HTML 5 now and proposed

This blog is constructed from W2C website posting for last 6 months, CIO.com reviews & couple of Blogs I refer for HTML 5. This is a reference point for me as well for some dates etc. Not my copyright but belongs to above mentioned authors & organizations. This is just a data representation in a context. Please contact me in case any issue on HTML 5 at Ravindrapande@gmail.com

The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) last week announced it will finalize HTML5 by 2014 and HTML 5.1 in 2016. With significant challenges ahead, the W3C laid out a tentative implementation plan. Should the plan be approved by the HTML Working Group the W3C will see 15 years of work culminate in not only HTML5.0 but its successor 5.1 as well.

The reasoning behind announcing two specs is the result of a different approach to the problems and setbacks the W3C has faced in the past. The W3C plans to step back from what it has dubbed a monolithic "kitchen sink" method with a grab-bag of features. Moving forward it will rely more on modularity in an effort to prevent setbacks and delays.

"The current combination of a monolithic kitchen sink specification, Decision Policy, A11y Task Force, and Formal Objection process has led to a significant number of objections, and current difficulties in achieving consensus." -- Worldwide Web Consortium

Originally HTML5 included many pieces that have now been turned into their own specifications including Web Storage, Web Workers and the WebSocket Protocol. This approach will allow the W3C to move any unstable elements into the HTML 5.1 spec, thereby limiting what is in HTML5. With this approach the W3C can focus on making HTML5's current features interoperable between browsers and stable--something they have been working on for quite some time.

"Splitting out separate specifications allows those technologies to be advanced by their respective communities of interest, allowing more productive development of approaches that may eventually be able reach broader consensus" -- Worldwide Web Consortium

W3C's HTML5 Proposed Plan Outline

• Split what was originally HTML 5.0 into an HTML 5.0 and an HTML 5.1, and considerably raising the bar on what issues and bugs we consider in the HTML 5.0 timeframe:
• For bugs: create a new bugzilla component for HTML 5.0 stable/CR versions of the specifications, and only allow bugs to be created or moved in/to this component that address interoperability issues or can be addressed by a non-substantive change to the specification.
• For issues: require actual specification text to be published in the form of extension specifications first, and only after said text meets the exit criteria for CR, consider folding the result into the core specification. To prevent unnecessary confusion, drop explicit indications that any given extension is obsolete once an extension specification exists that has been published as a FPWD. Issues that are raised that concern interoperability issues will be considered during as a part of HTML5.0, all others will be considered in the HTML 5.1 timeframe. As needed, split out controversial or unstable text into extension specifications. A detailed, issue by issue, list of proposals appears later in this document.
• Verify with those that made the 11 current Formal Objections that they continue to support their objections. Close those that we can, and forward the remainder for immediate consideration by the Director. We encourage the Director to advocate Modularity as a solution whenever possible.
• Proceed immediately after these objections are processed to CR on HTML 5.0 with Public Permissive proposed CR exit criteria.
• We think it is likely that the Working Group will make substantive changes to the document as a result of Candidate Recommendation Review. Therefore, in accordance with the W3C Process, we will return to a short Last Call before requesting to advance to Proposed Recommendation.
• Allow extension specs to proceed at their own pace. Examples: HTML/XHTML Compatibility Authoring Guidelines, HTML Canvas 2D Context, and HTML Microdata.

Source: HTML5 Plan 2014 - W3C

If its plan is approved, the W3C says HTML5 should reach Candidate Recommendation status, one step closer to standardization, in the final quarter of this year.

HTML5 Progress and Setbacks

With 10 open issues, approximately 300 outstanding bugs and 11 formal objections it looks like the W3C has a tough hill to climb. That said, year to date the W3C says it has tackled more than 600 bugs and 28 issues. It also faced some challenging staffing issues in 2012 when Ian Hickson stepped down from his role as HTML5 Specification Editor to concentrate on other technologies at the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG).

For open issues have look at http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/open

Since Hickson's departure, the W3C has brought aboard 4 new editors to the HTML 5 editorial team in an effort to keep things moving forward.  The new editors were announced on Wednesday by HTML Working Group co-chair Paul Cotton in a message posted to the W3C's public HTML mailing list.

They are Travis Leithead and Erika Doyle Navara, both Microsoft employees; Ted O'Connor, an Apple employee; and Silvia Pfieffer, an independent consultant whose company, Ginger Technologies, specializes in HTML video.

Cotton gave no specific explanation for any of the appointments, saying only, "After evaluating all the applications, we chose the above HTML5 editorial team based on the individual qualifications of the new editors as well as the combination of the individual appointee's qualifications."

The four co-editors will be tasked with maintaining the W3C's formal HTML5 specification, which seeks to be the definitive document of the markup language that underlies the web.

 It has also received funding from tech giants, Microsoft, Google and Adobe. If you'd like to know more about the W3C's HTML5 Plan 2014, you can visit http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/html5-2014-plan.html

As always, we'd love to know what's on your mind. Do you think HTML5 will hit the mark?

"My hope is that the net effect of all this will be that work on the HTML Living Standard will accelerate again, resuming the pace it had before we started working with the W3C working group," Hickson wrote.

Critics of WHATWG's approach say the whole idea of a living standard is silly, and that it will be impossible for browsers to maintain compatibility with the HTML standard if the specifications are in constant flux.

Overall, however, browser makers appear to disagree. WHATWG was founded by representatives of Apple, Mozilla, and Opera, and its current steering committee includes reps from Google. All of those companies' browsers have already implemented HTML5 features, even though the standard is not yet final.

