NEW NET Issues List for 03 Aug 2010

Below is the final list of issues for the Tuesday, 03 August 2010, 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 -- if there's a chain across the steps, ignore it and come on upstairs.

The ‘net

1. Why Facebook Questions Could Be Zuckerberg's Dream Come True http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_facebook_questions_could_be_zuckerbergs_dream.php “…things are about to change dramatically on the world's largest social network…A few million people have been given access this afternoon to Facebook Questions, a social Question & Answer feature built under the leadership of Blake Ross, co-creator of the Firefox browser years ago and now an employee at Facebook. Questions may come closer than anything else has yet to founder Mark Zuckerberg's vision of Facebook as a connector of people around the world, a force for empathy and world peace…It might be tempting to assume that Facebook Questions is going to end up a cesspool of idiocy, harshness and partisan tyranny of the majority. But look at it this way: The most successful social software company in the history of the world hired the creator of the Firefox browser who worked for months to build an effective Q&A service and you think it's going to turn into a YouTube dumb-fest? That's not the outcome I'd bet my money on…”

2. Blekko: New Search Engine Lets You “Spin” The Web http://searchengineland.com/blekko-a-new-search-engine-that-lets-you-spin-the-web-47215 “…New challenger Blekko is stepping into the fray, opening to limited beta testing today…Blekko isn’t a Google-killer. Nor is Blekko positioning itself that way. But Blekko’s “slashtags” are a unique feature…when you want to see how search results look when they’re skewed to a particular viewpoint…What would rank number one for “honey” if you asked bakers versus beekeepers? Blekko can give you the spin from both groups. Want your search results with a liberal slant? You can do that at Blekko, or slash your results the opposite way for a conservative view. This is all done using slashtags, special keywords that you place after what your searching for, in order to indicate the viewpoint you want used to spin your results. Blekko maintains over 250 slashtags…Want web sites discussing BP but with a liberal slant? Do this…bp /liberal…That’s a search for BP, as you might do on Google, followed by the slashtag indicating a liberal viewpoint: /liberal. It returns back sites like the Huffington Post or Mother Jones…Want a conservative view? Then do: bp /conservative…You get Fox News topping the list…”

3. Why the Facebook-Amazon.com integration is bigger than you think http://social.venturebeat.com/2010/07/27/facebook-amazon/ “Facebook and Amazon.com partnered Tuesday in what could be one of the social network’s most important integrations yet. Amazon.com now offers a personalized page, where consumers can see product recommendations influenced by friends and their own tastes. They get notifications on when friend’s birthdays are coming up and suggestions on what to buy for them…One of Google’s most lucrative use cases is when consumers search to decide which products to buy. Costs-per-click on product keywords like refrigerators, TVs and books are often easily more than $1. But if consumers start looking toward their friends to find out what to buy, they could be able to bypass Google altogether…The longstanding problem with brand advertising is that it is notoriously hard to measure effectiveness…Online advertising, as it exists today, rewards the last ad that a consumer clicks on before they buy a product (like Google’s search ads or Amazon’s affiliate links). But it doesn’t reward all the display or engagement ads that might influence a consumer for weeks or months beforehand on content sites or social networks…if Facebook can build out a partnership with Amazon, where it can get key pieces of aggregated data back to study how product sales change in relation to social recommendations or ad campaigns, it can build models to show how financially valuable it is on average when a user “likes” a product or brand…”

4. Americans spending more time on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube; online gaming overtakes e-mail http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=69156 “Americans are spending a quarter of their Internet time on Facebook or other social networking sites, while online video games have passed sending e-mail as the second most popular online activity…Americans spent 22.7 percent of their online time on social networking or blogs in June 2010, a 43 percent increase compared to June 2009. Video game playing increased by 10 percent in the same period to account for 10.2 percent of time spent online…e-mail usage…declined 28 percent to an 8.3 percent share of online time…time spent on Web portals decreased 19 percent to a 4.4 percent share of all activity, and instant messaging had a 4 percent share, a decrease of 15 percent…viewing of online videos and movies increased 12 percent to about 3.9 percent of all activities, allowing that category to surge past online searches. "Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the Web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities - social networking, playing games and e-mailing…”

5. Bing Maps Adds OpenStreetMap http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/maps/archive/2010/08/02/bing-maps-adds-open-street-maps-layer.aspx “OpenStreetMap (OSM) is the newest layer for Bing Maps and the newest Bing Map App in the gallery. The map app, dubbed simply, “OpenStreetMap” loads OSM maps as a new map style option. OpenStreetMap follows a similar concept as Wikipedia, but for maps and other geographic facts (despite its name, it's by no means only limited to streets and roads). People, like you and me, gather location data across the globe from a variety of sources such as recordings from GPS devices, from free satellite imagery or simply from knowing an area very well, for example because they live there. This information then gets uploaded to OpenStreetMap's central database from where it can be further modified, corrected and enriched by anyone who notices missing facts or errors about the area…”

6. Bing Maps learns to calculate taxi fares before Google http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/08/never-be-surprised-again-bing-maps-gets-taxi-fare-calculator.ars “How much will it cost to grab a cab from my apartment to a favorite seafood restaurant? How about from my friend's hotel to another friend's apartment?...users can calculate taxi fare between any two destinations within major metropolitan areas on Bing Maps. In our testing, the feature works quite well…Not only can this feature be useful for locals, it would also be appreciated by out-of-town visitors who want to know what to expect when checking out a new city…”

Security, Privacy & Digital Controls

7. Smartphone wallpaper app that steals your data was downloaded by millions http://mobile.venturebeat.com/2010/07/28/android-wallpaper-app-that-steals-your-data-was-downloaded-by-millions/ “…apps that seem good but are really stealing your personal information are a big risk at a time when mobile apps are exploding on smartphones…“Even good apps can be modified to turn bad after a lot of people download it,” MaHaffey said. “Users absolutely have to pay attention to what they download…Jackeey Wallpaper…was uploaded to the Android Market, where users can download it and use it to decorate their phones that run the Google Android operating system. It includes branded wallpapers from My Little Pony and Star Wars, to name just a couple. It collects your browsing history, text messages, your phone’s SIM card number, subscriber identification, and even your voicemail password. It sends the data to a web site, www.imnet.us. That site is evidently owned by someone in Shenzhen, China. The app has been downloaded anywhere from 1.1 million to 4.6 million times…”

