the big round icons just tap the menu button (left button next to Home button) and switch to List View. Now, if you don't see List view you can jump to another XDA thread where you'll find a separate APK for the Note 3 that resolves the missing List View on the S4 as well. Just repeat the same process above with the new APK and you'll be golden. The new Settings menu is a little unstable and some users are reporting some force closes or crashes but it's still pretty cool.

Source: XDA Developers,