NEW NET Weekly List for 08 Mar 2011

Below is the final list of issues for the Tuesday, 08 March 2011, NEW NET (Northeast Wisconsin Network for Economy and Technology) 7:00 - 9:00 pm weekly gathering at Sergio's Restaurant, 2639 South Oneida Street, Appleton, Wisconsin, USA.

The ‘net

1. Windows Live Mesh reaches 5 million connected devices http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/03/01/windows-live-mesh-reaches-5-million-connected-devices.aspx “…Windows Live Mesh has now connected 5 million devices, with over 3 million users syncing 2.2 petabytes to the cloud. Windows Live Mesh was released on September 30th, 2010 and joined SkyDrive, a service already used by 70 million customers, as a core component of Microsoft’s consumer cloud strategy…” http://explore.live.com/windows-live-mesh

2. Founder Conference and LetsLunch bring the best lunch partners on-stage http://venturebeat.com/2011/03/04/letslunch-founder-conference/ “…LetsLunch launched earlier this year with the goal of helping its users grow their professional network by meeting the right person for lunch. After the meal, each participant rates their lunch partner on a number of factors, then the site uses those ratings to provide future recommendations…we are crowdsourcing the selection of presenters. We know what doesn’t work: everyone applies to the organizer, the organizer is swamped with requests, and can’t tell who to pick…we’ll use LetsLunch.com to let entrepreneurs self-select other entrepreneurs…You meet other entrepreneurs equally interested in pitching. You chat with them over lunch…learn about their startup and their plans. Then you provide feedback on the site…You’ll be surprised how quickly the top 10 founders will emerge with such a process…LetsLunch…has now scheduled 500 lunches and has more than 1,000 users. There are another 1,000 people on the waiting list. The service is limited to Silicon Valley…Raynaud plans to expand to New York in April…”

3. Facebook is killing (killed?) authenticity http://stevecheney.posterous.com/how-facebook-is-killing-your-authenticity “…Facebook is no longer a social network…Facebook is really a huge broadcast platform. Everything that happens between its walls is one degree away from being public…Last week a bunch of…sites across the web, including TechCrunch, adopted Facebook commenting…humans are born with an instinctual desire to understand the broader context of their surroundings and build rapport, a social awareness often called emotional intelligence. In the beginning, Facebook catered to this instinct we all have. But FB in its current form…does not. And forcing people to comment – and more broadly speaking to log-on – with one identity puts a massive stranglehold on our very nature…authenticity goes way down when people know their 700 friends, grandma, and 5 ex-girlfriends are tuning in each time they post something on the web…Facebook’s insistence that you have one identity across the web is…short-sighted…one social network will not rule the web…” http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000823.html “…it is an extremely alarming statement, one that would have gladdened the hearts of despots and government spooks all through human history. Coming from the man child who controls the Facebook empire, such a quote should trigger alarm bells of concern for every person, everywhere, who cares about free speech and civil liberties…to force all comments into the realm of "single real identity" public exposure -- as Facebook now appears intent on doing -- is unacceptable, reprehensible, dangerous, and utterly at odds with basic free speech rights in the United States…There are costs to living in a "free society"…One of those is that we need to accept some speech that is painful or abhorrent, as part of the price for protecting free speech and civil rights for us all. When anonymous speech is destroyed, whether under a boot and rifle shot, or via a simple mouse click on a massive social networking site, the damage is strikingly similar in the long run. People become nervous about speaking their minds…”

4. Skype Adding Ads to Windows Version http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381568,00.asp “Skype…will begin adding ads into its Windows platform, together with a promise that they "won't interrupt your Skype experience"…Skype also is…proposing a partnership with Facebook to embed Skype on that platform, so that users can connect with other users via Skype voice chat…ads won't identify the user specifically, but the company may use the user's location, gender andf age to tailor ads. If the user does not wnat Skype to use this information, the user can opt out using the Privacy tab under "Tools>Options"…Skype has been working on ways to expand its user base with low-bandwidth and optimized direct-dial options to allow the technology to be used in areas without widespread PC coverage. Skype also enhaced its iPhone app and bought Qik to improve its video-calling capabilities. That, of course, won't be used in China, which has declared Skype to be illegal…”

5. craigconnects: A Network of Networks http://www.bethkanter.org/craig-connects/ “…I just launched a new thing called craigconnects. This is the biggest thing in my life, and I’d like a little help from you. Together, we can work together from the grassroots up to make things better for everyone. Please check it out at www.craigconnects.org. It’s a long-term effort, not a one-shot deal, we’re talking ongoing support for effective organizations. I’m committing 20 years to craigconnects, focusing first on nonprofits and public service organizations that get stuff done on a sustainable basis…It’s a voice for the grassroots, the rank-and-file, for people who never had a voice until now…please know that this site exists primarily to help me connect and protect worthwhile organizations and efforts in certain specific areas I want to support. craigconnects isn’t a fundraising or grant-making organization…I’d appreciate it if you could help out – here’s a way to start. Take a look at our Featured Nonprofit or any of the other organizations I endorse and consider helping them. If you have others to suggest, contact me through www.craigconnects.org…”

Security, Privacy & Digital Controls

6. ChronoPay’s Scareware Diaries http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/03/chronopays-scareware-diaries/ “If your Windows PC has been hijacked by fake anti-virus software or “scareware” anytime in the past few years, chances are good that the attack was made possible by ChronoPay, Russia’s largest processor of online payments…a company that has artfully cultivated and handsomely profited from the market for scareware…ChronoPay handles Internet bill payments for a variety of major Russian companies, including domestic airlines and utilities. But ChronoPay also specializes in processing the transactions of so-called “high-risk” industries, including online pharmacies, tobacco sales, porn and software sales…When I confronted ChronoPay’s CEO Pavel Vrublevsky in 2009 about the apparent ties between Innovagest and his company, he insisted that there was no connection, and that his company’s processing services were merely being abused by scammers. But the recently leaked ChronoPay documents paint a very different picture, showing that Innovagest2000 was but one example of a cookie-cutter operation that ChronoPay has refined and repeated over the last 24 months…Innovagest was a company founded by ChronoPay’s Spanish division…ChronoPay paid for everything, from the cost of Innovagest’s incorporation documents to the domain registration, virtual hosting and 1-800 technical and customer support lines for the company. The same dynamic would play out with other ChronoPay “customers” that specialized in selling rogue anti-virus software…”

