10 Cool Benefits At The Heavenly Google

Bangalore: There are some cool and delightful surprises that make Google a wonderful place to work at. The company offers a personalized environment where employees never get bored of their routine work life. From healthy, fresh and diverse foods to laundry, pets and games, Google tags itself as the coolest place keeping employees intact to a fun loving work culture.

#1 Healthy food and snacks

A Googler’s health is his wealth too. Snacks and lunch are available free of cost. Food on the menu is changed on a daily basis taking care of the employee’s nutrition. Cafes serve organic and healthy food varieties. You can crunch on a variety of dry fruits too. You can eat every day at Google and there’s no way out to get bored of it.
A doctor is available at your service on a 24 x 7 basis.

#2 Benefits for your new born

Employees who turn parents receive benefits of $ 500 for their baby’s food and nutrition.  So mummies need not worry as Google shows its responsibility too.
Newly turned mothers also have private rooms for breast feeding.

#3 Play games or with pets

Google awaits you with an array of entertainment at work. There is a swimming pool, a rock-climbing wall, beach volleyball area, table tennis, video games and the list goes on.
If your pet is all alone at home, bring it to office and leave it at the pets’ park.

 

#4 Laundry service and car wash

Google offers laundry services too. Dry cleaning and ironing is at the will of the employee.
Free car wash service is an added advantage, and free oil change as well.

 

#5 Privacy and Relaxation at ease

Private cabins are available for free to spend some quality time with your loved one. There are prayer rooms for all religions as well. There is also a facility of special massage chairs to relax your muscles. If you feel tired, there are specially designed health capsules that you can step on, relax and listen to some soulful music.
If you’re not satisfied with the massage chair, there is a professional masseuse and a sauna bath in the office campus too!

#6 Gymming and more

There is a gym with every possible facility for a Googler. Regular summer camps and marathons are also a part of the company’s list for great employee experience.

 

 

#7 Parking facility with no worries

There are special parking areas with free chargers for electric cars. Underground parking service is also free of cost. Just drop in your car and the keys will reach your desk. Employees who choose the Google bus service, can enjoy the free Wi-Fi facility inside the bus, that’s given to them.

 

#8 Your personalized work place

You can decorate your desk anyway you want. Couches, bean bags and comfortable chairs are available at its best. So just crash anywhere. You can practice your music skills in the music studio with electric guitars, drum sets and amplifiers.
There is a barber inside the office and if you refer a person as an employee, you get rewarded with 2000 dollars.
Every Google employee gets a free Android phone too!

#9 Learn and update yourself

Sitting on your relaxation chair, you can learn foreign languages at ease for free. The mobile library at the office offers you with the latest books and magazines as you will enjoy your reading experience.

 

#10 Office meetings

The office premises also have a leather boat with seatbelts on it. So a meeting can be held in the best of comforts.  Friday meeting are held where any question can be thrown at senior management while sipping free beer and wine.

And what’s more…

 

After life benefits too

Google takes care of its employees even after death. The nominees can benefit by getting half the salary of the employee every month for the next ten years. Even the employee’s Google stocks are transferred to the nominees.
If you wonder why Google does all these things… well, it’s not business here but the company feels that it is the right to do so.

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Facebook, Google tech gurus to design cancer research game

