Northeast Wisconsin WordPress Developers

Attention all WordPress developers in northeast Wisconsin!! The Appleton WordPress Meetup is a new resource available to you for:

1. Connecting with other WordPress developers in northeast Wisconsin
2. Learning new WordPress skills
3. Sharing your WordPress knowledge and experience
4. Discussing business skills relevant to website developers

The inaugural gathering of the Appleton WordPress Meetup just wrapped up. Eight people showed up this morning at Harmony Cafe in Appleton, Wisconsin, USA, for the initial meetup. Attendees were from Green Bay, Weyauwega and Appleton. After self-introductions by everyone, we discussed how the meetings should be structured to be of most interest and value to participants.

Based on the input from everyone at the meeting, it was agreed that we'll meet at 8:30 AM at Harmony Cafe in Appleton on the second Tuesday of each month. For at least the first few meetings, each month will feature a primary topic of discussion. Patrick took responsibility for the April 2012 meeting topic. Bob talked to Harmony Cafe management and reserved the Harmony conference room on the third floor for the second Tuesday of each month from 8:30 to 10:30 AM. It seems likely the monthly meetup will be structured to have a one hour agenda, with the 9:30 - 10:30 time slot used for random discussions or continued discussion of the monthly topic by those meeting participants who have the time and interest to hang around for more in-depth exploration of that topic. If WordPress developers and users want to talk about non-meeting stuff but need to leave at 9:30 AM for other commitments, Harmony Cafe is open at 7:00 AM so there's plenty of time for one-on-one or small group meetings prior to the 'official' meetup starting time.

If you are interested in WordPress development or use, consider coming to the April 13, 2012, Appleton WordPress meetup. Or if you know someone from the Fox Valley or other parts of northeast Wisconsin interested in WordPress, please let them know about the Appleton WordPress meetup. Thanks!

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NEW NET Weekly List for 13 Mar 2012

Below is the final list of issues for the Tuesday, 13 March 2012, NEW NET (NorthEast Wisconsin Network for Entrepreneurism and Technology) 7:00 - 9:00 PM weekly gathering at Sergio's Restaurant, 2639 South Oneida Street, Appleton, Wisconsin, USA.

The ‘net

1.        Khan Academy Inspires Flip of Doctor-Patient Relationship Model  http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/06/khan-academy-inspired-flip-of-doctor-office-visit/  “…the Khan Academy has impressed many of us and inspired teachers to flip the classroom lecture/homework model on its head as described in the video below. Doctors are now recognizing similar value in videos for their patients…In fact, we may not have a choice with the ever-increasing shortage of primary care physicians…individuals forget as much as 80-90% of what a doctor tells them. One of the nice things about Khan Academy is learners with different skill levels can watch the videos in different ways. Some may get it just watching it once while others may want to replay the video over a few times before a concept sinks in…Perhaps because Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson was a teacher before she was a pediatrician, she was naturally drawn to using her videos and blogs to benefit her patients’ families…the shortcomings of an office visit…is heavily driven by the billing needs versus a long-term focus on a patient’s overall health…Many doctors, particularly in primary care, are unhappy about the way they have been practicing and are unleashing their own creativity…So much of our present care delivery is rote and could be practiced online or provided via video/blog/text. And that the ‘real medicine,’ the service and the relationship or helping people in moments of anxiety and indecision are rare and undervalued. That oddly enough, there is simply no time in the day to do what matters most…”

2.       Microsoft: OnLive's Windows-on-iPad service violates license  http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/03/microsoft-onlives-windows-on-ipad-service-violates-licensing-policy.ars  “Gaming company OnLive…recently launched a service bringing a Windows 7 desktop, complete with Microsoft Office 2010, to iPad and Android tablets…There's just one problem: Microsoft says it's not properly licensed. The software giant is apparently asking OnLive for some cash in exchange for the right to continue the service, which is still working today…Microsoft has licensing options for partners who want to provide Windows in virtual desktop settings, but those options apparently don't cover the OnLive service as it exists today…Brian Madden, who writes extensively about desktop virtualization, wrote that "based on everything we know about Microsoft licensing, this [the OnLive service] should be in clear violation of Microsoft's policies…”

3.       Infographics For Everyone: Visual.ly Launches First Automated Tool  http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/12/infographics-for-everyone-visual-ly-launches-first-automated-tool-out-of-beta/  “…Visual.ly, which offers an online tool to create instant visualizations of data, is launching its first public product out of beta. The service will let users take publicly-available data such as information from a Twitter hashtag or a Facebook feed, and then select a template (currently five, with each having two to three variations within it) to instantly visualize it. It will also team up with third parties and brands to offer other data feeds to users: one, for example, will involve sports statistics from ESPN. While infographics seem like the kind of thing that would mostly be the domain of number-crunching analysts and journalists, created for consumption by the wider public, the use of Visual.ly’s beta — launched last year — testifies to there being a bigger audience for actually making these pictures firsthand…”

Gigabit Internet

4.       Gigabit Internet for $70: the unlikely success of California's Sonic.net  http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/gigabit-internet-for-80-the-unlikely-success-of-californias-sonicnet.ars  “…While some other cities can also brag about gigabit access, in this Sonoma County town it costs only $69.95 a month. The service comes courtesy of Sonic.net, the18-year-old Internet provider based in the neighboring city of Santa Rosa. And Sonic even throws in two phone lines with unlimited long-distance calling when you sign up…almost none of the few dozen residents on Florence Avenue bother with the highest-end gigabit service, though. And why should they? Sonic's everyday 100 Mbps fiber offering costs just $39.95 a month, the same price Sonic used to charge for its 20 Mbps DSL connections (It includes unlimited phone, too.) Compare Sonic’s 100 Mbps price to the two better-known area options for broadband—Comcast's Xfinity Extreme 105 Mbps service runs $199.95 a month, while AT&T's U-Verse tops out at 24 Mbps for $49.95…Sonic kicked off this buildout on favorable ground: a reasonably dense neighborhood in Sebastopol, a compact town of 7,397 that may be best-known as the home of tech-book publisher O'Reilly…But why did Sonic also offer gigabit access at only twice the price of its 100 Mbps service? Said Jasper: Why not? "The cost differential between a customer who's connected at all and one who's connected at one gigabit…is nominal." Calling the $69.95 service "a headline product," he noted one key reason for Sonic to offer it: because others can't…”

5.        Bell Labs innovations underpin a breakthrough commercial 400 gigabit-per-second chip  http://www.stockhouse.com/News/USReleasesDetail.aspx?n=8444567  “…Alcatel-Lucent…is introducing…a new chip for fiber optic networks that offers double the capacity, and four times the speed of today's networks…the Alcatel-Lucent Photonic Service Engine supports 400 gigabit per second…data transmission speeds on optical networks…unabated growth of broadband, mobile data and cloud-based services has presented a major challenge for service providers that need to find ways to keep costs in check while dramatically expanding the capacity of their networks…The versatile 400G PSE chip can be deployed in a broad range of network configurations - from metro to regional to ultra-long haul - and transmit wavelengths over existing or new photonic lines…”

Security, Privacy & Digital Controls

6.       Up against the Wall! Should district be allowed to demand middle-schooler's Facebook password?  http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/13/10657012-up-against-the-wall-should-district-be-allowed-to-demand-middle-schoolers-facebook-password  “A 12-year-old Minnesota girl was reduced to tears while school officials and a police officer rummaged through her private Facebook postings after forcing her to surrender her password…The girl, whose identity is withheld in the lawsuit, came home "crying, depressed, angry, scared and embarrassed" after she was intimidated into divulging her login information by a school counselor and a deputy sheriff, who arrived in uniform, armed with a Taser…The student now fears that the school could make her give up her passwords at a moment's notice, at any time, for any reason," the lawsuit claims.  It also alleges that password prying is standard practice at the Minnewaska Middle School…Officials at the Minnewaska Area School District…say the ACLU's version of events is "one-sided," and that the school acted to "prevent disruption,"…The lawsuit raises the complicated -- and quite unsettled -- legal quandary that balances students' constitutional rights with schools' needs to maintain order and a positive educational environment. For example, can schools punish students who publicly criticize school officials on their own time using social networks?…”  http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/06/10585353-govt-agencies-colleges-demand-applicants-facebook-passwords  “If you think privacy settings on your Facebook and Twitter accounts guarantee future employers or schools can't see your private posts, guess again. Employers and colleges find the treasure-trove of personal information hiding behind password-protected accounts and privacy walls just too tempting, and some are demanding full access from job applicants and student athletes. In Maryland, job seekers applying to the state's Department of Corrections have been asked during interviews to log into their accounts and let an interviewer watch while the potential employee clicks through wall posts, friends, photos and anything else that might be found behind the privacy wall…Student-athletes in colleges around the country also are finding out they can no longer maintain privacy in Facebook communications because schools are requiring them to "friend" a coach or compliance officer, giving that person access to their “friends-only” posts. Schools are also turning to social media monitoring companies with names like UDilligence and Varsity Monitor for software packages that automate the task. The programs offer a "reputation scoreboard" to coaches and send "threat level" warnings about individual athletes to compliance officers…”

7.        Why online security is taxing our brains  http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/08/us-websecurity-memory-idUSBRE82719N20120308  “…trying…to keep up with all the passwords and security questions…just to log onto…personal accounts…sometimes it feels like a losing battle. It's a battle millions of consumers can identify with. For a while it was just your mother's maiden name, then your first pet, the street you grew up on or the make and model of your first car. As passwords and security questions multiply, so does the potential for things to go wrong, possibly locking you out of your own life. Unless you're a savant with total recall, you need a system to manage that morphing body of login credentials necessary to navigate your virtual life…His answer? An elaborate Excel spreadsheet that's password-protected. Others go more old-school, like executive coach Darla Arni in Slater, Missouri. "I have an entire notebook that I keep all my passwords in, but its pages are filling up" and becoming increasingly disorganized, says the 55-year-old…Some smartphone apps, like RoboForm, Keeper Password, and PasswordWallet, can help consumers manage password overload…To be sure, going through several layers of authentication is a good thing for consumers, helping reduce the risk of increasingly sophisticated hackers gaining access to their accounts and emptying them out…It's what helps us identify fraudsters in Eastern Europe who have stolen your online credentials…”

8.       Yahoo Uses Words of Facebook’s Zuckerberg to Poke Him  http://allthingsd.com/20120312/worst-but-first-yahoo-uses-words-of-facebooks-zuckerberg-to-poke-him-in-patent-lawsuit/  “On the sixth page of its just-filed patent lawsuit against Facebook, Yahoo quotes the social networking company’s CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg: “Getting there first is not what it’s all about.”…Yahoo contends…Zuckerberg has “conceded that the design of Facebook is not novel and based on the ideas of others,”…it’s an attempt to hit home one point: We were here first and we have more patents…Of the 10 patents Yahoo is using in the 19-page lawsuit, filed today in California, the company said: “For much of the technology upon which Facebook was based, Yahoo was there first…Facebook’s entire social network model, which allows users to create profiles for and connect with, among other things, persons and businesses, is based on Yahoo’s patented social networking technology,”…So what does Yahoo want for this alleged free ride? Triple damages and to enjoin Facebook from operating by using said patents. Given the scope of the patents Yahoo said it has, that means it wants Facebook to essentially close down…”

9.       Eavesdropping Antennas Can Steal Your Smart Phone's Secrets  http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/39855/  “The processors in smart phones and tablets leak radio signals that betray the encryption keys used to protect sensitive data…Gary Kenworthy of Cryptography Research held up an iPod Touch on stage and looked over to a TV antenna three meters away. The signal picked up by the antenna, routed through an amplifier and computer software, revealed the secret key being used by an app running on the device to encrypt data…The antenna was detecting radio signals "leaking" from the transistors on the chip inside the phone performing the encryption calculations…"[This] antenna is not supposed to work at this frequency, and it's been in someone's attic for years and is a bit bent," said Kenworthy, a principal engineer at Cryptography Research. "You could build an antenna into the side of a van to increase your gain—well, now you've gone from 10 feet to 300 feet." Kenworthy and Benjamin Jun…demonstrated how a loop of wire held close to two models of smart phone could pick up their secret keys…The apps used in Jun and Kenworthy's demonstrations were of their own design, because it would be "bad manners" to demonstrate sniffing keys from other company's apps…the researchers have shown privately that they can eavesdrop on encryption keys from any app or mobile software…”

10.     Duqu Trojan used 'unknown' programming language  http://malware.cbronline.com/news/duqu-trojan-used-unknown-programming-language-kaspersky-070312  “…Researchers working for Kaspersky Lab have discovered that the Duqu Trojan, believed to have been written by the people behid the Stuxnet worm, was partly written using a previously unknown programming language…Researchers analysed the Payload DLL and found one section was written in an unknown language - it is this section that communicates exclusively with the C&C server, Kaspersky said. They have labelled this section the Duqu Framework. The Duqu Framework is not written in C++ and it's not compiled with Microsoft's Visual C++ 2008, "but is definitely object-oriented," Igor Soumenkov wrote on the company's blog. "The Duqu Framework appears to have been written in an unknown programming language."…we are 100% confident that the Duqu Framework was not programmed with Visual C++. It is possible that its authors used an in-house framework to generate intermediary C code, or they used another completely different programming language,"…CEO Eugene Kaspersky said that it "seems the state behind Duqu sponsored the development of a new [programming] language…”