7. Facebook To Share Users' Home Addresses, Phone Numbers With External Sites http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/28/facebook-home-addresses-phone-numbers_n_829459.html “Facebook will be moving forward with a controversial plan to give third-party developers and external websites the ability to access users' home addresses and cell phone numbers in the face of criticism from privacy experts, users, and even congressmen. Facebook quietly announced the new policy…in January. It suspended the feature just three days later following user outcry…In response to a letter penned by Representatives Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) expressing concern over the new functionality, Facebook reaffirmed that it will be allowing third parties to request access to users' addresses and phone numbers…it is "actively considering" whether to restrict users under 18 years old from sharing their contact information with third-party developers…Even if the revamped feature were to include improved notifications and protections for minors, privacy experts warn the feature could imperil users' personal information and increase their risk of being targeted by scams, spam, and identity thieves…”

Mobile Computing & Communicating

8. Android Job Listings Overtake iOS For the First Time http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381453,00.asp “In 2010, most mobile developer job descriptions read: 'must have iOS experience, Android optional.'…According to tech recruitment firm Dice, jobs requiring Android skills have overtaken those requiring iOS experience, for the first time…employers are finally beginning to "put their developers where the handsets are."…now that there are so many Android handsets and tablets coming to market, Hill says employers realize they need to develop apps for both platforms…”

9. Android smartphones top iPhones, BlackBerries US usage for first time http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9213258/Android_smartphones_top_iPhones_BlackBerries_for_first_time_ “Android smartphones beat out iPhone and BlackBerry devices for the first time in the U.S. in the latest Nielsen survey…Android devices made by several manufacturers were used by 29% of the U.S. market in the November-through-January reporting period…Apple iPhones and BlackBerry devices from Research In Motion each had a 27% share…Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 smartphones had a 10% share…WebOS from Hewlett-Packard had 4% and Symbian from Nokia had 2%…”

10. Is iPad 2 worth $100 more than the original? http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20039034-266.html “…iPad 2…isn't much different from its predecessor…Apple…reduced the price of the older version of the iPad by $100…the least expensive 16GB Wi-Fi only iPad is now $399 instead of $499…iPad 2, it's…33 percent thinner and lighter…comes with front-facing and back-facing cameras that can be used for video conferencing. The older iPad doesn't have cameras. The new version of the iPad does use a faster dual-core processor and it has upgraded graphics inside that will supposedly make the graphics nine times faster…my CNET colleague Josh Lowensohn…believes new apps developed for the iPad will make use of the newer hardware, which means that these apps may not work at all on the older iPad…iOS 5 could add something to the software code that will allow new multi-core threaded apps to make use of both processor cores at once, which could result in some very interesting applications…Apple has a nasty habit of leaving out older hardware from future software update…”

11. Adobe Gives In To Apple, Releases Flash-to-HTML Converter http://www.businessinsider.com/adobe-gives-in-to-apple-releases-flash-to-html-converter-2011-3 “Adobe has finally given in to the inevitable: a new tool will convert Flash files to HTML5 so they can run on Apple devices like the iPad and iPhone. The tool will help advertisers and Web sites who have already made big investments in Flash, but it's not going to keep developers from defecting -- especially if they're making mobile apps…Adobe has created an end-around and released a tool called Wallaby that will let developers convert Flash to HTML5, which can run in the Safari browser used by Apple devices…”

Apps

12. Android apps about to improve: Google launches Android anti-fragmentation tool http://gigaom.com/mobile/why-android-smartphone-apps-are-about-to-improve/ “…a new Fragments API for developers building software for Android 1.6 and up. Fragments…allow for multiple windows of activity on the device display, which can greatly increase the usability of an app…[D]evelopers can break the Activities of their applications into subcomponents called Fragments, then combine them in a variety of ways to create a richer, more interactive experience…Because they are modular, Fragments also offer an efficient way for developers to write applications that can run properly on both larger screen as well as smaller screen devices.”…Android developers can design applications with interactive panes, either on the same screen or by using virtual screens where the user swipes from one pane to another…The use of fragments should allow developers to worry less about smartphone screen sizes and resolutions…fragments will allow developers to adapt the user experience to different screen sizes, saying developers “might include multiple fragments in an activity only when the screen size is sufficiently large, and, when it is not, launch separate activities that use different fragments…” http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/03/fragments-for-all.html

13. The Node Ahead: JavaScript leaps from browser into future http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/01/the_rise_and_rise_of_node_dot_js/print.html “Voxer is a walkie-talkie for the modern age, an iPhone app that lets you instantly talk across the interwebs and listen at the same time and leave voice messages if no one is on the other end and simultaneously chat with multiple people and toggle between text and voice to your heart's content. It's a real-time internet app in the extreme, and that's why it's built with a development platform most of the world has never heard of. Matt Ranney…started coding in good old fashioned C++…But C++ proved too complex and too rigid…so he switched to Python…But Python proved too slow for a low-latency VoIP app, so he switched to Node….a two-year-old development platform specifically designed for building dynamic net applications. The "js" stands for JavaScript. Node is built atop V8, the open source JavaScript engine at the heart of Google's Chrome browser…Node moves V8 from the client to the server, letting developers build the back end of an application in much the same way they build a JavaScript front end…Node is also an extreme example of an "event-driven" system, a software architecture that's built around not threads or data but events: messages from other other applications or inputs from users. In short, it doesn't wait for one thing to happen before moving to the next. If it calls a database for information, for instance, it can tackle the next task before the database responds. Whereas traditional multithreaded systems are suited to heavy CPU work, event-driven systems are meant for network applications that involve heavy I/O…It allocates only small slice of memory – a placeholder, if you will, that simply identifies the connection – and it grabs additional memory only as required…Ranney ran a test to see how many connections he could open a single server…just to see where things would fall down…I ran out of port numbers…Node is known as The New PHP…on github, the popular open source repository…though Rails still has more "followers" than Node – roughly 7,000 versus 5,000 – Node is indeed getting more views…Node debuted in 2009. We're still a long way from a 1.0 release. Version 0.4 arrived just last month…Gerad Suyderhoud…organized the first Node hackathon…Held at Joyent's offices in August, the Node Knockout competition attracted 500 developers…Node isn't just a tool for building applications and websites. It's also a means of driving so-called cloud services…With the cloud-management stuff, you have all these little agents sitting here and there, and they're not necessarily dealing with a large amount of throughput," says Ryan Dahl, the man who invented Node as an independent programmer and now works for Joyent. "Writing these little things turned out to be really nice in the [event-driven] world. You don't have to deal with different threads. You just have to receive messages and send messages…”