Reuters, March 04, 2013

Scientists from a British cancer charity are teaming up with technology gurus from the likes of Amazon, Facebook and Google to design and develop a mobile game aimed at speeding the search for new cancer drugs.The project, led by the charity Cancer Research UK, should mean that anyone with a smart phone and five minutes to spare will be able to investigate vital scientific data at the same time as playing a mobile game.
The first step is for 40 computer programmers, gamers, graphic designers and other specialists to take part in a weekend "GameJam" to turn the charity's raw genetic data into a game format for future so-called "citizen scientists".
"We're making great progress in understanding the genetic reasons cancer develops. But the clues to why some drugs will work and some won't are held in data which need to be analysed by the human eye - and this could take years," said Carlos Caldas at Cancer Research UK's Cambridge Institute.
"By harnessing the collective power of citizen scientists we'll accelerate the discovery of new ways to diagnose and treat cancer much more precisely."
After the GameJam, which runs in London from March 1-3, an agency will build the game concept into reality and the team plans to launch it in mid 2013.
Cancer already kills more than 7.5 million people a year and the number of people with the disease worldwide is expected to surge by more than 75 percent by 2030, according to the World Health Organisation's cancer agency IARC.
CRUK's scientists are working hard to identify the genetic faults that drive cancer to try to find new ways of diagnosing and treating patients in a more targeted way based on their genetic profile and that of their tumours.
In a major international study on breast cancer genetics published last year, CRUK researchers said they are now able to classify the disease into 10 subtypes - a finding that could lead to more accurate and tailored treatment in future.
That study also found several completely new genes that drive breast cancer, offering potential targets for new types of drugs.
Yet this type of research generates colossal amounts of data that need to be analysed, CRUK said as it announced the gaming project. And while advances in technology mean scientists can process data faster than ever, much of it still needs to be analysed by people rather than machines.
"The human eye can detect subtle changes that machines are not programmed to look for - leading to serendipitous discoveries providing clues to the causes and drivers of the disease," the charity said.
"With the collective power of hundreds of thousands of people across the globe helping our scientists to analyse this data we could drastically speed up research."
Philip Su, engineering site director of Facebook London said his company believes the best way to solve a problem "is to bring smart people together to 'hack' a solution."
"That approach is just as valid in the field of life sciences as it is in software engineering," he said.

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Does Google mean what it says?

This week, one senior Google exec declared that smartphones are "emasculating," while another said there was no need for physical stores. Yet Google makes smartphones and has pop-up stores. Confusing?

Now that's a real man.

In business, meaning what you say is unnecessary. It can also have consequences.

Was a Beijing restaurant really serious when it posted a sign that read: "This shop does not receive the Japanese, the Philippines, the Vietnamese and dogs"?

It was. Its owner takes China's territorial rights against various nations (and, presumably, dogs) very seriously.

And what should one make of the highly territorial bosses at Google when they say things in public?

Last week, they surpassed themselves in uttering words of moving peculiarity.

First, Android chief Andy Rubin told the Mobile World Congress that Google has absolutely no need of retail stores.

Rumors has been pulsating that the company felt it needed to compete with Apple and would open stores, with, no doubt, white walls and some Google logos.

It needed its products to be felt and not merely seen on a screen.

Not at all, soothed Rubin. These days, people just need to talk to their friends and read reviews before they spend thousands of dollars on a gadget.

I have a feeling that by "people" Rubin might mean "people who work here at Google who have little time to go to a physical store."

He might also mean "engineers who buy things according to specs, rather than anything human like touch, feel, or smell."

There is also the strange piece of data that Google actually does have pop-up stores. Real, physical ones in places like airports and British computer stores.

If there was no need for physical stores, why does Google have, well, physical stores?

Perhaps I'm being pedantic. Perhaps, moreover, Rubin simply didn't want to give away the fact that Google will simultaneously open 400 physical stores within the next 18 months.

The next day, though, things became even stranger.

Google's Sergey Brin turned up at TED and revealed that smartphones are, in fact, "emasculating."

"You're standing around and just rubbing this featureless piece of glass,' he explained.

Yes, every time you nervously rub your mojito glass in a bar while talking to your date, she is thinking that you are worthlessly fey.

Pausing to consider this troubling notion, I remembered that Google actually sells smartphones. So here was the company's co-founder insisting that it was selling products that make men drippy.

It reminded me of Gerald Ratner, the head of a jewelry chain that bore his name, who last century called his own products "crap." It didn't help his business.

It's one thing for Brin and his co-founder Larry Page to have disdained advertising for so long. It's quite another to openly insist that the things you sell will make men weedy.