11.      U.S. reportedly warns Apple, e-book publishers about price-fixing  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-fi-tn-department-of-justice-warns-apple-major-publishers-possible-lawsuits-for-ebook-price-fixing-20120308,0,5119376.story  “The U.S. Justice Department has warned Apple Inc. and five top book publishers that lawsuits over alleged e-book price fixing might be in the offing…the Justice Department has told publishers and the Cupertino tech giant that lawsuits could be filed accusing the companies of colluding to keep e-book prices high for both Apple users and rivals such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Some publishers "have held talks to settle the antitrust case and head off a potentially damaging court battle," the Journal said. "If successful, such a settlement could have wide-ranging repercussions for the industry, potentially leading to cheaper e-books for consumers…”

Mobile Computing & Communicating

12.     SXSW 2012: British ad agency turns homeless into wifi hotspots  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9139054/SXSW-2012-British-ad-agency-turns-homeless-into-wifi-hotspots.html  “A well known British advertising agency has sparked outcry within the technology community attending the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, by turning homeless people into wifi hotspots. Bartle Bogle and Hegarty (BBH) has launched a “charitable experiment”…whereby it equips homeless people with a 4G MiFi device to create a pay-as-you-go wifi hotspots for attendees. However, the experiment…has been criticised by many attendees and technology writers as “tasteless” and “thoughtless”. Attendees need to stand near the homeless volunteer in order to access the wifi, which many have described as just "awkward"…BBH’s Homeless Hotspots website frames the initiative as an attempt to “modernise the Street Newspaper…Wired magazine has described Homeless Hotspots as something which sounds like it is out of a “darkly satirical science-fiction dystopia…BBH has defended the initiative, which, at first many people on Twitter thought was a hoax…homeless people are…given a t-shirt to wear, which says: I’M [FIRST NAME], A 4G HOTSPOT, SMS HH [FIRST NAME] TO 25827 FOR ACCESS, www.homelesshotspots.org...there’s an insane amount of chatter about this, which…in many ways is very good for the homeless people…these people are no longer invisible…We are not selling anything. There is no brand involved. There is no commercial benefit whatsoever…Each of the Hotspot Managers keeps all of the money they earn. The more they sell their own access, the more they as individuals make…”

13.     Former Microsoft exec Ozzie: 'Of course we're in a post-PC world'  http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57392789-75/former-microsoft-exec-ozzie-of-course-were-in-a-post-pc-world/  “Microsoft fights the notion that the world has entered the "post-PC era," opting instead for the more Windows-friendly "PC-plus" phrasing. But Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's former chief software architect, has little doubt that the world has moved on. "Why are we arguing? Of course we're in a post-PC world," Ozzie said…To Ozzie, though…the market for devices that do general computation is going to continue to expand. And there's plenty of opportunity for companies that understand how to create devices consumers want…”

14.     New iPad all about graphics  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-57392624-64/new-ipad-why-quad-core-graphics/  “Apple has just elevated the graphics chip to superstar status…the new iPad has a quad-core graphics processing unit (GPU)…Anandtech cites graphics chip technology from Imagination (PowerVR SGX543MP4) and CPU tech from ARM (Cortex A9)…Translation? The new iPad's graphics chip--which is based on Imagination's PowerVR tech--is basically a quad-core version of the dual-core graphics chip in the iPad 2. That's where Apple gets the two-fold performance increase…Apple is focusing on the GPU because it needs to devote all of the chip real estate it can to transistors that push around an amazingly pixel-dense display--which crams a resolution of 2,048x1,536 into a 9.7-inch display…But good graphics aren't only necessary for gaming. High-octane graphics silicon can boost performance on other tasks, including multimedia (video decode) and productivity (iPhoto or Photoshop)…for these reasons, Apple may have just promoted the GPU to No.1 chip status…”  http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_the_new_ipad_is_so_huge_for_apple.php  “…new iPad introduction was Apple's most important event of the year…the iPhone is still a bigger business for Apple…But the iPhone is just Apple's small sliver of the giant phone market. The iPad, meanwhile, is a green field - a totally new market that Apple is building and defining. And so far, it has it almost to itself…the iPad maintained its lead as the best tablet on the market in terms of hardware, software, and ecosystem…And don't overlook the importance of the price-cut iPad 2, now starting at $399. By shaving $100 off the cheapest iPad's price, Apple has significantly expanded the iPad's addressable market…"We think that iPad is the poster child of the post-PC world," Apple CEO Tim Cook said…Apple could potentially sell 80 million iPads this year, about twice as many as it did last year…At an average price around $550, that's about $45 billion in sales - about the same amount as all of Apple generated in 2009…”  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57392727-37/four-takeaways-from-apples-resolutionary-ipad/  “…Someday, sometime, Apple is going to stumble, and maybe the competition will finally take advantage of the misstep to close the gap. That day's not yet on the horizon. With the newest iPad featuring a sharper screen, the high-resolution 2048x1536-pixel Retina Display, as well as faster wireless connectivity, rapid-response touch-screen control and quad-core graphics, Apple has widened its lead in the tablet market…Middle managers are showing up for meetings with iPads in tow. Factory managers go about their floor checks carrying around iPads. Doctors and hospital administrators are incorporating the iPad into work flow. Similar stories abound, offering anecdotal evidence that something's afoot…”

Apps

15.     HomeSnap Is Not A Boring Real Estate App  http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/08/homesnap-is-not-a-boring-real-estate-app/  “Sawbuck Realty, an online real estate broker, has just launched a new app called HomeSnap which lets you discover information about any home nationwide just by taking a photo of it. Using a combination of mobile phone sensors to determine location and orientation as well as MLS and public records data, HomeSnap can tell you everything about a home, including how many square feet it has, number of bedrooms/bathrooms, estimated price and more. And it can do so even if the house is not on the market…Currently, it has over 90 million homes in its database… “So many of the real estate apps are boring and utilitarian, explains Wolcott. “We looked at things like Shazam – things where you want to show your friends, and they say ‘how does that work?’ – and we tried to make something like that for homes.”…the app uses the iPhone’s sensors, like the accelerometer, gyroscope, and GPS, to determine where you are and what you’re looking at… “The real idea,” says Wolcott, “is to be kind of magical. You just take a picture, and it knows what you’re looking at…”

16.     Retailer Mobile Websites Beat Apps among US Smartphone Owners  http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/a-store-in-your-pocket-retailer-mobile-websites-beat-apps-among-us-smartphone-owners/  “Smartphone owners are increasingly using their devices for shopping, from researching products and reviews, to comparing prices, finding retail locations, and redeeming coupons. And retailers are responding with mobile apps and websites designed to attract smartphone shoppers…Nielsen’s detailed analysis of smartphone usage reveals that retail websites are more popular than retail apps, and that Amazon’s is the most popular retail mobile website of all…Retailers need to think of their business as a multi-channel environment that can potentially include mobile, online, and bricks and mortar stores…”

17.     Apple switches from Google to OpenStreetMaps in new iPhoto…but forgets to give credit  http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/08/apple-switches-from-google-to-openstreetmaps-in-new-iphoto-but-forgets-to-give-credit/  “…since Google raised the price to access its maps API, a lot of companies have switched to OpenStreetMaps…Apple has joined the club, using OSM in the new iPhoto for iPad and iPhone. But…Apple didn’t bother to credit the creators of these maps, and is using two-year-old, out-of-date information…all they’ve done is render Open Street Map data with their own stylesheet, miscategorised the status of some ways, conveniently forget to include any copyright attribution, and pass it off as their own…The folks behind OSM were a little more tactful in their blog post about the discovery: The OSM data that Apple is using is rather old (start of April 2010) so don’t expect to see your latest and greatest updates on there. It’s also missing the necessary credit to OpenStreetMap’s contributors; we look forward to working with Apple to get that on there…”

18.     Satellite AR  http://spacedata.agi.com/MobileApps/about.htm  “Ever wondered what satellites are flying above your head when you look up? This app will show them to you using augmented reality. Point your phone's camera to the sky, and small icons track the locations of various satellites. For many, a line indicates their projected path across the sky. Those flying in sunlight are labeled in yellow, and those in the shadow of the Earth or Moon, in blue…The app also contains a simple star map. The brightest 2000 stars are shown as white dots on the screen, to help the user align the app's display with the sky above…”

SkyNet

19.     Google wins approval to sell pay TV service in Kansas City  http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2012/03/07/missouri-approves-googles-request-to.html  “Google…has the go-ahead to provide video services in Kansas City. The Missouri Public Service Commission has granted Google Fiber Missouri LLC the authority to build a video service network…On Feb. 17, Google sought franchises to offer video service in Kansas City and Kansas City, Kan…The application to the Kansas Corporation Commission cited Internet-based TV offerings to residences. That application remains pending; commissioners have 30 days from the Feb. 17 filing date to approve it…Google still is exploring what product offerings will be available when it launches Google Fiber in Kansas City. She said the video franchise licenses were a necessary legal step, but the action doesn’t mean Google will or will not pursue video services…”

20.    Top 10 Google Docs Annoyances (and How to Fix Them)  http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/251496/top_10_google_docs_annoyances_and_how_to_fix_them.html  “Google Docs is convenient, cheap, and compatible with just about any platform, making collaboration incredibly simple. It’s also infuriating, incomplete, and limited. Google Docs wafts in the cloud, just beyond your tinkering fingertips, and you’re at the whim of the Google engineers who control the tweaks, fixes, and enhancements…This is the first part of an ongoing series covering fixes for Google Docs annoyances. In this first edition, we tackle the Google Docs text editor…Manage Repeated Text…View Plain Text Files…Simulate a Guided Spelling Checker…Claim More Real Estate…Turn Off Notifications…Open Google Docs in the Same Tab or Window…Find Out Who Changed an Item…Sidestep Problems With Big Images…Share Files Among the Clouds…Avoid the Internet…”

21.     After the pwnage: Critical Google Chrome hole plugged in 24 hours  http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/03/after-the-pwnage-critical-google-chrome-hole-plugged-in-24-hours.ars  “Less than 24 hours after a Russian hacker pocketed $60,000 by exploiting a previously unknown critical vulnerability in Google Chrome, company developers released an update removing the security threat. The quick turnaround underscores one of the key advantages of Google's open-source browser: the speed in which highly complex bugs are fixed and updates are pushed out to users. By contrast, Microsoft, which must run updates through a battery of rigorous quality-assurance tests, often takes months to fix bugs of similar complexity…”

General Technology

22.    ARM unveils world’s most efficient 32-bit processor  http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/arm-unveils-worlds-most-efficient-32-bit-processor-20120313/  “…chances are you have a chip based on an ARM design inside your phone and/or tablet. But it’s not just the high-performance gadgets we use everyday that require processors, everything from home appliances to the vehicles we travel in and the medical equipment that monitors us contain a myriad of chips too. Today, ARM has unveiled the world’s most energy efficient 32-bit processor, and it’s promising to open the way for many more very low power, always-connected devices…The new chip is called the ARM Cortex-M0+ and has a 32-bit architecture built using a 90nm process, which helps to keep costs down…Significantly, the M0+ offers both performance and power saving gains over the previous generation chip it the replaces: the Cortex-M0. But more importantly, ARM has developed a 32-bit processor that uses a third of the energy typical 8-bit and 16-bit processor require…Even though ARM is using a 90nm process for the M0+, it still manages to produce a chip that measures just 1mm x 1mm…Depending on the device, when coupled with a battery pack this new chip could go years before the battery is depleted. It truly opens up a deploy-and-forget mentality for intelligent sensors…”

23.    IBM drills holes into optical chip for terabit-per-second speed  http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/03/holey-chip-ibm-drills-holes-into-optical-chip-for-terabit-per-second-speed.ars  “IBM researchers have built a prototype optical chip that can transfer a terabit of data per second, using an innovative design requiring 48 tiny holes drilled into a standard CMOS chip, facilitating the movement of light. Much faster and more power-efficient than today's optics, the so-called "Holey Optochip" technology could enhance the power of supercomputers…With the Holey Optochip, Schow said "our target is the bandwidth that interconnects different processors in the system—not the processor talking to its memory, but a processor talking to another processor in a large parallel system."…That base chip has all the electronic circuit functions to complete the optical link. So it's got drivers that modulate vertical cavity lasers and receiver circuits that convert photocurrent from a detector into a usable electrical signal." Drilling holes into the chip lets IBM use industry-standard, 850-nanometer vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSEL), and photodiode arrays, both soldered on to the chip. The holes allow optical access through the back of the chip to the transmitter and receiver channels, making it more compact…”

24.    Five technologies that will transform homes of the future  http://arstechnica.com/business/the-networked-society/2012/03/the-five-technologies-that-will-transform-homes-of-the-future.ars  “…We've been sold on such technological visions for years, but they always seem to be "three to five years" out. The tech we do get never seems to work quite as seamlessly as the futurists suggest. And yet we're still making remarkable technical progress; networking in general, and the Internet in particular, have only begun to transform our homes. Here are five basic technologies that will soon prove crucial to our networked lives…Super high-speed Internet…Smart thermostats and the future of power…Centralized entertainment and the streaming revolution…Personal health tools meet constant connectivity…The personal content experience: e-readers, tablets, and phablets…”

25.    Microsoft unveils universal translator that converts your voice into another language  http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/122083-microsoft-unveils-universal-translator-that-converts-your-voice-into-another-language  “Microsoft Research has shown off software that translates your spoken words into another language while preserving the accent, timbre, and intonation of your actual voice. In a demo of the prototype…Rick Rashid, Microsoft’s chief research officer, says a long sentence in English, and then has it translated into Spanish, Italian, and Mandarin…it’s remarkable how the three translations still sound just like Rashid. In order for the translation system to do its work it needs about an hour of training, which allows it to create a model of your voice. This model is then mushed into Microsoft’s standard text-to-speech model for the target translation language…Once the training period is out of the way, there’s no reason that translation couldn’t be performed in real time on a smartphone, or near-real-time…”

