NEW NET Weekly List for 23 Jul 2013

Below is the final list of technology news and issues for the Tuesday, 23 Jul 2013, NEW NET (NorthEast Wisconsin Network for Entrepreneurism and Technology) 7:00 - 9:00 PM weekly gathering at  Sangria's Restaurant in Appleton, 215 S. Memorial Drive, Appleton WI, USA.

The Weekly Top Ten, (pre-NEW NET, based on potential or immediate impact and/or general tech interestingness)

1.        5by Wants To Be Your Web Video Concierge (# 14)

2.       The anti-virus age is over (# 17)

3.       NSA head admits the agency made “huge set of mistakes” in 2009 (#18)

4.       Smartphone Upgrades Slow as 'Wow' Factor Fades (# 19)

5.        Google tests encryption to protect users' Drive files against government demands (# 26)

6.       Google Maps out-Yelps Yelp (# 32)

7.        Apple Owns 56% Of The Streaming Devices Market, Roku Second With 21% (# 38)

8.       3D printing will explode in 2014, thanks to the expiration of key patents (# 46)

9.       Seej 3D Printed Game Update (# 49)

10.     Canonical Seeks $32 Million in Crowdfunding for Linux Phone (# 51)

The ‘net

11.      Edit Wars Reveal The 10 Most Controversial Topics on Wikipedia  http://www.technologyreview.com/view/517101/edit-wars-reveal-the-10-most-controversial-topics-on-wikipedia/  “…Wikipedia’s own estimate is that it has some 77,000 contributors working on more than 22 million articles in 285 languages…So it’s not surprising that disputes arise over the wording of these articles. Indeed, the controversy can sometimes reach war-like proportions with one editor changing the wording and another immediately changing it back again…Taha Yasseri…and a few pals have ranked the most controversial topics in 10 different languages according to the intensity of the editing wars they generate…Yasseri and co looked instead for “mutual reverts” in which one editor reverts another’s work and vice versa, so both editors are undoing each other’s changes…That gives a simple list of the most controversial articles in each language. In English, the top 10 most controversial articles are as follows: George W Bush…Anarchism…Muhammad…List of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. employees…Global Warming…Circumcision…United States…Jesus…Race and intelligence…Christianity…”

12.     Apple Buys 2 Mapping Companies  http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/apple-buys-2-mapping-companies/?src=recg&gwh=C2F51B6C657DE2659A68C3F21604F027  “Apple is deepening its mapping skills, buying two start-ups that specialize in location technology. Apple…bought…two small companies, HopStop and Locationary…HopStop is an application that can be used to get directions within cities and shows real-time traffic delays. The other start-up, Locationary…specializes in maps and mapping data…HopStop was founded in 2005 with the idea that someone could type two addresses into a Web site and get reliable directions for public transportation…”

13.     Bitcasa Takes Infinite Storage To Version 2.0  http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/23/30-petabytes-later-bitcasa-takes-infinite-storage-to-version-2-0-with-revamped-android-ios-desktop-apps/  “…Bitcasa has spent the last five months or so growing out of its beta launch…Bitcasa is launching version 2.0 of its desktop, iOS and Android apps…Bitcasa is a software service that essentially gives you infinite storage on your computer. It does this by only saving information that is unique to you, and only saving one version of all the content that is redundant. Because of this, Bitcasa actually gets faster the more people use it…”  http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/18/bitcasa-for-ios-and-android/  “…Bitcasa…promises to bring infinite storage to its users for just $10 per month…Bitcasa’s encrypted, proprietary and patent-pending “Infinite Drive”…acts as a virtual external drive that just continues to grow as you save more data to it. As an added bonus, everything is encrypted across the system and as the company’s co-founder and CEO Tony Gauda told me earlier this week, even the Bitcasa team has no way of accessing your data…”

14.     5by Wants To Be Your Web Video Concierge  http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/22/5by-wants-to-be-your-web-video-concierge-and-its-taking-aim-at-phones-and-tvs-too/  “…You’re bored out of your wits and rather than try to do something productive, you just spend hour after endless hour on YouTube…that’s exactly…a Montreal-based web video startup called 5by is trying to fix. 5by takes a decidedly different approach to how it finds and plays videos for you…5by has been called the Songza of video…you’re greeted not by a smattering of videos but by a series of categories like “Blowing You Away” and “Killing Time.”…When you’re in a video, you’re presented with a series of reactions: you can hit buttons to signify that you’ve laughed at the video being shown to you, hated it, or felt it tug at your heartstrings. And if a video just isn’t your cup of tea, there’s always a skip button to take you far, far away…”

Security, Privacy & Digital Controls

15.     SIM Card Hack Allows Attackers to Remotely Control Victim's Phone  http://mashable.com/2013/07/22/sim-card-hack/  “A dangerous SIM card hack has been discovered, potentially allowing attackers to remotely send premium SMS messages or re-direct and record calls…Not all SIM cards are vulnerable — just under a quarter of the SIM cards tested were susceptible to the hack — but those that are can be hacked via sending a hidden SMS. All in all, millions of phones worldwide could be affected…an attacker could use the victim's phone to send premium SMS messages, which can skyrocket one's phone bill, collect location data, re-direct or record calls, or even carry out paymnet fraud. Nohl claims it is unlikely that cyber criminals have already found this security flaw, and he thinks it may not happen in the next six months…”

