How To Convert Mobile Into A Universal Remote

Your smartphone can do more than you think. With some additional hardware or apps, it can remotely start your car, control various appliances in your home, control A/V equipment like TVs & home theatre systems and even your PC.

Read on to find about the various free apps and systems available today that allow your smartphone to work as a universal remote control.

Remotely control your home

Crestron is one of the leading brands for home automation. Although each installation usually comes with its own universal remote control, Crestron also provides apps for iOS and Android devices.
These apps connect to the Crestron system using Wi-Fi (for seamless access anywhere ) and allow you to remotely control any home appliances or gizmos that are wired into the system. Plus, you need not be at home to control your air conditioning or lighting for instance - you could do it from anywhere you have a data connection . The Android and iPhone/iPod Touch apps are free, but the iPad app costs a hefty $99.

Remotely start your car

Viper SmartStart for your Car enables you to lock, unlock or start your car using an iOS, Android or BlackBerry smartphone. For this to work, you need a Viper security system and smartphone module installed in your car.
The app also remembers where your car was parked and shows directions on your phone using augmented reality. Currently , SmartStart only works with US-based GSM providers, though the company is working on making the app work anywhere. For more information check out www.viper.com

Remote apps for PC/ Mac

Mobile operating systems offer a number of applications to control various aspects of your PC/MAC. You can choose to control just the mouse pointer and input text or you could control various applications such as the audio player, video player, presentations and so on.
Each app requires a small server application installed on your PC/MAC, which is also available for free.

Android

Gmote is a free application that lets you control your PC, MAC or Linux music and video player over Wi-Fi . It shows various controls on screen with the album art in the background and can even be used to browse and select files for playback.
Another free (ad-supported ) app called WIN-Remote offers connections to your Windows PC over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. It provides control over almost everything - browser, task manager, video/audio players, image viewers and even presentations.
If you want to control specific media players, the Android Market and Apple App Store have free apps for common ones like VLC, Windows Media Player, Media Player classic, XBMC, iTunes & Foobar.

iPhone/iPod Touch

One of the best free remote apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch is Logitech Touch Mouse. It connects to your machine over Wi-Fi and converts the 3.5-inch display into an input device. You get full control over the mouse pointer with multi-touch gestures thrown in too.
An onscreen keyboard can be used to enter text input when required. Apple's own free app called 'Remote' is perfect when you just want to control iTunes.
Similarly, there are apps like i-Clickr to control presentations , VLC remote for VLC player, PowerDVD remote and a Remote X app that lets you control a variety of media players with a single interface.

BlackBerry

Vectir's Bluetooth/Wi-Fi Remote allows you to launch and control VLC Media Player, iTunes, Windows Media Player and even PowerPoint presentations . It even has a remote desktop feature to view and control the desktop from your BlackBerry or Android device. Like Logitech's offering, mouse and keyboard input can be done using your phone.
The app can be used for free for the first 30 days, after which you will need to purchase a license for the desktop server app (a one-time purchase of $10) from www.vectir.com. Unlike the others, Vectir also supports Java ph

Hotel Romp is Match Of The Day

Into touch ... couple

Footie fans cheer as couple score

A ROMPING couple were seen by thousands of footie fans as they scored in their hotel room overlooking the stadium.

The crowd at the top-flight clash cheered as they watched the off-pitch performance through the window.

The woman was later identified as glamour model Alicia Tenderness, 26. She said: "We thought it was tinted glass and that we could see outside, but not vice-versa.

"When we checked out the next morning the lady on the front desk was very cold, but we did not understand why.

"We only realised on Monday when we read it in the newspaper."

Footie officials blasted the couple. Philippe Bormans of Belgian team Sint-Truiden – who were playing at home to rivals Lokeren – said: "There are children in the crowd. We do not want this repeated."

Hotel boss Luc Withofs vowed to get stewards to monitor the windows.

But Alicia hit back: "He should put tinted glass in the rooms."

Alicia Tenderness

Madras HC Stays Execution Of Rajiv Killers

Chennai, Aug 30 : In a major relief for three convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, the Madras High Court on Tuesday stayed their hanging which was scheduled on September 9. Hearing their mercy petition the High Court gave interim relief for eight weeks to Murugan alias Sriharan, Santhan and Perarivalan alias Arivu.

The Centre will file a counter affidavit in the case within eight weeks.

Meanwhile, the Tamil Nadu Assembly also adopted a resolution moved by the J Jayalalithaa government urging the President to consider the clemency petition and commute their death sentence to life sentence.

The three convicts filed a petition on the grounds that the President of India took 11 years to reject their mercy pleas. Senior Counsel Ram Jethmalani appeared for the convicts in a case that has political overtones especially in Tamil Nadu.

K Perarivalan alias Arivu is the only Indian amongst the three men who are facing the death sentence in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case on September 9.

The families of the death row convicts hope political and legal intervention could stop the hanging.