Leisure & Entertainment

26.    Roku seeking $50M round for international expansion  http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/08/roku-seeking-50m-round-for-international-expansion/  “Roku…set-top boxes allow people in the U.S. to stream over 350 content channels on their televisions, including video, music, social and gaming services. Some of the channels offered include Netflix, Hulu Plus, Crackle MLB.tv, UFC, Classical TV, TuneIn, Facebook, Flickr…Following Netflix’s lead, Roku launched its line of streaming media set-top boxes in the U.K. and Ireland back in January…Roku has already sold 2.5 million of its set-top boxes in the U.S. alone…Roku, which generates revenue through hardware sales, advertising, and channel subscription fees, made over $100 million in sales last year. The company intends to become profitable in 2013…”

27.    The New Cable-TV Guy: Intel  http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702304450004577277732222512596-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwMjExNDIyWj.html#  “Intel Corp. is developing an Internet-based television service that it hopes to sell to U.S. consumers, a strategic shift by the chip maker as it sets its sights on the crowded pay-TV business. Intel has for several months been pitching media companies on a plan to create a "virtual cable operator" that would offer U.S. TV channels nationwide over the Internet in a bundle similar to subscriptions sold by cable- and satellite-TV operators…Intel wouldn't provide Internet access, which subscribers would obtain separately. The TV offering would use Intel technology, and in at least some scenarios under consideration, would use Intel's name. In its presentations to media companies, Intel says it is making its own set-top box to carry the TV service, and it has demonstrated an interface for users to browse programs…The new effort would mark a big shift for Intel…Intel's maneuvers come as the broader television business undergoes a major shift, with people spending more time watching video on the Internet and mobile devices…Hoping to get more of its chips into consumer living rooms, Intel has for years made the case that more processing power and better software are needed for services that appeal to consumers. But many of its efforts in the field, including a hardware effort called Viiv, and past partnerships with Hollywood content partners, have been scuttled…”

Economy and Technology

28.    PayPal launching Square competitor  http://gigaom.com/2012/03/12/rumored-paypal-to-launch-square-competitor/  “PayPal’s plans to announce a solution for small businesses at an event this Thursday includes a mobile payment dongle that would compete against Square, Intuit, Verifone and others…The dongle…will allow small business owners to process credit card swipes from a smartphone, similar to Square, Intuit’s GoPayment and Verifone’s PAYware. The potential move…would fall in line with PayPal’s recent strategy to bring its payment services into physical stores. It’s working with a host of partners to bring its in-store system to bigger retailers including Home Depot, which is launching the service in more than 2,000 locations…The in-store system works ideally for retailers with existing hardware. But a mobile payment acceptance tool like Square would allow PayPal to target much smaller businesses with one or two locations and give them a simple way to process card transactions…”

29.    Among Online Entrepreneurs, Subscriptions Are All the Rage  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/business/smallbusiness/selling-online-products-by-subscription-is-all-the-rage.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all  “…If you’re a dog owner like I am, you go out and buy food every three or four weeks…But you usually don’t realize you need it until you’re out.” Mr. Zhardanovsky, 34, was well aware that an online pet supply store, Pets.com, had been one of the more celebrated flameouts of the dot-com bubble. But…Mr. Zhardanovsky’s plan was to sell pet food on a subscription basis. He figured that other pet owners had experienced the same frustrations…and might be willing to sign up for a monthly delivery service…We had an overwhelmingly positive response from our customers who wanted to sign up for the service…Customers who sign up to receive regular deliveries of pet food can determine how much they get and how often it comes…In its first month, July 2010, the company shipped about 60 orders; by January of this year, that number had leapt to 27,000. In 2011, PetFlow exceeded $13 million in revenue — with 60 percent of its sales coming on a subscription basis…subscription models are, in so many ways, the holy grail of business…lately, more businesses have come up with creative ways to use the Internet to sell products that have not traditionally been sold by subscription. H.Bloom…sells flowers by subscription; Trunk Club sells clothing by subscription…Amazon encourages customers to place standing orders for products like power bars or paper towels…It is not hard to see the appeal of recurring revenue, but some of the benefits may be less obvious. “This is the best business model you can ever have because we can place inventory purchases against future sales…That predictability allows…lower inventory levels and…better deals with suppliers…A subscription model allows you to establish long-term relationships with customers…Subscription models and recurring revenue also tend to impress investors…he noticed we had such a strong connection with our community of customers and suggested a subscription-based model…subscription models are a great way to build lifetime relationships with our customers…The change to a subscription model had an immediate impact; Ms. Kim’s business grew more in the five months after she made the switch than it had in the previous three years combined…I think subscription models work best in two instances,” he said. “Where the product is a necessity or when it’s an absolute passion…” [potential opportunity discussion topic for NEW NET meeting: what products could we sell by subscription? – ed.]

30.    Twitter buys Posterous, a social blogging service  http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-twitter-buys-blogging-platform-posterous-20120313,0,5686169.story  “Twitter is taking the San Francisco startup Posterous under its wing…the two companies announced that Twitter had purchased Posterous…Posterous Spaces blogging platform…a popular service in its own right with about 15 million users, won't be going away anytime soon…We'll give users ample notice if we make any changes to the service. For users who would like to back up their content or move to another service, we'll share clear instructions for doing so in the coming weeks."…Twitter made it clear that they were purchasing the talent that built the blogging platform that focuses on sharing to specific groups of friends and easily blogging from mobile phones, email and app…”

DHMN Technology

31.     “Back To The Future” flying DeLorean quadcopter  http://technabob.com/blog/2012/03/11/back-to-the-future-flying-delorean-quadrotor/  “…What you're looking at here isn't a scene from a movie, it's a totally custom-built flying quadrocopter built to look like Doc Brown's DeLorean from Back to the Future. This thing looks exactly like Doc's ride from the movie, and can hover off the ground quite well, despite the uneven weight distribution of the car body. Clearly, where it's going, it doesn't need roads…not only does it fly, but it looks awesome, with those LED headlights and taillights, body details and glowing wheels. It's even got a tiny little Mr. Fusion on the back - though it gets its power from a Lithium Polymer battery…its stabilization control is powered by MultiWii, a HobbyKing 12A BlueSeries speed controller, and a batch of Turnigy 2204-14T motors for the engines. Pictures can't do it justice, and you really need to see this thing in flight…”

32.    OCD: Hackerspace Detroit  http://metrotimes.com/culture/the-nerdy-playhouse-1.1281937  “…OmniCorpDetroit, a self-described hackerspace located in the heart of Eastern Market. Pushing past the completely tired "computer-hacking" connotation, the term refers to a cooperative where members pool financial and material resources as well as ideas…It's about creating, rebuilding, experimenting and inventing together — a notion that members refer to as "hacking."…OCD guy and moped mechanic AJ Manoulian remembers millions of extension cords running everywhere because there was originally only one plug for the airy, 8,000-square-foot space. At least junk removal was easy, as garbage was thrown out a second-story window into a garbage bin below...One of the founding members, Jeff Sturges…secured finances and the lease on the building, which was once a cold storage warehouse. The initial funds were gathered from all co-founders, each of whom contributed between $200 and $2,000 for a start-up pot of about $5,000. There was no grant funding, total DIY from day one. They rent from the folks at Rocky Produce, who've been "really supportive." A year and a half after OCD opened its doors, every corner of the cavernous warehouse is occupied and in-process. The first-floor workshop houses a bunch of dusty mopeds and myriad old machines — a table saw, welder and lathe being the easiest to identify…Upstairs, computer geeks and artists are lost in their respective programming and painting. There is a full sewing station, a 3-D printer, and neat rows of desks cluttered with computer screens, oscilloscopes and other electronics. A well-stocked DJ booth sits behind a wall of speakers made from hacked-up radio components from an abandoned music school…Most of these tools and machines have been donated or are shared between members, with a few larger purchases having been voted on as a group and purchased from communal OCD funds…”  http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthread.php?9639-Hackerspace-Detroit  “…If you seek the bright side of Detroit, look no further than the budding Eastern Market hackerspace collective OmnicorpDetroit…When one enters a hackerspace the thought can easily cross one's mind, "What use on earth could any of these projects ever have?" Yet when in the actual surround of the space and feeling the energy exuding from the all the brightness and inquisitiveness the thought becomes, "Something, no many things, very significant and important are certain to arise from here…”  [check out this article for some great pictures of OmniCorpDetroit – ed.]

33.    3D-Printer with Nano-Precision  http://www.tuwien.ac.at/en/news/news_detail/article/7444/  “Printing three dimensional objects with incredibly fine details is now possible using “two-photon lithography”. With this technology, tiny structures on a nanometer scale can be fabricated. Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) have now made a major breakthrough in speeding up this printing technique: The high-precision-3D-printer at TU Vienna is orders of magnitude faster than similar devices (see video). This opens up completely new areas of application, such as in medicine…The 3D printer uses a liquid resin, which is hardened at precisely the correct spots by a focused laser beam. The focal point of the laser beam is guided through the resin by movable mirrors and leaves behind a polymerized line of solid polymer, just a few hundred nanometers wide. This high resolution enables the creation of intricately structured sculptures as tiny as a grain of sand…”

Open Source Hardware

34.    "Piccolo" Is the World's Smallest CNC Platform  http://www.core77.com/blog/digital_fabrication/honey_i_shrunk_the_cnc_machine_piccolo_is_the_worlds_smallest_cnc_platform_21909.asp  “…the fellas at Diatom…have partnered with a couple of collaborators at Carnegie Mellon's Computational Design Lab to present "Piccolo," a purportedly "pocket-sized stand-alone CNC platform for under $70." It's essentially a kit to turn your trusty Arduino into a very basic, very small CNC machine…Be it plotting a quick graffiti, printing a one-off business card on the fly, or multiple Piccolos working together to create a large mural, this kit provides a platform for experimenting with 2D or 3D digital fabrication at a small scale. We are currently refining the Piccolo prototype into an open-source design that is simple, quick to assemble, and easy to use, and is entirely composed of digitally manufactured components and inexpensive off-the-shelf hardware…Piccolo project includes Arduino and Processing libraries, to use Piccolo in a variety of ways such as moving autonomously or responding to sensors and data, whilst providing an accessible educational tool and a new output for Processing sketches…”

35.    Lessons learnt from Local Motors’ take on the open-hardware revolution  http://miter.mit.edu/article/open-source-cars-are-here-lessons-learnt-local-motors%E2%80%99-take-open-hardware-revolution  “…The only attractive segment of the automotive market is getaway vehicles for VCs who hear the word ‘automotive’ and need to flee the scene as hysterically as possible…The epitome of Japanese efficiency, Toyota, spends three to five years and billions of dollars to produce a new automobile model. This industry is not for everyone. But Jay Rogers…founded Local Motors to make open-source cars. The company developed an online platform for crowd sourced car design and developed a unique micro-factory for rapid local manufacturing…we are not taking on the car industry as a whole. Rather, we are taking on the problems with car manufacturing. There are so many technologies for cars, but they are not making their way to production and testing quickly…Rogers believes that this model of open innovation is not appropriate for every field, but it can be applied to any field that scores high on two scales: number of users and number of creators. This simple paradigm makes sense, and when you think about it, it suddenly poses opportunities in other apparently obese industries…it’s not enough just to have many people able to do this and many people interested in the product – it has to have a large, real impact on the user’s life…The hitch with crowd-sourcing is that nobody wants to do the uninteresting dirty work…There is no such thing as un-moderated open sourcing. Standard-writing is a critical part of the process and regulation is a very real part of the car industry…Local Motors took a big piece of regulation from the Air Resources Board to court and won unanimously…Can an open-sourced jalopy survive against the lean mean driving machines of Detroit, Germany and Japan? Local Motors’ showstopper, the Rally Fighter, argues that it can. It is a sleek all-terrain vehicle with…stunning design and extreme durability…The Rally Fighter originated from a web design tournament and was chosen as the first design for production…This design made it through not only because of its popularity within the open community, but because it was identified as buildable yet unique…Specs for the Rally Fighter are: 6.2 liter, V8 engine and 430 horsepower (at 5900 rpm), 424 lbft (at 4600 rpm). The final version of the Rally Fighter uses composite panels for the doors, body and inner shells.  There is no paint on the Rally Fighter…We wanted desert drivers to absolutely love it, whereas North-Easterners will probably find it inappropriate, but we will get to them soon, with our next models…It took the Rally Fighter 18 months to go from initial concept to production. Traditional manufacturers need three to five years…Local Motors plans to further reduce this time to 12 months for its next models…the open-source model allows for rapid development to a stage that is “good enough to get to customers.” Great customer ideas are incorporated in the next production vehicles…To manufacture cars locally and save on expensive shipping fees, Local Motors designed a micro-manufacturing plant, implementable globally…Customers come for a few days to build their own car with the assistance of Local Motors trained staff. No mechanical or engineering skills are required…The customer is fully involved in the assembly of the car – from frame alignments and engine calibration to break system and dashboard placement…this concept of having the customer emotionally involved in the creation of the car is…part of a recent trend of shifting the power balance from traditional manufacturers…to the end customer, who is recently figuring out the benefits and accessibility of hands-on production. “Our vision is for everyone to be able to build these models everywhere, but in the short run, the best solution is this micro factory we developed, which is operated like a local agency in different areas by people who are interested in being a nexus of local manufacturing…”