But the consensus is not total. Although Internet Explorer has also implemented HTML5 features, Microsoft has yet to join WHATWG. Also, half of the new W3C HTML5 edit team hails from Redmond.

The W3C gave no word on whether it expects four editors to get the job of drafting the HTML5 spec done any faster than one would have. At its present rate, the standards org says not to expect HTML5 to reach "Recommendation" status – the final phase of the standardization process – until 2014

Revised HTML 5.0 milestones

The following are revised milestones based on the above plan:CR:   2012 Q4

LCf:  2014 Q3

PR:   2014 Q4

Rec:  2014 Q4

For CR, we begin in October 2012 by creating a draft HTML5.0 implementation report, which eliminates controversial or unstable features, and contains a listing of all the features in the current HTML5 specification, with information about:

• which of the features have been implemented in browsers, and in which browsers
• how stable each feature is
• what the level of interoperability for each feature is
• a list of at risk features

We also begin work on a systematic HTML5.0 Testing Plan, with the goals being:

• identifying areas that are known to be interoperable and don't need further tests.
• identify areas that are known not to be interoperable, and to be removed without the need for investing time in the creation of tests.
• for the remaining areas:
• systematically determine which features we currently have test cases for
• systematically determine which features we still need test cases for

The initial draft of the HTML5.0 implementation report will be more of an outline than an actual report; at first it may be based more on qualitative assessments of features than on quantitative assessments. But as we get more test cases into the W3C Testing Framework, we will be able to collect more quantitative data on features, and to update the HTML5.0 implementation report, and evolve it into a much more quantitative assessment of all features in the specification. We should use the remains of the editor fund to hire extra resources for the html test suite task force.

Be Happy and proud at Work

Every one special believe it, Let's start with a light story. Once upon a time there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work. One day he was walking along the shore. As he looked down the beach, he saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself to think of someone who would dance to the day. So he began to walk faster to catch up.

As he got closer, he saw that it was a young man and the young man wasn't dancing, but instead he was reaching down to the shore, picking up something and very gently throwing it into the ocean.

As he got closer he called out, "Good morning! What are you doing?"

The young man paused, looked up and replied, "Throwing starfish in the ocean."

"I guess I should have asked, why are you throwing starfish in the ocean?"

"The sun is up, and the tide is going out, and if I don't throw them in they'll die."

"But, young man, don't you realize that there are miles and miles of beach, and starfish all along it. You can't possibly make a difference!"

The young man listened politely. Then bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it into the sea, past the breaking waves and said, "It made a difference for that one." See think at this we don’t need to start with moving a mountain right life gives us enough opportunities.

There is something very special in each and every one of us. We have all been gifted with the ability to make a difference....

Now let’s move to happiness part, if you're unhappy at work or anywhere else, for that matter it's because you've made yourself unhappy. I strongly believe that there's an easy way to change that.

Let me share another little story. I once knew a saleswoman–young, divorced–who got a diagnosis of cancer. She had to work and raise two kids while fighting the cancer in our society. Even so, she managed to be happy at work, noticeably happier than her co-workers. In fact, she not only won her battle with cancer but subsequently became one of the top salespeople in the organization.

She was not, as it happens, naturally cheerful. Quite the contrary. When she started full-time work, she was frequently depressed. But she turned it around, using the techniques I'm going to provide you in this column.

That saleswoman once told me: When you're unhappy, it's because you've decided to be unhappy. Think is that right? yeah see circumstances can only push you but surroundings can be fought against & if you have decided to believe in you, your can be there.

Maybe it wasn't a conscious decision; maybe it crept up on you while you weren't looking–but it was a decision nonetheless. And that's good news, because you can decide instead to be happy. You just need to understand how and why you make the decisions.

What Are Your Rules?
Happiness and unhappiness (in work and in life) result entirely from the rules in your head that you use to evaluate events. Those rules determine what's worth focusing on, and how you react to what you focus on.

Many people have rules that make it very difficult for them to happy and very easy for them to be miserable. I once worked with a sales guy who was always angry at the people he worked with. The moment anything didn't go the way he thought it should go, he'd be screaming in somebody's face. He was making everyone around him miserable–but just as importantly, he was making himself miserable, because just about anything set him off.

For this guy, the everyday nonsense that goes on in every workplace was not just important, but crazy-making important. I once asked him what made him happy. His answer: "The only thing that makes this !$%$#! job worthwhile is when I win a $1 million account." I asked him how often that happened. His response: "About once a year."

In other words, this guy had internal rules that guaranteed he'd be miserable on a day-to-day basis, but only happy once a year. One of the other sales guys at that firm had the exact opposite set of rules. His philosophy was "every day above ground is a good day." When he encountered setbacks, he shrugged them off–because, according to his internal rules, they just weren't that important. When I asked him what made him miserable, his answer was: "Not much." When I pressed him for a real answer, he said: "When somebody I love dies."

In other words, the second sales guy had rules that made it easy for him to be happy but difficult to be miserable. I'd like to be able to write that Mr. Positivity regularly outsold Mr. Negativity, but in fact their sales results were similar. Even so, I think Mr. Negativity was a loser, because he lived each day in a state of misery. His colleague was always happy. He was winning at life. He was happy at work.

