College Students More At Risk of Identity Theft

We often think that business people are more at risk of identity theft. But, this is not the truth. You will be surprised to know that most of the victims of identity theft are college students.
Students take this risk very lightly. They think they do not have much worth and so, what will the thieve benefit from students’ identity. But it’s just the opposite. The thieves are more interested in your identification documents. Also, their laptops are also less secured and are more vulnerable to hacking.

We need to understand whom we can trust and who can actually steal your identity information. Most of the time the culprits are average looking person like your ex-roommate, library friend, an open WiFi or any such person whom you will least suspect and who can easily get away with your ID information.
We have a very interesting infographic here telling us more about identity theft in colleges and how the students can save themselves from being a victim.

A Roadmap to the Future of Marketing

Nailed it. That’s what I thought as soon as I saw the image below from MediaPlant’s report sponsored by Microsoft, Dollars, Bits, and Atoms: A Roadmap to the Future of Marketing. It’s a well-thought out and practical look at how technology is evolving to enable more effective marketing strategies. One diagram stood out as we’ve been assisting companies develop their online marketing strategies so I’ve included it below.

Marketing is in a state of transition, driven by changes in technology, demographics, and society. This map visualizes trends identified by industry leaders and experts, showing relationships between technologies and marketing tactics, and where the industry is headed.

I didn’t want to share too much – be sure to read through the entire collection of reports at MediaPlant. MediaPlant is a communications firm specializing in B2B marketing, strategy, and technical development. Author Rob Salkowitz is an internationally recognized author and expert in entrepreneurship, innovation, and the disruptive effects of technology on business. Be sure to read this report and others at MediaPlant.

'I'm Still Here': This 113-Year-Old Had to Lie About Her Age to Facebook

At 113, Anna Stoehr is probably the oldest woman in Minnesota, United States. She was born even before her family home had a phone or electric lights. But if you think she is infirm or incapable in any way, you couldn't be more wrong.

Anna's zest for life is heartening and her readiness to embrace modern technology is adorable beyond words. She is learning how to send e-mails, FaceTime and use Facebook.

However, before she could get on to the social networking site, she had to lie about her age. Yup! Since Facebook's year of birth option starts from 1905, Anna, who was born in 1900, had to fake her age to create a profile.

"I'm still here," she wrote in a letter to Facebook.

Unbelievable Kitchen Appliances You'll Love - Part II

I think I just fell in love with technology a little more. 

When gadgets work in tandem with your kitchen needs, it's a match made in technology heaven. 

I tip my hat to the inventors for coming up with these handy devices, considerably decreasing our work load and making life a tad easier. 

If you're worried about handling a gadget, these are simple and klutz-proof and it's safe to say anyone can use them. 

Cooked too much spaghetti as usual? Let that be a thing of the past with a nifty Spaghetti Measurer. It tells you how much Spaghettiis enough for one to four people. 

Another variant is the aptly named 'I Could Eat a Horse' measurer, which does the same job whilst adding a dash of humour. 

Tea for two please. Green tea for Mrs. Sharma and a red one for her husband? Fear not when you have a teapot that holds two different kinds of tea!

Securely stick an iPad to your fridge to listen to music in the kitchen, jot down shopping lists or view a recipe while cooking.

A One-Step Corn Kerneler that removes all the corn kernels in one swift motion!

Take your everyday water up a notch with this flavor-infusing water bottle.

Finally a coffee cup that tells people when it's safe to talk to you in the morning.

Imagine a machine that churns out rotis at will. Just add flour, water and oil to dedicated slots in the Rotimatic machine, and it kneads, rolls and makes rotis automatically! There are also options for oil, thickness and roast levels.

White salt is so 2013. Colored Margarita Salt to the rescue. Pretty colours for pretty drinks.

If you watch what you eat, this Digital Nutrition Scale computes calories, calories from protein, fat, fiber, carbohydrates and so much more.

A toaster that not only comes with a message board to write notes on but with the ability to toast the message on the bread itself!

In the unlikely event of you not finishing a bag of chips, this tool re-seals the bag and locks in the flavour and freshness. 