New tagline: Nexus 4. It'll Make You Weak At The Knees. And Elsewhere.

But these people are allegedly deep thinkers. They're the very souls building our tomorrow, whether we like it or not.It may well be that Google's executives find media contact tiresome, so they offer words that are ill thought-through.

They're also admirers of Steve Jobs, who wasn't often exactly candid when speaking with the outside world. Perhaps they think they're mischievously walking and talking in his wake.

The impression it leaves is that one shouldn't take their words to heart. Which is rather heartening. It leaves open far more possibilities

It means Google might buy the current Macy's store in New York's Herald Square and turn it into the world's biggest gadget retail experience, like a monstrous Disney World for gadgets.

It means the company might favor Motorola heavily in the future. It might launch self-driving golf carts and helicopters. It might even set up a new Asian HQ in North Korea.

And it might also launch a smartphone that makes you feel like a real man.

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Two-year-old infected with HIV 'functionally cured'

Doctors say toddler born with HIV shows no signs of the virus a year after being removed from antiretroviral therapy.

Scanning electron micrograph of HIV-1 budding (in green).

In an unprecedented case, doctors in Mississippi believe they have "functionally cured" a toddler of an HIV infection.

Recent tests of a 2-year-old born premature with the disease show no detectable levels of the virus, according to the National Institutes of Health. Doctors credit early administration of antiretroviral therapy with curing the child, who shows no signs of the virus after a year off the drugs.

"Despite the fact that research has given us the tools to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, many infants are unfortunately still born infected," Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a statement today. "With this case, it appears we may have not only a positive outcome for the particular child, but also a promising lead for additional research toward curing other children."

The child was born in Mississippi in July 2010 to an HIV-infected mother who had received neither antiretroviral medication nor prenatal care. The infection was confirmed two days after birth and the child was immediately placed on a liquid antiretroviral treatment consisting of a combination of three anti-HIV drugs: zidovudine, lamivudine, and nevirapine.

For reasons that scientists said were unclear, the antiretroviral treatment regimen was discontinued when the child was 18 months old. However, blood tests conducted last fall revealed undetectable HIV levels (less than 20 copies/mL) and no HIV-specific antibodies.Additional blood tests during the first child's first three weeks of life also confirmed the presence of the virus. After nearly a month of treatment, the child's viral load had decreased to less than 50 copies of HIV per milliliter of blood.

Researchers said it was the first well-documented case of an infected child showing no signs of the disease in the absence of antiretroviral therapy. It's only the second documented case of a person infected with the disease being cured. Timothy Ray Brown, 45, was cured of the disease after receiving a bone marrow stem cell transplant in 2007.

As promising as the results are, the doctors cautioned that additional research was necessary to determine whether the case can be replicated in clinical trials involving HIV-infected children.

"This case suggests that providing antiretroviral therapy within the very first few days of life to infants infected with HIV through their mothers via pregnancy or delivery may prevent HIV from establishing a reservoir, or hiding place, in their bodies and, therefore, achieve a cure for those children," Dr. Deborah Persaud, associate professor of infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore.

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Microsoft targets holidays for next Windows Phone update

Normally tight-lipped about product release plans, the software giant tips its hand in a job posting.

Windows Phone 8 update for Christmas?

Microsoft doesn't expect to release its next update to Windows Phone 8 before the holiday shopping season, according to a recent job posting.

Usually pretty tight-lipped about its Windows Phone product updates, Microsoft tipped its hand in a job posting late last week for a software development engineer for phone testing.

"This is a great time to join as we're completing our current release [and] are getting ready for our next release targeting the holiday of this year and we're chartered with keeping the momentum for Windows Phone by bringing new killer devices and delightful user experiences," the post reads. "There are enormous growth opportunities in this role and organization."

The post refers to Windows Phone as "one of the most exciting challenges in Microsoft" but offers no clue as to what new features users could expect at the end of the year.