14. Google Pulls 21 Apps With Malware From Android Market http://mashable.com/2011/03/01/android-malware-apps/ “Google has just pulled 21 popular free apps from the Android Market…the apps are malware aimed at getting root access to the user’s device, gathering a wide range of available data, and downloading more code to it…Although Google has swiftly removed the apps after being notified (by the ever-vigilant Android Police bloggers), the apps in question have already been downloaded by at least 50,000 Android users…These apps are all pirated versions of popular games and utilities…the apps root the user’s device using a method like rageagainstthecage, then use an Android executable file (APK) to nab user and device data, such as your mobile provider and user ID…Below is a complete list of the bad apps, all of which were made by an entity called Myournet…” http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/03/01/the-mother-of-all-android-malware-has-arrived-stolen-apps-released-to-the-market-that-root-your-phone-steal-your-data-and-open-backdoor/ “…Justin pinged a contact at Google to bring the issue to their attention…holy cheeseballs, they've been pulled already! Took less than 5 minutes from first contact to pull…as well as remotely removing them from user’s devices. Unfortunately, that doesn’t remove any code that’s already been backdoored in…this is the ultimate Android Trojan to date, and it’s already been downloaded over 50,000 times…Justin is also working on a removal tool…” http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/03/malware-in-android-market-highlights-googles-vulnerability.ars “…Similar malware, dubbed "DreamDroid" has been found in even more applications, with applications from publishers named Kingmall2010 and we20090202 also removed. In total, more than 50 programs have been pulled…” [maybe the Zynamics team Google just acquired, per the NEW NET item further down today’s list, will develop and install a malware screening suite in the Android Market app submission process – ed.]

15. MixAR: 3D Augmented Reality Editor for iPhone http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1492185039/mixar-augmented-reality-editor-for-iphone “…MixAR is our second Augmented Reality (AR) iPhone application and the world's first AR Editor for the iPhone…Using MixAR you can make and save your own simple 3D models and icons (or load pre-made models from our library), assign them to markers, place them in scenes together, and film or photograph your scenes in order to share with the world…current AR applications require programming and 3D animation skills in order to produce content…we are developing MixAR to let anyone create your own AR designs, all on your phone, without needing to know programming or 3D animation…We have invested gobs of our own time, money and code into this project, but require some assistance from the MixAR community to get the first version into your hands before Spring 2011. With this funding we will not have to take on extra projects to pay the bills over the next few months, and be able to focus solely on MixAR- which means you get to start creating with it much sooner and in a more stable condition…”

16. Mozilla Makes A Better Case for Web Apps in Minutes Than Google Did in Months http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mozilla_makes_a_better_case_for_web_apps_in_minute.php “…Google first introduced Chrome OS and the idea of "Web apps" last December…Today, Mozilla announced its own Web app initiative and, in just minutes, it makes so much more sense than the vision put forth over the several months since the same idea was first introduced by Google…I hear Google say "Web app" and I think "website"…It opens up in a new browser tab, takes up the entire page and functions exactly as a website would…Mozilla manages, within two minutes [via their video], to convince me that Web apps are something completely different and empowering for both the user and the developer…”

17. Medical app: bedside cancer detector http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/diagnostics/bedside-cancer-detector/ “A handheld device that detects proteins produced by tumor cells could give doctors a fast, accurate way to diagnose and monitor cancer. Tumor-marker testing…can take days in a laboratory to yield results. The new detector, by contrast, requires a tiny speck of tissue, takes less than an hour to process samples, and could be used in a doctor’s office…The device…developed by researchers at Harvard Medical School, attaches to a smartphone, providing a user-friendly interface for doctors to view results…the researchers accurately detected cancer 96 percent of the time…the device could support big medical decisions like whether to do surgery on a patient to look at the malignancy or refer them to more intensive CT or MRI scans…The detector is a miniature nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) machine…The new detector’s magnet can be smaller because the sample volume is also smaller and because the system measures only how quickly the atoms’ vibrations decay over time rather than measuring the frequency, as a conventional NMR does…Standard pathology testing on a larger biopsy specimen from the same tumors was only 84 percent accurate.”It’s an exciting technology and could be used for cancer prescreening at a patient’s bedside…He points out, however, that while the device is very sensitive, it also gave false positives, identifying some healthy people as having cancer. Andrew Seidman, a clinical oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center…believes it would be most helpful for guiding cancer therapy. ”Tumors evolve during treatment,” Seidman says. ”I can see this as a safer way to do serial biopsy…”

18. LiquidSpace launches its workspace-finding mobile app http://venturebeat.com/2011/03/07/liquidspace-workspace/ “If you’re the kind of person who spends more time working at Starbucks than in your office (i.e., me), then you may be able to upgrade your work life with a new iPhone application called LiquidSpace…LiquidSpace is less focused on creating long-term work arrangements and more focused on finding someplace to work right now…the app is that it supports a variety of arrangements. They include private spaces, where a company only makes offices available to traveling employees or other approved guests; paid spaces, like a co-working office where you rent a desk for the day or the afternoon; and public spaces, like a Starbucks with WiFi…LiquidSpace is also announcing a promotion next week where users who travel to the South by Southwest conference will be able to visit a number of “pop-up workspaces” in Austin locations like art galleries and coffee houses. The LiquidSpace app is free, because the company plans to make money by taking a share of all the paid transactions…LiquidSpace has data showing…there are more than 110 million mobile workers in the United States alone.”

