2008 is the year which made us to think mostly internally and safety.
I would like to present some of biggest advancements in technology and its allied fields..
1) Apple iPhone..
Naturally, Apple iPhone has created a space for another type of cell phones in the market.This phone is a smartest one with a sensitive touch screen, clear camera, look and feel design and powerful Microprocessor.This phone has created a lot of fuzz in the market and it had made other coz like Nokia, Samsung, HTC, Sony etc.. flush out some touch screen models to face It. Nokia’s N95 is considered as the biggest iPhone threat, everyone agrees with just specifications and clarifies with usage because both costs same.Other models like LG Prada, Samsung F700, Meizu M8, SonyEricsson Xperia,Samsung Ominia, HTC Diamond, Nokia Tube etc… are well known iPhone killers.LG claimed that iPhone design is copied from theirs model Prada.
iPhone has been targeted by Hackers. Many hackers are able to develop softwares which can unlock iPhone with out activation.Many programs are available on Net to unlock iPhone.Apple developed a compiler for third-party applications. With this compiler many developers and coz are able to prepare softwares, games and many other required and handy applications which made iPhone much smarter. Even here hackers are able to make their presence..Some applications are developed by hackers which are vulnerable to iPhone.So, if u are downloading or buying third-party applications from apple site check the manufacturer of that application.
Whatever may be competition within these companies consumers satisfaction has been levited as they are witnessing a new era of mobile computing.
2) Processors..
Today is not for a single processor, its the multi-core processor which took importance and acceptance of usage for overclocking. In 2008, processors shifted from single pentium-IV to dual-core and then to core 2 duo & quad-core. Intel has specified Its 65nm Octa-Core processors will roll out in mid-2009.In 2008 there has been a shift in processing power and cores.Many people still today get confused with the Names of these processors.
Core 2 duo is the new Conroe cpu from Intel, and it is a dual-core cpu(2 processors on 1 chip).
'Dual-core' is just a generic term for any cpu that has 2 processors on the 1 chip.
'Quad core' would be the generic term for a cpu with 4 processors on the 1 chip.
Every processor has a code name.All Core 2 Duos are currently Conroes. Conroe is simply the code name for it, as all CPU manufacturers give their CPUs codenames before they're released.Such as the Pentium 4 had Willamette, Northwood and Prescott. The Pentium III had Katmai and Coppermine. Not all codenames are as creative, for instance, the original Pentium MMX was codenamed P55C.
Though Intel processors are considered top for priority, their Motherboards have been facing stiff competition from NVIDIA. Nvidia is a graphics processing company which develops Graphics solutions and Advanced Graphics Cards.Today this company’s Motherboards are considered an alternative to Intel’s one. Apple selected Nvidia Motherboards for their MacBooks.This has created bigger rippled talk in Hardware market for not selecting Intel.Meantime AMD has shocked the market in december’08 as they started rolling out their quad-core processors without announcing any launch.
Don’t expect to see any major leaps in performance from these dual-cores and quad-cores. Two cores don’t mean twice the performance, nor do four cores quadruple the performance. Confusing? Not really, just a different game altogether, a few years ago things were clear-cut and obvious, every increase in processor clockspeed equaled better performance, or rather all software would automatically take advantage of the faster execution. So basically more MHz meant more performance, simple really.
Not today though, you’d think that two processor cores running side by side would surely be faster than a single core right? And four cores working simultaneously would certainly run circles around it? Well no, only if the application that you are running is multithreaded and thus can take advantage of the extra cores, remember that about 99% of all software available today is programmed to run on a single core processor. Hence isn’t multithreaded and thus in the vast majority of cases you won’t see a speed up, as the second, third or fourth core is just sitting there idling, or handling simple operating system tasks that don’t eat up a lot of processing power in the first place. But wait a minute, you must have that backwards, dual and quad core processors speed up your operating system considerably and hence overall performance goes up. Well, no again, if running the operating system was such a resource hog and would eat up heaps and heaps of CPU-cycles then the difference between a 1GHz Pentium III and a 3GHz Dual Core processor would be astronomical wouldn’t it, isn’t.
So what’s needed to get these dual and quad core processors to offer genuine leaps in performance and make us forget about single core processors altogether? Well, basically the same thing that needs to happen with 64-bit support: software needs to be written, or a whole lot less likely, rewritten, to take advantage of these extra cores. And most software we use today, that includes your favorite browser, email client, etc. is not going to see much of a speedup, from these optimizations. No, for dual and quad core processors to show their strengths you need some heavy applications that can benefit from parallel execution such as video and photo editing software, games, simulation and CAD/CAM software, etc. Don’t expect the mundane office applications most of us use during the day to run any faster though. So without software support dual and quad core processors simply are not going to shine, they’ll just be a novelty.
And unlike slapping on a few extra cores which is relatively easy, writing software to make use of these extra cores isn’t. So for the next few years we’ll be left wanting while the majority of the dual and quad core processors are idling until software finally catches up. Keep that in mind when you’re thinking about spending some of those hard earned savings on a new PC equipped with a top-of-the-line quad core processor.
3) Time
Time is crucial we all know that!but, I want to say that an extra second is added in 2008.
The world's official timekeepers have added a "leap second" to the last day of the year on Wednesday, to help match clocks to the Earth's slowing spin on its axis, which takes place at ever-changing rates affected by tides and other factors.
The U.S. Naval Observatory, keeper of the Pentagon's master clock, said it would add the extra second on Wednesday in coordination with the world's atomic clocks at 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC.
That corresponds to 6:59:59 p.m. EST (23:59:59 GMT), when an extra second will tick by -- the 24th to be added to UTC since 1972, when the practice began.
UTC is the time scale kept by highly precise atomic clocks around the world, accurate to about a billionth of a second per day, the Naval Observatory says. For those with a need for precision timing, it has replaced Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT.
The decision to add or remove a second is the responsibility of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, based on its monitoring of the Earth's rotation.
The goal is to make sure clocks vary from the Earth's rotational time by no more than 0.9 seconds before an adjustment. That keeps UTC in sync with the position of the sun above the Earth.
Mechanisms such as the Internet-based Network Time Protocol and the satellite-based Global Positioning System depend on precision timing.
The first leap second was introduced into UTC on June 30, 1972. The last was added on December 31, 2005.
They have been added at intervals ranging from six months to seven years, Daniel Gambis, head of the IERS Earth Orientation Center at the Observatoire de Paris, wrote in an explanatory piece this month (http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/).
Among the reasons for Earth's slowing whirl on its axis are the braking action of tides, snow or the lack of it at the polar ice caps, solar wind, space dust and magnetic storms, according to the U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology, another timekeeper.
By contrast, a leap day, February 29, occurs once every four years because a complete turn around the sun -- our year with all its seasons -- takes about 365 days and six hours.
In 1970, an international agreement established two time scales: one based on the Earth's rotation and another on highly accurate atomic clocks.
The U.S. Naval Observatory's master clock is based on a system that now includes 50 atomic clocks, 36 based on the element cesium and 14 known as hydrogen masers.
With the Earth's rotation gradually slowing, the periodic insertion of a leap second into the atomic time scale is needed to keep the two systems within a second of each other.
