NEW NET Issues List for 28 Sep 2010
Below is the final list of issues for the Tuesday, 28 September 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. Schools and Libraries Can Rent Fiber with Fed Funds http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/schools-and-libraries-can-rent-fiber-with-fed-funds-fcc-says/ “…The FCC announced Tuesday that it will allow schools to use federal technology funds known as E-rate to hook up to unused fiber optic cables to provide speeds up to 1 Gbps to students and library patrons. The order will also let schools open up their computing facilities to the wider community after school hours, though it does not free them to become micro-ISPs for their neighborhood…a school district could apply to use E-rate funds to lease so-called dark fiber and jump from a 1.5 Mbps connection to a truly fat pipe…The FCC said it is…launching a pilot program to use E-rate funds to pay “off-campus wireless Internet connectivity for mobile learning devices,” which sounds…like the feds subsidizing 3G-connected reading devices, including the Nook, the Kindle and the iPad.”
2. Bing Rewards: Windows Live ID, Windows computer, Bing Toolbar, IE (no Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc) http://searchengineland.com/microsoft-launches-a-new-loyalty-program-bing-rewards-51374 “Prior Microsoft search loyalty programs, SearchPerks and Cashback, were retired. But maybe the third time’s the charm: today Microsoft is rolling out Bing Rewards Preview (beta). It’s a credit card or airline-style loyalty program that offers users credits that can be redeemed for products, gift cards or charitable donations. People must first install the Bing Bar toolbar, have a Windows Live ID, be on a Windows machine and use Internet Explorer. No Chrome or Firefox, no Macs…” http://www.fastcompany.com/1690598/microsoft-launches-new-bing-loyalty-scheme-keeps-it-tightly-in-the-family
3. Windows Live adds LinkedIn and Facebook chat http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20017433-56.html “…Microsoft today said it is adding LinkedIn and Facebook chat ties to Hotmail and Messenger…Among the added features are auto-contact linking, being able to use Messenger to get updates on what LinkedIn contacts are doing, and making it easy to use Messenger to share updates with one's LinkedIn network. Hotmail is also getting the ability to chat with Facebook friends…” [ http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/news/article.php/3905106/Microsoft-Updates-Office-Web-Apps----Again.htm http://explore.live.com/home ]
4. Xmarks shutting down bookmark sync service http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20017827-264.html “Two million users with 5 million computers storing 100 million bookmarks doth not a business make. That's what Xmarks, a company that for a time ruled the technical specialty of synchronizing bookmarks among different computers and browsers, concluded. After four years' effort, it's closing up shop in about 90 days…The company got its start as Foxmarks, a Firefox extension, but eventually spread to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Apple's Safari, and Google's Chrome. It let people synchronize not only their bookmarks but also passwords and open tabs…"For four years we have offered the synchronization service for no charge, predicated on the hypothesis that a business model would emerge to support the free service…The company tried various ways to make a profit out of its business, including a "smarter search" idea based on data gleaned from its anonymized collection of 100 million bookmarks. "If you were looking for the Web sites in a particular category, the results were shockingly complete and entirely spam-free…Interest in the service fizzled, though, and efforts in the spring of 2010 to sell the company failed…the company will switch its servers off after January 10…”
5. Microsoft Dumps Live Spaces for WordPress http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2369783,00.asp “Microsoft and WordPress.com announced Monday that WordPress will be the default blogging platform for Windows Live…WordPress powers over 8.5 percent of the web, is used on over 26 million sites, and WordPress.com is seen by over 250 million people every month…we decided the best thing we could do for our customers was to give them a great blogging solution through WordPress.com." Microsoft currently has 30 million people using its Windows Live Spaces blogging platform. Those users can port their blog posts, comments, and photos to WordPress, and redirect their old Spaces URLs to the new blog…”
6. Easier Conference Calls: Tungle.me Now Has WebEx Integration http://gigaom.com/collaboration/easier-conference-calls-tungle-me-now-has-webex-integration/ “Scheduling conference calls can be a real pain. First you have to find a time that suits everyone, then you need to actually set up the conference, and distribute the meeting details and dial-in number to all of the participants. If you’re a user of meeting scheduling app Tungle.me, then the process just got a little easier, because the company has rolled out integration with conference call provider WebEx…As WebEx is the only item under the “Partner Add-Ons” menu currently, I’d hope that would mean that Tungle is also looking at integrating other apps with its service. Tungle.me already plays nicely with a large variety of calendaring apps, but being able to integrate it with a wide variety of web conferencing and online presentation providers would be very useful.”
