NEW NET Issues List for 29 Sep 2009
Below is the final list of issues for the TUESDAY, 22 September 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.
The ‘net
1. The gigabyte generation is here http://wistechnology.com/articles/6531/ “…WiMAX which is a wireless network with a licensed part of the spectrum that has been deployed in many other countries is starting to be deployed here in the
2. A New Search Engine for Finding Similar Web Sites http://gigaom.com/2009/09/25/a-new-search-engine-for-finding-similar-web-sites/ “…Similar-site.com is a new search engine that lets you find web sites akin to one you’re interested in by pulling up a list of sites with matching web tags. For example, if you input gigaom.com into the search box on similar-site.com, it will bring up a list of blogs including TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb and the O’Reilly Radar, all of which share the tags “blog,” “technology” and “Web 2.0.” You can also specify tags that you want the search engine to look for, as well as delete any that you feel may be unrelated…”
3. Hacker Book Club http://ericholscher.com/blog/2009/sep/26/hacker-book-club/ “At LPDN, our weekly programmer drinkup, we have been talking for a while about watching the SICP lectures from MIT as a fun thing to do. I then got to thinking about how it would be neat to involve more than just the few of us in Lawrence…I was thinking about having some kind of Hacker Book Club…an IRC channel where we can all hang out and ask each other questions…a focused group of people focused on learning the same material. It feels a bit like an open source classroom, where disperate people can come together to learn and share in the open source mindset…a really interesting way to combine a lot of the conversations that happens across the web in one place, with context, about a book…”
4. Dropbox Reaches 2 Million Users; Continues to Grow http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/24/dropbox-reaches-2-million-users-continues-to-grow/ “Dropbox, the impressive file sharing service which makes it easy to sync your files across multiple computers and the web, has announced that it has reached two million registered users, just four months after reaching one million users. Of those, Dropbox has almost one million users that are active. Just earlier this month, Dropbox rolled out a brand new redesign of its web interface, and new search as well as many other features…”
5. Your Guide to Music on the Web, Part II http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/26/your-guide-to-music-on-the-web-part-ii/ “…Last month, I published Part 1 of my Guide To Music On The Web, which covered music recommendation sites, Web radio, independent music sites, playlists, and music visualizations. Today, in Part II we’ll take a tour of music search engines, Web players, ways to share music on Twitter, and music mixing apps…I really tried to find the best and the most used applications that will probably still be here to serve you tomorrow too…”
6. Wize: Product Review Search Engine http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/29/wize-redesigns-product-review-search-engine/ “…Product recommendation research engine Wize has launched a redesigned version of its platform that aggregates reviews from across the web. Launched in 2006, Wize lets consumers search for reviews on electronics, home goods, video games, health products and more. It searches shopping sites with user reviews, such as Amazon and BestBuy, as well as expert reviews from traditional product review sites. Wize’s technology has been tweaked to read reviews across the web and then analyze what people have said is good, bad or important…”
7. Flickr Now Supports OpenStreetMap Tags http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/flickr_now_supports_openstreetmap_tags.php “Flickr just announced support for OpenStreetMap, the wiki-like mapping service that allows users to create and edit maps. Starting today, photos that are tagged with an OpenStreetMap node ID will include a link to OpenStreetMap (OSM) right underneath the photo. OSM assigns a random number to objects on its maps and Flickr can now read this number and also extract additional data about places from the OSM database. In addition, Flickr also announced that it will now support venue ID tags for the increasingly popular Foursquare service…” Flickr, OpenStreetMap, Foursquare, ReadWriteWeb
Security, Privacy & Digital Controls
8. Misdirected Spyware Infects Ohio Hospital http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/172185/misdirected_spyware_infects_ohio_hospital.html “…A 38-year-old Avon Lake, Ohio, man is set to plead guilty to federal charges after spyware he allegedly meant to install on the computer of a woman he'd had a relationship with ended up infecting computers at Akron Children's Hospital…Scott Graham shelled out US$115 for a spyware program called SpyAgent and sent it to the woman…He allegedly sent the spyware to the woman's Yahoo e-mail address, hoping that it would give him a way to monitor what she was doing on her PC. But instead, she opened the spyware on a computer in the hospital's pediatric cardiac surgery department, creating a regulatory nightmare for the hospital…Between March 19 and March 28 the spyware sent more than 1,000 screen captures to Graham via e-mail. They included details of medical procedures, diagnostic notes and other confidential information relating to 62 hospital patients. He was also able to obtain e-mail and financial records of four other hospital employees as well…”
