Want to buy anything online ? using Taobao

Want to buy anything online ? using Taobao
Taobao

What is taobao ?
Taobao (simplified Chinese: 淘宝网; traditional Chinese: 淘寶網; pinyin: Táobǎo Wǎng; literally: "searching for treasure website") is a Chinese website for online shopping similar to eBay and Amazon^[3] that is operated in China by Alibaba Group.
Founded by Alibaba Group on May 10, 2003, Taobao Marketplace facilitates consumer-to-consumer (C2C) retail by providing a platform for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to open online stores that mainly cater to consumers in Chinese-speaking regions (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) and also abroad.
With around 760 million product listings as of March 2013, Taobao Marketplace is one of the world’s top 10 most visited websites according to Alexa. For the year ended March 31, 2013, the combined gross merchandise volume (GMV) of Taobao Marketplace and Tmall.com exceeded 1 trillion yuan.^[6]
Sellers are able to post goods for sale either through a fixed price or auction. Auctions make up a small percentage of transactions. The majority of the products are new merchandise sold at fixed prices. Buyers can assess seller backgrounds by information available on the site, including ratings, comments and complaints.

In taobao have many services and features , like

Tmall.com

Tmall.com offers a shopping experience for increasingly affluent Chinese consumers that offers them the opportunity to buy Western brands. According to the Alibaba Group web site, these brands include UNIQLO, L’Oréal, adidas, P&G, Unilever, Gap, Ray-Ban, Nike and Levi's). Again, according to the Alibaba Group site, Tmall.com and Taobao Marketplace set a record for highest single-day transaction volume during a special promotion on November 11, 2012, facilitating the sales of goods totaling RMB19.1 billion on the day. For the year ended March 31, 2013, the company claimed that combined gross merchandise volume (GMV) of the two platforms exceeded RMB1 trillion.

Mascot

Taobao’s mascot is an ant, which represents their corporate culture. Ma introduced Taobao to the outside world by stating, "We are the ant army." Ma once organized more than 2,000 employees at a gymnasium to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the founding ceremony. At the party, Taobao employees waved the Taobao mascot — the flag of "ants." At the end of the celebration that lasted for four hours, all the employees stood hand-in-hand, singing "If you do not experience wind and rain, you cannot see the rainbow. The ants that be organized together can beat the elephant."

Shop feedback

To thoroughly investigate a Taobao shop, a good way is to view its feedback by clicking the shop's rating icon. For Tmall.com shops, people click the stars to view their ratings. Taobao users usually spend time to read feedback and compare items of one shop with those of others.

Alipay

Launched in 2004, Alipay (simplified Chinese: 支付宝; traditional Chinese: 支付寶; pinyin: Zhīfùbǎo), an escrow-based online payment platform, is the preferred payment solution for transactions on Taobao Marketplace. It is the most widely used third-party online payment solution in China.^[16] To ensure safe transactions, Alipay uses an escrow system through which payment is only released to the seller once the buyer has received his or her goods in satisfactory condition.
According to the Alibaba Group web site, Alipay is partnered with multiple financial institutions as well as Visa and MasterCard to facilitate payments in China and abroad.

AliWangWang (TradeManager)

A distinctive feature of shopping on Taobao Marketplace is the ease of communication between buyer and seller prior to the purchase through its embedded proprietary instant chat program, named AliWangWang (Chinese: 阿里旺旺; pinyin: ĀlǐWàngWàng). It has become a habit among Chinese online shoppers to interact with the sellers through AliWangWang to inquire about products and to bargain prior to purchasing products.

Happy Taobao

In Dec. 2009, Taobao, together with Hunan TV, set up Happy Taobao, Inc for television shopping. Hunan TV launched an entertainment series called "Happy Taobao", while Taobao Marketplace created channels and independent websites.