8. Hacker makes mobile phone snooping affordable http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j5yfIBPjapprjCR7CbHvzj-1s-wg “A hacker has brought mobile phone snooping to the modestly financed, showing how to build a call-catching system for about 1,500 dollars (US)…I can intercept cell phone calls with 1,500 dollars worth of radio gear and a laptop," Paget said after the talk. "Your handset thinks I'm your cell phone tower and I get to control your calls. These attacks used to cost millions of dollars, now you can do it for a lot less."…A hacker could then pretend to be the telecom service provider, forwarding calls to intended recipients and listening in. "I can target specific people if I want to spy and I can command only certain types of phones to connect," Paget said. "An attacker could easily take advantage of this."…His creation worked only on mobile phones using the GSM network and not more secure 3G, third generation, networks…”

9. Justifiable 'jailbreaks' on the Apple iPhone http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/28/ED581EL68R.DTL “Want an iPhone? Hate AT&T? Used to be, the only way to remedy this common problem was to clandestinely "jailbreak" your phone, so that you could switch to a more reliable network. Tech nuts also did the jailbreak so that they could load applications or programs on their phones that Apple didn't offer. Thanks to the Library of Congress, which can define exceptions to copyright law, it's now legal for consumers to break out. The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation asked for an exception, and it won…Apple battled it. In legal filings last year, Apple had argued that altered phones infringed on its copyrights because they used "modified" versions of Apple's operating systems. It still claims that jailbreaking can degrade the user experience, and that it can make the iPhone become unstable and unreliable. News flash, Apple: The iPhone already was unstable and unreliable…The company's attempt to control the "user experience" after it had sold the product was an affront to consumers everywhere - imagine if Chevy told buyers that after they bought cars, they weren't allowed to customize them with after-market speakers, engine performance boosters or fancy wheels. Apple is still likely to void the warranties of people who jailbreak their phones, and that isn't right…Typical human inertia suggests that jailbreaking is only going to be a solution for the most disgruntled and the most tech-obsessed. However, it should be everyone's option…”

10. Jailbreaking an iPhone is a Snap Thanks to New Website http://www.pcworld.com/article/202335/jailbreaking_an_iphone_is_a_snap_thanks_to_new_website.html “…a new tool called JailbreakMe…lets you unlock an iOS 4.O device effortlessly. The free online-based tool, and instructions, come just days after jailbreaking your iPhone was declared legal by the U.S. Copyright Office. Jailbreaking your iPhone lets you install various non Apple-vetted applications to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. The hack is accessible to anyone through JailbreakMe.com, via the Mobile Safari browser, and can be used with an iPhone 4, 3GS and 3G running iOS 4 and 4.0.1…Until now, jailbreaking your iPhone involved having the device connected to a computer, in a painstaking process that put off some of the more novice users. JailbreakMe makes hacking your iPhone much easier, as it's a browser-based solution…”

11. "Leaked" data of 100M Facebook users came from public info http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/07/leaked-data-of-100m-facebook-users-came-from-public-info.ars “Much has been made of a recent Facebook "leak" which allegedly disclosed information on over 100 million Facebook users. What some reports have failed to highlight, however, is that the information was already public to begin with. Security researcher Ron Bowes wrote a Ruby script that downloads information from Facebook's user directory, a searchable index of public profile pages. The directory…only exposes information that the user has allowed Facebook to make public…This incident doesn't represent a breach of Facebook's security, because the information is made public by design. It highlights, however, the importance of keeping an eye on your social networking privacy settings and understanding how your personal information is used…”

12. Using Facebook to Catch Scofflaw Drivers http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/technology/02traffic.html “…[New Delhi’s] overburdened traffic police officers have enlisted an unexpected weapon in the fight against dangerous driving: Facebook. The traffic police started a Facebook page two months ago, and almost immediately residents became digital informants, posting photos of their fellow drivers violating traffic laws. As of Sunday more than 17,000 people had become fans of the page and posted almost 3,000 photographs and dozens of videos…There are photos of people on motorcycles without helmets, cars stopped in crosswalks, drivers on cellphones, drivers in the middle of illegal turns and improperly parked vehicles. Using the pictures, the Delhi Traffic Police have issued 665 tickets, using the license plate numbers shown in the photos to track vehicle owners…Despite some concerns about privacy, and the authenticity of the photos, the public’s response has been overwhelmingly positive…the Facebook page never told people to take pictures of lawless drivers…Mr. Garg acknowledged that it was possible photos could be manipulated to incriminate someone who was not actually breaking the law. But, he said, drivers can contest the tickets if they think they were wrongly issued. The police advise residents not to let personal animosity influence their photo-taking…“Up until now, any driver about to break traffic laws, including me, used to look around,” Mr. Jain said, to see if there was an officer nearby before doing so…Critics say these methods could set a dangerous precedent. Relying on people to turn in their neighbors online is “Orwellian,” said Gaurav Mishra…”

13. Google Earth Used to Find Unpermitted Pools on LI http://www.1010wins.com/Google-Earth-Used-to-Find-Unpermitted-Pools-on-LI/7816369 “A town on New York's Long Island is using Google Earth to find backyard pools that don't have the proper permits…Riverhead has used the satellite image service to find about 250 pools whose owners never filled out the required paperwork. Violators were told to get the permits. So far about $75,000 in fees has been collected…”