Windows Phone is considered key to Microsoft's mobile strategy, as well as Bing's mobile market share. However, Windows Phone has been slow to catch on with consumers, a majority of whom continue to snap up iPhones and Android devices.CNET has contacted Microsoft for comment and will update this report when we learn more.

Microsoft job posts often give hints at the company's product plans. Another ad posted earlier this month referred to "Windows Blue," the alleged codename for the next wave of Windows-related operating system and services updates from Microsoft.

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India Becomes The First Country To Put Smartphone Into Orbit

Bangalore: India has become the first country to put Smartphone into the orbit which is loaded with some serious and some fun apps.

The nano-satellite STRaND-1, built by University of Surrey's Surrey Space Centre (SSC), carrying a Smartphone, has been successfully launched into space from Sriharikota, India, according to PTI report.

STRaND-1 is a training and demonstration mission weighing 4.3 kg, intended to test commercial off the shelf technologies in space. Launched into a 785 km Sun-synchronous orbit on Indian Space Research Organisation ISRO's PSLV launcher on Monday, the spacecraft is an innovative 3U CubeSat weighing 4.3 kg and is the world's first ‘phonesat’ to go into orbit, as well as the first UK CubeSat to be launched.

Professor Sir Martin Sweeting, SSC Director and Executive Chairman of SSTL, said, "This launch is SSC's first with Isro, and I am looking forward to exploring opportunities for further launches and a wider collaboration on space projects in the future." 

"This launch is SSTL's first with ISRO, and I am looking forward to exploring opportunities for further launches and a wider collaboration on space projects in the future," he added.

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Yahoo to shut down seven products, including Message Boards, Blackberry app

Reuters, March 03, 2013

Yahoo Inc is shutting down seven products, including its mobile app for Blackberry smartphones, as new Chief Executive Marissa Mayer takes a page from Google Inc's play book by eliminating unsuccessful products en-masse.

The product shutdowns, which Yahoo announced on its official company blog on Friday, are part of what the company said are regular efforts to evaluate and review its product line-up.

"The most critical question we ask is whether the experience is truly a daily habit that still resonates for all of you today," wrote Jay Rossiter, Yahoo's executive vice president of Platforms.

The announcement represents Yahoo's second group shutdown of products since Mayer, a former Google executive, became CEO of the struggling Web portal in July. So-called "spring cleaning" announcements, in which multiple products are shut down, have become a regular feature at Google in recent years.

Mayer signaled the company would prune its line-up of mobile apps at an investor conference last month, noting that Yahoo would reduce the 60 to 75 disparate mobile apps it currently has to a more manageable 12 to 15 apps.

Yahoo said its app for Blackberry smartphones would no longer be available for download, or supported by Yahoo, as of April 1.

Yahoo also said that on April 1 it will stop supporting Yahoo Avatars - the cartoon-like digital characters that consumers create to depict them on Web services such as Yahoo instant messenger and Facebook. Consumers who want to continue using their avatar on Yahoo's online services must download the avatar and then re-upload the information to their personalized Yahoo profile.

The other Yahoo products set to be terminated include Yahoo App Search, Yahoo Sports IQ, Yahoo Clues, the Yahoo Message Boards website and the Yahoo Updates API.

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Why teens are tiring of Facebook

Facebook has become a social network that's often too complicated, too risky, and, above all, too overrun by parents to give teens the type of digital freedom they crave.

To understand where teens like to spend their virtual time nowadays, just watch them on their smartphones. Their world revolves around Instagram, the application adults mistook for an elevated photography service, and other apps decidedly less old-fashioned than Mark Zuckerberg's social network.

And therein lies one of Facebook's biggest challenges: With more than 1 billion users worldwide and an unstated mission to make more money, Facebook has become a social network that's often too complicated, too risky, and, above all, too overrun by parents to give teens the type of digital freedom or release they crave.

