Project Ara — Google’s Revolutionary Modular Phone Coming To Developers Later This Year

Google has revealed that its Project Ara modular phone is almost ready. With some major compromises on the modularity front, Google will be shipping the Developer Edition of Ara in Q4 2016. The final consumer version of the phone will arrive next year.

It looked like Project Ara, Google’s revolutionary modular phone idea, was never going to see the light of the day. However, at its I/O developer conference, Google announced that Project Ara’s Developer Edition will arrive this fall.

If you are wondering about the final release date of the consumer version, it has been further delayed to 2017.

Google has also unveiled a new Project Ara website where pictures and details of the new phone are available. There, developers can sign up for the dev kit that would be shipped this fall.

Notably, the Project Ara started in 2013 and it was expected to complete in the next two years like the other ATAP projects. However, the company failed to deliver a pilot device in 2015 and now its consumer launch is again delayed.

Apart from the delay, some major changes have been made to the Ara prototype. The users will surely be disappointed by the lack of an upgradeable RAM, processor, and display.

It looks like Google wants to deliver the first Project Ara devices to the consumers by locking in the crucial components to reduce the risks of users messing them up.

At present, there are total six modules that come in dimensions of 1×2 rectangles or 2×2 squares. Here’s the complete list:

• Speaker and microphone modules
• E-ink display for notifications
• Camera module with sensors and lenses
• Kickstand module
• Fingerprint reader
• Programmable touch-sensitive module
• ‘Style’ Modules

Even without the crucial upgradable components, Google paints a pretty exciting picture with Project Ara modular phones.

If you are a developer, you can go ahead and sign up on Ara’s website and grab more information.

How Virtual Reality Works? – The Ultimate Guide

Virtual reality is one of the next big things that will rule the entertainment and gaming world. All major companies are betting big on virtual reality and releasing new headsets. Read our ultimate guide to know how virtual reality works. 

Haven’t all of us been fascinated by virtual reality? Isn’t it amazing how we can walk into any planet, or fight back aliens, or bring our enemies down with heavy guns in our own hands?

Almost feels like reality, doesn’t it? But then, how does it work? The working of virtual reality involves the collaboration of head tracking, motion monitoring and eye-tracking. Headphone gives the wearer the sense as to from where the sound is coming from. Motion tracking helps in ensuring the VR experience and eye-tracking makes the images blurred or focussed as per the virtual distance.

Here’s the ultimate guide to the working of virtual reality.

It basically consists of:

• A PC
• A console or a smartphone
• Head-gear and other accessories.

1. Headsets & Head tracking:

While in some headsets like that of Rift, the video is sent from computer/console, in case of Samsung Gear VR, it’s already on the smartphone slotted into the headset. Well, VR headsets basically make use of two things:

• Two feeds are sent to one display
• Feeds are sent to two LCD displays, one per eye.

Lenses which are placed in between the eyes and the pixels. VR sets increase immersion by increasing the field of view in front. In head tracking, the picture of us shifts according to our own body movements. A system called 6DoF (six degrees of freedom) plots the head in terms of your x, y and z-axis to measure head movements in all possible directions.

2. Headphone:

Headphones are used to get a person all the more involved in the Virtual Reality experience. 3D-audio can be used giving the wearer the sense about where the sound is coming from.

3. Motion tracking:

Remember how you squeezed on the hand trigger to shoot the enemies with your gun? Didn’t it feel absolutely real? Well, The Oculus Touch is designed with wireless controllers to  give you the perfect feeling of Virtual Reality.

It involves sensors to detect gestures. Also, the base stations sweep the area around it with lasers, detecting the precise position of head and hands.

4. Eye tracking:

This involves the use of infrared sensors which monitors the eyes who get an idea as to where you are looking in virtual reality. This enhances the reaction of game characters and makes VR all the more realistic.

FOVE is world’s first eye tracking virtual reality headset. Well, an infrared sensor monitor’s your eyes inside the headset, so FOVE knows where your eyes are looking in virtual reality.

The main advantage of this – apart from allowing in-game characters to more precisely react to where you’re looking- is to make the depth of field more realistic. FOVE’s graphics engine can even track our eyes to simulate focus or blurs in a 3D space in VR.