Irom Sharmila Must Reach Out To People: GK Pillai

Shillong, Aug 30 : Irom Sharmila, fasting for the last 11 years for the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), must "reach out to people across the country" like anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare to make her cause known, says former union home secretary G.K. Pillai.

AFSPA enables security forces to shoot at sight and arrest anybody without a warrant if an area is declared disturbed. Sharmila is currently in an isolated room of Manipur's Jawarharlal Nehru Hospital.

"It is a question of how you reach out to people. AFSPA is applicable only in Jammu and Kashmir and in the northeastern states. Corruption is pricking people everywhere and that's why Anna Hazare had a high moral ground," Pillai told IANS Monday.

"She (Sharmila) has to reach out to the people across the country. She has to say why she is on fast," said Pillai.

"AFSPA should be repealed and the government should have a humane law," Pillai added.

Dubbed the 'Iron Lady of Manipur', Sharmila began her fast Nov 2, 2000, after witnessing the killing of 10 people by the army at a bus stop near her home. Now around 40, Sharmila was arrested shortly after beginning her protest -- on charges of attempted suicide. She was sent to a prison hospital in Imphal where began a daily routine of being force-fed via a nasal drip.

Sharmila is frequently set free by local courts but once outside, she resumes her hunger strike and is rearrested.

AFSPA was passed in 1990 to grant special powers and immunity from prosecution to security forces to deal with raging insurgencies in northeastern states and in Jammu and Kashmir.

The act is a target for local human rights groups and international campaigners such as Amnesty International, which say the law has been an excuse for extrajudicial killings.

Amnesty has campaigned vociferously against the legislation, which it sees as a stain on India's democratic credentials and a violation of international human rights laws.

Anna To Meet Irom Sharmila Soon

Anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare, social activist

New Delhi, Aug 30 : Social activist Anna Hazare will soon visit Manipur to meet civil rights activist Irom Sharmila, RTI activist and Team Anna member Akhil Gogoi said in Guwahati after his return from Delhi.

Gogoi also said that Anna had extended his moral support to the Iron Lady of Manipur, who has been on hunger strike for over 10 years now, demanding the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act in the state.

After being released from hospital, Anna would return back to his village in Maharashtra and post this he would be visiting Assam and the North East to commence the next round of democratic movement.

On the first day of his visit to Northeast, Hazare will join an anti-dam protest in Assam and would visit Manipur the next day, Gogoi said.

Manipur Sadar Hills Meeting Begin

Decision on agitation only after consultations are over: Committee

A rally at Noney in Manipur on Friday, protesting against the demand for creation of the Sadar Hills district. Picture by UB Photos

Imphal, Aug 30 : The Sadar Hills District Demand Committee has started seeking the opinion of the public on the next course of agitation by holding public meetings from today.

The first meeting was organised at Gangpiphai of Sadar Hills along the Imphal-Senapati highway. A large number people residing in and around the area attended the meeting.

Leaders of the demand committee and an MLA from Sadar Hills, Haoklholet Kipgen, attended the meeting.

A source in the demand committee said more meetings would be held before the committee took a final decision.

“A final decision would be taken on whether the agitation should continue further or be suspended temporarily only after the meetings are over. No decision was taken today,” the source said.

Another public meeting will be held at Kangpokpi, the headquarters of Sadar Hills, tomorrow. The committee also plans to hold meetings at Saikhul and Keithelmanbi to seek peoples’ opinion.

The decision to seek public opinion on the agitation came after the Okram Ibobi Singh government constituted an official-level committee to examine the boundary and police jurisdiction of the proposed boundary.

The official committee was asked to submit its report within three months. President Pratibha Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also assured a delegation which met them in New Delhi that the matter would be looked into.

Sources said Ibobi Singh constituted the committee after the Centre “advised” him to resolve the Sadar Hills issue.

The Sadar Hills District Demand Committee launched its indefinite agitation on the midnight of July 31 to put pressure on Ibobi Singh government to create the district.

As a result of the strike, no vehicles, including trucks carrying essential items, were allowed along the Imphal-Dimapur and Imphal-Jiribam roads in Sadar Hills areas.

The situation worsened as the United Naga Council also imposed a blockade along these two highways from August 21 demanding that land belonging to Nagas should not be divided while creating Sadar Hills district.

As people in other areas of Manipur are reeling under the impact of the blockade, people in Sadar Hills are suffering too as all activities have come to a standstill, sources said.

Shops and business establishments have remained closed in the Sadar Hills areas since August 1.

Khasi Villagers Display No Sex Differences in Spatial Ability

Men’s spatial superiority takes cultural cues

Disputed study puts social forces at root of sex disparity

By Bruce Bower

In a new study, Khasi villagers in Northeast India displayed no sex differences in spatial ability. Researchers suspect that Khasi culture, which is organized around females, largely erased men's spatial superiority observed in many other societies.

Culture may hold a spatial place in thought. Social forces profoundly influence people’s ability to think about three-dimensional objects, a new study suggests.

