NEW NET Weekly List for 26 Jun 2012

Below is the final list of issues for the Tuesday, 26 Jun 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.        Successful lawsuite means users can now stop Facebook ads from using their names, photos  http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57458489-93/facebook-to-give-users-more-control-over-controversial-ads/  “If a judge approves Facebook's settlement of a class-action lawsuit regarding "sponsored stories," the social network will give users more control over the advertising tool, which features users' profile photos and other information in ads for businesses and products the users have "Liked."…the settlement agreement includes giving users the ability to determine what, if any, user information can be featured in ads, and adding new language to Facebook's guidelines informing users of sponsored ads, according to court documents filed Wednesday…user opt-outs will apparently apply on a story-by-story basis and that users can't opt out of all sponsored stories in one fell swoop. Facebook agreed to keep the changes in place for at least two years…While an economist hired by the suit's plaintiffs said the value of the changes is about $103 million for Facebook members, the company will pay just about $20 million to take care of attorney fees and pay organizations that are devoted to educating people about using social networking safely…”

2.       Facebook forces all users over to @facebook.com e-mail addresses (and what to do about it)  http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/facebook-forces-all-users-over-to-facebook-com-e-mail-addresses/  “If you are on Facebook but have never taken a particular shine to Facebook's e-mail capability, Facebook is intent on changing your mind. As of Friday, the company seems to have quietly given or replaced the display e-mail addresses of all of its users with an @facebook.com address, routing any e-mail communiques you would have received back to its own Messages inboxes. Facebook began its jaunt as an e-mail service in November 2010…The service was intially hailed as a Gmail replacement, but caught on about as well as Facebook Gifts and Facebook Places…You can change your e-mail back, if you want. By the way, congrats on your new Facebook e-mail address. If you find your display e-mail has been hijacked by a facebook.com domain, fret not; a quick edit of the settings will let you restore a personal e-mail address (edit Contact Info, then select the facebook.com email to be "hidden from timeline." Select another to be "shown on timeline," if you desire)…Facebook has provided the following statement on the change: As we announced back in April, we’ve been updating addresses on Facebook to make them consistent across our site…”

3.       Mac users steered to pricier hotels on Orbitz  http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2012/06/26/mac-users-have-money-to-spare-says-orbitz/  “…travel website Orbitz has discovered that people who use Macs are willing to spend as much as 30 percent more per night for hotel rooms compared to the more frugal Windows PC users…The sort of targeting undertaken by Orbitz is likely to become more commonplace as online retailers scramble to identify new ways in which people’s browsing data can be used to boost online sales. Mac users are also 40 percent more likely to book a four or five-star hotel compared to Windows users, and when Mac and Windows users book at the same hotel, Mac users tend to stay in more expensive rooms…Orbitz isn’t showing the same room to different users at different prices, but more luxurious rooms at higher prices…”

4.       Bing Maps Adds 165 TB, High-Res Imagery Will Cover All The U.S. And Europe By The End Of The Year  http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/25/microsoft-bing-maps-high-res-imagery-will-cover-all-the-u-s-and-europe-by-the-end-of-the-year/  “…Microsoft…is launching its largest imagery release in its history: Bing Maps today features a full 165 terabytes worth of new data that spans about 1 million square miles. What’s maybe even more interesting, though, is that the Bing Imagery Technologies group completed its mission to cover 100% of the U.S. with aerial photography in June and that the company expects to hit the same 100% milestone for Europe…by the end of 2012…With the “Global Ortho” program, which Microsoft launched in 2010, the company aims to provide 30cm aerial blanket coverage of the U.S. and Europe to provide users with a consistent mapping experience…Microsoft also noted that it takes about 16,500 compute cores and about 55 petabytes of storage to run Bing Imagery Technologies’ software that stitches all of these photos together and prepares them for publishing…”

5.        Microsoft to build out Bing Maps with Gigwalk mobile workforce  http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2011/07/gigwalk-partners-with-bing.html  “Microsoft has tapped Gigwalk's mobile workforce to add panoramic and 3-D images to its Bing Map results. Gigwalk, a California startup that launched less than two months ago, elicits the help of iPhone users, a.k.a. Gigwalkers, to capture images and information about local businesses. The new service pays Gigwalkers anywhere from $3 to $50 to perform on-location "gigs," tasks like taking photos, verifying street signs and product placement or reporting a red-light camera. Gigwalk has signed up a few big customers, including Tom Tom and MenuPages. But Microsoft, which recently ran a successful trial of the service in New York, is a big addition for the company. Microsoft plans to use Gigwalkers to build out its Bing Maps; participating users will use the Photosynth app to take panoramic images of restaurants, bars, and retail shops…”

6.       Backup Box Makes Switching Between Cloud Storage Services Easy  http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/25/backup-box-makes-switching-between-cloud-storage-services-easy-now-also-supports-google-drive/  “Chances are, you have quite a bit of data on your favorite cloud storage service by now. But with the recent changes in this space, especially with Google and Microsoft making a push to compete with startups like Dropbox, what happens if you decide to switch to a different service? Moving data between different backup and cloud storage services is usually a manual and slow task, but that’s where Backup Box comes in. What started as basic tool for moving data from an FTP server to Dropbox has now become a fully-featured backup and data transfer service with support for FTP, SFTP, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft’s SkyDrive, MySQL, and – starting today – Google Drive. Since its launch, the company, which is based in Edmonton, Canada, has already moved over 12 million files, as BackupBox’s founder Eric Warnke told me earlier this week. Even without a major marketing push, the company is now growing rapidly and getting to the point where it is moving a million files every three days…”