9. Judge Orders Google To Deactivate User's Gmail Account http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=114264 “…In a highly unusual move, a federal judge has ordered Google to deactivate the email account of a user who was mistakenly sent confidential financial information by a bank…The Gmail user hasn't been accused of any wrongdoing…The bank attempted to file its papers under seal, but U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Whyte denied that request…"It's outrageous that the bank asked for this, and it's outrageous that the court granted it," says John Morris, general counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology. "What right does the bank have and go suspend the email account of a completely innocent person?" He adds: "At the end of the day, the bank obviously screwed up…” [ http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10362913-245.html ]
10. IRS Scam Now World's Biggest E-mail Virus Problem http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20090925/tc_pcworld/irsscamnowworldsbiggestemailvirusproblem “…Criminals are waging a nasty online campaign right now, hoping that their victims' fears of the tax collecter will lead them to inadvertently install malicious software. The spam campaign, entering its third week now, is showing no signs of slowing down, according to Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics with the
11. Microsoft Security Essentials Available Sept. 29 http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Microsoft-Security-Essentials-Available-Tomorrow-492109/ “…Microsoft…Security Essentials product will be generally available Sept. 29…Security Essentials freeware is a slimmed-down replacement for Windows Live OneCare…Unlike OneCare, Security Essentials does not deal with firewalls or data backup. Instead, Microsoft chose to focus on anti-malware and anti-rootkit functionality…Security Essentials is "the first Microsoft security product to make use of the company's new Dynamic Signature Service, a technology that helps ensure [that] users stay protected by the most current virus definitions available without having to wait for the next scheduled download…Actions from unknown sources such as unexpected network connections, attempts to modify privileged parts of the system or the downloading of known malware all trigger requests for updates from the Dynamic Signature Service…”
12. Ignoring RIAA lawsuits cheaper than going to trial http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/09/ignoring-riaa-lawsuits-cheaper-than-going-to-trial.ars “Jammie Thomas-Rasset and Joel Tenenbaum…were defendants in the RIAA's first two trials against accused online infringers…both defendants would have been far better off monetarily if they had simply ignored the complaint altogether…federal judge Nancy Gertner issued four default judgments against accused P2P file-swappers who never bothered to respond to the charges against them. Their failure to appear meant an automatic loss…Gertner accepted the record labels' claims and awarded them the minimum statutory damages of $750 per song. The defendants were accused of downloading an average of ten songs, putting total awards in the $7,500 range, in addition to a few hundred more for court costs…Thomas-Rasset's retrial ended up with a $1.92 million award, while Tenenbaum faces $675,000 in damages…Tenenbaum faces a life-altering damage award and the prospect of bankruptcy if not reduced or overturned on appeal…several commenters rightly point out that "not showing up" isn't the cheapest way out of such situations. Settling with the RIAA usually leads to payments of between $3,000 and $5,000, lower than the default judgments issued here…”
Mobile Computing & Communicating
13. Walmart offering Palm Pre for $79.99, Amazon $99.99 http://www.cnet.com/8301-17918_1-10361693-85.html http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/26/pre-drops-to-79-99-at-walmart/ “…The Palm Pre…at Amazon…for just $99.99 with a two-year contract without any fussy rebates…”
14. Golden-i microdisplay http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1555944/golden-microdisplay-esc-boston “…A WEARABLE COMPUTER will let you view documents on the equivalent of a 15in SVGA screen and navigate them by moving your head as if you are looking 'round a room. The device, called Golden-i, was demonstrated yesterday at the ESC embedded systems event in
15. Wearable HD camcorders for your head http://venturebeat.com/2009/09/29/vholdr-launches-wearable-hd-camcorders-for-your-head/ “…VholdR has a new high-definition 