Nevermind the reasons, sometimes you just need a shot glass. This mold makes it all possible by giving you four fully-formed shot glasses made of ice in no time!

Burnt toast no more! All hail the See-Through Toaster.

Moms will love this. Keep an item in the safe, set the timer and the safe won't open till the timer reaches zero. Time to build that much hated practice of self-control, kids. 

Not all of us are lucky enough to have efficient house-help at hand, but we can have the next best thing - smart kitchen gadgets that take the load off. 

These aren't 'save your salary for three months and then some' kind of tools, just simple ones that come with one clear idea to solve the most annoying kitchen problems. 

I shall let the pictures speak for themselves.

The Never-Soggy Cereal Bowl

Get that crunch back: A bowl with separate compartments for milk and cereal, genius!

Desk Microwave Oven

Good things do come in small packages. Warm up your lunch right at your desk using a USB cable. That's right. 

A Plate Clip For Your Wine Glass

Life's good when you're holding a plate full of food and a wine glass at a party, except when a handshake comes your way. Here's to no more awkward juggling and wobbling.

Ramen Spoon and Fork

Spork: A spoon for the broth and a fork for noodles in one!

Spice Book

You can buy, wash, chop, grind and store spices, or you can just tear-and-use them out of a book!

Pineapple Peeler 

Like a lot of other people, if I have to peel and core a pineapple, I'd rather skip eating it altogether. Introducing, this God-sent peeler, which does the job in seconds.  

Chopping Board and Scale

Chop and weigh your veggies at the same time!

Floating Mug

The no-coaster-required coffee mug: I'd buy it just for the design, but it eliminates ugly rings on the table too!

Toasted Selfie

Toast bread with your selfie on it because why not?

Heated Butter Knife

World's first knife that solves the world's biggest problem - cold butter that's impossible to spread on toast.

Egg Yolk Separator

No more sticky, gooey hands, everyone. Sorry, but I have to say- egg-cellent! 

Dumb-Bell Cutlery

Want to lose weight but not prepared to stop eating? Work out with each bite with these 1kg knives & forks and 2kg dessert spoons.  

Knife, Spoon and Fork Pen Covers

Not even a minute to waste? Turn your pen into cutlery in less than three seconds. 

There you have it, folks! So immensely glad that with time, kitchen gadgets are getting more snazzy and cutting edge. Now, the only thing left to do is to wait for them to come out with a Jetsons-style kitchen, ah. 

Fusion Will Be A Huge Clean-Energy Breakthrough, Says National Ignition Facility CIO

By Tim Frazier, CIO for National Ignition Facility and for Photon Science Principal Associate Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once. 

—Albert Einstein.

When it comes to scientific research, sometimes the biggest obstacle of them all is time.

That’s because, as Dr. Einstein implies, time is linear. Everything doesn’t happen all at once: It takes time to conduct the research, plan the experiments, and analyze the findings that lead to scientific breakthroughs.

At the National Ignition Facility (NIF), we recently announced our own scientific breakthrough in our quest for Ignition, which is energy gain from a controlled nuclear fusion reaction. The breakthrough came when our scientists were able to create more energy from a fusion reaction than was deposited into the hydrogen fuel we used in the experiment.

Although we haven’t yet achieved our goal, this was the result of years of research and a significant step toward the goal.

But It Took Time 

As the Chief Information Officer, it’s my team’s responsibility to help expedite those breakthroughs—by maximizing the time our scientists spend doing science.

This means finding the right technology and infrastructure to give them more time to work on their research and spend less time waiting to access their data. By enhancing our IT infrastructure, we’ve found better ways to reduce downtime and even help contribute to the research at the NIF.

Our goal is that we become even more efficient, using cloud technology to become a worldwide facility, with research data that can be accessed globally.

Giving Time Back To Science

The greatest contribution that my team provides our scientists is reliable and fast access to their data. For us, that meant finding ways to practically eliminate downtime.

Maintaining our IT infrastructure requires monthly maintenance outages, but now we can do our own maintenance more efficiently, which typically saves us five hours each month.