Wish to know more? Stay tuned for more upcoming updates on Virtual Reality.

Linus Torvalds Releases Linux 4.6 With New Features — Download Now

After seven release candidates, the Linux 4.6 kernel was officially released by Linus Torvalds on May 15. As the third major Linux kernel release in 2016, the Linux 4.6 kernel is here 8 weeks after the Linux 4.5 kernel. It includes many changes like the support for OrangeFS file system, USB 3.1 SuperSpeed Plus protocol, and better driver support.

Linux 4.6 kernel is codenamed the “Charred Weasel”. After receiving a total seven Release Candidate builds and spending two months in development, the final production version of kernel is here with new features, security improvements, and updated drives.

“It’s just as well I didn’t cut the rc cycle short, since the last week ended up getting a few more fixes than expected,” wrote Linus Torvalds about the latest release.

As 4.6 kernel is released on time, Torvalds has announced that he will start doing merge window pull requests for 4.7 kernel from tomorrow.

The new features in Linux 4.6 kernel

In the form of big changes coming to kernel, Linux 4.6 brings the full support for the USB 3.1 SuperSpeed Plus protocol, giving you the transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps, compared to 5Gbps speed of USB 3 and 480mbps speed of USB 2.0.

The other big features coming to Linux is the support for OrangeFS distributed file system along with the support for Intel Memory protection keys and improvements of the Out Of Memory task killer.

To make the open-source AMD graphics driver stack more stable, various AMDGPU and Radeon improvements have been made.

Linux 4.6 kernel release also bring the 3D/acceleration support for NVIDIA GeForce GTX 900 “Maxwell”. Please note that it’s just an initial support and it doesn’t bring any re-clocking support.

With the new Kernel Connection Multiplexor (KCM) technology, networking has also got a boost with an ability to use TCP to send and receive application protocol messages.

With the new driver changes, Dell and Alienware laptops, including Dell XPS 13 Skylake, are now better supported.

Othe changes in Linux 4.6 kernel include 802.1AE MAC-level encryption support, BATMAN V protocol support, pNFS SCSI layout support, and online inode checker for the OCFS2file system

Linux 4.6 kernel is available for download on  Kernel.org

Coder Creates “HTML5 Mario” Written in OCaml – Play It Right Now In Your Browser

Matthew Hsu, a young coder from Cornell University, has created HTML5 Mario, written exclusively in OCaml. He has also made the source code of this geeky rendition of Super Mario Bros available on GitHub.

Matthew calls his creation MariOcaml as it’s an OCaml implementation of the game. The game consists of usual features of Super Mario Bros, including basic enemies, blocks etc. with practice support.

The key features of the code include a 2D Mario platformer for emulating the platform mechanics of the games and a web-based playable implementation with graphics (OCaml transpiled to JavaScript). For randomly generating the levels, a procedural level generator was used.

I played the game and found it comparatively difficult than the usual versions. The new Mario seemed to slide forward as I tried to stop him. I guess Mario inMariOCaml has more inertia.

Matthew has kept the design of the game pretty neat and modular to ensure that he can add more features later. Using js_of_ocaml, the game has been made interactive and graphical, that allows cross-compilation of OCaml to JavaScript.

You can find the related GitHub code here and play the “HTML5 Mario” written in OCaml here. The game runs in any modern desktop web browser.

WhatsApp Releases Desktop Apps For Windows and Mac

Windows/OS X: WhatsApp is working hard to become your go-to messenger. Now that it’s free for everyone, you can use WhatsApp on your computer with the new desktop apps.

When you first login to WhatsApp on the desktop, you’ll be prompted to scan a code from the mobile WhatsApp app on your phone. You can insert your own Yo Dawg joke here. To scan the code from your phone, press the menu button in WhatsApp and tap WhatsApp Web. Here you can scan the QR code on your computer. Later, you can also view a list of all desktop or web clients that are logged into your account from this menu.

The desktop app works much like WhatsApp Web. You can send messages, attachments, record voice messages, send pictures, and manage your message history. It might be missing a couple features from the phone version (I can’t find a way to change a conversation wallpaper from the desktop version, for example) but it should be mostly the same experience you’re used to.

Read Official Blog

WhatsApp’s desktop app