Open Source

19. Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) http://openfarmtech.org/community/content/why-not-buy-these-tools-and-machines-my-local-store “Farm and construction implements bought in the current market are limited because their designs are the intellectual property of the companies that produce them…This results in higher prices…Reasons proprietary technologies are more costly: Planned obsolescence…Competition through advertising…Regulated repair…Advantages of OSE [open source ecology] technologies: Lifetime design…Collaborative development…Design as a set…Modification…Self-replication: The GVCS, once fully developed, is designed to be self-replicating. Buying into the development of this set could mean never having to buy a new implement again…” http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/71302 http://www.inc.com/articles/201103/5-start-ups-bubbling-up-at-ted.html http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/GVCS_tools

20. The Audacity of Carla Schroder http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/News/The-Audacity-of-Carla-Schroder “…Linux Today editor Carla Schroder talks about her latest book, The Book of Audacity…I've always been good with my hands, the classic tinkerer taking things apart to figure out how they work…I own a little farm, which makes being handy extra-valuable: handling and caring for livestock, growing food, building and maintaining fences, painting, maintaining a long gravel driveway, maintaining irrigation ditches, pasture management and improving the soil, researching and using sustainable and 'green' technologies, cobbling together customized sprinkler lines out of cheap materials that work as well as the expensive prefab kind, building outbuildings and critter shelters…Nothing beats having a pile of nothing-to-lose gadgets, some tools, and time to mess around with them and figure out how they work…I like making live recordings and then editing and cleaning them up, and I've digitized a lot of treasured old vinyl LPs…I was approached by No Starch Press to write an Audacity book…I was already familiar with Audacity and thought why not, it's a great program with a strong dev team and community support. It's popular, it's packaged with a lot of commercial audio devices…Audacity suits me fine for my style of audio production. I play violin…Terry plays guitar, and there are a lot of musicians we hang out and play with…Audacity is great for producing two-track stereo recordings at all quality levels, from lo-fi Internet streaming to very high-quality CD and DVDs…A netbook equipped with Audacity and a good-quality stereo mic is an awesome portable recording studio…It took over two years; it should taken less than one…In the last six months I pretty much rewrote the whole book. It was rather humiliating to go back and re-read those early chapters because they were so bad…I wrote the book in LaTex, exported to PDF for proofreading and editing, and then I was assigned a new, very excellent copy editor who was willing to deal with LaTex…Audacity is an excellent recording and mixing program for interviews, podcasts, studio and live recordings, and preserving and restoring legacy media, such as old tape recordings and vinyl records by digitizing it…The book covers both how to use Audacity and teaching fundamental audio production concepts…Digikam is probably my favorite piece of software ever. I am investing a lot of energy into learning to be a good photographer, and Digikam is my digital photo workhorse. It's an amazing piece of work that keeps getting better…I had not anticipated…having to teach both audio fundamentals and audio hardware. Audacity (or any audio software) doesn't make sense if you don't understand those things, so…an integrated approach makes this book especially valuable. Not only does it go into detail on Audacity's features, but also the basics of building a recording studio, doing field and live recording, and the basics of digital and analog audio hardware…”

21. How to get involved in the open source community http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/185-jennifer-cloer/414794--ask-the-experts-how-to-get-involved-in-the-community “…we've reached out to another group of experts to learn what exactly are the best ways to contribute and/or participate in the Linux and open source software communities. Our panel this month includes: Cat Allman, Program Manager, Open Source Programs Office, Google…Mark Charlebois…Qualcomm Innovation Center…Jon Corbet…Linux Weekly News…Richard Purdie, Linux Foundation Fellow…We talked to our panel to get some advice on how to get started and how to navigate your way through the process of contributions…Cat Allman, who does developer relations for open source projects at Google, agrees: "Do your homework before you get started. It will make your entry into the project so much smoother. Almost every project will have an archive of mailing list(s), a wiki, code repository; look at what has been done in the past, discussed and/or argued over on the list…Be familiar with coding style, contribution practices, community email etiquette, and copyright assignment practices for the project you are contributing to…Jon also advises to review project documents: "Every project is different in this regard; some have better documentation than others. In the kernel community, we have a number of documents…One of those documents was also published by the Linux Foundation as a white paper: How to Participate in the Linux Community…Embedded Linux is a hot area for developers right now…The Linux Foundation recently published a new white paper: "10 Ways to Get Started in Embedded Linux Development."…Find something that is interesting and you think could be improved, then go and do it. Persevere if you find any obstacles but do listen, learn and adapt…you will find that if you give things back to a project in the form of patches and improvements (even for the documentation), you will get help in return now and again…”

SkyNet

22. Google To Shut Down Gizmo5 On April 3 http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/04/google-to-shut-down-gizmo5-on-april-3/ “…in November 2009 Google acquired Gizmo5, a powerful VoIP telephony service that allows users to place and receive calls from their computer and mobile phone applications…the company has started informing users that it will be shutting down Gizmo5 service on April 3, 2011…Google has integrated Gizmo5 technology into Gmail/Gtalk, which has allowed users to make phone calls directly from their Gmail inbox…but it can’t do everything Gizmo5 can. For example, using a supported SIP application, Gizmo5 allows users to make/receive phone calls using their Wifi connections on their mobile phones…Gizmo5 also offers more flexibility in terms of hardware setups. It hooks into SMB PBX systems, allowing businesses to tap into the service, and it also supports analog telephone adapters — you can hook a landline phone into the Gizmo5′s VoIP network using the appropriate adapter. And Gizmo5 offers desktop applications that users can leave open 24/7 without having to worry about keeping a browser tab open to receive calls…”

23. Google Buys Security Analytics Software Developer Zynamics http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/01/google-buys-security-analytics-startup-zynamics/ “…Google…made an acquisition today: security analytics software company Zynamics…Zynamics builds reverse engineering tools (BinDiff, BinNavi, VxClass, BinCrowd and PDF Dissector) for both offensive and defensive security that help find and prevent security vulnerabilities and issues within software applications. The startup’s tools are used to help understand security updates, identify FOSS code in binaries and identify flaws in closed-source software and build input to trigger them. The company’s software will also cluster malicious software and generate signatures as well as share information remotely…The zynamics team will continue to develop innovative ways of applying their software analysis tools to protect users from malicious software. Their goals overlap with the commitment that Google has already made to ensure online security for our users…”