7.        Infinite-capacity wireless vortex beams carry 2.5 terabits per second  http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/131640-infinite-capacity-wireless-vortex-beams-carry-2-5-terabits-per-second  “American and Israeli researchers have used twisted, vortex beams to transmit data at 2.5 terabits per second. As far as we can discern, this is the fastest wireless network ever created — by some margin. This technique is likely to be used in the next few years to vastly increase the throughput of both wireless and fiber-optic networks. These twisted signals use orbital angular momentum (OAM) to cram much more data into a single stream. In current state-of-the-art transmission protocols (WiFi, LTE, COFDM), we only modulate the spin angular momentum (SAM) of radio waves, not the OAM. If you picture the Earth, SAM is our planet spinning on its axis, while OAM is our movement around the Sun. Basically, the breakthrough here is that researchers have created a wireless network protocol that uses both OAM and SAM…” [hah! Who needs Google Fiber 1 Gbps symmetric when you’ve got 2.5 Tbps connections – ed.]

Security, Privacy & Digital Controls

8.       Google Maps Reinvented As Employee Tracker  http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/google-coordinate/  “…Google uncloaked a new service dubbed Google Maps Coordinate that lets businesses track the activities of remote workers — such as traveling sales staff and field technicians — by tapping into GPS devices on their cell phones. For instance, says Google, a cable TV company could follow the progress of their field techs as they move from home to home repairing cable connections….the service is designed to be as straightforward as possible. “In the enterprise, there’s a tendency to over-engineer and over complicate…A huge emphasis for us is to make it really simple.”…With services such as Gmail and Google Docs, the company aims to provide a new breed of online business software that streamlines what you get from traditional business software outfits such as Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle. Tools for overseeing remote workforces have long been available from companies such as Trimble, IBM, and AT&T. Google says the Coordinate is different not only because it’s simple, but because it lets businesses customize how it works on their own…”

9.       Printer bomb malware wastes reams of paper  http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/06/printer-bomb-pandimonium/  “A recently unleashed piece of malware is wreaking havoc in some enterprises by causing all their printers to print gibberish until they run out of paper…"The impact is global and effecting approximately 80 print servers," an admin of one Fortune 500 company wrote in an online forum dedicated to the print bomb explosion. "The print job names were all 15 characters in length and unique. The print jobs were all garbage print, as if it was opening the .exe and printing the garbage text." Other participants reported the same phenomenon caused hundreds of their organizations' printers to run through reams of paper…”

10.     In bid for patent sanity, judge throws out entire Apple/Motorola case  http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/in-bid-for-patent-sanity-judge-throws-out-entire-applemotorola-case/  “…One of the most outspoken judges in the craziness that is the US patent system made a bold move tonight, throwing out a lawsuit in which Apple and Motorola were seeking injunctions against each other's mobile products. Judge Richard Posner previously canceled a jury trial in Chicago in the case, and then castigated both Apple and Motorola while calling the entire US patent system "chaos." Posner, a US Court of Appeals judge who is sitting by designation for this case in US District Court in Illinois, issued a ruling late today (Scribd link) that shows he wasn't just joking…"It would be ridiculous to dismiss a suit for failure to prove damages and allow the plaintiff [Apple] to refile the suit so that he could have a second chance to prove damages. This case is therefore dismissed with prejudice," Posner wrote. Posner had previously ruled that proposed testimony from experts put forth by both sides would be inadmissible, making it difficult to support any claims for damages or injunctions…”  http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/23/why-judge-posner-pulled-the-plug-on-apple-v-motorola/  “…Apple's "rip-off" claims are right. Judge Posner's decision doesn't prove that there was no "rip-off". He just cannot see that the patents that were shown to him, and the related infringement allegations and damages theories, substantiated a "rip-off" of the illegal kind. At the most he felt that Apple might have been entitled to a limited amount of money, if it had done a better job of proving economic harm. This is a useful paragraph because it separates the legal issues at stake from the palpable sense of injustice Steve Jobs felt when he threatened to "go thermonuclear"…There is, as Mueller put it, a "protection gap" between what Jobs clearly felt -- and many people might feel -- ought to be protected by the laws governing intellectual property rights, and what our patent and copyright systems actually protect…”

11.      Canadian airports being wired with listening equipment that 'will record conversations'  http://www.globaltoronto.com/sound+off/6442663297/story.html  “Airports and border crossings across Canada are being wired with high-definition cameras and microphones that can eavesdrop on travellers' conversations, according to the Canada Border Services Agency. A CBSA statement said that audio-video monitoring and recording is already in place at unidentified CBSA sites at airports and border points of entry as part of an effort to enhance "border integrity, infrastructure and asset security and health and safety." As part of the work, the agency is introducing audio-monitoring equipment as well…”

Mobile Computing & Communicating

12.     A tale of two rugged Android smartphones  http://asia.cnet.com/a-tale-of-two-rugged-android-smartphones-62216778.htm  “…we bumped into these two rugged Android 2.3 smartphones. The first is Winmate's E430M, a handset made for warehouse use and military service…It features an IP66 level of dust and water resistance, and is compliant with the MIL-ST 810G standard. The unit that we spent time with also came with a bar code scanner, useful for warehouse inventory stock takes. Since it's heavily ruggedised, it's likely to survive a drop from when you're up on a ladder…This bulky handset will not be available to consumers…if you want something you can actually buy, the Seals TS3 is a slimmer handset with some consumer-oriented features. It features a dual-SIM card slot, an IP68 rating as well as the MIL-810G military standard. It comes with only 512MB of storage, but you can expand that via a microSD card slot. The 3.5-inch HVGA (480 x 320 pixel) display may not be as big as Winmate's smartphone, but you do get a special SOS rescue button that you can tap once to turn on the flashlight. Hold that down and the handset will send an emergency message to five selected friends with your location…”

