2009/05/26

NEW NET Issues List for 26 May 2009

Below is the final list of issues for the TUESDAY, 26 May 2009, NEW NET (Northeast Wisconsin Network for Economy and Technology) 7:00 - 9:00 pm weekly gathering. This week we're upstairs at Tom's Drive In, 501 N Westhill Blvd, Appleton, Wisconsin, USA.

One discussion topic at tonight's NEW NET will be portable power options for laptops, netbooks and other electronic devices. Luke's purchase of an ultraportable command line device has him pondering the options for power whilst on the go. If you know of cost effective options for long-life portable power packs, give us a shout or show up at Tom's.

The ‘net

1. Learning, Profiting, from Online Friendships http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_22/b4133032573293.htm “…Friendships aren't what they used to be. We now have tools, from e-mail to social networks, to keep in touch with people who a decade ago would have drifted into distant memories. Practically every hand we shake and every business card we exchange can lead to an invitation, sometimes within minutes, for a "friendship" on LinkedIn or Facebook. And unless we sever them, these ties could linger for the rest of our lives. What do these relationships say about us and the people in our networks?…”

2. Food Web, Meet Interweb: The Networked Future of Farms http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/food-web-meet-interweb/ “…Food could undergo a transition like the one that swept through classified ads, air travel and dozens of other industries…information flow could be the hidden lever inside the food system. The current system does a remarkably good job of concealing how food is grown and by whom. Lettuce planted halfway around the world looks pretty much like lettuce grown around the corner. Farmers have a hard time showing the value they add and being recognized for innovative practices. The current distribution of edibles works the way it does, though, because it’s brutally effective at reliably delivering low-cost food all over the country…Three students at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Information are trying to create a social network, Squash and Vine, to connect farms, retailers and food consumers. And a handful of activists in Santa Cruz created a service for finding small farms, Local Harvest, that now reaches 4 million people…”

3. Online microstock photos: Fotolia http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/22/fotolia-takes-a-massive-50-to-100-million-round-from-ta-associates/ “…Fotolia has been self-funded by French entrepreneurs Oleg Tscheltzoff, Thibaud Elziere, and some silent partners. The company is officially headquartered in New York City, but everyone still works from home. The company has been on a roll lately. It reached one million registered users and five million images for sale in February, introduced microstock video in April, hired an iStockPhoto co-founder in May, and just yesterday launched a royalty-free photo site called PhotoXpress. Fotolia is smaller than iStockPhoto, but it has been going through a recent spurt of growth, while iStockPhoto seems to be stagnating…”

4. White House Launches Data.gov http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/white-house-launches-datagov-and-seeks-advice-on-transparency/ The Obama administration launched its anticipated Data.gov web site today where federal agencies will publish raw data. The data is being made available to programmers to allow them to develop applications to make the data more accessible to the public…To encourage the development of applications for the data, the Sunlight Foundation, in conjunction with others, has launched a competition, Apps for America 2: the Data.gov Challenge. The winner of the best application will receive $10,000…”

5. Move to online public notices looms over papers http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090522/ap_on_hi_te/us_newspapers_government_ads “…State laws require newspaper notices to inform citizens about official activities, such as changes to tax laws, foreclosures and public meetings. Newspapers have long been deemed the best outlets for these notices because they are widely accessible, relatively inexpensive, have a documented list of subscribers and are easily preserved for records…Publishers who fear losing one of their most reliable revenue streams contend that nothing replaces the local newspaper as a community bulletin board. Newspapers run public notices on their Web sites in addition to the printed pages…Newspaper advocates worry an online shift will reduce the public's understanding about civic affairs and ability to act on the information…”

6. Why It’s the Megabits, Not the MIPs, That Matter http://gigaom.com/2009/05/22/why-its-the-megabits-not-the-mips-that-matter/ “…If you ask people if they had a choice of getting a computer with a processor that is 10 times more powerful than their current one, or get a connection that is 10 times as fast, most people would opt for the latter,” Papadopoulos pointed out. He’s is a believer in the 4G wireless broadband technology called Long-Term Evolution (LTE) because he knows that multimegabit wireless speeds are going to spawn a brand-new class of devices…”

Security, Privacy & Digital Controls

7. Military is looking for a few good geeks http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/21/cybersecurity-students-hackers-technology-security-cybersecurity.html “…Cyber Challenge, which will be officially announced later this month, will create three new national competitions for high school and college students intended to foster a young generation of cybersecurity researchers. The contests will test skills applicable to both government and private industry: attacking and defending digital targets, stealing data, and tracing how others have stolen it…More is at stake in these games than mere geek glory. Talented entrants would be recruited for cyber training camps planned for summer 2010, nonprofit camps run by the military and funded in part by private companies, or internships at agencies including the National Security Agency, the Department of Energy or Carnegie Mellon's Computer Emergency Response Team…Paller told the story of Tan Dailin, a graduate student in China's Sichuan province who in 2005 won several government-sponsored hacking competitions and the next year was caught intruding on U.S. Department of Defense networks, siphoning thousands of unclassified documents to servers in China…”

8. Blogger Faces Lawsuit Over Comments Posted by Readers http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB112541909221726743-_vX2YpePQV7AOIl2Jeebz4FAfS4_20060831.html?mod=blogs “…Traffic-Power.com sued Aaron Wall, who maintains a blog on search engine optimization – tactics companies use to get themselves to appear higher in searches at Google, Yahoo and elsewhere – alleging defamation and publication of trade secrets…At issue are statements posted in the comments section of Mr. Wall's blog, SEOBook.com. Many blogs allow readers to post comments, often anonymously, and Mr. Wall's blog included several reader submissions that blasted tools sold by Traffic-Power.com…Other Web sites have criticized Las Vegas-based Traffic-Power.com's business, saying the company has coerced prospective clients into signing up for its service through aggressive telemarketing. Dave Baardsen of Absecon, N.J., who owns TrafficPowerSucks.com, said he also was sued this month by Traffic-Power.com in Nevada…Legal analysts said the suit could be a test case for determining what protections bloggers have or don't have for allegedly defamatory material posted by others. At issue would be the court's application of the federal Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that, broadly, protects providers of computer services from being held liable for content posted by others…”

9. Craigslist vs. South Carolina: Now It's Personal http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/craigslist_vs_south_carolina_now_its_personal.php “…As Craigslist's CEO, Jim Buckmaster, argued in an unusually aggressive blog post on Monday, it is hard not to think that McMaster unfairly singled out Craigslist for his own political gain, especially given that the changes Craigslist instituted last week, go even beyond the proposed measures the Attorney General himself accepted in a joint statement of over 40 Attorney Generals and Craigslist…A number of legal experts have argued that the "safe harbor" provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) protects Craigslist from criminal prosecution, as, according to the DMCA, an "interactive computer service" can not be held responsible for content posted on the service's site…”

Mobile Computing & Communicating

10. AT&T Netbook data plans go coast-to-coast http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10244962-1.html “…you'll soon be able to buy mini ultraportable laptops made by Dell, Lenovo, and Acer at a discounted price when you get a 3G data plan at one of AT&T's retails store or on its Web site…by the end of 2009, worldwide shipments of mini laptops could reach 22 million…Netbooks embedded with AT&T 3G services will also be available through other national retailers.”