camcorder that you can attach to your head…Vholdr ContourHD1080p is the world’s first wearable camcorder that you can use to shoot and share 1080p video…It can shoot at 30 frames per second or 60. And you can adjust metering, contrast, exposure, and microphone sensitivity. The camera can share your video to VholdR.com. It costs $329.99 for the HD 1080p version and $279 for the HD version…The camera can record 3.5 hours of 1080p video internally. You can record up to eight hours on a removeable 16GB MicroSD memory card (not included). You can mount the camcorder on your goggles, helmet, handlebars, vehicle or pretty much anywhere else. The camera weighs just 4.3 ounces…”
16. A boost for Palm Pre? http://tech.yahoo.com/news/infoworld/20090926/tc_infoworld/93384 “…Two dignitaries in the JavaScript development space who have led the Mozilla Developer Tools Lab have joined Palm as directors of the Palm Developer Relations team…Palm is gaining the services of Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith, said blog entries from both men, who also have been running the Ajaxian Web site focused on AJAX development and related issues. "We will have the responsibility of the developer experience with Palm…The Palm opportunity, Galbraith said, gives he and Almaer "the opportunity to run Palm's developer program and to do things quite a bit differently than some others in the industry have done…”
17. Palm Pre's New Strategy: Forget iTunes, Hello Wireless Amazon Downloads http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/palm_pres_new_strategy_forget_itunes_hello_wireless_amazon_downloads.php “When the Palm Pre debuted, one of its most useful features was its ability to sync with Apple's iTunes software. Unfortunately, how it went about doing this was a little bit underhanded: it pretended to be an iPhone. The most recent version of the hack…was made possible by Palm's use of Apple's USB hardware vendor code provided by the USB Implementers Forum, an industry standards group. The Pre simply used Apple's code so that iTunes would see the Pre as an Apple device. Apple…broke this functionality in subsequent iTunes software updates. Palm responded by complaining to the Forum, but the group took Apple's side…the Apple/Palm war seems to have ended. With the latest update to Palm Pre's webOS software, the company has come up with a new tactic altogether: forget about iTunes, use Amazon instead…”
Open Source
18. Moblin on the Dell Mini 10v netbook http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/09/moblin-2-arriving-via-dell-with-moblin-ubuntu-remix-netbook.ars “…Intel's Linux-based Moblin 2 platform is finally moving out of the lab and into the market. Dell launched its first Moblin-based product on Thursday, making the software platform available to consumers on its Mini 10v netbook. Although Moblin has a lot to offer, Dell warns that Moblin isn't ready for primetime yet and informs prospective buyers that the software is still experimental. Moblin was originally launched in 2007 to provide a Linux-based software platform optimized for Atom-based MIDs…”
19. GNU/Linux Gaming - Vega Strike for All http://blog.eracc.com/2009/09/24/gnulinux-gaming-vega-strike-for-all/ “…I have enjoyed playing games that run natively on…Linux…One of the games I play for a while, stop playing, and keep coming back to is the trading and battle space simulator Vega Strike…It has been under continual development over several years and is currently at stable version 0.5.0 which is “half way” to the eventual goal “The project goal is, at version 1.0, is to be a generic space simulator…”
20. IBM opens a Linux innovation center in
21. Character Head Modeling in Blender http://www.packtpub.com/character-head-modeling-in-blender-part1 “In this two-part tutorial by Jonathan Williamson, we are going to look at how to model a character head in Blender. Along with basic modeling tools we will also focus heavily on good topology and how to create a clean mesh that will deform well during animation. This tutorial will take you through the whole process from setting up a background image as a reference, to laying out the topology, to tweaking the final model proportions and mesh structure…”
SkyNet
22. Google search snippets: go right to the information you want http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/jump-to-information-you-want-right-from.html “…Google shows you a few lines of text to give you an idea of what the page is about — we call this a "search snippet." Recently, we've enhanced the search snippet with two new features that make it easier to find information buried deep within a page...imagine we're particularly interested in learning about good cholesterol and what levels of it are healthy, so we try a more specific query, [good cholesterol level]. The top result is from the American Heart Association and has tons of information about cholesterol levels. The specific information about good (HDL) cholesterol, however, is contained in one section titled "Your HDL (good) cholesterol level"…the snippet for this result now provides the option to "jump to" just this section of the website…”
23. Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html “…Google doesn't use the "keywords" meta tag in our web search ranking…”
