NEW NET Weekly List for 20 Aug 2013

Below is the final list of issues for the Tuesday, 20 August 2013, NEW NET (NorthEast Wisconsin Network for Economy and Technology) 7:00 - 9:00 PM weekly gathering upstairs at Tom's Drive In, 501 N. Westhill Blvd., Appleton, WI, USA, near Woodman's. Ignore the chain if it's across the stairs; come on up and join the tech fun!

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

1.        Meet the Hackers Who Want to Jailbreak the Internet (# 12)

2.       Groklaw shuts down (# 17)

3.       Barnes & Noble Undercuts Amazon, Kobo, NOOK Simple Touch GlowLight $99 (# 25)

4.       Google Search Gets More Personal, Now Lets You Find Your Flight Info, Reservations, Photos (# 32)

5.        Google is preparing for screenless computers (# 34)

6.       How to get better images out of your smartphone (# 40)

7.        Brainwaves to raise the tech game (# 41)

8.       Quad Copter Camp Teaches Engineering and Business Skills (# 44)

9.       Beyond 3D printing: The all-in-one factory (# 51)

10.     Grasshopper spaceship 100M lateral divert test (# 57)

The ‘net

11.      Slack, The Newest Enterprise Social Network, From Flickr’s Stewart Butterfield  http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/14/say-hello-to-slack-the-newest-enterprise-social-network-and-the-latest-effort-from-flickr-co-founder-stewart-butterfields-tiny-speck/  “Stand aside Yammer, Convo, Socialcast, Hipchat and the rest, and make way for another hopeful in the world of enterprise social networking: Stewart Butterfield…is today launching Slack, a platform aimed at teams of co-workers to converse, work on projects together, and share links, pictures and more in real time…It’s aim…is…to make work more seamless, particularly among those who don’t work in the same physical space…There are smart integrations…with Google Docs, Dropbox, GitHub, SVN and Perforce (Source control / repository), Twitter (Social network), Crashlytics (Crash reporting), HelpScout and ZenDesk (Help Desk), Wufoo (Form building), Nagios (IT monitoring), Trello (Project Management), Heroku (Cloud infrastructure as a service), Hubot (Messaging bot), Phabricator (Software management) and Travis (Testing / Continuous Integration). This means that users can track — and most significantly search — across all of what they may do in these different programs, once a user has created a link between files in one program and Slack…there is a great system for tracking hashtags (effectively discussion topics) on the service, with a dedicated, always-there column of them that not only indicates the most popular discussions, but also those that are important and ongoing…”  https://slack.com/   http://www.convo.com/   https://www.hipchat.com/

12.     Meet the Hackers Who Want to Jailbreak the Internet  http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/08/indie-web/  “One guy is wearing his Google Glass. Another showed up in an HTML5 t-shirt…At first, they look like any other gaggle of tech geeks. But then you notice that one of them is Ward Cunningham, the man who invented the wiki…And there’s Kevin Marks, the former vice president of web services at British Telecom. Oh, and…Brad Fitzpatrick, creator of…LiveJournal and, more recently, a coder who works in the engine room of Google’s online empire…this rag-tag band of software developers has an outsized digital pedigree, and they have a mission to match. They hope to jailbreak the internet. They call it the Indie Web movement, an effort to create a web that’s not so dependent on tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, and, yes, Google — a web that belongs not to one individual or one company, but to everyone…The movement grew out of an egalitarian online project launched by Fitzpatrick, before he made the move to Google…On any given day, you’ll find about 30 or 40 of them on an IRC chat channel, and each summer, they come together in the flesh for this two-day mini-conference, known as IndieWebCamp. They hack. They demonstrate…They strive to create a new set of tools that can give you greater control over the stuff you post to the net — the photos, the status updates, the blog posts, the comments. “The Indie Web is a community of folks interested in owning their own content — and identity — online…”