24. Google Voice Now Offers SIP Addresses For Calling Directly Over IP http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/2011/03/google-voice-now-offers-sip-addresses-for-calling-directly-over-ip.html “Wouldn't it be great if you could call a Google Voice number directly via SIP? So that you could bypass the PSTN when calling a GV number and go directly over IP?...NOTE…these SIP addresses may not be working for all Google Voice users…today I learned that you could simply take your Google Voice number and append "@sip.voice.google.com" to get a perfectly working SIP URI that you could use with any SIP phone. I naturally tried it out with my own GV number…The call worked great…SJphone reports that the remote client is YATE, a.k.a. Yet Another Telephony Engine…I subsequently made several calls using the Blink softphone on my Mac and again could see in the SIP traces that YATE was receiving the call on the Google end…Google appears to have chosen Yate to use on the receiving end of SIP calls into a Google Voice number…When I've been building apps in Tropo or Voxeo's Evolution platform, I've wanted to route them to my GV number... and I have to do this via the PSTN side. No big deal on one level, but it's just inefficient. If the call is already all on the IP side, why not just keep it all IP!...Now we can…”

25. Google surprises GDC attendees with free Chrome OS notebooks http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-20037529-235.html “…This year's Game Developers Conference…those who managed to sit in on one of Google's two sessions on Chrome ended up walking out with something more than a free GDC tote bag--they got a laptop. Following the sessions, Google handed developers blue cards saying they could exchange it at the end of the day for a "surprise gift from Google." What that ended up being was a Cr-48, the reference design hardware that houses Chrome OS…”

26. Chrome OS Get A Big Update — Two Words: Trackpad Fixes http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/03/chrome-os-update-trackpad/ “…Google rolled out the beta of Chrome 10, the latest version of their web browser. Today they’re bringing it to Chrome OS too…Most importantly, Google is touting trackpad fixes, presumably for the Cr-48 device that people have been testing the OS with…The full list of updates in the new Chrome OS build…”

27. Google Chrome OS Pilot Program Provides Free Laptops to High School Students http://thejournal.com/articles/2011/02/14/google-chrome-os-pilot-program-provides-free-laptops-to-high-school-students.aspx “…Google delivered a truckload of free Cr-48 laptops to Astoria High School in Astoria, OR earlier this month as part of its Chrome operating system (OS) pilot program. Astoria is one of several high schools in the United States selected to be part of the pilot program…every student and teacher in the pilot schools will receive a free laptop. In return, Google wants the students and teachers to integrate the laptop into their classroom, homework, and personal lives and provide feedback on the experience…students and teachers at participating high schools will use the Cr-48 laptops and Web apps instead of traditional computers and software. And because every student will have one of these laptops to use in class or at home, teachers can fully integrate the technology into their instruction without worrying about the digital divide…Students can start working on an assignment at school, save it to the cloud, continue working on it at home, and then access it again at school the next day, thereby eliminating excuses about forgotten homework…”

General Technology

28. Lenovo's Laptops Are First to Have Eye-Control Ability http://www.fastcompany.com/1733060/look-into-my-eyes-lenovos-laptops-first-to-get-eye-control “Lenovo and Tobii today unveiled what they're calling the "world's first eye-controlled laptop,"…allowing users of the laptop to control what happens in the UI using keyboard, mouse and where they glance on the screen--not entirely unlike the hand-eye-coordinated actions we do in non-computing environments…When you work on a computer…your eyes scatter and dart around as you focus on specific details…Google even uses eye-tracking tech to work out where attention-grabbing hotspots are on its homepage so it can optimize its design…Lenovo is exploiting Tobii tech in a much more interactive way. The system is at heart just an infrared light source and a camera that observers a user's eyes--by looking for reflective IR "glints" off your eyeballs. It combines that with clever software that works out where the eyes are positioned in space in front of the computer, and where they're looking…The result is that you can glance at an on-screen object like an icon and the system will pop up more info on that item. Maps can be scrolled or zoomed depending on the area of interest that you're concentrating on, and more subtle UI events can be worked in to improve your workflow…things like dimming windows you're not looking at, switching focus between windows based on which ones you what to see, and darkening the display if you're not sitting looking at the machine…”

29. The Future of the Connected Car http://mashable.com/2011/02/26/connected-car/ “…things are starting to get exciting in the in-car technology space. Connected cars are hitting the consumer market in a price bracket that makes them a realistic option for many…So what can we expect from these connected cars? We’ve spoken to a major motoring manufacturer, a futurist, an automotive analyst…to find out…1. Your Car as Your Credit Card…You may currently enjoy contactless payment at tolls via a smart card, but in the future we will see such cashless transactions extended to other areas of motoring, such as parking charges and fuel payments via embedded tech…consumers can get one bill at the end of the month for every car-related cost: their parking, their insurance, their lease, their roads, even full repairs coverage…2. Your Garage as a Docking Station…While Bluetooth is great for in-car communications and streaming music, it’s cellular and Internet connectivity that truly puts the “connected” in connected car…cars with the tech, such as the 2012 Ford Focus, can be turned into mobile Wi-Fi hotspots…your car wakes up, SYNC wakes up and it grabs the latest software update via the Wi-Fi…Just like all your other mobile devices can get updated on the fly, why shouldn’t your car also be able to be updated that way?...3. Voice Controls for Your Car…Voice control is now starting to become the primary interface in the car because it allows you to keep your hands on the wheel, your eyes on the road and focus on the task of driving. Instead of picking up your iPhone and browsing through the music, you can just say ‘play artist,’ ‘play genre,’…Ford’s system can currently understand 10,000 words — an impressive vocabulary for a car…We also spoke to Nuance, the company that powers the voice recognition in Ford’s systems about what the future holds in this area…By 2020, expect the majority of the vehicles to have in-build speech recognition…But as move towards a future where cars can command our attention as much as our cell phones, I expect to see a growing cultural backlash around this notion of distracted driving and inattentive drivers…4. Apps to Control Your Car…controlling certain functionality of your car via your cell phone will soon be commonplace for new car owners…While the current crop of apps work on the driver activating the controls, Golden sees the future of this area in proximity-based sensors and related automation…As you walk towards the car, your phone will adjust temperature, turn on the music and unlock the door as you step closer…In the same way that consumers develop preferences for computer or cell phone operating systems, always sticking to iOS or Android, for example, we think as consumers get used to in-car connectivity platforms, they will want to stick to the same platform with future purchases…”