16.     Fact or Fiction: Your Smartphone and Tablet Are Vulnerable to Hackers  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=smartphone-tablet-mobile-vulnerable-to-hackers  “Personal computers have been subject to cyber attacks from the moment we began connecting them to the Internet…So why don’t we have the same security problem with our smartphones and tablets, which are essentially variations on the PC? Several factors hold back…serious effort on the part of cyber attackers to infect mobile devices with malware designed to raid apps and commandeer sensitive data. For starters, devices running Apple iOS, Google Android and other mobile operating systems still are not nearly as numerous as PCs…Smartphones and tablets are also, for the most part, better designed than PCs to minimize the potential damage caused by viruses…Of the more than 140 million smartphones in use in the U.S., less than 2 percent have been infected with mobile malware…It is possible…for attackers to break into mobile devices…But it’s much more work than it would be to do the same exact thing against Windows…cyber criminals usually want to make money from their efforts. These entrepreneurial types are more likely to design a piece of malware to attack a tried-and-true target such as Microsoft’s Windows operating system or Internet Explorer Web browser, causing maximum disruption with minimal effort…the sheer number of PCs that have accumulated in offices and homes over the past several decades still dwarfs the world’s population of active smartphones and tablets…By 2015 more Americans will access the Internet via mobile devices than with PCs or any other type of wireless device…more than 470 million Android handsets were sold in 2012. By 2017 this number is expected to grow to more than 1 billion, giving the platform a 67-percent share of the smartphone market…Apple will own about 14 percent of the market in 2017. “Android is a very secure operating system—if you keep it up to date…This is not always possible, especially if device makers don’t support the most current versions of the operating system.” As people start using their smartphones and tablets instead of their PCs to do online banking and purchasing, mobile devices become more appealing targets for attackers…Likewise if PCs become more secure, attackers are likely to direct their efforts toward mobile…”

17.     The anti-virus age is over  http://codeinsecurity.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/the-anti-virus-age-is-over/  “…anti-virus systems are as good as dead…Signature-based analysis, both static (e.g. SHA1 hash) and heuristic (e.g. pattern matching) is useless against polymorphic malware, which is becoming a big concern…By the time an identifying pattern is found in a particular morphing engine, the bad guys have already written a new one…malware behaviour is almost infinitely re-writeable, with little effort on the developer’s part…We’ve also seen a huge surge in attacks that fit the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) model in the last few years…Attacks under the APT model can involve social engineering, custom malware, custom exploits / payloads and undisclosed 0-day vulnerabilities – exactly the threats that anti-malware solutions have difficulty handling. The next problem is memory-resident malware…If malware never touches the disk, most AV software will never catch it…the economic aspect is the nail in the coffin…the bad guys have more people working for them, for less money…They can produce and update malware significantly more quickly (and cost-effectively) than the AV guys can analyse and defend against it…”

18.     NSA head admits the agency made “huge set of mistakes” in 2009  http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/nsa-head-when-obama-took-office-he-narrowed-overbroad-data-collection/  “…the head of the National Security Agency (NSA) admitted that the spy agency had been overbroad in its acquisition of telephone data. NSA Director General Keith Alexander told the assembled crowd…that when President Barack Obama first took office in January 2009, he called out the agency on its blanket data collection practices…we had a huge set of mistakes that we were working through in 2009,” he told the audience…At the president’s direction, the NSA then set up a “directorate of compliance,” an internal watchdog group to make sure that it wasn’t over-collecting and stayed within the confines of the law…Alexander also emphasized the need for secrecy in its surveillance programs…"The reason we use secrecy is not to hide it from the American people, not to hide it from you, but to hide it from those who walk among you who are trying to kill you," he argued…”

Mobile Computing & Communicating

19.     Smartphone Upgrades Slow as 'Wow' Factor Fades  http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887323664204578610233963082210-lMyQjAxMTAzMDEwNjExNDYyWj.html  “Fewer people are upgrading their smartphones—a trend that could make it harder for companies from AT&T Inc. to Apple Inc. to keep up the pace of revenue growth. The rates at which American cellphone users have traded in their devices for more advanced models have declined over the last few years…They turned negative last year, when about 68 million people upgraded their phones in the U.S., down more than 9% from a year earlier. UBS predicts upgrades will fall again this year…There are two components to the trend: With smartphone penetration approaching 70% of contract subscribers last year in the U.S., there are fewer customers left to upgrade to the Internet-ready devices and data plans…among existing smartphone owners, fewer are seeing the need to buy the latest Apple iPhone or Samsung Galaxy as the pace of innovation slows…”

20.    Here’s How Qualcomm’s Leaving Intel Behind in Mobile Computing  “…Qualcomm…will soon break into the tablet market with upgraded versions of its Snapdragon processor that will be featured in 200 phones and tablets to be released this year…Intel has historically…neglected mobile technology…and is now attempting to play mobile catch-up. Both companies are behind Samsung Electronics (SSNLF.PK), Texas Instruments (NYSE:TXN), and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) in the tablet-chip market…Intel has also been working to change the design of its chips used in smartphones and tablets to be more energy efficient and better tailored for mobile computing. Qualcomm’s big advantage in mobile is that its chips work like laptop chips, combining several functions into a single, small chip without sacrificing battery life. Intel doesn’t yet have that capability, and neither does Samsung…”

21.     Inside the wearable computing mobile market  http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/WEARABLE-COMPUTING-Inside-The-New-Mobile-Market-4652328.php  “…wearables won't just complement smartphones. What is perhaps most intriguing about them is that they will serve new purposes too…they're ideal for monitoring our vital signs and health. They'll track how active we are, our sleep quality, how many steps we take during the day. Consumers of all sorts — fitness buffs, dieters, and the elderly — will come to rely on them…Overall consumer awareness is still low…In a recent report…we…analyze various growth forecasts for the wearable computing market, explore the products and prospects of each component market - including bracelets, smartwatches, and eyewear…Here's a brief overview of the wearable computing market: Market sizing estimates vary…We see global annual wearable device unit shipments crossing the 100 million milestone in 2014, and reaching 300 million units five years from now…Bracelets…dominate the wearables market…We believe fitness and medical wearables, taken together, will account for roughly 60% of the wearables market this year, and…a larger share in the future…Smartwatches…Promoters of smartwatches also highlight the fact that users will no longer have to constantly reach into their pockets for a smartphone…we see the advantages of a smartwatch display over a smartphone screen as minimal…Eyewear…Marketers see great potential in Google Glass. They are already familiar with augmented reality since they have experimented with print materials that are readable by smartphone applications and can create complementary ad experiences…”