13.     Google reveals Fiber plans coming to Provo this year, including free 5 Mbps Internet after $30 construction fee  http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/08/15/google-reveals-fiber-plans-for-provo-starting-with-free-5-mbps-internet-for-all-after-30-construction-fee/  “Google…plans to sign up its first Google Fiber customers in Provo before the end of the year…Here are…Google Fiber plans that will be available in Provo…Free Internet. Get today’s basic broadband speeds (up to 5 Mbps download, 1 Mbps upload) for free for at least the next seven years…Gigabit Internet. Connect to the web at speeds up to 100 times faster than basic broadband (up to 1 Gbps download and upload) for $70/month…”

14.     Microsoft to kill Tag barcode program  http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/19/4635588/microsoft-tag-2d-hccb-barcode-support-ending-2015  “Microsoft is to shut down Tag, a type of barcode technology not too dissimilar to QR codes, in 2015. The technology is a form of High Capacity Color Barcode (HCCB), and allows for a higher density of information to be stored in a smaller space when compared to QR codes, in addition to tracking and analytics. Although Tag failed to gain mass-market adoption, Microsoft currently facilitates Tag reading through apps for Windows Phone, iOS, and Android…”

Security, Privacy & Digital Controls

15.     Ability to police U.S. spying program limited  http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/court-ability-to-police-us-spying-program-limited/2013/08/15/4a8c8c44-05cd-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html  “The leader of the secret court that is supposed to provide critical oversight of the government’s vast spying programs said that its ability to do so is limited and that it must trust the government to report when it improperly spies on Americans…” 

16.     You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up  http://www.groovypost.com/news/facebook-shadow-accounts-non-users/  “…it looks like Facebook is a bit more involved in privacy intrusions than anyone had previously thought. In a recent bug fix, Facebook inadvertently revealed that it’s creating dossier-like profiles on its users based on third-party information…When someone “connects” to Facebook using their Gmail, Yahoo, Twitter, Outlook or whatever account, Facebook will ask for permission to access your contacts to “find your friends on Facebook”…Facebook is…harvesting all of that contact data and using it to create “shadow profiles” based on name and email address information…For a while, this information was available to people using the “download my data” feature due to a bug in the Facebook system, which has now been corrected. Although this information is no longer publicly available, it is still being collected by Facebook. And, these profiles may store information on people who don’t even have a Facebook account…”

17.     Groklaw shuts down  http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175  “The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too. There is no way to do Groklaw without email. Therein lies the conundrum. I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure it out. And the conclusion I've reached is that there is no way to continue doing Groklaw…which is incredibly sad…I don't know how to function in such an atmosphere. I don't know how to do Groklaw like this…What I do know is it's not possible to be fully human if you are being surveilled 24/7…You'll find all the laws in the US related to privacy and surveillance there. Not that anyone seems to follow any laws that get in their way these days. Or if they find they need a law to make conduct lawful, they just write a new law or reinterpret an old one and keep on going…There is now no shield from forced exposure…My personal decision is to get off of the Internet to the degree it's possible…I can't stay online personally without losing my humanness, now that I know that ensuring privacy online is impossible…Oddly, if everyone did that, leap off the Internet, the world's economy would collapse, I suppose. I can't really hope for that. But for me, the Internet is over…”  http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130820/02152224249/more-nsa-spying-fallout-groklaw-shutting-down.shtml  “…What amazes me in all of these discussions concerning the defenders of such surveillance is that they never even seem able to comprehend the psychological impact of what all of this does. The way people change their behavior when they're being watched constantly…The government, again, has put so much emphasis on the "benefit" of preventing an exceptionally low probability event, that it barely even considers the massive costs on everyone else…It's difficult to see how anyone can claim it's worth the costs…Groklaw is a needless casualty in a stupid power struggle among weak-minded, power hungry government officials who don't even seem to comprehend what a mess they've created.”

