What Is Battery Calibration and When Should You Do it?

Now, when it comes to rechargeable batteries there are a lot of variations. But one thing that is universally true for all the rechargeable batteries is that, from the day they're manufactured ... they start to lose their ability to hold the charge. Although the rate is small (depending on the type) but even without you having to do a Calibration (more later), still at the end they'll all gonna lose their ability to hold the "charge" nonetheless which is defined either by their "life/years" or recharging cycles (which also changes according to the battery type). 


Calibration and Memory Effect

Nickel-cadmium or commonly known as NiCd is one of the oldest rechargeable batteries invented around 1899 by Waldemar Jungner (Swedish). There was single main disadvantage that NiCd had from the beginning. Let me give you an example.

Few variations of NiCd batteries...

With a NiCd battery, say that you usually let it discharge about 20-25% and then do a full (100%) charge, then as the time goes on NiCd cells will "forget" about the remaining 20-25% capacity that it can hold thus resulting a charge hold of 70-75% (as per this example, otherwise the numbers will change) of it's full capacity. This "loss" of the battery's "memory" is called Memory Effect.  

So in another words, as the time goes on NiCd (and its other variations) loses its ability to measure or caliber it's charge-holding capability thus requiring us to do a manual battery Calibration!, to help the dumb battery to get its "memory" back :P.

But remember, the above phenomenon does not occur due to the fact of excessive battery discharging but it comes into its existence due to the fact of not charging it to its full capacity.

A little about Lithium-ion Batteries

Lithium-ion or Li-ion batteries are the current most popular types of rechargeable batteries used by electronic gadget manufactures. Unlike with NiCd, Li-ion does not have the notorious "Memory Effect". They are more efficient, smaller in size, low cost, ... they have their advantages.

Li-ion battery (from Nokia in this example)

But...

Even though they don't have the memory effect issue, still they have a phenomenon called SOC mismatch.

Li-Ion batteries require a Battery Management System to prevent operation outside each cell's Safe Operating Area (over-charge, under-charge, safe temperature range) and to balance cells to eliminate SOC mismatches, significantly improving battery efficiency and increasing overall capacity.[86] As the number of cells and load currents increase, the potential for mismatch also increases.[87] There are two kinds of mismatch in the pack: state-of-charge (SOC) and capacity/energy ("C/E") mismatch. Though SOC is more common, each problem limits pack capacity (mA·h) to the capacity of the weakest cell. Source: Wikipedia. 

Although we don't need to go into much details... but interestingly SOC or Safe Operation Area, etc results in a very similar effect that the NiCd's Memory Effect has, which is : making Li-ion batteries losing their ability to caliber or judge the real charge they can hold!.

So although the never, popular Li-ion does not have the bad Memory Effect, yet, over time when not properly used, they can have those above mentioned "cell mismatches" which ultimately resulting a calibrating confusion, seems happen concerning the electronic battery management "brain" inside the batteries.

I think this is why Apple recommends doing battery calibration even after including Li-ion batteries (iPhone/iPod... they use Li-ion in all their products as far as I know, but read your manual just to make sure) in their products, so are HP I hear.

For Li-ion Batteries, there could be various reasons for getting "confused" like this, but as most know, "heavy" heat is certainly one of the main reasons. For instance, if you use you Laptop as a desktop (which actually happened to me which leads to this little "finding" :P) for weeks without taking it anywhere but powered directly through an AC output, then it is advised by experts to remove the battery which will of course make you lose your data if power cut occurs.

Here's Apple's "explanation" concerning the matter...

Lithium-ion polymer batteries pack in a higher power density than nickel-based batteries. This gives you a longer battery life in a lighter package, as lithium is the lightest metal. You can also recharge a lithium-ion polymer battery whenever convenient, without the full charge or discharge cycle necessary to keep nickel-based batteries at peak performance. (Over time, crystals build up in nickel-based batteries and prevent you from charging them completely, necessitating an inconvenient full discharge.) Source: Apple/Batteries.

Another one...

Power loss through Protection Circuit

Besides common aging, a Li-ion battery can also fail because of undercharge. This occurs if a Li-ion pack is stored in a discharged condition. Self-discharge gradually lowers the voltage of the already discharged battery and the protection circuit cuts off between 2.20 and 2.90V/cell. Some chargers and battery analyzers (including those from Cadex) provide a wake-up feature, or “boost,” to re-energize and recharge these seemingly dead Li-ion batteries.  Source: batteryuniversity.

How do I know when to do it?

Well if your battery meter in your operating system or in Mobile phone in that case, tends to give skeptic "remaining times" that are highly unlikely, although as said before all batteries lose their charge holding ability over time. Then it is time for you to do a battery calibration.