22.    New Motorola Droid sports 48-hour battery life  http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07/new-motorola-droid-sports-48-hour-battery-life/  “Verizon relaunched its Motorola Droid line…The three new Droids run Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, and each model focuses on maximizing one of three specs: compact design, thinness, and battery life, thanks to the a new SoC called the Motorola X8. The X8 system has eight cores, with two allocated for app processing, four for graphics processing, one for “contextual computing,” and one for natural language processing. The Droid Mini is the compact variation, with a 4.3-inch display. The Droid Ultra focuses on thinness and design, with a coated Kevlar body and 5-inch display. The Droid Maxx, the successor to the Droid Razr Maxx HD, is also thin at 8.5 millimeters with a 5-inch display, but it has a 3500 mAh battery that affords 48 hours of active use…”

Apps

23.    New smart phone app in Alameda County matches technology with civic engagement  http://www.cafwd.org/reporting/entry/new-smart-phone-app-in-alameda-county-matches-technology-with-civic-engagem  “…County residents now have a new tool for reporting issues like these to their Alameda County Public Works Agency, and it comes in the form of a smartphone application called Mobile Citizen. The app…allows citizens to take a photo of the problem and submit it along with GPS coordinates gathered by their phone…Ruiz believes this is the start of a growing movement towards local governments promoting civic engagement through tech…The primary draw of Mobile Citizen is the real-time response. Citizens receive automatic notifications throughout the process, confirming their request was received, when the work order was approved, and when it's been closed…Ruiz says counties and cities in the Bay Area have kept up a dialogue about different technological innovations they can undertake to improve the lives of their residents…Perhaps an app for citizens to submit their app ideas should be the next project for Alameda County…”

24.    Five smartphone apps for frequent flyers  http://www.mensxp.com/technology/portable-media/9244-5-must-have-smartphone-apps-for-frequent-fliers.html  “…MensXP brings you a list of 5 must-have apps that will make your flying hassle-free…1. Routehappy…2. SeatGuru…3. GateGuru…4. Next Flight…5. TripIt…”

25.    Pflugerville smartphone app connects residents  http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/pflugerville-smartphone-app-connects-residents/nYmHP/  “…The city of Pflugerville launched two smart phone apps, available for free on Apple and Android devices, on July 2…The three city festivals – Deutschen Pfest, Pfirecracker Pfestival and Chili Pfest – have their own links within the city app, with schedules, maps, general information and a vendor list…While the app has entertainment-based functions, there are also sub apps for residents’ everyday life. A city calendar sub app shows upcoming events in the city. There is also a library sub app where residents can search for books and research databases…Residents can also pay their utility bills and municipal court citations through the app…The Pfix-It app, which was created by City Sourced, is a work order system for the city. Residents can take a picture of anything that needs city attention, including utility issues or graffiti…Waggoner has high hopes for the apps in the coming years. She said the city will track who is clicking on what areas of the app and what parts of the app are most popular, to better serve the community…”

SkyNet

26.    Google tests encryption to protect users' Drive files against government demands  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57594171-38/google-tests-encryption-to-protect-users-drive-files-against-government-demands/  “Google has begun experimenting with encrypting Google Drive files, a privacy-protective move that could curb attempts by the U.S. and other governments to gain access to users' stored files…the…company is actively testing encryption to armor files on its cloud-based file storage and synchronization service…The move could differentiate Google from other Silicon Valley companies that have been the subject of ongoing scrutiny after classified National Security Agency slides revealed the existence of government computer software named PRISM…Major Web companies routinely use encryption, such as HTTPS, to protect the confidentiality of users' communications while they're being transmitted. But it's less common to see files encrypted while stored in the cloud, in part because of the additional computing expense and complexity and the difficulties in indexing and searching encrypted data…”

27.    Google to fund Taiwanese chipmaker to push Google Glass  http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/22/himax-google-idUSL4N0FS25T20130722  “Google Inc will take a 6.3 percent stake in the unit of Taiwanese chipmaker Himax Technologies Inc that develops display technology for devices such as Google Glass…The investment will help fund the production of liquid crystal on silicon chips and modules used in head-mounted devices such as Google Glass, head-up displays and pico-projectors…Google…is pushing forward with Google Glass, a product which CEO Larry Page has described as vital to the company's future success. The agreement also allows Google to raise its stake in the unit, Himax Display Inc, to 14.8 percent within a year…”

28.    Motorola Mobility Is Starting To Focus On Wearable Tech In Earnest  http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/19/job-listing-suggests-motorola-mobility-is-starting-to-focus-on-wearable-tech-in-earnest/  “…Motorola Mobility is looking to produce some new wearable gadgets…The…company quietly posted a job listing…for someone to fill the role of senior director of industrial design for wearables…that person will “provide strategic leadership, champion innovation and institute best practices to create a new world-class wearable’s [sic] design group within Motorola.”…There are repeated references to the importance of consumer appeal: the person who lands the gig must “define design strategies that synthesize technology innovation and consumer desires” and “ensure creative direction for design is consumer focused”, which make it look like Motorola eventually wants to release a wearable device that’s meant for the masses…”