Let's go to implement this , make yourself Happier: 3 Steps
The saleswoman who had breast cancer was happy, too, and this is the method she used to make herself happy:

1. Document Your Current Rules : Set aside a half-hour of alone time and, being as honest as you can, write down the answers to these two questions:

What has to happen for me to be happy?
What has to happen for me to be unhappy?

Now examine those rules. Have you made it easier to miserable than to be happy? If so, your plan is probably working.

2. Create a Better Set of Rules: Using your imagination, create and record a new set of rules that would make it easy for you to be happy and difficult to be miserable. Examples:
"I enjoy seeing the people I work with each day."
"I really hate it when natural disasters destroy my home."

Don't worry whether or not these new rules seem "realistic"–that's not the point. All internal rules are arbitrary, anyway. Just write rules that would make you happier if you really believed them.

3. Post the New Rules Where You'll See Them
When you've completed your set of "new" rules, print out them out and post copies in three places: your bathroom mirror, the dashboard of your car, and the side of your computer screen. Leave them up, even after you've memorized them.

Having those new rules visible when you're doing other things gradually re-programs your mind to believe the new rules. You will be happy at work. It's really that simple.
See life will be as you treat yourself, be positive & build a positive attitude

E-learning in the age of the tablets

New technologies have a way of transforming our approaches to learning, and of influencing our theories about it. So how will the emergence of the tablet change e-learning content and how we deliver it?

In typical IT support scenarios, we talk a lot about learner engagement in the e-learning industry. Generally, I think it’s fair to say that, if we really want someone to engage with what we’re saying, we have to speak to the heart and not just to the brain. We may disagree about the best way to do that through e-learning, but I think most people in this business would recognize the difference between a sterile information dump, without context or emotional relevance to the learner, and a stimulating interaction that successfully reaches for the emotions as well as the mind.

With tablet computing, we have a whole new sense to engage – the sense of touch. So, we need to explore what works with this a low end computer & phone in one with sufficient processing power.

Now, with tablet computing, we have a whole new sense to engage – the sense of touch. This is an incredibly exciting opportunity, and I’d hate to see it wasted because we failed to think through the practical implications of the medium and neglected to consider what ‘pleases the finger’. Just as in the past we labored over the cognitive and visual aspects of e-learning, we now need to explore what works kinesthetically.

Appealing to the sense of touch :Touch is a natural, intimate gesture; it is perhaps our most instinctive way of interacting with anything at all. While a PC relies on an abstract relationship between the learner and the elements on the screen, mediated by a mouse and a pointer, with a tablet we get to engage more directly. A learner has a more immediate physical interaction with the learning material. Put a product knowledge or process training course on a tablet, and you can literally open that subject up for tactile exploration.

So, what strengths do tablets have when it comes to e-learning? I think there’s little doubt that tablets will become an important platform for e-learning delivery. Their personal nature, ease-of-use and low cost – as well as that intimacy of touch – could well mean that the majority of e-learning is provided this way in the future.

Laid back learning : But what exactly do tablets do best? First of all, a tablet is a much more relaxing device to use than a smart phone or PC. As smart phone users we find ourselves squinting at our tiny screens, killing an empty minute or seeking some seemingly-essential factoid. As PC users we tend to lean forward, hunched over the keyboard, squinting at a cluttered environment full of windows, menus, processes and notifications.

When a learner launches e-learning on a tablet, the tablet becomes a ‘learning appliance’.

So our learning appliance, at least in the shape of the say Aakash / ipad , is more of an appliance; the app you are using takes over the device and becomes the device. When you launch an ebook reader the tablet becomes an ebook reader; when you launch the newspaper app it becomes the newspaper and so on. Similarly, I believe, when a learner launches e-learning on a tablet, the tablet becomes a ‘learning appliance’. We just don’t have a name for it yet: L-device?

On a tablet, learning can take place in a more tranquil setting: sitting in an armchair or on a sofa, say, relaxing and taking time to think and contemplate. Indeed, this setting may even be too relaxed for some forms of learning, but maybe this laid-back context will stimulate designers to develop new and effective learning interactions.

Text makes a comeback : Tablets threaten one of our most basic assumptions about e-learning content: that reading large amounts of text on a PC screen is bad. If this notion was ever true for computer-based training, it’s surely not true for tablets. Tablets are excellent reading devices; you can sit back, relax, adjust the text size and orientation and enjoy the read.

I think text, which we have gone to great lengths to avoid in e-learning, stands a good chance of making a big comeback on the tablet. I’m not advocating a text-only approach but, as a learning tool to compare with other media, I think text holds its own on a tablet in a way that it doesn't on PC monitor.

Video galore: We’ve been using more and more video in PC-based e-learning, so perhaps it comes as no surprise that video will be play a starring role in tablet-based e-learning as well. Video really stands out on a tablet: it’s great for standalone video-casts, but it works just as well interspersed with other content. You can even scale the video to full screen with a simple gesture – another example of tactile interaction with content on a tablet.

And because the tablet is a device that you must hold and touch, video content feels more personal and engaging than it does on a PC screen. I really hope that video replaces that standard e-learning approach: text with voice-over. A tablet playing an interview with a Subject Matter Expert, or even a trainer talking directly to you, is much more effective than the ever-droning voice-over that seems to haunt PC-based e-learning.

So, the tablet is looking good for reading and watching video – both ‘laid back’ learning activities. But we want interactivity in our e-learning too, to engage learners and make them absorb our learning objectives as they explore the content. And that raises an interesting question: to what extent do we need to reinvent even the most basic PC-based interactions for the tablet environment?

