NEW NET Weekly List for 07 May 2013

Below is the final list of technology news and issues for the Tuesday, 07 May 2013, 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.        MovingWorlds: Where Peace Corps meets Match.com  http://www.geekwire.com/2013/matchcom-peace-core-common-movingworlds-answer/  “When it comes to volunteering, there’s no shortage of global organizations looking for extra hands, but it’s not always easy finding a place to lend your efforts. Enter MovingWorlds, a Seattle startup that’s building a platform where people can go, list their expertise, and find an organization that’s looking for exactly what they have to offer…MovingWorlds connects professionals in marketing, business, and tech fields who are looking for skill-specific ways to volunteer with the small organizations who need their help…Professionals post where they’d like to go and what they have to offer, and organizations post their plans and the skill sets they need Or, as Horozowski explains it, it’s where “the Peace Corps meets Match.com…”

2.       Jobaline looks to help hourly workers hook a job  http://www.geekwire.com/2013/jobaline/  “…the majority of workers in the U.S. — roughly 59 percent —  pull down hourly paychecks in jobs such as dishwashers, baristas, sales clerks, landscapers and janitors. Jobaline…wants to help businesses find hourly workers in a snap, taking over where existing job search services such as Craigslist, Facebook or traditional job boards end. Launching service today in Seattle and Miami, the service allows workers to apply in Spanish and English via text message on smartphones or feature phones, as well as through tablets or desktop computers…”

3.       Hotmail Is Officially Dead  http://www.vibe.com/article/hotmail-officially-dead  “Say goodbye to a 90s e-mail pioneer: Hotmail is officially gone forever. For over 16 years, Hotmail users kept the service alive, even when Yahoo and Gmail came and took a big chunk of their business. This week Microsoft announced that Hotmail is officially ancient history. The platform rolled into Microsoft’s new Outlook.com service. Outlook claims over 400 million active accounts, 125 million of which are accessed from mobile devices. It took six weeks for Microsoft to migrate 150 petabytes of email. However, Hotmail users can still user their old address…”

4.       Barley Aims To Be The Simplest Way To Create And Edit Websites  http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/04/barley-launch/  “Sometimes the simplest product demos can be effective. Take a new web editor called Barley. To show off the product, co-founder Colin Devroe opened me a regular old web page, then changed the wording of the page with just a few keystrokes. A small editing menu opened as he typed, but didn’t have to access an admin dashboard, open a separate editor, edit any HTML, or anything like that…The point is to offer a web page editor with absolutely no learning curve…There are simpler website building tools, such as Weebly, but Devroe pointed out that even in those cases, you still have to use a separate interface to lay out the page and edit the content. With Barley, on the other hand, you just edit everything directly, just as if you were working with a document. And by using one of Barley’s templates, you don’t have to deal with layout at all…”

5.        Viber morphs into full-blown Skype rival by releasing desktop app  http://gigaom.com/2013/05/07/viber-morphs-into-full-blown-skype-rival-by-releasing-desktop-app/  “Viber has been a Skype competitor of sorts for a long time, like any VoIP and messaging app for smartphones. At the same time, it’s also been a direct competitor to WhatsApp, employing the same tactic of tying itself to the user’s mobile phone number…the Cyprus-headquartered startup has taken things to a whole new level with its Viber 3 version: it’s released a desktop app for OS X and Windows, making it a full-blown alternative for Skype’s core user base. At the same time, Viber has also beefed up its Android and iOS apps…“Viber for desktop lets you do pretty much everything that Viber lets you do on your mobile phone, with minor exceptions such as stickers,” Viber CEO Talmon Marco explained…“What puts it apart from Skype is how tightly integrated it is with the mobile experience. Skype went from the desktop to the phone. Viber went from mobile to desktop…”

6.       YouTube set to charge for videos  http://money.aol.co.uk/2013/05/07/youtube-set-to-charge-for-videos/  “YouTube is turning to PayTube. At least for some channels and videos. The Google-owned website looks primed to go ahead with a new subscription service for users, though it's not yet clear if it will be ad-free. The move is something of a landmark for YouTube, given its service has been free to watch since its launch. So why the change now?  Money, of course. While much of YouTube's content is free, it's set to create a subscription platform for certain partners that will generate revenue - revenue beyond the usual YouTube ad-placements. The revenue is needed, it's claimed, given that online advertising contributes little yet to TV and movie budgets…”

Security, Privacy & Digital Controls

7.        Warner Brothers sued for unauthorized use of Nyan Cat and Keyboard Cat  http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/warner-brothers-sued-for-unauthorized-use-of-two-feline-internet-memes/  “Warner Brothers is facing a federal lawsuit for using two feline-themed Internet memes in a video game without their creators' permission. The authors of "Keyboard Cat" and "Nyan Cat" have sued the media giant arguing that the game Scribblenauts, published by WB Games, infringes their copyrights and trademarks. The game's developer, 5th Cell, is also named in the lawsuit. Keyboard Cat is a YouTube video uploaded in 2007. It shows a man's cat supposedly playing music on a keyboard. Nyan Cat is featured in an extremely irritating video that was uploaded to YouTube in 2011. As the complaint describes it, Nyan Cat is "a character with a cat's face and a body resembling a horizontal breakfast bar with pink frosting sprinkled with light red dots" that "flies across the screen, leaving a stream of exhaust in the form of a bright rainbow in its wake." Both videos went viral and racked up tens of millions of downloads. The creators of the memes have both registered for trademark protection…”

8.       Napster For Pirated 3D Printing Templates?  http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/04/3d-printing-piracy-physibles/  “Buy it in a store, laser-scan it at home, upload it to the web, print it anywhere. 3D printing is poised for the mainstream, but what happens when one person’s finely hand-crafted designs can be pirated and reproduced by anyone? Will 3D-printing-piracy social networks arise? And how will manufacturers lobby to stop them? The ideas came out of my conversation at TechCrunch Disrupt NY with Alex Winter, director of the new documentary about Napster called “Downloaded”. While The Economist pondered these questions last year, and The Pirate Bay has coined the term “physibles” for 3D-printed objects, Winter takes the next step. He suggests a Napster for 3D printing models is inevitable…”