That might not seem like much, but when you consider the amount of time involved and the value of that time to our facility and research teams, reclaiming that time from planned downtime is hugely valuable to us. That’s 60 hours a year we can give back to science.

With little or no downtime, we can now allow our scientists to access their data 24/7, which gives them more time to analyze it.

Flipping The 80/20 Split

Our technological advancements also enable us to give time back to research in indirect ways. We spend less time managing our infrastructure, which means we have resources that can be freed to contribute to research.

Most of those I speak with in the IT industry have a rule that they spend about 80% of their time just managing their infrastructure, but only 20% of their time contributing to the success of their organization.

In comparison, we’ve flipped the 80/20-split on its head at the NIF.

By migrating towards a highly virtualized infrastructure, we’re no longer forced to spend the majority of our time managing equipment. We can focus on our core competency—scientific research—not running our IT infrastructure.

The Future Of NIF Could Be In The Cloud

We continuously review and evaluate possible methods for innovating and improving our IT department for the future.

As with my colleagues in the rest of the industry, we’re reviewing cloud computing. Our belief is that cloud, if done right, could transform how we do research at the NIF.

We currently bring in scientists from across the globe to conduct experiments at our facility, which means that their research occurs in one place. Cloud computing, would help us offer data access, securely, from anywhere in the world. It would also help enable collaboration between scientists across the globe. This is already occurring in many other scientific disciplines, like climate research, that use cloud-based platforms such as Google Docs.

This transformation is already underway as we work to change the NIF into a user facility: Our goal is to enable scientists from across the world to not only utilize our experimental facility, but also collaborate on their findings.

The Bottom Line 

Achieving Ignition is a big, audacious goal! Working on its many challenging problems to support our country’s pursuit of the goal is what drives both the NIF scientific team, and also the IT team.

When we achieve that goal, it’ll be a tremendous breakthrough for our teams and for the scientists that started us on this journey, nearly 60 years ago. My IT team and I will continue to play our part, by finding new ways to give time back to science, and accelerate discovery.

10 Reasons Why You Are the Way You Are

We are all born with a unique personality and nature; some good qualities and some bad. Some of our traits are loved by all and others bag us a few negative remarks. The tricky part is that since all these traits are innate, we don't have much control on them. Let's find out why we are the way we are! 

Friendly (a little too much?)

Friend of one and friend of all! Does this describe you well enough? Are you the always–there–for–everyone kind? Well, that is just awesome. You have a confident and positive approach and therefore connect well with others. You also like being in the lime light and hence, attract a lot of people around you.  Leo, Taurus, Aquarius and Pisces are born with this beautiful trait.

Curious Cat (wink)

“What's going on there?” “Why did he call you?” “What happened after the party?” “Shush! Let me hear what they're talking about”; are these your favorite words?  One hell of a curious mind you've got there! The urge to know everything makes you like this. Of course, there's nothing wrong with it! A curious mind leads to great inventions and creations! You'll often find a Virgo or an Aquarian digging very deep.

The Romantic Lover

Does the lover within you comes alive every time you lay your eyes on an attractive person from the opposite sex? Do you start planning a cozy candle light dinner and a long walk across the street at dawn? Your romantic tactics make you win hearts because romance is all you've got in your heart! You can find an irresistible lover in a Taurus or Libra! They are prone to falling head over heels in love.

The Worried Soul

Some people are quite conscious about their reputation, always worried about offending or hurting others (even unknowingly). This way you restrict your friends' circle and people end up thinking you're antisocial or reserved. You people have this tendency due to your soft and caring heart and emotions. Cancer, Scorpio and surprisingly Libra fall under this category.

Flirty much! 

Are you the guy who makes all the girls in the room giggle as you enter? Or are you the girl who leaves guys awestruck just at the sight of you? Well, what a flirtatious little thing we've got here. You all are just happy and friendly (in a different way) people who love to see happy people around them. Flirting is generally just your way of bringing a smile on other's faces. This naughty trait is clearly visible in a Sagittarian or a Gemini.

The Angry Bird! 