Security, Privacy & Digital Controls
7. Free Microsoft Security Essentials now for small businesses http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/09/microsoft-security-essentials-coming-to-small-businesses-soon.ars “…Microsoft Security Essentials has won a lot of praise since its introduction last year. The anti-malware software is unobtrusive and reasonably effective, and its price—free—can't be beat. One fly in the ointment has been the software's licensing terms; MSE is only licensed for home users. Businesses have to look elsewhere for their anti-malware needs…That's set to change…From early October, small businesses—defined here as those with ten PCs or fewer—can use MSE, too. Microsoft claims that enterprise security software is too expensive, complicated, and hard to use for these organizations, hence its decision to expand the reach of MSE…” http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-does-an-about-face-offers-free-security-essentials-to-small-businesses/7450
8. Researchers calculate the death toll from texting while driving http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-distracted-driving-20100924,0,3103350.story “…texting while driving is dangerous…According to researchers from the University of North Texas…texting behind the wheel accounted for 16,141 deaths between 2002 and 2007…by analyzing nationwide traffic data from the Fatality Accident Reporting System and texting records from the Federal Communications Commission and CTIA…Only one-third of Americans had a cellphone in 1999. By 2008, 91% of us did. The average monthly volume of text messages was 1 million in 2002. By 2008, it was 110 million…Criminal charges for texting while driving and routine examination of cell phone records in accident investigations may act as effective deterrents to drivers…”
9. T-Mobile Claims Right to Censor Text Messages http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/text-message-censorship/ “T-Mobile told a federal judge Wednesday it may pick and choose which text messages to deliver on its network…T-Mobile, the company wrote in a filing…“has discretion to require pre-approval for any short-code marketing campaigns run on its network…Such approval is necessary, T-Mobile added, “to protect the carrier and its customers from potentially illegal, fraudulent, or offensive marketing campaigns…It’s the first federal case testing whether wireless providers may block text messages they don’t like…”
10. Evercookie: the one cookie that you... just... can't... DELETE! http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/09/21/evercookie-the-one-cookie-that-you-just-cant-delete/ “…As the name suggests, deleting an evercookie isn't easy -- in fact, once you've taken a nibble, that's it: you can't delete it…the sheer number of clever hacks, cheap tricks and snarky ingenuity employed to make evercookies invulnerable makes this project very interesting indeed. All told, evercookie uses eight different storage locations for its cookie, ranging from HTTP and Flash cookies through to HTML5's new storage methods and 'RGB values of auto-generated, force-cached PNGs using HTML5 Canvas tag to read pixels (cookies) back out' (really!). If the cookie can be found in any one of those locations, it can be rebuilt (and then stored in all eight places again!) Basically, unless you know exactly what you're doing (and you have a lot of spare time to hunt down all of the cookies), you can forget about ever deleting an evercookie…For now it's only in eight locations, but Samy already has plans for two more: Silverlight Isolated Storage and a Java method based on your NIC's details…”
Mobile Computing & Communicating
11. Can Verizon totally ruin Android? http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/verizon-v-cast-apps/ “…we noted that Verizon was gearing up to launch its own app store for Android phones…completely separate from Android’s existing Market for apps…During their Verizon Developer Community Conference earlier this afternoon, the company took the time to respond to the charges that they were taking over control of Android devices…Here’s my favorite: “V CAST Apps is NOT out to take over the phone. It’s about choice, and about simplicy [sic] – carrier-billing — and quality — great apps.”…It’s not about control or money…It’s about “choice”. Excuse me while I vomit…Does anyone really believe that Verizon really cares about choice here? What they care about is not ”becoming a commodity connectivity provider,”…there’s nothing wrong with a company wanting to be successful and maintain their success. But I’m sick of this spin that all of this is for the betterment of all. Verizon cares about making money…and that’s why they’re doing this…Verizon has proven itself to be incapable of making a decent consumer experience…we’re seeing it with the Droid Verizon phones. They’re packed to the gills with garbage compliments of Verizon…Verizon is essentially making Verizon Android phones different from all other Android phones. Say I buy an app through the V CAST app store then a year down the line I buy another Android device on Sprint. Guess what? It won’t work on the new device. This was supposed to be an open ecosystem…a Verizon Android phone and a Sprint Android phone will soon only share a bit of branding in common…this doesn’t seem to bode well for the prospects of a Verizon iPhone. Does anyone believe for a second that Apple is going to let Verizon open their own app store on the iPhone? Not a chance. They’ll be lucky if they get a V Cast content app pre-loaded on there — you can bet Apple doesn’t even want that. So why would Verizon want to have anything to do with a device that will turn them into the “commodity connectivity provider” when Google is giving them the keys to the castle…”