Other services

Taobao Marketplace introduced various features and services to create a better user experience for online shoppers and retailers. For instance, in January 2010, it launched the Taobao app, created by independent developers through the Taobao Open Platform, to be downloaded by consumers in Taobao App Store.
In March 2010, it introduced the Taobao Data Cube platform, which gives small businesses access to its aggregate consumer transactions data for insight into industry trends.
In June 2010, it partnered with Wasu Media Internet Limited to launch Taohua, a digital entertainment products platform, and interactive digital television shopping, that are operated by a joint-venture formed by the two companies^.

Taobao agents

Taobao agent helps foreigners to buy products. It gathers online shoppers in China, attracted by millions of categories and Price Absolute Advantage. Shopping agent services benefit all foreign customers. Agents are fluent in many languages. Agents are particularly popular in Southeast Asia.

Chinese Singles Day

Chinese Singles Day (11/11) is China’s biggest e-commerce sales day of the year. It is larger than America’s Cyber Monday. In 2011 Taobao.com and Tmall.com took only 8 minutes to reach 100 millions RMB (equivalent to $15.8m) in transaction volume and after the day ended, transaction volume reached RMB 3.36 billion.

Taobao for Southeast Asia

In September, 2013, Taobao launched its Southeast Asian site. A translation feature is now available on Taobao.com for major languages in Southeast Asia.

Metrics

Taobao Marketplace had more than 5 million registered users as of June 2013 and hosted more than 80 million product listings. It facilitated approximately RMB 200 billion in gross merchandise volume in 2009. In September 2013, Taobao ranked 12th overall in Alexa's internet rankings. For the year ending March 31, 2013, the combined gross merchandise volume (GMV) of Taobao and Tmall.com combined exceeded RMB 1 trillion.

 Now link is here !
www.taobao.com

Jurassic Park is simply 'a dumb monster movie': Paleontologists slam Hollywood blockbuster for its glaring errors

It seems the scientists in Jurassic Park who messed around with dinosaur DNA still haven't learned their lesson.

In the latest film, Jurassic World, genetically-engineered dinosaurs make way for a terrifying genetically-engineered hybrid, named Indominus Rex.

Chaos ensues, with the trailer showing stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard battling to deal with the aftermath.

But while the plot has won over the public ahead of tomorrow's release, there's one group of people who are less than impressed; palaeontologists.

Scroll down for the trailer 

It seems the scientists in Jurassic Park who messed around with dinosaur DNA still haven't learned their lesson. In the latest film, Jurassic World, genetically-engineered dinosaurs make way for a terrifying genetically-engineered hybrid, named Indominus Rex (pictured)

They argue that while the film has helped renew interest in dinosaurs, the plot provides a bizarre notion of how creatures lived in the Jurassic era.

Among the most cited inaccuracies are how T-Rex can't see you if you stay perfectly still, and how Velociraptors can open doors. 

But the scientist behind the film, Jack Horner, argues that many of these criticisms are based on opinion rather than fact.  

'I would disagree with that, Raptors can open doors, they certainly have the hands and arms,' he told DailyMail.com.

'We have no idea how smart the dinosaurs were..It's just their opinion. And most animals can't identify a human being if they've never seen one, and if you stand still.'

However, James Kirkland, who has been involved in the discovery of 20 dinosaurs, takes particular issue with the film's version of raptors.

He claims Jurassic World portrays them almost as cute creatures compared with the monster fossils that he's found during digs.

'They could have made it look like they had this attacking dinosaur that was bigger than T. rex, that would intimidate the large animals these things would have normally preyed on,' he told CBS NEWS.

'They could have seriously made these guys as intimidating. It actually could have been something you actually looked at as being somewhat nice.'

It's not just the raptors. A major source of disappointment for palaeontologists is the film's depiction of dinosaurs as leathery monsters. 

Drinking too much cola could lower men's sperm count

Men who drink around a litre of cola every day could be harming their sperm, according to a new Danish study.
On average, these men's sperm counts were almost 30 per cent lower than in men who didn't drink cola.