36.    WIKISPEED and Open Source Ecology Announce OSHW Partnership  http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/profiles/blogs/wikispeed-and-open-source-ecology-announce-partnership-in-open?xg_source=activity  “The open-hardware movement got a tremendous boost today when WIKISPEED, an innovative automotive company building modular, high-performance cars using agile design principles, and Open Source Ecology (OSE), a group committed to providing free plans and processes necessary for building the global economy, announced that they are teaming up to revolutionize transportation in the developing world. Taking on traditional, proprietary manufacturing R & D, the two companies aim to create an open-source productdevelopment methodology that would allow communities around the world to quickly develop their own machinery and processes to support themselves, removing a dependency on industrialized nations for costly solutions…”

37.    Open source hardware: Announcing a new licence  http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/commons-law/2012/03/open-source-hardware-announcing-a-new-licence/index.htm  “Open hardware is coming of age. I'm currently working on projects as diverse as open source cars, open source boats, open source wind turbines and open source electronics. A problem is that there are only two open licences designed for hardware: the CERN open hardware licence and the TAPR open hardware licence. Both of these are copyleft licences, and attempt to impose the same licence terms on any distribution of the original hardware, in a form similar to GPL: so called "copyleft". I'm not convinced that copyleft is the right way to go for hardware…Hardware and software are different. It costs zero to replicate software, but will always cost something to replicate hardware, even if you have unrestricted access to the blueprints. The upshot of this is that the cost differential between adopting the GPL and designing around it (for software) is vastly greater than the cost differential in circumventing a copyleft hardware licence. This is one reason why hardware copyleft is not a great idea. Another reason is that it's relatively easy to circumvent any hardware copyleft licence…”

Open Source

38.    An open-source robo-surgeon  http://www.economist.com/node/21548489  “…Blake Hannaford and his colleagues…are about to release a flock of medical robots with wing-like arms, called Ravens, in the hope of stimulating innovation in the nascent field of robotic surgery. Robot-assisted surgery today is dominated by the da Vinci Surgical System, a device that scales down a surgeon’s hand movements to let him make tiny incisions. That leads to less tissue damage, and thus a quicker recovery for patients. Almost 2,000 da Vincis have been made, and they are used in about 200,000 operations a year around the world…the da Vinci is…immobile and weighs more than half a tone…and it costs $1.8m, which puts it beyond the reach of all but the richest institutions. It also uses proprietary software. Even if researchers keen to experiment with new robotic technologies and treatments could afford one, they cannot tinker with da Vinci’s operating system. None of that is true of the Raven. Originally developed for the American army by Dr Hannaford and Jacob Rosen…as a prototype for robotic surgery on the battlefield, it is compact, light and cheap (relatively speaking) at around $250,000…it is also the first surgical robot to use open-source software. Its Linux-based operating system lets anyone modify and improve the original code, creating a way for researchers to experiment and collaborate…At Harvard, Rob Howe and his team hope to use a Raven to operate on a beating heart, by automatically compensating for its motion. At the moment, heart surgery requires that the organ be stopped and then restarted…Warren Grundfest is working on ways to give the robot a sense of touch that is communicated to the operator. Pieter Abbeel and Ken Goldberg…will try teaching the robot to operate autonomously by mimicking surgeons. And Dr Rosen himself will work on ways to get human and robotic surgeons to work together…”

39.    Install BackTrack 5 Revolution 2 on external hard drive  http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2012/03/12/install-backtrack-5-revolution-2-on-external-hard-drive/  “BackTrack is a Linux distribution that is based on Ubuntu, designed for hackers and/or security professionals, and loaded with the best Free Software and Open Source penetration testing applications available…the best information gathering, vulnerability assessment, exploitation, privilege escalation, reverse engineering, RFID, stress testing, forensic and anti-forensic applications…The latest edition is…BackTrack 5 R2. It is available as an installable Live DVD ISO image for both 32- and 64-bit architectures…While you can install it on any computer, I think the best practice is to install it on an external, USB hard drive. Doing that, gives you a pentest distribution on the go plus all the extra storage you might need. You may also opt to install it on a USB…flash drive…if you choose to go that route, be sure to have one with a capacity of more than 18 GB…A default installation of BackTrack 5 R2 takes up just a little bit more than 18 GB of disk space…”

Civilian Aerospace

40.    Neil deGrasse Tyson Supercut Demands We Dream of Space Again  http://gizmodo.com/5892297/neil-degrasse-tyson-supercut-demands-we-dream-of-space-again  “We're big fans of Neil deGrasse Tyson here at Gizmodo, and although we've delivered similar messages in the past, this new "We Stopped Dreaming" supercut by Evan Schurr…is worth five minutes of your…day. It's beautifully cut, with all kinds of archival space footage and a compendium of Neil deGrasse Tyson's most compelling messages…The entire thing adds up to a convincing, emotional, yet logical plea to revive the space program…” [video is a must-listen for space enthusiasts - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl07UfRkPas&feature=youtu.be – ed.]

41.     Making #spaceapps physical  http://open.nasa.gov/blog/2012/03/10/making-spaceapps-physical/  “…Jon is a product designer at the University of Dundee…His research emphasis is on physical apps, which as he explains it are a way to take information or data from the internet and connect that to a real world device…Physical apps are a way of making the web physical…By working together with similarly concerned citizens from throughout the world, NASA believes that by sharing your expertise you can make a difference…NASA invited people to make suggestions about grand challenges that could be solved…the initial tranche of suggestions were software based. To help define some more “physical” ideas NASA asked Dundee for some help. We want to make, rather than just code…We want you to try and make stuff – some of that will be grand theme and grand idea type challenges, but we want to start with something a bit more homely…If you are stuck up in a confined space whizzing round the earth for months, if not years, at a time, you are going to miss the odd home comfort…How will bread bake in space?...since baking takes a lot of energy, can we device new low power techniques that can be applied on the Space Station, and then ultimately in the new low power homes back on Earth…We call this challenge #bakerfaire…We call on makers, bakers, bread lovers, food scientists, product designers, electrical engineers and tinkerers everywhere to come and develop physical apps and hardware as part of the NASA International Space Challenge…”  http://spaceappschallenge.org/challenge/handheld-hardware-citizen-science/  “The challenge is to develop plug-in hardware that can be used for any one of NASA’s citizen science missions, such as the creation of a spectrometer, photometer, or other instrumentation. A solution could include an open source framework to allow a variety of external sensors to interface with common smartphones. Sensors could measure atmospheric conditions, the radioactive environment over time, electromagnetic interference, or a variety of other conditions…”

42.    Rocket club aims to fly high with project, careers  http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20120311/NEWS01/303110025/Rocket-club-aims-fly-high-project-careers  “Things are looking up for student rocket enthusiasts at Florida Tech. A 60-member club on campus called the FIT Student Rocket Research Society (SRRS) is designing a large-scale rocket and launch program. Their goal: to launch their rocket higher than 100,000 feet and log GPS data to become a contender for $10,000 in prize money. The student engineers are developing the rocket according to requirements for the Carmack prize from Armadillo Aerospace, a leading developer of reusable rocket-powered vehicles. They’ve received financial support from Northrop Grumman. While the rocket is not scheduled to compete until April of 2013, a test flight will take place next month…”

Supercomputing & GPUs

43.    HPC Advisory Council to Create NVIDIA GPU Development Center  http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2012-03-13/hpc_advisory_council_to_create_nvidia_gpu_development_center.html  “The HPC Advisory Council, a leading organization for high-performance computing (HPC) research, outreach and education, today announced a new NVIDIA GPU-based HPC development center. The new center is part of the HPC Advisory Council's High Performance Center, and will provide remote access to the HPC community free of charge for developing, testing and benchmarking the next generation of HPC applications. The Center will provide developers with the ability to test their HPC applications on NVIDIA Tesla M2090 GPUs, the world's most powerful parallel processors. Designed from the ground up for HPC, computational science and supercomputing, NVIDIA's Tesla M2090 GPUs provide 512 CUDA cores with 665 gigaflops of peak performance to accelerate even the most demanding computationally intensive workloads…”

44.    Going parallel  http://www.sdtimes.com/blog/post/2012/03/09/Going-parallel.aspx  “If you’re not doing parallel programming yet, just wait. Multicore processors and on-chip GPUs are already on the desktop…You may have started your parallel programming career with multiprocessor systems. Clusters and symmetric multiprocessing systems are commonly used as servers, and high-level task partitioning has wrung a lot of performance out of them. The next wave of parallelism arrived with multicore processors. All the major CPU vendors are now delivering multiple cores on single chips. Your app won’t perform any better unless you use special libraries and algorithmic techniques to rewrite your code to take advantage of multiple cores. Tools to ease this process are now routinely included in vendors’ development systems. A variant of multicore processing is now being implemented on GPGPU systems. GPGPU stands for “general-purpose computing on graphics processing units.” Now that hardware vendors are building chips that contain both general-purpose CPUs and GPUs on the same silicon, you can farm out certain kinds of tasks to the GPU. Researchers are finding that a wide variety of programming problems are vulnerable to the GPGPU approach, but you may not recognize your code once you’ve adapted it to the new architecture. Say goodbye to loops, and hello to arrays and vectors…”

*****

NEW NET location for 13 Mar 2012 Mtg = Sergio's Restaurant

The NEW NET (NorthEast Wisconsin Network for Entrepreneurial and Technology issues) 13 Mar 2012 meeting from 7 - 9 PM will be at Sergio’s Restaurant, 2639 South Oneida Street, Appleton; backup location, Tom’s on Westhill Blvd. Come and join in the tech fun!

*****

WordPress Meetup in Appleton, Wisconsin

There is a WordPress meetup in Appleton, Wisconsin, USA, at 8 AM on Friday, March 16, 2012, at Harmony Cafe at 233 E. College Avenue. If you're a WordPress user or developer, or want to learn more about using WordPress to build websites or to blog, come to the meetup.

The WordPress community in the Fox Valley, and northeast Wisconsin in general, appears to be pretty spread out and less well-connected than it could be. Having regular meetups is a good way to connect WordPress developers and users in the region. Being well-connected will help us:

• Share our skills and knowledge with others interested in using this open source CMS (content management system) for personal or business uses.
• Learn new WordPress tips, tricks and ideas from fellow WP users and devs.
• Connect with the wider TIME community (technology, innovators, makers, entrepreneurs) in the Fox Valley and northeast Wisconsin.

In addition to meeting new WordPress people at the March 16 event, there are three specific items of discussion for the meetup which are of interest to me:

1. Identifying one or two days/times that work for the next few regular WP Appleton monthly meetups. We may need to do two meetings per month if there are a number of people who prefer to meet during the day, e.g. at 8 AM on a weekday, and a roughly equal number who are likely only to participate in meetings that are held in the evenings or on weekends due to the schedule limitations of a full-time job.
2. Find others interested in periodic roadtrips down to Milwaukee to participate in the WordPress Milwaukee metro monthly meetups.
3. 2012 Milwaukee WordCamp, June 2 - 3, Saturday and Sunday, at Bucketworks. The more people who can help with the planning and can be volunteer workers at the event, the more everyone will enjoy the 2012 Milwaukee WordCamp. If you've never participated in a tech unconference, consider checking out this event. It's a little more structured than typical barcamps are, but should still be a good experience!

If you live in Appleton, the Fox Valley or nearby parts of northeast Wisconsin, and are interested in WordPress, consider participating in the March 16 meetup at Harmony Cafe, or at least consider connecting with some of the other WordPress users in the area. If you have questions regarding the other WP activities, feel free to contact me at bwaldron [att] gmail {dot} com.

*****

NEW NET Weekly List for 06 Mar 2012

Below is the final list of issues for the Tuesday, 06 March 2012, NEW NET (NorthEast Wisconsin Network for Entrepreneurism and Technology) 7:00 - 9:00 PM weekly gathering at Sergio's Restaurant, 2639 South Oneida Street, Appleton, Wisconsin, USA.

