Skype has made its debut as an Android app. There are no Verizon-related limitations anymore. The app can sync your Skype contact data to your existing contacts, and make Skype Out calls using your Skype credit.
The disclaimer at the tail end of the Android download site states that Skype calls are Wi-Fi only in the U.S.
Skype is also using quite a few processing cycles to do its job, so much so that it introduced crackling on a call carried out with the EVO.
You will need to have Android 2.1 installed to run this thing.
The world is a beautiful place in more ways than one.With the number of people living on earth growing exponential, there’s no room for cities to expand on the ground, especially in the big overcrowded areas, and that’s why architects are planning many ways of expanding through the air.
No, we’re not talking about flying cities, just about skyscrapers which are architectural and engineering marvels that rise hundreds of meters into the air, overlooking all others.
Here is a list of the Top 10 Tallest Buildings of the modern world.
10. Jin Mao Tower, China
The landmark supertall skyscarper is situated in Pudong, Shanghai, China. The tower features offices, restaurants and observation decks. At the time of completion it was 5th tallest building in the world by roof and 7 th tallest by pinnacle height. Jin Mao Tower is a part of Pudong skyline and is right next to Shanghai World Financial Center.
Height: 421 meters or 1,380 ft
Roof height: 370.0 meters or 1,214 ft
Floors: 88
Floor area: 278,707 m sq
Completion: 1998
Designed by: Skdimore, Owings and Merrill.
9. Trump International Tower & Hotel, United States
Trump International Hotel and Tower also known as Trump Tower Chicago and simply Trump Tower is named after its owner Donald Trump who is a real estate developer. It is situated in downtown Chicago Illinois. This condo-hotel sits adjacent to Chicago river and has a four or five star rated restaurant & it includes,from the ground up, retail space ,spa, a parking garage, a hotel, and condominiums and is currently the tenth tallest building in the world.
Height: 423 meters or 1,388 ft
Roof Height: 356 meters or 1170 ft high
Floors: 96
Completion: 2009
Estimated cost: USD $ 847 million
Floor area: 2,600,000 sq ft
Designed by: Adrian Smith of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Bovis Lend Lease
8.Guangzhou International Finance Center, China
The building is situated in Zhujiang Avenue West in Tianhe District at Guangzhou, China. The construction started in 2005 and is expected to finish this year (2010). First 66 floors will be used for office purposes, floor 67 and 68 will be used for mechanical equipment whereas 69 to 99 will be used as hotel. 99th and 100th floor is observation deck and the lobby of hotel is at 70th floor.
Height: 440.2 meters tall or 1,444 ft
Roof height: 432 meter or 1417 ft
Floors: 103
Completion: Will be completed in 2010
Floor area: 285,000 m sq (3,068,000 sq ft)
Designed by: Wilkinson Eyre
Topped-out: 2008
7. Willis Tower, United States
The building is situated in Chicago, Illinois. At its time of construction it was the tallest building in the world (in 1974) surpassing World Trade Center in New York. Former name of the building was Sears Towers which in 2009 was changed to Willis Tower. This building is currently the tallest building in America and 5th tallest free standing structure in the world.
In 2006 seven men were arrested by the FBI. Their plan was to destroy this building. They were sentenced to 13 1/2 years in prison.
Height: 527 meters or 1,30 ft
Roof height: 442 meters or 1,451 ft
Floors: 108
Elevators: 104 elevators with 16 double decker elevators
Floor area: 4.56 million sq ft
Completion: 1974
Designed: Bruce Graham
6. Nanjing Greenland Financial Center, China
The building is situated in Nanjing,China. The building has offices in the lower floor and restaurant and observationdecks near the top. The observation deck is on the 72th floor of the tower. This building is second tallest building in china and was 5th tallest in the world at the time of completion.