18.     U.K. government thought destroying Guardian hard drives would stop Snowden stories  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/19/u-k-government-thought-destroying-guardian-hard-drives-would-stop-snowden-stories/  “…the British government raided the Guardian’s offices in order to destroy hard drives containing information provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden. The British government had been pressuring the Guardian to return or destroy the Snowden documents. Rusbridger…tried to explain that destroying hard drives would be pointless: I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil? The man was unmoved…”

19.     3-D Printing Stirs Copyright Clash on Homemade IPhone Gear  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-13/3-d-printing-stirs-copyright-clash-on-homemade-iphone-gear-tech.html  “Fernando Sosa had no doubt his sword-covered iPhone dock inspired by the hit TV series “Game of Thrones” would become a top seller for his small manufacturing startup. Then he heard from HBO…Defending a copyright on electronics featuring its show, HBO in February demanded Sosa halt sales on his website…Sosa is part of the swelling ranks of designers facing legal challenges for using consumer versions of 3-D printers once found only on factory floors. “It’s going to be a problem for the future,” said Sosa…“A lot of new products are going to come out, and big companies are going to squash the little companies.”…disputes are ushering in a new era in legal skirmishes over high-tech designs, threatening a printing market…“We’re at the tipping point,” Darrell Mottley, a patent and trademark attorney..said…“The technology has got to where it’s not that expensive. If you’re a manufacturer and people start making their own replacement parts, what does that mean?…”

20.    Oh Google. Of course email users expect privacy — you promised it to them  http://gigaom.com/2013/08/14/oh-google-of-course-email-users-expect-privacy-you-promised-it-to-them/  “…In a motion to dismiss Consumer Watchdog’s class action lawsuit against it, Google said no email users can expect privacy. The lawsuit is about the fact that Google scans Gmail emails for keywords, so it can better target ads…Google’s lawyers said…all users of email must necessarily expect that their emails will be subject to automated processing…But where might email users have got the crazy idea that their webmail correspondence was private and secure in the first place? Perhaps from their provider’s promises, such as…“You have a variety of tools that can help keep you safe and keep your information private and secure.”…“We’re constantly working to ensure strong security, protect your privacy…”…“Our top priority is to protect the privacy and security of our users.”… “We want to protect your privacy…”

21.     Webcam spying goes mainstream as Miss Teen USA describes hack  http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/webcam-spying-goes-mainstream-as-miss-teen-usa-describes-hack/  “Webcam hacking has officially gone mainstream with yesterday's revelation that the new Miss Teen USA, Cassidy Wolf, was the victim of a "sextortion" plot in which someone slipped Remote Administration Tool (RAT) software onto her computer and used it to snap (apparently nude) pictures of Wolf in her room…These hacks are such a profound privacy violation—accessing webcams, microphones, and stored files provides the attacker with almost unfettered access to one's private life, thoughts, documents, even conversations—that they routinely generate amazement in interlocutors…Wolf is even making sextortion and webcam hacking one of the centerpieces of her educational efforts as Miss Teen USA…RAT software has grown so powerful and so easy to use that it's use has been surging…Wolf…has refused to be silenced by her extortionist and…is taking on the topics of digital privacy and security, which are increasingly crucial to teens…”

22.    The 'gold rush' for 3-D printing patents  http://www.cnbc.com/id/100942655  “The technology behind 3-D printing, which seems limited only by our imagination, could very well upend patent and intellectual property law. Goldman Sachs recently cited 3-D printing as one of eight trends poised to disrupt industries…get ready for a patent land grab of 3-D intellectual property. Industrial manufacturers are making shapes from fused bits of plastic and metal powder; shapes that previously weren't possible. They're looking up from their work on the shop floor and wondering, "Do I need a patent?" "The last time I saw this kind of gold rush for patents was during the dot-com boom" of the late 1990s, said Peter Canelias, a patent attorney…The 3-D technology has kept the Patent and Trademark Office busy, too. During the last decade, it has received more than 6,800 patent applications related to 3-D printing (also known as additive manufacturing). Since 2007, about 680 patents a year have been filed…”

Mobile Computing & Communicating

23.    Smartphones Finally Overtook Featurephones Sales Globally In Q2, Android Now At 79%  http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/14/gartner-q2-smartphone/  “…Q2 2013 numbers show…smartphone sales exceeded feature phone sales for the first time…worldwide smartphones sales rose 46.5%...to hit 225 million units shipped…feature phones declined 21% year-on-year to 210 million units…IDC‘s recent market figures put Android on approaching 80% worldwide marketshare for Q2…Apple also grew shipments of its iPhone but its marketshare declined — highlighting the case for Cupertino to make a low cost iPhone to capture growth at the budget end of the market…”

