Google just announced an update to its Flight Search feature that makes it easier for tablet users to search for and book travel from the couch. According to a recent study, 47 percent of all U.S. tablet owners who search for travel on their tablets also end up making 

purchases on the device. Starting today, travelers who use their iPads or Nexus 7s to use Flight Search will get to see this new tablet-optimized user interface.


This new UI, says Google, will allow you to “easily explore places to visit on the map and see prices updated in real-time for each destination.” All of the usual Flight Search features are available through the tablet interface, including the ability to find the cheapest dates to travel (something Google does faster than any other flight search tool), as well as the ability to see your flight on a map and filter by number of stops, airline (and airline alliance), price, duration, and connecting airports.

         

Google launched its long-awaited Flight Search feature last September after the U.S. Justice Department cleared the company’s acquisition of flight search and airline logistics specialist ITA Software in April 2011. The first version of Flight Search was somewhat limited (and rightly labeled as a beta), but since then, Google has continuously improved the service. Earlier this year, for example, it finally added international destinations.

 Two possible pyramid complexes might have been found in Egypt, according to a Google Earth satellite imagery survey.

Located about 90 miles apart, the sites contain unusual grouping of mounds with intriguing features and orientations, said satellite archaeology researcher Angela Micol of Maiden, N.C.

One site in Upper Egypt, just 12 miles from the city of Abu Sidhum along the Nile, features four mounds each with a larger, triangular-shaped plateau.

The two larger mounds at this site are approximately 250 feet in width, with two smaller mounds approximately 100 feet in width.

NEWS: Egyptian Pyramids Found With NASA Satellite

The site complex is arranged in a very clear formation with the large mound extending a width of approximately 620 feet -- almost three times the size of the Great Pyramid.

"Upon closer examination of the formation, this mound appears to have a very flat top and a curiously symmetrical triangular shape that has been heavily eroded with time," Micol wrote in her website Google Earth Anomalies.

Intriguingly, when zooming in on the top of the triangular formation, two circular, 20-foot-wide features appear almost in the very center of the triangle.



Some 90 miles north near the Fayoum oasis, the second possible pyramid complex contains a four-sided, truncated mound that is approximately 150 feet wide.

ANALYSIS: Satellite Views Reveal Early Human Settlements

"It has a distinct square center which is very unusual for a mound of this size and it almost seems pyramidal when seen from above," Micol wrote.

Located just 1.5 miles south east of the ancient town of Dimai, the site also contains three smaller mounds in a very clear formation, "similar to the diagonal alignment of the Giza Plateau pyramids," Micol stated in a press release.

"The color of the mounds is dark and similar to the material composition of Dimai's walls which are made of mudbrick and stone," the researcher wrote.

HOWSTUFFWORKS: Building the Pyramids
 Founded in the third century B.C. under the Ptolemaic king Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309 B.C.–246 B.C.), Dimai was built on top of an earlier neolithic settlement.

Also known as Dimeh al-Siba, Dimeh of the Lions, the town is surrounded by a mudbrick wall that stretches up to 32 feet high and 16 feet thick, and features at its center a ruined stone temple dedicated to the crocodile god Soknopaios.

Indeed, the town's Greek name, Soknopaiou Nesos, means "Island of Soknopaios."


Well known to scholars for the amount of papyri and other inscribed material found among its ruins, Dimai reached its peak during the first and second century A.D. thanks to a major trade route. It was abandoned during the mid-third century A.D.

According to Micol, both sites have been verified as undiscovered by Egyptologist and pyramid expert Nabil Selim, whose findings include the pyramid called Sinki at Abydos and the Dry Moat surrounding the Step pyramid complex at Saqqara.

Selim found that the smaller 100-foot mounds at the site near Abu Sidhum are a similar size as the 13th Dynasty Egyptian pyramids, if a square base can be discovered.

BIG PIC: Man Etches Name in Sand, Visible from Space

"The images speak for themselves. It's very obvious what the sites may contain but field research is needed to verify they are, in fact, pyramids," Micol said.

The researcher has previously located several possible archaeological sites with Google Earth, including a potential underwater city off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula.

She believes the use of infrared imagery will allow scientists to see the extent of the complexes in greater detail.

