Google Launches the Google Maps Gallery

Google has launched the Google Maps Gallery, which enables organizations to share and publish their data on a map to discovered by people using Google Maps, Google Earth and search engines.In other words the Google Maps Gallery helps to “unlock the world’s maps”.Maps Gallery works like an interactive, digital atlas where you can find historic city plans, climate trends, deforestation changes and up-to-date evacuation routes.

Google Maps product manager Jordan Breckenridge said, "As the Gallery grows, it'll be easier to find out where we've been, where we are, and where we're going, giving us a new way to look at the world around us."

The Google Maps Gallery includes several maps, they are National Geographic Society,World Bank Group, United States Geological Survey, Florida Emergency Management agency, and City of Edmonton and many more.

With the Google Maps Gallery, governments, nonprofits and businesses can publish maps and manage their content with personal sitting that enable control over maps branding, styling and licensing.Organizations can apply to submit their request to join the Map Gallery.The gallery can browse at: http://maps.google.com/gallery/.

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Fastest Car in the World (Video)

The American sports car unofficially gained the title of world's fastest production car, it's Hennessey Venom GT car has set the new record fastest car in the world with reaching a top speed of 270.49 mph (436 km/h) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.The Venom GT has powered by a 7.0-litre twin-turbo, V8 engine with a horsepower of 1,244 bhp, gain a top speed of 270.49 mph and this Venom GT costs $1.2 million a car.

“The Venom GT reached a maximum speed of 270.49 mph as measured by the world-renowned maker of VBOX 3i GPS data-acquisition systems,” said Racelogic engineer Joe Lachovsky.

The Guinness Book of World Records has not certified the Venom GT as “the fastest production car.”For the new record to stand, it has to be ratified by Guinness. So, the car needs to complete two runs in two directions with the average speed to break previous record.The Venom completed one run because NASA allowed to use its 3.2-mile space shuttle landing runway for only one run to complete.The world record is currently held by the Bugatti Veyron which reached top speed of 435 km/h in 2010

Driver Brian Smith said, "It was still pulling. "If we could run on an eight-mile (12.8km) oval, we could go faster than that."
“Thankfully, its Brembo carbon-ceramic brakes were able to haul the car down from 270 mph well before the end of the runway’s 1,000-foot threshold,” the Hennessey team said.

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Finger Ring Reads Books Aloud (Video)

The FingerReader developed by the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab.The FingerReader is a Braille scanners for the visually impaired people.It is a finger-mounted computer to help visually impaired people that reads text aloud, in other words it scans printed text and reads it aloud.

It works basically as a fingertip moves along lines, a camera in the ring records and analyzes the words, and are then said in a robotic voice.The FingerReader uses other tech like vibrations are given to the user when reader nears the end of a line and to note where a new line begins and also able to translates other languages.

Reachers Said, "the FingerReader is a wearable device that assists in reading printed text. It is a tool both for visually impaired people that require help with accessing printed text, as well as an aid for language translation. Wearers scan a text line with their finger and receive an audio feedback of the words and a haptic feedback of the layout: start and end of line, new line, and other cues. The FingerReader algorithm knows to detect and give feedback when the user veers away from the baseline of the text, and helps them maintain a straight scanning motion within the line."

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Inflatable Jungle Gym Gives New Experience

It is designed by Croatian-Austrian collective Numen/For Use, "string prototype" is a inflatable jungle gym made up of a grid of cables which are able to carry human weight.It is located near the Viennese countryside. The designer group that build "String jungle gym" is known for its large-scale interactive environments and made an inflatable building with a network of cables known as large geomatric inflatable object installation.


It works on the same pattern(principles) or rules like a bounce house.In jungle gym air is filled into the whole things of gym like wires to make the cables strong to climb on.When the body will inflate, the cables will pull and tight into a structure and able to support human body weight.


"Bodies entrapped in 3D grid, fly in unnatural positions throughout superficial white space, resemble Dadaist collages.Impossibility of perception of scale and direction results in simultaneous feeling of immenseness and absence of space." said designers who are working on the project.