Some manufactures even recommend doing this per 30-40 day-cycles.

How to do it?

Usually in your Laptop BIOS you'll find an "option" which lets you discharge your battery. But I don't know if all the manufactures do this. So is that case the best things to do is to...

1. Make sure your battery is charged at least 93% or above of its full capacity before proceeding.

2. Now remove your AC adapter and let your Laptop run using the battery.

As most know, when your battery reaches its critical levels Windows, Mac OS, GNU/Linux, etc gives you warnings and if you don't do anything about it, then the BIOS automatically puts your operating system to sleep or stand-by mode. So wait until your battery is so drained which forces your OS to put itself to sleep mode.

3. Immediately after your PC/Laptop goes to sleep mode, then plug in your AC adapter (not before, but after the "sleeping" occurs) and charge it it to its full extent = 100% which is important.

Now you're done calibrating your battery!. Although if your Laptop or a mobile phone (especially) can last for hours depending on your battery. In that case you could "get busy" with your Laptop or mobile phone which resulting a faster battery "eating" (I usually watch a HD video... run several memory eating apps, etc).

Or you can search Google for a dedicated software that runs on top of your OS which makes sure to keep your Laptop/PC real busy :). For finding one, you can use Keywords like "battery calibrating software for Windows" (just replace the Red text with your operating system such as Mac OSX, GNU/Linux/android, etc). Good luck.

Introducing Prerendering Technology into Google's Chrome Web Browser

Giving users a more secured web browser is not just enough. That's not to say security is not important or anything like that but even if you have the world most secured web browser still, if it loads pages dauntingly slower... well I seriously doubt that anyone would be interested.

Anyway, starting with shorter release cycles, Google is certainly throwing everything at their simplified web browser called Chrome. Personally I'm not a huge fan and it had some issues in the past concerning user privacy, etc but the developers of the original Chromium are certainly adding cutting edge features, one after the other, nonetheless.

The latest one is called web page "prerendering". The technology is not invented by Google/Chrome but has been there for a while, as far as I know.

Anyhow the idea is pretty simple. Unlike with the usual behavior for the web browser where it totally depends on the user to tell him what site to load, etc but when you use the browser after enabling prerendering, it'll use algorithms to predict your next move!. Sounds a bit risky ... let me humbly give an example.

Say that you searched for Google for the term "learn GNU/Linux fast", then while the Chrome browser display the SERP result page, it'll also be working from the background and silently be loading the web page that it thinks you'll most probably click on.

Say that it cached or saved to disk the website that stands at the first in big G for that term, and the browser was actually correct about the prediction, since you did click on the the link of the first website, then you'll see an instant webpage loading! (0.00 waiting time).


But here's the thing...

Shi* happens...

Now for to prerendering to occur, it needs reasonably faster internet connection, otherwise it can easily jeopardize the user experience by making the whole process of loading a the webpage more slower than usual. For instance, let's assume that Chrome was fetching a website called "A" and it did contain a reasonable amount of data thus requiring some bandwidth. Now this is fine as long as the user chooses to click on the link of site "A" in Google.

But what if the user actually click on the site below "A" called the site "B" which is positioned 2nd. Now we have a situation where the web browser loads two websites simultaneously, one site is totally unnecessarily loaded thus making the actual site ("B" in this instance) loading more slowly (obviously). This is the most obvious issue.

Although as soon as the web browser realizes the situation, it'll stop loading the site "A" but... there's an another one.

Here's Google's own video example about it...



Say that like me, you have an internet connection with a monthly usage limit. Then by prerendering the wrong the website means unnecessary data/bandwidth usage, which is not good at all.

Anyway, from a user point of view, this is the most hardest part, prediction. Will there be a day where the computer software be able to predict all our actions, if so, then it'll wipe out the whole possibility for "free" thinking.... :/.

So, it's actually pretty interesting to watch the advancement of this prerendering technology and its success. Well I guess we'll certainly know whether its successful or not in the near future. Oh btw, this feature is proposed for the upcoming Google Chrome web browser and is also available in the Chrome Dev channels.

But not everyone will be using the Dev channels since they're actually beta versions thus won't be giving the most secured web browser version nonetheless. So, it's best to wait.

Gmail Introduces AIM Chat, (No AOL Log-in Necessary!)

Standardizing is a great thing. Among many of its advantageous is the "space" it gives for simplicity, from a user point of view anyway. Since, it may look easy and "simple" for us but for the developers writing an API ain't that simple. Anyhow, few days ago Gmail team announced a new feature which enables the loyal Gmail users to chat with their AIM "buddies" directly from Gmail account.