13.     Top 5 hottest smartphones this summer  http://www.zdnet.com/blog/cell-phones/top-5-hottest-smartphones-this-summer/7860  “…Here are my Top 5 hottest smartphones of summer 2012…Number 1: Samsung Galaxy S III…Number 2: AT&T Nokia Lumia 900…Number 3: HTC One Series (X, S, EVO 4G LTE)…Number 4: Apple iPhone 4S…Number 5: Nokia 808 PureView…”

14.     13-inch MacBook Air vs. 13-inch MacBook Pro: which should you buy?  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57458148-37/13-inch-macbook-air-vs-13-inch-macbook-pro-which-should-you-buy/  “MacBook Air. MacBook Pro. Once upon a time, these two products were significantly different from each other, two totally different products. That dividing line's been blurring, especially when it comes to the world of 13-inch MacBooks. The MacBook Air used to be an underperforming, expensive laptop with stellar design, while the 13-inch Pro was a full-featured, far more robust machine. The truth is, these systems are closer in performance and price than ever before…Entry-level 13-inch MacBook Air and Pro laptops now cost the same $1,199, but you'll still have to make a decision: do you value hard-drive space, or portability? Weight, or ports? Easy upgrades, or faster boot times? In 2011, I thought the go-to laptop remained the 13-inch MacBook Pro by the narrowest of margins. This year, I think the scale has tipped to the MacBook Air…”  http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/MacBook-pro-Minus-Retina-Display-Far-More-Repairable-iFixit-672852/

15.     Pixelpalooza: 15" Retina MacBook Pro reviewed  http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/06/pixelpalooza-ars-reviews-the-15-retina-macbook-pro/  “…Apple did not disappoint when it introduced the new 15" Retina MacBook Pro at its Worldwide Developers Conference last week…We put the machine through some benchmark paces to look at relative raw performance, and spent a couple of days using the machine for our usual work to get a more subjective impression of the whole package—and we came away impressed. Specifications…15" Retina MacBook Pro, $2,199…Storage: 256GB solid state flash drive…Screen: 15.4" diagonally, 2880 x 1800 native resolution…The new 15" Retina MacBook Pro is the first time Apple has applied the same design thinking that went into that new Air to its "pro" notebooks. Spinning hard drives? Gone. Optical storage? Useless anachronism. FireWire and Ethernet? Vestigial, obsolete ports. But this isn't a stripped-down machine with ultra low voltage processors. The new MacBook Pro differentiates itself from the Air by packing in a quad-core Ivy Bridge processor built on Intel's latest 22nm process. It includes Intel's HD4000 integrated GPU, which isn't quite the pixel-y sloth that past Intel IGPs used to be. It also packs in a discrete NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M mobile GPU with 1GB of dedicated DDR5 memory, and you get at least 8GB of DDR3 RAM standard…”

16.     Tesla Model S Rated at 89 MPGe, Instruments Powered by Nvidia  http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/06/tesla-model-s-fuel-economy/  “…Beginning Friday, Tesla will begin delivering the first batch of Model S sedans to buyers who have pre-ordered the svelte EV, but before the first all-electric Model S rolls out of the automaker’s Fremont, California, factory, the EPA has released its official fuel economy ratings. The new “miles per gallon equivalent” or MPGe of the Model S comes in at 88 MPGe in the city and 90 MPGe on the highway, for a combined rating of – you guessed it – 89 MPGe. Just as importantly, the EPA is rating the sedan’s range at 265 miles, based on its new five-cycle testing procedure. That puts it at the top of the EV heap when it comes to range, dwarfing the Honda Fit EV’s combined 118 MPGe, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV’s 112 MPGe, the Ford Focus Electric’s 105 MPGe and the Nissan’s Leaf’s 99 MPGe – none of which are as large or as capacious as the Model S. The EPA tested a Model S equipped with the largest capacity battery available, with 85 kWh of juice and a sticker of $69,900…Tesla has also announced its partnership with Nvidia to supply the chipmaker’s Tegra Visual Computing Module (VCM), which powers the 17-inch touchscreen navigation, infotainment and climate control system. Two Tegra processors handle both the massive center stack display – the largest fitted to a production car – along with the 12.3-inch configurable LCD fitted behind the steering wheel and taking the place of traditional gauges…”

Apps

17.     Hands-On With the Latest Siri Competitor For Android  http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/06/hands-on-robin/  “…Android apps that aim to compete with Siri…like their Apple counterpart…often fail to deliver on the promise of being an always-connected virtual assistant. The latest entrant into the Android market is Robin, which takes a similar tact to Siri, but puts the focus on searching points of interest while you’re behind the wheel. Robin, available for free from Google Play, comes to the party with a novel approach to inputting voice commands – you simply wave your hand above the phone, slightly brushing up against the light sensor, and the familiar voice control dialog appears awaiting your instructions…Robin seems to be more focused on in-car usage than similar apps, allowing the driver to find everything from movie theaters to gas stations, the latter displaying the price of fuel directly on the map. You can even specify what kind of dino juice you’re running on – from premium to diesel – and when you tell Robin to navigate to the nearest station, it automatically brings up Android’s built-in Navigation app. Even more useful is Robin’s ability to find parking near your destination, filtering the results by closest and cheapest…”

18.     10 Free Travel Apps Every Tourist Needs To Download  http://www.businessinsider.com/best-mobile-apps-for-travelers-2012-6?op=1   “Going to somewhere you've never been before can be a stressful experience. Luckily, modern technology can help you out through your travels so you can actually enjoy your vacation…We've compiled a list of free mobile apps that could help a tourist in any situation, because you don't need to pay any more for that extravagant vacation you've planned…TripIt…GateGuru…iMedJet…Hipmunk…Kayak…Yelp…Wi-Fi Finder…Picksie…New York Pass Travel Guide…Tourist Eye…”

