From a technological advancement point of view; there has never been a better time to be alive, with improvements to technology coming thick and fast as well as the constant introduction of new and seriously impressive gadgets and consumer electronic devices.

Every now and then, we hear rumors surrounding a new product which is reported to be going to hit the shelves and it makes us salivate with anticipation. One such rumor came a couple of weeks back and focused on the fact that Google have been working on a heads-up display type product which is built into a pair of wearable glasses and would feature a number of cutting edge technologies. Today, that speculation has grown with The New York Timesclaiming that sources have confirmed the product.

At present we don’t know a great deal about the Google-branded glasses, but the previously aired speculation claimed that they would feature an embedded display which would be only an inch or two away from the wearers eye. They will include a display, mere inches from the wearer’s eye, streaming real-time info about your surroundings, similar to the various augmented reality applications we’ve seen on smartphones.

The data will be fetched through a 3G/4G data connection, and the glasses will retrieve information about their surroundings through GPS and several sensors.

 

The glasses will cost “around the price of current smartphones,” sources say. While definitely not very precise – current smartphones cost anywhere from $150 to $600 – this price range shows that Google intends the glasses as a product for the mass market.

Will these glasses be something you need as opposed to want? We doubt it – we haven’t seen a must-have augmented reality application yet, although we have seen some very cool ones in the past.

The glasses will send data to the cloud and then use things like Google Latitude to share location, Google Goggles to search images and figure out what is being looked at, and Google Maps to show other things nearby, the Google employee said. “You will be able to check in to locations with your friends through the glasses,” they added.

Everyone I spoke with who was familiar with the project repeatedly said that Google was not thinking about potential business models with the new glasses. Instead, they said, Google sees the project as an experiment that anyone will be able to join. If consumers take to the glasses when they are released later this year, then Google will explore possible revenue streams.

This may all seem a bit ‘virtual reality’ but we are getting to the point where that kind of functionality is becoming a reality. The actual hardware configuration of the final product remains to be seen, but the glasses could also feature an integrated flash for the camera, as well as the ability to accept voice input from the user, and all reportedly powered by the Android mobile operating system.

If the proposed internal display is correct, the implementation of augmented reality technology into the glasses in order to give the surrounding’s information to the user would be truly stunning and opens up a whole new realm of possibility for developers should Google decide to allow them to explore that route.

When it comes to these kind of products, buyers generally tend to rule with their hearts rather than their heads and although I can’t seeing anyone actually ‘needing’ these glasses, I think pretty much all gadget and technology fans will want them.

Why Controversial:

Despite the incredible success of Zukerberg’s marketing strategies, he made a mistake four years back when he introduced Beacon. It seems as if Mark Zukerberg loves to take great risks for amusements only else how could an entrepreneur ignore user feedback? Facebook has automatically replaced all the fan pages’ to timeline layout without giving an option to undo it. People are a little angry and much annoyed at this forced change. Has Zukerberg launched a campaign convincing all to switch, the situation would have been better today. People dislike this layout because they find it difficult to customize and maintain.

Why Time Line?

You must be thinking now and most of you have surely searched it; Why Timeline? Well, of course Zukerberg would have some solid points at his side to justify timeline. Let us share a few with you:

Be Unique:

No one can ignore the basic marketing secret of “Being Unique”. Since its launch, facebook has always been unique in its facilitation, services and social networking approach. Facebook was doing perfectly fine with the old profiles and almost everyone was satisfied with it, including Zukerberg. There was no need to completely change the way people communicate with each other. But due to the emergence of its newly born rival, Google+, Zukerberg had to think seriously because Google+ offered almost all the features of Facebook with a little modification in them. May be this is the reason, why Zukerberg did not wait for positive user feedback and changed the game all alone.

Simpler Design:

Simplicity is one the key points in designing. Had there been two different layouts, things have been more difficult. To be technical, more complex algorithms would be required to manage the interactions and the transference of data properly. It could have also resulted in incalculable bugs. A question could also have arisen about the way search robots crawl information. To keep things simpler, it was a better choice to allow only one layout.

Uniform Outlook:

Facebook is the most widely used social network, used by people of all ages and interests. If you are using old profile and your friend is enjoying TimeLine, it would be difficult for you to understand his profile and organization of data, events, posts etc he has done there; because you are not used to it. So, it was a necessity to keep the uniformity in its user interface; else there could be a rise of two conflicting user groups of the same social network; one in the favor of time line and the other totally against it. How on earth, could one afford such a mess?

Accept TimeLine:

We can understand why people are so reluctant to this new feature and wish to deactivate Timeline. It is just like, you have been living in your home for many years and someone throws you out of it and asks you to live in the home he has chosen for you. And now, you have to get new furniture as well because the old one is totally outdated in the new home. We do not like when any one orders us! Also, many people are not technical out there and they are used to simpler facebook layout. They find this new customization as an advanced one and can not absorb it. But, just as in our daily life, many things are beyond our control; we made compromises for them and accept things the way they are. We have to accept this time line as the only option available. Relaxed are those who adjust themselves with the changes easily but genius are those who turn these compromises into opportunities.

So let’s see what we can make out of this controversial change. Facebook fan page has come up with the following options for marketing your brand:

Cover Photo:

Cover Photo is not less than an immediate showcase or flyer for your brand. Although image dimensions are 851*315 pixels, but your uploaded image should be at least of 399 pixels so that it will stretch to the larger size. You can change your cover photo as many times as you like, and a news feed is displayed to all the subscribers. This can be an exciting option for all those who are designers, photographers or advertisers to show off their talent. However you can not display contact info or any discount packages, coupons or any sort of call to act on cover photo. Just hold on, you are provided with some better options.