29.    Google launches Cloud Printer driver and service for Windows  http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/07/22/google-launches-cloud-printer-driver-and-service-for-windows-lets-you-print-documents-outside-of-chrome/  “Google…is bringing its Cloud Print project to Windows. The company has launched both a driver and a service, both of which are available for download now from Google Tools…Google Cloud Print connects Cloud Print-aware applications (across the Web, desktop, and mobile) to any printer. It integrates with the mobile versions of Gmail and Google Docs, and is also listed as a printer option in the Print Preview page of Chrome…the new Google Cloud Printer driver makes it possible to print to any of your cloud printers from Windows applications. Chrome is no longer required…”

30.    How to enable or disable Gmail's new tabs  http://www.pcworld.com/article/2044770/how-to-enable-or-disable-gmails-new-tabs.html  “Gmail just rolled out one of its best features in years: Inbox tabs…Gmail can now automatically organize certain kinds of messages into tabs, greatly reducing inbox clutter in the process. For example, all your notifications from social-media services (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) will now be sorted into the Social tab, while offers from Groupon, LivingSocial, and other advertisers will land under Promos. If…you want to make changes to the settings, do this…”

31.     Google accounts for 25 percent of all Internet traffic  http://www.pcworld.com/article/2044938/google-accounts-for-25-percent-of-all-internet-traffic-study-finds.html  “…new products being built and provided by Google now make the company accountable for nearly 25 percent of all Internet traffic, up from a mere 6 percent just three years ago, according to a new study…The analysis includes computers and mobile devices as well as hundreds of varieties of game consoles, home media appliances and other embedded devices like Apple TV, Roku, Xbox 360 and mobile apps. The data focus primarily on North America…Deepfield co-founder Craig Labovitz attributed the meteoric rise in traffic patterns to server growth at Google as well as the success of a range of products such as YouTube (which the company bought for $1.65 billion in 2006), Android-based mobile devices and various Google cloud services like Google Drive…The rise in Google’s presence online is strongly linked with the…Google Global Cache (GGC) dedicated server program in the U.S…Google’s GGC program is designed to let network operators and Internet service providers deploy a small number of Google servers inside their network to serve popular Google content, like YouTube…”

32.    Google Maps out-Yelps Yelp  http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/23/technology/mobile/google-maps-app/?source=cnn_bin  “The best part of the new Google Maps app has nothing to do with a map. The new secret weapon of Google Maps for smartphones and tablets is a new feature called Explore, a Yelp-like tool that allows users to find, rate and see reviews of local establishments…Explore is a highly visual part of Google Maps that gives you a quick survey of the best options around you across five categories: Eat, Drink, Shop, Play, Sleep. The tool incorporates all the reviews Google…acquired when it bought Zagat, and it combines those with Google's own user-generated ratings….it's perfectly suited for tablets. The iPad and other tablets offer just enough physical screen space to deliver the loads of information about various locations that Explore cooks up…Going back to Yelp after using Explore is a little painful. Explore is Google's next big move towards conquering its rival, and this is only the first of many Google Maps innovations that should give the recommendation site pause…”

33.    Gmail Offers Full-Screen Compose Again  http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/19/gmail-offers-full-screen-compose-again/  “…Google has just launched a brand new, but ultimately ineffectual, feature for Gmail users: a full-screen compose option. Enabling this option will push the compose window to the center of your inbox, expanded across the majority of the screen for a better viewing experience. Google launched a brand new compose a few months ago, which gave users a bevy of new tools to build out their emails, as well as a new design to let you open a compose window without ever leaving the inbox. However, it appears that some users enjoy a more full-screen compose experience…”

General Technology

34.    Ars Technica System Guide: July 2013  http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07/ars-technica-system-guide-july-2013/  “…this iteration of the System Guide looks pretty straightforward. The new System Guide accounts for a significant jump in graphics performance and the continuing evolution of faster CPUs, but the effects are limited…Intel's new 4th generation Core i-series processors, codenamed Haswell, bring nice improvements in performance and platform power consumption, but the Haswell processors available at launch are really only suitable for the Hot Rod…cheaper dual-core Haswell parts in the Budget Box price range won't hit until the second wave of Haswell processors later this year. Overclockers have not been terribly happy overclocking Intel's 22nm processors (Ivy Bridge and Haswell), but in general, the IPC (instructions per clock) improvement and reduced power consumption have made Haswell a nice update all around…to AMD's credit, the very modest tweaks in its latest codenamed Richland APUs keep them very relevant in cheaper systems such as the Budget Box…”

35.    Smooth out your business’s voice and video streaming with QoS  http://www.pcworld.com/article/2044778/break-the-bottleneck-smooth-out-your-business-s-voice-and-video-streaming-with-qos.html  “If you’ve ever engaged in a voice over IP (VoIP) phone call or conducted a video conference over the Web, you’ve probably experienced choppy audio, pixelated video, and other “hiccups” that make these technologies frustrating to use at best and and an impediment to doing business at worst. Those annoying interruptions are the result of data struggling to get across your network. It’s important for all of the data to get from Point A to Point B, but some types—like streaming voice and video—simply won’t work if the data can’t travel smoothly. You can solve the problem by spending a lot of money for a bigger, faster Internet connection, but the smart way to address the issue is with QoS: Quality of Service…QoS is like designating certain data as the emergency vehicles of your network: It gives higher priority to specified data to ensure it arrives at the destination in order as quickly as possible. You can use QoS to create “express lanes” on your network for designated applications or computers, but QoS is not simply about getting the data there faster. It employs different techniques and algorithms for streaming media to make sure it arrives smoothly in the proper order to avoid interruptions, or the dreaded “buffering” message…”

