Manu Prakash: A 50-cent microscope that folds like origami!

9 Ways the Internet Will Change Your Life in 2025, for Better and Worse!

In honor of the 25th birthday of the World Wide Web, the Pew Research Center recruits more than 2,000 experts try to predict what the Web--and life--will look like some 10 years out.

Happy Birthday, World Wide Web.

Twenty-five years ago today, Tim Berners-Lee (now Sir Berners-Lee) wrote a paper describing an information-management system that we would later know as the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee released the code to make his system real on Christmas Day, 1990.

The rest, as they say, is history. To mark the Web’s 25th birthday, the Pew Research Center has been conducting a series of research projects to better understand impact of the Web and to try to predict and prepare for its future. In collaboration with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Project, Pew asked 2,558 handpicked experts--folks such as Hal Varian, danah boyd, Vint Cerf, and Marc Rotenberg--to describe what the Web will look like, and how we’ll be interacting with it, in 2025. Pew then grouped those answers into "theses," some more positive than others.

Here are nine of the report's predictions for 2025:

1. There will be added awareness of our world and our own behavior.

For this, we’ll have the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and big data to thank. This awareness won’t be limited to ourselves, though. We’ll have similar insights into other people as well. As Judith Donath, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, writes: "We’ll have a picture of how someone has spent their time, the depth of their commitment to their hobbies, causes, friends, and family. This will change how we think about people, how we establish trust, how we negotiate change, failure, and success."

2. Information sharing will be so enmeshed in our daily lives that we mostly won’t even notice it.

By 2025, the Internet will become akin to electrical service or another utility. Says Joe Touch, director at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute: "We won’t think about 'going online' or 'looking on the Internet' for something--we'll just be online, and just look."

3. Wearable devices will transform health care delivery.

Wearable devices will give us not just early detection of disease but early detection of the very risk for disease. That will help us make lifestyle changes not only day-to-day but hour-by-hour, "magnifying the effectiveness of an ever more understaffed medical delivery system," says Aron Roberts, a software developer at the University of California-Berkeley.

4. Governments may lose control.

The Internet enables more people in the developing world to become more aware of disparities in access to health care, education, water, and human rights, and for everyone to become more aware of the cost of manipulative governments. The result will be more peaceful changes but also more public uprisings such as the Arab Spring. "Nations" of those with shared interests will become increasingly difficult for formal governments to control--but we can expect them to try mightily, with new regulations and increased monitoring.

5. The Internet will become (more) fragmented.

In a line that sounds right out of a 1980s science-fiction novel, David Brin, an author and futurist, predicts: "There will be many Internets. Mesh networks will self-form and we’ll deputize sub-selves to dwell in many places." If you have a "work persona" on LinkedIn and use Facebook mostly to communicate with your relatives, you already know what Brin is talking about.

6. Education will be available to all.

A singularly sunny prediction about the effects of universal access to education is represented in the report by a quote from Hal Varian, now Google’s chief economist. "The smartest person in the world currently could well be stuck behind a plow in India or China. Enabling that person--and the millions like him or her--will have a profound impact on the development of the human race."

7. Gaps between the haves and the have-nots may expand, leading to violence.

Oscar Gandy, an emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School, predicts "growing inequality enabled and amplified by means of networked transactions that benefit smaller and smaller segments of the global population." Social media makes it easier for people to share their frustrations; it also makes it easier for people to challenge the status quo--not necessarily peaceably.

8. The bad guys will have new tools to make life miserable for everyone else.

Privacy and confidentiality will become things of the past (see below). As the world becomes less safe, terrorism and cyber-terrorism may become daily occurrences. Dirty tricks over social media may become more influential in political campaigns. As one antispam expert commented: "Abusers evolve and scale far more than regular Internet users."

9. Say good-bye to privacy.

By 2025, only the relatively well-educated and affluent will have the ability to maintain their privacy. Whether they will choose to do so remains to be seen.
The report closes on a positive note, sharing a reminder voiced by many of the experts who were consulted: The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Robert Cannon, an Internet law and policy expert, writes: "The good news is that the technology that promises to turn our world on its head is also the technology with which we can build our new world. If offers an unbridled ability to collaborate, share, and interact.... It is a very good time to start inventing the future."

by Kimberly Weisul

Partition >> The Day India Burned!