Some of us often have temper issues. We cannot control ourselves and burst out like a volcanic eruption! Why is that? Well, either you're too patient and have reached your no tolerance point, or you just have that angry streak in you. It's natural, although you can try to keep it in control, but only to some extent, after all, what is an innate trait remains an innate trait! Aries, Scorpions, Leos, and Taureans have the most horrifying temper outbursts (whenever they have them).

The Helping Hand

You people are always there to help others. Even if it's 1 AM in the night or 4 in the morning, you are that friend who's always there when needed.  This isn't an attempt to please others; it's just your way of staying happy. Your heart feels comforted when you comfort others. Taureans, Aquarians and Virgos are the helping souls here!

The Workaholic

Your professional life is reaching new heights; happy bosses, quick promotions and a successful career, you guys have it all. Umm.. and your personal life, is also your office. You like spending late nights together, don't you? Your high ambitions make you a very hard worker. Not a bad thing, but it's always good to have some alone time to relax. All you Capricorns out there, are you listening?

The Optimist 

A flat tyre early in the morning, heavy rainfall causing traffic or a fight with your mother just before stepping out; no matter what, a few of us will just find a reason to smile. Finding the positive side of every situation is a wonderful trait, isn't it? Having such an optimistic approach towards life is appreciable. You are positive about everything; this is just an innate trait that you're blessed with. Being a Sagittarian or an Aries is in other words, being gifted!

The Perfectionist


“Push the cupboard a little to the right, no no, a little to the left, not that much! Push it to the right again, a little more, perfect!” Wow! What a perfectionist we have here! So what is it that makes you this eager for perfect work? Yes, you have an eye for perfection and you know how to reach there too! You're bosses might love you for this! Hey Virgos, do we see a little giggle there?

The Internet Loophole That Made One Man a Millionaire!

How can a regular person with no online experience make money online doing absolutely nothing at all? That’s a question millions of people have been asking themselves. It’s also already been answered. George Brown figured out how to do exactly that when he created a program that makes it possible to earn a full-time income from home just by taking advantage of one big internet loophole.

There’s no secret to how George Brown made his fortune on the internet. You won’t be left wondering why you can’t do the same thing he did. You’ve basically been invited to join the company. What made George Brown so successful is Google Sniper, a savvy internet marketing affiliation program that can turn websites into pure money.

Google Sniper monitors and exploits loopholes of one of the largest internet companies in the world Google’s Adsense program. 196 billion dollars is just an astounding amount of money. That’s how much Google makes from Adsense every year. A fraction, the tiniest little slice of that pie can amount to hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for you.

How do you do this? There’s no technology to be afraid of. George Brown didn’t need to know everything about computers when he set up Google Sniper. There’s no confusing uploading involved and definitely no coding. All you need to do is copy all of the steps that George Brown sets up for you and set them up for yourself. It’s cut and paste. It’s that easy.

After you set up your personal network of affiliate sites, you don’t ever have to do any maintenance to them. It’s like clocking into work for one day and getting paid regularly for the rest of your life. You basically only have that one task to complete, and after that you can just wait for the money to start showing up. Because your sites are passively doing the work for you, your life is essentially free to live. You keep earning money months or even years after your sites go live.

Now, it should be pointed out that some people will be more successful using Google Sniper than others. There have been a lot of people who have managed to turn the internet into a cash machine. They don’t all pull in the million dollars a year George Brown does, but they definitely walk away with money they don’t have to do much to earn.

HAVE WE ALL BEEN BLIND TO THE TRUTH ABOUT GOOD VISION?

Visual conditions are not what we believe they are. In fact, there’s a truth about visual conditions that has been hidden from you by the eye care industry. Eye care has become a very profitable business and in order to keep being profitable, they need you to keep being a patient.

At 24 my eyesight started to degrade. I thought it was permanent and genetic. I couldn’t have been more wrong! 

But let me start from the beginning, because my story is one that you need to read if you are tired of expensive ineffective visual treatments that make you feel hopeless.

I know that feeling too well. I used to feel that way not so long ago, when I was diagnosed with severe astigmatism. Aside from the horrible headaches, the blurry vision and the scary thought that I may never be able to benefit from clear eyesight again, there was also the problem of driving at night.