The Danish study found soft drinks did appear to affect male reproductive healt

While most of the sperm counts would still be considered normal by the World Health Organization, men with fewer sperm generally have a higher risk of being infertile.

The link is unlikely to be due to caffeine, the researchers say, because coffee did not have the same effect, even though its caffeine content is higher. Instead, other ingredients in the beverage or an unhealthy lifestyle could be involved.
Kold Jensen, who led the new research, said only a few studies have looked at caffeine's impact on reproductive health in men. The participants have generally been a very select group, such as infertile men, and the results have been conflicting.

Because Danish youth has been upping their consumption of caffeine-containing soft drinks over the last decades, the researchers decided to study how this might affect their reproductive health.
More than 2,500 young men were included in their study. Those who didn't drink cola had better sperm quality - averaging 50 million sperm per millilitre semen - and tended to have a healthier lifestyle.
In contrast, the 93 men who drank more than one litre a day had only 35 million sperm per millilitre. However, they also ate more fast foods, and less fruit and vegetables.
When looking at caffeine from other sources, such as coffee and tea, the decrease in sperm quality was much less pronounced. 
It is still not clear if the cola or the unhealthy lifestyle, or both, is to blame and the scientists said further research was needed.

The study was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

5 Hidden Youtube Secrets

#1 Doge Meme

 Open YouTube and search for Doge Meme in search box. The search results page's fonts will be automatically converted to Comic Sans and will show text in various colors.

#2 Snake Game

 By pressing Down arrow key on your keyboard while a video is buffering, you can play the game snake

#3 Do the Harlem Shake

 Open YouTube and search for Do the Harlem Shake in search box and the search results page will do the Harlem Shake. The song Harlem Shake will be automatically played on search results page which can be muted or paused by the user and videos will shake based on the beats.

#4 Use The Force, Luke

Open YouTube and search for Use the force, Luke in search box. The search results page will show the videos using Star Wars effect. You'll notice a wavy effect on search results page and everything will fly on the screen.

#5 Beam Me Up, Scotty

 Open YouTube and search for Beam me up, Scotty in search box. The search results page will show the videos list using popular Star Trek effect which looks like YouTube is beaming the videos on search results page.

How ant colonies, butterfly swarms and lizard tongues are teaching industry a lesson

Researchers say robots in the future must show not only the capacity to take orders

At the core of the research is swarm technology; the study of how large groups

From the organizational strength of the ant colony, to the unseen communication in a swarm of butterflies, nature has always beaten man to it.

But now researchers at Festo, a German industrial control and automation company, are taking their cue from the natural world to gain valuable insights that could one day transform industry.

Its three latest projects -- BionicANTs, eMotionButterflies and its tongue-like FlexShapeGripper -- all mimic nature to find solutions to the problems thrown up by the coordination and logistics necessary to carry out mechanical robotic tasks.

"With all of our products we want to show how innovative technical ideas can facilitate the future of work and how principles from nature can change and improve industries," a Festo spokesman told CNN.

The aim of its butterfly project, for instance, shows how communication in flight could one day work for complex networks in the workspace.

"We wanted to show how several objects could be coordinated without colliding in a three- dimensional space thanks to a multifaceted network," he said.

"Although we don't expect our butterflies to be flying through factories any time soon, their integrated network systems may well be used as solutions for industrial logistics applications or could lead to a guidance and monitoring system in future factories."

Swarm tech takeover

Its prototype artificial BionicANTs, meanwhile, takes its cue from the deeply hierarchical and highly organized world of the ant colony."

Our ants are able to communicate with a network on their own. Working together they can achieve things they could not do by themselves," he said.

"This cooperative behavior provides interesting approaches for the factory of tomorrow."With greater flexibility and individuality demanded of automation in the future, the ants, he said, show how a networked group can communicate with each other while at the same time take orders at a higher control level.

"Using these types of networks will allow industries to better cater to the individual requests of customers."