30. Saab Unveils First Android Infotainment System, IQon http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381439,00.asp “Saab has announced the first Android-based, in-dash "infotainment" system for a car. Called 'IQon,'…The Wi-fi enabled, 8-inch touch screen lets drivers access thousands of Android apps. Apart from the usual productivity apps, like e-mail, navigation, entertainment, and music streaming, drivers can expect to see more auto-specific apps…unlike the Android Marketplace, Saab's app store will require the automaker's approval before being uploaded, for "safety, security, and malware" issues…the IQon API will allow developers to access driver data from 500 vehicle sensors, gathering stats like like speed, temperature, steering angle, and yaw rate…”

31. Which improves faster -- hardware or software? http://www.fastcompany.com/1736368/does-moores-law-suddenly-matter-less “…The rate of change in hardware captured by Moore's Law, experts agree, is an extraordinary achievement. "But the ingenuity that computer scientists have put into algorithms have yielded performance improvements that make even the exponential gains of Moore's Law look trivial," said Edward Lazowska…If you agree with this, the implications are profound…my hypothesis is that there's a much faster rate of advancement on the software layer…as an investor I live in it. As a result of several of our themes, namely HCI and Glue, we see first hand the dramatic pace at which software can improve. I've been through my share of 100x to 1000x performance improvements because of a couple of lines of code or a chance[sic] in the database structure in my life as a programmer 20+ years ago…The hardware is rapidly becoming an abstraction in a lot of cases…I don't have a good answer as to whether it's core algorithms, distributed processing across commodity hardware (instead of dedicated Connection Machines), new structural approaches (e.g. NoSql), or just the compounding of years of computer science and software engineering, but I think we are at the cusp of a profound shift in overall system performance and this article pokes us nicely in the eye to make sure we are aware of it. The robots are coming. And they will be really smart. And fast…”

32. GPS chaos: How a $30 box can jam your life http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20202-gps-chaos-how-a-30-box-can-jam-your-life.html “…In the tower at the airport, air-traffic controllers peered at their monitors only to find that their system for tracking incoming planes was malfunctioning…emergency pagers used for summoning doctors stopped working…the traffic-management system used for guiding boats failed…people reaching for their cellphones found they had no signal and bank customers trying to withdraw cash from local ATMs were refused…It took three days to find an explanation for this mysterious event in January 2007. Two navy ships in the San Diego harbour had been conducting a training exercise. To test procedures when communications were lost, technicians jammed radio signals. Unwittingly, they also blocked radio signals from GPS satellites across a swathe of the city…GPS has become an "invisible utility" that we rely on without realising. Cellphone companies use GPS time signals to coordinate how your phone talks to their towers. Energy suppliers turn to GPS for synchronising electricity grids when connecting them together…our societies' reliance on GPS navigation is growing by the year…a GPS jammer…can be bought on the internet, and tend to be used by…truckers who don't want their bosses to know where they are. Their increasing use has already caused problems at airports and blocked cellphone coverage in several cities. One jammer can take out GPS from several kilometres away, if unobstructed…The problem is that the GPS signal is very weak. It's like a car headlight 20,000 kilometres away…commercially available jammer… illegal to use in the US, UK and many other countries, these low-tech devices can be bought on…for as little as $30. Sellers claim they're for protecting privacy…Some criminals use them to beat trackers inside stolen cargo. "We originally expected that jammers might be assembled by spotty youths in their bedrooms," says Last. "But now they're made in factories in China…”

DHMN Technology

33. Open Source 5 axis CNC Router & Plasma Machine Plans 5'x10' http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1091976372/open-source-5-axis-cnc-router-and-plasma-machine-p “This set of instructions is to be extracted from the digital documents of a working 5 axis machine which I have just recently fabricated and is fully operational…This 5 axis CNC router is 10' long, 5' wide and has a Z stroke of 24". This project is to produce a set of plans & instructions from which one can build a machine…there is at least one open source 5 axis CAM solution called the CNCtoolKit ( http://cnc-toolkit.com/ ) which is a plug-in for a popular 3d modeling program. I have a modified script version of the plug-in which works with the machine that will be described in the plan/instruction set. The modified script will be available with the plan set…The money raised with Kickstarter will afford me the time to take the hundreds of photos, drawings, cad files, g-code files, etc., that were created to make the custom machine and edit them all into a readable, logical set of drawings, instructions, lists, and maybe even video. This will enable the release of a complete set of open source instructions on how to build a large, production quality, 5 axis CNC router/plasma machine…”

34. Gameduino: an Arduino game adapter http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2084212109/gameduino-an-arduino-game-adapter “Gameduino connects your Arduino to a VGA monitor and speakers, so anyone who can write an Arduino sketch can create video games. It's packed full of 8-bit game goodness: hundreds of sprites, smooth scrolling, multi-channel stereo sound. Gameduino is designed, tested, documented and the prototype is built…What needs to happen next is a manufacturing run. Because the board uses a fairly fancy chip, a short production run is the only way to keep the cost reasonable. Your pledge gets you a Gameduino from this first run…” http://www.pcworld.com/article/221147/meet_gameduino_the_arduino_for_game_creation.html

35. FOSS maven says $29 'Freedom Box' will kill Facebook http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/17/eben_moglen_freedom_box/ “…free-software champion Eben Moglen has unveiled a plan to populate the internet with tiny, low-cost boxes that are designed to preserve individuals' personal privacy. The Freedom Box, as the chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center has christened it, would be no bigger than power adapters for electronic appliances. The inexpensive devices would be deployed in a peer-to-peer fashion in homes and offices to process email, voice-over-IP communications, and the sharing of pictures, among other things. The decentralized structure of the devices is in stark contrast to today's biggest internet providers…Freedom Boxes would be used to perform a wealth of services that most of the world has been brainwashed into believing are better performed in the cloud. Secure backups that automatically store data in encrypted form would be performed on the Freedom Boxes of our friends, just as their encrypted data would be stored on ours…The guts of the boxes would be the Debian distribution of Linux…The Freedom Box website gives no timeline for delivery, but Moglen told The New York Times that he could build version 1.0 in one year if he could raise “slightly north of $500,000.” The cost of plug-in devices is about $99 right now, but Moglen said they'll eventually sell for about $29…You plug it into the wall and forget about it…”