For tweens and teens, Instagram -- and, more recently, SnapChat, an app for sending photos and videos that appear and then disappear -- is the opposite of Facebook: simple, seemingly secret, and fun. Around schools, kids treat these apps like pot, enjoyed in low-lit corners, and all for the undeniable pleasure and temporary fulfillment of feeling cool. Facebook, meanwhile, with its Harvard dorm room roots, now finds itself scrambling to keep up with the tastes of the youngest trendsetters -- even as it has its hooks in millions of them since it now owns Instagram.

Asked about the issue, a Facebook representative would say only, "We are gratified that more than 1 billion people, including many young people, are using Facebook, to connect and share."

There's no hard-and-fast data that quantifies Facebook's teen problem. But we know -- from observing teens, talking to parents and analysts, and from a few company statements -- that age doesn't become Facebook with this group.

In recent weeks, Facebook has told us on two occasions about its teen-appeal problem. When it filed its annual report, it warned investors for the first time that younger users are turning to other services, particularly Instagram, as a substitute for Facebook.

Then, earlier this week, Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman admitted that Instagram, an application he described as popular among the "younger generation," is a "formidable competitor" to Facebook. Which seems odd until you realize that the profit-hungry Facebook isn't yet making a dime from Instagram.

What we do know is that Instagram is already a very popular service that continues to grow rapidly, and we believe, based on the information that we have, that it's quite popular among these kinds of users that you're asking about, the younger generation. It is very important for Facebook to build products that are useful to those users, and to build products that they feel comfortable...they can have a good experience with. Definitely high on the list of priorities for us.

The under-13, tween crowd, including one CNET editor's daughter, technically isn't allowed to use the application, as dictated by the terms of service and a federal restriction (though the law is changing this July in ways that will make it easier for kids to join). Yet kids found Instagram anyway, largely because their parents wouldn't let them join Facebook, argues Altimeter Group principal analyst Brian Solis. Teens 13 and up joined Instagram, he said, because Facebook became "too great" a social network, where they're now connected to their grandparents.

Isn't it ironic, as Alanis Morissete would say, that Facebook, the onetime underground drug of choice for college kids, is now so readily available and acceptable that we all use it in broad daylight, and worse, at work? Sure, a 12-year-old skateboarder can derive some value from Facebook, but in the whitewashed kind of way that the rest of us use LinkedIn.

"We take pictures of food and landscapes," Solis said, "but teenagers use [Instagram] to share pictures of themselves...the more you share, the greater the reaction, and the more you push outside comfort zones, the more people react."

A teen's Instagram account.

Tweens and teens are addicted to the idea of eliciting more reactions in the form of likes, followers, and comments, he said. They employ like-for-like photo tactics, use a myriad of hashtags to get their pictures in front of more users, and promote their desire for additional followers in their profiles.

Ascertaining the extent of Instagram's popularity with teens is particularly tricky -- until you talk to them. And some data on the phenomena does exist. Nielsen, one of the few companies to measure teens' online behavior, can track only Web usage for this youngest demographic. The analytics firm told  that Instagram was the top photography Web site among U.S. teens ages 12 to 17, with 1.3 million teens visiting the site during December 2012. By the analytics firm's count, roughly one in 10 online teens in the U.S. visited Instagram in a browser during the month.

Anecdotally, the evidence overwhelmingly points to Instagram as the preferred social network of tweens and teens. A personal relationship provided me with a direct lens to view how two teenage boys used the application in their everyday lives. I also chatted with other kids, some the children of friends, and others I found through friends of friends.

Beth Blecherman's 14-year-old son, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, downloaded Instagram when he was 13 because all his friends were using it as their social network. Marisa, a 16-year-old girl who attends Cathedral City High School in Southern California, has been using Instagram for more than a year. She said that a majority of her high school friends are using the application. And a San Diego friend's 12-year-old son is so hooked on the application that he was in tears when his account was temporarily suspended earlier this year.

"Teens recognized Instagram as a social network before anyone else," Solis said. "Everyone else treated it as a camera app."