I worked as a taxi driver and this condition meant that I would have to renounce the most profitable shift. I couldn’t afford that. I had two little kids to raise and a mortgage that meant half my salary. I was desperate and I simply couldn’t see a way out. I told myself there must be something I could do to change this.

So I tried everything in my power to restore my vision. I went to many doctors, I tried experimental treatments and I bought drugs and products to help my vision. Nothing ever worked. I felt like I was sinking in a pit of desperation and there was no one that could offer me a hand. I was living a nightmare, one that was blurry, with hidden faces in the dark that waited patiently as I sank deeper and deeper into my pit of desperation.

That was until I discovered the truth about my condition.

I thought it was permanent and genetic. I couldn’t have been more wrong!

In fact, it was learnt and temporary!

I read about this in an program called “Restore My Vision”. After I read it, everything made so much sense. Nearly all visual conditions are actually learnt traits and not genetic issues. This is the key to everything! Because if something is learnt, that means it is reversible.

You are not born with it; it is not part of who you are and so it can be changed. Glasses and contacts are actually worsening your condition, making you dependent on them.

I believe that anyone who suffers from a visual condition should have access to the information that saved my life.

Why Himalayan glaciers are expanding instead of shrinking

Scientists' observations in the Karakoram region have revealed that the glaciers there were stable, and snowfall is increasing instead of decreasing.

The researchers found that while precipitation is increasing across the Himalayas, most of this moisture drops in the summer — except in Karakoram, where snow dominates the scene, Discovery News reported.

Study researcher Sarah Kapnick, a postdoctoral researcher in atmospheric and ocean sciences at Princeton University, gave reasoning for why you can have increased snowfall in a region and have increased glaciers or stable glaciers in a warming world.

She and her colleagues collected data on recent precipitation and temperatures from the Pakistan Meteorological Department and other sources, including satellite data. They combined this information with climate models to track changes in three regions of the Himalayas between 1861 and 2100: the Karakoram; the central Himalayas; and the southeast Himalayas which included part of the Tibetan Plateau.

The researchers found that a new model that simulates climate down to an area of 965 square miles (2,500 square kilometers) was able to match the observed temperature and precipitation cycles seen in the Karakoram. A model used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to simulate what will happen if the world continues to emit greenhouse gases at current rates was unable to capture these seasonal cycles, Kapnick said.

The reason, she said, was that the IPCC and other climate models are lower-resolution, capturing climate change over areas no finer than about 17,027 square miles (44,100 square km). The coarser resolution "smoothes out" variations in elevation that works fine for the central Himalayas and southeast Himalayas. However, the Karakoram region has more elevation variability than the other two regions.

Ultimately, the result is that the IPCC and other models overestimate the amount of warmth in this region, Kapnick said.

Google uncovers vulnerability in SSL web encryption technology

Three Google researchers have reportedly discovered a security bug in widely used web encryption technology that can be used by hackers to take over email accounts, banking accounts and other services. The bug has been named Poodle and stands for Padding Oracle On Downloaded Legacy Encryption.

The revelation has prompted browsers to issue advises asking users to disable use of the source of the security bug: an 18-year old encryption standard known as SSL 3.0, reported The Huffington Post. This is the third time in a year that researchers have uncovered a bug in the web technology following April's "Heartbleed" bug in OpenSSL and last month's "Shellshock" bug in a piece of Unix software known as Bash. However, the report said that the vulnerability is not as complicated and dangerous as the last two. 

Microsoft rolls out Windows, IE, Office update to fix two dozen vulnerabilities

Microsoft has rolled out eight security bulletins to fix two dozen vulnerabilities as part of its October edition of Patch Tuesday. The software giant has also issued update addressing the "SandWorm" bug reportedly being exploited by Russian hackers to spy on NATO and the Ukrainian government.