At the core of the research is swarm technology; the study of how large groups such as bees, ants and butterflies can act in concert as a group but at the same time maintain enough individual volition to avoid collision.

"Swarm technology has improved in a huge way in recent years," said.

"Our butterflies get their instructions from a master computer in much the same way as an air traffic controller operates at an airport, coordinating all the different flying maneuvers each butterfly performs.

"This automated controller checks the position of all the butterflies and makes sure there will be no collision. A human pilot is not required."

The ants, on the hand, communicate with each other and come to an agreement about what to do next.

"Even though the ants are part of an overall networked system, every ant is an individual unit which can react independently to a situation," he said. "Swarm technology has a huge significance for the future of mechanization and is improving very fast."

Learning from lizards

The chameleon-tongue robot -- a liquid-filled rubber gripping device which mimics the grasping abilities of the predatory lizard -- could be used to handle small objects, replacing the finesse of human motor abilities in the workplace.

"The tongue has the ability to grab differently-shaped objects and it can also grab more than one thing at once," he said. "It could be used, for instance, in lightening the load of small but time-consuming jobs on the factory floor or even to clean up a room by taking things back to their usual places."

He said the importance of these prototypes shows the direction of industrial automation -- that robots must not only take their orders from a central computer but show the capacity for individual action as well.

"The components have to be able to manage their own actions while knowing what the other members of their network are doing," he said.

"Bionic products are leading to new ideas about how industrial processes could work. At the moment the development is furious and the changes are fundamental.

"Who knows what the status quo will be in 10,15 or 20 years time."

This robotic chimp could one day roam the moon

(CNN)Could the next moon mission involve a small step for an ape, but a giant leap for all robots?

With renewed interest in moon exploration -- in particular the remote possibility that deposits of helium-3, believed to be in greater concentration on the moon, could one day power nuclear fusion power plants on Earth -- robots might be the ideal solution, especially to keep the costs down.

And a design from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (also known as DFKI) in Bremen, Germany, has landed on the chimpanzee as its model for unmanned lunar missions.

Quadruped stability

DFKI hopes its design -- called the iStruct Demonstrator and nicknamed "Charlie"- will capitalize on the inherent stability of the ape's quadrupedal stance without losing the chimp's versatility in climbing, grasping and moving over all types of terrain.

"We chose the ape because it allows us to study several locomotion modes," DFKI researcher Daniel Kuhn told CNN.

"For example, they have quite good quadrupedal walking abilities but they can also perform stand- up motion and walk on two legs -- their ability to do this is greater than other animals. This change in posture and walking form interested us," he said.

Four-legged locomotion, Kuhn explained, might be stable -- but for speed and agility on flat ground, bipedal walking has the edge.

The chimp's greatest asset is that it can choose which form of movement best fits the situation.

"They can choose: if the environment won't let you move in a stable fashion on two legs they can choose four. When the environment improves, two legs allows you to get a better view over the field."

Founded by the German space agency DLR, the project has also built Lunar craters in a lab to test the prototype.

"In general, we are very happy with the results," he said. "The robot can walk up and down slopes of up to 20 degrees.

"Currently, we are studying how to transfer from the four-legged to the two-legged motion pattern, which is very interesting. This system gives us hints as to how much deviation there is between the four-legged and the two-legged walking and how humans evolved to walk on two legs."

Lower body torque

Previously, most multi-legged robots have been equipped with single-point contact feet for the sake of simplicity in design and control.

However the robotic chimpanzee focuses on a sophisticated lomwer limb system that combines the torque and twist of the chimpanzee's lower body.

And, like a real chimp, the robot's feet and hands have multiple sensors and multiple points of contact.

The sensors include a pressure sensor array of 43 individual force sensing resistor (FSR) sensors. It also has six additional FSR-sensors used for collision detection.

The robot is also equipped with a distance sensor in the heel to anticipate the heel strike and two temperature sensors to compensate for the difference in temperature produced by its own electronics.

