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
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
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…”
posted by myDigitechnician at 26.5.09
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