24.    Smartphones and tablets outsell computers for Lenovo, the world's top PC maker  http://www.pcworld.com/article/2046697/lenovos-smartphone-tablets-outsell-pcs-in-first-quarter.html  “Lenovo's sales of tablets and smartphones were higher than that of PCs in its fiscal first quarter…The company reported on Thursday that net profit jumped 23 percent during its first fiscal quarter…The Chinese PC maker reported the positive earnings for a quarter when it beat HP to become the world's largest PC maker, according to research firm IDC. During the period all of the top five PC vendors saw decline in shipments, with Lenovo's down year-over-year by 1.4 percent…”

25.    Barnes & Noble Undercuts Amazon, Kobo, NOOK Simple Touch GlowLight $99  http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/18/barnes-noble-undercuts-amazon-kobo-by-dropping-nook-simple-touch-glowlight-to-99/  “The Nook Simple Touch GlowLight is one of the best ereaders on the market. It has a very nice form and a great screen. And now it’s also the cheapest of its kind. B&N just announced a $20 price cut, bringing the GlowLight’s price down to just $99. The ad-supported Kindle Paperwhite is $119 and the Kobo Glo is $129.99…Powered by a front-lit screen dubbed GlowLight, the Nook Simple Touch GlowLight emits a pleasant glow that’s sort of different from traditional backlighting. It’s easier on the eyes but the light cuts the battery life in half — which honestly is not that big of a deal since it still lasts 2 months…the Nook Simple Touch GlowLight is setting the new standard for ereaders. Front-lit screens offer a more versatile reading experience to their non-lit counterparts…”

26.    Galaxy Mega: phone or tablet?  http://gigaom.com/2013/08/19/is-the-galaxy-mega-a-phone-or-a-tablet-according-to-sprint-its-a-phone/  “…Samsung Galaxy Mega may have a screen only 0.7 inches smaller than the Nexus 7, but Sprint doesn’t view the Mega as a tablet, rather as a phone…Sprint revealed on Monday that…the Mega…will come with the same unlimited data options as its regular smartphone plans…For carriers that still offer unlimited plans like Sprint and T-Mobile, smartphone plans can be unlimited, but tablet plans cannot…thing about tablets is that they’re much more immersive devices than smartphones. Their larger screen sizes and longer battery lives promote hardcore data usage: more multimedia streaming and higher quality video streams, a PC browsing experience rather than a handset browsing experience…studies have shown that the typical cellular-enabled tablet eats up to three times the data of the typical smartphone…”

27.    Avast! Mobile Backup Regularly Backs Up Your Android to Google Drive  http://lifehacker.com/avast-mobile-backup-regularly-backs-up-your-android-to-1157080403  “There are plenty of great ways to back up your Android phone, but the new Avast! Mobile Backup makes it easy for anyone to do scheduled backups of their apps, settings, and data, and then sync all of that information to the cloud where you can quickly use it to set up a new phone. Backing up your Android phone isn't difficult, but the best tools require root access in order to get all of your apps and settings, and to do automated, regular backups that can run when you're not looking. Avast, on the other hand, doesn't require root access …You'll need an Avast account to use the app, and once you're logged in the app will prompt you to connect it with Google Drive, where most of your data will be stored. From there, the free version of the app lets you back up call logs, SMS, contacts, and photos. If you want to back up music, video, or apps…you'll need to upgrade to a premium account in-app for $2/mo or $15/yr…”