Height: 450 meters or 1,480
Roof height: 339 meters or 1,112 ft
Floors: 89
completion: 2010
Designed by: Adrian Smith and Marshall Strabala
5. Petronas Towers, Malaysia
Patronas Towers are located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Building is also known as Twin Towers and are the tallest twin towers in the world. Patronas Towers were also the tallest towers from 1998 to 2004. The towers also feature a double story bridge which the highest 2 story bridge in the world. It is not attached to the mainframe but instead is slide in and out in order to protect it from being destroy in high winds.
Height: 451 meters or 1,482 ft
Roof height: 375 meters or 1230 ft
Floors: 88
Completion: 1998
Elevators: 78
Estimated cost: USD $ 1.6 billion
Designed by: Cesar Pelli
4.International Commerce Center, Hong Kong
The building is located in West Kowloon, Hong Kong. The formal development name of the building is Union Square Phase 7 as it is a part of Union Square project on top of Kowloon station. After completion it is the tallest building in Hong Kong and building with 3rd tallest roof. It also features a restaurant Ritz-Carlton which happens to be the highest restaurant in the world and it occupies the top 15 floors of the building.
Height: 484 meters or 1587 ft
Floors: 118
Completion: 2010
Elevators: 30 elevators 14 shuttle lifts and 2 VIP lifts
Designed by: Wong & Ouyang (HK) Ltd, Belt Collins & Associates, Kohn Pedersrn Fox Associates
3. Shanghai World Financial Center, China
It is located in Pudon Shanghai,China. The building features hotels, offices, conference roomsand observation decks. The hotel Park Hyatt Shanghai was the highest hotel at the time of completion and contains 178 room and is on the 93rd floor. It was surpassed by Ritz-Carlton. At the time of completion it was second tallest building on the world with the highest occupied floor and tallest roof in the world. Its observation deck is 474 meters high which is the highest observation deck in the world.
Height: 494.4 m (1,622.0 ft)
Roof height: 487 m (1,599 ft)
Floors: 101
Completion: 2008
Elevators: 91
Floor area: 381,600 m sq (4,107,500 sq ft)
Estimated cost: USD $ 1.2 billion
Designed by: Kohn Pedersrn Fox Associsutes
2. Taipei 101, Taiwan
The building marks the identity of Taiwan. It is located in Xinji District,taipei,Taiwan. Due to the remarkable engineering it was ranked as Seven New Wonders of the World (by Newsweek magazine 2006) and seven Wonders of Engineering (by Discovery Channel). The design of the building reflects the evolution of technology and local culture and traditions. Its was the tallest building in the world from 2004 to 2010. It also received Emprois Skyscraper Award. It is also design to withstand typhoons and earthquakes. It is a mixed used tower offering offices, fitness centers, restaurants.
Height: 509.2 m (1,670.6 ft)
Roof height: 449.2 m (1,473.8 ft)
Floors: 101
Completion: 2004
Elevators: 61
Floor area: 412,500 m sq (4,440,100 sq ft)
Estimated cost: USD $ 1.8 billion
Designed by: C.Y. Lee & partners
1.Burj Khalifa, UAE
The tallest man made structure sit in the heart of UAE, Dubai. Its former name was Burj Dubai but was changed when the president of Abu Dhabi (Khalifa Bin Zayed) loaned Dubai $ 10 billion since Dubai has been drastically effected by the recession. The name was changed in his honor. Getting and office would set you back a staggering $ 43000 per sq m.
Height: 828 m (2,717 ft)
Floors: 160
Completion: 2010
Floor area: 464,511 m sq
Estimated cost: USD $ 1.5 billion
Designed by: Adrian Smith
Special Mention
This building is a little out of the time range, as it is scheduled to be completed way after 2010, but it worths being mentioned, being by far the tallest structure, with an estimated height of 1001 m(3,284 ft).
Burj Mubarak al-Kabir, part of the Madinat al Hareer (City of Silk), massive complex that is going to be built in Kuwait over the next 25 years, containing the tower, a new airport, a natural reservation and many business and entertainment centers.