24. Why You Can’t Trust Google http://gigaom.com/2009/09/24/why-you-cant-trust-google/ “…If, like our little company, you run your business using Google Apps, you’re playing with fire. For time and again, the company has proven that despite all its talk, its offerings are as unreliable as those of any other service provider. Today, once again, Google’s Gmail service has gone on the blink, thereby disrupting our company’s work flow. For a few minutes, I quite enjoyed the fact that there was a lot less email than usual in my Inbox, but its absence gets in the way of getting any work done. Just to be clear — we have a paid version of Google Apps, so I have a legitimate reason to gripe about the Gfail…”
25. Is Criticism Of Google's Outages Unfair? http://www.pcworld.com/article/172636/Is_Criticism_Of_Googles_Outages_Unfair.html “Give Google a break: Statistics show its reliability to actually be very good. It's the media that makes a big deal of Gmail and Gnews outages, not users. That is what several readers told me in response to yesterday's post concerning recent problems with the two services. Their authors have a point: The actual amount of downtime is pretty small. And a news service outage isn't the same as losing access to your hosted e-mail…”
26. Place Pages for Google Maps http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/place-pages-for-google-maps-there-are.html “…wouldn’t it be great to see all the information about one place in...one place? Starting today, you can do that on Place Pages for Google Maps. A Place Page is a webpage for every place in the world, organizing all the relevant information about it. By every place, we really mean *every* place — there are Place Pages for businesses, points of interest, transit stations, neighborhoods, landmarks and cities all over the world. You can get to a Place Page by clicking on "more info" in search results, or by clicking "more info" in the mini-bubble. Now, instead of just getting a slightly bigger bubble, you'll get an entire page of rich details, like photos, videos, a Street View preview, nearby transit, reviews and related websites…”
27. Google Docs Become More Student-Friendly http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/28/AR2009092802665.html “…Google is tweaking Google Docs, which is a part of Google Apps' productivity suite, by adding a few student-friendly features. Google Docs has added an equation editor so students can actually complete math problems within a document, allowing students to not only write papers that include numbers and equations but also take notes from quantitative classes using Google Docs. Google has also added the ability to insert superscripts and subscripts, which can be useful for writing out chemical compounds or algebraic expressions. Google is also trying to make Docs appealing to those humanities majors out there by letting users to select from various bulleting styles for creating outlines and giving students ability to print footnotes as endnotes for term papers…”
28. Google Wave to be released to 100,000 testers Wednesday http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/29/google.wave.beta/ “Google Wave…will go out to about 100,000 beta testers Wednesday…the Web application from Google Inc. combines elements of e-mail, chat, Wiki documents, blogs and photo-sharing sites to create a form of Internet communication called a "hosted conversation," or a "wave”…The app was created by…the Australian brothers who developed Google Maps…they hope Google Wave will eventually replace e-mail as the main way people converse on the Internet…”
29. More Ads Are Coming to Google Maps http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/more_ads_are_coming_to_google_maps.php “…you may start seeing company logos dotting the landscape on Google Maps. While Google has experimented with different types of ads in Google Maps on and off over the years, it now looks like Google is going to make another push to monetize Google Maps…Google plans to launch this program in at least the US and Australia in the new few weeks…”
General Technology
30. Freecom outs first ever USB 3.0 hard drive http://news.techworld.com/storage/3202573/freecom-outs-first-ever-usb-30-hard-drive/ “After 8 years of success the USB 2.0 standard has begun its long journey into obsolescence. Dutch storage company Freecom has announced the first mainstream storage product based on ‘SuperSpeed' USB 3.0…the new external Hard Drive XS 3.0 doesn't cost the earth at £99 (approx $160) for a 1TB drive, even though that excludes the £22.99 for a desktop PCI-bus controller necessary to make it work at its intended throughput. Laptop users can pair it with a £25.99 plug-in PC Card to achieve the same effect. The company is also supplying drivers to make USB 3.0 work with