SkyNet

19.     Google Webmaster Tools Adds New Capability  http://technorati.com/technology/article/google-webmaster-tools-adds-new-capability/  “…Google announced…a way to make keeping track of certain website metrics much easier…you can download your Google Webmaster Tools data directly to Google Documents…This is great for cloud computing enthusiasts because it eliminates the need for an installed spreadsheet program on your computer's hard drive, such as Excel, WordPerfect Office Quattro, or Open Office, to chart or make other changes to the stats as they're presented in your Webmaster Tools account. Though you can still download the familiar.csv file to be used in stand-alone spreadsheet programs, this new ability to download your files directly to Google Docs makes your data available by browser — anywhere, anytime…”

20.    YouTube’s Gigantic Year Is Already Here  http://allthingsd.com/20120621/youtubes-gigantic-year-is-already-here-citi-says/  “Is Google making money off of YouTube? You betcha, Google execs told shareholders today, without offering the slightest bit of detail…in lieu of real numbers from Google, here’s a Wall Street estimate: Google is making a ton of money from YouTube…The video site should generate more than $3.6 billion in gross revenue this year, says Citi’s Mark Mahaney. After distributing some of that to partners, Google probably records net revenue of $2.4 billion…last year, when he guessed at YouTube’s 2012 revenue, he thought it would do a mere $1.7 billion. Why is he even more optimistic now?...because YouTube’s traffic continues to grow…comScore has it posting 20 percent growth, quarter after quarter. And because Google is sticking more ads on more videos…He’s also bullish about the early results from its “channel” project…”

21.     The Next Version Of Android Is Confirmed As 4.1 Jelly Bean  http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/06/21/the-next-version-of-android-is-confirmed-as-4-1-jellybean-will-be-coming-to-the-galaxy-nexus-first/  “Google's let a bit of info slip a little early via the Play Store. When purchasing a Galaxy Nexus via the site, while checking out, the device is listed on your order as "Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ - The latest smartphone from Google, soon the first phone with Android 4.1 Jell..." This marks the first time the name Jelly Bean, and the version number 4.1 has been referenced publicly. More interesting than that, however, is…that the HSPA+ Galaxy Nexus from the Play Store is "soon the first phone" running the new OS…”

22.    Google ramping up development of Android Siri rival  http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/google-ramping-up-development-of-android-siri-rival-50008326/  “…Google is accelerating its efforts to beat Apple's voice-controlled butler Siri, according to the Wall Street Journal…the Journal reckons Google is speeding up plans to launch an Android-based Siri competitor, rumoured to be called Google Assistant. Android has featured voice-control tech for ages, letting phone owners bark orders into their mobiles using Voice Actions. This lets you do plenty of things, such as send texts, search or play music on your Android phone, but the actions are triggered by specific commands and, unlike Siri, the phone doesn't speak back. Google is reportedly looking to upgrade its voice-controlled search to full personal-assistant status -- a new Android tool that will create a 'personalisation layer' using data from Google+, offer a 'do engine' that helps you achieve real life goals…”  http://support.google.com/ics/nexus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=168603  “You can use Voice Actions in Voice Search to text your contacts, get directions, send email, and to perform a number of other common tasks, in addition to searching the web…Words you want to search for…"Call" followed by a name from your contacts…"Map of" followed by an address, name, business name, type of business…"Navigate to," followed by an address, name, business name, type of business…"Call" followed by the digits of a phone number…"Call" followed by a business name…"Send SMS" or Send Text…"Send email"…"Note to self" followed by the message you want to send to yourself…"Listen to" followed by words for music you want to search for…”

General Technology

23.    Breakthrough in speech recognition with Deep-Neural-Network approach  http://blogs.technet.com/b/next/archive/2012/06/20/a-breakthrough-in-speech-recognition-with-deep-neural-network-approach.aspx  “…I’m a big fan of a Microsoft Research technology known as MAVIS – it indexes audio and video content and then allows you to search for a word or phrase across that content and jump to the exact point at which it was uttered…The key is to hover over the “bubbles” that appear beneath the text to jump to the precise moment in the video. A recent post by Rob Knies on the Inside Microsoft Research blog details so new advances in our speech technology – something with the mysterious name Deep-Neural-Network Speech Recognition. MAVIS is being updated to include this technology and it’s the first time deep-neural-networks (DNN)-based speech-recognition algorithm in a commercial product. It’s been heralded as a breakthrough and the “Holy Grail of speech recognition”. So what is DNN?...Automated voice services that interact with multiple speakers do not allow for speaker training because they must be usable instantly by any user. To cope with the lower accuracy, they either handle only a small vocabulary or strongly restrict the words or patterns that users can say. The ultimate goal of automatic speech recognition is out-of-the-box speaker-independent services that don’t require user training. That’s where DNN comes in. Artificial neural networks (ANNs), mathematical models of the low-level circuits in the human brain, have been a familiar concept since the 1950s. The notion of using ANNs to improve speech-recognition performance has been around since the 1980s. The Speech group at Microsoft Research Redmond became interested in ANNs when recent progress in building more complex “deep” neural networks (DNNs) began to show promise at achieving state-of-the-art performance for automatic speech-recognition tasks…”