Wait... isn't that kinda old??. Yes, it is.. but in the past you had to log-in to your AOL account to open a "portal". But with this new service that is no longer necessary!. Furthermore, you can add AIM users to your chat list as easy as adding Gmail users (for instance, add "username"@aol.com in your Chat box and you're good to go).

 
According to Google, not just in Gmail, but you can use this feature in few of their other services such as iGoogle, Orkut, and Google Talk (on Android Phones). Because of the API "collaboration", AIM users can add Gmail users the same way in their accounts as well.

But if you had a massive list of "friends" then adding the one by one is a painful task. In that case, this official AIM Buddies importer is a must. Good luck :).   

S1 and S2, Meet the Sony's First Android Honeycomb Tablets!

Wow!, that's what came to my mind when I saw Sony's latest Android Honeycomb tablets for the first time (yep... only saw the pictures, not for real). Even before going into the details when looking at the below pictures.. seriously I'm excited!.

S1 (to the Left), S2 (to the right)

A little about "Honeycomb"...

Honeycomb's "approach" to Tablets...

Now, not that long ago when Android was getting some serious market share in the smart phone industry, it was obvious that the next generation of a "phone" should be something that looks like a phone but let you do things that a Tablet PC is capable of doing. But the apparent disadvantage that Google had was that Android was not designed especially for Tablets.

So although you could run Android OS (version 2.0 and below) on Tablet PC's still, it was not quiet capable of giving the optimum usability for the users (such as the applications and the OS was designed for smaller smart phone type devices... so some portion of the screen while on Tablet PCs were "wasted", etc). But then Google decided to seriously work on a "version" that is especially designed for Tablets which they later called the Android Honeycomb.

This gave the Tablet PC manufacturers the ideal opportunity to install a Tablet PC optimized OS with their products thus resulting a much better user experience which was followed by the Samsung (if I'm not mistaken). Anyhow, the latest in the "list" is Sony with the introduction of S1 and S2.

The S1 comes with a 9.4" looking touch sensitive screen while the S2 takes a bit of a different approach by giving 5.5" dual screens with 1024x480 resolution. They both use the Tegra 2 SoC, both certified for PlayStation, Wi-Fi and 3G/4G "compatible" - don't know what that means and fully supports DLNA framework as well (a photo sharing protocol)... these are the main hardware details that I'm aware of.

Below is the official presentation by Mr. Kunimasa Suzuki, Sony's deputy president....

Few Tips To Enhance Your Android Phone's Battery Life!

Thanks to the Google powered Android OS... mobile phone manufactures that use Android as their OS are getting more and more popular as a result, without a doubt in the near future, they'll start dominating in all sorts of ways like Tablet PC (oh they already are :D) markets, etc.

Anyhow, these days we're seeing android smart phones that come with dual processors!... which is tempting but...

Some of these smart phones are actually faster than some of our PC as well (OK I'm taking about mine here). But the point is that, no matter how powerful your phone is but if the battery is not capable of giving you a longer batty life... then it just destroys the whole purpose, isn't it? So, let's have a look at few things that you can do to improve the battery life of you android smart phone.

What are the apps that sucks your battery the most - If you navigate to: Settings > About Phone > Battery > Battery Use..... with the help of this feature you can easily figure out those battery suckers more easily.

1. As obvious as it is... the Screen comes first. 

So as a tip, you can override the automatic brightness of your screen by going over to: Settings > Display > Brightness and remove the check of "Automatic Brightness". Now, try manually setting a value about 10-15% for a start. And also there is a built in widget that lets you easily activate/inactivate these settings via a single click.

So enable that widget - press and hold on an empty section of your screen, choose Widgets, and pick the Power Control option.

You can also change the screen timeout settings from 60 seconds to 15-20 seconds as well (Settings -> Display) as well.

3. Turn of your...

*. 3G - another big batter eater.

*. WiFi - Unlike many 3G connections Wi-Fi is not that widely used (well not always true but in comparison). So if you don't use it that much, then, turn that sucker off too.

*. Bluetooth - If you don't use headsets or other Bluetooth related things that often you can turn off it completely or can set it to stand-by mode.

*. Disable GPS (not everyone gets trapped in jungles :D ).

3. Change the "update intervals" of apps

Applications such as Gmail and Twitter client for Android, Facebok, etc are continuously checking for new updates which can again easily wear down your valuable battery. So set their update intervals to about 30 mins or 1 hours, or to longer periods in general which would help to calm them down a bit :).

4. If you have animations that runs in the background, etc.. disable them.

5. Don't let it get too "hot" - Yep, the battery wears out (can do some damages too) easily if it gets too hot. So let it get too hot.