36.    New way to prevent garbage software patents  http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2013/07/22.html  “There are a lot of people complaining about lousy software patents these days. I say, stop complaining, and start killing them. It took me about fifteen minutes to stop a crappy Microsoft patent from being approved…Software developers don’t actually invent very much. The number of actually novel, non-obvious inventions in the software industry that maybe…is, perhaps, two. The other 40,000-odd software patents issued every year are mostly garbage that any working programmer could “invent” three times before breakfast…companies large and small have figured out that patents are worth money, so they try to file as many as they possibly can…The first technique is…to make the language of the patent as confusing and obfuscated as possible…The second technique…is to use a thesaurus. Often, software patent applicants make up new terms to describe things with perfectly good, existing names…Since patent examiners rely so much on keyword searches…if you can change some of the keywords in your patent to be different than the words used everywhere else, you might get your patent through…when there’s blatant prior art…the third technique…is, striving to get the broadest possible patent…The America Invents Act changed the law to allow the public to submit examples of prior art…the USPTO asked us to set up Ask Patents, a Stack Exchange site where software developers…can submit examples of prior art to stop crappy software patents…Take patent application US 20130063492 A1, submitted by Microsoft…This patent…used terms like “pixel density” for something that every other programmer in the world would call “resolution,”…So I spent about a minute with Google and…found this…document entitled Writing DPI-Aware Win32 Applications…written by Ryan Haveson and Ken Sykes at…Microsoft…And it was written in 2008, while Microsoft’s new patent application was trying to claim that this “invention” was “invented” in 2011. Boom…Total time elapsed, maybe 10 minutes…The USPTO rejected Microsoft's Resizing Imaging Patent!...Micah showed me a document from the USPTO confirming that they had rejected the patent application, and the rejection relied very heavily on the document I found…It’s a pleasure to read him demolish the patent in question, all twenty claims…Software patent applications are of uniformly poor quality. They are remarkably easy to find prior art for…My dream is that when big companies hear about how friggin’ easy it is to block a patent application, they’ll use Ask Patents to start messing with their competitors. How cool would it be if Apple, Samsung, Oracle and Google got into a Mexican Standoff on Ask Patents? If each of those companies had three or four engineers dedicating a few hours every day to picking off their competitors’ applications, the number of granted patents to those companies would grind to a halt…”

37.    SanDisk's new flash drive wirelessly beams files to your tablet or phone  http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/22/4544560/sandisk-connect-wireless-flash-drive-USB-wi-fi-hands-on  “When you run out of room on your Apple iPad, your HTC One, or other mobile device without an SD card slot, where do you turn? Do you painstakingly delete one batch of vacation photos to make room to show off the next?...the SanDisk Connect…wireless flash drive…can hold additional files and beam them to your device at will, no internet connection required…the SanDisk Connect crams a Wi-Fi radio, a microSD slot, a four-hour battery, and all its circuitry into a device that's really no bigger than a fancy USB thumbdrive. And, at $49.99 for the 16GB model (or $59.99 for 32GB) it's comparatively cheap, too…You can…transfer files from stick to device, or vice versa…”

Leisure & Entertainment

38.    Apple Owns 56% Of The Streaming Devices Market, Roku Second With 21%  http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2013/07/apple-owns-56-of-the-streaming-devices-market-roku-second-with-21.html  “…Apple owned 56% of the streaming devices market in 2012, with Roku coming in second at 21% of the market. Apple accounts for the majority of sales by far, despite offering relatively narrow content access – this is not (yet) a market being driven by the value proposition of a streaming TV experience. AppleTV’s AirPlay feature was strategically crafted to simplify the process of transferring laptop and tablet displays to a TV screen, and it is AirPlaying – not OTT streaming – that is the primary reason for purchase of AppleTV devices. Roku is the second largest vendor in this space and is driving growth through a strong lineup of content as well as through a series of agreements with Pay TV vendors such as Time Warner Cable. The long-term potential for this segment does remain uncertain…while current growth rates are high, the total installed base of $99 streaming boxes is quite low…”

39.    How To Self-Publish A Bestseller: Publishing 3.0  http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/20/how-to-self-publish-a-bestseller-publishing-3-0/  “…This post is about what I did differently, why I did it differently, and how I think anyone can do this to self-publish a bestseller…Every entrepreneur should self-publish a book, because self-publishing is the new business card. If you want to stand out in a world of content, you need to underline your expertise. Publishing a book is not just putting your thoughts on a blog post…It shows your best curated thoughts and it shows customers, clients, investors…what the most important things on your mind are right now…The distinction now is no longer between “traditional publishing” versus “self-publishing.” The distinction now is between professional versus unprofessional publishing…The benefits are enormous: More money…Control over design…Speed…Content control…Avoiding bad things in life…Here’s what I did step-by-step with my latest book for the first month since publication…1) BUILD YOUR PLATFORM…2) HOW DO YOU BUILD YOUR PLATFORM?...3) WRITE…4) KNOW WHAT YOU WANT…5) EDITING…6) DESIGN…7) AUDIOBOOK…8) TITLE…9) MARKETING…10) FOREIGN RIGHTS…11) OTHER MERCHANDISE…”

40.    Goodreads Has 20M Members, Doubling In Less Than A Year  http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/23/goodreads-20-million-members/  “Goodreads, the social reading service…has reached 20 million members…It took Goodreads only 11 months to double its membership after hitting 10 million members in August 2012. Chandler identified three main factors behind the accelerating growth. First, he said, Goodreads has now built up “a critical mass of book reviews.”…with more than 25 million reviews, Goodreads now covers enough titles that you can find lots of useful content. Second…Goodreads has seen “explosive” mobile growth…users…want to look up titles before they purchase them in bookstores, and the easiest way to do that is from their phones. Plus, he said it reflects…the fact that “more people are reading on mobile devices than ever before.” The third factor has been Goodreads’ international growth…”