The ‘net

1.        Video and voice calls in your browser without a plugin in sight  http://thenextweb.com/dd/2012/03/01/impressive-video-and-voice-calls-in-your-browser-without-a-plugin-in-sight/  “Until now, video calling from your computer has required dedicated apps such as Skype or browser plugins like Flash that power the likes of Vox.io. However, the similarly-named Voxeo Labs has been cooking up something impressive; plugin-free video and voice calls in a browser…Voxeo Labs has demoed a way of making calls using the WebRTC technology included in the Canary build of Google’s Chrome browser…WebRTC is an open source project that allows developers to create real-time communications apps for the Web via Javascript APIs and HTML5. The Phono SDK also allows for real-time presence and chat capabilities, meaning that developers should be able to create Google Talk or Skype-like services with ease. The technology even supports standard phones, so you could call a friend’s browser from your landline…the technology isn’t quite ready for you to try…you can find out more by watching the two videos below…”

2.       Time Warner Cable brings back usage-based billing  http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/28/2831842/twc-usage-based-billing-texas-meter  “…in 2009, Time Warner Cable tried, unsuccessfully, to bring usage-based billing to market…the company has jumped back into the fray with a new "Essentials" plan in a few South Texas markets…customers can choose to get $5 off their monthly bill for giving up unlimited data in favor of a 5GB data cap…even modest web use could put you over 5GB pretty quickly. Going over the 5GB will cost you $1 per GB, to a maximum of $25 per month…Other details of the plan include a "meter" site that customers can check to get up-to-the-hour usage totals and a two-month grace period for overages, and…you can always change your plan back…”

3.       Windows Azure suffers worldwide outage  http://www.zdnet.com/news/windows-azure-suffers-worldwide-outage/6348160  “A component of Windows Azure has experienced a worldwide outage for the past eight hours, preventing customers from carrying out management operations for technology that uses the cloud management service. The worldwide outage of the Windows Azure Service Management technology began at 1:45am GMT on Wednesday 5:45pm PT Thursday) and, at the time of writing, Microsoft was in the process of rolling out a fix to deal with the problem…One ZDNet UK reader called in to give some details on how the Azure problems affected their business. "Our live site's been down all day now, so we've been losing money. The address it's on is not resolving, you can't even ping it," Ashley Rudland, who runs a startup travel site hosted on Azure…"Everything I've been told is that the management portal is the only thing that's got down, but the thing is I can go in and see my machines are running in the cloud, they all say they are ready and green and fine, but they're completely inaccessible." Rudland said he shares an office with a major Microsoft partner that does cloud integration for the public sector and large companies. "Their biggest clients are all offline…”

4.       Gdrive and the cloud wars  http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/03/google-drive-cloud-wars/  “…any startup touching the cloud storage space has lived in anticipation and fear of Google’s entry into the market. G(od) Drive’s arrival was meant to instantly commoditize existing offerings, kill all future opportunity for new players, and leave a charred ecosystem in its wake as it battled Microsoft and Apple for control of our online lives and content…But the Google Drive never came. Why? “Sundar had concluded that it was an artifact of the style of computing that Google was about to usher out the door…Steven Levy writes in his book, In the Plex, referring to Sundar Pichai, head of Google Chrome. Google was moving towards a world where its cloud operating system would make traditional file systems obsolete…Reality set in that most people still created content using local apps…Google’s Chrome and cloud-only view of the world wasn’t supportive of this reality…like all good legends, Google Drive is rumored to be back on the brink of launch…At Box, we were but a small guppy in waters soon to be populated by sharks with rocket launchers…we hit the big red “Pivot” button that’s hidden under every startup CEO’s desk. We decided to let the other players duke it out in the noisy consumer space, while we’d try and shake things up the quiet and dusty enterprise world…iCloud is attempting to have applications rebuilt on top of its proprietary notion of a cloud-assisted data model…and trying to kill the concept of sync products along with it…by integrating it more deeply into the operating system. With Skydrive, Microsoft has a goal of “delivering personal cloud storage for billions of people.” But its historic approach to openness and cooperation leaves a lot to be desired…it’s yet another walled garden of information that gets created in its environment…With around $200B in cash between Microsoft, Apple, and Google alone, cost is no issue; they see your data as the center of their universe…”

5.        Instruction for Masses Knocks Down Campus Walls  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/education/moocs-large-courses-open-to-all-topple-campus-walls.html  “…Since Udacity, the for-profit startup running the course, opened registration on Jan. 23, more than 90,000 students have enrolled in the search-engine course and another taught by Mr. Thrun, who led the development of Google’s self-driving car. Welcome to the brave new world of Massive Open Online Courses — known as MOOCs — a tool for democratizing higher education. While the vast potential of free online courses has excited theoretical interest for decades, in the past few months hundreds of thousands of motivated students around the world who lack access to elite universities have been embracing them as a path toward sophisticated skills and high-paying jobs, without paying tuition or collecting a college degree…Consider Stanford’s experience: Last fall, 160,000 students in 190 countries enrolled in an Artificial Intelligence course taught by Mr. Thrun and Peter Norvig, a Google colleague. An additional 200 registered for the course on campus, but a few weeks into the semester, attendance at Stanford dwindled to about 30, as those who had the option of seeing their professors in person decided they preferred the online videos…Mr. Thrun was enraptured by the scale of the course, and how it spawned its own culture, including a Facebook group, online discussions and an army of volunteer translators who made it available in 44 languages. “Having done this, I can’t teach at Stanford again,” he said at a digital conference in Germany in January. “I feel like there’s a red pill and a blue pill, and you can take the blue pill and go back to your classroom and lecture your 20 students. But I’ve taken the red pill, and I’ve seen Wonderland.”…Stanford offered two other MOOCs last semester — Machine Learning (104,000 registered, and 13,000 completed the course), and Introduction to Databases (92,000 registered, 7,000 completed). And this spring, the university will have 13 courses open to the world, including Anatomy, Cryptography, Game Theory and Natural Language Processing…”  http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/blogs/mba_admissions/archives/2012/02/pushing_free_online_learning_in_a_new_directionral_top.html

6.       Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site  http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html  “…The Exceptional Performance team has identified a number of best practices for making web pages fast. The list includes 35 best practices divided into 7 categories…Minimize HTTP Requests…Use a Content Delivery Network…Add an Expires or a Cache-Control Header…Gzip Components…Put Stylesheets at the Top…Put Scripts at the Bottom…Avoid CSS Expressions…Make JavaScript and CSS External…Reduce DNS Lookups…Minify JavaScript and CSS…Avoid Redirects…Remove Duplicate Scripts…Configure ETags…Make Ajax Cacheable…Flush the Buffer Early…Use GET for AJAX Requests…Post-load Components…Preload Components…Reduce the Number of DOM Elements…Split Components Across Domains…Minimize the Number of iframes…No 404s…Reduce Cookie Size…Use Cookie-free Domains for Components…Minimize DOM Access…Develop Smart Event Handlers…Choose over @import…Avoid Filters…Optimize Images…Optimize CSS Sprites…Don't Scale Images in HTML…Make favicon.ico Small and Cacheable…Keep Components under 25K…Pack Components into a Multipart Document…Avoid Empty Image src…”  http://www.scirra.com/blog/74/making-a-fast-website

Gigabit Internet

7.        Lansing, Michigan part of gigabit Internet initiative  http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20120229/NEWS01/302290025/Lansing-area-part-Gig-U-super-high-speed-Internet-initiative-  “…the Lansing region made a pitch two years ago to become a test site for Google Inc.'s super-high-speed broadband fiber network and came out empty-handed…It caused all of us across the country to aspire higher and higher for the sort of innovation that would come with that kind of connectivity,”…On Tuesday morning, Webster and a handful of community and business leaders gathered at the foundation’s offices in downtown East Lansing to announce their own plan to…bring widespread 1-gigabit broadband service to mid-Michigan…The plan is both to lower barriers to investment by getting local municipalities to expedite…the permit process for installing new broadband networks and to “aggregate demand,”…convincing potential users to locate their businesses in certain key areas…The first targeted areas, identified because they have significant numbers of high-tech, health care and engineering companies, will be a corridor that extends from downtown Lansing to Michigan State University…the community is “exquisitely close” to having all of the fiber-optic cables in place to make the first stage of the plan a success, though a wider distribution of 1-gigabit services would require more substantial infrastructure upgrades…”

8.       OnLive Desktop Plus iPad app brings gigabit web browsing  http://www.t3.com/news/onlive-desktop-plus-ipad-app-brings-ie9-and-gigabit-web-browsing  “…OnLive Desktop Plus subscription service for iPad…now brings full flash-enabled Internet Explorer and access to its gigabit web speeds…a premium version of its recently launched OnLive Desktop app for Apple iPad…brings lightning-fast browsing through a Flash-enabled version of Internet Explorer 9…OnLive Desktop…free offering…has already impressed by offering full and free access to Windows 7…through a remote server…OnLive's…gigabit internet connection through the cloud…means that regardless of your home Wi-Fi connection, you'll be able to connect to remote servers and access some phenomenally fast speeds…Early tests on some sites have pulled-in download speeds of 650Mbps and phenomenal upload speeds of 200Mbps…transfering files through sites like Dropbox and downloading large attachments from web-based Gmail, Yahoo Mail becomes insanely fast…” [so I can’t quite figure out if this is some type of buffering or compression or just pixie dust, but I know the NEW NET participants at this week’s meeting will make all things clear – ed.]

Security, Privacy & Digital Controls

9.       NBC Sics The Lawyers On The Inspector Spacetime Kickstarter Project  http://pandodaily.com/2012/03/01/funs-over-nbc-sicks-the-lawyers-on-the-inspector-spacetime-kickstarter-project/  “The tale of “Inspector Spacetime”…started with a gag on NBC’s “Community”…a few of the main characters on “Community” were shown watching a program called “Inspector Spacetime.” Based on the adventures of a humanoid alien inspector who traveled the galaxy in his flying phone booth, it was essentially the BBC’s “Doctor Who,” just… not…Almost overnight, the fan base behind “Inspector Spacetime” (again, a show that does not exist) exploded. A full, deeply-intertwined backstory sprang from nowhere. Stickers and T-shirts were made. Posters were printed. Not by NBC, mind you, but by the fans…Travis Richey, the guy who actually played Inspector Spacetime in that fleeting scene, decided to make it into something real…a series of webisodes, paid for by the fans themselves through Kickstarter. (A show, from a show, from a show. BWAAARM.)…it seems that NBC and Sony Pictures are having none of it…Travis says that lawyers from NBC and Sony have put a kibosh on things…Though I firmly believe the law would be on my side in producing this parody, I have no wish or ability to fight…I had hoped that they would embrace what is essentially a fan film…the project has been cheekily redubbed “Untitled Web Series About A Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel Through Time.”…Really, NBC/Sony? One of your shows makes a one-off joke that, through some ridiculous stroke of luck, flourishes into a meme? Embrace it! Don’t light it on fire and stomp on its ashes. The show’s team has been very clear that they have no intention to cash in on this, refusing to sell any DVDs or merchandise of any sort…Now, lets see if NBC tries to milk this Inspector Spacetime meme now that they’ve thrown lawyers at the zany fanbase that made it worthwhile…”

10.     New Browser Add-On Visualizes Who Is Tracking You Online  http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/02/ted-mozilla-collusion/  “…Tracking our online behavior is big business. The revenues involved in the top online tracking companies in the space is over $39 billion…Kovacs unveiled a new Firefox add-on named Collusion on Tuesday…a visualization tool that depicts the number and different types of sites that are tracking your browsing as you surf the web…Collusion composes a dot matrix diagram composed of grey dots — sites you’ve visited or are visiting — connected to red dots: sites that have passed your browser tracking cookies to monitor your site navigation…The end-game idea, Kovacs says, is to eventually launch Collusion on a grand scale, allowing users to opt-in and share their tracking data anonymously…The idea is, if we can understand who is tracking us and how, we can find better ways to bypass it…We are being watched. It’s now time for us to watch the watchers…”

11.      Android Apps Can Also Secretly Copy Photos  http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57388797-94/photo-theft-security-loophole-found-in-android-too/  “…A security loophole on Apple's iOS platform that gives applications access to a user's photo library without explicit permission has been found to exist on Google's Android platform as well…Android applications are able to read pictures off a phone as long as that user has given the app permission to use the device's Internet connection…the mobile OS has long been set up to allow this kind of access due to the way it stores data on external memory cards that expand on the phone or tablet's built-in storage. But it may not stay that way. "We originally designed the Android photos file system similar to those of other computing platforms like Windows and Mac OS," a Google spokesperson said in a statement. "At the time, images were stored on a SD card, making it easy for someone to remove the SD card from a phone and put it in a computer to view or transfer those images…”

12.     Police can search cell phones for evidence without first needing a warrant  http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57388786-93/court-warrantless-cell-phone-searches-legal/  “…Police don't need a warrant to search a cell phone for its number, a federal appeals court has ruled. The decision…stems from an Indiana case in which prosecutors used evidence that police found on cell phones at the arrest scene to convict a suspect on drug charges. Police had subpoenaed three months of each cell phone's call history to gather evidence on one of the defendants in the case, Abel Flores-Lopez. Defense attorneys appealed their client's 10-year prison sentence…The three-judge panel was unpersuaded, likening the cell phone to a diary. "It's not even clear that we need a rule of law specific to cell phones or other computers. If police are entitled to open a pocket diary to copy the owner's address, they should be entitled to turn on a cell phone to learn its number…So opening the diary found on the suspect whom the police have arrested, to verify his name and address and discover whether the diary contains information relevant to the crime for which he has been arrested, clearly is permissible; and what happened in this case was similar but even less intrusive, since a cell phone's phone number can be found without searching the phone's contents, unless the phone is password-protected--and on some cell phones even if it is…”

13.     Who can shut down cell phone service? FCC seeks public comment  http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/who-can-shut-down-cell-phone-service-fcc-seeks-public-comment.ars  “The FCC is calling for public comment on the legality of the San Francisco transit agency's interruption of cellular service in August 2011. Bay Area Rapid Transit had shut off cell phone service in its tunnels, anticipating a cell-phone-coordinated protest of the fatal shooting of passengers by the transit system's police…SF transit officials claimed they cut service to protect public safety by dispersing the protest, but critics of that justification said it violated free speech and put people who might need to make emergency calls at risk. The FCC claims that 70 percent of emergency calls now come from mobile phones…”

14.     The Little White Box That Can Hack Your Network  http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/03/pwnie/  “When Jayson E. Street broke into the branch office of a national bank in May of last year, the branch manager could not have been more helpful. Dressed like a technician, Street walked in and said he was there to measure “power fluctuations on the power circuit.” To do this, he’d need to plug a small white device that looked like a power adapter onto the wall…Street had been hired by the bank to test out security at 10 of its West Coast branch offices. He was conducting what’s called a penetration test…bank employees were only too willing to help out. They let Street go anywhere he wanted — near the teller windows, in the vault — and plug in his little white device, called a Pwn Plug…The bank, which Street isn’t allowed to name, called the test off after he’d broken into the first four branches. “After the fourth one they said, ‘Stop now please. We give up.’” Built by a startup company called Pwnie Express, the Pwn Plug is pretty much the last thing you ever want to find on your network — unless you’ve hired somebody to put it there. It’s a tiny computer that comes preloaded with an arsenal of hacking tools. It can be quickly plugged into any computer network and then used to access it remotely from afar. And it comes with “stealthy decal stickers” — including a little green flowerbud with the word “fresh” underneath it, that makes the device look like an air freshener …”