12. iPhone Payments Go Live in New York City Subways, Taxi Cabs http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/iphone_payments_go_live_in_new_york_city_subways_t.php “Beginning this week, New Yorkers won't have to pull out cash or credit to pay for their bus, subway, train or taxi fares…they'll be able to pay using their iPhones as part of a pilot program for Visa's payWave program, which allows users to make contactless payments. The system makes it as easy as waving your payWave-enabled phone in front of a sensor…The solution is different than many of the mobile payment solutions we've discussed, in that it doesn't use Near Field Communication…the system works on "a majority of smart phones that have a slot for a memory card"…payWave program "users can insert the card into their phone's memory slot to transform their phones into mobile payment devices."…payWave-enabled phones will be able to pay for New York City subway, PATH rail system and NJ Transit fares using their phones, along with fares for more than 10,000 New York City cabs…”
13. Developers Can Now Access Locations of 250 Million Phones Across U.S. Carriers http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/developers_can_now_access_locations_of_250_million.php “Location Labs today announced a "Universal Location Service" platform that aggregates locations of phones across carriers…"Developers can now remotely access the location of over 250MM mobile phones in the U.S. through a single cloud-based API…The service can locate all types of devices, including smartphones and non-smartphones, and it allows developers to locate them in real-time. Developers can use this information to build apps that run in the background…It is especially helpful for monetizing mobile apps…The location data comes from national carriers Sprint-Nextel, T-Mobile and AT&T. Verizon…was the last carrier to sign on…Getting location data from carriers can be preferable for developers because it doesn't require users to download an app…” [http://www.fastcompany.com/1690493/verizons-separate-app-store-explained-still-not-necessary “…Location data is promising but also a bit scary: Verizon has access to a huge amount of location data, and will make all of it available to developers in a passive, persistent way (meaning, you won't have to turn on GPS to be located). That comes with its own set of privacy concerns that Verizon has pledged to address responsibly…”]
14. Windows Phone 7 will not be able to tether http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/09/24/windows-phone-7-will-not-be-able-to-tether-after-all/ “…the official statement from Microsoft is: “Windows phone 7 does not support tethering.” Not a lot of room for ambiguity in that quote…”
Open Source
15. Java Creator James Gosling: Why I Quit Oracle http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Java-Creator-James-Gosling-Why-I-Quit-Oracle-813517/ “…James Gosling led the team that created the Java language and platform… a feat that many would assume would demand some modicum of respect…Gosling says all he got was the opposite…Gosling came clean about why he left Oracle…There is actually a long list of things that played into my leaving Oracle,” Gosling said. “There were things like my salary offer…For the privilege of working for Oracle, they wanted me to take a big pay cut,” Gosling said…another annoyance arose when, according to Gosling, Oracle did not have a notion of a senior engineer or at least one equivalent to Gosling’s grade at Sun, where he was a fellow. “In my job offer, they had me at a fairly significant grade level down,”…the final straw was what Gosling said was Oracle’s move to rein him in. indeed they owned Sun and thus Java, so they also owned its creator and his intellectual property, so it was up to Oracle to decide what Gosling or anybody else had to say about Java. “My ability to decide anything at Oracle was minimized,” Gosling said. “Oracle is an extremely micromanaged company. So myself and my peers in the Java area were not allowed to decide anything…”
16. OpenOffice forks into LibreOffice: An Idea Whose Time Has Come (and Gone) http://gigaom.com/2010/09/28/libreoffice-an-idea-whose-time-has-come-and-gone/ “…the OpenOffice community has kissed goodbye to its project owner, Oracle, so it can set up The Document Foundation and a new spin on the OpenOffice code called LibreOffice. The bigger news is that anyone cares…it’s not as if office suites are playing center stage in technology innovation. Not even Microsoft, which has owned the office productivity suite market for decades, has bothered to release meaningful changes to the desktop version of Office this century…Supporters will likely cite Microsoft’s dominance as the very reason to look elsewhere for innovation. Indeed, The Document Foundation has declared its aim to channel innovation back into the office productivity market…Perhaps. But why start from the paradigm of 1980s technology?...If anyone is advancing the office productivity market, it’s Google Apps or Zoho Office, which were born on the web. It’s unclear what a web-light, client-heavy Microsoft Office clone can hope to achieve in terms of real innovation…It’s not that we’re not engaged in “office productivity,”…We just work differently now. We email. We SMS. We Facebook. We IM…What we don’t do, or rarely do, is open a Word document to create a stale relic of communication. Business moves too fast these days to open attachments…yes, there are people who live in documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. But these people are not you, most of the time…” [ http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20017869-264.html ]
