NEW NET Weekly List for 31 Jan 2012
Below is the final list of issues for the Tuesday, 31 January 2012, NEW NET (NorthEast Wisconsin Network for Entrepreneurism and Technology) 7:00 - 9:00 PM weekly gathering at Sergio's Restaurant, 2639 South Oneida Street, Appleton, Wisconsin, USA.
The ‘net
1.
Twitter Bots Create
Surprising New Social Connections http://www.technologyreview.com/web/39497/ “You might have encountered a "Twitter
bot" before: an automated program that perhaps retweeted something you
wrote because it had particular keywords. Or maybe you received a message from
an unfamiliar, seemingly human-controlled account, only to click on an
accompanying link and realize you'd been fooled by a spambot…a group of
freelance Web researchers has created more sophisticated Twitter bots, dubbed
"socialbots," that can not only fool people into thinking they are
real people, but also serve as virtual social connectors, speeding up the
natural rate of human-to-human communication…The Web Ecology Project set up an
experiment in which teams of researchers competed to gain the most Twitter
@replies. Since there was no rule against automating the process, a few teams
quickly realized they could compete better by using bots…the group tracked
2,700 Twitter users, divided into randomly assigned "target groups"
of 300, over 54 days. The first 33 days served as a control period, during
which no socialbots were deployed. Then, during the 21-day experimental period,
nine bots were activated, one for each target group…On average, each bot
attracted 62 new followers and received 33 incoming tweets (mentions and
retweets). But Hwang and his colleagues also found that the human-to-human
activity changed within the target groups when the socialbots were introduced…”
2.
SocialFolders Teams Up
With Evernote to Bring You 'Social Memory' http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/31/socialfolders/ “…we often have files and bits of data that
live exclusively on a server far away from our hard drives. And while that’s
often really awesome, sometimes you want and need a backup of that information
on your computer. Enter SocialFolders, a service that backs up your social and
cloud data to your hard drive. “SocialFolders was basically created to help
people manage their content on social networks and cloud services and allow
everyone to actually own that content,”…SocialFolders is an app for Windows and
Mac that syncs with Twitter, Facebook, Google Docs, Instagram, and as of
Tuesday, Evernote. With SocialFolders, you choose which services you want to
connect with and a corresponding folder for each service will appear in your
file system, Dropbox-style. When you upload a new picture to Facebook or create
a new Google Doc, the new file will automatically sync with your SocialFolders
app on your hard drive. Starting Tuesday, you can add documents, images, and
other files to Evernote with SocialFolders…”
3.
What It's Like When
Google Comes to Your House for a Presidential Chat http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/what-its-like-when-google-comes-to-your-house-for-a-presidential-chat/252281/ “The White House last night held the
first-ever presidential "hangout," the latest in a line of
administration experiments with social technologies, this time with Google's
newish multi-camera live streaming Google+ platform. There was, as it turns
out, a breakout star: one Jennifer Wedel, a 29 year-old mother of two and State
Farm employee from Fort Worth, Texas, selected to participate on the basis of a
video question she submitted on H1B visas. What was so eye and ear catching
about her exchange with President Obama was her willingness to inject a little
bit of her own reality into the presidential bubble…Wedel opened by raising the
issue of her husband, a 40 year-old semiconductor engineer who, after seven
years or so at Texas Instruments, lost his job three years ago and has been
unemployed since. "My question for you," said Wedel to Obama,
"is why does the government continue to issue and extend H1B visas when
there are tons of Americans just like my husband with no job?" Obama began
his response, and it quickly became clear that a long, Obamesque answer was in
the offing…"I understand that...," interjected Wedel. "And
so...," continued Obama. "But," said Wedel. "Yeah...,"
said Obama, who then gestured for Wedel to continue…"Why," she asked,
"do you think the H1B program is so popular with big corporations?" Obama,
though, preferred to focus on why what he's hearing from said corporations
wasn't matching Wedel's stated experience. "It is interesting to
me...," he began, and then switched approaches. "I meant what I said.
If you send me your husband's resume, I'd be interested in finding out exactly
what's happening right there…that kind of engineer, should be able to find
something, ah, right away." He asked again for her husband's resume, and
Wedel assured the president that she'd be taking him up on the offer…How did
Wedel come to be in a digital room with the president of the United States in
the first place? She's active on YouTube, she explained, "and I saw that
little red telephone," an icon the company put up last week to collect
questions. "I though, 'what the heck is that?' I clicked on it…last
Friday, after work, she said, she got a call from a contact at Google…"I
talked to them on Friday, and they were in my house Sunday. I basically had
Saturday to clean." She points to her two children. "When I told them
that Google was coming to our house, my 7 year-old was like, 'Google has
people?'…Part of the company's tasks: explaining to participants just what the
heck they were engaging in. Google sent a rep from Austin to her home, said
Wedel, as well as a technician from Canada, equipped with just a few monitors
and "a tiny webcam like you can buy at Walmart." Few of the chosen
questioners knew what a Google+ hangout was, said Wedel, and Sunday featured a
crash course in the tool as well as a dry run of the event, sans White House
participation. The video "hangout" was new to Wedel, she said, but
she liked it immediately. "Seeing their smiles, I could feel their energy,
even though they weren't in the room. You can't see emotion in text, but there
was something different about this. That's when I thought, this is going to be
cool…” [cool way for her husband to get a
new job – ed.]
4.
'Super Wi-Fi' Blankets
First County in U.S. http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27531/ “New Hanover County, North Carolina, just
rolled out Super Wi-Fi…a new Wi-Fi standard operating in the 'white spaces'
between 50-700Mhz, where previously only television stations were allowed to
transmit."…This could mean super fast wireless connections for the
county's residents, and also the potential to connect to Wi-Fi towers that are
miles distant—something that is impossible with conventional Wi-Fi, mostly
because the power of normal Wi-Fi transmitters are limited by the FCC…There's a
bunch more in the release about how Super Wi-Fi is the greatest thing since
penicillin, but I have to temper the hype a bit by referring to an earlier
piece in Tech Review by Scott Woolley that notes that Super Wi-Fi can't really
live up to its full potential, at least as a medium for long distance
connectivity. Under government rules designed to protect local TV stations from
harmful interference, high-power Super Wi-Fi signals (up to four watts), which
can travel for miles, must give TV channels a wide berth. Low-power Super Wi-Fi
signals (less than 40 milliwatts) face fewer restrictions. The result is that
while there are 48 channels potentially available for long-range Super Wi-Fi,
zero or one channel will be available for long-range use in the places most
Americans live…”
Gigabit
Internet
5.