36. iHYPE ( i Hold Your Pad everywhwere ) http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cjbug/ihype-i-hold-your-pad-everywhwere An iPad holder prototype developed at the FVTC Fab Lab in Appleton

Leisure & Entertainment

37. Minecraft creators’ next project is a strategy game: Scrolls http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/03/02/minecraft-creators-next-project-is-a-strategy-game-scrolls “…www.scrolls.com. It’s the secret next project…Mojang started when Minecraft suddenly took off, and it could hardly be more different. It’s a single and multiplayer fantasy-themed strategy game that takes the mechanics of collectible card games, but changes what the Mojang guys have always seen as their limitations…the biggest advantage of Minecraft’s success is that it enables us to do the projects we really want to do. Scrolls is just that.”…You play Scrolls online against other players, or offline in a campaign mode. Each player chooses a selection of scrolls, representing creatures, spells and structures under their control, and chooses where to place them on a game board…On a broader level, the game is about acquiring those cards: players can buy packs of randomly selected cards for real money, or earn them for free by playing the single player campaign against the AI. Some cards can only be bought, others can only be earned, but all can be traded on the auction house for in-game currency. The swords-and-sorcery setting of Scrolls will be fleshed out with a backstory by Jerry Holkins, writer of Penny Arcade…”

38. Minecraft Documentary Explores Indie Game’s Impact http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/03/minecraft-documentary/ “…Of all the videogame industry’s tremendous success stories, Minecraft might very well be the most remarkable. The blocky indie game created a whirlwind last year, selling more than a million copies as gamers took an instant liking to its do-it-yourself charm and functionality…why did Minecraft catch fire? Can we learn anything from its massive success? What kind of impact will it have on the future of independent gaming?...2 Player Productions wants to answer these questions. The company is seeking donations through crowdfunding site Kickstarter to help fund a feature-length documentary that digs into the Minecraft phenomenon…Owens and his crew have already shot a 20-minute concept video (above)…the Kickstarter campaign has raised $131,000 of the minimum $150,000 needed to finance the film…“Minecraft showed people that games could offer more then just a prepackaged experience. It excited the imagination of millions…It’s also a story of a regular guy that became a millionaire just from supporting his passion project…”

39. Facebook: The Future of Online Video Rentals? http://gigaom.com/video/facebook-video-rentals/ “Users have become increasingly comfortable with Facebook as a place to watch videos, catapulting the social network into the top 10 video destinations on the web in the U.S. But will they also pay for movies from big time studios?...Warner Bros. has made The Dark Knight available to Facebook users as a low-cost rental directly through the social networking site…for 30 Facebook credits, or approximately $3. Users who pay for the rental will have 48 hours after purchase to watch the movie, which can be paused, resumed and displayed in full screen mode…For Warner Bros., the decision to rent The Dark Knight online is just one more in a series of experimental moves that the studio has made in recent weeks…The usage of Facebook credits as currency also, like the iTunes implementation, has the ability to open up rentals in markets where mature on-demand online video libraries might not exist…we’re skeptical that Facebook will become a large-scale video rental opportunity for studios based on the current implementation. Users who want to watch The Dark Knight have to go to the film’s official Facebook page in order to click through to the actual film rental…seems like a cumbersome process…if a huge, global video site like YouTube can’t build a business from online rentals, it’s difficult to see Facebook being able to pull it off…”

40. Massive database launched to help build the next generation of music apps http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/03/04/massive-database-launched-to-help-build-the-next-generation-of-music-apps/ “…The Million Song Dataset is a collaboration between Columbia University…and music data service The Echo Nest…Designed for non-commercial use only, the Dataset is an enormous 300GB download containing all sorts of incredibly detailed information about all one million songs…Everything from basic artist and song data right down to time signatures, keys, pitches, tempos, year of release…researchers and non-commercial developers can use the information to build and test new services and apps based around music…The kinds of apps the team behind the dataset imagine it will be used for include apps for song recognition, analysing the ‘mood’ of music, being able to recognise what year a song came from just based on the music, artist recognition and cover song recognition…The Million Song Dataset is available to download…”

Economy and Technology

41. AOL’s Patch Buys Hyperlocal News Site Outside.In http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/04/aol-outside-in/ “…AOL’s Patch has acquired hyperlocal news aggregator Outside.In…Outside.In…will be integrated with Patch, the company’s hyperlocal news platform…Outside.In is a local news aggregator aimed at bringing together all the hyperlocal news around a given location. Via its search portal, you simply enter your zipcode, neighborhood or address and the site will surface the most relevant news in your particular area. Outside.In focuses on sourcing information and news from local bloggers as opposed to large publications…Outside.In’s traffic has been declining over the past six months and only saw 317,000 unique visitors in January…In addition to the coverage that Patch reporters provide in a given area, Outside.In will be able to supplement news with its search platform, and scale coverage…” http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_heartbreak_of_hyperlocal_news_aol_scoops_up_ou.php

42. Western Digital to buy Hitachi HDD ops for $4.3 bln http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/07/hgst-westerndigital-idUSL3E7E717G20110307 “…Western Digital Corp , the world's No. 2 hard drive maker, agreed to buy Hitachi Ltd's hard disk drive operations for about $4.3 billion in cash and stock, in a bid to leapfrog market leader Seagate Technology…The hard drive market has been hurt by weakening growth in PC-related sales as tablet computers and other new devices not equipped with hard disk drives surge in popularity…After the deal, Hitachi will own 10 percent of Western Digital…”

43. Vurve Gives Businesses “Advertising On Autopilot” http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/03/vurve-raises-another-4-5-million-to-give-businesses-advertising-on-autopilot/ “…a well-managed online marketing campaign can be a powerful weapon for small businesses eager to get in front of new customers — there’s a reason Google’s AdWords pulls in billions each year…the legwork involved with running these (especially on multiple platforms simultaneously) can be daunting. That’s where Vurve comes in…it automates many of the most time-intensive aspects of running marketing online…Vurve will ask you to set your monthly budget — the minimum is $200, the maximum is $10,000…Vurve’s engine, dubbed Sophie, will automatically run ads through a variety of marketing channels, including search ads on Facebook, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and display ads on various shopping sites, like Amazon. Ad copy is generated using a combination of templates and information garnered from simple questions (What is your company’s tagline?) The service will also automatically post your products to shopping search engines like Bing and Google Product Search, and over time it will adjust which channels it invests in based on performance. Vurve makes money by taking 15% of your budget as a fee…”