Apps

28.    Chronos, The Quantified Self App, Version 2.0  http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/14/chronos-the-quantified-self-app-without-the-financial-commitment-relaunches-with-version-2-0/  “Chronos, a time-tracking application for iPhone…is rolling out…Chronos version 2.0…It’s generally aimed at so-called “quantified self” enthusiasts — those who like to gather data about their lives, activities, health, moods and more. This is a growing area of interest, especially in terms of fitness trackers like Fitbit, FuelBand, Jawbone UP, Shine, Withings Pulse…it may appeal to those who are curious about the quantified self movement, but who aren’t ready to commit to a hardware purchase…If you want to buy a FuelBand or Fitbit, you’re talking about 100, 130, or 150 bucks to get started,” Kubal says…Chronos is easier to get started with, as it’s just a free software download…”

29.    Iowa DOT plans app to block young drivers' texts  http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20130814/NEWS/308140047/DOT-plans-app-block-young-drivers-texts  “Not many tech-savvy teenage drivers will be LOL…after their parents download a new smartphone application planned by the Iowa Department of Transportation…The goal is to prevent young drivers from texting while behind the wheel. “What we would like it to do is to turn off the texting availability of the phone anytime it detects a speed over 15 mph,”…the teen driver safety app…is expected to become available in early 2014…Parents would have a portal on a desktop or laptop computer to monitor some of their teen’s driving behaviors…Use of the app will be purely voluntarily to encourage safe driving behavior. “It is not tied in any way to the issuance of their license…”

30.    Smartphone app replaces lost keys  http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/smartphone-app-replaces-lost-keys/26121  “A smartphone app called KeyMe is offering a high tech solution to the old problem of misplaced keys by creating a digital copy that can be remade at any time. KeyMe…was created to help customers avoid having to call a locksmith when home or office keys are lost, which can cost over US$100. KeyMe offers savings by charging $20 for keys if the original isn’t in hand; the cost of copying a key that you do have varies from $3.49 to $5.99 depending on the style of key that’s ordered…Physical copies can be ordered through the service, which ships in a few days via USPS. A regular locksmith can also make copies using the digital images…”

SkyNet

31.     Google Is Now 40% Of The Internet  http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/08/17/fascinating-number-google-is-now-40-of-the-internet/  “It’s obviously fairly difficult to work out exactly how much of the internet and the traffic across it any one company is responsible for…But sometime we do get to have a good look at the real levels of traffic. And from one of those such looks we can now, reasonably safely, claim that Google is in fact 40% of all the internet’s traffic…yesterday afternoon…the entirety of Google’s services went offline…Which led to this graph being registered by GoSquared…That’s a 40% drop as all of those services go offline and then a 50% bounce as they come back on and everyone is able to catch up with what they were doing…what happened to knock Google out entirely isn’t known as yet…One is that someone typed “Google” into Google which, as everyone knows, will break the internet…The other is that the GooglePlex finally achieved sentience yesterday afternoon…”

32.    Google Search Gets More Personal, Now Lets You Find Your Flight Info, Reservations, Photos  http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/14/google-search-gets-more-personal-now-lets-you-find-your-flight-info-reservations-photos-and-more/  “Google…announced a number of search features that make it easier for you to find your own personal information through Google Search. The search engine can now find information about your upcoming flights (“Is my flight on time?”), hotel or OpenTable reservations, package delivery information (“When will my package arrive?”), your purchases and what’s on your calendar. Just like on Google+, you can also now use the regular Google search to find your own photos through queries like “Show me my photos of beaches.”…If you are familiar with the Gmail Search Field Trial and, of course, Google Now, you’ll have seen some of these cards pop up in your searches…today’s launch only graduates a subset of the Gmail Search Field Trial and for now, the trial will continue as a test bed for new features for those who want to remain on the cutting edge. Over time, Google expects to bring more of the Field Trial feature to the rest of Google Search…”

33.    Google Chrome’s Parental Controls  http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/19/google-chromes-parental-controls-feature-spotted-in-the-wild/  “Google has been making progress on the development of parental controls for its Chrome web browser, a feature which first showed up in test builds of the browser this past December…The parental controls were spotted this week by the Browser Fame blog, which explains how you can preview these experiments in Canary now…The site also grabbed several screenshots of what the parental controls will look like, which includes screens showing how users can create “supervised user” accounts, pick out avatars, and create desktop shortcuts. The option then lets the admins or parents go into Chrome’s settings to configure restrictions which will apply to the child’s account, as nothing is apparently restricted by default…”