Mobile Computing & Communicating

14. Verizon users outpace iPhone users in data usage http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20012011-266.html “Verizon Wireless smartphone customers use 25 percent more data than AT&T iPhone customers, thanks in large part to new Verizon's new Android smartphones…Validas, a company that analyzes cell phone bills and usage for consumers and corporate customers, analyzed 20,000 consumer phone bills between January and May of 2010 and discovered that Verizon Wireless smartphone customers consume on average about 421 megabytes per month. Meanwhile, AT&T iPhone users consume roughly 25 percent less data, or about 338 megabytes per month…The comparison between smartphone data usage on Verizon's network and iPhone data usage on AT&T's network is important to note, because iPhone users have typically been viewed as the heaviest data users in the entire mobile market…Verizon is seeing a major uptick in data usage in the past six months, largely due to new Android smartphones…If the trends continue, Verizon could see an explosion in data usage…”

15. Will Droid 2 Make Droid Obsolete? http://www.pcworld.com/article/202311/will_droid_2_make_droid_obsolete.html “…Verizon and Motorola unleashed the Droid on the world about nine months ago, but already the phone is starting to seem a bit long in the tooth. The list of "better" Android phones is too long to go into in detail…we're hearing very, very strong rumors and leaks about a Droid 2 coming this month. Does this mean my Droid is officially obsolete?...maybe there's hope for us original Droid owners. The leaked specs…aren't all that intriguing. A 3.7" screen, 750 Mhz processor, no front facing camera…A bit faster than the original, but with some kind of proprietary 'skin' over the Android OS…I'm wondering why Verizon and Motorola would bother retiring the original Droid to replace it with such a modest upgrade…Most original Droid owners aren't due for an upgrade for another year or more, so presumably the intent isn't to motivate us to upgrade…”

16. Verizon's 4G LTE roadmap http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/08/01/verizon.lte.roadmap.slips.out “…Verizon's key 4G upgrade plans have been detailed in a leak this weekend…two to three 4G modems will be the only devices on tap with the November launch…In 2011, much of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi should be addressed, as well as areas that haven't been serviced by Verizon before, such as West Virginia…Verizon's known intentions to cap 4G data…would likely sit at or near 5GB, as with existing data-only plans, but wouldn't affect the "unlimited" use of 3G…Sprint…currently sells its WiMAX service as unlimited as an incentive to use its technology…Verizon's 4G is expected to have an edge over Sprint's, as LTE can reach up to 12Mbps in real-world download conditions where Sprint usually estimates 6Mbps…”

17. AT&T, Verizon to Target Visa, MasterCard With Smartphones http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-02/at-t-verizon-said-to-target-visa-mastercard-with-smartphones.html “AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile carriers, are planning a venture to displace credit and debit cards with smartphones, posing a new threat to Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc…The partnership, which also includes Deutsche Telekom AG unit T-Mobile USA…would let a consumer pay with the contactless wave of a smartphone…The trial would be the carriers’ biggest effort to spur mobile payments in the U.S. and supplant more than 1 billion plastic cards in American wallets…The service, similar to those already available in Japan, Turkey and the U.K., would use contactless technology to complete purchases in stores. They’d be processed through Discover’s payments network…Barclays would be the bank helping to manage the accounts…Interchange fees on credit and debit cards exceed $40 billion a year and average about 1 percent to 2 percent of every transaction…Mobile technology for banking and payments is reaching “a tipping point,” with younger consumers leading the way…More than half of U.S. consumers, and almost 80 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34, will use mobile financial services within five years…as people rely on their phones to manage every aspect of their lives, said Mercatus Managing Partner Bob Hedges, former head of retail banking and payments at Fleet Bank…MasterCard and Visa have been investing in their own mobile solutions…Startups based near Silicon Valley, California, such as Zong, Bling Nation and Boku Inc., offer alternative payment solutions…The wireless carriers have an advantage over Visa and MasterCard in the race to control the U.S. payments market because the phone companies have access to their customers’ mobile numbers and bank account information…“A mobile device is online, real-time interactivity that changes the customer relationship,” he said. “A card is dumb.”

18. Android Sales Overtake iPhone in the U.S. http://gigaom.com/2010/08/02/android-sales-overtake-iphone-in-the-u-s/ “…Android phones in the U.S…have outsold Apple handsets for the first time on record. New smartphone subscribers choosing Google phones accounted for 27 percent of U.S. smartphone sales…nudging past the 23 percent share held by Apple…Android isn’t just a U.S. phenomenon: Canalys today estimates that Android handset sales grew 886 percent worldwide from the year ago quarter. It’s easier to show stellar growth in the beginning of a product cycle, but Android is nearly two years old…Google’s platform is still an infant when compared to iOS4, BlackBerry…Motorola’s Mobile Device division has swung from losses to profits on the back of Android, for example. And HTC…embraced Android…The result? HTC revenues were up 66 percent in June from the year ago period. As hot a seller as Google Android phones are right now, its user base isn’t the most satisfied with their device…71 percent would buy an Android phone again…it falls noticeably short when asking iPhone owners about their next handset — 89 percent are happy with iOS4 and plan to buy a future Apple handset…Android and iOS4 platforms still trail the 33 percent U.S. share held by Research in Motion’s BlackBerry devices, but for many, BlackBerry needs an overhaul. One half of the current BlackBerry owners surveyed don’t want another RIM device…but instead are looking at replacements running either Google’s or Apple’s mobile platform…”

19. Google’s New DRM for Android Marketplace http://www.hardocp.com/news/2010/08/01/googlersquos_new_drm_for_android_marketplace/ “Google is implementing a new DRM program for the Android Marketplace which will use a licensing server to verify a user has purchased the app before it launches. Apps can be written to handle the interaction with the licensing server in any way the developer choose, but Google is providing two preconfigured implementations that will stop an app from running if the server doesn't or can't verify the app's license…”

20. Verizon Denies Tethering and Hotspot Features to Droid Customers http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/verizon-droid-android-update/ “…While Verizon Wireless is set to push out the latest version of the Android operating system to Droid users starting this week, two key features will be missing: tethering and Wi-Fi hotspot capability. Verizon says the Droid won’t get these two features, which are built into the Android 2.2 OS…“The Droid by Motorola doesn’t have [the] hardware to support a mobile hotspot,” a Verizon spokesperson told MobileCrunch…Custom flavors of the Android OS such as CyanogenMod also offer Wi-Fi and USB tethering…If the hardware is capable of tethering and acting as a hotspot when running rooted firmware, why can’t it do that with the stock firmware…the carrier has a history of disabling features on a phone, only to turn around and charge for it later…Verizon’s moves with the Android also go against what makes the Google-designed operating system so attractive to consumers…”