24.    SSD prices plummeted by 48 percent over the past year  http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/22/3109811/ssd-price-stats-cost-per-gb-june-2012  “While traditional hard drive pricing remains inflated after last year's Thai floods, the cost of SSDs continues to drop…the price for drives from OCZ, Corsair, and Crucial have fallen dramatically over the past year, with the larger 240GB / 256GB models dropping by over 50 percent in most cases. Samsung's 830 Series SSDs started at a lower cost than the others, but have settled into a similar price range today. The only buck to the trend is the Intel 320 Series, which uses a proprietary Intel controller and hasn't fluctuated much since its release. The newer Intel 520 Series, which uses the same SandForce controller as found in the majority of drives, is still pricier than most, as Intel differentiates its drives with custom firmware it says gives higher performance levels than its competitors' SSDs. Overall, the statistics show a huge 48 percent drop in the average price of a flash storage drive. Several models finally fall beneath the hallowed $1 per GB threshold…”

25.    Innovation in America: A Tale of the Decade to Come  http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/06/22/innovation-in-america-a-tale-of-the-decade-to-come/  “…This is a fictional story exploring how several major technological trends shape one man's life 10 years from now. It is the final part of a three-part series that examines the possible progress of technology over the coming decade…Johnny is now 33 years old and has become a senior roboticist at Google (NAS: GOOG) X. He and his wife are trying to conceive their first child. They want their offspring to have the best possible opportunities available in a rapidly changing world. Today, Johnny and his wife are going to visit the Silicon Valley Genomic Institute for a full genomic analysis. The institute is not known only for its analytical capabilities. It has evolved from that original focus to become one of the most advanced human genetic engineering facilities in the United States. Johnny and his wife travel to the institute in an autonomously driven car controlled by Google technology. It's been more than a decade since Google first developed successful self-driving cars, but legislation and costs posed major obstacles to widespread consumer adoption until the start of the 2020s…The roads would seem eerily sparse to a driver in 2012. Most knowledge workers now find telecommuting more rewarding and efficient than going to an office, and cost-conscious corporations encourage the behavior shift. Many travel-dependent jobs have either moved online or have been superseded by autonomous vehicles and unmanned aerial transports, whic…”

Leisure & Entertainment

26.    Nintendo unveils super-sized 3DS XL game machine  http://www.ingame.msnbc.msn.com/technology/ingame/nintendo-unveils-super-sized-3ds-xl-game-machine-840499  “…Nintendo has unveiled a new super-sized version of its Nintendo 3DS handheld game machine. During a pre-recorded online video released Thursday night, the game giant took the wraps off of the Nintendo 3DS XL (that's XL for extra large) -- a gadget that boasts top and bottom screens that are 90 percent larger than the original 3DS's screens…The new 3DS XL handheld will run $199.99 and will launch in North America on August 19 -- the same day "New Super Mario Bros. 2" launches for the 3DS…the top screen will measure 4.88 inches while the bottom screen is 4.18 inches compared to the current 3DS' 3.53-inch and 3.02-inch screens. The battery will last 3.5 to 6.5 hours compared to the 3 to 5 hours with the current-model 3DS…”

27.    GIGApixel cameras coming soon  http://dvice.com/archives/2012/06/megapixel-schme.php  “While some camera geeks are salivating over the possibilities of the new Nokia 808 PureView smartphone and its comparatively beefy 41-megapixel camera, researchers have recently unveiled a technique for capturing 50-gigapixel images, which they predict may hit the public in as little as five years. Let's put those numbers in some perspective: if you're happy with the camera on, say, your iPhone 4S, that comes with a relatively standard 8 megapixels. Have fun with that. Meanwhile, 50 gigapixels is 50,000 megapixels, which also happens to be five times better than 20/20 human vision…researchers at Duke University and the University of Arizona — with support from DARPA — have developed a prototype that synchronizes 98 tiny cameras to produce one ginormous image…”

Economy and Technology

28.    Domain Wheeling and Dealing  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304441404577481101826098404.html  “Entrepreneurs and big companies are battling one another for the rights to manage hot new Web address endings, including .app, .home and .book. Some are gathering in Prague this weekend, where they may decide to team up and pursue a contested domain together or duke it out. Among them will be Bill Doshier of Conway, Ark., who hopes to meet his competition for the rights to .fun. Mr. Doshier in April spent more than $500,000 to apply officially for the rights for the name as well as .buzz. He thinks he can sell the two domains to registrars such as GoDaddy.com LLC, which specialize in reselling website addresses, including secondary names—the words to the left of the dot. He believes people who list entertainment venues or promote parties online might have an interest in buying addresses such as parties.fun…The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, a nonprofit that regulates the Internet, last week disclosed the identities of the more than 800 applicants for new right-of-the-dot names…In addition to the $500,000 of his own money for application fees and technology services and other expenses, Mr. Doshier lined up additional funding from private investors to cover the cost of managing and promoting the domains in the event he wins approval from Icann for either of them. "My intentions are to be a part of .fun but I realize who I'm up against," he said. "I'm nervous."…at this weekend's meeting, many of those seeking the rights to contested domains say they intend to meet with their competitors. Some hope to discuss teaming up to reach arrangements where one party might agree to withdraw an application so that another technically would have the rights to manage the name in question. But they would work together to manage the name and share profits if Icann were to later approve the remaining application. It is also possible that some domain seekers will offer to pay their rivals to back out entirely. Icann, which awards domains based on applicants' qualifications and plans for using the domains, is expected to begin evaluating the applications next month…”