11. Android is 'a revolution' http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10245994-93.html “…Android made its debut in 2007, a few months after another computer with designs on improving the Internet experience on a phone--the iPhone--hit the streets as perhaps the most hyped gadget ever. Buzz has been slower to build around Android, but that could start to change as additional phones arrive that have a bit more pizazz than the G1, the world's first Android phone released last October…Rubin…sat down with CNET News to review Google's progress thus far and share his impressions of what makes Android unique…”

12. New Yorker Cover Art, Painted With an iPhone http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/business/media/25yorker.html “…Some people send text with their iPhones, and some play games. The artist Jorge Colombo created this week’s cover for The New Yorker with his. Mr. Colombo drew the June 1 cover scene, of a late-night gathering around a 42nd Street hot dog stand, entirely with the iPhone application Brushes…Mr. Colombo bought his iPhone in February, and the $4.99 Brushes application soon after, and said the portability and accessibility of the medium appealed to him…It “made it easy for me to sketch without having to carry all my pens and brushes and notepads with me, and I like the fact that I am drawing with a set of tools that anybody can have easily in their pocket,” he said. There is one other advantage of the phone, too: no one notices he is drawing. Mr. Colombo said he stood on 42nd Street for about an hour with no interruptions…”

13. Lenovo S12 Netbook: heavy-duty Ion graphics http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10247921-1.html “…The IdeaPad S12, arriving in August, will be the first Netbook sporting discrete graphics from the Nvidia Ion processor. With power similar to the 9400M chipset already in Apple's 13-inch MacBooks, IonNetbooks promise full-HD video output and actual gaming performance…The price is right, too--$499 for the Ion-packing S12, with a 12.1-inch, 1,280x800 screen and Atom N270 processor…”

Open Source

14. Why the Arduino Matters http://www.urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2009/05/why_the_arduino_matters.html “…Why was the Altair such a runaway success? After all, by comparison to the cutting edge computers of its day, it was underpowered and extremely difficult to work with. The answer is ownership. The Altair offered bourgeoning hackers their first chance at a computer that would be fully and completely theirs. They could take it home, throw it up on their work bench, take it apart, put it back together and try to get it to do totally new unimagined things…Recently, our Altair arrived. It's called the Arduino. This is 2009 so instead of being built by two engineers in Albuquerque, it was built by an open source international cabal of programmers and professors. A lot of people complain that it's underpowered and overpriced (even though it only costs $8.64 in 1975 dollars). But you don't need special hardware to program it. It lets you do all the basic tasks with just a line or two of perfectly comprehensible code. And there's a thriving community of people busily using it to do all the useless, fun, creative things they'd always dreamed of if only they could get their hands on a computer that could sense and control the world around it. They're using it to teach houseplants to call for help if they need watering. And they're using it to play music on glasses of water…”

15. Loongson-2 MIPS Lemote Yeeloong Netbook http://www.osnews.com/story/21530/The_Loongson-2_MIPS_Lemote_Yeeloong_Netbook “…Enter the first non-i386, Debian GNU/Linux mini laptop - and the first mini laptop that doesn't target children or the general audience, but users (students, hobbyists, professionals) specifically looking for a Linux system. Not only is the Lemote Yeeloong incompatible with i386, it is part of a larger Chinese effort to produce an independent range of processors, for which no license fees have to be paid to major American, Japanese or other foreign cpu designers such as Intel…The Lemote Yeeloong mini laptop is just one of a range of Lemote computers equipped with the energy-efficient Loongson2 cpu. A MIPS-compatible cpu (MIPS following RISC principles, if I understood it correctly, like ARM, PowerPC, SPARC do, among others) clocked at 797 MHz…Assembled by Quanta, one of the major laptop manufacturers, the Yeeloong's looks and build are not revolutionarily unlike many other mini laptops. Although I don't own any other mini laptops of the "netbook" genre, I've tried out several in stores to find out how they compare. Since I'm a Thinkpad user, the keyboard is on my priority list - the keyboard of the Yeeloong is quite decent, with a good layout…”

16. iUnika debuts GYY a low-cost solar-powered netbook http://www.ecofriend.org/entry/eco-gadgets-iunika-debuts-gyy-a-low-cost-solar-powered-netbook/ “…iUnika, has launched an ecofriendly netbook computer, iUnika GYY. The netbook weighs only 700gm and carries a 400MHz processor running the GNU/Linux operating system. With an 8-inch screen boasting a resolution of 800 X 480, the system is powered by solar panels mounted on the rear of the display. The system features up to 64GB of flash memory and a low 128MB of RAM, which according to the company is enough to run many free applications developed for GNU/Linux. In terms of connectivity, the system comes with Wi-Fi and a 10/100 Ethernet card. Apart from the use of solar energy, the system body’s is made from bioplastics and other biodegradable materials derived from starch and cellulose. Costing a little over $180, the system should hit the shelves in late June…”

17. Netbook Runs on AA Batteries http://www.osnews.com/story/21555/Netbook_Runs_on_AA_Batteries “…It's powered by an x86 system-on-chip called the Vortex86MX from Taiwanese company DMP Electronics. Its processor is an x86-compatible with ARM-like power consumption (1.2W!) which runs at 1.0Ghz. The Gecko EduBook has other goodies too, such as an internal SD card for storage (it also has an IDE slot) as well as internal space for a Bluetooth or WiFi dongle. It has an 8.9" 1024x600 display, and the CPU/RAM module is removable, and can carry anywhere between 256MB and 1GB of DDR2 RAM. The cool stuff is of course that it can be powered by a set of 8 NiMH AA batteries, which can power the netbook for 4 hours; you can also buy a normal battery pack which will power it for 6 hours…By default it comes with Ubuntu Linux…” [http://www.norhtec.com/products/gecko/index.html]

18. Protect Your Linux Data With TrueCrypt http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tips/6756/1/ “…TrueCrypt is open source disk encryption software for Linux, Windows and Mac OSX…TrueCrypt has several useful features, including the ability to create a hidden encrypted volume inside a standard encrypted one. In a situation where you're forced to reveal your password, that hidden volume can't be identified (as it looks the same as the random data you get anyway on an encrypted volume). Encryption/decryption is handled on-the-fly. Although there is a slowdown, it isn't prohibitive…”

19. Desktop Linux For The Windows Power User http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ubuntu-linux-guide,2293.html “…I've been a Windows user since 1995, and before that, I used MS-DOS. I had Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE. I even went out and bought a copy of Millennium Edition (Ed.: we're sorry, Adam). I was a beta tester and early adopter of Windows XP. I made sure to get my hands on the beta of Windows 7 and I've never even considered switching to a Mac…With that said, Ubuntu Linux has been my primary operating system for the past year. I've periodically checked in on Linux since 1997. I screamed at the monitor, smashed the keyboard, pulled my hair out, and yes, even cried more than once…Then, last April, I put together a brand-new rig and wanted a brand-new operating system to match. After reading the critical reviews of Vista…I was unimpressed and not willing to pony up that kind of cash…I figured I would try Linux again, and installed Ubuntu 7.10…it's a good thing that I gave it another chance, because today I am as happy with Ubuntu as I was with XP in 2001…”