Entrepreneurism and Technology

41.     Why you should pre-launch your startup idea  http://www.bogdannedelcu.com/why-you-should-pre-launch-your-startup-idea.html  “…I made a simple presentation page for the product with the desire of validating certain ideas and for attracting people willing to test the application shortly after its launch. Results are good: I validated some initial assumptions about the market potential, and up to 200 visitors were willing to test the product…promoting a landing page before the official release also brings more solid and directly measurable results.  Below I have compiled a list of  benefits, which can be achieved through a landing page prelaunch…1. You can test your idea…2. You can test the value proposition…3. You can test the necessity of some features…4. Market and traffic potential…5. Determine the Customer Acquisition Cost…6. Get valuable feedback…7. Get a psychological boost..8. Launch Big…”

42.    Bay Area Tech Wages Are The Nation’s Highest At $123K  http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/20/bay-area-tech-wages-are-nations-highest/  “The San Francisco Bay Area pays the highest median tech wage, at $123,497…Despite the significant gap in wages and costs between the Bay Area and other tech hubs, it doesn’t look like it’s causing a significant talent exodus yet. The median wage for tech workers in San Francisco, Marin, and San Mateo counties is nearly 21 percent higher than the second highest, Boston, at $102,230. However, while this wage is good for top-flight engineers, it leads to significantly higher costs for entrepreneurs…salaries for a 10-person team, on average, would total $1,234,970 in San Francisco, but only $932,490 in Austin, Texas. The difference in how much equity a founder has to give up can be substantial…”

43.    MBank And The Future Of Responsive Banking  http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/20/mbank-and-the-future-of-responsive-banking/  “…How could a banking spin-off of BRE Bank and founded in 2000 create one of the coolest, most high-tech banking experiences I’ve seen? The more important question…was how could a Polish bank beat the big guys — the Chases, the Citibanks, and the Credit Suisses of the world — to the punch in terms of improved user experience and unique features?...While they still get some funding from their parent organization, mBank was designed to be a greenfield operation and work independently from the staid old banks…it’s a snappy…web-only service that lets customers view their transactions using user-experience rules that are more familiar to Steam users than bank customers…While other bank websites show a list of transactions and little else, mBank can show you where those purchases appear in your overall account balance and how and where they fit into your budget. This is done with some clever animations and dynamic objects that are as modern and sleek as an app…”

Design / DEMO

44.    Design Is Catching Up to 3D Printing  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/arts/design/Catching-Up-to-3D-Printing.html?src=recg&_r=0  “If all goes well, Space, a charity that provides studio space for about 700 designers and artists in east London, will hit its target of £10,000 in a crowdfunding campaign that ends Saturday and can then buy the equipment it needs to open a digital manufacturing facility named Fab Lab. Like designers and artists all over the world, the occupants of Space’s studios are eager to experiment with the latest advances in 3D printing and other digital production technologies…Fab Lab is intended to give them the physical resources to do so, while Space plans to organize debates where they can discuss the possibilities of these new forms of manufacturing. Translating scientific innovations into things that may make our lives more efficient, enlightened or enjoyable has been an important role of design throughout history…Experimenting with the rapidly evolving technology of digital manufacturing forms part of that tradition, which is why it has proved so contentious within design circles…Some of the companies that apply it on an industrial scale, including CRP Group in Italy and Materialise in Belgium, have collaborated with designers to experiment with ways of using their systems to make furniture and other small objects in far larger quantities…”

45.    Why 3D Printing Will Work In Fashion  http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/20/why-3d-printing-will-work-in-fashion/  “…3D printing has entered the mainstream, and it will disrupt every industry’s manufacturing processes slightly differently. Let’s talk about why it will work in fashion. 3D printing is not entirely new to the fashion industry, as jewelry designers have for years outsourced quick modeling jobs to printing companies…Catherine Wales, a designer trained in classic garment cutting at Yves Saint Laurent and Emanuel Ungaro, is currently exhibiting a collection of masks, corsets and helmets…Designers Francis Bitonti and Michael Schmidt collaborated with Shapeways to produce a 3D-printed gown…The results are beautiful. Comprising 3,000 articulated joints and dotted with 12,000 Swarovski crystals, Dita’s gown fits her curves like a glittering Chinese finger trap. Wales’s feathered shoulder piece fluffs and falls like the real thing. This is art. It isn’t wearable, but it suggests that 3D printing has the finesse necessary to break into an industry known for its attention to quality craft. It is becoming more and more wearable…Printers are getting closer to producing good fabric-like materials, using interlocking structures to create weaves and stitches…”

DHMN Technology

46.    3D printing will explode in 2014, thanks to the expiration of key patents  http://qz.com/106483/3d-printing-will-explode-in-2014-thanks-to-the-expiration-of-key-patents/  “…In February 2014, key patents that currently prevent competition in the market for the most advanced and functional 3D printers will expire…These patents cover a technology known as “laser sintering,” the lowest-cost 3D printing technology. Because of its high resolution in all three dimensions, laser sintering can produce goods that can be sold as finished products…Once the key patents on 3D printing via laser sintering expire, we could see huge drop in the price of these devices…when the key patents expired on a more primitive form of 3D printing, known as fused deposition modeling, the result was an explosion of open-source FDM printers that eventually led to iconic home and hobbyist 3D printer manufacturer Makerbot…Within just a few years of the patents on FDM expiring, the price of the cheapest FDM printers fell from many thousands of dollars to as little as $300. This led to a massive democratization of hobbyist-level 3D printers and injected a huge amount of excitement into the nascent movement of “Makers,” who manufacture at home on the scale of one object at a time. A similar sequence involving the lifting of intellectual property barriers, a rise in competition, and a huge drop in price is likely to play out again in laser deposition 3D printers…”