Robot with backbone

Its biggest advantage, however, comes from the fact that like a real chimpanzees, it has a spine.

"We have an actuated spine -- one of the first ever built -- and for us it was very interesting how the spine influences the motion of the legs," Kuhn said. "We need much less activation for the knee -- the knee can be much lower if we use the spine and it needs less force to move the robot.

"It's strong enough to walk around and carry its own weight -- and it can carry 20 to 25 kg of additional weight."

Because of the embedded electronics in the spine, the overall structure can be used as a 6-axis force-torque sensor, allowing it a range of movement that replicates human and animal mobility.

Daunting specs

For those designing lunar robots, the list of specifications can be daunting.

Not only must a robot be able to see, drill, grind, collect and even sieve, it needs to get around a hostile environment in extreme temperatures and in a vacuum.

Robots also must offer the greatest strength and versatility for the least payload and have the ability to fix problems if something goes wrong.

With the moon 380,000 kilometers away, there's little margin for error and Kuhn says it may take three or four generations before the lunar chimp is completely space proof.

"You have to use different technologies - you can't use the same electronics that you use on Earth; they have to be space qualified and space proof.

"What we are doing is working on integrating more redundancy into the robot. If something goes wrong then we can rely on different actuators."

Space and other animals

The chimpanzee is not the only animal that is being studied by DFKI as a potential model for a lunar robot. Also on the drawing board are plans for a lunar mantis and a lunar scorpion.

Also at the prototype stage, the advantage of this type of locomotion, Kuhn says, has great potential.

"What you have is an animal that can stand on four legs, giving it stability, but can use its front two legs to manipulate objects," he said.

These tiny robots have superhuman strength

Engineers David Christensen, left, and Elliot Hawkes, right, with their tiny robots.

Imagine dragging a blue whale around on land without batting an eye. That's similar to the strength of tiny robots being developed by engineers at Stanford University.

These micro-robots, which are about the size of a Matchbox car, can pull 2,000 times their weight. They come in two sizes, and the smaller one can even haul items up glass walls.

"These are the first micro-robots that are able to live in -- and manipulate -- a human-sized world," said David Christensen, who developed the robots with fellow Ph.D student Elliot Hawkes.
So far, the robots have just been used in the lab to haul around weights, drag a full coffee cup across the table and move objects up a wall, but their strength does have some applications for the real world.

The engineers said the robots could be equipped with CO2 sensors and then sent into a burning building to find survivors. Or, in less dire circumstances, they could be used to put objects in out-of-reach spots -- like a wireless router in the rafters of a factory.
Christensen said the robots should be thought of as a little army that can be deployed, and since they're cheap to make -- each one only costs about $20 -- it's not a big deal if one goes missing.
"You can make hundreds of them and you don't care so much about breaking one or losing one because they become disposable," said Hawkes. He and Christensen can build a new robot in just a day or two in the lab. They use 3D printers to make the parts, which has sped up the process.

This robot, officially called the Ground MicroTug, weighs 12 grams but can pull 2,000 times that amount.

When designing the robots' movement, the engineers were inspired by geckos and ants, whose feet adapt when they climb or carry a load.
To haul an object, the robot first drives forward on its two front wheels, and then plants itself on a hard surface and pulls on a string attached to the object. It continuously repeats the process to move things forward, and can keep going as long as there isn't anything in its way. The robots' "feet" have spikes that stick to the ground, much like a gecko.
The robots are still a work in progress and have only been in development for a few months. They will be on display next month at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Seattle, Wash.
"What we're trying to prove is that we can do amazing things like ants can do," Christensen said.
It's hoped that the tiny robots will one day work just like ant colonies, which work together as a team to get things done. Ants are especially impressive when it comes to weightlifting -- a regular ant can lift up to 5,000 times its own body weight.
"If I have an ant crawl on my hand, you realize how awesome they are," Hawkes said. "They are beautiful little things."