20. Balancing open-source community and commerce http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10248445-62.html “…My initial question for Olson was how does the company succeed when users are happy with the open-source project? Olson answered with several key points…Most enterprise buyers are very different from Facebook and Yahoo. They employ much smaller development and IT staff. They need strong SLAs and a quick response to problems from a vendor with deep expertise. Cloudera aims to solve those problems in ways that community support, mailing lists, and online forums can't. This is typical of open-source projects that become more like products, and the challenge is ensuring that the project lives on and the commercialization efforts are balanced with good citizenship to non-customers…”

SkyNet

21. Google launches PowerMeter smart-grid service http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10245295-54.html Google has signed on smart-meter manufacturer Itron and eight utilities to offer Google's PowerMeter Web service for monitoring home energy use. PowerMeter reads a home's electricity meter and gives the consumer a detailed readout of usage. The idea is that a better understanding of electricity usage--presented via daily trends and data on individual appliances--will help people figure out how to cut consumption…For now, Google PowerMeter is only available to a limited group of customers, but we plan to expand our roll out later this year…Google says that PowerMeter is a free, opt-in service…It is estimated that simply surfacing information on trends and individual appliances will allow the typical consumer to lower electricity use by 5 to 15 percent…”

22. Google Chrome 2.0 http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=4404 “…Google’s Chrome browser was already fast, but the 2.0 update loads JavaScript-heavy web pages about 30% faster than version 1.0. Benchmark tests I’ve run seems to suggest that this claim holds true, and in fact when version 2.0 is compared against version 1.0 using Google’s V8 benchmark, the newer browser is twice as fast.for those who like an all-singing, all-dancing browser, Google’s Chrome as always been a poor choice because while the browser packed plenty of power, it was very basic. Chrome 2.0 is no different. Here are some of the most significant newly added features to Chrome 2.0…”

23. Algorithms to optimize Google’s workforce? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124269038041932531.html “…The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit…The inputs include information from surveys and peer reviews, and Google says the algorithm already has identified employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving…The move is one of a series Google has made to prevent its most promising engineers, designers and sales executives from leaving at a time when its once-powerful draws -- a start-up atmosphere and soaring stock price -- have been diluted by its growing size…Google's algorithm helps the company "get inside people's heads even before they know they might leave…”

24. Is Google Terminator's SkyNet? http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2009/03/google-terminators-skynet.html Is Google SkyNet? In a word: Yes. In fact, in some ways, it's even smarter. SkyNet didn't assume worldwide domination until 2029, while Google has already effectively monopolized search and it's only 2009…”

25. Google Images Show Growing Crude Storage in China http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/05/22/chinese-oil-google-images-show-growing-crude-storage-in-china/ “…Energy analysts at Sanford Bernstein say eye-in-the-sky satellite images from Google show the Chinese are packing away a rising amount of crude in storage tanks. “Our analysis confirms that tanker capacity arrivals into China have spiked up in recent months, in line with imports, but more importantly, tanker arrivals into Strategic Petroleum Reserve ports have increased materially…Just as satellite imaging has helped fuel debate over the true state of oil supplies—especially in Saudi Arabia—the new technology promises to give oil-market watchers a chance to crack the demand side of the puzzle too…”

General Technology

26. Editors' Choice of the Best PC Freeware http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/top-freeware-picks-category-editors.htm “…Welcome to the editors' choice list, where you'll find a collection of the best free software on our site…You'll find only the best free software products here, many as good as or better than their commercial counterparts…” [http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-adware-spyware-scumware-remover.htm ]

27. Battery-Powered Vehicles To Be Revolutionized http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1683791/batterypowered_vehicles_to_be_revolutionized/index.html “…It's a revolutionary battery because it is made from non-toxic materials abundant in the Earth's crust. Plus, it's not expensive…the 100 percent electric Microcar that's set to debut in Europe this year will be and powered by the LifePO4 battery…The theoretical principle behind the battery was patented by a University of Texas professor in 1995. However, without the work of local chemists such as Nathalie Ravet, we couldn't have developed it…Phostech's St. Bruno plant began to produce LiFePO4 in 2006 with 20 employees and a 400 metric-ton capacity. Since then, Phostech has nearly doubled its staff…For Gauthier, Phostech Lithium is the product of academia and the business world coming together. "Even if we knew that lithium, iron and phosphate were theoretically promising materials, we had to make them efficient. We had to find the right voltage and maintain the right charging and discharging properties…”

28. ZigBee: Has Home Automation Standard Finally Arrived? http://www.cepro.com/article/has_home_automation_standard_finally_arrived_zigbee_pro_with_control4_as_an/ “…ZigBee aims to win the home automation-standards race, and the initial surge is about six weeks away, according to Eric Smith, CTO of Control4. Control4 is a home-control manufacturer that claims roughly 1 million installed ZigBee nodes, including light dimmers, keypads, thermostats, controllers and universal remotes. ZigBee is a low-rate RF (2.4 GHz) mesh-networking protocol developed for industrial and residential automation. It is based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard that defines low-power radios…”

29. Inexpensive Plastic Used In CDs May Improve Aircraft http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1690152/inexpensive_plastic_used_in_cds_may_improve_aircraft_computer_electronics/index.html “…Thanks to a pair of grants from the U.S. Air Force, Shay Curran, associate professor of physics at UH, and his research team have demonstrated ultra-high electrical conductive properties in plastics, called polycarbonates, by mixing them with just the right amount and type of carbon nanotubes…Curran, who initially began this form of research a decade ago at Trinity College Dublin, started to look at high-conductive plastics in a slightly different manner…By combining nanotubes with polycarbonates, Curran's group was able to reach a milestone of creating nanocomposites with ultra-high conductive properties…Making this very inexpensive plastic highly conductive could benefit electronics in everything from military aircraft to personal computers…”

30. Three Young Women Win Top Honors at World's Largest Pre-College Science Competition http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20090515edu.htm?cid=rss-90004-c1-232255 “…The Intel Foundation today announced top winners of the world's largest pre-college science fair, the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF), a program of Society for Science & the Public. Tara Adiseshan, 14, of Charlottesville, Va.; Li Boynton, 17, of Houston; and Olivia Schwob, 16, of Boston were selected from 1,563 young scientists from 56 countries, regions and territories for their commitment to innovation and science. Each received a $50,000 scholarship from the Intel Foundation…”

31. Why Mass Customization Isn’t Mainstream http://replicatorinc.com/blog/2009/05/why-mass-customization-isnt-mainstream/ “…3D printers, crowd sourcing designs, and similar developments are frequently mentioned in the press, but the market has yet to fully develop. There are a number of hypotheses that could explain this…”