The sites have been sent to Egyptologists and researchers for further investigation and "ground truthing," she said.

Photos: The site near Abu Sidhum contains four mounds with a larger, triangular-shaped plateau. Credit: Angela Micol;
-- Enhanced image of the 150 foot wide, four-sided mound near the ancient town of Dimai. Credit: Angela Micol;
-- The site also contains three smaller mounds in a formation similar to the diagonal alignment of the Giza Plateau pyramids. Credit: Angela Micol.

Rising security incidents and poorly defended phones suggest 2012 could be a risky year for smart-phone users.

A recent rise in Android malware—combined with increased efforts to combat the threat—highlight the fact that, just like tech companies, app makers, and users, hackers are fast turning their attention to mobile devices. What's more, experts say, such devices are often configured in ways that make it easier for malware to thrive.

Several new types of Android malware have been spotted "in the wild" in recent weeks, and they demonstrate growing sophistication. One specimen, dubbed Opfake, is a bogus Web browser that automatically makes calls to premium phone lines. Opfake exhibits a powerful trick previously seen only in desktop malware, whereby the code repeatedly mutates to make anti-virus detection more difficult.

To counter the rising tide of threats, Google last week announced it had launched an app prescreening tool called Bouncer that runs a server-based simulation to check apps for malicious behavior—such as attempts to access or send personal data, or simply send out pricey text messages. Google blocks them before they get into the official Android Market.

Bouncer has been used quietly for several months; in the second half of 2011, the Android market saw a 40 percent decrease in malware apps identified as potentially malicious, compared to the first half of the year, wrote Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google's Android engineering vice president, in a blog post.


In a similar move, the mobile security firm Lookout says it is testing new methods for Android users that quarantine and scan downloaded apps. Whereas many existing tools screen the phone for already installed malware, a new tool would allow users to delay installation of a downloaded app until a check was complete. "For many users who install apps outside of Android Market, there is a need for pre-installation detection," says Derek Halliday, senior security manager at Lookout.

Lookout found, at the end of 2011, that 4 percent of Android users were likely to encounter malware over the course of the year—up from 1 percent of users a year ago, though part of the increase may be a function of improved detection, Halliday says.

Android is the most popular smart-phone operating system in the world, with 52.5 percent of the global market at the end of 2011, according to Gartner.

By David Talbot

The huge success of online shopping and advertising—led by giants like Amazon and Google—is in no small part thanks to software that logs when you visit Web pages and what you click on. Startup Prism Skylabs offers brick-and-mortar businesses the equivalent—counting, logging, and tracking people in a store, coffee shop, or gym with software that works with video from security cameras.

"There's a lot of wonderful information locked up in video, and 40 million security cameras in the U.S. collecting it, but it's data that's not been available," says Steve Russell, cofounder and CEO of Prism, based in San Francisco. "We want to free up that information."

Prism's software can count people that come into a business, measure the length of the line at checkout, and produce static or animated visualizations showing how people moved around a store. It is designed so that it cannot identify or track individuals. One national wireless carrier is already using Prism's technology to generate heat maps of where visitors go in their showrooms, to compare the level of interest in different devices—valuable data to them and to the device makers.

Prism's software can also be used to turn security footage into a live version of Google's Street View, says Ron Palmeri, Prism's president and other cofounder. "We give the ability to go beyond the facades of businesses and show you the inside and even how busy it is, using very effectively privacy-protected imagery."
 

That imagery can show people blurred into anonymous ghosts, in what Russell calls "Predator vision" (a pixelated image), or have people disappear altogether to be replaced with a "heat map," on which colors signal the density of people. One gym in San Francisco trialing the technology plans to use it to show customers a live view of how busy it is.

Although security cameras are typically low quality, Prism uses computational photography techniques to combine multiple frames to produce images with higher quality and resolution than the original video. "We can remove the ugly, grainy quality of surveillance footage," says Russell.

Prism's software is designed to be used with existing security cameras. Software installed on a computer linked to the cameras digests the raw video into a compressed form that is sent to cloud servers, where Prism's software does the hard work. It sends back the visualizations, statistics, and other data it extracts to a PC, smart phone, or tablet.