17. Linux-ready SoCs sip half a Watt http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Freescale-iMX28-and-MCF5441x-/ “Freescale Semiconductor announced a Linux-ready, ARM9-based i.MX28x SoC and a Coldfire-based MCF5441x MCU, both targeting fanless industrial applications as well as automotive systems. The i.MX28x and MCF5441x each consume less than half a Watt, support extended temperatures, offer clock synchronized Ethernet, and with some models, include a Layer 2 switch for low-cost daisy-chaining of devices. The i.MX28x and MCF5441x are aimed at low-power applications, including appliances, portable and diagnostic medical devices, energy distribution equipment, meters, human machine interfaces (HMIs), motor control, and industrial controllers…Built around an ARM9 core clocked to 454MHz, the i.MX28x delivers 500 MIPS performance, says Freescale. All five versions are equipped with 128KB of SRAM and 16KB/32KB I/O caches, and are offered in a 289-pin ball grid array (BGA), says the company. External memory support is said to be offered for DDR2, LPDDR, LV-DDR2, and NAND flash…”
SkyNet
18. $10 million for Project 10^100 winners http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/10-million-for-project-10100-winners.html “Two years ago today, we began Project 10^100 by asking you to share your ideas for changing the world by helping as many people as possible…People from more than 170 countries submitted more than 150,000 ideas. We selected 16 big ideas and asked the public to vote for their favorites. The five ideas that received the most votes are the winners of Project 10^100. Over the past 12 months, we’ve reviewed concrete proposals to tackle these ideas, and today we’re pleased to give a total of $10 million to five inspiring organizations…Idea: Make educational content available online for free. Project funded: The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization that provides high-quality, free education to anyone, anywhere via an online library of more than 1,600 teaching videos…Idea: Enhance science and engineering education. Project funded: FIRST is a non-profit organization that promotes science and math education around the world through team competition…student-driven robotics team…Idea: Make government more transparent. Project funded: Public.Resource.Org is a non-profit organization focused on enabling online access to public government documents in the United States [http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/09/lawgov-update-1.html ]…Idea: Drive innovation in public transport. Project funded: Shweeb is a concept for short to medium distance, urban personal transport, using human-powered vehicles on a monorail…Idea: Provide quality education to African students. Project funded: The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) is a center for math and science education and research in Cape Town, South Africa…”
19. Google New: It’s Google News About New Google Stuff In One Place http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/22/google-new/ “…Google…has well over 100 blogs devoted to everything from general company news to niche things…with over 100 different blogs pumping out a wide variety of content, it can be hard to keep up with all the Google news. That’s why Google has created Google New. Google New, not to be confused with Google News…is a landing page that gives you a quick overview of the latest news from all the various Google blogs…”
20. Why You Want Google Voice on Your iPhone http://gigaom.com/2010/09/28/why-you-want-google-voice-on-your-iphone/ “…Apple has reportedly approved Google’s Voice application for the iTunes App Store…If you’re not familiar with Google Voice, I highly recommend you take a closer look at the software. Essentially, it can be used to route incoming calls to multiple handsets, landlines or VoIP services…Google Voice can also act as your voicemail service, providing speech-to-text translation of messages, which you can receive via email. Even better are the free text messages that can be sent through Google Voice on a handset or in a web browser, and low-cost international calls. All in all, Google Voice is a masterful method to manage communications…”
General Technology
21. The Ars System Guide: September 2010 Edition http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/guides/2010/09/the-ars-system-guide-september-2010-edition.ars “After a long hiatus, the Ars Technica System Guide finally returns. The main three-box System Guide leads off the return, with the traditional Budget Box, Hot Rod, and God Box addressing three different price points in the market. The main System Guide's boxes are general-purpose systems with a strong gaming focus, which means you won't find any office boxes or bargain-basement machines here…”