Leisure & Entertainment

32. Hollywood eyes $70 zombie movie wowing Cannes http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/05/21/Colin/index.html “…A budding British director is enjoying success on a shoestring at Cannes with "Colin," a new zombie feature that cost a scarcely believable $70 to make…When we say it's a low budget film, people presume a couple of hundred thousand [dollars]. People can't figure out how it's possible. What Marc's achieved has left people astonished." It was by advertising for volunteer zombies on social networking site Facebook, borrowing make-up from Hollywood blockbusters and teaching himself how to produce special effects that thrifty director Price was able to make the film for less than the price of a zombie DVD box set…”

33. Hulu's first live concert could be tip of the iceberg for TV http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/05/hulus-first-live-concert-could-be-tip-of-the-tv-iceberg.ars “…TV streaming site Hulu plans to offer a live stream of a Dave Matthews Band concert on June 1—the site's first-ever live music concert…The live concert will begin at 9:00 pm ET on June 1 at Hulu. Because of the partnership, Hulu will begin offering various music videos leading up to the show, and after the concert is over, the site will continue offering on-demand streaming access…Whether or not you're a Dave Matthews Band fan, the move is significant in that it's the first major streaming "event" for a mainstream entertainment act…”

34. Mattel's Mindflex coming October 1st for $99.99 http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/24/mattels-mindflex-coming-october-1st-for-99-99/ “…the Mindflex has us all sorts of intrigued. Originally introduced at this year's CES, said game is a brain-powered fun-fest that relies on intense mental activity to control the height of a ball suspended in a column of air…Amazon has it listed to ship on October 1st…it's currently up for pre-order at $99.99…”

35. 'The Sims' return with more personality quirks http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090522/ap_en_ot/us_games_the_sims3 “…'The Sims 3' is a huge step forward for us," said Bell. "You can create incredibly detailed people who have real personalities that you get to design using a feature we call personality traits. By combining words, you can create a new kind of a person that has totally different desires in life and then you get to go fulfill their destiny in the game." Unlike previous editions in the series, every character will live their lives simultaneously in the fictional town of Sunset Valley. Bell said "The Sims 3," available June 3, will also feature a moviemaking tool and more options for players to customize their Sims' homes, furnishings and clothes. Gamers can even turn their Sims into kleptomaniacs. "A Sim who has this trait is going to have wishes in life to steal things from other people," said Bell. "They also have the ability to sneak into a friend's house, walk into a room where nobody happens to be hanging out and maybe swipe something…”

Economy and Technology

36. Micron Enters Market for Tiny Display Screens http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2009/tc20090519_173915.htm Memory chipmaker Micron Technology is being buffeted by price swings in the low-margin computer memory market. So the company is turning to a healthier sector of the tech field for future growth—tiny projectors that may one day enlarge the text and graphics more users consume on ever-more sophisticated smartphones…Micron plans to announce that it has acquired DisplayTech, which makes small display screens used as viewfinders in digital cameras and other products, for an undisclosed amount…By acquiring DisplayTech's technology, Micron could create projectors so small that they could be built into a device like Apple's iPod or Research in Motion's BlackBerry. DisplayTech uses a technology called ferroelectric liquid crystal on silicon, or FLCOS, that takes in an image from a digital device and turns it into projected light. Micron plans to announce the acquisition as part of the launch of a new micro-display product. Micron's interest stems primarily from a new technology DisplayTech has been developing called "pico projection,"…”

37. Helping New Technologies Grow Into Businesses http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/business/smallbusiness/18edge.html San Diego remains a fertile breeding ground for entrepreneurs, despite the problems in the broader economy. That is due in large part to a nonprofit organization, Connect, that was created 23 years ago to bring together people knowledgeable about business and investment capital with researchers at the universities and research institutes in San Diego…Connect is neither a business nor a philanthropy. It offers prospective biotechnology, telecommunications, computer software and electronics companies advice and programs that introduce them to investment and venture capital firms…”

38. How to Solve Local Search, Once And For All http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=106633 “…I can't do either plumbing or electric work in the city of New York, as building codes prohibit it. So I'm in need of a good plumber and electrician. Though they must exist, I know implicitly that there is no way to find a good plumber or electrician in New York City. It simply can't be done. I can find a plumber, any plumber, no problem. My Google query for "New York City Plumbers," for example, returned 14,700,000 results…This is where I thought I would start writing about Facebook, and the opportunity Facebook has to corner the local search and services market. No one out there is doing this well -- not the major engines, not the IYPs, not even the new(er) social search and recommendation engines like Yelp…”

39. Recession suddenly humbles high-tech sector http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090524/ap_on_hi_te/us_stress_map_silicon_slump “…last year, as the national economy tanked, high tech economic centers from California's Silicon Valley to North Carolina's Research Triangle were apparently "recession-proof" with increasing jobs and stable housing prices. Last fall, everything changed. When previously invested funds petered out, there was no new capital. Bankruptcies, foreclosures and unemployment in high tech regions spiked, and are now at some of the highest levels in the country. For example: • Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley, saw bankruptcies soar 59 percent in the past 12 months, and projections are that they're still climbing; • North Carolina's unemployment has doubled since early 2008 to a record 10.7 percent, with close to 200,000 jobs lost in the state, 20 percent of those in Research Triangle, a high tech hot spot near Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill…”

Civilian Aerospace

40. Past and future of 'New Space' http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/05/21/1939893.aspx “…A decade ago, when the dot-com boom was going strong, a well-connected group of space enthusiasts and entrepreneurs laid plans to set up their own commercial beachhead in outer space…when Russia's space officials began thinking about getting rid of Mir and turning their attention to the international space station, the revolutionaries began thinking about the opportunities. The central figure in the fight to save Mir turned out to be Walt Anderson, an "anarcho-capitalist" telecom millionaire with a penchant for supporting space causes. "I had approached Walt earlier and said to him, 'Would you like a space station, because I think we can get it…”

41. Space pioneers battle for greater freedom http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227096.100-space-pioneers-battle-for-greater-freedom.html “…At issue are the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which are supposed to prevent technological secrets ending up in the hands of 21 proscribed nations, including China, Iran and North Korea. If a technology appears on a document called the US Munitions List, companies need a licence to export it or to reveal details to a foreign national…The list contains very broad definitions of what should be kept secret, and even includes spacecraft hatches and windows. "That list is written for a cold war world," says Mike Gold of Bigelow Aerospace…Gold speaks from experience. In 2006, Bigelow launched a model habitat called Genesis 1 on a Russian ballistic missile. ITAR requirements cost the firm $1 million, including $220,000 for two American guards to watch over a support stand no more advanced than a coffee table…”

42. Online Community Project Aims for the Moon http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/090520-tw-glxp-frednet.html “…Open source usually applies to virtual space rather than outer space, but Team FREDNET hopes to apply the concept toward winning the Google Lunar X Prize. The growing group of netizens hopes to reach the moon using the mantra "simple, small, low mass, low budget," after starting from a network of professional friends and the vision of a man named Fred Bourgeois…”