Stunning Time-Lapse Video Shows Rare Views of Yosemite! National Geographic!!

Explore the night sky in Yosemite National Park from the top of Echo Ridge—all in the first eight seconds of the video.

California-based photographers Colin Delehanty and Sheldon Neill spent more than ten months backpacking across Yosemite National Park to create this stunning five-minute time-lapse video of the park in all four seasons.

Yosemite HD II is their second time-lapse video of the national park. The first, Yosemite HD, was published in 2012 after three months of shooting. But they knew they could do better.

After 200 miles (320 kilometers) and a total of 45 days in the park, they finally captured what Yosemite means to them. In order to do this, they had to get off the beaten path.

National Geographic asked them to guide viewers through the video and point out the difficult-to-reach places of Yosemite National Park.

1. Echo Ridge in Cathedral Range (0:00 in the video)

The photographers walked for a total of five hours round trip to capture the introductory shot of Yosemite, near one of the highest points in the Cathedral Range, known as Echo Peaks.

Echo Peaks and Echo Ridge are about 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) from the closest road and reach an elevation of 11,062 feet (3,372 meters) from the base. Echo Ridge connects Echo Peaks with nearby Unicorn Peak. (Learn about 3-D mapping of Yosemite's iconic mountain ranges.)

"It was freezing cold, and there wasn't much of a surface area," said Neill. "It was one of our more memorable trips because it was windy and the sunset was amazing. We were also fortunate to capture the Sierra Wave, which you don't see often."

In the first shot of the video, light pollution can be seen in the distance behind the Cathedral Range. Other shots of the Cathedral Range appear at 2:20, 2:52, and 2:48.

2. Clouds Rest (1:12 in the video)

Clouds Rest is the highest feature overlooking Yosemite Valley. It has an elevation of more than 9,921 feet (3,024 meters) and is a 14-mile (22-kilometer) journey from the valley below.

"I was hiking through deep snow without waterproof boots or snowshoes," said Delehanty, laughing. 

"The area that I used to approach Clouds Rest didn't get a lot of sun in the daytime."

Clouds Rest has an extensive view of most of the Yosemite landmarks, due to its elevation.

"From up there I developed a better understanding of how big the park is. I tried finding locations off in the distance that could be found on the map. I stayed up for 24 hours capturing footage," Delehanty added. "Since I hadn't planned on staying up there an additional day, I melted some snow for water and got comfortable while I waited for sunset the following day."

There are many different shots from Clouds Rest in the video. You can find Clouds Rest at 1:36, 3:00, 3:08, and 4:56.

3. Diving Board (4:00 in the video)

The Diving Board is a rock that juts out in front of the iconic Half Dome in Yosemite. It's where famed photographer Ansel Adams took the photo "The Monolith" in April 1927.

Delehanty and Neill traversed the back side of Half Dome in February 2013 to reach the Diving Board.

"We were pooped when we got to the top. The fog had rolled in, and behind it you couldn't see anything," said Neill. "The Diving Board was the only area where there was visibility. My back was completely frozen by the time we finished shooting."

Other shots from the Diving Board can be found at 0:24 and 3:52.

The photographers visited more than 24 different locations, some of them multiple times, in order to get the right shots of the park.

Yosemite National Park is 150 miles (240 kilometers) east of San Francisco and encompasses 761,266 acres of wilderness reserve, including waterfalls, forests, canyons, and the Sierra Nevada range. It has 150 miles of land without any roads, one of the largest roadless areas in the continental U.S.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140309-yosemite-national-park-time-lapse-video/?rptregcta=reg_free_np&rptregcampaign=20131016_rw_membership_n1p_intl_dr_c1#close-modal

Gift! Rich - It's not in how much money you have...but in how much you give!!

25 years of the World Wide Web: Top 9 interesting WWW facts

Today, you are able to access numerous webpages through a Web browser over the Internet. You use Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Google and many other websites often to get information, stay in touch with people and remain updated.