9.       Tor Books says cutting DRM out of its e-books hasn’t hurt business  http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/05/tor-books-says-cutting-drm-out-of-its-e-books-hasnt-hurt-business/  “Early this week, Tor Books, a subsidiary of Tom Doherty Associates and the world's leading publisher of science fiction, gave an update on how its decision to do away with Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes has impacted the company. Long story short: it hasn't, really. Tor announced last April that it would only retail e-books in DRM-free formats because its customers are “a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another."…the publisher has seen “no discernible increase in piracy on any of our titles, despite them being DRM-free for nearly a year.” Tor's 2012 decision was largely applauded by its customers, who enjoyed being able to share e-book files among various devices…“All of our authors including bestsellers such as Peter F. Hamilton and China Miéville were incredibly supportive when we asked them to consider removing DRM from their titles,” Crisp wrote. “All of them [signed] up without hesitation…”

Mobile Computing & Communicating

10.     Tech blogger Scoble sats he’ll never live another day without a wearable computer on his face  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2315814/Google-Glass-review-Famous-tech-blogger-Robert-Scobles-exhaustive-review.html  “A gadget fan spent two weeks wearing Google Glass almost non-stop and says the groundbreaking new device has changed his life so significantly he never wants to go a day without them again…Scoble has written a comprehensive review of Google Glass…Since getting Google Glass, Scoble said he had given five speeches while wearing the product as well as going through airports and letting hundreds of people try them out. 'This has changed my life,' he wrote on Google+. 'I will never live a day without it…Scoble praised the device as being far more social than a cell phone, for having excellent voice command software, and for a camera that 'totally changes photography' by allowing you to capture moments in a fraction of a second. He said the voice commands are tailored to such specific commands that 'accuracy' is 'crazy high, even if you have an accent…”  https://plus.google.com/+Scobleizer/posts/ZLV9GdmkRzS  “…I bet that +Larry Page is considering two price points: something around $500, which would be very profitable. Or $200, which is about what the bill of materials costs. When you tear apart the glasses…you see a bunch of parts that aren't expensive. This has been designed for mass production…millions of units…I wouldn't be shocked if Larry went very aggressive and priced them at $200. Why would Google do this? Easy: I'm now extremely addicted to Google services. My photos and videos automatically upload to Google+. Adding other services will soon be possible (I just got a Twitter photo app that is being developed by a third party) but turning on automatic uploads to other services will kill my batteries…So, I'm going to be resistant to adding Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Evernote, and Tumblr to my glasses. Especially when Google+ works darn well and is the default. Also, Google is forbidding advertising in apps. This is a HUGE shift for Google's business model. I believe Larry Page is moving Google from an advertising-based company to a commerce based company…” [I want Google Glass and the bad thing is that it might get me to have GPS on all the time, which I don’t do with my phone. Conundrum. – ed.]

11.      Smart Watches  http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/513376/smart-watches/  “Eric Migicovsky didn’t really want a “wearable computer.” When he first conceived of what would become the Pebble smart watch five years ago, as an industrial-design student at Delft University of Technology in the Nether­lands, he just wanted a way to use his smartphone without crashing his bicycle. “I thought of creating a watch that could grab information from my phone,”…Now Migicovsky is shipping 85,000 Pebble watches to eager customers who don’t want to lug a glass slab out of their pocket just to check their e-mail or the weather forecast. Pebble uses Bluetooth to connect wirelessly to an iPhone or Android phone and displays notifications, messages, and other simple data of the user’s choosing on its small black-and-white LCD screen. In April 2012, using the online fund-raising platform Kickstarter, Migicovsky asked for $100,000 to help bring Pebble to market. Five weeks later, he had more than $10 million—making his the highest-grossing Kickstarter campaign yet. Suddenly smart watches are a real product category: Sony entered the market last year, Samsung is about to, and Apple seems likely to follow…”

12.     U.S. Cellular to Begin Offering Apple Products  http://www.macrumors.com/2013/05/03/u-s-cellular-to-begin-offering-apple-products-later-this-year/  “…U.S. Cellular announced that it will begin carrying Apple products later this year…"We have a number of strategies in progress to increase loyalty and attract more customers, including our announcement today that we will begin offering Apple products later this year…Our smartphone penetration is currently 43 percent of core market customers and growing quickly…The move marks a reversal for U.S. Cellular, which said in late 2011 that it had declined to carry the iPhone due to "unacceptable" terms being offered by Apple…”

13.     Cheezburger cuts 35% of staff as it looks to make transition from desktop to mobile  http://www.geekwire.com/2013/cheezburger-cutting-35-staff-transition-desktop-mobile/  “Cheezburger today announced that it is cutting 24 employees, or about 35 percent of its staff, as it struggles with the changing economics of more people viewing content on mobile devices. “We have seen a pretty big transition in our audience from desktop to mobile, and we are going to continue to see that for years to come. We need to restructure the company to be set up for that,” said CEO Ben Huh…Huh said that the Seattle comedy network remains the largest humor site on mobile. But because ad rates are lower on smartphones they’ve not been able to re-position the business. “Mobile continues to grow, but the revenue we generate from it is significantly less,” Huh said. “We want to take this year and think about how we can generate similar returns in mobile, or else you are going to have the case of one part of your platform subsidizing the other…”