43. Virgin Galactic spaceships finished by December 2009 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/5354372/Richard-Bransons-Virgin-Galactic-spaceships-finished-by-December-2009.html “…Sir Richard assured the audience at the annual Google event, that the first commercial spaceships would be completed by December 2009 and ready for test programmes soon after…Sir Richard said: “It’s important to invest in new technology. We can send people into space for the same environmental cost of someone flying from here to New York…”

Supercomputing & GPUs

44. From academia to the computer graphics wars http://venturebeat.com/2009/05/22/interview-stanfords-bill-dally-leaps-from-academia-to-the-computer-graphics-wars/ “…A CPU today is optimized for single thread performance. That’s becoming less important all of the time. It runs the legacy code (i.e., Windows). People are writing more code that takes advantage of parallel processing in a throughput processor. The other reason is single-thread performance isn’t scaling. Moore’s Law says we double the number of transistors on a chip every couple of years. It gives us more transistors. Chip architects take more transistors and deliver more performance. And then application writers take more performance and deliver more value to the user. That food chain is broken on the latency processor side. We get more transistors over time, but they don’t make a single-thread processor go any faster. CPU makers respond to this by putting a lot of cores on a chip to try to take advantage of throughput. If you’re going to take advantage of throughput, it’s far more efficient to do that with a throughput-optimized processor than a latency-optimized processor. They can put eight latency-optimized processors on a chip. We can put 240 throughput-optimized cores on a chip. They are each a lot more efficient than the latency optimized hardware that reorders instructions and predicts this and predicts that to get maximum performance out of a thread…”

45. GPUs: Here to Stay http://www.genomeweb.com/gpus-here-stay “…Sometimes it's the ubiquitous technologies that are the most overlooked. Such is the case with GPUs, which have largely gone unnoticed though they've lived inside our laptops and desktops for quite some time…it's important to keep in mind that it is not the hardware, but the algorithm and the data set that should inform your choice, along with cost and ease of use. The fact that GPU chipmaker NVIDIA has made porting code for GPUs easier for the average bench biologist with its CUDA software technology helps the argument for considering this breed of acceleration technology… Also coming down the GPU development pipeline are improvements for MUMmerGPU, a GPU adaptation of the genome alignment program that was originally released in 1999…In addition to genome analysis algorithms, GPUs have been a logical candidate for molecular dynamic simulations. In February, Vijay Pande, an associate professor of chemistry at Stanford University, and his colleagues announced the release of Open Molecular Mechanics (OpenMM), an open-source software package designed to make use of GPUs for accelerating small molecule simulations…”

46. Parallel Programming: Some Fundamental Concepts http://www.hpcwire.com/features/Parallel-Programming-Some-Fundamental-Concepts-45492432.html?viewAll=y “…The entire concept of parallel programming centers on the design, development and deployment of threads within an application and the coordination between threads and their respective operations. This article examines how to break up programming tasks into chunks that are suitable for threading…”

47. Appro Debuts HyperPower Cluster Solution http://it.tmcnet.com/topics/it/articles/56506-appro-debuts-hyperpower-cluster-solution.htm “…The Appro HyperPower puts 19 of the twin Nehalem EP servers interleaved in a standard 42U rack with 19 of the Tesla appliances, which yields 304 x64 cores and 18,240 GPU cores. The peak performance of such a rack weighs in at just over 78 teraflops on single-precision codes and 6.56 teraflops at double-precision math. While many companies have made attempts to cash in from the Tesla GPUs and their related CUDA tools to develop their own versions of personal supercomputers…Appro waited for the Tesla technology to mature. The latest Tesla cards now offered by NVIDIA are integrated with double precision math which is very essential for workloads. Lee says that customers want to start deploying hybrid x64-GPU systems using the CUDA environment today so they will be ready for the next generation of nVidia GPU co-processors…”

48. RapidMind Launches Web Seminar Series http://rapidmind.com/News-May-14-MedicalWeb.php “…RapidMind, provider of the RapidMind Multi-core Development Platform, today announced the launch of a series of web seminars examining how leading medical imaging companies are using the RapidMind platform to meet the challenge of exploding 3D/4D data volume sizes, constrained development resources, and clinical expectations for ever faster volume processing times. Today, RapidMind is used in the advanced volume processing of CT scans and ultrasound sonograms, image analysis of ultrasound data, and registration…Medipattern Corporation (TSX-V: MKI), is using RapidMind in their B-CAD™ system to leverage the speed of multi-core CPUs while simultaneously exploiting acceleration available from a Graphics Processor Unit (GPU)—achieving an 8 times performance increase in processing throughput while maintaining the same image analysis performance. B-CAD™ V1 is the first FDA cleared computer-aided detection (CAD) system for breast ultrasound imaging…The study, conducted by Lin Xu and Dr. Justin W. L. Wan, demonstrated that the RapidMind platform provided over 100 times acceleration of a 2D/3D rigid registration application running on an off-the-shelf graphics card (GPU). This level of acceleration means the registration can be performed in near real time, offering a powerful tool for radiation therapy and computer-assisted surgery…”

49. SETI@home Celebrates 10th Anniversary http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=28232 “…SETI@home moved to BOINC in 2005; other projects are using BOINC to study disease-related proteins (Rosetta@home), search for gravitational waves (Einstein@home), and predict the Earth's future climate (ClimatePrediction.net)…SETI@home now uses not only CPUs (central processing units), but also the graphics processing units (GPUs) found in newer PCs. "GPUs are much faster than CPUs at this point," Anderson said. A new version of SETI@home, released five months ago, automatically uses GPUs and typically runs about 10 times faster than the CPU version…”


*****

2009/05/19

NEW NET Issues List for 19 May 2009

Below is the final list of issues for the WEDNESDAY, 19 May 2009, NEW NET (Northeast Wisconsin Network for Economy and Technology) 7:00 - 9:00 pm weekly gathering. This week's meeting is at Cambria Suites Hotel, 3940 N. Gateway Drive, Appleton Wisconsin, USA.

The ‘net

1. Jump Into The Stream http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/17/jump-into-the-stream/ “…the Internet is shifting before our eyes. Information is increasingly being distributed and presented in real-time streams instead of dedicated Web pages… This rising stream has the potential to fundamentally change the contours of media distribution on the Web. Large destination sites like Yahoo and AOL, already weakened as distribution hubs by search and social networks, now face the prospect of becoming completely bypassed…The stream does not replace Web pages or search, for that matter, but it has the potential to completely transform them. Already, we are seeing Web pages adopt the stream as a new user-interface…Traffic occurs in bursts, depending on what people are paying attention to at that second across a variety of services. Someone might notice an obscure blog post on Twitter, where it starts spreading, then it moves to FriendFeed and Facebook and desktop stream readers such as Tweetdeck or Seesmic desktop and before you know it, a hundred thousand people are reading that article…This isn’t an inbox we have to empty, or a page we have to get to the bottom of — its a flow of data that we can dip into at will but we can’t attempt to gain an all encompassing view of it…”