Since surveillance cameras are static, Prism's software can work out which parts of a scene are fixed in place, such as walls, flooring, and furniture. Anything that moves against that background is clipped out and subjected to further processing. Russell hints that he hopes to eventually offer more sophisticated analysis by taking advantage of emerging computational photography techniques—for example, Lytro's light field cameras, which produce images that can be refocused after they have been taken.

Source...

Google has brought innovation to our lives since its inception, offers free services of high quality and a lot of functions we are sometimes overwhelmed by because all of the functions they offer. Here we look at 5 things you can do thanks to Google and possibly many people doesn't know, because they are not familiar with the subject or because until now had not thought of the possibilities they had with this computer giant.

1. Check unwanted access to your email (Gmail)

Gmail, allows to verify access to your account according to each IP address, so you know if someone else is accessing your email without permission and see in a detailed way if you are the victim of an unwanted entry. To verify this, at the bottom right corner of the Gmail screen, you see text that says "Last account activity" and in the bottom of a link with detailed information. Here we can see the IP, approximate location, date and time of access, so you can be sure if someone enters your account without your permission.

2. Customize your start page (iGoogle)

Google lets you customize your browser, not just special wallpapers and attractive themes, but also with applications that allow you to access a lot of information and customize the home page details.

Through the web address google.com/ig and entering the information from your Gmail account, you can store your changes to this screen on iGoogle. On this site you can customize your home page with widgets, so you can add applications that allow you to control your Gmail email, check your tweets (Twitter), check the news from Google News, and even play and share with your friends your applications. Additionally, iGoogle also lets you customize your background with a lot of themes and cool designs.

3. Install applications (Google Chrome)
Chrome, Google's browser, has been characterized by its speed and efficiency in resource consumption, becoming a strong competitor to FireFox and Internet Explorer in the browser market. One of the strengths of Chrome is that it has the ability to use applications, expanding and facilitating the use that this browser has to offer.

By visiting chrome.google.com / webstore , you can find a lot of applications (mostly free), sorted into different categories, they may be used regardless of operating system, since they work directly in Chrome. To take advantage of Chrome apps you just have to have a Gmail account.

Additionally, thanks to Chrome allows you to synchronize our options, history and data, the Google browser sync also allows to have our applications in different computers as we like. Some of the most prominent, are, Google Docs, which lets you create and share documents like Microsoft Office; Angry Birds, a game that stands out especially in the mobile market for addiction; Chrome Desktop, a utility that let you share with anyone (with Chrome) your desktop remotely, and a lot more of free applications, allowing also synchronization between devices.

4. Editing documents (Google Docs)

Speaking of outstanding applications, we have Google Docs ( docs.google.com ), although many already know, not all have given it the importance it deserves, in addition to many or at least the main functions with which we can count on Microsoft Office, it has a few extras that make it attractive to its users. First of all, Google Docs is completely free, second, it has the ability to share and edit a documents with multiple people simultaneously, which facilitates access and editing on-line between co-workers without any problem of overwriting. Also, If you install the application in Chrome, Google Docs lets you use offline documents you have stored and they will automatically sync when an Internet connection is available.

Also, as all documents are stored with your Google Account (Gmail) you dont have to worry about losing or being unable to access them, because you can do that from any place with Internet access, even from a cell phone or tablet, you can access Google Docs thanks to its application for Android. This lets you work with great freedom, ease of editing and creating documents from anywhere you work.

5. Printing on Cloud (Google Cloud Print)
A great tool that not a lot of people know is Google Cloud Print ( google.com / CloudPrint ), a service for Chrome that allows you to print documents remotely via the Internet, sharing printers you have installed on your computer. This way, working at home, you can send to print a file in your office. To use it, you just have to install Chrome and enable your printers with Google Cloud Print so that you can access them from anywhere.

Cloud Print allows you to share your printer with anyone, from any Internet-connected device, facilitating print jobs from your tablet, cell phone, office computer, or from basically anywhere.

These services are a part of the large number of utilities that Google provides us, and continues to provide us more and generally all of them free of charge. Should be noted that all these applications are linked from your Gmail account, allowing quick synchronization, without export information every time you want to use any of them.

Thanks Google :D

Written by: @rahksO