22. Oracle surprises with new Sparc chip launch http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/oracle-surprises-with-new-sparc-chip-launch.ars “When the news broke that Oracle was buying Sun, it seemed quite unlikely that Oracle would soldier on with Sun's boutique chip architecture, the aging SPARC family. But the company announced that Sparc lives…The company's 16-core, 128-thread "Rainbow Falls" part, which made its formal debut at Hot Chips last year, will actually see the light of day in a shipping product. Now christened the Sparc T3, the new processor will power a collection of Solaris-based T-series servers for Oracle…The servers range in size from blades up to multisocket monsters, and one of the new products is aimed at virtualization. Of course, with 128 simultaneous threads of execution available per chip…Oracle had previously laid out a five-year Sparc roadmap, and CEO Larry Ellison claims that the company is quite serious about continuing to produce Sun hardware…”
23. High speed 'Superbus' to be unveiled http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/8016292/High-speed-Superbus-to-be-unveiled.html “The prototype of a 155mph "Superbus" is to be unveiled in Germany…As long as a conventional bus, but no taller than a four-wheel drive sports utility vehicle, the Superbus is capable of carrying 23 passengers. Billed as a "future vision of sustainable public transport", at first sight it resembles a futuristic stretch-limo…the accommodation will be similar to that to be found in the business class cabin of an aircraft…Built from lightweight carbon, it will be powered by four electric motors. The driver will be helped by radar to prevent collisions…”
DHMN Technology
24. Vuzix wins SBIR grant for helmet with 1280 x 1024 flat panel micro display http://www.marketwatch.com/story/vuzix-wins-award-from-us-air-force-research-laboratory-2010-09-21 “…Vuzix Corporation…announced today that it had been awarded Phase I of a multi-phase Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Award from the Air Force Research Laboratory…to design a binocular display system for a combat pilot helmet capable of presenting 1280 x 1024 monochrome imagery from a flat panel micro display…Follow-on phases of the award, which are expected to be valued at significantly higher dollar value, will develop pathways to full color displays and lightweight, easy to wear, curved visors…This technology enables our high definition (HD) displays to be incorporated into very thin lenses similar to normal eyeglasses. We believe that innovative display systems for advanced applications like those described in this award will be used in future mobile video displays and next generation video games…developments in holographic optics make it possible to replace current optical systems with lightweight, see-through optics. The research proposed by Vuzix will determine the feasibility of the Vuzix holographic waveguide visor display (HWVD) for use in aircraft helmet mounted displays…”
25. Turning Thoughts into Words http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/26332/?a=f “Brain-computer interfaces could someday provide a lifeline to "locked-in" patients, who are unable to talk or move but are aware and awake…Scientists in Utah have now demonstrated a way to determine which of 10 distinct words a person is thinking by recording the electrical activity from the surface of the brain. The new technique involves training algorithms to recognize specific brain signals picked up by an array of nonpenetrating electrodes placed over the language centers of the brain…Individual words have been decoded from brain signals in the past using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), says Eric Leuthardt, director of the Center for Innovation in Neuroscience and Technology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. This is the first time that the feat has been performed using ECoG, a far more practical and portable approach than fMRI…”
26. NVIDIA Adds GPU Acceleration for OpenCV http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvidia-adds-gpu-acceleration-for-opencv-application-development-2010-09-23 “NVIDIA today announced CUDA support for OpenCV, the popular Computer Vision library used in developing advanced applications for the robotics, automotive, medical, consumer, security, manufacturing, and research fields. With the addition of GPU acceleration to OpenCV, developers can run more accurate and sophisticated OpenCV algorithms in real-time on higher-resolution images while consuming less power…With thousands of developers and well over two million downloads to date, OpenCV is a popular Computer Vision library for the development of computational-intensive and powerful applications, many of which require robust real-time performance. For example, the new OpenCV depth calculation engine performs 5-10 times faster with GPU acceleration than with the equivalent CPU-only implementation…”
27. Home's Electrical Wiring Acts as Antenna to Receive Low-Power Sensor Data http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100915094230.htm “…The walls do have ears, thanks to a device that uses a home's electrical wiring as a giant antenna. Sensors developed by researchers…use residential wiring to transmit information to and from almost anywhere in the home, allowing for wireless sensors that run for decades on a single watch battery…"When you look at home sensing…it hasn't really taken off…Existing technology is still power hungry, and not as easy to deploy as you would want it to be." That's largely because today's wireless devices either transmit a signal only several feet, Patel said, or consume so much energy they need frequent battery replacements…Patel's team has devised a way to use copper electrical wiring as a giant antenna to receive wireless signals at a set frequency. A low-power sensor placed within 10 to 15 feet of electrical wiring can use the antenna to send data to a single base station plugged in anywhere in the home. The device is called Sensor Nodes Utilizing Powerline Infrastructure, or SNUPI…They discovered that home wiring is a remarkably efficient antenna at 27 megahertz…While traditional wireless systems have trouble sending signals through walls, this system actually does better around walls that contain electrical wiring. Most significantly, SNUPI uses less than 1 percent of the power for data transmission compared to the next most efficient model…”