A graphic sketch of the final project is shown in this picture, and I can’t wait to see what are the enginners going to achieve in their tasks of building a tower higher than 1 km.
The futureis not written yet and who knows whether robots are dangerous or not. What is for sure is that humans, being the curious beings, will developnewadvanced generations ofrobots.
It happens so thatpeople and robotsgo together in this lifeside by side, in some spheres of life they are even interchangeable and who knows into what this opposition“Human and Robots”will translate.Robots and humansthat live and prospertogether…Orrobotswillrealize they don’t need that much…
For now it is up to out fantasy toexpresswhat we think will happen inhuman-robot relations in the future. This is acollection of 3d computer generated imagesof various creative3d artiststhat shows their vision.
The level of detail of these computer graphics shows that our technology will lead us to the point where these fantastic photographs will be the reality.
PERSONAL ROBOT 04, AUTHOR: FRANZ STEINER (SOFTWARE: 3DS MAX)
Who will win in this game of chess? When there is the opposition of the mechanical creature and the human intellect it is not easy to predict the outcome of the game. You can make books, but you will never be sure about the results, they are unpredictable.
PERSONAL ROBOT 08, AUTHOR: FRANZ STEINER (SOFTWARE: 3DS MAX)
In the process of the humming work robots can be of a great use for people. With them less time would be spend for the most complicated tasks and the crunch times would take place not so often. The only question that is left – to find such a robot.
PERSONAL ROBOT 02, AUTHOR: FRANZ STEINER
I’m not sure that it is more pleasant to work in the company of robots, but it definitely has certain advantages. One of the main is the high efficiency of the process of work, furthermore not a lot of time is spent for the idle talks, spreading silly rumors and gossiping.
PERSONAL ROBOT 06, AUTHOR: FRANZ STEINER (SOFTWARE: 3DS MAX)
This robot looks like a housekeeper who takes care of everything around. In its duties are household activities and it copes with all the everyday duties without any difficulties in a short time and without procrastinations.
MECHA, AUTHOR: TINYPANTS
This robot looks like the one that was made either in correspondence to the model of a human being or using the human’s corpus as the basis. A little bit creepy and at the same time intriguing. Anyway, the excellent model and the great work!
I’M ROBOT, AUTHOR: WIDYANTARA
Some time ago, when I was a human being I was dreaming about the perennial youth, the thoughts that were so peculiar for every woman. My dreams turned into life immediately after my death and I have obtained the desired eternity: now I’m a robot.
PERSONAL ROBOT 07, AUTHOR: FRANZ STEINER (SOFTWARE: 3DS MAX)
When you touch gently the lips of your beloved your heart begins to beat speedily, the mind is hazed with pleasant feelings and you fly away. These minutes can fly not so that you’d notice, but they are so sweet and inimitable.
PERSONAL ROBOT 05, AUTHOR: FRANZ STEINER (SOFTWARE: 3DS MAX)
Love is a curious thing, one never knows when it happens so that you will be overtaken with this feeling and who will be the matter of your sleepless nights. It can be a bonny girl from the next door, a handsome boy from the night-club or even a caber creature.
Sometimes even the best can fail and at the most inappropriate of times, leaving you stunned and confounded; Zidane’s legendary headbutt in the 2006 world cup surprised even the casual fan. Technology isn’t invincible either; it can leave Bill Gates speechless in face of a blue screen of death in Windows 98 in front of hundreds. Here we are with Top 10 worst technological failures that left lawsuits to near-mayhem in their wake.
10. Hubble Space Telescope
A 2.5 Billion dollar device, which finally goes to space, sends back some pictures and which shockingly enough, are all blurry. The problem was with the telescope’s calibration instruments, as later it was found out. The problem was fixed using corrective lenses three years later.