Israel plans fiber-based
national broadband network http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/01/27/israel.joins.australia.with.national.fiber/
“Israel has followed Australian footsteps in
planning its own national broadband network. The country's Israel Electric
Corporation plans a purely fiber-based network that will supply many of the
country's homes with at least 100Mbps speeds. They picked fiber with the
intention to scale and could theoretically hit 1Gbps in time…As with the
Australian buildout, the goal is to catch up to and eventually leapfrog
countries with some of the fastest Internet access available…it could eclipse
the US and other countries where sparser populations and corporate resistance
to public deployments can keep the average speed down. Israel does have a
vested interest in courting American companies by promising high speed Internet
access to local workers. Intel, Microsoft, and now Apple consider Israel their
Eastern technology center…”
6.
Three teams win in KC
Google Gigabit Challenge http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/18/3378753/three-teams-ideas-earn-prizes.html “…One team handed out T-shirts and fired Nerf
guns at a prop. Some strolled back and forth while others anchored themselves
to a lectern. Somebody opened with shaky video of his daughter hitting the
buzzer beater that clinched a 13-11 basketball game. All came to a library
auditorium Wednesday with dreams transformed to plans translated into
pitches…The Gigabit Challenge was born out of news that broke last spring that
Google Inc. had picked Kansas City as the place to build an ultra-fast Internet
network…That inspired a local business start-up incubator, Think Big Partners,
to corral prizes it values in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to
turbo-charge a few entrepreneurs who see Google’s project as a chance to make
something big…Perhaps the most polished pitch came from a pair of high school
seniors from Johnson County, Jaspreet Singh and Andrew Ying of Blue Valley’s
Center for Advanced Professional Studies. They made a convincing argument about
using the fat data pipe of Google’s coming fiberoptic lines to stream video in
a cable-like service at a better price. Their yet-developed product, Hong,
would note programs individual viewers watch to gauge their interests and then
target ads accordingly…“It’s a Pandora-like model,” Ying said in reference to
ad-supported music streaming service, “for TV.”…Grand prize went to Sein
Analytics & Asset Management…with a better way for small- to medium-sized
financial institutions to sort the wheat from the chaff of asset-backed
securities such as default credit swaps. One of the judges quizzed them on why
their plan needed Google-speed Internet to work, and even after their victory
they didn’t have much of an answer. In fact, they’ve been developing the
business for two-plus years…The contest’s “Born Global” prize was landed by
Kauzu, a budding online job site aimed at younger workers that plays off location
technology to make nearby opportunities more obvious…A “People’s Choice” award
drawn from online voting Wednesday from people watching the pitches in 41
countries went to Paruzia Technologies. The business hopes to provide storage,
backup and support services remotely using Internet connections…” [so much for using gigabit speed to improve
the KC economy; two of the three Gigabit Challenge contest winners aren’t even
located in KC, and the grand prize winner doesn’t even need gigabit internet
for their venture… - ed.]
Security,
Privacy & Digital Controls
7.
Symantec advises
disabling pcAnywhere software http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16740153 “Security firm Symantec has warned customers
to stop using its pcAnywhere software. The company confirmed that
"old" source code stolen by a hacking group had exposed
vulnerabilities in the remote access program…In its website note, the company
said it recommended "disabling the product until Symantec releases a final
set of software updates that resolve currently known vulnerability risks"…It
said the vulnerability left pcAnywhere users exposed to "man in the
middle" attacks - a security hole which puts data at risk of being
intercepted…It suggested that corporate customers who used pcAnywhere for
business-critical activity should "understand the current risks" and
"apply all relevant patches as they are released, and follow the general
security best practices…”
8.
Senator Rand Paul: TSA’s
intrusions undermine security http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/23/tsas-intrusions-undermine-security/ “Today, while en route to Washington to speak
to hundreds of thousands of people at the March for Life, I was detained by the
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for not agreeing to a patdown
after an irregularity was found in my full body scan. Despite removing my belt,
glasses, wallet and shoes, the scanner and TSA also wanted my dignity. I
refused…I requested to be rescanned. They refused and detained me in a
10-foot-by-10-foot area reserved for potential terrorists…My detention was real
and I was repeatedly instructed not to leave the holding area. When I used my
phone to inform my office that I would miss my flight, and thus miss my speech
to the March for Life, I was told that now I would be subjected to a full body
patdown. I asked if I could simply restart the screening process to show that
the machine had made an error. I was denied and informed that since I used my
phone, to call for help, I must now submit or not fly…While sitting in the
cubicle, I thought to myself, have the terrorists won? Have we sacrificed our
liberty and our dignity for security? Finally, the airport head of TSA arrived
after I had missed my flight. He let me go back through the scanner and this
time the scanner did not go off. The only comment from TSA was that some of the
alarms are simply random…a 6-year-old girl from Bowling Green was subjected to
an invasive search despite her parent’s objections. Mr. Pistole…replied that
TSA concluded because a child in a market in Afghanistan exploded a bomb, all
American children needed to be evaluated as potential threats…My office is
being inundated with their stories of assault and harassment by TSA agents.
This agency’s disregard for our civil liberties is something we are expected to
understand and accept…It is time for us to question the effectiveness of TSA…”
[three cynical comments on this article:
(1) how come Rand Paul (and other members of the US Senate and Congress) only
speak out when TSA or other ‘bad’ legislation or regulations cause them
personal inconvenience or problems, (2) Senator Paul was only allowed to go through
the scanner again because the top TSA person at the airport didn’t want to get
in trouble with a senator (Joe Citizen would have been arrested or at least
refused permission to go through scanner again or to fly that day and would be
put on the TSA list of ‘bad flyers’), and (3) it’s extremely unlikely that
Senator Paul will pursue this issue until significant improvements are made – most
TSA agents would give him special treatment because he’s a senator, so he’s
unlikely to have future problems with TSA. – ed.]
9.
When college applicants
plagiarize, Turnitin can spot them http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-plagiarism-20120129,0,2954802.story “The student's admissions essay for Boston
University's MBA program was about persevering in the business world. "I
have worked for organizations in which the culture has been open and nurturing,
and for others that have been elitist. In the latter case, arrogance becomes pervasive,
straining external partnerships." Another applicant's essay for UCLA's
Anderson School of Management was about his father. He "worked for
organizations in which the culture has been open and nurturing, and for others
that have been elitist. In the latter case, arrogance becomes pervasive,
straining external partnerships." Sound familiar? The Boston University
student's essay was written in 2003 and had been posted at businessweek.com.
The UCLA applicant was rejected this year — for plagiarism. The detection of
such wholesale cheating in college applications is on the rise due to the use
of Turnitin for Admissions, an anti-plagiarism database service that compares
student essays to an immense archive of other writings…"The more we can
nip unethical behavior in the bud, the better," said Andrew Ainslie, a
senior associate dean at UCLA Anderson…In the school's first review of essays
from potential MBA candidates this year, Turnitin found significant plagiarism
— beyond borrowing a phrase here and there — in a dozen of the 870
applications, Ainslie said. All 12 were rejected. Turnitin — as in, "turn
it in" — began in the 1990s and became a popular tool at high schools and
colleges to help detect copying in academic term papers and research by
scanning for similarities in phrases from among billions of Web pages, books
and periodicals…”
Mobile
Computing & Communicating
10.