14.     Smartphones in primary-school class  http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57582133-1/smartphones-banned-not-in-this-primary-school-class/  “It's not unusual for schools to ban mobile devices during class, but it's a different story at Nan Chiau Primary School in Singapore. Here, 350 third-graders gaze and poke at Windows phones while their science teacher elaborates on their assignments for the day. The students are free to shoot photos and videos using their Nokia Lumia 710 smartphones to help them remember what they've learned. Using an app called myDesk -- developed by undergraduates at the University of Michigan -- the students make diagrams and concept maps, as well as append text and photos to their assignments…The entire third-grade cohort is part of a pilot project called We Learn, which aims to let students take control of their learning, as well as collaborate better with their classmates. It has supposedly resulted in an increase in students' ability to analyze and answer open-ended questions in the English and science subjects…”

15.     Why Big Companies Are Investing in a Service that Listens to Phone Calls  http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514016/why-big-companies-are-investing-in-a-service-that-listens-to-phone-calls/  “Would you give your wireless carrier permission to listen in on your phone calls? Telefónica, one of the world’s largest mobile carriers, is testing a technology that can understand conversations and quickly pull up relevant information. If that info turns out to be useful, customers may want to invite it to listen in. The technology is being built by a small San Francisco startup, Expect Labs…Expect Labs has attracted attention because its technology is in line with the general direction that search technology has been taking with the advent of wearable computers such as watches and glasses, and Internet-connected cars and TVs. Rather than wait for users to search for something, the new technology offers up info that it thinks the user might need. The Google Now software for mobile devices, for example, already monitors its users’ locations, search history, and e-mail to call up traffic reports and other information. But Google Now doesn’t mine old-fashioned voice conversations yet…”

16.     Intel’s Silvermont Architecture Getting Serious About Mobile  http://www.anandtech.com/show/6936/intels-silvermont-architecture-revealed-getting-serious-about-mobile  “The most frustrating part about covering Intel’s journey into mobile over the past five years is just how long it’s taken to get here. The CPU cores used in Medfield, Clover Trail and Clover Trail+ are very similar to what Intel had with the first Atom in 2008…Intel had this architecture for five years now and from the market’s perspective, did absolutely nothing with it…Today Intel is in a different position. After acquisitions, new hires and some significant internal organizational changes, Intel seems to finally have the foundation to iterate and innovate in mobile. Although Bonnell…was the beginning of Intel’s journey into mobile, it’s Silvermont - Intel’s first new Atom microarchitecture since 2008 - that finally puts Intel on the right course. Although Silvermont can find its way into everything from cars to servers, the architecture is primarily optimized for use in smartphones and then in tablets, in that order…the good news for Intel is that Silvermont seems competitive right out of the gate. The even better news is that Silvermont will only be with us for a year before it gets its first update: Airmont…”

17.     Fitbit Flex activity tracker  “…I've been testing the Fitbit Flex, the first fitness wristband from the company that deserves a lot of credit for popularizing wearable fitness devices in the first place…the…company has typically been known for devices that clip to your shirt or your pants and track your every movement. But every Fitbit user seems to have a tale of a lost or accidentally machine-washed tracker, so the company came out with the Flex. It's a $99 bracelet that purports to help you be more active, eat better, sleep better…But you could fill both your arms with all the available gadgets that claim to do those things. From Jawbone to Nike to Samsung to even a slew of apps for your phone, there are a million and counting ways to track your activity. So what does Fitbit offer that makes it special?...Some people want jewelry — I want something I never notice. Just as Google Glass will only be ubiqutious when it's built into the glasses so many of us already wear, fitness bands need to be totally unobtrusive before they'll catch on with everyday people. In the interim, there are two plausible approaches: make your device beautiful like the Up, which people would wear even if it didn't do anything; or make it as thin, light, and inconspicuous as possible. Fitbit took the latter route, and the Flex is the best effort I've seen yet…The solid matte-colored rubber is cheap and sort of boring, without any of the Up's stylishness, but I went whole days without noticing the Flex was there. That's exactly what I want from this type of device. The bracelet itself is actually just a holder — all of the Flex's technology is stored inside a black rectangular box about the size of my pinky toe, which slides into a pocket in the wristband…”

Apps

18.     Google Now is the company's big bet to maintain market share in transition from desktop to mobile  http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57582368-93/google-the-future-of-search-is-now/  “Google needs a new tagline: The future of search is Now. It wouldn't be a stretch, given the huge bet Google is making that it can create intelligent digital assistants for billions of people by putting Google's computer brain to work for you via Google Now. The service, which Google this week expanded to iOS users, is about far more than one-upping Siri in the battle for digital assistants. Google is angling to maintain its top position in search as people leave the desktop and search on mobile and wearable devices…Google wants to tell you what you need to know "now," quickly and accurately. It works by turning natural language queries -- speaking to computer as if to another human -- into precise answers delivered from Google's servers…Where Google Now becomes most interesting, and useful, is when it does a mind meld with user data gleaned from your mobile devices, Google services and other, non-Google apps…”

19.     MobileX Labs brings DIY mobile apps  http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130430/BLOGS11/130439993  “Dan Novaes wanted to create a mobile app for his music blog when he was a student at Indiana University. But he quickly found that hiring a developer at up to $15,000 for a custom project or $500 a month from a cookie-cutter firm was too much for the wafer-thin economics of a blog. So he decided to build a do-it-yourself platform for building mobile apps with drag-and-drop simplicity…It's a freemium model: MobileX charges $29 to publish an app to either Apple's App Store or Google Play…”

SkyNet

20.    Make Google docs, spreadsheets, and presentations work offline  http://www.itworld.com/consumerization-it/354167/make-google-docs-spreadsheets-and-presentations-work-offline  “Google Docs (or documents, spreadsheets, and presentations stored on Google Drive) has been a great resource for many who like to sync their files online and between computers. Well, except for one thing: If you wanted to work on these files without an internet connection, you had to make the files offline before you're disconnected from the net. Google has recently (finally) updated Drive so you can access these files automatically without an internet connection…you'll need to use the Chrome browser or Chrome OS. If you're using the Chrome browser, you'll also need to enable offline access with the Drive Chrome web app…Google will then start automatically syncing your docs files for offline access in Chrome…”