31. Mad Scientists, Unite! http://wweek.com/editorial/3529/12608/ “…Housed in a 33,000-square-foot warehouse in Beaverton, TechShop is a Willy Wonka-like headquarters for inventors and hobbyists that gives its members access to spendy tools most garages don’t have, from $15,000 laser cutters and smelting equipment to an $8,000 tungsten inert gas welder used to weld stainless steel. It also offers space for storage and offices for companies working on test projects, as well as member- and employee-taught public classes on everything from robotics to welding. TechShop only opened last month, but the day I visited the warehouse was already buzzing with the sounds of industry. It’s only the third shop of its kind in the United States—joining the original TechShop in Menlo Park, Calif., and a recent addition in Durham, N.C.—but the Portland branch is growing fast, with 110 members so far… echShop’s newest idea—a Tonka Toy wet dream called “Dig It” that would let people take control of a giant construction machine and go nuts in the open field. After a quick tutorial I found myself at the controls of a 9,500-pound mini-excavator. Pushing the accelerator farther than someone with no qualifications should, I steered into a field and proceeded to dig, yes, a really big hole…”
32. Honda's U3-X unicycle really for robots http://news.cnet.com/8301-17912_3-10360718-72.html “…Honda on Wednesday unveiled the U3-X, a stool with a unique directional wheel system that allows it to travel diagonally, as well as right, left, forward, and backward. It's basically a robotic unicycle…Like the Segway, the U3-X is more about showing off an engineering breakthrough than selling an actual product. In this case, Honda contributes to the ongoing discourse on mobility among roboticists. The legs vs. wheels debate among roboticists has been going on for years. A third option, the tank tread system, has been introduced in recent years…”
33. Build a Better Bulb for a $10 Million Prize http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/technology/25bulb.html “…Philips, the Dutch electronics giant…submitted the first entry for the L Prize, an Energy Department contest that will award up to $10 million to the first person or group to create a new energy-sipping version of the most popular type of light bulb used in America…Testing of the Philips lamp will take close to a year to complete as the department independently evaluates the company’s claims…The L Prize has garnered significant attention in the lighting industry because 60-watt incandescent lamps represent 50 percent of all the lighting in the United States, with 425 million sold each year…”
34. Fast interfaces overlap at IDF http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220200127 “The buzz in fast interconnects at the Intel Developer Forum was supposed to be around SuperSpeed USB, the 3.0 version of the omnipresent interface coming to systems in 2010. But…Intel decided to roll out
35. ARM attacks Atom with 2GHz A9 http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2009/09/arm-attacks-atom-with-2ghz-a9-can-servers-be-far-behind.ars “…ARM…took a major step last week in bringing the fight back to Intel by boosting its Cortex A9 processor up into Atom territory…ARM announced the availability of IP for a 2GHz dual-core A9 processor on TSMC's 40nm process, which the company claims will offer massively more performance than Atom within a smaller power envelope… Unfortunately for ARM's netbook ambitions, Linux is the only netbook OS that matters that runs on ARM, and the jury's still out on whether it can really take on Windows 7. As for Windows on ARM, it just ain't gonna happen, ever…Given that even the most insanely power-efficient, Atom-smashing 2GHz ARM netbook product is going to be relegated to whatever netbook niche Linux can carve out for it, it's worth asking what sort of future there is for such a high-powered ARM part…The only thing that makes the technique feasible from a performance per dollar perspective is the fact that Intel charges a fat premium for its higher-end server chips. Avoiding that premium is the sole reason that anyone would even consider using board-level integration…instead of die-level integration…any four-core ARM desktop or server processor that shoots at a similar absolute performance target as a four-core Nehalem processor will either look pretty much like a four-core Nehalem, or it won't hit the target…”
Leisure & Entertainment
36. Nintendo Cuts Wii's Price to $200 http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/eyeonasia/archives/2009/09/nintendo_cuts_w.html “…Nintendo said that it would lower the price of its Wii video game console by $50 to $200 in the U.S…going into the crucial yearend holiday shopping period. Sony reduced the price of its…PlayStation 3 by $100 to $300 in August, sparking big sales gains. Microsoft also reduced the cost of the most expensive Xbox 360 model to $300…As of late June, Nintendo had sold 52.6 million Wii consoles; it expects to sell another 23.8 million by the March 2010 fiscal year end. Sony’s tally was at 23.8 million in June with another 1.19 million expected by next March. Meanwhile, Microsoft, which released the Xbox 360 in 2005, had sold 31 million consoles as of late August…”
37. Before Choosing an E-Book, Pondering the Format http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/technology/personaltech/24basics.html “…Steve Jordan, a self-published science fiction novelist…has the added burden of deciding how to deliver the stories he creates to his online audience. Some of those readers own dedicated devices like Amazon.com’s Kindle, some plow through his books on smartphones, some use laptops and maybe a few even employ desktop PCs left over from the last century. (In true sci-fi fashion, Mr.