Obama and Romney
campaigns use Square for fundraising http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2012/01/obama-and-romney-campaigns-use-square-for-fundraising.html “Barack Obama's use of social media is
credited with helping him reach out to voters in a groundbreaking way that
helped him win the 2008 presidential race. In 2012, the Obama campaign is eying
a new way to reach voters and donors too -- Square. The president's reelection
campaign…is outfitting its staff across the U.S. with the small plastic
smartphone credit card readers and mobile payment apps from Square, the San
Francisco start-up run by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. But just as the Obama
campaign isn't alone in its embracing of social media this year, it too isn't
alone in deploying Square for easier, faster fundraising on the campaign trail.
On Tuesday, Republican Mitt Romney's campaign announced it too would be using
Square for fundraising in Florida…”
11.
Droid Razr Maxx Boasts
Best Android Smartphone Battery http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/31/motorola-droid-razr-maxx-review/ “…Enter the Motorola Droid RAZR Maxx. A mere
two months after its predecessor was released on Verizon, this new contender
came around to challenge the battery life of every single next-gen phone we've
ever used. Its back end has been filled out somewhat to make room for a bigger
battery, but at 8.99mm, it's still slimmer than a huge number of competing
handsets on the market today. So what makes the Maxx different from the RAZR?
Is it worth paying $300 with a two-year commitment -- a $100 premium over its
original?...Power users who need to have the longest lifetime possible will
have no choice but to pick it…At its worst, it's an original RAZR with a $100
extended battery pack attached. At its best, however, the Maxx is proof to
every phone manufacturer that it really is possible to make a slender (and
absolutely stunning) device that can actually survive more than a full days'
worth of heavy use…”
12.
The Smartphone Has Become
an Essential Shopping Tool http://www.pcworld.com/article/249064/the_smartphone_has_become_an_essential_shopping_tool.html “…over half of U.S. adult cell phone owners
used their handsets for shopping assistance while in stores during the 2011
holiday season…A quarter of cell owners used their phones while inside a store
to go online and find product reviews. And a quarter of adult cell users went
online to see if they could find a better price for a product they were
considering buying…Mobile devices are rapidly becoming essential shopping
tools, and more smartphone- and tablet-toting consumers will soon insist that
physical stores match or beat the prices of their online competitors…The bad
news for retailers: Mobile devices are here to stay, and price-matching is only
going to get more popular.”
13.
Marko Ahtisaari:
smartphone evolution is only just beginning http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/31/ahtisaari-nokia-lumia-design “…Nokia's problem is that it's struggling to
keep pace in the smartphone market as first the iPhone and then Android phones
such as Samsung's models have eaten into the top-end market, while cheap
low-end versions have attacked the Symbian market…Nokia's response, to ally
itself with Microsoft and adopt Windows Phone for the interface, has been described…as
a Hail Mary pass – an American football phrase for staking everything on one
attempt…So what, I asked, could Nokia bring to the smartphone table now? "There's
a point of view about design that all innovation in the interaction with the
phone has been done," Ahtisaari says. "Nothing could be further from
the truth. The phase we're in now is like the 1880s in the car industry. Back
then, cars had tillers…It took 15 years to settle on the steering wheel at the
front controlling the front wheels. And we're in the middle of that part of the
evolution of interaction."…"Look at iOS. Multiple pages of apps, and
folder, with a physical home key. It's very elegant; it was a great innovation
five years ago. But the core interaction hasn't evolved much. It's simple but
constant…Our aim was to start and make the most beautiful phone, where we took
away every unnecessary element. In the N8, we had the extruded form. And looked
to rapidly evolve it, with better materials…Will the next design perhaps omit
the popup USB cover – the one design oddity and only moving part in the phone?
"Definitely, if you can take away a moving part and make it more beautiful
in the placement of the component, we'll do it, so that's something where we
can certianly keep improving. Take it to the extreme," he adds, "why
are there any connectors?"…It's a thought. With open NFC, and wireless
charging, you wouldn't need any connectors – either for power or sound. It's
quite an aim…”
Apps
14.
Google Launches Official
G+ Page For Android Developers http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/01/android-developer-hangouts/ “If you want a high number of quality apps in
your app store, you better make sure your developers have all the tools and
knowledge to do the job. Google has recognized this, and is taking extra steps
to provide tips, services and even instruction to Android developers in order
to promote the Android Market as a hub for plentiful, high-quality apps. The latest
effort in this push…is the addition of a Google+ Android Developer Page,
+AndroidDeveloper…a hub for development tips, as well as a place to talk about
updates to the Android SDK and other developer tools…One of the most useful
features of the new developer page could be the introduction of weekly “office
hours” via the Hangouts tool in Google+. Developers will be able to ask
questions of the various Android teams, and delve deep into discussion with
other coders…”
15.
Rypple, hot off
Salesforce acquisition, launches Android app for social management on-the-go http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/31/rypple-android-app-salesforce-social-hcm/ “…social performance management service
Rypple has launched a native Android app to make sure managers and employees
can connect no matter where they are. Rypple’s software helps managers improve
employee performance through “social goals” and consistent feedback and
recognition. It’s in an increasingly competitive market for cloud-based human
resource management services. Leading competitors include SuccessFactors…Workday,
Taleo, Ultimate Software, and Cornerstone OnDemand…The key features of the
Android app include public recognition for colleague praise, real-time feedback
and social goals for tracking priorities. “The best feedback often comes on the
taxi ride back to the office after an important meeting,” Rypple co-founder and
co-CEO Daniel Debow told VentureBeat via e-mail. “Rypple’s investment in an
Android app lets our users stay aligned with key priorities, get real-time
updates, and recognize great work — away from the office…”
16.
Salesforce.com Launches
New Social, Mobile Customer Service Platform http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/salesforcecom-launches-deskcom-help-desk-service-185359
“Salesforce.com today unveiled a new
SaaS (software as a service) help-desk application called Desk.com that can
reach users through social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Desk.com, which
is based on Salesforce.com's recent acquisition of Assistly, can be deployed in
a matter of days even by companies with no dedicated IT staffers, according to
Salesforce.com…It's important to align help-desk software with social networks,
given the sheer amount of time customers are spending on Facebook and other
sites, according to Salesforce.com. Companies are also facing pressure dealing
with the "new social, global, and mobile customer," given how easy it
is for consumers to transmit their opinions about a product or service over the
Internet to many people, Bard said. The Facebook and Twitter integrations are
standard, and companies can tie their accounts on those social networks to
Desk.com…”
SkyNet
17.