44. YouGotListings Offers A Broker-Tested Rental Listing Management Software http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/06/yougotlistings-offers-a-broker-tested-rental-listing-management-software/ “…technology has helped redefine the real estate industry. With the success of Trulia, Zillow and others, it’s clear that there is a huge market for providing the real estate sector with online tools…YouGotListings is adding an innovative product for brokers and landlords with the launch of its simple, easy to use rental listings management software…Chen and Li spent a full year as brokers in Boston so they could fully understand how the system works and eventually provide an application that would meet the needs of both brokers and landlords in the rental industry…YouGotListings aims to be a start to finish application for brokers, where they can find listings, publish these listings to consumers, and then also run credit-checks, print rental applications and more. YouGotListings is free for listing distributions, and costs anywhere from $50 per month for a single user to $100 per month for unlimited users…YouGotListings is currently focused on the Boston and Chicago markets…The model has worked in Boston and YouGotListings says that already have 75% of the market in the city…YouGotListings’ main competitors is RentJuice, which just raised $6.2 million in funding and acquired a competitor, Kahoots…”

Civilian Aerospace

45. FAA Seeks Funding for $5 Million Space Prize http://www.space.com/11035-commercial-space-contest-faa.html “The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is requesting funding in the 2012 budget to offer a $5 million prize to encourage the development of projects designed to provide low-cost space transportation…it is likely to be offered to the first company or organization that can launch a small payload, weighing only 1-5 kilograms, into low Earth orbit…Last year NASA announced plans to award $2 million to the first company or organization to place a small satellite into Earth orbit, twice in one week. Space agency officials are seeking an organization to administer that competition. "We have been coordinating with FAA on our plans…FAA budget documents submitted to Congress in February includes $5 million "to establish a program for incentivizing advancements in space transportation by non-governmental organizations." The Low Cost Access to Space incentive "would provide a $5 million award designed to jump-start the creation of an entirely new market segment, with immediate benefits to private industry, NASA, the Department of Defense, and academia…”

46. Crunch time for new spaceships http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/04/6192962-crunch-time-for-new-spaceships “…eight companies have been invited to chat with NASA about their plans to build spaceships for sending astronauts to the International Space Station after the space shuttles are retired…The list of eight was reported last week by the weekly Space News. Here's the rundown…Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, which is partnering with Astrium on a launch vehicle that's based on Ares and Ariane technology…Blue Origin, the relatively secretive rocket venture that's backed by Amazon.com billionaire founder Jeff Bezos…The Boeing Co., which is offering its CST-100 space capsule as a crew transport craft for NASA and private operators…Excalibur Almaz, which plans to update Soviet-era hardware to create a low-cost next-generation launch system…Orbital Sciences Corp., which is partnering with Virgin Galactic and other companies on its Prometheus space plane…Sierra Nevada Corp., which is working on a lifting-body concept based on the decades-old HL-20 design…SpaceX, which has already successfully tested its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule and would adapt that system for crew transport…United Launch Alliance, which is working to get its Atlas and Delta rockets ready to launch humans into space…All these companies are looking for money from NASA for the second phase of the agency's Commercial Crew Development program, or CCDev 2….The current plan calls for NASA to award another $200 million for CCDev 2…”

Supercomputing & GPUs

47. CUDA 4.0 Gets In Line for Parallel http://drdobbs.com/high-performance-computing/229300467 “…NVIDIA has announced its CUDA 4.0 toolkit for developers focused on building parallel applications…there is now peer-to-peer communication support across GPUs within a single server or workstation…Unified Virtual Addressing (UVA) technology…is intended to provide a single merged-memory address space for the main system memory and the GPU memories, again enabling so-called "quicker and easier" parallel programming…routines such as parallel sorting are argued to be 5X to 100X faster than with Standard Template Library (STL) and Threading Building Blocks (TBB). Having access to GPU computing through the standard template interface greatly increases productivity for a wide range of tasks, from simple cashflow generation to complex computations…The CUDA 4.0 architecture release also includes MPI integration with CUDA applications so that modified MPI (Message-Passing Interface standard) implementations automatically move data from and to the GPU memory…”

48. AMD Fusion APUs Accelerate More Than 50 Leading Software Applications http://www.sys-con.com/node/1742096 “…more than 50 mainstream applications currently accelerated by the new AMD Fusion Family of Accelerated Processing Units (APUs)…help remove hardware barriers to allow software developers to deliver the most immersive computing experience possible…Although some developers are skilled at leveraging parallel programming for high-performance computing applications, most mainstream PC software previously has been limited to relying on either the CPU or GPU…”

49. White House Announces Project to Spur HPC Adoption in US Manufacturing http://www.hpcwire.com/features/White-House-Announces-Project-to-Spur-HPC-Adoption-in-US-Manufacturing-117336563.html “The White House…announce[d] a new public-private partnership…to bring HPC technology to the have-nots of the US manufacturing sector. Using a $2 million grant from the US Department of Commerce and an additional 2.5 million investment from industrial partners, a consortium has been formed to broaden the use of HPC technology by small manufacturing enterprises (SMEs)…the National Digital Engineering and Manufacturing Consortium (NDEMC), will be tasked to spread adoption of advanced modeling and simulation software in a sector that is in dire need of IT modernization…there is a big gap between HPC capabilities at the large manufacturers versus their smaller and much more numerous suppliers. At these less well-endowed firms, HPC capabilities are absent or in short supply. NDEMC will attempt to fill that gap by sharing its members' expertise and resources…The central goal of this project is to bring access to HPC simulation and modeling software down into the supply chain of these major manufacturers…giving these SMEs access to HPC will dramatically change how these firms operate. "For small and medium sized manufacturers today, the typical product development cycle takes 14 months," he said. "But with this new technology it can be reduced to eight months…”

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