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A New Laser Makes Optical-Fiber Network 20 Times Faster

A team of researcher at Caltech has developed a new laser which has enough potential to increase the rate of data transmission in the optical-fiber network and replace the 40 years old fiber optic communications system.The study was published the week of February 10–14 in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Light is capable of carrying vast amounts of information, approximately 10,000 times more bandwidth than microwaves.This new laser is noticeable due to its high spectral purity, spectral purity means close to operates on a single frequency.The closer (narrower) the tone, the more information laser light can carry and allows data to travel with the faster speed, so it is called faster internet.

Nowadays worldwide's optical-fiber network is known as the distributed-feedback semiconductor (S-DFB) laser.This distributed-feedback semiconductor (S-DFB) technology developed in the mid 1970s in Yariv's research group.The S-DFB laser manages to attain such spectral purity by using a nanoscale corrugation within the laser's structure that acts like a internal filter, discriminating against spurious "noisy" waves that effecting or making bad the ideal wave frequency.

The old S-DFB laser consists of continuous crystalline layers of materials called III-V semiconductors which absorb light causing a damage of spectral purity.The new laser technology still using the III-V material which stores the light in a layer of silicon, silicon does not absorb light.This new high spectral purity allows the laser to achieve range of frequencies Which is 20 times narrower the S-DFB laser.

Yariv and his team trying hard to improve laser technology and believe that the new laser will certainly improve the optical-fiber networking system.

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US Navy Ready To Deploy Laser For First Time This Year 2014

The U.S. Navy wants to deploy its first laser on a ship later this year and it plans to test an electromagnetic rail gun prototype aboard a vessel within two years.Lasers which designed to shoot down aerial drones and electric guns that fire projectiles at hypersonic speeds like "Star Wars" movie series .

Program manager for directed energy and electric weapon systems for the Naval Sea Systems Command, Capt. Mike Ziv said "It fundamentally changes the way we fight,"

The solid-state Laser Weapon System is designed to hit out "asymmetrical threats," such as aerial drones, speed boats and swarm boats etc.



The Navy also plans to test a newly designed electromagnetic rail gun prototype aboard a ship within two years.

Rail guns which have a ability to fire a projectile at six or seven times the speed of sound and cause damage.

Defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, Loren Thompson said "Lasers may lose their targets if it's raining, dusty, or if there's turbulence in the atmosphere, and the rail gun requires vast amount of electricity to launch the projectile."

The Navy's new destroyer, the Zumwalt, is the only ship which has enough electric power to run a rail gun and its gas turbine-powered generators can produce 78 megawatts of power.

The laser beam is invisible to the human eye and  operates on 30 kilowatts of electricity."You see the effect on what you are targeting but you don't see the actual beam," Ziv said.

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Wanxiang Has Won a Fisker Bankruptcy Auction With $149 Million Bid

Wanxiang Group, China's auto parts maker group, has won a bankruptcy auction for the assets of Fisker Automotive with a bid of more than $149 million.
Wanxiang beat out Hybrid Technology, led by Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li, with a bid of $149.2 million in cash, including Fisker's plant in Wilmington, Delaware.

People who participated in the auction said that Wanxiang's bid, which includes more than $100 million in cash, beat out Hybrid Technology.The auction, which began on Wednesday and ended on Friday, Hybrid had offered $30 million in cash and cancellation of $25 million in debt it says it is owed as Fisker's senior secured lender.



Wanxiang had offered $35.7 million in cash and an equity stake for creditors in a reorganized Fisker, with the possibility of additional recoveries for creditors through lawsuits.

Hybrid statement:-

"After actively bidding in the auction, Hybrid has elected to retain its rights as a lender rather than continue to bid for ownership of Fisker.

Hybrid acquired the Department of Energy’s secured loan of US$168 million in November 2013, and is the senior secured creditor of Fisker. After repayment of its debtor-in-possession financing and certain other costs incurred as part of the bankruptcy proceedings, Hybrid is entitled to be repaid ahead of the unsecured creditors on account of its security and, in relation to any assets that are ultimately determined to be unencumbered, will share in those assets together with all other creditors.

Hybrid will consider taking all necessary steps and appropriate measures to protect its interests in this matter, and remains committed to exploring other long term investment opportunities in the United States."

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