Open Source

21. Curriki: Education goes open source http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/technology/01ping.html “…Mr. McNealy, the fiery co-founder and former chief executive of Sun Microsystems, shuns basic math textbooks as bloated monstrosities: their price keeps rising while the core information inside of them stays the same. “Ten plus 10 has been 20 for a long time,” Mr. McNealy says…He has since decided to aim his energy and some money at Curriki, an online hub for free textbooks and other course material…Even the traditional textbook publishers agree that the days of tweaking a few pages in a book just to sell a new edition are coming to an end…groups nationwide have adopted the open-source mantra of the software world and started financing open-source books. Experts — often retired teachers or groups of teachers — write these books and allow anyone to distribute them in digital, printed or audio formats…Aneesh Chopra, the federal chief technology officer, promoted an open physics textbook from CK-12 in his previous role as the secretary of technology for Virginia…“We still had quotes that said the main component of a television was a cathode ray tube,” Mr. Chopra says…Publishers have started de-emphasizing the textbook in favor of selling a package of supporting materials like teaching aids and training…Ms. Colby of Houghton Mifflin puts the state of affairs politely: “I think the open-source movement is opening a whole new conversation, and that is what is exciting to us…”

22. Setting Up OpenVPN on a DD-WRT Router, Part 2 http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/3896031/Setting-Up-OpenVPN-on-a-DD-WRT-Router-Part-2.htm “…a two-part series on setting up the OpenVPN server on DD-WRT router firmware…a great way to set up secure connections to your network for road-warriors or to remotely connect offices…In Part 1, we uploaded the DD-WRT firmware to the router, changed the router's IP and subnet for compatibly reasons, and created the SSL certificates for the OpenVPN server and clients. Now, we'll continue by enabling the OpenVPN server and copying in the SSL certificates. We'll also input startup and firewall scripts. Then, we'll configure the clients and finally test it out…”

23. Foobillard, an opensouce Billiard Simulation game for Linux http://linuxers.org/article/foobillard-opensouce-billiard-simulation-game-linux “Had a night out with friends, the plan was to watch a lot of movies but ended up playing this awesome game from 3am until morning. And the amazing part - all of us had hardly ever played any cue games before. I never realized that a non-arcade game like this could keep me awake all night…Foobillard was actually suggested to me by a college friend who is a die hard fan of cue sports and a good player too…For the introduction part, Foobillard is free and opensource, cross-platform, OpenGL based game…it was originally built for Linux and later ported to MacOS and Windows. The games that can be played in Foobillard are - Carambol, Snooker, Pool (8 ball and 9 ball). It can also be played over network, making it a complete multiplayer game…bad thing about the game is that it directly throws you in a game - no menu, no key bindings help, no game options etc…”

24. Get a Blazing-Fast Computer for Free http://www.slate.com/id/226178 1 “…two years ago, I reviewed Ubuntu, the user-friendly version of the free Linux operating system. I wasn't impressed…I made a second foray onto Ubuntu's shores a week ago, and so far, I like it quite a bit…So Ubuntu is good. But why should you use it? After all, nearly every computer you encounter will likely be running either Windows or the Mac OS…To me, it's the perfect way to give an aging Windows PC new life…the laptop that I purchased in the spring of 2006… was…getting progressively worse at simple tasks over the last few months. For reasons I haven't bothered to check out—maybe it was a virus or spyware, maybe some kind of hardware or driver error, who knows?—the laptop would take forever to load up a Web page and would completely bog down when more than two browser tabs were open. The machine needed a makeover…I could have hunted down the Dell's original XP disks and reinstalled it to its factory settings. But it's 2010—why should I use an operating system first made in 2001?...One of the main problems I had with Ubuntu two years ago was its mysterious app-install process…I didn't have any trouble downloading programs from the Web this time around…I don't think you'll find anything too unusual about Ubuntu—it looks and works pretty much the same way as Windows and the Mac OS. Thanks to Ubuntu, a four-year-old machine that I'd been ready to throw out now works amazingly well. It can run multiple tabs, it can play YouTube videos…That makes it a pretty fantastic way to get an instantly new computer.”

SkyNet

25. Google Earth Now Displays Real-Time Rain and Snow http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/07/rain-or-snow-now-you-can-see-weather-in.html “…Google Earth 5.2…projects images of rain and snow over the areas with those weather patterns as it’s actually happening! First enable the clouds layer, then zoom in to a particular location where it might be raining or snowing. I’m willing to bet London is a likely spot, even these days, or the Lone Star state (pictured below) which is in the midst of tropical storm season. Currently, our precipitation data cover some areas in North America and Europe; you can see if it’s available in certain places by enabling the radar layer…”

26. Street Slide: Microsoft's Answer to Google Street View http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20011994-248.html “…StreetView…has long wowed users with its option to view the road inside a 360-degree panorama. But Microsoft Research's latest effort…approaches viewing streets from a different direction. Literally. Instead of having users venture from one "bubble" of captured imagery to the next, as is done in Google's StreetView and Microsoft's Streetside, the new technology, called "Street Slide," stitches together multiple panoramas into one, large strip that users are able to scroll through side to side. And in place of putting information overlays on the imagery itself, things like street signs and business information are placed below, and out of sight of what was captured. The end result is something that lets users skim around long stretches of street, as if they were looking out the window of a moving vehicle, then stopping to get out and look around, once they've reached any one particular spot within the series…”

27. Rapportive for Gmail http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/killer_app_for_gmail_gets_backing_from_calacanis_a.php “If you use Gmail for business and haven't tried out browser plug-in Rapportive, your work life online is not yet complete…Rapportive replaces the ads in your Gmail side bar with a picture of the person who sent you an email, their job title from LinkedIn, recent Twitter messages they've sent and more. Once you install it, you may have a hard time imagining life without it…The context that Rapportive has provided to the emails in my inbox has proven invaluable. My communication has been substantially more informed by seeing the present and past job titles of people I'm emailing with next to their message…Competitor etacts offers a similar service, but is more complex and hasn't caught my eye in the same way…”