29.    Y Combinator-Backed Rentobo Helps Landlords Fill Apartments Without All The Messy Paperwork  http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/25/rentobo/  “Looked for an apartment lately? It sucked, right? You showed up and you had to fill out an application and submit all sorts of stupid paperwork — credit check, proof of employment, utility invoice (apparently to prove that you can pay a bill, like an adult), etc. And then, if you’re lucky, your name will be pulled out of a hat amongst the other half-dozen people who applied for the same property. Well that whole process sucks for landlords and property management companies as well. After all, they’re the ones who collect all that paperwork and sort through all that data. Don’t you wish there were a better way? Thanks to Rentobo, there is. Rentobo provides a platform for landlords, listing agents, and property management firms to not only post their open units across a number of different apartment listing sites, but it gives them a way to quickly and easily get information from prospective tenants with an online application process…For landlords, first and foremost there was the listing problem. Craigslist still looms large in most major metro areas, despite its crappy interface and lack of functionality. But then there’s Zillow, Trulia, and other sites as well. Rentobo provides a single listing interface for landlords and listing agents to post to all of those sites at once…”

DHMN Technology

30.    Can 3D Printers Reshape The World?  http://www.npr.org/2012/06/22/155582850/can-3d-printers-reshape-the-world  “What if you needed a new toothbrush and all you had to do was hit print? What if doctors could print out transplantable organs and pastry chefs turned to a printer, not a kitchen, for their next creation? Ira Flatow and a panel of guests discuss 3D printing technology, how far it's come and what a 3D-printed-future could look like…I'm Ira Flatow. What if you broke your doorknob, or you needed a spare part for your car, and instead of going to a store or your car dealership, you just powered-up your desktop 3-D printer, and hours later, voila, you've got the part you needed. Some say 3-D printers already have that capability, after all people have printed out bicycles and bikinis and burritos and even a person's entire lower jaw from titanium on these nifty gadgets. And if that weren't enough, they're exploring how to print out skin and ears and bone and organs like the kidney, made out of living cells…Wohlers is the president of Wohlers Associates, a consulting firm that tracks the 3-D printing industry. He joins us from Fort Collins, Colorado. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY…”

31.     How I Accidentally Kickstarted the Domestic Drone Boom  http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/ff_drones/all/  “…Companies like Shenzhen-based DJI Innovations are selling drones with the same capability as the military ones, sometimes for less than $1,000. These Chinese firms, in turn, are competing with even cheaper drones created by amateurs around the world, who share their designs for free in communities online. It’s safe to say that drones are the first technology in history where the toy industry and hobbyists are beating the military-industrial complex at its own game. Look up into America’s skies today and you might just see one of these drones: small, fully autonomous, and dirt-cheap. On any given weekend, someone’s probably flying a real-life drone not far from your own personal airspace…What are all these amateurs doing with their drones? Like the early personal computers, the main use at this point is experimentation—simple, geeky fun. But as personal drones become more sophisticated and reliable, practical applications are emerging. The film industry is already full of remotely piloted copters serving as camera platforms, with a longer reach than booms as well as cheaper and safer operations than manned helicopters…To give a sense of the scale of the personal drone movement, DIY Drones—an online community that I founded in 2007 (more on that later)—has 26,000 members, who fly drones that they either assemble themselves or buy premade from dozens of companies that serve the amateur market. All told, there are probably around 1,000 new personal drones that take to the sky every month (3D Robotics, a company I cofounded, is shipping more than 100 ArduPilot Megas a week); that figure rivals the drone sales of the world’s top aerospace companies (in units, of course, not dollars). And the personal drone industry is growing much faster. Why? The reason is the same as with every other digital technology: a Moore’s-law-style pace where performance regularly doubles while size and price plummet. In fact, the Moore’s law of drone technology is currently accelerating, thanks to the smartphone industry, which relies on the same components—sensors, optics, batteries, and embedded processors—all of them growing smaller and faster each year. Just as the 1970s saw the birth and rise of the personal computer, this decade will see the ascendance of the personal drone. We’re entering the Drone Age…”

32.    The Many Faces of Raspberry Pi: From Toy to Autonomous Drone  http://midsizeinsider.com/en-us/article/the-many-faces-of-raspberry-pi-from-toy  “Raspberry Pi, the $25 open-board computer, made its debut earlier this year to great anticipation by students, hobbyists, and industry professionals alike. The low-cost computer is intended as an educational platform to teach school children in developing countries to program, but industry professionals are increasingly taking a closer look, in part because of its envisioned potential. In a recent Engadget article, Terrence O'Brien evaluated the computer's components by running the Pi through a series of tests. He found that the Pi was able to perform on the level of a 300MHz Pentium II, as advertised, and that the Broadcom graphics chip, a Videocore 4 GPU, was mostly worthy of the buzz it has received. On the downside, the computer struggled from the software perspective, leading the author to believe that the supported Linux language variants were not particularly reliable. Overall, O'Brien found that the Pi was "more likely a tinker toy."…OpenRelief, a group that makes tools for disaster relief efforts, is using the Pi to control a computer-vision system onboard an autonomous flying drone. It will communicate with a radiation-detection system and weather sensors, providing information to on-the-ground responders and disaster management systems. So it seems that the Raspberry Pi's usefulness may be greater and even grander than expected…”

33.    Will Apple Buy Into 3-D Printing?  http://seekingalpha.com/article/674001-3d-systems-will-apple-buy-into-3-d-printing  “Personal 3-D printers are the next big technological revolution. They will drastically change our lives, second only to the effect of the personal computer. Throughout the course of this article, we will see why 3-D printing really is the next big technological leap; learn about 3D Systems Corp. (DDD), one of the major players in the field; and discuss why Apple Inc. (AAPL) should buy into this burgeoning industry…There are already a number of different marketplaces set up to connect designers with consumers. Designs for eyewear, shoes, jewelry, light fixtures, and sculptures are already being sold. Apple even sells 3-D printed iPhone covers. Also, a number of apps that assist in the creation and personalization of the products are already available. The 3-D printing industry has grown almost 9% a year over the last ten years and is expected to reach "$3.1 billion worldwide by 2016 and $5.2 billion by 2020."…I can't say how these processes will evolve or which of these technologies will gain preeminence. However, here is my prediction for the next five to ten years…”