Admin Panel:

A much better organized admin panel is provided with five subdivisions.

Notifications

New Likes

Insights

Messages

PageTips

Notifications are the same as previous. New likes and insights help us to keep a track of who is engaged with your website and the page itself. You can contact directly to the page owner via “Messages”, as you would message any of your friends. This eliminates the need of a separate contact form.

PinPosts:

Now, this is the feature I am really interested in. Page admin can pin any of the posts and it will appear on the upper left .These will last for seven days. You can use this option to promote any of your required post .For examples, if you have launched an e-book, developed a widget or achieved anything big you may prefer to pin that.

Milestones:

And here comes another exciting feature. Set your celebrations and greetings once and they will be displayed at their time accordingly. You do not need to put any more reminders. You can schedule your posts for a week and can enjoy free time easily because milestones are provided to set specific dates to things and it will appear at the specified time and date.

Display Tabs:

Display tabs or apps provide a more dynamic way of access. It has twelve tabs. One is reserved for your photo and this is static. Rest can be used to display any of your custom icons, url or facebook likes etc. But at most three can be displayed at a time (other than photo) and you need to hover over it to see the remaining apps. So, you need to prioritize the display order.

Do you have a laptop or netbook with average or poor battery lifetime? If that’s the case, you might want to use an Internet browser that’s able to take advantage of the power saving features included with Windows 7 or Windows 8. We tested all the major browsers and had some very surprising results. Read on to learn which browser is best at squeezing more time out of your laptop’s battery. Is it Google Chrome? Is it Internet Explorer? Or is it Firefox?

The Testing Procedure

For this comparison, I tested all the major browsers: Internet Explorer 9, Internet Explorer 10 beta (included in Windows 8 Consumer Preview), Google Chrome 18, Mozilla Firefox 11 and Opera 11.62. No addons were installed.

I used my two and a half years old laptop - an HP Pavillion dv7 2185dx with the following hardware configuration: Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q9000 @ 2.00 GHz, 6 GB of RAM DDR2, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650. This model is marketed as a desktop replacement and battery time was never its strength, and it is even less of a strength now that a few years have passed. I can barely squeeze two hours of battery time when using it. Therefore, understanding which browser to use, so that my battery lasts as long as possible, was important to me.

The tests were made on a clean Windows 7 installation, with all Windows Updates installed and no other software than the browsers being tested. I used the Power saver Power plan. I had to modify its settings so that it did not turn off the hard disk and put the computer to sleep only when the battery reached its critical level.

Since Internet Explorer 10 beta is available only in Windows 8, I used a clean installation of Windows 8 Consumer Preview on the same laptop. The same power plan was used, using the same modifications to its default values as in Windows 7.

The benchmark used was the Peacekeeper battery test, which tests your browser until your battery runs down and Windows puts your computer to sleep. I ran this test at least three times for each browser and recorded the results. Some of the test runs were unsuccessful due to various reasons: the Internet connection stopped working for a short while during some tests, Peacekeeper was not able to record the results of some tests while in other runs I encountered browser crashes.

For each browser I recorded the results of three successful test runs and made the necessary averages to make the comparison between results.

Observations: Google Chrome - Very Unstable & Internet Explorer 10 beta - Constant Results

Out of all browsers, Google Chrome stood out as the most troublesome. Most of the tests I made with this browser did not finish successfully. First, I had issues with the browser crashing in the middle of testing. I reinstalled Chrome and the problem was fixed. Then, many tests simply did not end well and Peacekeeper was not able to record the results, for unknown reasons. Also, during most tests, the screen of my laptop was becoming active at random intervals, as if mouse or keyboard movements were detected. I found this strange, as my laptop was simply sitting on a table, not bothered by anyone. This lowered the battery lifetime when testing Google Chrome, as the screen consumed more energy than in the tests made with other browsers. Again, the cause for this behavior is unknown and it was encountered only when testing Google Chrome.

I noticed that Internet Explorer 10 beta had the most constant results. The variations between tests were extremely small, both in terms of the average performance score and how long the battery lasted. For example, the difference between the best and the worst result was only of 4 minutes. The least constant browser was Mozilla Firefox. The difference between the worst and the best test result was 21 minutes.

All browsers, except Google Chrome, ran the tests without any major issues and were very stable in their behavior.

Test Results: Internet Explorer Delivers the Most Battery Lifetime

Below you can see the averages of the results I obtained during my tests.

 

If you want to choose the browser that gives you the maximum battery lifetime then your best bet is Internet Explorer 9 or 10, depending on the operating system you are using (Windows 7 or Windows 8). Both browsers had very similar results, delivering an average battery lifetime of 108 minutes and 104 minutes respectively.

If you look at the average performance score, the winner is Google Chrome, by a huge margin (126% better) when compared to Internet Explorer 10. However, you get the worst possible battery lifetime out of all browsers (21% lower). It seems that Google Chrome doesn’t take advantage of the power saving features included with Windows 7 and maxes out all the resource available.

However, if you want a mix between browsing performance and battery lifetime, your best choice is Opera. Opera was always close to Internet Explorer 10 and 9 in terms of battery lifetime (only 7% lower) while delivering browsing performance that’s 78% better.

Conclusion

If I were to pick the winners, they would be Internet Explorer and Opera. Depending on what matters most to you, they are your best choice while browsing the web in battery mode.

Before you close this article, please share your experience with using different browsers while running on battery. Are the results above similar to what you have experienced?