38. Future is TV-shaped, says Intel http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8272003.stm “…chip giant Intel…said its vision of TV everywhere will be more personal, social, ubiquitous and informative…TV will remain at the centre of our lives and you will be able to watch what you want where you want." Mr Rattner said: "We are talking about more than one TV-capable device for every man and woman on the planet…”
39. Samsung SCH-W880: 12 megapixel, 3X zoom http://dvice.com/archives/2009/09/samsung-sch-w88.php “…Samsung: the SCH-W800…socking great 12-megapixel camera with a 3G phone attached, making it a real departure from all of the talky-talk, snappy-snap hybrids we've seen over the past five years. There are proper camera controls on the body, and you get 3x zoom, HD video, HSDPA data, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, microSD slot, and, this being a phone for the Korean market, mobile TV. There's also a huge 3.3-inch AMOLED display…”
40. LucidLogix marries graphics chips that hate each other http://games.venturebeat.com/2009/09/22/lucidlogix-technologies-launching-chip-to-tie-graphics-chips-together-in-a-pc/ “The graphics chip market is an exclusive club with only a few big members: Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia. But Israeli startup LucidLogix Technologies hopes to break into the club with its innovative Hydra 200 chip. That chip enables a game or other program to take advantage of all of the 3-D graphics chips in a computer, even if those graphics chips are different types or come from different vendors…”
41. Top 10 Unanswered Questions in Geeky Movies http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/09/top-10-unanswered-questions-in-geeky-movies/ “Even the best movies ever made leave unanswered questions in their wake. Some refer to these as “plot holes,” but why not give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt? Maybe they had a perfectly reasonable explanation in mind, and simply… forgot to include it in the movie…here is GeekDad’s list of the ten best unanswered questions from geeky movies…”
Economy and Technology
42. A123 IPO charges car battery market http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/24/news/companies/a123_ipo/ “…A123 Systems…raised $380 million through an initial public offering… It was founded in 2001 with a $100,000 grant from the Department of Energy, and now has facilities in 10 countries. The firm has around 1,700 employees, mostly located abroad…The firm recently won a $250 million grant from the federal government to build a production facility outside Detroit - the second largest grant awarded in a recent $2.4 billion round of stimulus-related funding. The factory will complement production facilities the company already has in
43. Is Twitter Worth a Billion Bucks? http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2009/tc20090924_956402.htm “…reports emerged on Sept. 24 that the microblogging service was close to securing $100 million in funding that valued the company at $1 billion…a billion dollars for a company with virtually no revenue recalls the excesses of the dot-com era. The logic behind Twitter's valuation comes straight from the very same school. It views Twitter less as a single company than as the base for a whole realm of communication and data. "It is an increasingly important platform for business and consumers," says Seth Levine, managing director of Foundry Group. The bet, quite simply, is that Twitter can become enormous—a rich new source of business intelligence, a channel to reach targeted consumers around the world, and a hothouse for marketing and news startups. The risk, of course, is that Twitter may stall along the way and be remembered in a couple of years as a quirky fad…”
44. Playfish is taking the online gaming industry into uncharted waters http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article6829844.ece “…when Sebastien de Halleux and three friends founded Playfish in 2007, they found an intriguing way to side-step the set-up costs. They used the internet as their storage space and distribution platform. Since then Playfish has grown to become one of the world’s leading providers of games that are played on social networking sites such as Facebook. Its most popular game, Pet Society, attracts 16 million players a month — more than even World of Warcraft…We have no servers of our own. We run off the cloud. Everything from our business services like e-mail to our commercial services that actually run our games are all hosted on the cloud. This makes us a nimble operation…its games, which also include Country Story, are free to play. It makes money by selling inexpensive accessories or add-ons within the games, paid for online by micropayments…We allow people to buy additional items within the games, which they then show to their friends. The social connection is a powerful driver of the virtual goods model for us…The only thing apparently hampering Playfish’s growth is a lack of a reliable, global micropayment system. Mr de Halleux said: “The current e-commerce sites have been customised for the West, whether it’s Amazon or eBay, and they’re designed primarily for higher-ticket items like electronics or books. “Today, with the sort of global audience that Facebook makes addressable, we have a payment problem that really spans the globe…”