34.    Can 3D printing make it into the mainstream?  http://www.techhive.com/article/2000140/can-3d-printing-make-it-into-the-mainstream.html  “3D printing could be at the start of something huge. 3D-printing technology has only been available to consumers for a few years, but it’s already led to some interesting creations and made the manufacturing process easier in terms of sourcing parts and reducing costs. However, a few key limitations and legal controversies surrounding 3D printing could restrain innovation…3D printers are becoming more common in a variety of different fields. They’ve proven to be a valuable tool for researchers, hardware engineers, and even artists. Thanks to hardware advances and falling prices, 3D printing is as accessible as it’s ever been, and it’s only going to become more consumer-friendly in the future…3D printing could even be used to replace various body parts. Earlier this year, doctors and engineers worked on a project involving a 3D printer, which would replace a patient’s infected lower jaw with a new artificial one. The patient recovered from the operation within a few days…researchers in Germany are making steady progress developing 3D-printed, bio-compatible artificial blood vessels. While the research team stressed that 3D printers are not quite precise enough to cover all the steps necessary to create the vessels yet, it’s an emerging area of research worth watching…3D printing could one day end up in the kitchen: A University of Exeter lecturer modified a 3D printer to print chocolate. His invention, the Choc Creator, is now on sale for businesses looking to let customers design their own sweet treats for loved ones—or individuals who really love chocolate…there are plenty of fun and practical uses for a 3D printer, too. For example, you could use a 3D printer to replace broken or missing parts of a model you’re working on. Or even cooler, you could create your own model from scratch and get the printer to run off the parts. There’s plenty of room to get even more imaginative. By connecting it to an iPad and taking a photo, you could have your face printed onto a vase, all done with a 3D printer. Want to make electric guitars more practical without compromising sound? Then you can print a more- streamlined version of the instrument. You can also create your own unique fashion accessories with the help of 3D printing…”

Open Source Hardware

35.    Open Source Hardware Association is official  http://www.oshwa.org/2012/06/20/were-official/  “We’re official! After getting denied (a couple times) in NY State, we successfully incorporated in Delaware. Yay! Step 1 accomplished   (Step 2 will be to tackle the paperwork for IRS non-profit status.) We also created a mailing list for the Open Source Hardware Association. Sign up here please: www.oshwa.org/mailing-lists/  We will use this list to update folks on our progress, discuss directions for our goals and purposes, and use the list as our communication method…”

36.    Makey Makey Hits $568,106 and 11,124 Consumers Said Yes  http://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2012/06/20/makey-makey-hits-568106-and-11124-consumers-said-yes/  “Make a key out of any thing. Literally. Banana piano? No problem. Play dough. A pencil sketch. A beachball. Connect any and all of it with an alligator clip and you have an input device. Any material that has even the tiniest bit of conductive capability can be a touch sensor with the Makey Makey. The Kickstarter project goal was $25,000 and it raised $568, 106 from 11,124 customers in 30 days. Make + Key = Makey Makey. It has a fun ring to it, but more than that it is a powerful way to get kids engaged in learning about inventing, and tinkering, and making interesting projects. In fact, it is also for experts and engineers and those who want to solve problems that involve nontraditional input keys or products for the differently able. It just takes a little bit of creativity to think about how a quadriplegic individual might benefit from a simpler keyboard-like interface. The open source hardware company has partnered with Sparkfun…to manufacture the circuit boards.  It is an arduino-compatible controller/device…”

Open Source

37.    Wireshark 1.8.0 can capture from multiple interfaces at once  http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Wireshark-1-8-0-can-capture-from-multiple-interfaces-at-once-1624081.html  “Support for capturing from multiple interfaces at the same time is one of the most notable improvements in the major update to the Wireshark network protocol analyser. Version 1.8.0 of the open source, cross-platform tool – used for network troubleshooting, analysis, development and education – also includes support for GeoIP IPv6 databases, and now allows users to add, edit and save packet and capture file annotations. Like TCP retransmissions, fast retransmissions are now flagged as an expert info note in the new stable release of the network monitor, and TCP Window Updates are no longer coloured as "Bad TCP". Wireshark can now resolve SNMP OIDs (object identifiers) on 64-bit versions of Windows, and decryption key management for IEEE 802.11, IPsec and ISAKMP is said to be easier…”

38.    OStatic's Updated Collection of Free Books on Open Source Topics  http://ostatic.com/blog/ostatics-updated-collection-of-free-books-on-open-source-topics  “Ask many people--including CIOs who are wary of allowing open source software in their organizations--about the manuals and documentation you get with many open source applications, and they'll say that these guides leave a lot to be desired. There are, however, a lot of free, online books on open source topics available. We round these up on a regular basis here at OStatic, and in this post you'll find our latest updated collection of online books that you can get in an instant. They introduce essential concepts for getting started with Linux, Firefox, Blender (3D graphics and animation), GIMP (graphics), and much more…”