28. Google Multiple Sign-in, Now Available http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/08/google-multiple-sign-in-now-available.html “Google is rolling out a feature I mentioned in a previous post: signing in to multiple Google accounts simultaneously from the same browser. When you go to the Google accounts page, you might see a new option: "multiple sign-in". If you don't see the new feature, it will probably be enabled soon. After clicking on the "change" link, Google informs that this is an advanced feature and that it will only work for Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites, Google Reader, Google Voice, App Engine and Google Code. When multiple sign-in is enabled, a drop-down is displayed next to your email address at the top of the page, so you can quickly switch to a new account…”

29. 8 potential Gmail features/changes http://www.geek.com/articles/news/8-future-gmail-featureschanges-revealed-with-a-single-image-20100730/ “An image uploaded to the Chromium OS bug tracker shows a pre-release version of Gmail sporting a number of new features and changes to the layout…Here’s the list of differences we can see in the image…Three new links sit at the top of the sidebar menu (Mail, Contacts, Tasks)…Composing mail link is now a button…A drop-down allows you to switch between Google accounts…Select all, none, unread, etc. is a drop-down instead of a link list on a separate line…Call phone option appears in Gmail Chat…Chat settings appear as a drop-down…Search contacts box has moved…Menu at top of screen looks to have moved from the right to the left…As this is an internal version of Gmail these may not be final settings we ever see publicly…”

30. Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/ “…investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future. The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come…the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents…The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online “momentum” for any given event…you can actually predict the curve, in many cases,” says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science…It’s not the very first time Google has done business with America’s spy agencies. Long before it reportedly enlisted the help of the National Security Agency to secure its networks, Google sold equipment to the secret signals-intelligence group. In-Q-Tel backed the mapping firm Keyhole, which was bought by Google in 2004 — and then became the backbone for Google Earth. This appears to be the first time, however, that the intelligence community and Google have funded the same startup, at the same time. No one is accusing Google of directly collaborating with the CIA. But…”

General Technology

31. To Solve Our Problems on the Road: Lose the Drivers http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/to-solve-our-problems-on-the-road-lose-the-drivers/ “…Cure congestion. Allow cars to race at 65 mph down the Jersey Turnpike or the 405 at the height of rush hour…Increase safety. Even with those higher speeds, cut fatal accidents way down. And achieve this even with lots more dangerous behavior, like in-vehicle texting, drunk driving, Big Mac eating, YouTube watching…Improve mobility for the transportation-deprived members of our society: the young, the elderly, and the disabled. Are these developments in the realm of fantasy? Happily, no. In fact, a technological suite is progressing which will allow us to enjoy all three simultaneously…The miracle innovation is self-driving, robotic cars …”

32. New Languages, and Why We Need Them http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25854/ “Creators of two dozen new programming languages--some designed to enable powerful new Web applications and mobile devices--presented their work last week in Portland, OR. The reason for the gathering was the first Emerging Languages Camp at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention…In dense 20-minute presentations, designers shared details of their embryonic languages. What all the designers had in common was a desire to shed decades-old programming conventions that seem increasingly ill-suited to modern computing…One of those problems…is how to manage the exploding complexity of distributed, multicore computing platforms like data centers and cloud networks…C++…does not allow programmers to easily take advantage of modern parallel computing architecture. "C++, which is the main systems language at Google and a lot of other places, is essentially 20 years old now," Pike says…C++ limited productivity by taking minutes or hours to compile…Go reduces redundancies in the compiling process, which means that "programs can be ready to execute in a matter of seconds," says Pike…Another evolving area of computing concerns programs running on mobile devices linked in "ad hoc" wireless network…”

33. The robot that visits your cubicle http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/07/30/anybots.robots.office/index.html “When Trevor Blackwell, CEO of a company called Anybots, wants to know what his employees are up to, he sends a robot to their cubicles. "I can see if people are busy on something -- and then won't interrupt them," he said this week. "Or, you know, if they're doing something that looks interesting, or if they look stuck, I'll have a conversation with them."…The 5-foot-6, 35-pound robot contains a video camera, a still camera and a microphone…A sensor stops it from running into doors and tables. The robot zips around at 3.5 miles per hour, and its battery lasts up to 8 hours, or the length of a typical human workday, he says. Blackwell says that this is how the office of tomorrow will work. Within a year or so, he says, every office in Silicon Valley, California, will have about one telepresence robot for every 10 employees. His is one of several companies trying to push this idea of the robot-infused workplace into reality. Others companies include RoboDynamics, WowWee and iRobot…”

34. Nuance: Reliable Dictation, Down to a ‘T’ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/technology/personaltech/29pogue.html “Nuance, the company that makes Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows, is…essentially a monopoly…the sole Mac speech-recognition program, MacSpeech Dictate, can no longer be considered a kind of rival; Nuance bought it this year…But here’s the thing: When you’re a monopoly, what incentive do you have to innovate?... try out NaturallySpeaking 11, which goes on sale Thursday…Nuance says the new version is 15 percent more accurate…how much better is a 15 percent gain when you’re already getting 99.6 percent accuracy…Nuance began offering a free iPhone app, Dragon Dictation. You speak; the company’s computers in Boston analyze your snippet; within seconds, the converted, typed text appears on your screen…Nuance had an ulterior motive. Its computers keep copies of those hundreds of thousands of dictated messages (no names attached, of course), creating an amazing central archive of American voices and speech patterns. Nuance engineers later exploited this gold mine, using it to test out new recognition algorithms to improve Dragon’s accuracy…The accuracy is so good that you no longer have to begin by reading a four-minute training text, as in years past. I installed the software on my PC, skipped the training, and dictated one of my old columns, 1,300 words. It achieved 100 percent accuracy…”