21.     Google adds remote desktop to Hangouts  http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/1/4291220/google-adds-remote-desktop-to-hangouts  “Google+ Hangouts just received a small but potentially quite useful upgrade today — as of now, Hangouts include a remote desktop feature. This lets you remotely control the computer of someone you're having a Hangout with for troubleshooting purposes, and the Hangout lets you keep chatting and walk through the troubleshooting process with the person on the other end. The feature is tucked away under the "Hangout Apps" section, and you'll obviously need permission from the other user, but this is a pretty clever way for Google to solve the constant problem of remote support…building it into a video chat client is a nice touch…”

22.    Google Forms More Useful Due To Properly Formatted Date And Time Fields  http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/07/google-forms-finally-become-useful-thanks-to-properly-formatted-date-and-time-fields/  “Google Docs, now Drive, have always had an option to create forms that would drop data right into a spreadsheet. This is super handy until you tried to do something like…collect date and time information. For whatever reason, those structured fields were never an option with Forms, but the team has finally added both as an option today. The product has always been “there,” but not heavily promoted by Google…Asking a simple question like when someone’s birthday was a nightmare, as you couldn’t normalize and structure being dropped into the spreadsheet, making the form pretty useless…”

23.    Google lets you add Calendar events from Gmail by clicking on date and time  http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/05/02/google-lets-you-add-calendar-events-directly-from-gmail-by-clicking-on-a-date-and-time-english-only-for-now/  “Google…announced a small Gmail update that lets you create Google Calendar events directly from your email. The new feature is rolling out to everyone with the English (US) language…Once you get the feature, dates and times within emails will be lightly underlined. All you have to do is click one to schedule whatever you want in reference to the email, without ever leaving Gmail…”

24.    Google Glass apps start to hit  http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238898/Google_Glass_apps_start_to_hit._Wink_Wink_  “Now that developers have Google Glass in hand, the first apps are starting to come out. An early app that's already getting lots of attention is called Winky. Aptly named, the app enables Glass users to take a picture simply with the wink of an eye. Glass was designed to be manipulated with touch, gesture and voice. For instance, a user could say, "Google Glass, shoot a video." Developer Mike DiGiovanni…decided to make it even easier to manipulate Glass. "Winking really changes things," DiGiovanni wrote on Google+. "You might not think it's hard to say, 'Ok, Glass Take a Picture' or even just tap a button. But it's a context switch that takes you out of the moment, even if just for a second. Winking lets you lifelog with little to no effort."…he's taken more pictures using Glass in one day with the Winky app than he had in the previous five days…”

General Technology

25.    Adobe kills Creative Suite, goes subscription-only  http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57582735-92/adobe-kills-creative-suite-goes-subscription-only/  “In a major shift for its business and its customers, Adobe Systems…announced it no longer will sell its Creative Suite software as it moves instead to the $50-per-month Creative Cloud and other subscription plans…Creative Cloud is going to be our sole focus moving forward,"…When Adobe launched its Creative Cloud subscription last year, executives weren't sure how long it would offer it alongside the traditional perpetual-license sales for its software. But customer enthusiasm for the Creative Cloud, combined with the awkwardness of maintaining it alongside the slower-moving CS products, led the company to move aggressively to the subscription plan. "We expected it to be a couple years before this happened. But we were surprised by how successful Creative Cloud has been,"…It's not just a big difference for customers. With the change, Adobe moves its business more to a recurring-revenue approach. Instead of revenue surging when upgrades such as CS6 arrive, the company gets a steady stream of money…”

26.    Wanted: A Print Button for 3-D Objects  http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514071/wanted-a-print-button-for-3-d-objects/  “The largest companies in 3-D printing are racing to simplify design software so that it can become as easy to make an object as it is to send a document to a printer…The idea is that 3-D printers could democratize design and eventually manufacturing by letting anyone make physical things in small quantities, without the expense of an assembly line. The technology still has a ways to go—making objects on consumer printers is slow and expensive. To print a solid plastic apple on MakerBot’s $2,000 consumer printer, for instance, takes seven hours and costs $50 in supplies, so it’s no competition for cheap plastic goods made in China.  But the bigger obstacle to a 3-D printing revolution is that few consumers or designers can actually operate the software used to render objects and turn them into files that can be printed…”

27.    'Wintel' on the wane: Intel goes Google  http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57581751-92/wintel-on-the-wane-intel-goes-google/  “The fact that Microsoft and Intel no longer rule the personal computing world isn't news. But what happens next is…the two companies controlled the Windows PC and, as a consequence, controlled the digital computing world…Today, Intel needs to be the engine powering the non-Windows world. That's where the explosive growth is. So Intel is turning to Google. I've been hearing from sources at Intel for a long time that Android is the future. And Intel said as much to CNET this week. Expect to see Intel-based Android laptops and hybrids priced between, let's say, $200 to $500 in the coming months…”

28.    Cube 3D Printer goes retail at Staples for $1,299  http://www.zdnet.com/cube-3d-printer-goes-retail-at-staples-for-1299-7000014876/  “…Staples will begin selling 3D Systems’ Cube 3D printer in select stores and online for $1,299 at the end of June. The move will be interesting to watch just to see how many small businesses pick up one. 3D printers have been popular in the tech press, but pricing has kept them from mainstream adoption. Staples’ price of $1,299 still isn’t cheap enough to be an impulse buy, but it’s certainly far enough the five-digit mark to gather some interest. The Cube 3D Printer will work with Mac or Windows and includes 25 templates with more available online. Staples will be among the first major retailers to offer a 3D printer…”