Google Earth 6.2: A
Seamless Globe http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2012/01/google-earth-62-its-beautiful-world.html “…With Google Earth 6.2, we’re bringing you
the most beautiful Google Earth yet, with more seamless imagery and a new
search interface…The Google Earth globe is made from a mosaic of satellite and
aerial photographs taken on different dates and under different lighting and
weather conditions. Because of this variance, views of the Earth from high
altitude can sometimes appear patchy. Today, we’re introducing a new way of
rendering imagery that smoothes out this quilt of images. The end result is a
beautiful new Earth-viewing experience that preserves the unique textures of
the world’s most defining geographic landscapes—without the quilt effect. This
change is being made on both mobile and desktop versions of Google Earth…”
18.
Google Music Now Lets You
Download All Your Saved Music http://lifehacker.com/5879732 “One of our biggest complaints about Google
Music was that you couldn't re-download any songs you'd added to your online
library. Google's now brought this feature for the web interface and the Music
Manager app, so you can download your music—whether it's your entire library or
just a few tracks—with the click of a button. This works for purchased music
and songs you've uploaded yourself, though you can only download purchased
tracks two times from the web interface. To do it, just click the triangle next
to a song or group of songs and choose "Download Selected Songs". If
you want to download your whole library, open up the Music Manager app for
Windows, OS X, or Linux, go to the Download tab, and click "Export Your
Library"…”
19.
Google Reincarnates Dead
Paper Mill as Data Center of Future http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/01/google-finland/ “Joe Kava found himself on the southern coast
of Finland, sending robotic cameras down an underground tunnel that stretched
into the Baltic Sea. It’s not quite what he expected when he joined Google to
run its data centers. In February of 2009, Google paid about $52 million for an
abandoned paper mill in Hamina, Finland, after deciding that the 56-year-old
building was the ideal place to build one of the massive computing facilities
that serve up its myriad online services. Part of the appeal was that the
Hamina mill included an underground tunnel once used to pull water from the
Gulf of Finland. Originally, that frigid Baltic water cooled a steam generation
plant at the mill, but Google saw it as a way to cool its servers…As it turns
out, all 450 meters of the tunnel were in excellent condition, and by May 2010,
it was moving sea water to heat exchangers inside Google’s new data center,
helping to cool down thousands of machines juggling web traffic. Thanks in part
to that granite tunnel, Google can run its Hamina facility without the
energy-sapping electric chillers found in the average data center…”
20.
How to prevent Google
from tracking you http://howto.cnet.com/how-to-prevent-google-from-tracking-you/8301-11310_39-57368016-285.html “Much has been made of Google's new privacy
policy, which takes effect March 1. If you're concerned about Google misusing
your personal information or sharing too much of it with advertisers and
others, there are plenty of ways to thwart Web trackers…You don't become
anonymous when you block tracking cookies, Web beacons, and the other identifiers
as you browse. Your ISP and the sites you visit still know a lot about you,
courtesy of the identifying information served up automatically by your
browser. The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers the Panopticlick service
that rates the anonymity of your browser. The test shows you the identifiable
information provided by your browser and generates a numerical rating…According
the the entropy theory explained by Peter Eckersley on the EFF's DeepLinks
blog, 33 bits of entropy are sufficient to identify a person…knowing a person's
birth date and month (not year) and ZIP code gives you 32 bits of entropy. Also
knowing the person's gender (50/50, so one bit of entropy) gets you to the
identifiable threshold of 33 bits…Prominent in the Google privacy policy are
links to services that let you view and manage the information you share with
Google…To view everything (almost) Google knows about you, open the Google
Dashboard. Here you can access all the services associated with your Google
account: Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, Picasa, Blogger, AdSense, and every other
Google property. The dashboard also lets you manage your contacts, calendar, Google
Groups, Web history, Google Voice account, and other services. More
importantly, you can view and edit the personal information stored by each
Google service, or delete the service altogether…Several free browser
extensions help you identify and block the companies that are tracking you on
the Web…While people are rightly concerned about who is watching and recording
their Web activities, at least Google makes it possible to use the company's
services without being too forthcoming with your personal information. ISPs and
other Web services do as much tracking as Google--or more--but garner far fewer
headlines…”
General
Technology
21.
Printed
Stickers Designed to Monitor Food Temperatures http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/39553/ “A plastic temperature-recording sticker that
could provide detailed histories of crates of food or bottles of vaccine would
be the first to use all-printed electronics components—including memory, logic,
and even the battery. The cost per sticker could be only 30 cents or less…There
are lots of efforts in academia and research where they play with printing
electronics…What's new is "somebody trying to do it commercially and
figuring out what are the first things you can make with 10 or 20 bits of
memory and a simple battery," he says. "We need a library of
different building blocks that are made by the same standard manufacturing
process to get this ecosystem working." The envisioned product will be
designed to work either with a printed display or a contact readout, and
include a battery that can last six to nine months, allowing the sticker to
make a continuous record of temperature. Existing temperature sensor stickers
that cost just pennies offer a crude measurement—using a chemical reaction to
change color when they hit certain thresholds, alerting to possible spoilage…”
22.
Nearly 50% of
businesses now issuing Macs, 27% support the iPad http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/26/50-percent-businesses-issue-macs-research/ “…Forrester…reports that almost 50 percent of
businesses in North America and Western Europe now issue Mac computers…Forrester’s
new report…found that 46 percent of enterprises were issuing Macs to employees.
Those employees receiving Macs tend to be “senior in rank, higher paid,
younger, and in emerging markets,” and managers are much more likely to have
Apple products than regular employees. Notably, only 36 percent of small
businesses reported issuing Macs in 2011…Forrester says that 27 percent of
companies are supporting the iPad…iPhone support is more common than iPad
support, with 37 percent of businesses now supporting the iPhone. Support for
the iPhone is projected to rise to 55 percent in 2012. Overall, Forrester
believes Microsoft’s dominance in the enterprise is quickly coming to a close…”
23.
Apple
introduces us to the Wild World of Coded Magnets http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/01/apple-introduces-us-to-the-wild-world-of-coded-magnets.html “Once in a while we're treated to a new Apple
invention that virtually contains a new self-contained world of possibilities
and vocabulary to enrich it…Today is such a day. This is such an invention.
Apple's invention reveals a wild world of programmable magnetic devices, and
more particularly, to security for computing devices and peripherals that may
be provided by programmable magnets…Apple envisions this technology eventually
working into iOS devices to produce wild haptic effects using Ferrofluids on
touchscreens and virtual keyboards. It will also allow Apple's iOS to present
light based points on the display as a way to guide a user through a process
like a teacher…In my view, this is what I call a foundational patent. It's a
wide overview of a new technology front being opened that will later on be
broken down and defined in other single vision patents using this technology.