Mobile Computing & Communicating

15.     Tipping point: US smartphones outnumber non-smartphones  http://business.time.com/2012/03/01/nearly-50-of-americans-own-smartphones-android-iphone-dominate/  “Smartphone use is surging in the United States…for the first time, smartphones now outnumber more basic mobile phones…The growing ubiquity of these sophisticated mobile device is fueling an entirely new industry — the so-called “app economy” — but it’s also placing increased burdens on the mobile networks…46%...of all American adults now own a smartphone…That’s an 11% increase from the 35% of Americans who said they owned a smartphone in May of 2011…42% of Americans say they own a more basic cell-phone, also known as a “feature phone.”…Overall adoption levels are at 60% or more within several cohorts, such as college graduates, 18-35 year olds and those with an annual household income of $75,000 or more…”

16.     Next iPad will be the iPad HD; rumor roundup  http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-57391022-248/next-ipad-will-be-the-ipad-hd-not-the-ipad-3/  “…Apple's next tablet will be called the iPad HD instead of the iPad 3…Apple owns the rights to the iPad name in the U.S. and other countries (though that's being debated in courts in China right now), but have others already beaten it to the punch online? On the domain front, the answer to that question is yes. The owner of iPadHD.com told CNET earlier today that he registered the domain before the original iPad was announced in 2010. He told us that he's never been contacted by Apple about the domain in the years he's held onto it…”  http://www.informationweek.com/byte/news/personal-tech/tablets/232602054  “…Let's take a look at some of the loudest iPad 3 rumors we've been hearing…The iPad 3 Will Have a Retina Display…The iPad 3 Will Feature 4G LTE Support…The iPad 3 Will Have a Higher Resolution Camera…The iPad 3 Will Be Similar in Form-factor to the iPad 2, Perhaps Thicker…The iPad 3 Will Have an A5X Processor…The iPad 3 Will Have Siri Support…”

17.     Innovators and Investors See Boon in AT&T Wireless Usage Cap  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-05/billionaire-li-joins-sequoia-seeing-boon-in-at-t-usage-cap-tech.html  “AT&T Inc.’s decision to set caps on heavy users of wireless data is infuriating to some people -- and a boon for startups like Onavo Mobile Ltd. that help reduce consumption. The 20-person company, based in Tel Aviv and San Francisco, makes a free mobile application for Apple Inc. and Android devices that compresses consumers’ mobile downloads, so they use less data…Onavo is just one of many companies U.S. consumers are turning to in an effort to avoid overage fees and getting their network speeds throttled…Venture capitalists are sensing an opportunity…The carriers are starting to force you to look at your data, and you see a lot more people looking to save money…Katz uses Onavo and Boingo Wireless Inc. to reduce his AT&T and Verizon Wireless bills. If Katz wants to download a photo, the image first goes to Onavo’s servers, which shrink the file before sending it on to a carrier’s data network…Many wireless carriers are ratcheting up their rates and capping usage in response to skyrocketing mobile data use, which is putting pressure on their networks. The strain on the global mobile networks more than doubled last year, as consumers began watching more mobile video and using tablets…The carriers already have begun raising prices, to discourage heavy use and recoup spending on their networks…Instead of offering unlimited data, AT&T now sells so- called tiered plans that include a certain amount of data at various price points. In January, AT&T raised those plans’ prices by $5 a month and increased the capacity allowances. AT&T’s tiered data plans cost $30 a month for 3 gigabytes and $50 for 5 gigabytes, plus $10 for every gigabyte over those limits…”

18.     ASUS Padfone formally unveiled  http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/27/asus-padfone-formally-launched-4-3-inch-super-amoled-display-s/  “…ASUS has formally unveiled its versatile, form-changing Padfone…a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD display, Snapdragon's new dual-core S4 chip, an Adreno 225 GPU, Ice Cream Sandwich and an 8-megapixel rear camera with an LED flash and f/2.2 autofocusing lens. (The front camera records at VGA resolution.) Other specs include 16 to 64GB of internal storage (expandable via microSD), Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI, GPS, A-GPS, a gyroscope, 1,520mAh battery and a compass. Connectivity options include WCDMA (900, 2100 MHz), EDGE / GPRS / GSM (850, 1800 and 1900 MHz) and HSPA+, with theoretical download speeds topping out at 42Mbps…If you focus solely on its chip and 9.2mm-thick frame you'd be missing its most distinguishing attribute: it's ability to parade around in tablet's clothing…the Padfone can slide into an optional station that effectively allows you to use it as if it were a 10.1-inch tablet. Like the optional docks sold alongside ASUS' Transformer tablets, the station not only improves the ergonomics, but also extends the battery life -- in this case, by nine-fold…”

19.     Google 'Assistant' Reportedly Will Surpass Siri  http://www.pcworld.com/article/251217/google_assistant_reportedly_will_surpass_siri.html  “Google is said to be working on artificial intelligence technology that could surpass the capabilities of Apple's Siri voice assistant…Google…plans to reveal a new "Assistant" product by the fourth quarter of this year…The feature will be personalized and make use of Google's data collection regarding how people behave online and will be "less about returning search results and more about accomplishing real-life goals,"…Android users will be quick to point out Google’s operating system has had voice commands for quite a while. Still, Google hasn't done a great job of touting Voice Commands so many people using Android haven't played around with it…Here's the full rundown of what you can do using Android's Voice Commands.…”

20.    Android Key Lime Pie set to topple Jelly Bean  http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/android-key-lime-pie-set-to-topple-jelly-bean-1068635  “Key Lime Pie will be the successor to Android Jelly Bean in Google's mobile operating system life cycle…Ice Cream Sandwich (version 4.0) has only just got out of the blocks and Android Jelly Bean (version 5.0) is still months away…It's not clear if Key Lime Pie will be a fully fledged version of Android itself, possibly 6.0, or a minor update from Jelly Bean which could see it sport version number 5.5…”

Apps

21.     Yahoo Cocktail: ambitious developers need more than just HTML5  http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57388697-92/why-ambitious-developers-need-more-than-just-html5/  “…HTML5…is often positioned as the alternative to native application development…the reality is that WC3's HTML5 alone is not enough at this pivotal time in Web history…Yahoo…believe the answer is a combination, or "cocktail" if you will, of technologies--including HTTP, HTML5, Cascading Style Sheets, and JavaScript--which lets publishers and developers build one visually rich app, and reuse the same code to reach several devices with consistent experiences…this switch from a site-centric Web to an app-centric Web is forcing developers to rethink the technologies they use, and it's sparking a debate about whether Web apps can really compete with native apps…developing on several native platforms at once is costly and time-consuming…it is critical for developers to find efficient ways to reach both high- and low-end mobile devices…Yahoo developed a Web application development platform called Yahoo Cocktails to tackle these challenges. Our platform combines…HTTP and HTML, Cascading Style Sheets…and JavaScript…Yahoo Cocktails overcomes five big shortcomings of native-only or HTML5-only development…Security…Distribution…Packaging…Performance…Reach and accessibility…we will be making our first Cocktail, Mojito, open-source within a few weeks, to evolve the Web into an open platform for application development…”

22.    MIT App Inventor Open Beta Preview  http://appinventoredu.mit.edu/developers-blogs/hal/2012/mar/announcing-mit-app-inventor-open-beta-preview  “The MIT Center for Mobile Learning is delighted to announce that we’re meeting our goal of making MIT App Inventor available as a public service in the first quarter of 2012…we have been conducting a closed test of the system for an increasing number of testers, and we’ve currently scaled to 5000 testers. Today, we’re taking the next step, and opening the MIT App Inventor service to everyone …”

23.    7 office suites for Android devices  http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/417447/7_office_suites_android_devices/  “…several office suites…let you view and edit your documents on an Android device. Most were originally designed for use on a smartphone, but here are seven that are compatible with most Android tablets that run Android 2.3…Google Docs (Free)…Documents To Go ($14.99)…Kingsoft Office (Free)…OfficeSuite Pro ($9.99)…Quickoffice Pro (14.99)…Smart Office+ ($9.36)…ThinkFree Office Mobile ($9.99)…”

24.    Android apps max size shoots from 50MB to 4GB  http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57391152-93/android-apps-max-size-shoots-from-50mb-to-4gb/  “…developers can now create Google apps with high-quality 3-D animation. Some Android apps are about to take a lot longer to download, but they'll also have more interactive 3-D graphics, audio, and video. Google boosted its maximum app size from 50MB to 4GB today…Android applications have historically been limited to a maximum size of 50MB. This works for most apps, and smaller is usually better -- every megabyte you add makes it harder for your users to download and get started," software architect Tim Bray wrote on the blog. "However, some types of apps, like high-quality 3D interactive games, require more local resources…”

SkyNet

25.    “Versus” series on G+ Hangout  http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_announces_drug_war_debate_via_hangout.php  “Google announced a new Hangout video show called Versus today on the YouTube blog. It's a partnership with Intelligence², a worldwide forum based in the U.K…Well-known participants debate a proposed motion, and the audience can vote in real time on the value of the arguments. The first motion will be "It's time to end the War on Drugs." Participants include Richard Branson, Russell Brand, Julian Assange and the former presidents of Mexico and Brazil. The moderator is Emily Maitlis of the BBC. It airs on the Versus YouTube channel on March 13 at 7:00 p.m. GMT. By participating on the Versus Google+ page, you could be picked to participate…Hangouts continue to be the bold new feature that can't be ignored. Most Hangout activity is only known to the people who use Google+, but it has gained some mainstream visibility…It's too early (and tech-bloggy) to think of Hangouts as "game-changing," but…Hangouts offer a two-way experience that's more engaging than TV…Google+ is going asymmetrical with Hangouts. It has no competition here. No "social network" in the conventional sense has YouTube's infrastructure as a back-end …”

26.    Google Chrome Browser to be deployed on State Department computers worldwide  http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/chrome-to-be-deployed-on-state-department-computers-worldwide-2012031/  “…Google Chrome is often touted as being the safest and fastest browser available…The sandboxed way that Chrome operates, combined with the speed and fluidity of its updates, means that it just makes sense to give it a try…that’s exactly what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced they were going to do…when Secretary Clinton was asked what could be done about the painfully slow update process for Internet Explorer, she announced that the State Department would be deploying Google Chrome to their offices worldwide…Secretary Clinton warned that some internal software may not be initially compatible with Chrome, so it may be necessary to use Internet Explorer as well…IE8 was fully tested and approved, while Chrome will be an optional browser. The State Department will skip IE9 and move to IE10 on or before February 2013…”

27.    New Google feature syncs recent searches from computer to phone  http://www.geekwire.com/2012/google-feature-shows-pc-searches-mobile-phone  “One of my chores this weekend involved searching Google on my home computer to figure out the hours of the local dump. And the record of the search is right there on the Google home page on my phone. Google today rolled out a new feature on iPhone and Android devices that shows a user’s latest searches for places under a new “recent” icon in the Google mobile web interface. It’s a handy trick when you need to use your phone on the go to find a location that you searched for back at your desk…”

28.    MS pays big $$ to smear Google in Europe  http://falkvinge.net/2012/03/02/how-microsoft-pays-big-money-to-smear-google-audaciously/  “…I spent this week in the European Parliament in Brussels. One of the seminars I attended was advertised as being a seminar on privacy, big data, profiling, and online identities…a well-dressed guy gave us a sloppy-looking printout of two pages in black and white…that it was a hardcopy of a Telegraph article, Dark Forces Gunning For Google, that was over a year old. Something here wasn’t right…What did Google have to do with this discussion in need for regulating governments’ appetite for citizen data and corporations abusing their privacy policies?...The seminar was arranged by ICOMP, a nonsense thirteen-a-dozen-spun name like “Initiative for a Competitive Digital Market Blah Blah Meaning Give Us Money Please”…My first hint of cause for alarm came as one of their head lobbyists sat down beside the four of us from the Swedish Pirate Party…and I overheard the following words from Christian Engström, Member of European Parliament…So your primary source of funding is Microsoft, then?...It was the most shameless bashing of a single company with hints and allegations that I had ever seen…the keynote…was exclusively about how bad Google was as a company..This was not a seminar on privacy at all. This was Microsoft-funded Google-smearing, plain and simple, and I felt my blood starting to boil. No free lunch was worth sitting down and taking this kind of language designed to smear a competitor for profit…So I made the strongest act of disapproval conceivable in the European Parliament. I walked out on a free luxury lunch…”  http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/03/microsoft-v-google

29.    New features in Google Docs  http://www.webpronews.com/google-docs-added-features-2012-03  “…Google Docs Blog just announced that the company has added improved discussions, search-scanned text in PDFs, custom Javascript and CSS support to personal Google sites…Google has made it easier to view and organize all comments made on user drawings, documents and presentations posted in Google Docs – by clicking on the “Comments” button at the upper right of the editor window, one can view a complete history of their discussions…using Google’s Optical Character Recognition technology, users can now search through and copy highlighted text from a scanned PDF…Additional features that were released today include the ability to add custom Javascript and CSS to Google Sites, keyboard shortcuts for navigating between table cells in documents…”

30.    ‘Google Play’ replaces Android Market, consolidates Google’s media marketplaces  http://www.geekwire.com/2012/google-play-replaces-android-market-consolidates-googles-media-marketplaces  “Google today introduced a unified distribution channel for movies, books, music and apps — rolling them all up under the name “Google Play.” Perhaps most notably, Google Play will replace the Android Market as a discovery, sales and distribution channel for Android apps. The company says the combination of the different marketplaces will make it easier for Android users to access different types of content across their devices…”