29.    Memory Implants  http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/513681/memory-implants/  “Theodore Berger, a biomedical engineer and neuroscientist…envisions a day in the not too distant future when a patient with severe memory loss can get help from an electronic implant. In people whose brains have suffered damage from Alzheimer’s, stroke, or injury, disrupted neuronal networks often prevent long-term memories from forming…Berger has designed silicon chips to mimic the signal processing that those neurons do when they’re functioning properly—the work that allows us to recall experiences and knowledge for more than a minute…Berger wants to restore the ability to create long-term memories by implanting chips like these in the brain…Berger and his research partners have yet to conduct human tests of their neural prostheses, but their experiments show how a silicon chip externally connected to rat and monkey brains by electrodes can process information just like actual neurons…“We’re putting in the capacity to generate memories.”…Berger and his coworkers demonstrated that they could also help monkeys retrieve long-term memories from a part of the brain that stores them…”

30.    ‘Time Crystals’ Could Upend Physicists’ Theory of Time  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/04/time-crystals/all/  “In February 2012, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek decided to go public with a strange and…somewhat embarrassing idea. Impossible as it seemed, Wilczek had developed an apparent proof of “time crystals” — physical structures that move in a repeating pattern, like minute hands rounding clocks, without expending energy or ever winding down. Unlike clocks or any other known objects, time crystals derive their movement not from stored energy but from a break in the symmetry of time, enabling a special form of perpetual motion…Wilczek’s idea met with a muted response from physicists. Here was a brilliant professor known for developing exotic theories that later entered the mainstream, including the existence of particles called axions and anyons, and discovering a property of nuclear forces known as asymptotic freedom…But perpetual motion, deemed impossible by the fundamental laws of physics, was hard to swallow. Did the work constitute a major breakthrough or faulty logic? Jakub Zakrzewski, a professor of physics…who wrote a perspective on the research that accompanied Wilczek’s publication, says: “I simply don’t know.” Now, a technological advance has made it possible for physicists to test the idea. They plan to build a time crystal…The idea came to Wilczek while he was preparing a class lecture in 2010. “I was thinking about the classification of crystals, and then it just occurred to me that it’s natural to think about space and time together,” he said. “So if you think about crystals in space, it’s very natural also to think about the classification of crystalline behavior in time.”…Eventually, his equations indicated that atoms could indeed form a regularly repeating lattice in time, returning to their initial arrangement only after discrete…intervals, thereby breaking time symmetry…that scientists say can be interpreted as perpetual motion…”

31.     Experimental aircraft speeds to more than 3,000 mph in test flight  http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-hypersonic-x51-test-flight-20130503,0,6645524.story  “A lightning-quick experimental aircraft made history when it sped more than 3,000 mph above the Pacific Ocean in a test flight, reigniting decades-long efforts to develop a vehicle that could travel faster than a speeding bullet. The unmanned X-51A WaveRider, which resembles a shark-nosed missile, was launched midair Wednesday off the coast near Point Mugu. It sped westward for 240 seconds, reaching Mach 5.1, or more than five times the speed of sound, before plunging into the ocean as planned. The X-51A…was powered by an air-breathing engine that has virtually no moving parts. It flew for longer than any other aircraft of its kind and traveled more than 264 miles in little more than six minutes. A passenger aircraft traveling at that speed could easily fly from Los Angeles to New York in less than an hour…”

32.    Solar Plane Begins Coast-to-Coast Flight  http://news.discovery.com/tech/alternative-power-sources/solar-plane-takes-coast-to-coast-flight-130503.htm  “A solar-powered airplane that can fly day and night without using a single drop of fuel embarked on an unprecedented flight across the United States Friday…The solar-powered aircraft, named Solar Impulse, took off…near San Francisco, Calif., shortly after 9 a.m. EDT…The plane will now head south on the first 19-hour leg of its journey, and is expected to touch down at Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport on Saturday (May 4) at 4 a.m. EDT…Solar Impulse is the first aircraft capable of flying day and night without using any fuel. The plane relies solely on its solar panels and onboard batteries for power. During today's flight, the aircraft is expected to reach a cruising altitude of 21,000 feet…Solar Impulse founders Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg will alternate piloting the single-seater plane over the five legs of the journey. Piccard was at the controls for today's takeoff from California…”

Leisure & Entertainment

33.    ‘First Legal’ Online Gambling Site Launches In The U.S. For Nevada Residents  http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/30/first-legal-online-gambling-site-launches-in-the-u-s-but-only-for-nevada-residents-for-now/  “Want the fun of losing your wallet without the free drinks and oxygen high? Now Nevada residents can legally gamble online at ultimatepoker.com, which could roll out nationwide as more states legalize the practice. Since the infamous 2011 “Black Friday” that took down PokerStars and the online gambling cottage industry, a court of appeals overturned the Federal Wire Act law that banned states from legitimizing it for their own residents. Nevada (of course) was the first to pave a legal pathway for casinos to reach residents in their own homes. The rush to legalize gambling was so fierce that Nevada ratified the law under emergency procedures to beat out New Jersey…”

34.    ORBX streaming tech could revolutionize computing  http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57582906-92/orbx-streaming-tech-could-revolutionize-computing/  “First-person shooter games don't appeal to Brendan Eich, Mozilla's chief technology guru and the guy who created JavaScript nearly two decades ago. He doesn't let his kids play them, either, he says. But he was so excited on Friday about showing off the potential of a new browser codec called ORBX.js at Autodesk's One Market Street offices here that he began playing Epic's Unreal Tournament 3 "Sanctuary" level in a room of 20 or so witnesses…Jules Urbach, CEO and founder of OTOY, Mozilla's partner in creating the new HTML5 codec, explained what we were seeing. "The app is running 600 miles away, but it's running [here] at full stream," he said. Eich confirmed the gameplay felt as seamless as it looked: "I don't feel any latency here," he said. Eich was able to play the game in a build of Firefox Nightly using a combination of the new ORBX.js and the recently released ASM.js and Emscripten tools…What made the demo unique wasn't that the game was being streamed from a server without any lag, it's that it was being run in a browser without a plug-in. ORBX.js allows for an uninterrupted, adaptable stream, and it can stream operating system desktops, single-serving apps and high-end programs, or entertainment content…”  http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/03/with-new-service-any-device-could-run-almost-any-program-from-anywhere/ 