Let's think outside the button: Interacting through touch means working with your fingers. To create a successful touch interface we need to think outside the button. A finger is much bigger than a mouse pointer, so any interaction that relies on mouse-level accuracy won’t be ideal for a touch interface. For e-learning, this means that the way we present and select options must be revisited from a finger-sized perspective.

Tablets allow us think bigger, and in terms of gestures. IT guys says Buttons are abstractions, they don’t allow us to work directly with content, but rather ask us for approval for the machine to do something. In an ideal learning interaction it is the learner who does things; the tablet as a computer should become invisible.

Tablets allow us think bigger, and in terms of gestures. You move a mouse pointer to another part of a PC screen with a relatively small twitch of the hand, but on a tablet you can use a combination of finger movements. Navigation and option selection could be less about reading and clicking and more about swiping towards areas of interest, using multi-touch gestures to explore and manipulate options and so on. I believe that what we consider to be ‘instructionally effective’ content is heavily influenced by the format in which that content is delivered. In other words, our fondly-held instructional design theories owe more to the medium than they do to some deeper pedagogical truth. To rewrite McLuhan: the medium forms the theory. And, clearly, the medium that has thus far influenced our instructional design theories has been the PC with its vertical screen, the keyboard, the mouse and the mouse pointer.

Is this "the end "of classic multiple choice? Think again,

We use multiple choice as part of a discourse rather than as way to test knowledge. It allows the learner to interact with the content, and stimulates reflection on key questions, possible outcomes and important issues. But the interaction still involves reading and clicking – mediated, or ‘abstracted’, by the screen, mouse and mouse pointer interface.

The combination of mobility, larger screen size, and greater computing power makes tablets an ideal mobile device for accessing a wide range of training and educational content—from e-textbooks to Web-based courses to decision-support apps. Producers of eLearning who understand the devices’ potential—and limitations—will be able to create truly innovative, effective tablet-based learning experiences that wow and delight learners.

What tablet-friendly alternatives will we get to ‘traditional’ e-learning interactions?

I’m not arguing that we now scrap multiple choice questions, but I do question whether it is an interaction we’d choose if we’d first started creating e-learning on tablets instead of on PCs. And if we can challenge multiple choice questions on that basis, we can do the same for the many PC-derived interactions involving buttons, boxes and lists.

We are already implementing what tablet-friendly alternatives we get to these ‘traditional’ e-learning interactions. the approaches will we discover that avoid the abstraction of button and option clicking, which embrace the tactile possibilities of direct screen contact, and that please the finger with large targets and intuitive gestures? These are exciting possibilities and the field is, as yet, wide open.

Any thoughts share with me at ravindrapande@gmail.com

Android 4 new improved

Just before few days ago Google released the software developer kit for its newest version of the Android OS, code-named "Ice Cream Sandwich." This is the newest version of Google's mobile OS will start hitting tablets and smartphones in November. In the meantime, developers can start geting their hands on the SDK, which features a new UI framework. I have also provided the link to download the SDK below. This blog is for the developer community to head start what’s new in Android 4.

A key highlight for developers in the newest Android OS version is the improved application programming interface (API) for calendar and contact information, which, this will make it easier to add calendar services and social media features to created apps. This new API, including a comprehensive set of Intents, to manage calendar data in ICS. Now anyone can code against these new APIs and know that Android is committed to supporting them, and that partners have to support these APIs as part of CTS.

To incorporate the improved API features, the UI framework also includes a widget called ShareActionProvider, which allows developers to embed action bars and share functionality into apps. Ice Cream Sandwich also includes a new feature called Android Beam, which will let developers design ways in which apps can interact with multiple users based on proximity. Users can share information, initiate multiplayer gaming and share media by touching two Android Beam-compatible devices.

On the display end, Android 4.0 will feature a grid-like layout that "improves the performance of Android applications by supporting flatter view hierarchies that are faster to layout and render." It also supports OpenGL ES texture views, making it easier to insert decided videos, embedded camera previews and OpenGL game assets into a desired app. Android 4.0 have an efficient multitasking, rich notifications, customizable home screens, resizable widgets, and deep interactivity -- and adds powerful new ways of communicating and sharing. You can download Android 4.0 SDK http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Let's try & collect different advantages & good stuff in Android 4 Starting with simple, beautiful, smart, etc. Android 4.0 builds on the things people love most about Android — easy multitasking, rich notifications, customizable home screens, resizable widgets, and deep interactivity — and adds powerful new ways of communicating and sharing.

Refined, evolved UI :Focused on bringing the power of Android to the surface, Android 4.0 makes common actions more visible and lets users navigate with simple, intuitive gestures. Refined animations and feedback throughout the system make interactions engaging and interesting. An entirely new typeface optimized for high-resolution screens improves readability and brings a polished, modern feel to the user interface.

Virtual buttons in the System Bar let users navigate instantly to Back, Home, and Recent Apps. The System Bar and virtual buttons are present across all apps, but can be dimmed by applications for full-screen viewing. Users can access each application's contextual options in the Action Bar, displayed at the top (and sometimes also at the bottom) of the screen.

Multitasking is a key strength of Android and it's made even easier and more visual on Android 4.0. The Recent Apps button lets users jump instantly from one task to another using the list in the System Bar. The list pops up to show thumbnail images of apps used recently — tapping a thumbnail switches to the app.