CNET reports that the updates address vulnerabilities found in all currently supported versions of Windows, Internet Explorer, Office and the .Net framework. Three of the bulletins are rated critical, meaning Microsoft recommends systems administrators apply the patches immediately. A report said that Russian hackers targeted the Ukrainian government around the time of the recent NATO summit in Wales, where discussions on Russia's alliance with separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine were of prime focus.

iSight Senior Director Stephen Ward said that the vulnerability appeared in every version of Windows from Vista to 8.1, barring Windows XP. Security researcher FireEye said that Microsoft identified two of three so-called zero-day bugs -- flaws that are being actively exploited in the wild by hackers -- being used as "part of limited, targeted attacks against some major corporations," the report added.

New 'smart' lithium-ion battery warns before it overheats and explodes

Scientists in Stanford University have developed a "smart" lithium-ion battery that gives ample warning before it overheats and bursts into flames. The battery is designed for conventional lithium-ion batteries now used in billions of cellphones, laptops and other electronic devices, as well as a growing number of cars and airplanes.

Yi Cui, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, said that they wanted to create an early-warning system that saves lives and property. After incidents such as, fire in two aircrafts of the Boeing aircraft company in 2013 and short-circuit in millions of lithium-ion batteries after consumer-laptop the Sony Corporation in 2006, Cui said, they wanted to lower the odds of a battery fire to one in a billion or even to zero.

Manufacturing defects, such as particles of metal and dust, can pierce the separator and trigger shorting, as Sony discovered in 2006. Shorting can also occur if the battery is charged too fast or when the temperature is too low – a phenomenon known as overcharge.

To address the problem, Cui and his colleagues applied a nanolayer of copper onto one side of a polymer separator, creating a novel third electrode halfway between the anode and the cathode.

The copper layer acted like a sensor that allows you to measure the voltage difference between the anode and the separator. When the dendrites grow long enough to reach the copper coating, the voltage drops to zero. That lets you know that the dendrites have grown halfway across the battery. It's a warning that the battery should be removed before the dendrites reach the cathode and cause a short circuit.

You might get a message on your phone telling you that the voltage has dropped to zero, and the battery needs to be replaced and the early-warning technology can also be used in zinc, aluminum and other metal batteries. "It will work in any battery that would require you to detect a short before it explodes.

Study was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Humans May Only Survive 68 Days on Mars: Study

Washington:  Space enthusiasts planning a move to Mars may have to wait to relocate: conditions on the Red Planet are such that humans would likely begin dying within 68 days, a new study says.

Oxygen levels would start to deplete after about two months and scientists said new technologies are required before humans can permanently settle on Mars, according to the study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The five-person team used data from Mars One, a Dutch-based non-profit group behind an audacious project to permanently colonize the Red Planet starting in 2024.

A shortlist of more than 1,000 people from an initial pool of 200,000 applicants will be whittled down to 24 for the mission -- an irreversible move to Mars, which is to be partially funded by a reality television show about the endeavor.

But conditions on Mars -- and the limits of human technology -- could make the mission impossible, for now at least.

"The first crew fatality would occur approximately 68 days into the mission," according to the 35-page report, which analyzed mathematical formulas on oxygen, food and technology required for the project.

Plants required to feed the space colony would produce "unsafe" amounts of oxygen, the authors said.

"Some form of oxygen removal system is required, a technology that has not yet been developed for space flight," the study concluded.

Shipping in replacement parts is an additional challenge and will likely boost the cost of the mission, which the researchers estimated to be at least $4.5 billion.

Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp agreed that sending spare parts to Mars could pose a problem.

"The major challenge of Mars One is keeping everything up and running," he told Popular Science magazine.

But he claimed the researchers used incomplete data, adding that technology for Mars colonization was nearly ready.

"While oxygen removal has never been done in space, I disagree that the technology is not mostly ready to go to Mars," Lansdorp told AFP.

"Of course, the actual apparatus that we will take to Mars still needs to be designed and tested extensively, but the technology is already there."

Many people have voiced doubts about the mission, though the project has won support from Gerard 't Hooft, the Dutch 1999 Nobel Physics prize winner.

The Red Planet lies at least 55 million kilometers (34 million miles) from Earth and it would take a minimum of seven months to get there.

Last June, the entertainment company Endemol, a major reality television producer, agreed to film the participants as they prepared for the move to Mars.