35.    ‘Ender’s Game’ trailer teases outer space spectacle, Mazer Rackham  http://herocomplex.latimes.com/movies/enders-game-trailer-teases-outer-space-spectacle-mazer-rackham/#/0  “The new trailer for “Ender’s Game” received a prominent rollout online Tuesday afternoon, with director Gavin Hood…and star Asa Butterfield participating in a Google+ hangout that coincided with the premiere of the promotional spot for the sci-fi adventure adapted from the novel by Orson Scott Card. Set in a near future in which an alien race known as the Formics have attacked Earth, the movie stars Butterfield as Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, a bright boy who’s recruited to help humanity face future threats. Guided in his growth by Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford), Ender advances from Battle School to Command School and soon finds himself under the tutelage of the legendary Mazer Rackham…The clip features war footage between the human race and the aliens…”

Entrepreneurism and Technology

36.    Jawbone Acquires BodyMedia To Give It An Edge In Wearable Health Tracking  http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/30/jawbone-will-acquire-bodymedia-for-over-100-million-to-give-it-an-edge-in-wearable-health-tracking/  “…two months ago that Jawbone snapped up mobile health startup Massive Health, and now the company has acquired an even more prominent player in the health monitoring space. Jawbone…announced that it will acquire…BodyMedia, a maker of wearable health tracking devices…Jawbone is a curious company in that it builds products and experiences for two largely unrelated markets: audio and fitness…“Audio will definitely not fall by the wayside,” he said…“We love it deeply.”…but he adds that Jawbone sees “a world where everything in your life is going to have a lot of computing power and a lot of sensors…”

37.    Hardware startups proliferate  http://cdixon.org/2013/04/30/hardware-startups/  “For a long time, entrepreneurs and investors shied away from hardware. This seems to be changing. As Paul Graham says, there are many reasons for this: Hardware does well on crowdfunding sites. The spread of tablets makes it possible to build new things controlled by and even incorporating them. Electric motors have improved. Wireless connectivity of various types can now be taken for granted. It’s getting more straightforward to get things manufactured. Arduinos, 3D printing, laser cutters, and more accessible CNC milling are making hardware easier to prototype. Retailers are less of a bottleneck as customers increasingly buy online…All the components in a smartphone — the sensors, the GPS, the camera, the ARM core processors, the wireless, the memory, the battery…which is being driven by the incredible economies of scale and innovation machines at Apple, Google, and others, is available for a few dollars. They were essentially “unobtainium” 10 years ago. This is stuff that used to be military industrial technology; you can buy it at RadioShack now…”

38.    Ebay To Use Mobile Tech To Go Deeper Into Offline Commerce With A Touchscreen Store Window  http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/30/ebay-to-use-mobile-tech-to-go-deeper-into-offline-commerce-with-a-touchscreen-store-window-coming-this-summer/  “Ebay CEO John Donahoe today described how the e-commerce giant is moving further into the world of offline commerce, using mobile technology to do it: the company is planning a partnership with a retailer that will create a “pop up” shop with a gigantic touchscreen store window. Donahoe says that this will take place this summer in New York and is part of a bigger push eBay is making to bring itself closer to where retailers are still doing the majority of their transactions, offline…it looks like it will be with around the new Kat Spade Saturday line of lower-priced clothes, bags and accessories. eBay and its payment subsidiary PayPal already have existing relationships with a number of bricks-and-mortar businesses…Not only does the company compete against Square for mobile point-of-sale transactions among small businesses with its Here product, but it is also targeting big chains, this January announcing a new raft of deals with national companies for its in-store payments technologies. These include Famous Footwear, Dollar General…RadioShack, Spartan Stores…Advance Auto Parts…Barnes & Noble…Home Depot…Office Depot…and Toys “R” Us…”

39.    11 Tips for Writing Effective Welcome Emails  http://www.vinaysahni.com/11-tips-for-writing-effective-welcome-emails  “…I now write…emails with a single goal in mind - to engage the customer and kick start a one-on-one relationship…Here are some tips on writing effective welcome emails, based on what I've learned from my experiments: Ensure the subject is interesting…Write in an genuine & personal voice…Use a real name in the From field…Ensure it can be replied to…Echo their name back at them…Be timely…Make it unique & send it by hand. If possible, add one to two sentences very specific to the customer…Ask a simple question…Invite them to email you…Say thank you…”

Design / DEMO

40.    Biofeedback finds place within clothing for apparel and design project  http://www.themorningsun.com/article/20130505/NEWS01/130509803/biofeedback-finds-place-within-clothing-for-apparel-and-design-project-at-cmu#full_story  “What happens with neuroscience, clothing and marketing all merge?You get Central Michigan University graduate student Benjamin Touchette’s project. Touchette is using biofeedback technology to measure consumer perception to…various clothing types…this technology can be used to better market clothing to customers, saving both the time and money of shoppers and manufacturers…Touchette, a student in CMU’s Apparel Merchandising and Design program, is working heavily with faculty member Seung-Eun Lee on the project…Touchette said that the idea spawned from a simple thought. “Is there another way that we can measure how people think about products before they’re potentially produced?” he asked. “That’s where neuromarketing became involved…”

41.     Product Design Agency BERG To Become BERG Cloud, An Internet Of Things Startup  http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/18/product-design-agency-berg-to-become-berg-cloud-an-internet-of-things-startup/  “Globally-known London-based product and design consultancy Berg has become best known for its work with major tech companies such as Apple and Twitter, as well as it’s now famous “Little Printer” design which captured the collective imagination of the tech world last year. The tiny device that could print out any kind of information you wanted from the web became a physical manifestation of how web services might interface with the ‘real world’. But it turns out that the Little Printer set BERG’s founders’ minds racing towards a new strategy – the ultimate pivot from the agency/client model to becoming a product-based startup with a cloud platform. BERG London is poised to become Berg Cloud, described as a ‘nervous system for connected products’ built to run at scale’. As an example of this platform running, BERG has produced a “Twitter Clock”…BERG Cloud aims to be an “operating system for connected products”. What we saw, cofounder and CEO Matt Webb told me…is the emergence of a platform that could control everything from the Little Printer to the signage in a city, to home electronics and automation inside businesses. Up for grabs will also be services like fleet management. “Web connected products are smarter, more social and more alive. As hardware and the cloud meet, new product categories are born and new business models are enabled. The network is the new electricity…”  http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514541/twitter-tests-a-toolkit-that-puts-the-internet-in-things/ 