At the same time, Instagram could disappear from teen consciousness just as easily at it arrived. Remember: Instagram was only 17 months old when Zuckerberg bought it in the weeks prior to Facebook's IPO last May. Parents are starting to understand that their kids haven't developed a fascination with the application to share artistic photos of landscapes and architecture. All of the teens I spoke with have watchful parents who keep an observant eye on their Instagram accounts.

Teens searching for a cyberhangout to call their own
Adam McLane, a former youth pastor who hosts educational social-media seminars for parents of teens in San Diego, told me that his sessions are dominated by talk of Instagram, with frenzied parents fearful that their innocent young ones are participating in unsavory activities such as bullying or posting inappropriate photos.

This Snapchat message will self-destruct in seven seconds.

The parent factor alone could send kids fleeing to other applications such as Snapchat, Pheed, and Tumblr, all of which appear to have strong teen followings. Investors are betting on Snapchat in particular, which sends more than 60 million short-lived messages daily, because they don't want to miss out on the next Facebook.

"Teens are looking for a place they can call their own," said Danah Boyd, a senior researcher who studies, for Microsoft, how young people use social media. "Rather than all flocking en masse to a different site, they're fragmenting across apps and engaging with their friends using a wide array of different tools.... A new one pops up each week. What's exciting to me is that I'm seeing teenagers experiment."

This experimental nature puts Facebook in the tricky position of reacting to the whims of transitory teens. Take Facebook's impromptu release of Poke, a mobile phone application, modeled after Snapchat, for sending messages that self-destruct moments later. The company's most reactionary move, however, was its surprise purchase of Instagram, an impulse buy that ultimately cost about $715 million.

Now that Instagram has more than 100 million active users, Facebook's impulsive pickup looks like a smart one. But the dangerous reality is that Facebook is bleeding attention to an application with no advertising model, and the social network doesn't even understand how Instagram ties in with its own applications.

Facebook doesn't know what teens want. Ebersman said as much, albeit in less direct terms:

"Facebook is a very young company in terms of the age of our employees, and I am hopeful that continues to be an asset for us in terms of having our finger on the pulse of what matters to that particular constituency of users and how we can provide products to satisfy them."

Put that way, Facebook's saving grace might be that its employees are also tiring of Facebook.

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Intel's best shot at tablets hasn't arrived yet

With its Bay Trail processor, Intel may give ARM chip rivals something to worry about. But Bay Trail won't arrive in products until late this year at the earliest.

The HP Envy x2 is an attractive "detachable" that doubles as a standalone tablet. The problem is the Intel silicon inside.

Intel won't have its best shot at mobile salvation until late this year. Let's hope that's not too late.

As of today, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Dell, Samsung, and Acer, among others, are all shipping high-profile Windows 8 tablets and hybrids with Intel's "Clover Trail" Atom processor.

And all are billed as running "all your favorite Windows applications."

The problem is that Atom still isn't up to the task, as CNET Reviews and many other reviewers have pointed out.

In short, it's Netbook deja vu all over again. Atom-based Netbooks were never good at Windows 7 multitasking but very good at constantly reminding you that the silicon was slow. (I know; I had one of the "faster" dual-core HP Netbooks.)

Ditto for Windows 8 desktop mode.

So, will Intel be able to get beyond the Netbook? Bay Trail, Intel's first mobile chip to tap its 3D transistor tech, just might get the company there.

In other words, this is a very different creature from the Atom chip that's been around since 2008.Bay Trail is a faster out-of-order design, just like Intel's mainstream Core processors, and uses a fast Intel graphics chip, also like its mainstream cousins.

And Bay Trail will integrate 4 processing cores, a first for an Intel chip that's designed for tablets.

Maybe most importantly, it will (according to leaked slides) be just as battery friendly as the current Atom.

So, it has a lot going for it on paper. One thing that can't be divined, however, is whether Bay Trail will finally put the Netbook behind us.