2. Who Has the Most Web Servers? http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/05/14/whos-got-the-most-web-servers/ “…Here’s a look at some of the providers with high server counts, gleaned from public reports and partial data from a recent Netcraft server count report: * 1&1 Internet: 55,000 servers (company)…* Verizon: 25,788 servers (Netcraft)…* AT&T: 20,268 servers (Netcraft)…Here’s a list of companies we believe are running at least 50,000 servers: * Google: The search giant’s server count has long been the focus of speculation. There’s a widely circulated estimate of 450,000 servers, but that number is at least three years old…* Microsoft: There’s actually some numbers on Microsoft’s server count, but it’s also dated. Screen shots from the company’s data center management software suggest that Microsoft was running about 218,000 servers in mid-2008. The company’s new Chicago container farm will hold up to 300,000 servers…”

3. Scribd launches online book market http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/05/scribd-store-a-welcome-additio.html The document-sharing site Scribd has launched a new "Scribd Store" selling view and download access to documents and books. As part of the launch, there are now more than 650 O'Reilly ebooks now available for preview and sale in the Scribd store, and all include DRM-free PDF downloads with purchase… publishers set the sale price directly, and keep 80% of the revenue…the pieces of the Scribd store I'm most excited about is the real-time reporting (compared with a lag of a month or more with most ebook resellers, including Amazon), the option to easily provide free updates to existing content, and the variety of adjustable display options…” [ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/43d3b10a-42f1-11de-b793-00144feabdc0.html ]

4. BillMyParents: kids shop, parents ok payment http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10242761-2.html “…new payment service just launching: BillMyParents. It's a way that kids ("tweens," according to the founder) can shop in online stores and easily spend their parents' money--if their parents later agree to buy them the stuff they want. The system puts little BillMyParents buttons next to items in online retail. To check out, kids write optional notes to their parents about the items they want. Parents get e-mail notifications and can approve and pay for individual items directly…It doesn't reduce or remove communication in a family, in fact it could increase it. And it makes it easier to mark, track, and purchase online items…”

5. Memeo means business with new backup software http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10243591-2.html “…Memeo--an online digital company that offers a variety of online services such as photo sharing (download)--has released a backup solution for business users that will help keep track of backing up data. Memeo Backup Professional 4.5 (download) is tied to an online console, from which an admin user can remotely view the status of backups of other users. This means that once it's installed on network computers, a single admin can oversee the backup status for the whole business…If you just want good backup software, I would strongly recommend GFI Backup Home Edition, which, apart from the online console and the tie to Memeo online storage, offers the same options and more, including the ability to back up to an FTP site. Best of all, it is yours for free…”

6. Webware 100 Winners http://www.cnet.com/html/ww/100/2009/winners.html Welcome to the 2009 Webware 100! Below you'll find 100 Web apps in 10 categories voted to be the best of the best by Webware readers and users of the apps themselves…”

Security, Privacy & Digital Controls

7. China deploys secure computer operating system http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090512/tc_afp/uschinaitcomputersecurityinternet China has installed a secure operating system known as "Kylin" on government and military computers designed to be impenetrable to US military and intelligence agencies…Kylin has been under development since 2001 and the first Chinese computers to use it are government and military servers that were converted beginning in 2007. "This action also made our offensive cybercapabilities ineffective against them, given the cyberweapons were designed to be used against Linux, UNIX and Windows," he said, citing three popular computer operating systems…The Chinese have also developed a secure microprocessor that, unlike US-made chips, is known to be hardened against external access by a hacker or automated malicious software, Coleman said. "If you add a hardened microchip and a hardened operating system, that makes a really good solid platform for defending infrastructure," he said. "In the cyberarena, China is playing chess while we're playing checkers…”

8. Craigslist CEO asks SC AG to apologize for threat http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jddtyeqnXsSIALyeJ0IkD8sHU4LwD988S90O0 “…Craigslist's chief executive demanded an apology from South Carolina's attorney general Monday, saying the prosecutor's threat to file prostitution charges against the company was unreasonable and unfair. Attorney General Henry McMaster threatened last week to prosecute Craigslist executives for aiding and abetting prostitution…"Many prominent companies, including AT&T, Microsoft, and Village Voice Media, not to mention major newspapers and other upstanding South Carolina businesses feature more 'adult services' ads than does craigslist, some of a very graphic nature," Jim Buckmaster wrote in a company blog. He included Internet links to listings for escort services throughout South Carolina…”

Mobile Computing & Communicating

9. GPS Accuracy Could Start Dropping in 2010 http://db.tidbits.com/article/10276 “…We've all become accustomed to using the Global Positioning System, or GPS, whether via our iPhones, car navigation devices, handheld GPS units, or even watch-based devices like the Garmin Forerunner series. The GPS system went into full operation in December of 1993…It relies on a constellation of between 24 and 32 medium Earth orbit satellites, some of which have been operating for nearly 19 years…Mike and his team at Natural Resources Canada use very high-end GPS receivers and special data processing techniques to measure the motions of the Earth with an accuracy of about 1 mm per year in their work defining and maintaining the coordinate systems used in North America and in contributing to the global coordinate system used by GPS…Delays in launching new satellites - the next one is scheduled for a November 2009 launch, almost 3 years late - could be problematic if the older hardware starts failing. The GAO has calculated - using reliability curves for each operational satellite - that the probability of keeping a 24-satellite constellation in orbit drops below 95 percent in 2010, and could drop as low as 80 percent in 2011…”

10. 2009 Ars USB flash drive roundup http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2009/05/usb-flash-drive-roundup.ars “…in 2005…A 2GB drive ran nearly $200, and speeds were quite a bit slower then…a good drive was still going to set you back $50 or $70—not exactly a cheap proposition. Since our first roundup, this picture has changed considerably, and it leads to a question: has the flash drive become an undifferentiated commodity, just like any other cheap plastic tsotschke that you might find at an office supply store checkout counter?…”

11. Acer's next-gen Aspire One Netbooks http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10242988-1.html “…the next generation of Aspire One Netbooks is finally here. Most notable is the inclusion of a new, bigger 11.6-inch model, the Aspire One AO751h; also new is a revamped 10.1-inch system, the Aspire One AOD250…the 11-inch AO751h has a full-size keyboard, along with a 16:9 LED display. "We predict that the larger display and keyboard will be a game-changer for mobile consumers looking to take it to the next level with the ultimate mobile device,"…Acer currently claims 30.5 percent of the global Netbook market, and has shipped 1.8 million Netbooks in the first quarter of 2009…”

12. My Phone Beta Open To All Users http://www.liveside.net/main/archive/2009/05/19/my-phone-beta-opened-to-all-users.aspx “…No more waiting list or promotional codes. Just visit http://myphone.microsoft.com and start using My Phone today. Microsoft My Phone will run on most mobile phones using the Windows Mobile 6.0 or later operating system…”

Open Source

13. Linux certifications: Hot or not? http://tech.yahoo.com/news/infoworld/20090513/tc_infoworld/75187 With Linux having gained traction in business, certifications of Linux expertise are becoming more popular, similar to how Novell or Microsoft systems certifications became important for those platforms. But some in the Linux community say the emergence of certifications is by no means a golden ticket for admins, and perhaps just a waste of time and money. Major Linux distributors, including Novell and Red Hat, have their own certification programs, notes Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation…the foundation offers the Linux Foundation Certified Developer certification…”