DHMN Technology

42.    How A 17-Year-Old Girl Won a Hackathon  http://evolver.fm/2013/04/30/how-a-17-year-old-girl-won-a-hackathon-and-what-it-means-for-women-in-tech/  “At this past weekend’s TVnext Hack event, a loose consortium of geeks, hackers, and businessmen from the television and technology industries gathered in a high-rise Boston office building to compete for cash and prizes by inventing and building technologies that add to the experience of watching television. Several hacks won prizes from sponsor companies, while five of the best scored “best in breed” prizes…Out of those, one was chosen as the grand prize winner on Monday at the TVnext Summit: Twivo, a clever hack that lets you watch DVR-ed television programs without worrying about your “second screen” ruining the show when you check Twitter only to see the show’s ending given away…Twivo was created by the only female participant at the event — and the only minor…the father of this prize-winning girl hacker…did not, as one might suspect, force, cajole, or otherwise convince his daughter to take up hacking. Instead, he took her hiking. “My dad goes to a hackathon a few times a year,” Jennie Lamere told Evolver.fm. “When I was growing up, I wasn’t interested in the technical side of his hacks…but rather the musical side. His hacks were a topic of our weekly hikes. He would tell me all about his latest project, which just seemed like pure magic to me. Then, one hike, my Dad asked me for an idea for a hack using the Songkick API…I came up with my own, that would eventually turn into Jennie’s Ultimate Roadtrip…Jennie Lamere was 15 on that fateful hike. In the past two years, she has attended five hackathons, and now, she’s building her hacks on her own, including the grand-prize-winning Twivo…”

43.    3D Printer Open-Source Franchise: Brick & Maker  http://3dprintinginsider.com/3d-printer-open-source-franchise-brick-maker_b3381  “Brick & Maker is attempting to create a a commercial chain of franchises of 3D printing walk-in stores with a selection of both locally produced 3DP objects as well as things made by the end-customers themselves. The idea is to basically take the maker/hacker space concept to the streets…Brick & Maker is not looking to create a franchise with huge license and marketing costs. The concept is open-source in nature. The company plans to create the physical spaces in abandoned buildings, for example a derelict gas station. The actual brick and mortars will be designed to include all needed equipment and knowledge for anyone to drop by and start making – ie 3D printers, 3D scanners and a house of staff with expertise on both 3D modeling and printing.  After printing out a product in-house, the creator can either take it with him/her or leave it on the store shelves to be sold…”

Open Source Hardware

44.    PrismX Open Source 3D Printer  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/575684524/prismx-open-source-3d-printer  “…the PrismX, a 3D printer that sets new standards for precision, speed, and strength…achieves exceptional frame alignment and outstanding performance. Each part has been designed with precision manufacturing and assembly in mind. Improved precision in the parts and assembly results in accurate frame alignment, and this results in fast, accurate performance. The efficient 4-motor design and belt-driven extruder make this the fastest and most reliable open-source printer in its class.  The PrismX features deluxe components but stays true to the reprap credo:  it can be replicated, expanded, hacked, modified, and is 100% open-source.  All of the design files are written in OpenSCAD…”

45.    Robots Reach Through Clutter with Tactile Sensing  http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/news/2013/05/robots-reach-through-clutter-tactile-sensing  “Whether reaching for a book out of a cluttered cabinet or pruning a bush in the backyard, a person’s arm frequently makes contact with objects during everyday tasks…in the same way, robots are now able to intelligently maneuver within clutter, gently making contact with objects while accomplishing a task. This new control method has wide applications, ranging from robots for search-and-rescue operations to assistive robotics for people with disabilities…Kemp, director of Georgia Tech’s Healthcare Robotics Lab, along with his graduate students and researchers at Meka Robotics, has developed a control method that works in tandem with compliant robotic joints and whole-arm tactile sensing. This technology keeps the robot’s arm flexible and gives the robot a sense of touch across its entire arm…Kemp’s research team has also released the designs and code for the sensors and controller as open source hardware and software so that researchers and hobbyists can build on the work…”

Open Source

46.    OpenWorm Is An Open-Source Virtual Worm  http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-05/open-source-virtual-worm-will-bring-predictive-modeling-living-organisms  “…OpenWorm, a new open-source project devoted to creating a complete virtual model of a worm, aims to bring simulation into the living world by creating a digital organism--C. elegans, a nematode commonly used as a model organism in biology research. The goal is to make a digital worm that mimics its biological counterpart in essentially every way, from the molecular level to behavioral patterns. The project's creators explain their reasoning like this: Because we believe brain research must accelerate, we are taking matters into our own hands. If we cannot build a computer model of a worm, the most studied organism in all of biology, we don’t stand a chance to understand something as complex as the human brain…”

47.    Low Cost Chromebooks Appeal to Linux Users Not Interested in Chrome OS  http://ostatic.com/blog/low-cost-chromebooks-appeal-to-linux-users-not-interested-in-chrome-os  “…prices in the $200 range for Chromebooks like the Acer system shown here are attracting users…There is a sub-trend going on with Chromebooks, though, and it involves users buying the low-cost systems and putting their favorite Linux distros on them, which isn't hard to do. This trend will only pick up now that the latest version of the Linux kernel includes code for running Linux on Chromebooks. You can read more about modifications to the Linux kernel for Chromebooks in Wired's story…But right here on OStatic, we've seen lots of evidence that readers are interested in buying inexpensive Chromebooks only to run Ubuntu, Mint or other Linux flavors on the systems…”