6. Have you tried wiping out your battery status?

Only an illustration... the menu could differ from phone to phone...

Don't do this often, but once in a while you should wipe out your battery status too. For instance, there is a file called "battery-status" that stores information about your battery. But from time to time (especially if you did an OS update, etc) it has to be "refreshed", there are certain precautions that you have to do prior to do that. In that case I humbly advice you to read this lifehacker post. Good luck.

Few Known Risks of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a big thing these days. And it seems apparent that having a "cloud" integrated business module is something that is inevitable at the end. Although cloud is not something new actually... for a long time most of the activities that we've been doing in the internet are actually a lesser version of a "cloud", in a way.

Definition Of Cloud Computing (in me own words :D)...

The process of managing data (accessing and processing) online using remote computers/servers on the internet.

So in this sense, even something that is as small as an e-mail account is actually a derivative of a cloud. For instance, when making e-mails, we sometimes use attachments that are stored in your local HDD and upload them to the online mail service and edit them within their servers + all those typing etc are also a way of processing data online, right?... so we've been doing this for a long time. Anyway...

The risks....

Shi*... I knew it!.

1. Who's in control of your data? 

For instance, some may even be surprised to know that when you use a cloud computing service, your data, not only they're stored different locations but those locations can be "as far as" different countries.

So, there could be occasions such as the restrictions that apply to your data within your country (who can access the data etc) may no longer be valid as long as your "cloud" is stored in another country!. So, always ask questions about the liability of your data concerning these types of security issues. 

2. How good is your Cloud Service provider's security?

On a cloud, even the data is stored within a single country, a given data is always (not necessarily always, but usually it is) on the "move" from one location to the other. So if the service provider has a weaker security levels this gives people like bad hackers (there are certainly good ones too :D )the ability to steam your data while on the move. So take extra precautions about the levels of the security of your service provider and how reliable they are.

3. Third-party access?

Sometimes when you join a cloud (especially those free ones) although the provider won't tell you much about it ... some third parties can access certain amount of data about you or your data (such as with a certain Amazon program). Always make sure your personal information + data stored in the cloud storage are only accessible by you.

4. Wanna get yourself locked?

Say due to a hacker attack concerning your account in the cloud ... as a security precaution the service provider may decide to lock your account ... even as long as for few days!. Not to say the impact of this on your business. So ask about them in such as situation what are the safety precautions or how fast they can "unlock" your data??, etc.

5. Bandwidth of the service provider?

This is another major concern. With a cloud storage or computing in general, involves a lot of bandwidth, a lot of it. So it's a must that the service provider has a guarantee that they'll always have the ability to give you a full throttle of data-bandwidth no matter what!. For instance, what's the use of a cloud even if you have the fastest internet connection but the service provider cannot match with you or their servers are usually "busy" :(.

Although cloud computing does has its benefits but if you're not careful while choosing a service provider, those benefits won't necessarily flow at your direction. Hope this was helpful. If interested, Wikipedia has a long, a painfully long article on the subject :P.

I personally would do anything to keep my "cloud needs" at a minimum, but that's just me.

Are You Ready For the BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet!

Apple dominates over 20% of the Tablet PC market alone. Although when considering the first iPad and things that it brought ... this is not a surprise, however, they recently introduced the new iPad which sucks big time in comparison with the previous model which can turn things around for Apple if they keep following their fears :).

Introducing the BlackBerry PlayBook!...

It seems that Apple may have lost their "cool" attitude due to the competition in the market... and this will open few "portals" :) to other Tablet PC manufactures to give users what the iPad does not give! thus giving a small chance to start their own dominance over the market, hopefully. Although it's still too early to tell, but BlackBerry is ready to ship their latest Tablet PC's called PlayBook, starting this Tuesday!.

Even before it is released, when BlackBerry released its features, etc for the first time... they received A LOT of positive feedback from the users all around the world!.

Why?

Well, first of all, they've decided to stick to their own OS BlackBerry Tablet OS rather than going for the popular Android these days. But most importantly, it seems that they are aiming for the business users! rather than the average PC users like you and me which is the most important thing about it.

But that's not to say that it is useless for us... far from it actually, when considering the hardware specifications, 1Ghz Dual-Core CPU, 1GB RAM, 64GB (SSD), fully supports HTML5, Adobe 10.1, Wi-Fi and Bluethooh, 3MP front camera and a 5MP back camera, HDMI out put, USB ports Optional 4G... it is ideal for the average gamers as well!.