47.    Water-cooled Raspberry Pi looks hot, runs cool  http://www.techhive.com/article/2044913/water-cooled-raspberry-pi-looks-hot-runs-cool.html  “People have done some pretty insane things with their Raspberry Pi—such as building a system cluster—but nothing looks quite as [cool]…as attaching a water cooling system to the popular computer on a stick…the build comes complete with a raspberry-colored cooling fluid that keeps the processors on the board chilled…You can check out the full hardcore build instructions on the Bit-Tech forums…”

48.    Austin Startup re:3D Creates Gigabot 3D Printer  http://www.siliconhillsnews.com/2013/07/18/8229/  “Gigabot is Austin startup re:3D’s printer that builds objects thirty times larger than most consumer 3D printers, and costs less than $6,000. For comparison: The Makerbot Replicator 2 printer that can build objects of 410 cubic inches (roughly the size of a human head) costs around $2,000…Gigabot prints objects of 14,000 cubic inches (about the size of your dorm refrigerator) for under $6,000…Objet 1000, built by Stratasys, has roughly a 24,000 cubic inch volume (the size of your real refrigerator) for about $40,000…there are other differences. Gigabot has a resolution of 100 micron layers whereas Objet 1000 can get an accuracy within 16 micron layers…”

Open Source Hardware

49.    Seej 3D Printed Game Update  http://3dprintingindustry.com/2013/07/19/seej-3d-printed-game-update/  “Seej, to quote it’s brief, ‘is an Open Source tabletop war game designed to advance the state of 3D printing through competition and player-directed evolution. Players print their own armaments and fortifications for use in battle. If you can print it, it’s legal to use in the game.’…Seej is a game that takes the principles of open-source to their logical conclusion: that the games components are flexible is one thing, that the rules are open-source is another. The basic tenant is that one player has to knock over the others flags using the various devices and arsenal concocted by their own imagination (or love of historical warfare knowledge, Games Workshop addiction, etc.). The base kit comes with Trebuchet, staple of all Hollywood historical battles, with coins as arms, and logo-brick-esque walls to knock over. These are all available, open-source and for free of course, over at The Forge…”  [one of the cool aspects of this game is that it appears he’s from the Appleton area! – ed.]

50.    Open source hardware searching for business model  http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1263197  “There's no doubt that engineers like the idea of open-source hardware. There are an increasing number of open-source hardware board designs – Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Beagleboard and many others – that enable hobbyist projects and the reuse of board designs in commercial products. And many engineers are putting a lot of time into enabling these movements via collaborative work online and through the creation of vibrant online communities. What is less clear is whether such movements will scale into the commercial world. There is a lack of clear business model…Over its short life the Raspberry Pi low-cost single-board computer, based on an ARM11-based system-chip from Broadcom, has been a phenomenal success in terms of shipments. But what remains unclear is how widely the board is fulfilling its original brief of teaching young people how to program or is being adopted as a building block in commercial embedded equipment designs. Gert Van Loo…architect of the prototype of the Raspberry-Pi computer board, said that commercial uptake has been gated by considerations of whether the Raspberry Pi Foundation can guarantee to be able to supply boards in five or ten years time. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is doing its best to make those assurances…”

Open Source

51.     Canonical Seeks $32 Million in Crowdfunding for Linux Phone  http://www.datamation.com/mobile-wireless/canonical-seeks-32-million-in-crowdfunding-for-linux-phone.html  “Ubuntu Linux vendor Canonical is taking a novel approach to getting a new type of superphone to market. Instead of bankrolling production on its own, Canonical is reaching out to its community via crowdfunding site Indiegogo, to raise $32 million in order to build 40,000 Ubuntu Edge devices…Ubuntu Edge will be a dual-boot device with both Android and Ubuntu on it. The device will also be loaded with 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of RAM. The device will also include a pure Saphire Crystal screen that will provide more resilience than what most phones provide today…Shuttleworth explained that his company will be underwriting the design validation and if the Indiegogo campaign is greenlit, Canonical will break even on the cost of building the phone…”

52.    OpenIncubate launches to supercharge infrastructure startups with open-source cred  http://gigaom.com/2013/07/18/openincubate-launches-to-supercharge-infrastructure-startups-with-open-source-cred/  “All systems are go for OpenIncubate, a new accelerator seeking startups focused on open IT infrastructure…We’ve already seen enterprise-focused accelerators and hardware accelerators cropping up. OpenIncubate takes from each of those categories, targeting open-source IT. Its doors will be open to any companies or teams that are working on software, Software as a Service (SaaS) and/or hardware and want to address the software-defined data-center vision through open-source technology…Participants will need to be in Austin, Texas; Menlo Park, Calif.; or Boston in order to get working space and access to advisors. What sorts of companies might be ripe for participation? Think of NoviFlow, a young OpenFlow-enabled switch maker, or Cumulus Networks, an ambitious startup with an operating system for commodity switches…”

53.    LittleBox DIY Kit: Make Your Own Raspberry Pi-based All-in-One PC  http://ostatic.com/blog/littlebox-diy-kit-make-your-own-raspberry-pi-based-all-in-one-pc  “…LittleBox…is a DIY kit that allows you to transform your Raspberry Pi into a full-fledged all-in-one desktop computer. It…looks a little like an iMac merged with an iPad…The Littlebox kit comes with 60 laser-cut wood parts, many components, an LCD screen, connectors…The project is currently in Kickstarter mode, and will be seeking funding there through August 8. You can either pledge $205 and get a LittleBox in October 2014, or pledge about $227 and get one in October of this year. Sounds like the second pledge saves a lot of wait time. However, LittleBox is open source in that you can get directions for building one here…”