In tests of spatial ability, men traditionally outperform women. But men’s spatial superiority disappears among Northeast India’s Khasi villagers, say economist Moshe Hoffman of the University of California, San Diego and his colleagues. In Khasi society, youngest daughters inherit property, men forward earnings to wives or sisters, and females get as much schooling as males.

Among neighboring Karbi villagers, men display spatial-thinking advantages over women, similar to those in many Western societies, Hoffman’s team reports in an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In Karbi society, males inherit and own land and receive more education than females.

“These results show that nurture plays an important role in the gender gap in spatial abilities,” Hoffman says.

But some researchers who study sex differences in thinking view the study skeptically.

PIECES OF MIND Villagers who assembled a four-piece horse puzzle have provided clues to cultural forces at the root of men's and women's spatial skills.M. Hoffman et al/PNAS 2011

It’s not clear that the study in fact measured spatial ability, remarks psychologist Richard Lippa of California State University, Fullerton. Hoffman and colleagues measured spatial ability as the time taken to solve a four-piece jigsaw puzzle. But they didn’t assess volunteers’ accuracy at mentally rotating 3D figures and performing other spatial tasks, Lippa notes.

The villagers’ puzzle-assembly time could reflect cautiousness, impulsiveness or a desire to please the researchers, not spatial ability, Lippa says.

Psychologist Diane Halpern of Claremont McKenna College in California agrees. “This new paper doesn’t tell us much about sex differences in spatial cognition.”

In Hoffman’s study, 1,279 Khasi and Karbi villagers received the equivalent of 25 percent of a day’s wage to solve a jigsaw puzzle of a horse. Standard spatial tests are too abstract for these villagers, but the horse puzzle requires mental rotation of picture fragments, Hoffman says.

Khasi men and women alike took an average of just over 30 seconds to put together the puzzle. Karbi men required an average of 42 seconds, versus 57 seconds for Karbi women.

Although better-educated villagers solved the puzzle faster, schooling leaves much of the group difference unexplained, the researchers say.

Findings from these Indian villagers miss the big picture of how sex differences in spatial thinking vary across nations, Lippa asserts. In a 2010 study, his group examined the scores of more than 200,000 people in 53 countries on tests of mental rotation and line-angle judgments.

Surprisingly, men’s spatial advantage was largest in rich countries with many educational and career opportunities for women. Spatial scores for both sexes declined to roughly equal levels in poor countries, in line with a previous study of poor families (SN: 11/19/05, p. 323).

Lippa’s study compared nations that differ in many respects, including culture, genetics and means of subsistence, Hoffman responds. The new study compares two societies identical on all dimensions except culture, he argues, allowing a conclusion that nurture affects sex differences in spatial ability.

Source: sciencenews.org

OIL Upbeat Over Mizoram Project

Exploratory drilling starts in 2012

Dibrugarh, Aug 29 : Oil India Limited (OIL) is all set to explore and produce oil and natural gas in Mizoram after it received the “clearance to operate” from the state recently.

“We have received tremendous support from the Mizoram government and the people in general. We are hoping to find some significant hydrocarbon reserves in the state, as it falls under the same geological structure as that of Myanmar and Bangladesh, where large hydrocarbon reserves have been found,” OIL spokesperson Tridiv Hazarika said.

He added that the oil major had received support from organisations like the Young Mizo Association during the three public hearings on environmental issues conducted by the Pollution Control Board.

Hazarika said OIL, with 85 per cent participating interest, and Shiv-Vani Oil and Gas Exploration Services, with 15 per cent, has signed a production-sharing contract with the government of India for the exploration and production of hydrocarbons in the exploration block MZ-ONN-2004/1 falling in the Lunglei, Aizawl, Serchhip and Mamit districts of Mizoram under NELP-VI.

The contract designates OIL as the operator of the block, the total area of which is 3,213 square km. The capital city, Aizawl, lies 5km north of the northern boundary of the block.

“Exploratory drilling has not been carried out at any place in the block so far. Acquisition, processing and interpretation of two-dimensional seismic survey, gravity magnetic survey, geochemical survey has been done for the block MZ-ONN-2004/1 while three-dimensional surveys are in progress,” Hazarika said.

The company’s expectations are quite high given the fact that official data released by the Centre states that the block has huge hydrocarbon reserves of around 170 million tonnes. At present, the company is producing around 4 million tonnes of crude per annum from its Assam operations.

OIL is planning to carry out exploratory drilling and testing at five promising locations within the block areas during phase I (within 2012) and at another location by 2015. This will be done in accordance with the minimum work programme outlined in the production-sharing contract, with an aim to ascertain the techno-economic viability of hydrocarbon production in the block area for an eight-year period (2007-2015).

Hazarika, however, said the drilling of wells in Mizoram would cost almost four times more in comparison with the drilling cost in Assam, basically because of the lack of proper roads and the tough geographical terrain of the state.

According to an estimate, the company is going to spend around Rs 500 crore to drill the first five wells in the state.

“The days of easy oil are over across the globe. One has to be prepared to take very strong measures to strike hydrocarbon reserves today,” Hazarika said.