Or whether Android tablets with Bay Trail will prove that Intel's x86 architecture is inherently faster than the newest ARM chips from Nvidia and Qualcomm.

Whatever happens, Bay Trail looks like Intel's best chance for mobile salvation, and it can't arrive too soon.

Is a Lenovo Android tablet in the offing packing an Intel Bay Trail processor?

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6 things I want to do with NFC (Smartphones Unlocked)

6 things I want to do with NFC (Smartphones Unlocked)

Uses for NFC are endless, but we have a long way to go until the protocol goes mainstream. Here's my personal wish list.

S Beam on the Samsung Galaxy S3 makes terrific use of NFC.

Tapping your phone on a console to pay for fries and a Coke is cool. Yet until the stars align, it's not how you'll be using NFC, the near field communications standard that gets devices talking to one another quickly and in a very short range.

Instead of using NFC to replace your credit card, it will increasingly become your passcode, your key. Best of all, it can be used to program one tag with a certain set of instructions that can launch specific actions when read by another NFC-enabled device.

In other words, just one tap of an NFC smartphone on the right tag can launch an app, a map, and share photos and documents.

NFC has been sitting around in phones for years, waiting for people to figure out how to use its charms. This past CES and MWC, device-makers have begun showing more smartphones, laptops, cameras, and appliances built with an embedded NFC chip.

The problem is, some of these NFC-enabled devices just don't work. There are software and hardware hurdles to overcome, but for the first time since NFC landed on an unsuspecting phone, there's the real possibility for NFC pairing to meld into a way of life.

Here are the ways I'd want use the protocol. Some already exist in nascent or concept-only forms. Others are logical next steps that will take root if and when NFC use becomes much more widespread. And finally, there's the category that's probably flawed, but that's why they call it wish list.

1. Transfer photos, video, and music from any device

I take a lot of photos and screenshots on the different phones that I review. What I would love to do is initiate photo, video, and music transfers with a single tap on the laptop body or through a USB dongle.

One tap is all it would take to kick off camera and laptop sharing.While we're at it, let's throw NFC cameras into the mix. I love the idea of an Internet-connected camera, but I don't always want to upload a picture or e-mail it right away, especially if I'm using the photo as part of a larger project.

Yes, Bluetooth 4.0 supports contact pairing, so that could be another option. Yet NFC is often used to very quickly initiate more complicated protocols to make Bluetooth sharing possible.

That's how Android Beam and Samsung's tweaked version, S Beam, are able to share multimedia from phone to phone.

NFC laptops already exist in the HP Envy 14 Spectre and Sony Vaio Tap. The problem is that they don't work very well. CNET editor Dan Ackerman was able to share a URL on the Spectre, but Rich Brown couldn't get beyond the pairing.

On the camera side of things, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS30 and DMC-TS5 will ship later in March with NFC enabled, though CNET hasn't had an opportunity yet to try it out (oh, but we will.)

In addition to quickly transferring photos, NFC with cameras can help you share media directly with someone else's device (like another camera, or maybe TV.) Pair it with a phone and you can also use it as a remote control for the camera shutter button, which is great for self-portraits and group shots.

NFC is also starting to creep up in other appliances, too, like washing machines and other home appliances.

2. Control your car

There are already some cool, extremely useful proofs of concept out there, including a QNX-running, NFC-enabled Porsche Carrera at CES.

Drop the NFC smartphone on the central console or in a cup holder and a car can not only start charging your phone, it can also rapidly save your contacts to the address book and automatically set up a Bluetooth profile for pairing and playing your music through its speakers.

I'd love to push out map coordinates to your GPS system with the help of NFC.

NFC invades Mobile World Congress (pictures)

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The guys in  Car Tech division thought up a few other great uses when awarding NFC for most promising future technology.

Keyless car entry through a smart fob is terrifically convenient, but having a redundancy through your phone is a good backup if you need to get into your own car. Tapping the handle could launch a verification screen where you enter a code and start about the business of getting back into the driver's seat.