35. Researchers Receive NSF Award to Encourage International Science Collaboration http://www.hpcwire.com/offthewire/Researchers-Receive-NSF-Award-to-Encourage-International-Science-Collaboration-99506069.html “Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Northwestern University have received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to encourage and enhance digital communication and collaboration between the US and international science and engineering research and education communities…The project, known as International Research Network Connections (IRNC) TransLight/StarLight, will enable multi-national collaborations by integrating high-performance networks with advanced data-intensive applications so that scientists and engineers can communicate with colleagues while simultaneously conducting major research projects. Researchers will, for example, be able to share data from instruments, sensors, high-definition cameras, data storage and computational resources located throughout the world…”

Leisure & Entertainment

36. Amazon unveils new Kindle: $139 WiFi-only model, $189 with 3G http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/kindle_wins_e-reader_price_battle_but_it_hasnt_won.php “…The Kindle has gotten pleasantly better and cheaper since its debut for $399 in 2007…By last year, the price was down to $259…in June, Barnes & Noble slashed the price of its Nook e-reader to $199. Amazon dropped the price of the simplest Kindle to $189…That's when both companies stopped making money on the e-readers, according to iSuppli…earlier this month, Sony dropped the price of its e-reader from $169 to $149. The cheapest Nook can now be had for $149. And Amazon's new Kindle Wi-Fi, to be released in August, is $139…Normally a price war is a zero sum game for companies selling similar products. They slash prices in order to compete with each other, but end up in a death cycle - selling more and more of a product at a loss, resulting in bigger and bigger losses…But this time may be different. Amazon will almost certainly be taking a loss on its $139 Kindles. But Amazon and other e-reader makers are betting that sales of e-books will more than make up for the loss on hardware…”

37. Barnes & Noble Planning Big Push to Increase Nook Sales http://www.pcworld.com/article/202306/barnes_and_noble_doubles_down_on_the_nook.html “…Barnes & Noble seems to be pretty darn serious about its Nook. The New York Times reports that the company is planning to make space for Nook boutiques in its superstores, dedicating a thousand feet of floor space near their cafés to Nooks…B&N plans to free up room for Nooks in part by shrinking space devoted to CDs…The move presumably means that B&N is in the hardware business for the long haul and already has future generations of Nooks in the works. The first-generation Nook got off to a somewhat bumpy start…the company has improved it through multiple software updates. It's also knocked the price down to $199 and introduced a $149 model with Wi-Fi but no 3G connection…”

38. Microsoft's Research Depth Enabled Kinect http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20100729/tc_pcworld/mundiemicrosoftsresearchdepthenabledkinect “…Kinect, Microsoft's forthcoming Xbox add-on…allows a user to control a game through body movements…People in the Xbox business unit researched the concept and determined it couldn't be done, he said. "They concluded it was impossible…they decided to approach workers in Microsoft's research arm. Researchers there in a wide array of fields including depth sensing, machine learning, speech recognition, gestural interface, computer vision, identity recognition, sound processing and parallel computing got together to build what is now known as Kinect…Microsoft will have gone, in three years, from "impossible to shipping" when it starts sending out Kinects, Mundie said. The Kinect will be available in early November…3-D sensing technology for Kinect comes from the Israeli chip-design startup PrimeSense. The technology senses a user's movements, such as a kick, jump or punch. PrimeSense is supplying the chips for Kinect, which had been called "Project Natal" during research and development, as well as licensing the reference design for the 3D sensor. The concept behind Kinect has applications beyond gaming, Mundie noted. "It portends a revolution in the way people will interact with computers…”

39. Microsoft's 'Avatar' Project Builds on 'Kinect' http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20100729/tc_zd/253218 “While Microsoft's Kinect for its Xbox 360 game console uses your body movements as input, the opposite may eventually be true: Microsoft debuted a video of a robotic "avatar" that may interact with humans…The technologies used to create the avatar, a personal triage assistant, were developed in the creation of Microsoft Kinect , the motion-sensing technology for the Xbox…Today, users select avatars or icons to represent them online, and Mundie's vision uses another to represent the computer itself…The idea that you'll interface, that seems to have something like a lifelong presence that is not necessarily real, or real as we know it, will become more and more acceptable to people," Mundie said…"If you look today, there are tens of million people playing XBox Live each who have a caricature form, an avatar, [and] use it to work and orchestrate with other people. I think it's going to be natural for those 20-, 30-somethings in the next three years to think that these avatars interfacing with them will be a natural part of dealing with the computer…”

40. Microsoft Researchers Combat Camera Blur with Sensor Package http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2367240,00.asp “Microsoft researchers presented a novel new anti-blurring technology…using a hardware attachment on a camera to measure the movement produced by an errant hand shake or other disruption…movement data, combined with an in-camera analysis of the picture itself, allows a device to come up with a stronger approximation of the corrections needed to "sharpen," or deblur, a picture…researchers…managed to construct their hardware sensor package completely off-the-shelf, using a combination of one three-axis accelerometers, three gyroscopes, and a Bluetooth radio all wired to an open-source Arduino controller…"To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that uses 6 [degrees-of-freedom] inertial sensors for dense, per-pixel spatially-varying image deblurring and the first work to gather dense ground-truth measurements for camera-shake blur."…The research group has set up a page featuring mouseover-based image comparisons that highlight the results of their technology versus other blur-removing methods…”

41. Amazon's New Kindles Sell Out in Just Five Days http://srph.it/cnN97Z “…Just five days after announcing a new $189 Kindle 3G model and a $139 WiFi only edition, both devices have sold out…Both the 3G and WiFi ordering pages now come with this new note: "Due to strong customer demand, Kindle is temporarily sold out. Shipments will be prioritized on a first-come, first-serve basis." Naturally, the e-retailer didn't give an indication of how many devices on pre-order it took to reach that sellout milestone, but the fact that it happened so quickly does demonstrate how the word "Kindle" has become increasingly synonymous with e-books…”