Civilian Aerospace

39.    Ice on the moon: Explorers may be able to raid 'lunar freezer'  http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-moon-ice-20120621,0,1168186.story  “Scientists believe that the glow from one extremely cold crater on the moon is due to ice, and now they are aglow too. What does moon ice mean for space exploration?  It could be a huge "lunar freezer," acting as a source of water for a nearby lunar base.  Think "man on the moon" -- but in a much more permanent way. "Frozen water in particular could be a resource for future human explorers," said Ashwin R. Vasavada, a planetary scientist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory…The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was sent to the moon in 2009 with a mission of mapping its surface. Now it's carrying out scientific experiments, as The Times' Science Now blog reports, and topping that list was an effort to determine what was causing an unusual brightness in the south pole's Shackleton crater. As Vasavada noted, it's long been theorized that the mountains near the moon's poles could be places of permanent shadow, never feeling the touch of the sun. "These super-cold places would be expected to trap water and other molecules that wander by," he said, "like frost collecting on your roof on a cold morning…”

40.    Voyager to become first man-made object to exit solar system  http://www.thebunsenburner.com/news/voyager-to-become-first-man-made-object-to-exit-solar-system/  “Voyager will soon become the first human-made object to leave the solar system, scientists from NASA say. Voyager 1, which was launched in 1977, is expected to exit the solar system much sooner than previously thought. “The laws of physics say that someday Voyager will become the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, but we still do not know exactly when that someday will be,” said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, in a press statement. “The latest data indicate that we are clearly in a new region where things are changing more quickly. It is very exciting. We are approaching the solar system’s frontier…”

41.     New passenger service to the Moon for $100M  http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/new-passenger-service-to-the-moon-for-100m/  “Excalibur Almaz has announced that it is selling tickets to lunar orbit. The price is $100 million. Your golden ticket will entitle you to a complete astronaut experience…The price includes a ticket to a flight to space aboard the XCOR Lynx suborbital spaceplane, so you'll have already been to space and experienced weightlessness before you board the Excalibur reusable capsule. On the big day you'll ride the Soyuz rocket with your two fellow passengers up from Baikonur to one of the company's two 90-cubic-meter space stations. Once you're aboard the station with your two fellow passengers, an electric thruster will slowly spiral the three of you up to an elliptical orbit around the Moon. After several days you'll spiral back the way you came, re-enter Earth orbit, board a small reusable capsule and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, leaving the station behind you…Excalibur Almaz has based its business around a fleet of Soviet spacecraft…Several years ago Dula procured two Almaz space stations…and four very stout reusable return capsules along with their escape systems…on…the Isle of Man…The spacecraft received new solar arrays, environmental controls, flight controls, and communications equipment. The kitchen, crew quarters, exercise rooms, storage racks, laboratory, and telescope are all being brought up to date…we can't operate at a profit in Low Earth Orbit right now…That takes government subsidy…There are more customers that are interested in going beyond LEO for a purely commercial system…Orbits were found that would allow the station to use electric propulsion to slowly make its way into lunar orbits…Plans eventually came together for three different lunar missions…The first mission begins in low Earth orbit and involves an elliptical lunar flyby, good for tourists who want to see the Moon up close through a window instead of a telescope. The second requires the station to travel up to a circular lunar orbit on a slow low-energy trajectory, where it waits for a crew on a high-energy spacecraft such as an Orion space capsule riding on a ULA Centaur upper stage. The crew vehicle docks with the station and can stay for a month or two. It then does a high-energy return and re-enters the atmosphere. The third mission is the lunar cycler orbit, wherein the space station flies to the Moon on a low-energy trajectory…The Moon rotates around and catches the spacecraft two weeks later on the other side, catching the spacecraft and returning it to where a new crew or supply ship can dock with it. The two-week cycles could last quite a long time before the station would need to be refueled…”

Supercomputing & GPUs

42.    Can OpenGL And OpenCL Overhaul Your Photo Editing Experience?  http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/photoshop-cs6-gimp-aftershot-pro,3208.html  “In our continuing look at the heterogeneous computing ecosystem, it's time to turn our attention to the photo editing apps currently able to exploit OpenCL- and OpenGL-capable hardware. We interview experts, run benchmarks, and draw some conclusions. The processing loads common in video editing are well known; it doesn’t take more than a couple of 1080p tracks and a filter or two to soak up 100% of CPU resources in many systems. However, not as many people appreciate the significant compute burden imposed by modern digital photography workloads. Adding a sepia filter to an eight-megapixel (MP) image may be no big deal, but how about a complex blur to an 18 MP RAW image? Even if your editing tasks don't swamp your CPU, they can still take a significant amount of time to execute, especially for multi-image batch jobs. More time means more waiting. For professionals, that translates to a loss of income. And pauses in your workflow prevent you from operating at the pace of your creativity, stopping you dead in your tracks. You want to edit as the creative options stream through your mind. The object of the game, of course, is to devise new ways of getting more processing work done in less time. In two prior articles, we examined how modern GPUs, including those embedded within CPUs and APUs (compute engines with on-die graphics capabilities), can be leveraged by industry standard APIs to accelerate highly parallel operations within video post-processing and games. The same is now increasingly true within the world of photo editing…”

43.    gSTAR game power to uncover the universe  http://www.swinburne.edu.au/chancellery/mediacentre/media-centre/news/2012/06/gstar-game-power-to-uncover-the-universe-  “Swinburne University of Technology's new $3 million GPU Supercomputer for Theoretical Astrophysics, 'gSTAR', has been launched today…gSTAR represents the next generation of supercomputing, and is one of only six such machines in Australia and among the top 200 in the world…Director of the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Professor Warrick Couch, said gSTAR is set to accelerate the rate of science and knowledge discovery at Swinburne and is at least 10 times faster than its predecessor. "This means that the three years of data processing that culminated in early 2011 in the discovery of a diamond planet in the Milky Way galaxy could now potentially be done in one week,"…Professor Couch said gSTAR is poised to receive a deluge of data from an emerging generation of telescopes equipped to generate a million billion bytes of information in a single night…gSTAR uses 636 Intel computer processing units (CPUs) and 121 NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs)…”

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