Civilian Aerospace

48.    Space in reach for Average Joes at Silicon Valley adult space camp  http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_23174139/space-reach-average-joes-at-silicon-valley-adult  “…attendees of Silicon Valley's first adult space camp are teaming up to navigate the next frontier: citizens in space…This weekend's Citizen Astronaut and Space Hacker Workshop of more than 100 space experts -- and aspiring space experts -- was focused on shooting the common man and his gadgets into orbit in hopes of going beyond the discoveries of NASA and other government programs…The event at the Hacker Dojo, appropriately across Highway 101 from NASA's Ames Research Center, featured speakers preaching way-out-there ideas such as colonizing Mars or building intergalactic gas stations to fuel rocket ships. And there were plans that entrepreneurs insist are only a year away, namely sending the first paying customer into space aboard a passenger rocket ship, at a cost of at least $95,000 per space tourist…many of the attendees urged Silicon Valley engineers to develop the tools that can be launched into space with the capability of gathering pivotal data as an alternative way to leave their mark on intergalactic exploration. That's a particularly appealing option in a region packed with engineers and programmers who in many cases have the knowledge and passion to develop the instruments that are furthering space research. It's also a cheaper option than buying a ticket on a commercial space flight…”

49.    Made in Space to Fly 3D Printer to ISS Next Year  http://www.parabolicarc.com/2013/05/04/made-in-space-to-fly-3d-printer-to-iss-next-year/  “Made in Space will fly the first 3D printer in space next year aboard a SpaceX Dragon freighter, which will deliver it for use by astronauts aboard the International Space Station…Dunn told attendees at the Space Hacker Workshop in Mountain View, Calif., that this will be the first time that humans will conduct manufacturing operations off the Earth. The 3-D machine will allow astronauts to print parts and components on orbit instead of having to ship them up from Earth. The company…has been working for three years to perfect 3D printers capable of working in microgravity gravity…Made in Space has flown more than 400 microgravity parabolas to test out printers…”

Supercomputing & GPUs

50.    AMD-led consortium takes on multicore programming barriers  http://www.techcentral.ie/21457/amd-led-consortium-takes-on-multicore-programming-barriers  “Programming for multicore systems can be complex, so an industry consortium led by Advanced Micro Devices has taken a step ahead in its goal to eliminate development challenges so applications are portable across devices, architectures and operating systems. The Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation is expected to introduce a new uniform memory architecture called HUMA that makes different memory types in a system accessible to all processors…HUMA ensures every hardware unit has access to the same data, so the information doesn't need to be copied into different memory types. GPUs and CPUs today have access to different cache and memory types and the specification would break the traditional mould in which CPUs allocate memory for code execution, but the information is copied into GPU memory for execution by the graphics processor. "The other part is it is unifying the hardware and also software architecture. If you are writing in C++, you can say I want the GPU to execute it…”

51.     Tour of San Diego's Supercomputer Center  http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2013/4/30/take-a-tour-of-san-diegos-supercomputer-center.aspx  “…the San Diego Supercomputer Center is the place where the largest supercomputer in the world exists that utilizes the largest flash array in the world. This supercomputer is known as Gordon…Gordon's specs are as follows, it features 1,024 dual-socket Intel Sandy Bridge nodes, each with 64 GB DDR3–1333 memory with over 300 TB of high performance Intel flash memory SSDs via 64 dual-socket Intel Westmere I/O nodes. It also has large supernodes of memory capable of delivering over 2 TB of cache coherent memory. Data Oasis high performance parallel file system with over 4 PB capacity and sustained rates of 100 GB/s…Ross' team…is specifically focused on GPU computation and utilizing GPUs to accelerate their biological simulations to help solve the biggest problems in today's world. His team are working on deploying GPUs inside of supercomputers and already have utilized some desktop gaming graphics cards in their own systems. They have a cluster of computers that they have put together into one rack with each computer utilizing four GTX 680s per computer and by joining these computers together with their GPUs, Ross and his team are able to gain incredible acceleration with very little power and heat…”

Trends & Emerging Tech

52.    7 tech trends to watch in 2013  http://www.dynamicbusiness.com.au/news/7-tech-trends-to-watch-in-2013-22042013.html  “…it’s important to be aware of upcoming trends that could fundamentally affect the way the world does business…1. Responsive Design: Extra Screens: Tablets and Smartphones…2. Personal Devices in the Workplace…3. Privacy…4. Augmented Reality…5. Micropayment Economy…6. 3D Printing…7. Big Data and Analytics…”

53.    Trends You Can't Afford to Ignore--From Eric Schmidt's New Book  http://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2013/04/27/trends-you-cant-afford-to-ignore-from-eric-schmidts-new-book/  “…The New Digital Age, by Eric Schmidt…executive chair of Google…and Jaren Cohen, director of Google Ideas…looks at how technology is reshaping the world on virtually every front, from personal privacy to international relations.  Many of the trends they discuss will affect anyone who works or runs a business. Here are three that I found particularly relevant–and my take on what they mean for entrepreneurs and executives…1. The “Balkanization of the Internet. ”…governments will want to set limits on the ideas to which the public is exposed and its freedom to communicate digitally…Expect to see states making increasingly energetic efforts to regulate and shape access to the internet on their own terms–which may eventually result in almost every country having its own version of the internet…2. More state-sponsored cyber attacks. While much of this hacking will target other governments, businesses will also be victimized…Even if your company seems to be too small to be targeted by a state-sponsored hacker attack, now is a good time to beef up your digital security…3. An explosion of self-styled journalists…This is a long-term trend that will have both positive and negative implications. We’ll have access to more information and to points of view that have been ignored. At the same time, we’ll be exposed to more news from unreliable and irresponsible sources…”

*****