42. Unsung features of Kindle 3 http://kindleworld.blogspot.com/2010/07/unsung-features-of-kindle-3-pdf.html “…For Kindle models that include 3G, you can avoid 3G delivery fees for the personal document service by addressing the e-mail so that the second part of your Kindle e-mail address is @free.kindle.com. The document will be delivered to your Kindle when your Kindle is connected via Wi-Fi and it will also be e-mailed to your Amazon e-mail address…While reading a PDF document, you can zoom in or adjust the contrast to make the document easier to read…You can zoom in to any web page to magnify the page. Additionally, if you see a magnifying glass displayed on a web page, you can use it to magnify a specific area of a web page…While viewing articles on a web page, you can switch to Article Mode ... allowing you to focus on the main text on the page…Lets you set the current local time on your Kindle…Microphone— the microphone is not currently enabled but is provided for future use…If one or more items are in the process of downloading from the Kindle Store or Archived Items to your Kindle, you can monitor the download progress…Once you open a book, when you go to the next or previous page, the header automatically disappears to allow the page to fill the screen…humorous thought from K. Rector, posting in Amazon Kindle forums who wonders if, since AT&T offers Kindle users free WiFi at AT&T hotspots everywhere and they list Barnes and Noble as one, whether one can be in the store and browse with the Kindle, using B&N's WiFi…TWO DICTIONARIES…the 2nd one is the Oxford Dictionary of English…”

43. First E-Book Hits a Million Sales http://www.pcworld.com/article/202316/first_ebook_hits_a_million_sales.html “…On July 28, Amazon announced that Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has become the first e-book to sell a million copies…Stephenie Meyer and James Patterson are quickly closing in on what Amazon is calling the "Kindle Million Club" for authors who have sold over a million Amazon Kindle e-books. Charlaine Harris and Nora Roberts with more than 500,000 Kindle book sales each, will soon join them. I doubt, however, that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was the first e-book to cross the million copy downloaded barrier…Long before…the current tidal wave of e-book popularity, there was Project Gutenberg with its over 33,000 free and public domain e-books. Project Gutenberg , and e-books, dates back to 1971 long before there were even PCs, never mind dedicated e-readers or popular entertainment tablets like the Apple iPad. Today, Project Gutenberg averages about 100,000 e-book downloads a day. If I had to pick the first book to actually have gone over a million downloads, my best guess is it would be one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries such as The Hound of the Baskervilles…Project Gutenberg remains relatively unknown to the new generation of e-readers. Many books that cost money from the retail e-book stores are available for free on Project Gutenberg…”

44. No E-Books Allowed in This Establishment http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/no-e-books-allowed-in-this-establishment/ “…I decided to mosey over to a local Manhattan coffee shop for an afternoon cappuccino. After placing my order I sat down at a table and pulled out my Amazon Kindle. I barely made it a sentence into the e-book I was reading before an employee of the coffee shop came by, stood over me and said, “Excuse me sir, but we don’t allow computers in the coffee shop.” I looked up at him with an incredulous look and replied, “This isn’t a computer, it’s an e-book reader.” He then told me that the “device” in my hand had a screen and required batteries, so it was obviously “some variation of a computer.” The coffee shop, I was told, did not allow the use of computers…I peppered the employee with questions on why reading on paper was more acceptable than reading on a screen. Flustered and confused by the existential debate he had been dragged into, the employee resolutely said, “Look, no computers in the coffee shop…”

Economy and Technology

45. Automotive X PRIZE Teams Advancing to the Validation Stage http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/27/2917328/progressive-insurance-automotive.html “…What began as a field of 136 vehicles from 111 teams has now been narrowed to an elite group of nine vehicles from just seven teams that have proven they can meet the strictest requirements of this competition, including the ability to achieve at least 90 MPGe on the way toward the ultimate 100 MPGe requirement and to survive grueling dynamic safety and range tests. ..Finalists were required to pass a repeat of technical inspections and on-track Efficiency…The following is a complete list of remaining teams, along with the class in which they compete and their fuel type…Validation is the final technical event in the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE. Finalists in both the Mainstream and Alternative classes will undergo dynamometer testing under controlled laboratory conditions…The car in each class that exceeds 100 MPGe, meets the emissions and performance requirements, and, in the case of a tie, completes the Combined Performance and Efficiency challenge with the fastest time, will win. The $10 million prize purse will be presented…on September 16…”

46. High-Frequency Programmers Revolt Over Pay http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/28/high-frequency-trading-personal-finance-programmer-pay.html “…programmers toiling away at Wall Street's secretive high-frequency trading shops…wrote algorithms that take advantage of fleeting trading opportunities and bring in up to $100,000 a day. In return, they received a fraction of the pay doled out to their bosses…Jeffrey Gomberg, 32, worked for a trading firm that paid him a low-six-figure income after four years on the job. His trader colleagues, by contrast, made millions manipulating the algorithms he'd written…Gomberg and a fellow programmer quit their jobs and cut a deal with HTG Capital Partners of Chicago, whose programmers typically trade on regulated futures exchanges. HTG supplies office space, technology and access to exchanges. Gomberg keeps 40% to 80% of net profits, with the percentage rising as his profits do…Another high-frequency programmer, who spoke on condition that his name not be used, quit two firms…He says one group was generating $100,000 a day from his high-frequency trading software and paying him $150,000 a year. The programmer's bosses offered him an office and a $45,000 raise, but he left instead. He found a partner, and together they began trading on their own. The programmer now pockets more than half of any profits his software generates…at his old job he'd topped out in pay while now he says the sky's the limit…”

47. gWallet Looks To Attract New App Publishers With $20,000 Guarantee http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/30/gwallet-looks-to-attract-new-app-publishers-with-20000-guarantee/ “Online monetization platform gWallet, which offers social gaming developers a variety of ways to monetize their apps and boost engagement, is looking to put its money where its mouth is: the company is launching a $20,000 cash guarantee to any social gaming publishers that don’t generate more revenue when they switch from their current monetization platform to gWallet…publishers need to be new to the platform, and need to have at least 250,000 daily active users. That said, it sounds like the the company is willing to discuss a guarantee to apps with a smaller user base if you email their partner@gwallet.com address…This is a highly competitive and tough space; major Offers company OfferPal recently had to downsize in the wake of Facebook deciding that TrialPay would be its preferred Offers provider…”