Although Apple claimed their iPad2 being able to play HD video... in truth it actually cannot render high resolution videos even with that so called "9x" or whatever the faster GPU it has over predecessors. But the Blackberry Playback Tablet is capable of playing full 1080p HD videos out of the box!, ouch!. 

The display is about 7" which in comparison with the 9.7" in iPad 2 is a bit short. But as said before... it feels like they're going after the business people which is where there strength lies... I think :). Anyhow, it is too early to say anything about it... but we'll see what it really capable of when they release it Tuesday... if you can't wait till then... you can pre-order it from their official web page if you like... ooh you rich people ;-).  

Apples Adds "Do Not Track" Information Option to the Safari Web Browser

With their recent Safari web browser (version 5), Apple has added "do not track" feature to its browser. If you haven't heard about this feature yet, then the idea is simple actually. As can be guessed with the name, when using this "mode", the web browser will not keep track of your visited sites or preferences in the browser itself or those information will note be visible to the outsiders to be prices.

Is it so important?

Well it depends. Several major online business models heavily depend themselves by accessing certain parts of the web browsers cache which helps them to "evaluate". For instance, the Google Adsense uses these information a lot.

Say that you're coming from a web site which is about fashion related and entering a web site which is all about weight loss, then you'll see both "fashion" and "weight loss" ads in adsense ad blocks. So, from a user point of view, this is actually good thus making the user less "exposed" to others.

But from a marketing point of view, it is quite handy which is why Google haven't "introduced" it in the Chrome web browser (both Mozilla and Microsoft do offer this feature). So, even though currently Apple only controls about 6% of the current browser market... this is a pretty good move by them.

In the mean time, for Chrome users, there is an addon which disables adsense using their web browser's cache by using an addon called Keep my opt-outs... until Google decides to offer this feature in Chrome :).

How To Install SopCast In Ubuntu 11.04, Watch Online TV Channels for Free!

The idea behind SopCast is actually pretty simple. It is a P2P (peer to peer) based video player, so you don't have to rely on a server to stream online videos. Although this has both good and bad aspects, but one of the cools things about it is, it gives you the ability to create a TV channel/s of your own and stream it using SopCast and reach thousands of end users for free!.

Although it comes with a list of TV channels of its own, but you can add your own channels as well. Remember SopCast use the VLC as the engine. So you have to make sure VLC is installed first. If you haven't done it already, then do so by giving the below command.

sudo apt-get install vlc mozilla-plugin-vlc

Now we can install SopCast in Ubuntu 11.04/10.10 or 10.04, by entering the next command below.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ferramroberto/sopcast
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install sopcast-player

By using the G-conf tool, we can associate "sop" extension on your Gnome desktop automatically, again by giving the below command.

gconftool-2-t-s string / desktop / gnome / url-handlers / sop / command "/ usr / bin / sopcast-player% s"
gconftool-2 - set - type = bool / desktop / gnome / url-handlers / sop / enabled true
gconftool-2 - set - type = bool / desktop / gnome / url-handlers / sop / need-terminal false

Enjoy!.

Meet the Android Based First "Tweet-TV" Phone from LG (Prototype)

LG few hours ago showed off their first prototype "Tweet-TV" platform based android smart phone called "Tweet-TV". Although as far as I know, Twitter has nothing to do with this (directly), the "Tweet-TV" is a platform developed by LG themselves which basically enables the users to watch TV on their mobile phones and "watch/react" using related Tweets at the same time.

Although the "idea" seems a bit ridicules, but when I heard them say...

Viewers engaged with Tweet-TV would be able to interact with program content and submit their comments on programs...

It is kinda interesting actually. This is just a prototype, but the phone will be released within this year and it will be interesting how the people react to it. Their platform get the help from the Mobile Digital TV framework which is another (a bit "shorter" version compared to the "Twitter-TV", perhaps) platform which lets the users to receive local whether or news updates (according to their geographic locations automatically) while watching TV on a small electronic device (mobile phone usually).

But personally, I don't like this at all. There are advantages, but this will easily "expose" the "audience" via their ideas and opinions much quicker than what we currently have "thanks" to cell phones or other things, thus making measuring the thought process of a nation much quicker which can have both negative and positive results. But they have a tendency to being end up as negatives rather than positive ones.

And from a physiological point of view, I'm not a big believer of using Language in "wider" ways either. By stimulating "gross" ways that people can "express" their emotions (negative ways) which the so called "Languages" fail thus reveling the obvious fundamental reason behind the birth of Languages which is to unbalance the human emotions by not letting them "expressed" in their true sense, it can easily create disharmony and gives the ideal opportunity for those at the "other-end" to create "power" through "chaos".  

Anyway, that's what I think, what do you think?...