14. Recognizing and Avoiding Open Source Community Pitfalls http://michaeldehaan.net/2009/05/17/oss-pitfalls/ “…While I do believe OSS is very rewarding and a great way to make technology move quickly, and having that kind of relationship with users is invaluable, it’s worth taking some time to dispel some misconceptions.. or at least make folks aware of some of the stumbling blocks and how to get around them…”

15. OWASP LiveCD switching to Ubuntu http://www.h-online.com/open/OWASP-LiveCD-switching-to-Ubuntu--/news/113305 “…The OWASP LiveCD is a collection of open-source security software for web developers as well as external and internal testers/auditors, that does very much the same job as the BackTrack LiveCD does for network and system penetration tests…”

16. Open source vector graphics editor similar to CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator http://webupd8.blogspot.com/2009/05/sk1-open-source-vector-graphics-editor.html “…sK1 is an open source vector graphics editor similar to CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator, or Freehand which just had it's first public release a few days ago. First of all sK1 is oriented for "prepress ready" PostScript & PDF output…”

SkyNet

17. Google Search Researches Users' Health http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Health-Care-IT/Google-Search-Researches-Users-Health-423727/ “…Google is performing a short-term experiment involving its users’ health-related searches. The company, claiming it wants to better refine its health-search-related processes by "understanding how people search when they’re feeling sick," wants to start differentiating between users searching for health-related topics purely for research purposes and those searching for those topics in order to find out more about a personal health issue…searches for certain health topics will produce a small dialog box at the bottom of the screen, asking the user if they’re searching because they, or someone they know, are experiencing that particular health issue. For example, if you search for "headache," Google may ask, "Did you search because you or someone you know has a headache? Yes/No…”

18. Frustration, distress over Google outage http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/14/BUPE17KKIJ.DTL&type=tech “…Google said the problems started at 7:48 a.m., when a systems error caused a portion of its online traffic to be rerouted through Asia. The snafu prompted an online traffic jam, slowing or interrupting service for 14 percent of Google users globally…Panic set in with some users, who discovered they couldn't get access to their e-mails, fearful that urgent messages were being missed…Francisco Lopez, an administrative assistant for a public relations company in Redwood City, said he came into work in the morning and was unable to log in to his Google e-mail, after fruitlessly trying four or five times. The delay lasted about an hour, he said, leaving him scrambling to do his job…Lopez surrendered and gave a Google rival a try. "We were worried, and I said, 'Let's try Yahoo' - and it worked…”

19. Google Updates Its Blog Search Algorithm http://searchengineland.com/quietly-google-updates-its-blog-search-algorithm-19329 “…Google tells Search Engine Land that it’s made several improvements under the hood of Google Blog Search…One of the algorithmic changes is aimed at making sure the home page clusters reward the freshest and most authoritative blog content. Within any cluster, Google wants to find the posts that people are talking about the most…”

20. New Google search options http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/more-search-options-and-other-updates.html “…a new set of features that we call Search Options, which are a collection of tools that let you slice and dice your results and generate different views to find what you need faster and easier. Search Options helps solve a problem that can be vexing: what query should I ask?... Another challenging problem we have worked on is better understanding the information you get back from a search. When you see your results from a Google search, how do you decide which one has the best information for you?...We call the set of information we return with each result a "snippet,"…We can't provide these snippets on our own, so we hope that web publishers will help us by adopting microformats or RDFa standards to mark up their HTML and bring this structured data to the surface…If you are a webmaster and are interested in participating, visit the rich snippets help page to learn more…Unlike a normal search engine, Google Squared doesn't find webpages about your topic — instead, it automatically fetches and organizes facts from across the Internet…”

21. Free Google Earth Game: Ships http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2009/05/fantastic_free_google_earth_game_sh.html PlanetInAction.com has released the first version of a fantastic free simulation game which leverages the browser-based Google Earth plugin as the primary graphics engine. The game is called "Ships" and lets you take the helm on ships - barges, cargo ships, container ships, and even a cruise ship (the QM 2). Everything is in 3D, you can drive the ships anywhere in the world, there are sound effects, physical modeling, and realistic visual effects that makes this a wonder to behold…”

22. Google Chrome Forces Patches, Makes Directory User-Writable http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/2009/05/google_chrome_forces_patches_o.php Google's Chrome has gotten some just critical praise for innovative security design, but not everything they do is universally praised. Two examples: updates are applied without permission from the user and this cannot be turned off, and the program is stored in a user-writeable directory…Chrome downloads and installs security updates without asking or even notifying the user. You can't turn off this behavior…The second point about Chrome is that it installs itself in a directory to which the user has full write access... even to the executables in it. This is, in part, how they accomplish their update trick…”

23. Gmail Message Translation http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/19/google-adds-message-translation-to-gmail/ “…Gmail Labs just added another nifty tool to its suite of features—message translation. Using Google Translate, Gmail will help you translate any message that you receive in another language into a language you can understand. The feature can be used for 41 languages…”

General Technology

24. HP recalls 70,000 notebook batteries because of fire hazard http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=18131 “…lithium-ion batteries in about 70,000 HP and Compaq notebook computers are being recalled because they pose a fire hazard…there are two reported incidents where the batteries overheated and ruptured, resulting flames and a fire that caused minor property damage but no injuries. The notebook computers with the batteries in question cover a wide range of models and were sold in computer and electronic stores throughout the U.S. - as well as on hp.com and hpshopping.com - between August 2007 and March 2008…”

25. Robot warriors will get a guide to ethics http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30810070/ “…what happens when humans are taken out of the loop, and robots are left to make decisions, like who to kill or what to bomb, on their own? Ronald Arkin, a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech, is in the first stages of developing an "ethical governor," a package of software and hardware that tells robots when and what to fire…He argues not only can robots be programmed to behave more ethically on the battlefield, they may actually be able to respond better than human soldiers…”

Leisure & Entertainment

26. Microsoft Swings at Wii With Videocam http://venturebeat.com/2009/05/12/microsofts-gesture-based-game-control-to-debut-in-2010/ The Wall Street Journal wrote a story today saying Microsoft is working on a video camera control system. It’s actually not a video camera in the traditional sense. It’s a depth camera that can precisely determine the position and movement of an object based on how close it is to the camera…But we know what it’s working on because that’s what 3DV Systems of Israel said it was working on in the fall of 2007, and Microsoft secretly bought 3DV earlier this year (for a relatively low price of about $35 million). There is a problem with the technology. The cameras were very expensive in the past, and 3DV’s goal was to bring the cost under $100. My guess is that Microsoft is waiting until 2010 to introduce the control system to bring the costs down. On top of that, game developers need time to create games that make use of the new controller…”

27. Fox To Crowdsource Cartoons Through Aniboom http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/18/fox-television-tries-to-crowdsource-cartoons-through-aniboom/ “…Fox Television, the proud home of The Simpsons and Family Guy, is looking for another cartoon franchise to add to its roster. But rather than searching in Hollywood, it is crowdsourcing cartoon ideas on the Web. In a contest hosted on animation site Aniboom, professional and amateur animators alike will be able to submit a two- to four-minute animated video online for a chance at cash prizes and a shot at producing a full-length pilot for TV…”