45. Shanda Games Falls in First Day of New York Trading http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aEXIJSlbRtXE “Shanda Games Ltd. fell in its first day of trading in New York after the unit of China’s biggest online games provider raised $1.04 billion in the largest U.S. initial share sale this year. Shanda Games…dropped 2.5 percent to $12.19 at 11:24 a.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market trading…Shanda Games increased first-half profit 75 percent as it attracted more players with games such as MIR 2 and Aion in the world’s biggest online market…”
46. Newegg files for IPO http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/28/neweggs-ipo-filing-reveals-the-financials-behind-a-2-billion-electronics-retailer/ “…Electronics retailer Newegg plans to raise $175 million for an IPO…retailer says that it has been profitable every year since 2001 and posted sales of $2.1 billion in 2008. Newegg’s net income increased 55 percent in 2008, to $28.4 million…while Newegg is seeing decent revenue growth, retail is tough, especially when your biggest competition is Amazon…As with any IPO, investors will be looking for growth potential and whether Newegg can expand those profit margins over time. In order to double its profits, it can either double its revenues to $4 billion or double its profit margins to match Amazon’s…”
47. Xerox buys ACS to get into services http://venturebeat.com/2009/09/28/ma-binge-continues-as-xerox-buys-acs-to-get-into-services/ “…Xerox said today it will buy Affiliated Computer Services in a cash and stock deal valued at $6.4 billion…the copier giant will now expand into services such as collecting tolls and installing computer systems in government agencies…Xerox will now join battle with HP in print managed services, something that HP expanded into with its $13 billion acquisition of EDS last year. It will also take on IBM global services as well as Dell, which last week bought Perot Systems for $3.9 billion…”
48. Red Hat Profit Rises 37% http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125379354205337405.html “Red Hat Inc.'s fiscal second-quarter profit jumped 37% as the company again posted better-than-expected results on growing revenue and higher margins…The open-software developer's results have held up relatively well in recent quarters, as the bulk of its revenue is recurring and subscription based…Red Hat's core Linux product is free, but the company makes its money on providing maintenance and support to corporations and large organizations who use it to operate computers…”
Civilian Aerospace
49. Student-Built Space Camera Photographs Earth, Costs $150 http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080923-space-camera.html “Two MIT students recently launched a digital camera into the stratosphere on a helium balloon, capturing amazing views of Earth from up high. The feat is impressive not just for the images, but for its budget - the entire project cost the students only $150. Oliver Yeh, an MIT senior studying computer science and electrical engineering, and Justin Lee, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, lofted the camera Sept. 2 from Sturbridge, Mass. By tracking its location through the GPS readout of a cheap cell phone they launched along with it, the students were able to retrieve the package after it landed in Worcester about 20 miles (32 km) away…”
50. SpaceX to Launch Spaceship Prototype in New Rocket Test http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090929-spacex-dragon-prototype.html “Space Exploration Technologies…will launch a prototype of its reusable Dragon cargo capsule on the maiden flight of the Falcon 9 rocket the Hawthorne, Calif.-based company still hopes to conduct this year…Dragon is a reusable capsule SpaceX has been developing under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program since 2006 to carry cargo to the international space station…”
51. Solar power from outer space http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/09/26/plans-for-solar-power-from-outer-space-move-forward/ “A
52. Founder of Cirque du Soleil heads to ISS http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090928-laliberte-space-clown.html “Former circus performer Guy Laliberte, the founder of Cirque du Soleil…launches to space Wednesday…headed for the International Space Station…has dedicated his flight to publicizing global water issues through a creative performance to be broadcast from orbit…reportedly paying about $35 million for the spaceflight. Liftoff is set for 3:14 a.m. EDT (0714 GMT) Wednesday. Laliberte will spend about 12 days in space…”