General Technology

31.     Microsoft Research shows off see-through 3D display, Holoreflector, IllumiShare  http://www.extremetech.com/computing/120293-microsoft-research-shows-off-see-through-3d-display-holoreflector-illumishare  “…Last week, however, Craig Mundie — Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer — showed off some of Microsoft Research’s most promising projects…The projects mostly revolve around movement tracking (Kinect and Kinect-like functionality is still a huge deal for Microsoft) and augmented reality — but one demo, a 3D desktop that utilizes a see-through OLED display, blew my mind…watch the video…Samsung has produced a display that looks almost completely see-through. As for where Microsoft could actually apply this technology in the real world, who knows; a 3D Surface-type interface for Windows 9, perhaps? …”

32.    Windows 8 Beta  http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-57386760-78/windows-8-beta-hands-on-with-microsofts-tablet-friendly-os/  “…I’ve been using the Windows 8 beta…officially known as the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, for the past week, and it's by far the most integrated and capable operating system Microsoft has ever put out…if you're looking for a quick summary: Windows 8 is a breeze to use. It's tricked out with social networking and synchronization, it's robust enough to handle Photoshop…Windows 8's predecessor could be summarized in six words: Windows 7 is Vista done right. Windows 8 is a much harder sell…more of your Windows 8 experience will be dependent on your hardware than ever before, because it will work on both actual PCs--i.e., desktops and laptops--and tablets…”

33.    Ford ushers in era of software upgradable car  http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2012/03/ford-owners-get-thumbdrive-myford-touch-update-this-week/1#.T1aYGvHPG88  “Owners of about the 300,000 of Ford's 2011 and 2012 model vehicles with the MyFord Touch and MyLincoln Touch will start receiving in the mail this week an extensive upgrade for the troubled infotainment and control system. Ford started mailing out flash drives today that owners can plug into the USB port to install the software upgrade by following a few menu prompts. Owners of navigation-equipped vehicles also will get an SD card with new, updated map data. The upgrade takes about 60 minutes, however, and the car must be running the whole time…some commands can still be performed during the first half of the download, but the screen freezes for the second half, meaning climate controls cannot be changed and audio stops. Alternatively, owners can go to a dealer to have it done…”

34.    Nobody Wants to Learn How to Program  http://inventwithpython.com/blog/2012/03/03/nobody-wants-to-learn-how-to-program/  “…Many programming tutorials begin with basic programming principles: variables, loops, data types. This is both an obvious way to teach programming and almost certainly a wrong way to teach programming. It’s wrong because nobody wants to learn how to program. If you are teaching a class of adults who are paying with their own money for an education, then this is an appropriate and direct way to teach programming…But for the casually interested or schoolchildren with several activities competing for their attention, programming concepts like variables and loops and data types aren’t interesting in themselves. They don’t want to learn how to program just for the sake of programming. They don’t want to learn about algorithm complexity or implicit casting. They want to make Super Mario or Twitter or Angry Birds…Here are my five pieces of advice to people who want to teach programming or create programming tutorials…1. Kits Are Not Programming…2. Toy Examples Are Fine, As Long As They Are Braggable…3. Beginner Programmers Are Plagiarists (So Give Them A Lot To Plagiarize)…4. My Programs, Let Me Show You Them…5. Don’t Distract New Programmers with OOP…”

35.    Dept. of Energy signs agreements to develop small nuclear generators  http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/03/dept-of-energy-signs-agreements-to-develop-small-nuclear-generators.ars  “…Department of Energy, led by Steven Chu, has taken a "portfolio" approach to easing the country into a future in which we're less reliant on fossil fuels. Instead of betting on a single technology to solve all our problems, the DOE has been pushing a mix of renewables, efficiency measures, and nuclear power. After having licensed the first new nuclear plant in decades, the DOE has now reached agreements with companies that are trying to develop an alternative to these large facilities. Rather than building large, Gigawatt-scale reactor buildings, several companies are developing what are termed small, modular nuclear reactors that produce a few hundred Megawatts of power. These are typically designed to be sealed units that simply deliver heat for use either directly or to generate electricity. When the fuel starts to run down, the reactors will be shipped back to a central facility for refueling…The new agreements, set up with Hyperion Power Generation, SMR, and NuScale Power, will give the companies access to the DOE's Savannah River National Lab, with the intention of having them develop sites there for a test installation…”

36.    US military robot Cheetah breaks speed record  http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ig0BnPECsNkAwkWLogwQikY9T5bw  “…Pentagon's main research agency has created the fastest-ever land robot, named "Cheetah," which can gallop at a speed of 18 miles (29 kilometers) per hour…The headless robot looks to be about the size of a small dog and is shown running on a treadmill in pictures and video released by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency…"The robot increases its stride and running speed by flexing and unflexing its back on each step, much as an actual cheetah does." Cheetah's dash has set a "new land speed record for legged robots," beating the previous target of 13.1 miles (21.1 kilometers) per hour…”

Leisure & Entertainment

37.    Who decides what gets sold in the bookstore?  http://www.thedominoproject.com/2012/02/who-decides.html  “…There’s been a long history of ubiquity at the bookstore. With a few extreme exceptions, just about every book is available at every bookstore if you’re willing to order it…I just found out that Apple is rejecting my new manifesto Stop Stealing Dreams and won’t carry it in their store because inside the manifesto are links to buy the books I mention in the bibliography. Quoting here from their note to me, rejecting the book: “Multiple links to Amazon store…We’re heading to a world where there are just a handful of influential bookstores (Amazon, Apple, Nook…) and one by one, the principles of open access are disappearing. Apple, apparently, won’t carry an ebook that contains a link to buy a hardcover book from Amazon…once bookstores start to censor the books they carry (business reasons, personal taste, etc.) then the door is open for any interest group to work hard to block books with which they disagree…I think that Amazon and Apple and B&N need to take a deep breath and make a decision on principle: what’s inside the book shouldn’t be of concern to a bookstore with a substantial choke on the marketplace. If it’s legal, they ought to let people read it if they choose to …”

38.    A Photo App That Makes “Awesome” a Verb  http://allthingsd.com/20120228/a-photo-app-that-makes-awesome-a-verb/  “Photography standards have taken a nose dive lately. The photos shared on social networks are often captured on smartphone cameras, which can take poor quality shots. Even photos captured at higher resolutions get downgraded when posted on social networks…Finally, there is an app that gives smartphone camera photos a major boost with powerful photo-capturing functions and editing: Camera Awesome. This is a free camera app made by SmugMug…this app…works for anyone, regardless of whether or not they have SmugMug accounts…it is by far one of the most full-powered camera apps I’ve used…Photos I captured with this app tricked friends into thinking they were taken with a high-quality camera…The app has 297 presets, filters, textures and frames, along with many other features like image stabilization and burst modes…Camera Awesome offers an ideal mix of beauty and brains. A playful “Awesomize” tool enhances with one touch, and hundreds of filters, frames and textures add artistic effects to shots…”

39.    Kodak passes off Gallery printing service to Shutterfly for $23.8M  http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/01/shutterfly-buys-kodak-assets/  “…a month after filing for bankruptcy, Eastman Kodak Company is dumping some of its digital assets…Shutterfly has agreed…to purchase Kodak Gallery for $23.8 million…Kodak Gallery is an online destination where customers in the U.S. and Canada can upload, share, and print their “Kodak moments” as keepsakes. Through the deal, the product’s more than 75 million users and their images will be transferred over to Shutterfly…”

40.    Free-to-play Microsoft Flight released  http://www.geek.com/articles/games/free-to-play-microsoft-flight-released-20120229/  “…in August 2010, it was announced that Microsoft Flight Simulator was making a return under the new name of Microsoft Flight. The name change wasn’t the only difference, though. Microsoft also decided to make it a free-to-play title so as to encourage even more people to have a go playing with the flight simulator. Now some 17 months after the original announcement, as promised Microsoft Flight is available for download. You can start playing right now. The free version of the game includes everything you need to get started. There’s tutorials and missions, and surprisingly Microsoft has allowed you to play in both online and offline modes…”

41.     Flying robots perform 'James Bond' theme  http://www.gizmag.com/quadrotors-perform-james-bond-music/21671/  “…the GRASP quadrotors are back, performing a feat that's certainly…entertaining. In a video…presented…at the TED2012 conference…a group of the little guys are shown performing the James Bond theme on musical instruments. The quadrotors performed in a room that was equipped with infrared lights and cameras. Reflectors on the struts of each robot reflected the light to the cameras, which allowed the system to determine each quadrotor's exact position within the room. That information was then relayed wirelessly back to the robots to make them aware of their own location and those of the other robots. In order to perform the music, each quadrotor had been assigned a set of waypoints in three-dimensional space, each one of which they had to reach at a precise point in time. While those coordinates had been programmed in by human operators, it was up to each robot to determine how to reach its waypoints on time, without disturbing the other units…the exercise…is aimed at improving the quadrotors' performance in…practical applications…learning how to get jobs done while staying out of each others' way…”

Economy and Technology

42.    Toshiba to acquire Western Digital's 3.5-inch HDD manufacturing equipment  http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57387199-92/toshiba-to-acquire-western-digitals-3.5-inch-hdd-manufacturing-equipment/  “Western Digital and Toshiba enter a deal in which Toshiba will take over WD's 3.5-inch HDD manufacturing equipment and intellectual property and WD will acquire Toshiba's 2.5-inch hard-drive facility in Thailand. Toshiba will acquire from WD manufacturing and related intellectual property for 3.5-inch hard drives (HDDs), used in desktop PCs and consumer applications, and near-line HDDs for server applications. Near-line storage is a type of data storage supporting larger capacity and with higher reliability than HDDs for desktop PC applications…”

43.    The Credit Card Is The New App Platform  http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2012/03/01/the-credit-card-is-the-new-app-platform/  “Credit and debit cards are ubiquitous, but they’re mostly pretty dumb. That’s about to change…We’re at the early stages of a massive wave of innovation in the payment industry…The platform in this case is the payment network. Software developers will add new capabilities to cards by programming the payment network to link online applications to specific payment events. Consumers will be able to effectively “drag and drop” apps to their smart cards in the same way that they add apps to their smart phones today…Online commerce is now a $200 billion industry, but it’s still small compared to offline transactions. Up to 70% of consumer spending is influenced by Web and mobile research, but over 90% of actual transactions are still conducted in the physical world…With cloud-connected cards, you can clear out your desk drawer or wallet. Instead of holding on to that Red Lobster gift card, REI loyalty card and printed Groupon deal, you can add these to your card, and receive benefits automatically when you make a purchase. You can also store a digital receipt or warranty on your card rather than keeping these in a filing cabinet in the basement…”

44.    Jumio helps merchants take credit cards via webcam  http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/05/jumio-funding-25m-andreessen-horowitz/  “…Jumio’s main focus is to help retailers process credit card transactions quickly and securely using webcams. Its Netswipe technology lets consumers show their credit card to a webcam to get details instead of typing them in. Jumio can detect what type of material is being scanned, so a photocopy of the credit card will not work…Netverify can turn a webcam into a secure ID reader. Netverify lets merchants confirm an ID online without having a customer fax or scan the ID, making the process faster. CEO Daniel Mattes told us that he has had his credit card details stolen twice and that his experience is not uncommon. Hackers can take credit card numbers you type online, so Jumio can theoretically make the process of buying online safer and quicker…”

45.    Spiroscout inhaler uses GPS, WiFi to track asthma attacks  http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/14/spiroscout-inhaler-uses-gps-wifi-to-track-asthma-attacks/  “Back in 2009, we told you about a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist using GPS to tag asthmatics in an effort to better understand what was triggering their attacks. Two years later, David Van Sickle and his current company, Asthmapolis, are about ready to turn his research into a commercial product dubbed the Spiroscout. The USB-powered inhaler uses GPS as well as WiFI to track patients' inhaler use, which Van Sickle says will yield a fuller, more accurate body of data than the self-recorded logs patients are often asked to keep. The benefit is two-fold, Van Sickle says: physicians can use this data to adjust their patients' medication, if necessary, while epidemiologists might have more insight into population-level trends…”

46.    How Giant Patent Troll Intellectual Ventures Does Business  http://www.businessinsider.com/revealed-how-giant-patent-troll-intellectual-ventures-does-business-2012-3  “…Founded by former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold about a decade ago, the company's main business is getting patents, then using them to extract licensing fees or legal settlements from other companies. The impolite word for companies who use patents this way… is "patent troll."…Until a lawsuit last year, nobody knew exactly who its investors were, or who had licensed its patents. (Turns out that Microsoft, Apple, Sony and a ton of other prominent tech companies have invested and/or taken licenses. So have a number of universities.)…Intellectual Ventures has between 30,000 and 60,000 patents…It uses more than 1,200 shell companies. IV's patent holdings and legal actions are hard to track because it often assigns patents to shell companies…About half its patents originated outside the U.S.  A lot of patents are not valued as highly overseas as they are in the U.S…Big companies invest, then use its patents for defense. For instance, Verizon paid $350 million for patent licenses an equity stake in one of IV's funds in 2008. When TiVo sued Verizon for patent infringement, Verizon "purchased a patent from one of Intellectual Ventures’ shell companies, which was then put to work as a counterclaim in the TiVo suit…IV has a "turnkey" method for getting patents from smaller companies. IV pays the company a one-time fee and a percentage of any profits it makes from the patents. IV then "assumes the costs of maintaining the portfolio, and gains the right to go after other companies."…Feldman and Ewing compare IV's activities to "privateering," a now-abolished kind of warfare from the 1800s. Countries would encourage private sailors to attack their enemies' ships and auction off the proceeds…the company licenses some patents to more aggressive third parties, then lets them do the dirty work of licensing and suing. They speculate -- but do not have evidence to prove -- that IV could use this tactic to convince new companies to license its patents, and to make sure existing customers keep paying up. It's an ugly business. But it's also perfectly legal…”