In fact, a single vision patent has already rolled out. In December 2011…a
report titled "The iPad's Smart Cover Patent has insightfully come to
Light."…pointed to how Apple has placed a magnet under the iPad's display
that works in conjunction with a magnet in the actual iPad cover. This is how
the iPad is put into hybernation and later awakened when unfolding the iPad
cover…This makes the programming of magnets discussed in this patent come to
life. So the technology presented in Apple's latest patent application, isn't
theoretical: it's a proven fact. The question now is: What will Apple do next?…”
Leisure &
Entertainment
24.
4 Inspiring Examples of
Digital Storytelling http://mashable.com/2012/01/31/digital-storytelling/ “In 2011, Sundance Film Festival created The
New Frontier Story Lab, an initiative created to foster the development of a
new style of media production…The New Frontier Story Lab helped many an interactive
narrative come to life. Each of these productions features multiple points of
entry across platforms and employs technologies such as facial recognition,
augmented reality, geo-location, motion sensors, data visualization and the
entire toolset of social and mobile platforms…Bear 71 is a multi-user
interactive social narrative that observes and records the intersection of
humans, nature and technology…Participants explore and engage with the world of
a female grizzly bear via animal role play, augmented reality, webcams,
geolocation tracking, motion sensors, a microsite, social media channels and a
real bear trap in Park City…Pandemic 1.0 is part film, part interactive game,
part sociological experiment, and was one of the most talked-about experiences at
Sundance 2011…a mysterious virus has begun to afflict adults in a rural town.
The town’s young people soon find themselves cut off from civilization,
fighting for their lives. People online work with people in the real world to
unlock a variety of hidden clues. This transmedia storytelling experience
unites film, mobile and online technologies, props, social gaming and data
visualization, enabling audiences to step into the shoes of the pandemic
protagonists…Part book, part film, part family photo album of a place that’s
been lost in time, the National Film Board of Canada’s Welcome to Pine Point
website explores the memories of residents from the former mining community of
Pine Point, Northwest Territories…the online experience combines photographs,
sound and video clips, interviews, music and narration by Simons to personally
immerse the viewer in a multimedia world of memory and loss…Rome is a
multiplatform interactive narrative experience inspired by the music of Danger
Mouse and Daniele Luppi…The result culminated into a feature film…which was
adapted from the novel The Reapers are the Angels. The project integrated the
use of webGL within the Chrome browser, creating a rich graphical interactive
experience complete with elements of game play.”
25.
How Can I Release My
Music Online So Music-Lovers Can Easily Find It? http://lifehacker.com/5879943/how-can-i-release-my-music-online-so-music+lovers-can-easily-find-it “…I'd like to release some music I've made,
but…don't want to go through a record company. What are my options?...It's not
hard to skip the record labels and sell and distribute music on your own. Let's
start by taking a look at how you can skip the labels and get your music online
before we move onto making sure music-lovers can find it…You have three
different choices for charging for your music: free, pay-what-you-want, and a
set price. Each has their own advantages and different services that work
better…let's break down the best places to upload your music…If you're
releasing your first set of songs, you might want to start by giving your music
away for free…Soundcloud is the easiest to use free music upload service. It
takes just a couple clicks to upload a song…If there's an equivalent to Myspace
out there right now, it's Reverb Nation. Part social network and part
personalized website, Reverb Nation allows you to put tracks online…If you're
interested in the streaming services, Spotmeup is a free tool to submit your
songs to Spotify and Pandora allows independent artists to submit songs…February
1 marks the start of the RPM Challenge, a contest where you're tasked with
writing, recording, and releasing an album within the month of February
(similar to how NaNoWriMo works for novels)…Bandcamp is free to use for
musicians and allows you to set your price for your album or let people pay
whatever they want…if you want to get your music onto the big stores like
Google Music, Amazon, and iTunes, you have to go through a distribution service
and pay a little money…the two most recommended services for this are TuneCore
and CD Baby. For around $35-$40 both of these services will upload and sell
your music on Amazon, iTunes, Beatport, Facebook, eMusic, and a host of other
stores…If you're interested in selling music through Google Music you do so after
paying a one-time $25 fee…”
26.
HBO Looking To Use New
Technology For Boxing Matches http://www.boxingscene.com/hbo-looking-use-new-technology-on-february-4th-card--49063
“HBO Sports…is seeking permission to use
some new technology…For the past 3 years we have been working on wrist based
sensor devices that would allow us to measure in real time the speed and force
of punches thrown. To date, the sensors
have been approved and used in Nevada, California, New Jersey, Michigan, Foxwoods
and Washington, D.C…The unit itself is 1” x 1” and is applied to the inside of
the wrist, on top of the commission approved wraps and protected by the padding
in the wrist of the glove. The unit
weighs 0.2 ounces…we’ve tested on hundreds of fighters at various gyms and
amateur events…We believe we are on the verge of a very exciting technological
breakthrough that could create much interest and entertainment for boxing
fans…”
27.
The Sky Is Rising! http://www.techdirt.com/skyisrising/ “For years now, the legacy entertainment
industry has been predicting its own demise, claiming that the rise of
technology, by enabling easy duplication and sharing -- and thus copyright
infringement -- is destroying their bottom line…since creators and performers
of artistic content existed long before the gatekeepers ever did, we've looked
into the numbers to get an honest picture of the state of things…not only is
the sky not falling, as some would have us believe, but it appears that we're
living through an incredible period of abundance and opportunity, with more
people producing more content and more money being made than ever before…” [you’ve
got to look at the infographic in this article to fully appreciate the
situation described above in words – ed.]
Economy and
Technology
28.
General Assembly Provides
Entrepreneurial Skills To A Chosen Few http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/161/general-assembly “…This is General Assembly, founded in
January 2011 in a 20,000-square-foot loft in New York…by four friends in their
late twenties and early thirties as a campus for technology, design, and
entrepreneurship…It's something new--augmented education, a stopgap for the
startup economy. It's an intermediary that gives…exposure to the way business
is done on the ground. The school focuses on technology and entrepreneurship,
covering everything from fundraising to wireframing. Some classes are
three-hour one-offs, others are weeklong workshops, and certificate programs…are
60-hour programs spread over several weeks…The teachers are practitioners…who
focus on usable results…the glass-walled space hosts hackathons, meetups, happy
hours, and two dozen startups…It creates a selective, aspirational network,
mixing promising newbies and people who have already made it…It iterates and
updates its offerings every few weeks, based on detailed student surveys. When
its students said they wanted to study Android development, General Assembly
ginned up a class two weeks later…This close-to-the-ground, customizable model
has been a missing piece of the innovation ecosystem. Top universities can't
always move fast enough to provide the technical and entrepreneurial skills
needed in this new world…established institutions are partnering with General
Assembly…GE…is sending more than 100 suits for a five-day session that will get
them up to speed on emerging technology, design, and entrepreneurship…They will
also expand online by recording classes and sessions and making class
materials, like slide decks, available…each school in this emerging field will
have to discover if the market is large enough for its ambitions…”
29.