Rich and interactive notifications let users keep in constant touch with incoming messages, play music tracks, see real-time updates from apps, and much more. On smaller-screen devices, notifications appear at the top of the screen, while on larger-screen devices they appear in the System Bar.

Improved Home screen folders and favorites(drag & drop support): New home screen folders offer a new way for users to group their apps and shortcuts logically, just by dragging one onto another. Also, in All Apps launcher, users can now simply drag an app to get information about it or immediately uninstall it, or disable a pre-installed app. On smaller-screen devices, the home screen now includes a customizable favorites tray visible from all home screens. Users can drag apps, shortcuts, folders, and other priority items in or out of the favorites tray for instant access from any home screen.

Resizable widgets: Home screens in Android 4.0 are designed to be content-rich and customizable. Users can do much more than add shortcuts. They can embed live application content directly through interactive widgets. Widgets let users check email, flip through a calendar, play music, check social streams, and more right from the home screen, without having to launch apps. Widgets are resizable, so users can expand them to show more content or shrink them to save space.

Lock screen new options: The lock screens now let users do more without unlocking. From the slide lock screen, users can jump directly to the camera for a picture or pull down the notifications window to check for messages. When listening to music, users can even manage music tracks and see album art.

Better responses for incoming calls :When an incoming call arrives, users can now quickly respond by text message, without needing to pick up the call or unlock the device. On the incoming call screen, users simply slide a control to see a list of text responses and then tap to send and end the call. Users can add their own responses and manage the list from the Settings app.

Android 4.0 makes managing notifications, recent apps, and browser tabs even easier. Users can now dismiss individual notifications, apps from the Recent Apps list, and browser tabs.

Improved text input and spell-checking: The soft keyboard in Android 4.0 will make text input even faster and more accurate. Error correction and word suggestion are improved through a new set of default dictionaries and more accurate heuristics for handling cases such as double-typed characters, skipped letters, and omitted spaces. Word suggestion is also improved and the suggestion strip is simplified to show only three words at a time.

To fix misspelled words more easily, Android 4.0 adds a spell-checker that locates and underlines errors and suggests replacement words. With one tap, users can choose from multiple spelling suggestions, delete a word, or add it to the dictionary. Users can even tap to see replacement suggestions for words that are spelled correctly. For specialized features or additional languages, users can now download and install third-party dictionaries, spell-checkers, and other text services.

Improved voice input engine: Android 4.0 introduces a powerful new voice input engine that offers a continuous "open microphone" experience and streaming voice recognition. The new voice input engine lets users dictate the text they want, for as long as they want, using the language they want. Users can speak continuously for a prolonged time, even pausing for intervals if needed, and dictate punctuation to create correct sentences. As the voice input engine enters text, it underlines possible dictation errors in gray. After dictating, users can tap the underlined words to quickly replace them from a list of suggestions.

Control over network data: Mobile devices can make extensive use of network data for streaming content, synchronizing data, downloading apps, and more. To meet the needs of users with tiered or metered data plans, Android 4.0 adds new controls for managing network data usage.

In the Settings app, colorful charts show the total data usage on each network type (mobile or Wi-Fi), as well as amount of data used by each running application. Based on their data plans, users can optionally set warning levels or hard limits on data usage or disable mobile data altogether. Users can also manage the background data used by individual applications as needed.

Designed for accessibility: A variety of new features greatly enhance the accessibility of Android 4.0 for blind or visually impaired users. Most important is a new explore-by-touch mode that lets users navigate without having to see the screen. Touching the screen once triggers audible feedback that identifies the UI component below; a second touch in the same component activates it with a full touch event. The new mode is especially important to support users on new devices that use virtual buttons in the System Bar, rather than dedicated hardware buttons or trackballs. Also, standard apps are updated to offer an improved accessibility experience. The Browser supports a script-based screen reader for reading favorite web content and navigating sites. For improved readability, users can also increase the default font size used across the system.

The accessibility experience begins at first setup — a simple touch gesture during setup (clockwise square from upper left) activates all accessibility features and loads a setup tutorial. Once accessibility features are active, everything visible on the screen can be spoken aloud by the standard screen reader.

Communication and sharing: Designed for the way people live, Android 4.0 integrates rich social communication and sharing touch points across the system, making it easy to talk, email, text, and share.

People and profiles: Throughout the system, a user’s social groups, profiles, and contacts are linked together and integrated for easy accessibility. At the center is a new People app that offers richer profile information, including a large profile picture, phone numbers, addresses and accounts, status updates, events, and a new button for connecting on integrated social networks.

The user's own contact information is stored in a new "Me" profile, allowing easier sharing with apps and people. All of the user's integrated contacts are displayed in an easy to manage list, including controls over which contacts are shown from any integrated account or social network. Wherever the user navigates across the system, tapping a profile photo displays Quick Contacts, with large profile pictures, shortcuts to phone numbers, text messaging, and more.

Unified calendar, visual voicemail: To help organize appointments and events, an updated Calendar app brings together personal, work, school, and social agendas. With user permission, other applications can contribute events to the calendar and manage reminders, for an integrated view across multiple calendar providers. The app is redesigned to let users manage events more easily. Calendars are color-coded and users can swipe left or right to change dates and pinch to zoom in or out agendas.

In the phone app, a new visual voicemail features integrates incoming messages, voice transcriptions, and audio files from one or more providers. Third-party applications can integrate with the Phone app to add their own voice messages, transcriptions, and more to the visual voicemail inbox.