28. Where's that plane going? This app knows http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/09/24/plane.finder.augmented.reality/ “Have you ever looked up at the sky, seen a plane zipping through the clouds and wondered, "Where the heck are those people going?"…Plane Finder AR, which debuted last week and costs $2.99, lets iPhone users point their phones at the sky and see data about flights passing overhead…How fast the planes are moving, where they're going, where they started, their elevation, the flight number and how far the aircraft are from the person's smartphone at exactly that moment…the app employs "augmented reality" technology, which refers to an emerging -- and at times clunky -- category of smartphone apps that seek to overlay digital information on top of the real world…Some users have given the app poor reviews, mostly because flight data is nonexistent in certain parts of the United States at this point…people who are interested in the augmented reality app should first download a free version of the app, called Plane Finder, to see if the app works in their area…10,000 people have bought the augmented reality app since its launch…Understanding how the new app works helps explain its problems…data about the phone's location and tilt is relatively easy to come by. Smartphones boast GPS sensors, accelerometers, compasses and, increasingly, gyroscopes that detect the phone's position. Data about the planes, however, is trickier. In Europe, Daniels said, most planes emit digital signals about where they are and where they're going. But in the United States, only some planes have been updated with this technology, making many of them invisible to the app…Daniels' company is in the process of installing sensors in the United States and in Europe to pick up these signals. The network is expanding, he said, but still does not encompass all areas of the United States. When the flight info is available, he said, the app works well and has become popular with plane spotters and aviation enthusiasts [and terrorists?]…”
29. Applied Technology Holdings Appoints Brian Lim as Chief Technology Officer http://www.lifeofall.com/applied-technology-holdings-inc-appoints-brian-lim-as-chief-technology-officer-and-chief-architect/ “…Brian Lim…Chief Technology Officer and Chief Architect…will commercialize the development platform of products for solution providers in…remote collection of data for sports performance enhancement, sports rehabilitation, strength and conditioning, gaming, military, and aviation…the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Applied Technology Holdings, Inc., a patent on a system for the gathering and processing of biometric and biomechanical data from sensors attached to a body or garment. The granted patent also relates to retrieval systems to collect body motion, and biometric data wirelessly…http://patft.uspto.gov/ patent number 7,602,301…”
Leisure & Entertainment
30. Blockbuster Bankruptcy: A Decade of Decline http://www.fastcompany.com/1690654/blockbuster-to-file-for-bankruptcy-a-decade-of-decline “…Rumors of Chapter 11 began to bubble in August, and Bloomberg reports that Blockbuster will file for bankruptcy Thursday…we present a timeline of how the video rental giant fell…1985: First Blockbuster store opens…1994: Viacom acquires Blockbuster for $8.4 billion…2000: Blockbuster declines several offers to purchase Netflix for a mere $50 million…2003: Netflix posts first profit, earning $6.5 million on revenues of $272 million…2006: Blockbuster, now valued at $500 million, surpasses its goal of two million subscribers for its online platform. Netflix reaches 6.3 million subscribers by December…September 2010: Drowned in revenue losses of $1.1 billion, sources say Blockbuster plans to file for bankruptcy. The company is valued at just $24 million.…”
31. Digital takes over as vinyl, tape and film disappears from British homes http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/8018999/Digital-takes-over-as-vinyl-tape-and-film-disappears-from-British-homes.html “Vinyl, film and video tape are all dying out as Britons turn to digital technologies…Each British household now has six web-enabled devices, compared to just one a decade ago…the typical household had approximately 25 consumer electronic devices…compared to 17 in 2000…the web is the main driver increasing our gadget usage. PC and mobile phone usage has increased the most with the iPod generation helping to grow the media player category from virtually nothing in 2000 to the typical household owning three devices in 2010…Smart phones, devices which hardly existed in 2000, are now increasingly popular across all age groups…”
32. Scrabble comes to the Kindle http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20017599-1.html “…word games continue to proliferate on the Kindle, with Scrabble following Shuffled Row and Every Word onto Amazon's popular e-book reader. The only difference this time is that Scrabble actually costs money ($4.99), making it the first paid game to hit the Kindle Store…While only a handful of buyers have rated the game, they've all given it high marks…You get a few game modes to choose from and you can either play solo or "pass N' play" with a friend…”
