Monday, 1 August 2011
Google Buys TheDealMap for Location-Based Deals
TheDealMap, which happened to be one of PCMag.com's best Web sites of 2010, rounds up local deals via an online map, and also separates them out via category. Users can also find deals by brand or by city, as well as via categories such as "restaurants," "medical," and "food and drugs," among others.
Google recently launched its Google Offers program in Portland, Ore., and later moving to New York's Manhattan and the San Francisco Bay Area. Like Groupon and other daily deals sites, Google Offers focuses on offers in a specific region, generally offering users the right to purchase a deal coupon for 50 percent off or more.
To date, though, Google's Offers beta places deals in a generic region, such as New York's MidTown, or "Oakland/East Bay". With TheDealMap, deals can be found outside those regions, with a much more refined sense of location. Google's strength in its Maps offering, with its Google Places becoming more of a home for businesses.
And Groupon recently launched Groupon Now, which provides location-based deals with time constraints as well, one-upping its competition.
"We believe Google provides the ideal platform to help us accelerate our growth and fulfill our mission. We're passionate about helping people save money while having great local experiences, and in Google we've found the perfect partner that shares this passion, as well as our vision and strategy," the company said in a statement posted on its site. "We believe that joining Google will help us innovate in new and unexplored areas of commerce."
It's unclear, however, how long TheDealMap will exist as a service.
"For the time being, we will continue to support The Dealmap's core products and partner services. People will still be able to access local and daily deals through The Dealmap website, mobile apps, and daily email, and we'll continue supporting The Dealmap API and feeds for existing sourcing and distribution partners. As we're ready to share more about integration and transition plans, we'll update our partners and consumers on progress and any news."
TheDealMap claims that it has over 2 million users of its branded mobile, Web, social, and email products, and that over 1 million people have installed its iPhone and Android apps. The site also claims over 85 million visitors have accessed its DealExchange distribution network.
Researchers Create Smallest Battery Ever Made
A team of scientists has created a battery so small that it fits into a "nanowire," a wire whose thickness is less than the wavelength of visible light. It's the smallest battery ever made, and it could end up powering a whole generation of nanotechnology.
The potential of nanotechnology—the practice of building machines so small that they can't even be seen—has been talked about for decades. In medicine, for example, the idea of creating tiny robots that could enter a person's bloodstream and target intruders or diseased cells has been touted as one of the most promising applications of the field, but it's remained purely theoretical.
To create the battery (see the diagrom below), the researchers first coated a nanowire template with a thin layer of copper. They then filled the pores (which create the individual nanowires) halfway with a nickel/tin alloy to create the anodes. At this point, they put on a thin layer of polyethylene-oxide gel, which acts as both an electrolyte and an insulator from the other nanowires. Next they filled the remainder of the pore with a polyaniline material to create the cathodes. A layer of aluminium goes on top to complete the circuit.
Every nanowire is just 150 nanometers (nm) thin. To put that in perspective, the lowest wavelength of visible light is about 400 nm. However, the complete battery is about 50 microns tall, or about the width of human hair. The researchers ended up creating an array of nanowire batteries that was about 0.08 square inches in area, though it's theoretically scalable to even larger sizes.
With a larger array that includes several layers stacked on top of each other, the tech could theoretically lead to batteries with massive energy density. And since the electrochemical materials don't contain lithium, they're easy to synthesize and manipulate at room temperature.
The nanowire batteries aren't without their limitations, however. After being charged and discharged 20 times, they lose their ability to hold a full charge. The researchers are working on addressing this limitation, however, by playing with the polymer thickness and trying out different kinds of electrodes.
Although it's in the early stages, the new battery technology could help usher in an era of practical nanomachines. With a real microscopic power source, the science-fiction scenario of tiny machines acting as doctors, builders, and explorers just took a step toward reality.
For more from Peter, follow him on Twitter @petepachal.
BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900 To Be Launched In India
Powered by the latest version of its OS, BlackBerry OS 7, this smartphone comes with a 2.8" VGA capacitive touchscreen. It features enhanced voice-enabled Universal Search, to make handsfree search easier. Also present isNear Field Communication (NFC), although it is going to take some time for this technology to be implemented in our country. It sports a 1.2 GHz processor, 5 MP camera, 8 GB internal memory and supports up to 32 GB SDHC memory cards.
RIM plans to sell the device with a 1.5 year warranty at under Rs 32,500, which is still a stiff price to pay. It seems that the BB Bold Touch 9900 is a good candidate to grab a sizeable customer base, due to reports praising its quick and speedy touchscreen response. We will find out if this is really true when the phone is available off the shelves.
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