Rich and versatile camera capabilities: The Camera app includes many new features that let users capture special moments with great photos and videos. After capturing images, they can edit and share them easily with friends. When taking pictures, continuous focus, zero shutter lag exposure, and decreased shot-to-shot speed help capture clear, precise images. Stabilized image zoom lets users compose photos and video in the way they want, including while video is recording. For new flexibility and convenience while shooting video, users can now take snapshots at full video resolution just by tapping the screen as video continues to record. To make it easier to take great pictures of people, built-in face detection locates faces in the frame and automatically sets focus. For more control, users can tap to focus anywhere in the preview image.

For capturing larger scenes, the Camera introduces a single-motion panorama mode. In this mode, the user starts an exposure and then slowly turns the Camera to encompass as wide a perspective as needed. The Camera assembles the full range of continuous imagery into a single panoramic photo.

After taking a picture or video, users can quickly share it by email, text message, bluetooth, social networks, and more, just by tapping the thumbnail in the camera controls.

Redesigned Gallery app with photo editor: The Gallery app now makes it easier to manage, show, and share photos and videos. For managing collections, a redesigned album layout shows many more albums and offers larger thumbnails. There are many ways to sort albums, including by time, location, people, and tags. To help pictures look their best, the Gallery now includes a powerful photo editor. Users can crop and rotate pictures, set levels, remove red eyes, add effects, and much more. After retouching, users can select one or multiple pictures or videos to share instantly over email, text messaging, Bluetooth, social networks, or other apps.

An improved Picture Gallery widget lets users look at pictures directly on their home screen. The widget can display pictures from a selected album, shuffle pictures from all albums, or show a single image. After adding the widget to the home screen, users can flick through the photo stacks to locate the image they want, then tap to load it in Gallery.

Live Effects for transforming video: Live Effects is a collection of graphical transformations that add interest and fun to videos captured in the Camera app. For example, users can change the background behind them to any stock or custom image, for just the right setting when shooting video. Also available for video is Silly Faces, a set of morphing effects that use state-of-the-art face recognition and GPU filters to transform facial features. For example, you can use effects such as small eyes, big mouth, big nose, face squeeze, and more. Outside of the Camera app, Live Effects is available during video chat in the Google Talk app.

Sharing with screenshots: Users can now share what's on their screens more easily by taking screenshots. Hardware buttons let them snap a screenshot and store it locally. Afterward, they can view, edit, and share the screen shot in Gallery or a similar app.

Cloud-connected experience: Android has always been cloud-connected, letting users browse the web and sync photos, apps, games, email, and contacts — wherever they are and across all of their devices. Android 4.0 adds new browsing and email capabilities to let users take even more with them and keep communication organized.

Improved web browsing: The Android Browser offers an experience that’s as rich and convenient as a desktop browser. It lets users instantly sync and manage Google Chrome bookmarks from all of their accounts, jump to their favorite content faster, and even save it for reading later in case there's no network available. To get the most out of web content, users can now request full desktop versions of web sites, rather than their mobile versions. Users can set their preference for web sites separately for each browser tab. For longer content, users can save a copy for offline reading. To find and open saved pages, users can browse a visual list that’s included with browser bookmarks and history. For better readability and accessibility, users can increase the browser’s zoom levels and override the system default text sizes.

Across all types of content, the Android Browser offers dramatically improved page rendering performance through updated versions of the WebKit core and the V8 Crankshaft compilation engine for JavaScript. In benchmarks run on a Nexus S device, the Android 4.0 browser showed an improvement of nearly 220% over the Android 2.3 browser in the V8 Benchmark Suite and more than 35% in the SunSpider 9.1 JavaScript Benchmark. When run on a Galaxy Nexus device, the Android 4.0 browser showed improvement of nearly 550% in the V8 benchmark and nearly 70% in the SunSpider benchmark.

Improved email: In Android 4.0, email is easier to send, read, and manage. For composing email, improved auto-completion of recipients helps with finding and adding frequent contacts more quickly. For easier input of frequent text, users can now create quick responses and store them in the app, then enter them from a convenient menu when composing. When replying to a message, users can now toggle the message to Reply All and Forward without changing screens.

For easier browsing across accounts and labels, the app adds an integrated menu of accounts and recent labels. To help users locate and organize IMAP and Exchange email, the Email app now supports nested mail subfolders, each with synchronization rules. Users can also search across folders on the server, for faster results.

For enterprises, the Email app supports EAS v14. It supports EAS certificate authentication, provides ABQ strings for device type and mode, and allows automatic sync to be disabled while roaming. Administrators can also limit attachment size or disable attachments.

For keeping track of incoming email more easily, a resizable Email widget lets users flick through recent email right from the home screen, then jump into the Email app to compose or reply.

Innovation: Android is continously driving innovation forward, pushing the boundaries of communication and sharing with new capabilities and interactions.

Android Beam : Android Beam is an innovative, convenient feature for sharing across two NFC-enabled devices, It lets people instantly exchange favorite apps, contacts, music, videos — almost anything. It’s incredibly simple and convenient to use — there’s no menu to open, application to launch, or pairing needed. Just touch one Android-powered phone to another, then tap to send.

For sharing apps, Android Beam pushes a link to the app's details page in Android Market. On the other device, the Market app launches and loads the details page, for easy downloading of the app. Individual apps can build on Android Beam to add other types of interactions, such as passing game scores, initiating a multiplayer game or chat, and more.