33. Otoy scores important deals for its server gaming technology http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/22/otoy-scores-important-deals-for-its-server-gaming-technology/ “Otoy, the maker of a server-based gaming technology which allows play over the Internet…said today that his company is now allied with both Nvidia and Intel in addition to its previous alliance with Advanced Micro Devices. The alliances will help the company spread its video-compression technology, which allows users to play high-end games stored on faraway servers as if they were installed on client machines. One consequence of that is that users will be able to play the coolest games such as Crysis on low-end desktops, netbooks, or even iPhones…customers requested that Otoy add support for Nvidia’s CUDA programming environment, which allows non-graphics applications to exploit graphics hardware…Since high-end apps such as Adobe’s CS5 are starting to use CUDA, Otoy needed to support CUDA in order to run them…Urbach said his technology is going to be used in Blue Mars, a high-end virtual world that uses very sophisticated graphics. Avatar Reality is making Blue Mars available as a big download. But it is also making a version that can be accessed via the cloud through a web browser. That version is tapping Otoy. That will enable Blue Mars, which normally runs on demanding computers, to run on the cheapest computers and netbooks…Otoy competes with rivals such as OnLive and Gaikai. Compared to OnLive, Urbach is certainly the underdog here. He has been talking about delivering this disruptive technology since 2004…”
Economy and Technology
34. AOL bought TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/28/tim-armstrong-we-got-techcrunch/ “AOL…has agreed to acquire TechCrunch, Inc…TechCrunch operates a global network of dedicated properties from Europe to Japan, as well as vertically-oriented websites, including MobileCrunch, CrunchGear, TechCrunchIT, GreenTech, TechCrunchTV and CrunchBase. The TechMeme Leaderboard ranks TechCrunch as the No. 1 source of breaking tech news online, followed by AOL’s Engadget…”
35. Zuckerberg gives $100 million to Newark public school system http://politic365.com/2010/09/28/newark-school-system-flush-with-donations-from-zuckerberg-gates/ “…Mark Zuckerberg…donating $100 million over five years to the…Newark public school system. Zuckerberg’s new foundation Startup: Education announced the gift this past week in what…Newark Mayor Corey Booker (D) characterized as a sorely needed infusion of cash. The gift was announced during a live broadcast of The Oprah Winfrey Show…“What’s the alternative? Is it to continue what we’re doing now, with nearly a 50 percent dropout rate?...Booker also announced that he was able to secure $40 million in grants from the Pershing Square hedge fund Foundation, including $25 million from Microsoft founder Bill Gates and $15 million from investment giants Beth and Ravenel Curry…”
36. Gmail Creator: Facebook Has The Potential To Be Worth More Than Google http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/23/google-facebook/ “…Buchheit is an angel investor and co-founder of FriendFeed, the social aggregation and conversation service that Facebook acquired last year…“I believe many people were (and still are) significantly undervaluing Facebook equity. It has the potential to be worth more than Google,” Buchheit wrote…With the Facebook deal, he and his fellow FriendFeeders were undoubtedly given a nice basket of stock options…the total deal was worth about $50 million, with around $30 million of that in Facebook stock…if Facebook is one day worth more than Google, Buchheit will be very, very rich…At the time of the FriendFeed deal, Facebook was valued around $6.5 billion — “silly-low“, as Buchheit puts it. Today, on SecondMarket, Facebook’s valuation is over $30 billion…Google’s current market cap value is about $165 billion…”
37. AOL acquires 5min for video push http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20017844-17.html “AOL has acquired video-syndication service 5min…The company also plans to use 5min to "enhance the distribution and monetization of AOL-produced original video content throughout the Web."…5min attracted 20 million unique viewers in August…The success of 5min can be attributed to the breadth of content the site offers--over 200,000 videos on topics ranging from travel to technology, video games to cars…over 1,000 media companies and independent video products syndicate their content to the site…AOL has been focusing on improving its video offerings over the past year. In January, it acquired video creation and distribution solution provider StudioNow…”
Civilian Aerospace
38. SpaceX Falcon 9 Demo For NASA Slips To Early November http://space.flatoday.net/2010/09/spacex-falcon-9-demo-for-nasa-slips-to.html “…The Falcon 9 and a Dragon cargo carrier are being targeted for liftoff Nov. 8 or Nov. 9…The mission had been scheduled to blast off Sept. 23…the demonstration flight is being carried out under a $1.6 billion NASA contact aimed at developing a commercial capability to launch supplies and equipment to the International Space Station. The contract calls for three test flights…Chief Technology Officer Elon Musk is talking with NASA officials about the potential to complete all developmental milestones in two flights rather than three. The company is targeting mid-2011 for the first of the 12 operational missions to the station.”