47.    Apple Wins Patent for iWallet: The one that will rule the World  http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/03/apple-wins-patent-for-iwallet-the-one-that-will-rule-the-world.html  “In May of 2010 we were surprised to see Apple's first iWallet patent officially surface. In that year we witnessed a steady stream of Near Field Communication based patents that kick started the iWallet trend…Today, Apple has been granted a major iWallet patent and it's one that has never been reported on before. Apple's patent reviews credit card transaction rules and shows us that the credit card companies will be sending statements directly to your iTunes account. The iWallet project just became a little more real today, and for many, it can't come soon enough. Who knows, perhaps one day Apple's iWallet will rule the world: the financial world that is…Apple has received a major Granted Patent that generally relates to establishing financial transaction rules for controlling a subsidiary financial account and, more particularly, to various systems, methods, and electronic devices configured to provide for the establishment of such rules…”

DHMN Technology

48.    How to make more 'makers'  http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/10/how-to-make-more-makers/  “Joey Hudy, a young "maker" from Phoenix went to the White House this week to show off his project, the "Extreme Marshmallow Cannon." When President Obama saw it, he told Joey: "Let's try it." Joey set up the air cannon, which uses a bicycle pump to build up air pressure, and put a marshmallow down the barrel. When he pressed the trigger, a single marshmallow was shot out across the room to the delight of everyone, but especially the president…Joey first came to Maker Faire – an event for "makers," or people who make things with their hands – last year in the Bay Area and he brought the Extreme Marshmallow Cannon with him…Joey then participated in the Maker Faires in Detroit and New York as well as a smaller independent Maker Faire in his hometown of Phoenix. He shared the instructions for the Extreme Marshmallow Cannon on Make…As a result of all these efforts, Joey was selected to represent Maker Faire at the White House this week…Makers start with that simple idea to do something…Soon, however, they find out that there are lots of people like you out there. When you find others, you have a community…We can find all kinds of makers in our communities…we also want to help create more makers. Through education and community outreach, we can offer the opportunity to make things to more people, but particularly children …”

49.    Electro Wire Stripper  http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:16332  “This is one of the best wire strippers I have ever used. If setup correctly, it can be very precise and give feedback telling when the blades have cut deep enough…Align the blades with where the wire should be stripped…When the blades cut through the insulation and contact the wire the LED will light…Remove the wire from the tool and pull off the insulation …”

50.    New speech-jamming gun hints at dystopian Big Brother future  http://www.extremetech.com/computing/120583-new-speech-jamming-gun-hints-at-dystopian-big-brother-future  “Japanese researchers have created a hand-held gun (pictured above) that can jam the words of speakers who are more than 30 meters (100ft) away. The gun has two purposes, according to the researchers: At its most basic, this gun could be used in libraries and other quiet spaces to stop people from speaking — but its second application is a lot more chilling. The researchers were looking for a way to stop “louder, stronger” voices from saying more than their fair share in conversation. The paper reads: “We have to establish and obey rules for proper turn-taking when speaking. However, some people tend to lengthen their turns or deliberately interrupt other people when it is their turn in order to establish their presence rather than achieve more fruitful discussions. Furthermore, some people tend to jeer at speakers to invalidate their speech.” In other words, this speech-jamming gun was built to enforce “proper” conversations. The gun works by listening in with a directional microphone, and then, after a short delay of around 0.2 seconds, playing it back with a directional speaker. This triggers an effect that psychologists call Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF), which has long been known to interrupt your speech (you might’ve experienced the same effect if you’ve ever heard your own voice echoing through Skype or another voice comms program). According to the researchers, DAF doesn’t cause physical discomfort, but the fact that you’re unable to talk is obviously quite stressful…”

51.     Boy and Girl Scouts? Meet the hacker scouts  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-57389087-52/boy-and-girl-scouts-meet-the-hacker-scouts/  “If you were ever a Boy Scout, you may recall earning an archery or camping badge. Girl Scouts offer athlete, naturalist, and many others. But what if you're a kid with serious 3D printing or laser cutting chops? Is there a badge for you? There is now, thanks to the folks at Adafruit Industries…Starting in the next few days--timed to the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts on March 12--Adafruit will begin offering a broad set of skill badges that reward kids--and presumably others--for completing any of a long list of the kind of tasks that would be right at home at Maker Faire. Learned to solder? There's a badge for that. "You sent something to space, almost," Adafruit offers its high-altitude balloon project badge. Worked on an Android or Linux project? Adafruit has you covered…The goal is to celebrate skill earning the same way kids play video games," Torrone said, "unlocking achievements and earning badges…For the moment, Adafruit is doing this project on its own. But Torrone said that he and Fried have hopes--unrealized so far--that they can get either or both of the Boy Scouts of America or the Girl Scouts of America to adopt the idea of rewarding DIY-era accomplishments with these new badges…”

52.    Augmented Reality Roundup: AR Still Has Some Tricks Up Its Sleeve  http://www.thecreatorsproject.com/blog/augmented-reality-roundup-ar-still-has-some-tricks-up-its-sleeve  “…augmented reality (AR)…is continuing to deliver new and interesting uses that keep cropping up on a daily/weekly/monthly basis…our augmented promised land is still visible on the horizon…we lassoed a few developments together…MIT Augmented Rope…an AR rope gaming system called Rope Revolution, which can be used by players to team up across the distance of continents or even more locally, like in the same room, to fly a kite, skip, or ride a horse…Microsoft’s “Holoflector”…this set up is able to render graphics which appear as a reflection in real-time, but are in fact a tracked virtual copy…Sesame Street Augmented Reality Dolls…Using a tablet and the Vuforia augmented reality platform, Bert and Ernie dolls come to life inside their apartment…Total Immersion’s AR Racing Game…you get put into the driver’s seat using a webcam to plant your head inside the racer’s helmet…”

Open Source Hardware

53.    Open source helicopters  http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/public-sector/2012/03/open-source-helicopters-trivia.html  “…the US military is planning a generation of open source helicopters. This is not just a generation of helicopters. It is the next generation of US military helicopter. It'll be built on open standards, and will actively court open source systems suppliers…Weapons manufacturers and US forces made an unequivocal declaration for royalty-free standards in January through the FACE (Future Airborne Capabilities Environment) Consortium they formed in response to US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta's call for a "common aircraft architecture and subsystems". The FACE Standard is an open, nonproprietary technical specification that is publicly available without restrictive contracts, licensing terms, or royalties…the US military is embracing open standards…to prevent an unhealthy concentration of market power in the hands of a small number of private interests…to prevent "lock-in" being achieved by a few powerful suppliers…Kill-or-be-killed stakes intensify the relationship between hardware and software in military systems…The military has already made some progress in, for example, common cockpit displays that can be shared between F-22 fighter planes and Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters…Software systems have become the most important aspect of military aviation, said the FACE consortium…As part of an open aircraft architecture it would cut costs by 50 per cent, reckoned FACE…”

54.    MeeBlip launches improved open hardware synthesizer  http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/MeeBlip-launches-improved-version-of-their-open-hardware-synthesizer-1463747.html  “The MeeBlip open source hardware project has announced an improved version of their hackable synthesizer…The device is available as a "quick build kit" which only requires minimal assembly and as a slightly cheaper DIY option that requires "an evening or two of soldering and assembly". Improvements from the previous version include…the ability to store and recall up to 16 patches and the ability to fully control the device via a MIDI interface. The MeeBlip SE now also supports anti-aliased waveforms and variable pulse width that can be adjusted via a dedicated control…The MeeBlip SE will start shipping on 16 March and will cost $149.95 (£95) for the "quick build kit", needing only assembly, and $129.95 (£82) for the version that still needs components to be soldered and then assembled. Until 31 March, the device is available for $10 off from the project's web store…”

55.     Thermal flashlight 'paints' cold rooms with colour  http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328546.200-thermal-flashlight-paints-cold-rooms-with-colour.html  “A DIY gadget shines different colours of light on a surface depending on its temperature, helping to show where more insulation is needed in a room…The device comes from the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, a non-profit group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that develops open-source tools to allow ordinary people to investigate environmental issues. A PLOTS team is working with a school-run project in Harlem, New York, to help tackle landlords who offer poorly heated apartments…Standard thermal cameras are prohibitively expensive for ordinary people. Costly sensors mean a camera with the resolution of a budget webcam can set you back thousands of dollars. That's because each pixel represents a separate thermal probe. In contrast, the thermal flashlight prototype costs about $40. What's more, it can easily be assembled by someone with no electronics expertise. To prove how easy it is, visitors to the Citizen Cyberscience Summit in London last month were shown how to build their own devices by fastening probes and wire to a circuit board…”

Open Source

56.    Raspberry Pi gets Arch Linux  http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/news/raspberry-pi-gets-arch-linux/  “…Arch Linux ARM for Raspberry Pi is finally ready. Coming mere days after the sell-out launch of the tiny computer, Arch Linux ARM is the second operating system to be officially approved by the Raspberry Pi Foundation…Arch Linux ARM is based on Arch Linux, which aims for simplicity and full control to the end user. It provides a lightweight base structure that allows you to shape the system to your needs. For this reason, the Arch Linux ARM image for the Raspberry Pi does not come with a graphical user interface…”

57.     Open-Source Makes Way for Robot  http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=920&doc_id=240024&f_src=internetevolution_gnews  “Robots and robotics are about to experience the transformative power of the Internet, echoing in many ways the evolution of computers themselves…it wasn't until the arrival of the Internet that people looked beyond computers themselves and focused on what they wanted to do, have, or be. Computers became must-haves…The Internet and cellphone technology are about to do the same for robots and robotics…The next-generation robots, like the PR2 from Willow Garage, are multipurpose, highly functional, and reprogrammable. However, they are also big and expensive. (For example, the PR2 costs $400,000). They may be analogous to mainframes. The end of the mainframe began with Bill Gates' crucial insight that the revolutionary microprocessor was nothing without software…the same is happening in robotics. A new generation of software functionality is opening up new horizons…Now there is Robot Operating System (ROS), also from Willow Garage, which enables developers to write software for any ROS-enabled robot. ROS is also open-source…Aldebaran Robotics offers NAO, a highly adaptable 60cm-high humanoid robot that is compatible with ROS but has its own open-source software, the NAOqi framework and Choreographe programming language, which have their own SDK. Still comparatively expensive at $15,000, NAO is aimed at the education, research, development, and entertainment markets…another wave of robots in the offing is looking to embrace everything offered by the Net, including cellphone technology…OLogic, an R&D company focused on consumer robotics, is prototyping robots based on cellphones and the Android operating system…DragonBot, a robot from the MIT Media Lab, runs entirely on an Android cellphone. The technology…makes use of the cellphone's built-in functions (camera, microphone, etc.), but its key feature is using its always-on Internet connection to communicate with and learn from other robots…”

Civilian Aerospace

58.    Virgin Galactic Aims for 1st Rocket-Powered Flight This Year  http://www.space.com/14706-virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-powered-flight.html  “Virgin Galactic hopes to perform the first rocket-powered test flight of its suborbital spaceliner by the end of 2012, with commercial operations perhaps beginning a year or two later…SpaceShipTwo has already performed 16 unpowered flight tests, in which the winged vehicle glides back to to a runway after being dropped in midair from its mothership…Pomerantz announced that Virgin Galactic is nearing another big milestone as well. It has signed up almost 500 paying passengers — people who think a trip to suborbital space is worth the $200,000 Virgin is charging for a seat on SpaceShipTwo…”

59.    Project at Carnegie Mellon is to put a robot on moon http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_784867.html  “…Whittaker, a Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor and CEO of Astrobotic Technology Inc., says his team has pushed back its plans to land a robot on the moon by a year — to May 2015…The CMU/Astrobotic team is competing to claim a portion of a multimillion-dollar prize for landing a robot on the moon. The team's new plan calls for a robot prospector to drill for ice samples at the moon's south pole to try to confirm the existence of water there…His team is among 26, including one from Penn State University, that are competing to claim a portion of the Google Lunar X prize, which will go to the first team to land a robot on the moon, make it travel 500 meters and transmit video to earth…The CMU/Astrobotic team built and tested its lunar lander. Last year Astrobotic signed a contract for a $60 million space shot with the privately owned Space X company…”

Supercomputing & GPUs

60.    AMD and Nuvixa Work On More Immersive Telepresence  http://www.telepresenceoptions.com/2012/03/amd_and_nuvixa_bring_new_immer/  “AMD today announced it has invested in Nuvixa, Inc., a developer of gesture-based video communication and presentation solutions, through AMD Ventures…Leveraging depth-sensing camera technologies, the Nuvixa StagePresence immersive video presentation tool extracts a presenter from virtually any background environment, and embeds their live video persona within any compatible digital desktop or slide content. Image processing enhancements only available via OpenCL and AMD accelerated processing units (APUs) create immersive performance and quality improvements that deliver close to double the frame rate(1) and a more immersive experience to online audiences…”

61.     OpenCL Gains Ground On CUDA  http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2012-02-28/opencl_gains_ground_on_cuda.html  “As the two major programming frameworks for GPU computing, OpenCL and CUDA have been competing for mindshare in the developer community for the past few years. Until recently, CUDA has attracted most of the attention from developers, especially in the high performance computing realm. But OpenCL software has now matured to the point where HPC practitioners are taking a second look…Kyle Spafford, from the Future Technology Group at Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL), has been benchmarking the two technologies for some time and is now convinced that OpenCL performance is now on par with that of CUDA. He recently presented his findings at Georgia Tech's Keeneland Workshop…”

*****