FounderSoup: Stanford
Startup Generator http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/founder-soup/ “…a group of Stanford computer science and
business students started the…FounderSoup program. It’s designed to give
entrepreneurs with an idea or a fledgling company a chance to pitch — not to
raise funding, but to recruit co-founders…I watched as 20 ideas were pitched,
and 170 PhD, MBA, and undergraduate students mingled. What I saw was an
effective model for fostering startups…Mike Dorsey tells me “As a CS student
and an MBA, I would constantly get questions from entrepreneurs to connect them
to people with coding skills. I’d also get all these coders with great products
who needed business co-founders.”…At the Founder Soup pilot event, 4 teams
discovered co-founders and 2 went on to receive funding…For Thursday, 50
founders submitted ideas and 20 were given the chance to pitch for 90 seconds
each. Afterwards, each team was stationed around the Stanford d.school and
approached by those interested in joining their team…Some startup-spawning
universities are beginning to set up their own VC funds, accelerators, and
incubators, like Harvard’s new Experiment Fund and Stanford’s StartX…More
universities and cities should look to copy the FounderSoup model…” [although northeast Wisconsin doesn’t have a
‘startup-spawning’ university, it would be worth using the concept of
FounderSoup to connect more potential startup cofounders in our region – ed.]
30.
Betaworks Returns All
Capital http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/28/that-was-fast-betaworks-returns-all-capital-and-then-some/ “…a lot of people are waiting for results
that prove…New York is really a tech ecosystem that is here to stay…This letter
to shareholders from Betaworks Founder and CEO John Borthwick is one of the
first pieces of evidence I’ve seen that New York is for real…we have produced
eight companies; among these, three have become category leading social tools,
three were acquired, and two are just taking off. We raised $26 million from
terrific investors. Our exits last year gave us the capital to return all
invested capital…Those exits included…Twitterfeed…TweetDeck…and GroupMe…Interesting
as those companies are, Betaworks as a startup itself is more fascinating to
me. It’s not a fund, and it’s not an incubator. It’s a company that takes ideas
and develops them in hyper-speed to become other companies that are put out
into the world. It’s analogous to how a movie studio puts out films. In
Borthwick’s words: “Betaworks is a platform that accelerates early-stage
company building…it’ll get it’s fair share of critics from…people who decry
companies that are built to flip…This studio model Borthwick describes has long
been an alluring one…but no one has really proven it can work. For former
entrepreneurs, it captures a lot of the fun part of starting new things and
allows them to share their experience, but avoids the drudgery of operating and
scaling…”
31.
Inside SAP's Skunkworks
as It Takes Aim at Oracle http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203430404577092651330963684-lMyQjAxMTAyMDIwNTEyNDUyWj.html
“…Now SAP's chairman, the 68-year-old
engineer is trying to take advantage of cheaper memory chips in servers to
speed up complex business calculations and allow companies to do in seconds
what currently can take hours or days. The aim is to allow executives to
quickly access and analyze business data even on hand-held devices…he hopes to
revolutionize business computing again and put his main competitor, Oracle
Corp., on the defensive. But if he fails, SAP could end up stagnating in an
industry full of bigger and richer tech adversaries. Oracle Chief Executive
Larry Ellison publicly derided Mr. Plattner's big bet as "whacko" in
2010 and said he wanted the name of SAP's "pharmacist."…For his bet,
Mr. Plattner decided to do an end run around SAP's corporate
research-and-development department with thousands of engineers. Instead, he
recruited a bunch of university students in this small city outside Berlin.
Working in a converted East German railway building dubbed "the villa,"
these T-shirt-clad 20-somethings built the prototype of Mr. Plattner's new
product…”
DHMN Technology
32.
Why 3-D
Printing Isn't Like Virtual Reality
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/guest/27533/ “...Typography used to be heavy industry. The
companies that make typefaces are still called foundries because there was a time
when letters were made of metal…Today, fonts are a thing that you pick from a
drop-down menu and printers are things in your home that can render just about
any typeface you can imagine…Today, it's reasonable for most people to have a
pile of paper and a printer that cost them next to nothing and for businesses
to have stockrooms laden with the raw material of documents. Print shops have
had to stay a step ahead, selling convenience, their ability to print nicer
things on bigger formats, or the economics of scale…It's also important not to
confuse 3-D printing & desktop-class fabrication…There is more to desktop
manufacturing than 3-D printers. A well-appointed contemporary maker workshop
has working CNC mills, lathes, and laser cutters…Aside from the 3-D printer,
none of these tools are terribly science-fictional; they're well-established
technologies that happen to be getting cheaper from year to year. Something
interesting happens when the cost of tooling-up falls. There comes a point where your production runs are small enough that
the economies of scale that justify container ships from China stop working.
There comes a point where making new things isn't a capital investment but
simply a marginal one. Fab shops are
already popping up, just like print shops did.”
33.
Recon
Instruments brings action camera viewing into your goggles http://www.gizmag.com/recon-instruments-action-camera-goggles/21243/ “Skiers and snowboarders of the future are
going to be pretty close to cyborgs. Over the years, we've seen such wearable
electronics as heated clothing, cell phone-compatible ski gloves and
camera-equipped goggles. We've also seen the Recon Instruments goggles, which
use a small heads-up display so that you can view your speed, vertical and
other ego-inflating (or deflating) stats…now we have a new upcoming technology
that combines two existing ski electronics into one seamless system - machine
is starting to take over. Recon Instruments and Contour announced a partnership
that will turn Recon's goggle-mounted display into a viewfinder for Contour
action cams…Contour + and ContourGPS cameras will sync with the MOD Live device
via Bluetooth and turn it into a viewfinder. Skiers will be able to line up
shots without ever removing their goggles. They'll also be able to view battery
life and remaining storage space and control camera settings in real time. Future
self-made action film stars beware, though: your footage will only be as good
as your skiing, and if you're paying more attention to your in-goggle display
than the ground ahead of you, it won't be pretty…Of course, the Recon + Contour
technology won't come cheap, particularly if you don't own any of the necessary
devices…”
34.