Similarly, if you live in a city like San Francisco where car-sharing is popular, you (or a car-sharing fleet) can use NFC to hasten unlocking the door for strangers.

3. Replace your ATM card, sometimes

Instead of inserting your bank card into the ATM, what if the tap of your phone (which you probably have in your phone anyway) launches your profile on the ATM screen. You'll still have to verify with your pin in order to see the menu, but the initial NFC handshake would pull up your saved details from the corresponding app on your phone.

I'm not suggesting that ATMs nix card slots altogether, but there's nothing wrong with having two ways to get started with your deposits and withdrawals.

4. Help you shop

There's already some talk of tapping a phone to an NFC tag at malls and supermarkets. I'm also envisioning that tapping strategically-located tags will surface a map of the mall, or list of stores.

In a supermarket, sporting goods store, or DIY home improvement store, NFC could pop up a mobile site that helps you locate items by aisle, track down a salesperson, and surface coupons or deals.

NFC is ideal for this ephemeral type of transaction. Why take the time to download an app with similar features for a store you visit once or twice a year?

MasterCard wants commuters to scan for fare packages with their phones, then bump an NFC sensor before boarding to dock the amount of the ride.

5. Check you in

Your phone knows your name, your phone number (obviously), and probably where you live. That data is all stored within the address book.

It'd be wonderful to use those details to check yourself into appointments at hospitals, sporting events, concerts, the DMV, and airport kiosks.

Again, I'm not suggesting we dissolve the old-fashioned way, but a quick tap could get the ball rolling with our credentials while we take the next step to verification.

6. Stay on the side of convenience

One of the biggest items on my wish list is for consumer electronics-makers who implement NFC to remember the customer and make their requirements as few as possible.

NFC itself is a standard, yes, but will you only be able to take advantage of the tapping shortcut on your Samsung TV if you have a Samsung phone, or on an LG washing machine in your LG phone?

Will you have to download a specific app and open it every time you want to use NFC with something (thereby making it more of a hassle than a shortcut,) or will smart software authors also launch the app you need and get you started in the right place?

What about NFC tags?

NFC tags or stickers that you can buy already exist and they're great for triggering some kind of response on your phone, like turning on WiFi and Bluetooth when you tag on in your home, or turning on the alarm and shutting off sound when you go to bed.

How to program your own NFC chips

However, I'm not talking about ugly stickers that get bent or lost, or that bear a company logo, like Samsung's TecTiles. What we're talking about here are smoothly integrated and embedded NFC transceivers that become a part of the way we shop, work, drive, and live.

With all the devices that are starting to receive NFC, and all the companies interested in turning a profit from this growing technology, I'm confident we'll see more and more practical and clever implementations soon. There will be kinks to work out, as there is with any new ecosystem, but we're on our way.

What do you want to do with NFC? Share with me in the comments below.

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Apple now blocks older versions of Adobe's Flash player in Safari

A new security update from Apple blocks outdated versions of Adobe's Flash plug-in, forcing users to nab the newest version.

Apple has tightened up security in its Safari Web browser following recent patches to Adobe's Flash technology.

As part of an update that went out yesterday, OS X will now block older and thus vulnerable versions of Flash, forcing users to update to the latest version if they wish to view Flash-based content. In order to block older versions of the software, Apple is using its Xprotect malware scanner, which is built into Mac OS X and can spot and quarantine known malware.

The move comes roughly a month after Apple began blocking older versions of Oracle-owned Java on OS X over security concerns. That issue proved to be a bit more complex, with Apple last week saying that it too was targeted as part of an organized hacking attempt that capitalized on Java vulnerabilities, but did not target the company's customers.

Earlier this week Adobe pushed out a software update that patched three vulnerabilities in Flash, two of which it said were designed to target Mozilla's Firefox browser.

The new warning that users see if they're running an older version of Flash.

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