39. International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-opinion/ci_16187410 “…Extreme travel - like space travel - requires unique international agreements. Astronauts returning from the space station have two landing site choices - Kennedy Space Center or Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan…Three astronauts, an American and two Russians landed in Kazakhstan Saturday, Sept. 25. They had an almost perfect "bull's eye landing." They landed in the precise planned spot at the steppes of Kazakhstan…if I had a choice, I'd come back on the shuttle. The Soyuz is a capsule; it lands under parachute in the desert…Recently while in New York, I was talking with astronaut Richard Garriott, son of astronaut Owen Garriott, about Spaceport America. He asked about the size of the…spaceport. I said it is 26 square miles. "Oh, Soyuz could not hit that small a target from space. We'd need a target the size of the state of New Mexico…We are preparing to create a new type of space travel experience…In October, Las Cruces will once again be host to a number of astronauts during the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS)…I have been talking to a lot of astronauts. The conversations are mundane for the most part, but every now and then I get to hear something extraordinary that helps put the lives of these unique individuals in perspective…”
40. British 'rocket man' launches mission to become first private firm to put tourists into space http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1315355/British-rocket-man-launches-mission-private-company-tourists-space--hopes-sky-high-earner.html “A team of British rocketeers plan to open the door to the stars by becoming the first private firm to put tourists in space. Starchaser boss Steve Bennett and astronaut Matt Shewbridge hope to loft the first paying passengers into the cosmos by 2015…next year they plan a manned launch test, firing the already-built 70ft 'Starchaser 4 off the ground in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire. If successful it will be the biggest rocket ever launched in Britain…Starchaser owns 20 acres and buildings at the site, which will eventually become mission control for the amazing operation…Former lab worker and university lecturer Steve left his day job 14 years ago to realise his dream of making it into space. He added: ‘My goal is to open the space frontier for everyone, to make access to space easy and inexpensive. ‘It's going to be like dot com all over again but instead of creating billionaires the space revolution will create the world's first trillionaires…”
Supercomputing & GPUs
41. GPU-based cheap supercomputing coming to an end http://www.isgtw.org/?pid=1002754 “Nvidia’s CUDA has been hailed as “Supercomputing for the Masses,” and with good reason – amazing speedups ranging from 10x through hundreds have been reported on scientific / technical code…For all that computing power, they’re incredibly cheap…it’s only possible because CUDA is subsidized by sinking the fixed costs of its development into the high volumes of Nvidia’s mass market low-end GPUs…that subsidy won’t last forever; its end is now visible…Anandtech received an early demo part of Sandy Bridge and checked out the graphics…Anandtech’s conclusion is, “If this is the low end of what to expect, I’m not sure we’ll need more than integrated graphics for non-gaming specific notebooks.”…integrated graphics are, effectively, free. Cheaper than free, actually, since there’s one less chip to socket onto the motherboard…This means the end of the low-end graphics subsidy of high-performance GPGPUs like Nvidia’s CUDA…because the fixed costs of developing any chip family are very large; spreading them out over a high-volume low end makes a major difference…So prices will rise, since GPGPUs will no longer have a huge price advantage over purpose-built HPC gear…”
42. GPU computing on servers? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/21/nvidia_gpu_servers/ “Server makers are swarming the GPU Technical Conference put on by graphics card and GPU co-processor maker Nvidia in San Jose this week…Many applications are only now getting GPU extensions, and now the appropriate iron has to be brought into the field…Cray said…that it would be creating a variant of its blade servers in the new XE6 massively parallel supers that would allow Tesla GPU co-processors from Nvidia to be mixed in with the x64 processors and offload floating point work…Cray has engineering expertise is weaving field programmable gate array (FPGA) and other types of accelerators into massively parallel x64 machines…Cray is planning to base the blades on the next generation of Tesla GPUs, which are code-named "Kepler" and which are due in 2011…”
43. Cray taps Nvidia chips for large supercomputer http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20017107-64.html “Cray will put Nvidia graphics processors in future large-scale supercomputers…Cray's largest system, Jaguar, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, based on processors from Advanced Micro Devices, is currently ranked No. 1 in the world, according to the Top 500 list…A couple of years ago, those (Nvidia) GPUs did not have functionality that was appealing to our customers…we'll see first is the data centers that run a few key applications on the accelerators. The data center that has to run 500 applications? That's the data center that won't move over to accelerators…”
*****
posted by myDigitechnician at 28.9.10
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