Does HP’s
TopShot Printer really hit-the-mark?
http://www.daniweb.com/hardware-and-software/pc-hardware/usb-devices-and-other-peripherals/reviews/408041 “…HP TopShot LaserJet Pro M275 is a
multi-function printer like no other. The printer portion of the TopShot is
much like the HP LaserJet Pro 100…What makes the TopShot different is the paper
feeder and flatbed scanner on top has been replaced by a flat white platform,
called the capture stage, and an arm that is positioned above the stage. On
this arm there is a camera and 3 flashes. As the name suggests, it takes a
picture of any 2D or 3D object you can fit onto the stage, under the arm. The
end result is a mixed but, in the right environment could be a game changer for
a business…Printing speed is about average for other laser printers at this
price. Text comes in around 17 pages per minute, where as color was about 4
ppm. Granted, it’s not the fastest printer on the market the print quality is
excellent…What makes the TopShot stand separate from the competition is
obviously the scanning function. The camera used by the TopShot for all scans
is an 8 megapixel CMOS image sensor. On all scans there are six images taken,
three with ambient light and three using the three flashes one at a time. The 6
images are then merged together to create a 2D image. For 3D objects the scans
come out clear and detailed. It is not as good as a high quality camera, but
the resulting image has the feel of a professional image taken in a light box
due to the pure white stage as a back drop. While the images are clear, their
resolution isn’t all that impressive. At only 245 dpi any resizing of the image
starts to show distortion…”
35.
Canadian
teens send Legonaut 15 miles into atmosphere http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/26/canadian-teenagers-lego-man-space “…Two Canadian teenagers have sent a Lego man
into the outer reaches of the Earth's atmosphere using a home-stitched
parachute and equipment found on Craigslist. Two weeks ago, Mathew Ho and Asad
Muhammad, both 17, attached the plastic figurine replete with maple leaf flag
to a helium balloon, which they sent 80,000 feet into the air. The pair managed
to capture the entire journey into the blackness of space, including the
descent, which lasted 97 minutes, using four cameras, at an entire cost of just
£254. Spending four months of Saturdays on the project, the teenagers launched
the professionally made weather balloon from a football pitch. It then soared
to more than double the height of a commercial jet's cruising altitude – some
24km into the upper atmosphere…”
36.
Why Apple
Should Start Making a 3D Printer Right Now http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/why-apple-should-start-making-a-3d-printer-right-now/252184/ “…The progression that computers made from
IBM to your laptop has patterned the expectations for all future technologies.
First, big companies create and use a very expensive set of technologies. Then,
garage tinkerers start to use slightly cheaper, smaller versions of the
original technology. They create a culture that makes the technology easier to
use and they give it more users, which drives down its costs. Finally, when it
is sufficiently cheap and easy to use, mass market consumers start to buy it…The
latest technology that seems to be working its way along this trajectory is 3D
printing. For those not in the MAKE crowd, 3D Printers are machines that
produce three-dimensional objects from digital data by printing in thin layers
of physical material, similar to the way an inkjet prints in two dimensions…After
a couple decades of research, development, and industrial deployment, the
technology appears to be on the threshold of developing a mass market. Still,
it's hard to imagine what to do with such a general purpose machine sitting in
one's house. And that's what makes Brendan Dawes such an interesting early
adopter. For one, he's kept meticulous records of his productions since he
bought his MakerBot Thing-O-Matic from Makerbot Industries, a company that
sells stripped down do-it-yourself 3D printers directly to consumers, in
December 2010. Over the past year he has posted his "printings" on a
tumblr called everythingimakewithmymakerbot. The site reads like a diary or
sketchbook; an intimate account of a creative person interacting with a new technology.
But more to the point: Dawes seems like a normal, creative person. He's not a
hardcore geek with an industrial engineering degree…I asked Dawes if the
Makerbot had changed him; if it had altered his perspective in some unexpected
way. "What's exciting to me is the opportunity to look at industrial
design --a very difficult, very sophisticated craft-- with fresh eyes. I'm able
to approach these problems from crazy angles, because I haven't spent twenty years
immersed in the culture of industrial design…”
Open Source
Hardware
37.
Interview of ColorHug
maker, Richard Hughes https://banu.com/blog/41/interview-of-colorhug-maker-richard-hughes/ “…The ColorHug is a colorimeter that can be
used to calibrate computer displays. It was created by Richard Hughes
(hughsie). It is a fully open hardware project, and the design, drivers and
firmware are available on the Gitorious code hosting website. From the branches
and commit logs it appears that others have taken an interest in its
development too, and have begun to contribute to it…My name is Richard Hughes,
and I'm a programmer in the desktop group at Red Hat…after my masters had finished
I took a job at a large UK defence contractor. It was pretty much the opposite
environment to open source, and as soon as Red Hat asked if wanted to hack on
cool stuff full time I jumped at the chance…I'm hugely privileged to spend all
day writing free software…When I bought a digital SLR camera, my wife paid for
me to go on a course to learn how to use the camera properly. During this
course I used OSX for the first time, and came to the realisation that the
color stuff just worked…Color Management on Linux was in sorry state of affairs
then, and I thought I could do something about that…A colorimeter is a device
that attaches to the screen and measures the actual colors output by the
computer…As LCD panels get older, they get yellow and dull, and even CRT
monitors have phosphors that degrade over time. This means you have to
calibrate every few months…The ColorHug is an open source colorimeter. It's
designed from scratch, and every part is 100% open source…The device is a small
USB peripheral that connects to the host computer and takes XYZ measurements of
a specified accuracy…ColorHug has no battery and takes the few hundred
milliamps it needs from the USB bus…The ColorHug is actually a PIC
microcontroller that is interfaced with a TCS3200 light to frequency chip. The
frequency is proportional to the amount of light, and so by enabling the red,
green and blue photodiodes in the sensor we can combine these with a bit of
clever maths into an XYZ color value…” http://www.hughski.com/
38.
Top ten open source
projects of 2011 http://blog.ponoko.com/2012/01/30/top-ten-open-source-projects-of-2011/ “…If it can be made, it can be open sourced.
Here are our top ten articles about open source projects from 2011…#10 Second
Generation Open Source Laser Cutter…#9 Arduino 1.0 programming environment and
language released…#8 FabFi: community-built wireless network…#7 Comic-style
introduction to Arduino…#6 Global Village Construction Set…#5 Open source
hardware from Microsoft…#4 littleBits — educational open-source modular
electronics…#3 FabScan open source 3D scanner…#2 WikiHouse – the open source
house…#1 Doctor 3D prints a model of a bone for surgery preparation…” [not all of these are hardware, but they do
directly relate to hardware – ed.]
39.
Ninja Blocks: Connect
your world with the web http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ninja/ninja-blocks-connect-your-world-with-the-web “…Want to bridge the things in your life with
the web? Maybe you want to get an alert when your friends are playing on Xbox
Live, or send an SMS to your phone when someone is at your front door. Even if
you're an electronics expert, or a programming prodigy, these are complex,
finicky projects. Ninja Blocks puts aside the complexity of electronics,
networking, and coding and allows you to focus on creating…Ninja Blocks are
simple but powerful open source hardware backed by an amazing web service
called Ninja Cloud that allows your Ninja Block to talk to your favorite web
apps. Each Ninja Block comes with an RGB LED and built-in temperature sensor
and accelerometer. Four expansion ports and a regular USB port allow you to add
further inputs and outputs…You can tell your Ninja to perform tasks like…Talk
to Siri and turn on the light…Take a picture of your front yard and save it to
Dropbox when movement is detected…Switch your lava lamp on whenever your friends
are playing on Xbox Live…”
Open Source
40.