53. SpaceX Navigation Sensor Demonstrated on Space Shuttle http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090925005578&newsLang=en “…Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) announces the successful demonstration of a proximity sensor, called DragonEye, on NASA’s STS-127 shuttle mission…in preparation for future visits by SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft…DragonEye, a Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) sensor, has undergone flight system trials aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour…DragonEye LIDAR system provides three-dimensional images based on the amount of time it takes for a single laser pulse from the sensor to the reach a target and bounce back, providing range and bearing information from the Dragon spacecraft to the ISS. DragonEye will make its operational debut on the final flight of the Dragon spacecraft under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, where the spacecraft will demonstrate the ability to berth with the ISS…”
Supercomputing & GPUs
54. Bloomberg Uses GPUs to Speed Up Bond Pricing http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/advancedtrading/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220200055 “…Each night, Bloomberg calculates pricing for 1.3 million hard-to-price asset-backed securities such as collateralized mortgage obligations (including cash flows, key rate duration and such). Since 1996, the market news giant has performed these calculations — single-factor stochastic models based on Monte Carlo simulations — on a farm of Linux servers in its data centers in New York and New Jersey…In 2005, Bloomberg released a more precise two-factor model that calibrates itself to the current volatility surface…This model was more expensive to run and we ran it when people asked for it…Bloomberg considered scaling up its Linux farm to accommodate this customer demand. "It turned out that in order to compute everything within that eight-hour window, we would need to go from 800 cores to 8,000 cores," Edwards. "That's a lot of servers, about 1,000…A programmer on Edwards' staff suggested trying to run the models on graphics processing units…That programmer now runs the team of technologists that work on the bond pricing system. Bloomberg went live in 2009 running its two-factor models on a farm of traditional servers paired with nVidia Tesla GPUs. Instead of having to scale up to 1,000 servers, Bloomberg is using 48 server/GPU pairs…”
55. GPU computing at Harvard http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/harnessing-fun-for-serious-science/ “…Lincoln Greenhill…together with U.S., Australian, and Indian colleagues, is…building a revolutionary radio telescope — 8,000 antennas spread across 1.5 kilometers of desert — deep in the Australian outback. The antennas will generate so much data, however, that without a new kind of computing, running at faster speeds while requiring lower power, the project would be impossible…Greenhill’s Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is one of a trio of projects at Harvard whose massive computing needs have prompted investigators to join forces to pioneer new computing techniques that will benefit not just radio astronomy, but quantum chemistry and neuroscience as well. The three projects have come together in an effort called “SciGPU” (www.scigpu.org)...GPUs were developed over the past two decades as manufacturers sought ways to speed up computers as they manipulated ever-larger and more-detailed computer graphics imagery – first computer animations and then also videos…The explosion of the video game industry in the 1990s and 2000s drove the development of ever-more-complex GPUs…two important events made GPU computing practical today. In the late 1990s, the first programmable GPU was developed, and roughly two years ago, the programming language to program it, called CUDA, was released by video card manufacturer Nvidia Corp…”
56. Supercomputers Often Run Outdated Software http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Supercomputers-Often-Run/8184/ “…Supercomputers keep breaking records for processing speed, but software to operate them has not kept up with that increasingly zippy hardware…Codes are still being used from the 1960s," said Ed Seidel, director of the National Science Foundation's office of cyberinfrastructure…Attendees at the meeting said one of the most popular computer languages used to create programs for supercomputers is Fortran, which went out of style among conventional programmers decades ago and is rarely even taught in college computer-science departments today…”
posted by myDigitechnician at 29.9.09
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