Economy and Technology

28. Intel fined $1.45 billion by EU http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12381468 In slapping Intel with a $1.45 billion fine, European regulators this week said the Santa Clara company had harmed millions of consumers by limiting the use of its chief competitor's chips in computers and other gadgets…As part of its 4-year-old lawsuit accusing Intel of monopolizing the microprocessor market, Sunnyvale-based Advanced Micro Devices has accumulated more than 150 million pages of documents related to Intel's global sales…the few details disclosed indicate the fine was based on Intel's total European sales and the presumption that the company kept chip prices artificially high by hindering AMD's ability to compete…”

29. Cisco Plans Big Push into Smart Grids http://seekingalpha.com/article/138286-cisco-plans-big-push-into-smart-grids “…We see the smart grid communications infrastructure market to be in the realm of about $20 billion per year over the next five years," said Marie Hattar, vice president of network systems and security. "We at Cisco are hoping to participate in that market and play a leadership role there." It's a bold pronouncement from a company that first stepped publicly into the smart grid space late last year, when it joined with giants like General Electric (GE), Microsoft (MSFT), IBM, Intel (INTC) and Oracle (ORCL) in the Pecan Street Project, a smart grid effort being formed by municipal utility Austin Energy…” [http://www.crn.com/government/217500646;jsessionid=GE4WMHYCEEBECQSNDLRSKH0CJUNN2JVN]

Civilian Aerospace

30. Wisconsin Student 'Rocketeers' Win National Rocketry Challenge http://sev.prnewswire.com/aerospace-defense/20090516/DC1829516052009-1.html “…A team from Madison, Wi., took first place at the Seventh Annual Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC) Saturday, taking on the title of national champion. The four-member team won the rocket competition after spending months perfecting their rocket design. The Team America Rocketry Challenge kicked off last September with hundreds of teams from 45 states and the District of Columbia…Hard work, perseverance, teamwork, and custom electronics are the reasons our rocket performed well today," said Ben Winokur, team member. He added a key component of their rocket's success was, "a very intricate active parachute ejection on ascent…”

31. Organizers unveil Spaceport Sheboygan strategic plan http://www.sheboyganpress.com/article/20090515/SHE0101/90515105/1062/SHE01/Organizers+unveil+Spaceport+Sheboygan+strategic+plan A vision of Spaceport Sheboygan as the Midwest’s hub for aerospace development, education and — eventually — travel was unveiled Friday by the taskforce organized to pilot the ideas to touch down…The opportunity lies in a no-fly zone, dubbed R-6903, that runs along the coast of Lake Michigan from Port Washington to Manitowoc. It was created decades ago when military exercises were done at the former Camp Haven…Ten or 20 years down the road when the technology is ready and when the industry is ready, we are going to be the Midwest’s spaceport…Spaceport Sheboygan is one of seven proposed spaceports nationwide seeking to join the six federal spaceports and six commercial spaceports already licensed…”

32. 28th Annual International Space Development Conference http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=28212 “…These bold entrepreneurs and private spaceflight advocates are shifting the paradigm previously thought to be the exclusive domain of governments, to open up a frontier previously unattainable to the general public, flying virtually anyone that wants to go into space. ISDC 2009 will take place from Wednesday May 27th to Sunday May 31st at the Omni Resort at ChampionsGate in Orlando, FL. The conference provides a unique opportunity for students, space enthusiasts, and the general public to engage aerospace entrepreneurs and executives, NASA officials, academics and key decision and policy makers in an open and positive discussion about space exploration, research, and development…”

Supercomputing & GPUs

33. CUDA, Supercomputing for the Masses: Part 12 http://www.ddj.com/hpc-high-performance-computing/217500110 “…In this installment, I discuss some paradigm changing features of the just released CUDA version 2.2 -- namely the introduction of "mapped" pinned system memory that allows compute kernels to share host system memory and provides zero-copy support for direct access to host system memory when running on many newer CUDA-enabled graphics processors…”

34. RapidMind Web Seminar Series for Healthcare Industry http://www.hpcwire.com/offthewire/RapidMind-Launches-Web-Seminar-Series-for-Healthcare-Industry-44988637.html “…A top priority in medical imaging is accelerating applications so they can cope with ever larger data sets. Advanced volume processing plays critical roles in diagnosis, screening, and treatment," said Dr. Michael McCool, RapidMind chief scientist…Dr. McCool provides technical insight into several examples of how RapidMind is accelerating medical imaging applications, including a recent study from the University of Waterloo. The study, conducted by Lin Xu and Dr. Justin W. L. Wan, demonstrated that the RapidMind platform provided over 100 times acceleration of a 2D/3D rigid registration application running on an off-the-shelf graphics card…”

35. CUDA-Enabled Apps: Measuring Mainstream GPU Performance http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-cuda-gpgpu,2299.html “…Some applications are linear in nature and merely want to crank as quickly as possible on a single processing thread until the cows come home. Others are built to leverage parallelism. Everything from Unreal Engine 3 to Adobe Premiere has shown us the benefits of CPU-based multi-threading, but what if 4 or 8 or even 16 threads was just a beginning?...But in 2009, we finally see a change. CUDA has come to the masses. There's a huge install base of compatible desktop graphics cards, and the mainstream applications able to exploit that built-in CUDA support are hitting one after the other…”

36. Dell pitches modular parallel processors http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/14/euro_hpc_academic_snapshot/ “…there are two types of supercomputer: the single box containing lots and lots of cores and/or graphics processing cores, compared to the clustered multi-node setup, with each node having SMP (symmetric multi-processing) processors. Some HPC applications are best suited to one or the other architecture. Dell people see hybrid clusters developing with nodes equipped with multiple GPU cores as well as SMP cores. The programming task is characterised by the need to use many, many cores in parallel. This is getting beyond the resources of research scientists whose job is research, not writing code. An IBM supercomputer could have 1,000 cores with many applications only using a subset. The software people have to get better at writing code to use all these cores. One user said his lab replaced a 5-year old, €1m Cray with a 4-socket Dell machine costing €60,000 and didn't tell his users. They asked him what had happened to the computer, as their jobs were running faster…”

37. What’s the Big Deal with CUDA and GPGPU anyway? http://www.vizworld.com/2009/05/whats-the-big-deal-with-cuda-and-gpgpu-anyway/ “…GPGPU can refactor an 82-cabinet supercomputer to 8 or 9 cabinets, and we’ve shrunk it down to 10% of the current floor space requirements, and something similar in power and cooling requirements. GPGPU could re-use existing resources within your computer boost performance without taxing your system. Who wouldn’t want this? Less hardware to maintain, fewer points of failure, less power and cooling to pay for, it’s a win-win all around, right? Not exactly. As much as computer scientists have tried to make it so, GPGPU is not a magic fairy dust that can make anything and everything faster. GPU’s are designed for pushing pixels, not crunching numbers…”


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