Face Unlock: Android 4.0 introduces a completely new approach to securing a device, making each person's device even more personal — Face Unlock is a new screen-lock option that lets users unlock their devices with their faces. It takes advantage of the device front-facing camera and state-of-the-art facial recognition technology to register a face during setup and then to recognize it again when unlocking the device. Users just hold their devices in front of their faces to unlock, or use a backup PIN or pattern.

Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth HDP: Support for Wi-Fi Direct lets users connect directly to nearby peer devices over Wi-Fi, for more reliable, higher-speed communication. No internet connection or tethering is needed. Through third-party apps, users can connect to compatible devices to take advantage of new features such as instant sharing of files, photos, or other media; streaming video or audio from another device; or connecting to compatible printers or other devices. Android 4.0 also introduces built-in support for connecting to Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP) devices. With support from third-party apps, users can connect to wireless medical devices and sensors in hospitals, fitness centers, homes, and elsewhere. In addition, for connecting to higher quality Bluetooth audio devices, Android 4.0 adds support for Bluetooth Hands Free Profile (HFP) 1.6.

Let's wait for more I will come back after my first POC ASAP. Till then send in feedback & suggestions.

Should we care about the speed of light or faster

Should we care about the speed of light. This is just on different note I am not a physicist but as reader loved this info

A change in how scientists conceptualize relativity could alter how we think about causality and turn physics on its head. When physicists announced last week that they had detected subatomic particles, called neutrinos, that appeared to be traveling faster than the speed of light, it seemed to be an exception to a cosmic speed limit set by Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity.

Einstein's theory, which he proposed in 1905, describes the relativity of motion, particularly the motion of anything moving at or close to the speed of light. At the time, people believed that light waves, just as sound waves, ocean waves or shock waves, had to travel through a medium. But rather than air, water or ground, they believed light waves traveled through a substance called ether, less tangible than air, that pervaded the universe.

Scientists assumed that the laws of physics would be different for an object at rest with respect to the ether, and with the proper experiments it would be possible to figure out what was truly at rest, according to Peter Galison, a professor of physics and the history of science at Harvard University.

"Einstein got rid of that," Galison said. "There are no physical properties that go with the statement 'I am truly at rest.' That's really what special relativity is about."

In other words, the properties of physics are the same for me whether I am riding my bicycle or sitting on a park bench. Special relativity, however, does not apply to acceleration. Einstein would tackle this later in his general theory of relativity.

Special relativity is also based on a second assumption that gives the speed of light — 186,000 miles per second (300 million meters per second) — in a vacuum a special status. Einstein postulated that light always travels at the same speed for every observer, regardless of that observer's speed, Galison explained.

So, if you have a fast enough car, in theory, you could catch up to a bullet. But you could never catch up to, or even reduce the apparent speed of a pulse of light, regardless of whether you were driving toward it or away from it.

Ultimate speed limit

Under Einstein's theory, the speed of light becomes a sort of ultimate speed limit. In fact, objects with mass, be they cars or neutrinos, can't reach the speed of light because they would need infinite energy to do so, according to the theory.

Some experiments have appeared to play with the speed of light, but these effects are illusory, according to Galison. Light traveling through different mediums, such as chilled sodium gas, does slow substantially, but this is because the light is being bounced between the atoms within the medium. But between interactions with atoms, it is still traveling at 186,000 miles per second (300 million meters per second), he said.

Claims that it's possible to push light beyond 186,000 miles per second (300 million meters per second), are equally illusory, Galison said.

Galison uses a hypothetical to explain why. If you shine a laser pointer on the surface of the moon and flick your wrist to sweep across the surface, wouldn't that mean that the bright dot is crossing the surface of the moon faster than the speed of light? No, because nothing is actually crossing the surface of the moon — the dot isn't an actual object, it is just a series of photons in the laser beam hitting the surface.

"For 100 years, people have used these and more sophisticated paradoxes to try to say, 'Well isn't there this way to exceed the speed of light?'" Galison said. "They usually turn out to involve accelerating motion, something that is not really an object" — like the bright spot of the laser pointer — "or infinite energy." In other words, cheats.

In the lab, researchers can create the impression of sending light faster than the speed limit by tweaking the speed at which the wave crests of light propagate through space. This, however, does not increase the speed at which the actual electromagnetic information travels — this is conveyed by the overall shape of the wave's amplitude.

Iron clad theory?

Since Einstein introduced special relativity, the theory and the special status it gives to the speed of light have appeared iron-clad.

Until now, that is. Scientists working on the OPERA experiment at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland beamed neutrinos 454 miles (730 kilometers) underground to Italy, and calculated how fast they made the trip. Shockingly, the neutrinos appeared to beat light speed by 60 billionths of a second. The finding appears to fly in the face of the last 106 years of physics.

"Our understanding hasn't evolved at all, we've been doing extremely precise tests of special relativity since the very first days," said Ben Monreal, an assistant professor of physics at University of California, Santa Barbara. "Special relativity has been passing tests with flying colors for over 100 years now. That is why this result is so surprising and unexpected."

If the finding of the OPERA experiment does pan out, the implications are much more mind-bending. Under special relativity, if something travels faster than the speed of light, it goes backwards in time. Such a proposition could interfere with the basic rule that cause precedes effect, called causality.

"The reason a lot of physicists are very unmoved by these claims is that it could make causality itself very problematic," Galison said. In other words, it raises the prospect of time travel.