Civilian Aerospace

48. U.S. Private sector's role may expand in space travel http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/7134009.html “…As Congress prepares to head home for summer recess, one thing is clear. The president won't get the entire $812 million he wants next year to begin his $6 billion commercial program because Congress is unlikely to give it to him…Until now, the space agency has relied exclusively on NASA spacecraft or NASA-contracted Russian spacecraft to carry every American astronaut into orbit since John Glenn's breakthrough mission in 1962…NASA has contracted with Russia to carry astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station until the U.S. deploys a crew-rated commercial spacecraft or a U.S. successor to the shuttle, probably around 2015…The spending plans underscore congressional caution. In response to Obama's request for $500 million to cover development of commercial crew capability for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation authorized $312 million. It offered Obama only $1.3 billion of the $3.3 billion he requested over the next three years…”

49. New space exploration robot takes first steps http://www.lacanadaonline.com/news/tn-vsl-jpl-20100730,0,7217785.story “…ATHLETE — short for All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer — is a joint project between NASA's JPL, Stanford University and the Boeing Company, and could one day be used to transport cargo on the surface of Mars or the moon. JPL engineers took the rover-type vehicle out for trial runs in the upper Arroyo Seco on Tuesday and Thursday…JPL lacked a large enough unpaved area for the robot, and it would have cost too much to send it to a test site, so they got permission from Pasadena to use the Arroyo Seco as a test-course…From late August to early September, ATHLETE will be in Arizona for…a 25-mile drive over 14 days through high desert under its own power at a pace of three to six miles a day…The robot-vehicle can also "walk" over obstacles in its path because its six wheels are each attached to the end of a limb, allowing it to navigate through extremely rough or steep terrain without getting stuck in sand like many Mars rovers do…”

50. Cheaper, Better Satellites Made From Cellphones and Toys http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/cell-phone-satellite/ “…Instead of investing in their own computer research and development, engineers at the NASA Ames Research Center are looking to cellphones and off-the-shelf toys to power the future of low-cost satellite technology…“You can go to Walmart and buy toys that work better than satellites did 20 years ago,” said NASA physicist Chris Boshuizen. “And your cellphone is really a $500 robot in your pocket that can’t get around…The biggest challenge of sending cellphones and toys into space is whether the parts can get up there without shaking apart and work in a vacuum at extreme high and low temperatures…two Nexus One cellphones caught rides on two rockets on July 24 that launched 30,000 feet into the atmosphere at a maximum speed of mach 2.4 (about 1,800 miles per hour). One of the rockets crashed into the ground after its parachute failed, but the other made it back with the cellphone unscathed. Both cellphones were able to record the acceleration of the rocket using their built-in accelerometers, and the undamaged phone captured 2.5 hours of video of the event through a hole in the side of the rocket…”

Supercomputing & GPUs

51. Postcards From the Edge of Parallel Computing http://www.hpcwire.com/blogs/Postcards-From-the-Edge-of-Parallel-Computing-99592644.html “…two HotPar presentations that I think everyone should take a look at…The first is based on a paper (PDF) by Georgia Tech's Richard Vuduc exploring the limits of GPU acceleration…The non-controversial conclusion is that some applications are going to be better suited to one architecture or another. The unfortunate aspect to this is that one may have to do a lot of code tweaking and testing to find out which one is optimal. The second presentation worth perusing takes a look at the parallelism "problem" from the 50,000 foot-level, specifically from the perspective of cloud computing. Karu Sankaralingam of the University of Wisconsin-Madison says that everyone needn't get so worked up about this parallel computing thing, since it's not the problem people think it is…Sankaralingam argues that the nature of cloud computing, which seems poised to become the dominant computing paradigm, does not necessitate traditional rocket-science parallelism. Rather it needs concurrency (tasks running at the same time, but unrelated to one another), which is a far easier proposition, software-wise…”

52. CUDA, Supercomputing for the Masses: Part 19 http://www.drdobbs.com/high-performance-computing/226300200 “…article uses the Parallel Nsight 1.0 analysis capabilities to compare the Part 18 primitive restart OpenGL example with more conventional OpenGL rendering methods…With the release of Parallel Nsight, NVIDIA has made a commitment to the debugging and profiling needs of a huge base of Microsoft Windows developers ranging from game developers to commercial High Performance Computing (HPC) users…Parallel Nsight also provides developers the ability to analyze and debug HLSL textures plus OpenCL application tracing is also supported…Parallel Nsight was designed from the very beginning to fully support remote debugging…a remote execution model fits naturally into debugging applications for both cloud and cluster environments. Secure connections are supported, which opens up interesting possibilities for remote application debugging and profiling at customer sites…”

53. Vanderbilt HPC Center to Add GPU Cluster http://www.hpcwire.com/news/Vanderbilt-HPC-Center-to-Add-GPU-Cluster-99594604.html “…NSF is using $390,000 from an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant to help fund a new GPU-based computing cluster at Vanderbilt University's Advanced Computing Center for Research & Education (ACCRE). According to Alan Tackett, ACCRE’s technical director, this is a new type of technology for the center, but has the potential to accelerate a range of scientific research going on at Vanderbilt…”

54. Summer School on Multicore Programming Has Global Reach http://www.hpcwire.com/offthewire/Summer-School-on-Multicore-Programming-Has-Global-Reach-99691469.html “Over 150 programmers from all over the world either traveled or tuned-in online to participate in the UPCRC Illinois Summer School on Multicore Programming, July 19-23, 2010. Another 20+ will participate in a satellite program from Singapore in mid-August. Of the fifty participants that attended at the Thomas M. Siebel Center for Computing Science on the Illinois campus, some traveled from as far away as France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Newfoundland, and Turkey. Over 100 programmers worldwide registered to participate in the program online. About half of all summer school participants were graduate or undergraduate students of computer science, computer engineering, math, and electrical or other engineering disciplines. Academic faculty, research programmers, and industry developers rounded out the other half of this diverse group of global participants…”

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