Most of us heavily rely on the Internet, and the power of Internet is not hidden from anyone. But do you know the source of this power? Do you know when did you get this power to freely view any webpage? 25 years ago, on March 12, 1989 the seed of the idea that would go on to become the World Wide Web was sown.

On the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web - a true milestone in the Internet history - here we bring you certain interesting facts about the Web:

On March 12, 1989 the seed of the idea that would go on to become the World Wide Web was sown.

1. British engineer and computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, now Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), wrote a proposal in March 1989 for what would finally become the World Wide Web.

2. On August 6, 1991, the first website http://info.cern.ch went online.

3. A NeXT Computer was used by Sir Tim Berners-Lee as the world's first web server and also to write the first web browser - WorldWideWeb - in 1990.

4. Berners-Lee uploaded the first photo on the Web in 1992. That was an image of the CERN house band Les Horribles Cernettes.


5. It is believed that a turning point in the history of the the World Wide Web began with the launch of the Mosaic web browser in 1993. It was a graphical browser developed by a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularising the World Wide Web.

6. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organisation for the World Wide Web, was founded by Tim Berners-Lee after he left CERN in October 1994.

7. Archie is considered to be the first Internet search engine. It was the first tool for indexing FTP archives, allowing people to find specific files.

8. If you dislike Internet users being addressed to as 'surfers', blame Jean Armour Polly. It was she who coined the term "Surfing the Internet".

9. Most people tend to treat the Internet and the Web as synonymous. They, in fact while being related, are not. Internet refers to the vast networking infrastructure that connects millions of computers across the world and the World Wide Web is the worldwide collection of text pages, digital photographs, music files, videos, and animations, which users can access over the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol to transmit data and is only a part of the Internet. The Internet includes a lot that is not necessarily the Web.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/25-years-of-the-world-wide-web-top-10-interesting-www-facts/457238-11.html

8 Things Kids Should Not Hear from Their Parents!

Every child matures with her own unique experiences. Observing your little baby grow up to be a smart teen is a learning process in itself. But, sometimes parents tend to forget their role and blurt out things that can play havoc to the little one’s self esteem. Parents seldom realize what their careless comments have done to their child’s emotions. So, to help you never make such harmful comments we bring you a list of things that you should avoid saying to your child.

1. I was way more responsible than you at that age…
This comment breaks into your little one’s confidence. You have to remember that you are a different person growing up in different times. Rather than this discouraging statement an encouraging advice would be so much more helpful. Also, remember to never compare yourself with your child and try to have no expectations towards them.

2. You always manage to do the wrong things and take the worst decisions ever.
Your kid is growing up and there is no learning without a few mistakes. So don’t criticise the mistakes instead encourage her to learn from them and guide her to follow the right path.

3. Do not disturb me.We all need space but sometimes your responsibility towards your child is more important. This harmless plea may be comprehended as neglect and a feeling of being unwanted can creep in making your child feel alone. Kids can even go into depression due to a comment like that. So next time be a little more careful.

4. You need to be more careful with your friends; they are not good people to hang out with.Children don’t make friends for their benefits. Their friendships are as innocent and their companionship means a lot. You must learn to respect your child’s choice in friends. If you feel like they are in bad company, try to reason things out for them and guide them towards better people.

5. Learn from your friends / siblings.Comparing one child with another is the most unreasonable thing parents can do. Parents tend to generate a negative feeling for that particular friend / sibling with comments like these which can be harmful for their relationship. Remember that every child is different and it is your duty to respect and appreciate your child’s qualities.

6. I’d rather not have children than have a child like you.It can’t get worst than this. As a parent you should never ever, for whatever reason make a comment like that to your kid. It could result in emotionally destroying your child.

7. You always succeed in hurting my emotions.
Children can’t always fulfill their parent’s wishes which result in unintended emotional pain. But rather than making the child feel guilty, reason things out and teach her how to be more careful the next time around.

8. Stop crying...
Tears are a way of expressing what words cannot. When your kid cries it means something she is trying to tell you but cannot. Do not scold the kid rather, empathise and try to understand her feelings.

Inputs from TNN | By Team iDiva | posted Mar 6th 2014 at 3:12PM

The amazing-n-outstanding Philanthropic Life of Bill Gates!