Civilian Aerospace

54.    Kickstarter Campaign Wants to Send Tiny Satellites out of Earth Orbit  http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517186/kickstarter-campaign-wants-to-send-tiny-satellites-out-of-earth-orbit/  “A mini-satellite, no bigger than a loaf of bread, could push itself out of Earth’s orbit as soon as next year if a crowdfunding campaign to support development of a diminutive propulsion system succeeds. If such small spacecraft can be made to operate far from Earth, they could one day make inexpensive expeditions to asteroids, Mars, and beyond. Interplanetary spacecraft are typically bigger than a car, cost hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, and take many years to develop and launch…Researchers at the University of Michigan have a design for a propulsion system they believe is ready to send a CubeSat on an expedition into deep space. Their campaign on the fundraising site Kickstarter asks for $200,000 to pay for development needed to make a test launch next year…”

55.     Mars needs workers! Space startups desperate for talent  http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/07/18/the-next-stem-talent-crunch-space-tech.html  “Hardware, software, mobile apps, product development. The list of potential jobs for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) talent goes on…bagging that talent is no small feat for employers, in particular small companies and startups…Elon Musk's space transportation startup Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is currently looking for about 200 employees, including highly technical roles in engineering and manufacturing…And it's not just SpaceX…“We’re hiring,” said Chris Lewicki, president and chief engineer of asteroid mining company Planetary Resources. “We take software developers of all disciplines…We’re not necessarily looking for people who have done the type of work we’re asking from them,” Lewicki said. “We're looking to add a few young and enthusiastic software developers who…want to follow their passion in space…”

56.    Two Tucson researchers get NASA awards to turn sci-fi into real thing  http://azstarnet.com/news/local/education/college/two-tucson-researchers-get-nasa-awards-to-turn-sci-fi/article_f4a40627-3df7-5cc3-b8dc-d3abe35cce7c.html  “Tucson-based researchers have won two of the 12 awards NASA gives annually to turn science-fiction concepts into reality…Christopher Walker wants to build a 10-meter suborbital telescope that is essentially an aluminized mylar balloon, while Thomas Prettyman…wants to build instruments for spacecraft that would take full-body scans of asteroids and comets…Walker…proposes to build a balloon whose aluminized half would form a 10-meter mirror that could either be aimed at targets in space or turned toward Earth from its suborbital position for remote sensing and communications…It would have the advantage of being above most of the distorting effects of water vapor in the atmosphere. The telescope would be surrounded by a larger balloon, the size of a football field. It would carry the telescope up to 120,000 feet above sea level and then serve as a stabilizing mount and protective radome…”

Supercomputing & GPUs

57.     Nvidia Debuts GPU-Based Surveillance Platform For Threat Detection  http://www.crn.com/news/storage/240158428/nvidia-debuts-gpu-based-surveillance-platform-for-threat-detection.htm  “Big data can only be smart data with the right tools. That's becoming increasingly hard for military and crime investigators that slice, dice and parse terabytes of image and video data to detect threats…Nvidia announced…a GPU-accelerated geospatial intelligence platform that allows security analysts to zip through raw data, images and video to detect threats fast and accurately…GeoInt Accelerator, consists of the Nvidia Tesla GPU, software applications for geospatial intelligence analysis, and supports custom-advanced application development libraries. Nvidia claims its platform can help companies analyze high-resolution satellite imagery, facial recognition in surveillance video and video collected by drones 10 times faster than systems with CPUs alone. Nvidia is targeting the fast-growing business-intelligence market…projected to be worth $17.1 billion by 2016…”

58.    Khronos Releases OpenCL 2.0 Provisional Specification  http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2013/07/22/khronos-releases-opencl-20-provisional-specification-public-review  “The Khronos Group…announced the…public release of the OpenCL 2.0 provisional specification. OpenCL 2.0 is a significant evolution of the open, royalty-free standard that is designed to further simplify cross-platform, parallel programming…“The OpenCL working group has combined developer feedback with emerging hardware capabilities to create a state-of–the-art parallel programming platform - OpenCL 2.0,” said Neil Trevett…“OpenCL continues to gather momentum on both desktop and mobile devices. In addition to enabling application developers it is providing foundational, portable acceleration for middleware libraries, engines and higher-level programming languages that need to take advantage of heterogeneous compute resources including CPUs, GPUs, DSPs and FPGAs…”

Trends & Emerging Tech

59.    Top Mobile Computing Trends For Trucking  http://www.truckinginfo.com/channel/fleet-management/article/story/2013/07/top-mobile-computing-trends.aspx  “…Adam Kahn, director of product marketing at Omnitracs, took a deeper look at emerging fleet management and mobile computing trends, and provided insight on how fleets can best use this technology to stay on top of the changing industry…1. Compliance…2: Data…3: Vehicle Safety…4. Optimizing Resources…5. Managing Driver Behavior…”

60.    Consumer Reports reveals eight big tech trends and gotta-have gadgets for summer  http://www.chathamjournal.com/weekly/living/technology/consumer-reports-tech-trends-gadgets-130621.shtml  “…America is on track in 2013 to acquire a new gadget for roughly every man, woman, and child over the age of 12. A special “Gear to Go” section in the August issue of Consumer Reports outlines some key trends that cut across multiple categories of mobile devices…Following are six of the eight tech trends that can be found in the report: Phones, meet cameras. Cameras, meet phones…Displays get sharp and wide…Don’t be afraid to mix or switch platforms…E-book readers are down – but not out…Battery life lengthens…Sound options multiply…”

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