9. Dell laptop explosions
At a conference in Japan, Dell’s laptop suddenly burst into flames. There were multiple explosions and the fireworks continued for a good 5 minutes or so. It turned out that batteries were the ones that exploded and eventually Dell announced recall of 22 thousand of their notebook batteries. Fortunately, there were no casualties.
Video:
8. Nokia N-gage
Being a gaming platform and a cell phone at the same time was good, but its weird when-calling pose was not so cool. Secondly, there were just a handful of decent games for it and it was a total disaster. You can still buy one of these though.
7. Asimo – The Humanoid Robot’s Embarrassing Fail
This robot by Honda failed embarrassingly in front of a packed auditorium in 2006. As a demo, Asimo moved towards the stairs, took few steps up and then suddenly freezes as if it would turn around and start singing. But, it didn’t sing, it teetered backwards and fell over horribly. The Honda presenters quickly turned off the lights and took the robot away.
Video:
6. Cloud Computing Disaster
In October of 2009, Microsoft servers holding data for thousands of T-Mobile SideKick users crashed without a warning. And, there was no back-up either. Many Law-suits were filed over data loss, with users alleging that company failed to protect the data entrusted to them. While Microsoft eventually recovered most of the lost data, this collapse severely hurt the future of cloud computing.
5. Pepsi’s Computer Glitch
Pepsi ran it’s “Number fever” promotion back in 1992 in Philippines, a number was announced at the end of each day and whomever’s number matched this would be awarded 1 million Philippine currency. Unfortunately, the number 349 produced thousands of winners and all of them reached Pepsi’s bottling plant to collect their prize money. Pepsi could never pay such money to thousands, so the situation turned ugly; the Pepsi plant was bombed and more than 30 trucks were burned down. The famous “Pepsi 349” case is still hanging in the balance. One woman and child were killed when a grenade was tossed at a Pepsi truck during these horrible riots.
4. Mars Climate Observer Mishap
The Mars Climate Observer was sent to Mars to study its weather, climate, water and carbon dioxide contents. The orbiter was supposed to enter the Martian atmosphere at an altitude of 140.5 – 150 km above Mars. However, some navigation error caused it enter too low into the Martian atmosphere, specifically 57 km above the Martian surface, where it was destroyed due to heavier than expected stresses. The cause? Contractors of the craft’s thruster’s used Imperial units to express its performance, when NASA specified Metric units.
Get it why they stress on using the correct units in school?:P
3. Ariane 5 explosion
In 1996, Europe’s 8 Billion dollar unmanned satellite-launching rocket self-destructed after 36.7 seconds of take-off. After the launch, the guidance system’s computer tried to convert a number from 64-bit to 16-bit, but failed because the number was too big, the system was shut down in response to this error and it passed on the control to a similar unit, which unfortunately had already been shut down milliseconds before, thus the system had nothing else to do, other than self-destruct.
Video:
2. Apollo 13 Debacle
The malfunction of Apollo 13’s mission service module caused an explosion during a routine tank stirring, which forced the astronauts to use the lunar module for oxygen, as it had quickly ran out in the service module. The mission to land on moon was immediately aborted and after many hardships and bravery the crew safely returned to earth. The mission was termed as a “successful failure”.
Video:
1. Glitch of the Millennium – 1983’s near WW3
Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov prevented a nuclear holocaust in 1983 when he indentified an early-warning satellite system’s alarm as fake or mistaken. When the alarms went off in Moscow, the Russian satellites indicated that US had fired 5 ballistic missiles at Russia. But Petrov’s gut feeling rejected this because he thought that if US would ever attack, it wouldn’t be 5 missiles, it would have been dozens! Believe it or not, if he hadn’t acted right, the World we live in might not have been the same as it is now.
In fact, the Russian satellite system had picked up sun’s reflections off the cloud tops as missile launches.
Bonus: Steve Jobs and iPhone Wireless failure
Well, even the iPhone is prone to failures. Have a look.