You Bought It, but Do You
Own It? http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2164 “On February 10th, I’m sending a letter to
the Library of Congress in support of granting exemptions to the DMCA for
jailbreaking your own devices. If you believe that you should be able to run
whatever programs you want on your own hardware, please sign my letter to show
support…In 2002, I intercepted a key on the original Xbox that allowed me to
encrypt and run my own software on the device…It was bewildering that running
linux on this PC with the green X is illegal, yet running linux on this
architecturally identical beige box next to it was legal…MIT sent letters to me
officially repudiating involvement in my activities, fearing the worst.
Fortunately, brave souls at the MIT AI lab stood up for me in defiance of the
campus counsel, and provided me with resources and the connections to the EFF
to negotiate with Microsoft and see a positive ending to the whole situation. I’m
lucky. Not everyone has the encouragement, wisdom and strength of a team of MIT
faculty and EFF counsel behind them.. many lawsuits have been filed under the
DMCA, creating a tone of fear. Research projects are abandoned, business plans
are scrapped…operators left with the will to research jailbreaks work in
shadow, a constant fear of lawsuit haunting them for the mere practice of
attempting to load their own software onto hardware that they legally own…I
believe if you buy hardware, you should own it; and ownership means nothing
less of full rights to do with it as you wish. If you believe in this too,
please sign my letter to the Library of Congress…”
41.
HP publishes webOS Enyo
framework under open source Apache license http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/01/hp-publishes-webos-enyo-framework-under-open-source-apache-license.ars “HP has published the code of Enyo, the
underlying JavaScript framework of the webOS platform. It is available from a
public repository on GitHub and is distributed as open source software under
the permissive Apache license. The release of Enyo is the first step in HP's
plan to completely open the webOS mobile platform. The webOS platform is built
on top of Linux, but has a proprietary application stack that is made with HTML
and JavaScript. HP obtained the platform in its 2010 acquisition of failing
device manufacturer Palm. At the time, HP said it intended to ship the webOS
software environment on a wide range of products, including tablets, printers,
and desktop computers…”
Civilian
Aerospace
42.
The Great
Moonbuggy Race http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/31/the-great-moonbuggy-race/ “…I am ecstatic this year because I have a
team of high school students entered in NASA’s 19th Annual Great Moonbuggy
Race. The Great Moonbuggy Race is an engineering competition that requires a
team of six students to design a “proof-of-concept” wheeled rover that will
race over a half mile of simulated lunar terrain. In April, two team members,
one male and one female, will drive the completed vehicle in competition at the
U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. This contest will present
design challenges that are similar to those encountered by the original lunar
rover team. This is the 16th year of competition for high school teams, but it
will be the first year for Chicago’s public high school students…Making the
decision to enter a team in The Great Moonbuggy Race is important to me because
I can give my students an after-school opportunity that engages them in
engineering in a way that is fun, creative and exciting. It isn’t often my
students get to see, let alone talk to, engineers…For some, this competition
will give them unparalleled opportunity to reach a goal that is often elusive
in a traditional classroom setting. This may be the first time many have left
Chicago and for all of them, it will be the first time they will be up close
and personal with NASA rockets…”
43.
Vega rocket
aims to make space research affordable
http://www.nature.com/news/vega-rocket-aims-to-make-space-research-affordable-1.9944 “…the European low-cost rocket Vega is ready
for lift-off next week…the European Space Agency (ESA)…hopes that the new
launcher will tap into a market for small scientific satellites, making space
research affordable for institutions such as universities…Vega's first launch
will take nine satellites into orbit. The main payload is the Italian Space
Agency's Laser Relativity Satellite (LARES), which will study the
Lense–Thirring effect, a distortion of space-time caused by Earth's gravity and
predicted by general relativity. Vega will also carry ALMASat-1, a demonstration
Earth-observation microsatellite from the University of Bologna, Italy, and
seven CubeSats — standardized minisatellites developed by various European
universities as educational projects. Their applications range from Earth
imaging to testing solar panels and radio technologies…” [while
this is not strictly a ‘civilian’ aerospace item, it does talk about a new
rocket that has the objective of making space research more affordable for
non-governmental organizations – ed.]
Supercomputing
& GPUs
44.
Virginia Tech unveils
HokieSpeed; supercomputer for the masses http://www.powermanagementdesignline.com/electronics-news/4234006/Virginia-Tech-unveils-HokieSpeed--supercomputer-for-the-masses “…Virginia Tech is again pushing the
supercomputing envelope, announcing its new HokieSpeed machine, said to be 22
times faster than its predecessor. At just one quarter of the size of X and
boasting a single-precision peak of 455 teraflops, with a double-precision peak
of 240 teraflops, the HokieSpeed debuts with enough performance to vault it
into the 96th spot on the most recent Top500 list. The $1.4 million
supercomputer is made up of 209 separate computing nodes, interconnected across
large metal racks, each roughly 6.5 feet tall. In all, the machine occupies
half a row of racks, three times less rack space than the X. Each HokieSpeed
node consists of two 2.40-gigahertz Intel Xeon E5645 6-core CPUs and two Nvidia
M2050/C2050 448-core GPUs on a Supermicro 2026GT0TRF motherboard. That gives
HokieSpeed over 2,500 CPU cores and more than 185,000 GPU cores…”
45.
Many Core processors:
Everything You Know (about Parallel Programming) Is Wrong! http://my-inner-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/many-core-processors-everything-you.html “David Ungar is "an out-of-the-box
thinker who enjoys the challenge of building computer software systems that
work like magic and fit a user's mind like a glove.". this is a summary
from SPLASH 2011 in November 2011. In
the end of the first decade of the new century, chips such as Tilera’s can give
us a glimpse of a future in which manycore microprocessors will become
commonplace: every (non-hand-held) computer’s CPU chip will contain 1,000
fairly homogeneous cores. Such a system will not be programmed like the cloud,
or even a cluster because communication will be much faster relative to
computation. Nor will it be programmed like today’s multicore processors
because the illusion of instant memory coherency will have been dispelled by
both the physical limitations imposed by the 1,000-way fan-in to the memory
system, and the comparatively long physical lengths of the inter- vs.
intra-core connections…If we cannot skirt Amdahl’s Law, the last 900 cores will
do us no good whatsoever. What does this mean? We cannot afford even tiny
amounts of serialization. Locks?! Even lock-free algorithms will not be
parallel enough. They rely on instructions that require communication and
synchronization between cores’ caches. Just as we learned to embrace languages
without static type checking, and with the ability to shoot ourselves in the
foot, we will need to embrace a style of programming without any
synchronization whatsoever…”
*****
posted by myDigitechnician at 31.1.12
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