There is another issue too. Einstein introduced the speed of light as a mathematical constant, c. If neutrinos can indeed exceed the speed of light, then c loses its special status, giving rise to a host of other problems elsewhere in physics, where c has been used in calculations, such as the famous formula E=mc^2.

"For all of these reasons, people are going to need extra evidence to conclude that it is going to hold up," Galison said.

Now let's understand this "Light Travels Backward and Faster than Light"

Robert Boyd, professor of optics stated this. It sounds nuts, but a scientist says his team has made light go backward. And this is not a simple trick of mirrors.

Previous work has slowed light to a crawl. But in the new research, a pulse of light is given a negative speed and—as if just to make your head spin—the researcher says the experiment made light appear to exceed its theoretical speed limit.

If you totally confused, don't worry. This reporter doesn't get it either. Nor do a lot of really smart scientists. "I've had some of the world's experts scratching their heads over this one," says Robert Boyd, a professor of optics at the University of Rochester. "It's weird stuff."

The research was reported in the May 12 issue of the journal Science. Though not normally stated in news reports, Science is a peer-reviewed journal. That means some experts read Boyd's paper and said it was good to publish.

That said, nobody would blame you if you stop here. Otherwise, grab a couple aspirin, have a look at depictions of the experiment and read on the internet.

If you're light, it's fairly easy to travel at your own speed -- that is to say 186,282 miles per second or 299,800 kilometers per second.

But if you are matter, then it's another matter altogether. (This is a good one you can have a smile or two).

Nothing we know of zips along more quickly than light. Einstein, nearly 106 years ago, said it's not possible. For us, the speed limit makes strange sense: Go faster than light, and you could return before you've left, become your own grandpa, or perform other leaps of cosmic logic. We're going to let Boyd do the explaining. And this next sentence is the crux of it all:

"We sent a pulse through an optical fiber, and before its peak even entered the fiber, it was exiting the other end. Through experiments we were able to see that the pulse inside the fiber was actually moving backward, linking the input and output pulses."

"The pulse of light is shaped like a hump with a peak and long leading and trailing edges. The leading edge carries with it all the information about the pulse and enters the fiber first. By the time the peak enters the fiber, the leading edge is already well ahead, exiting. From the information in that leading edge, the fiber essentially 'reconstructs' the pulse at the far end, sending one version out the fiber, and another backward toward the beginning of the fiber." Faster than light

Let's put that another way, verbatim from a statement issued by the University of Rochester:

"As the pulse enters the material, a second pulse appears on the far end of the fiber and flows backward. The reversed pulse not only propagates backward, but it releases a forward pulse out the far end of the fiber. In this way, the pulse that enters the front of the fiber appears out the end almost instantly, apparently traveling faster than the regular speed of light."

What about Einstein, who said nothing can exceed light-speed?

"Einstein said information can't travel faster than light, and in this case, as with all fast-light experiments, no information is truly moving faster than light," Boyd said.

A spokesperson at the university's communications department added this: "Everything that defines the pulse that enters, also defines the pulse that exits. But the energy of the light does not travel faster than light."

Fast forward a century. Astronomers are now measuring stuff -- material, matter, things -- that moves at so close to the speed of light you might think it'd make Einstein a bit nervous. His theory of relativity appears not to be endangered by the blazing speeds, though.

Among thee speed demons of the universe are Jupiter-sized blobs of hot gas embedded in streams of material ejected from hyperactive galaxies known as blazars. Last week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, scientists announced they had measured blobs in blazar jets screaming through space at 99.9 percent of light-speed.

"This tells us that the physical processes at the cores of these galaxies ... are extremely energetic and are capable of propelling matter very close to the absolute cosmic speed limit," said Glenn Piner of Whittier College in Whittier, California.

Ponder the power of the fast moving superheated gas, known as plasma:"To accelerate a bowling ball to the speed newly measured in these blazars would require all the energy produced in the world for an entire week," Piner said. "And the blobs of plasma in these jets are at least as massive as a large planet." The blazar jets are running around the universe in some fast company. Slightly faster, in fact.

In another study presented at the meeting, ultra high-energy cosmic rays thought to originate in a collision of galaxy clusters are slamming into Earth's atmosphere at more than 99.9 percent of the speed of light. Measurements put the number at 99.9 followed by 19 more nines -- about as close to light-speed as you can get without splitting hairs.

The particles are not light, but actual matter. They are tiny, thought to be mostly protons, but the energy that motivates them is similarly fantastic, and the mechanisms may be intertwined.

Scientists still don't know the exact mechanisms involved in accelerating matter to such high speeds, however. In the case of a blazars, it appears a black hole is involved. Anchoring an active galaxy, a supermassive black hole draws gas inward. Some is swallowed, yet some is simply accelerated and then ejected in high-speed jets along the galaxy's axis of rotation. Intense, twisted magnetic fields may play a role. Some ultra high-energy cosmic rays might originate in blazar jets, Piner told SPACE.com. But other phenomena may serve as particle accelerators in space, such as merging galaxies or colliding black holes.

Piner and his colleagues observed three blazars, known from previous observations to be super speedy, using the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array radio observatory. The results confirm the previous work and pin down the speeds with greater accuracy. The phenomenal pace of the plasma blobs looks to have reached a limit.

"All the results from blazar jet observations are in agreement with Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity," Piner said. "The jets are accelerated right up to the edge of the speed-of-light barrier but not beyond, even though these are some of the most efficient accelerators in the universe."

See now we are fighting to believe could we one day travel faster than light ? This is matter got .... Have great one. Feedbacks are welcomed.