34.    Google is preparing for screenless computers   http://qz.com/115304/google-is-preparing-for-screenless-computers/  “The spread of computing to every corner of our physical world doesn’t just mean a proliferation of screens large and small—it also means we’ll soon come to rely on mobile computers with no screens at all. ..if you think about form factors, they won’t all have keyboards or screens,” says Scott Huffman, head of the Conversation Search group at Google. Google is already moving rapidly to enable voice commands in all of its products…Google Glass would be almost unusable without voice interaction…Motorola’s new Moto X phone has a specialized microchip that allows the phone to listen at all times, even when it’s asleep, for the magic word that begins every voice conversation with a Google product: “OK…”…What’s different about Google’s work on the technology is that the company wants to make it as fluid and easy as keyboards and touch screens are now…“What we’re really trying to do is enable a new kind of interaction with Google where it’s more like how you interact with a normal person …”

35.    5 cool photo tools on Google+   http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/talkingtech/2013/08/07/google-plus-photo-tips/2627803/  “More photos are shared every day on Facebook, the most-used social network, than anywhere else on the Web. So what do you do when you're the No. 2 social network trying to gain traction against Facebook? If you're Google+, you try to outdo Facebook on photos, offering more tools and enhancements to make images look larger and prettier…Facebook has more than 1.1 billion members, Google+ is one-fifth the size, with 190 million members…here are five cool photo tools and features on Google+…Auto backup…Auto enhance…GIFs and panoramas…Highlights…Search …”

36.    Google’s Waze Acquisition: Mobile Google Maps App Gets Real-Time Incident Reports  http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/20/googles-waze-acquisition-bears-first-fruit-as-mobile-google-maps-app-gets-real-time-incident-reports/  “Google acquired Waze and it seemed obvious the purchase was about making Maps better. Today, Maps did indeed get a little better thanks to an update to its mobile maps apps that introduces Waze’s real-time incident reports to Android and iOS applications. On Waze, users can report things like accidents, cars stopped by the side of the road, construction and road closures in real-time as they drive. These reports are used to alert other Wazers to problems ahead as they happen…This gives us a big clue about how Google is viewing Waze: it’s not going to toss the two products into a melting pot and come out with a single hybrid – it’s treating Waze almost like a community-sourced product development arm of the Maps project…”

General Technology

37.    Intel's 12-Core Xeon With 30 MB Of L3: The New Mac Pro's CPU?  http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ivy-bridge-ep-xeon-e5-2697-v2-benchmarks,3585.html  “…those small touch-oriented devices are great for a lot of the tasks that used to require a PC. But they don’t replace PCs. And…enthusiasts want assurance that they’ll always have high-end hardware options. The problem is that enthusiast-class gear represents a sliver of what companies like Intel, AMD, and Nvidia sell…in light of IDC's forecast that that tablet shipments will outpace desktops and laptops combined by 2015, it's really no wonder that Intel's emphasis is on low power and new form factors…that’s where most of the innovation is happening right now…there’s still a ton of differentiation going on…what is keeping power users at their desks and buying high-end hardware? Gaming, largely…we’re going to start seeing 12-core Ivy Bridge-EP CPUs…Rather than turning its next Mac Pro into a big dual-socket affair, Apple is capitalizing on the fact that Ivy Bridge-EP will ship in 12-core configurations…with up to one Xeon E5-2697 V2 CPU…Xeon E5-2697 V2's specifications are…a 12-core processor with 3 MB total on-die L2 cache and 30 MB of shared L3. A base clock rate of 2.7 GHz jumps as high as 3.5 GHz with Turbo Boost enabled and just one core active. With two utilized, the clock rate tops out at 3.4 GHz…From six to 12 active cores, the Xeon E5-2697 V2 tops out at 3 GHz”

38.    IBM, Google, Nvidia and Pals Launch OpenPower  http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/78746.html  “…the OpenPower Consortium…is grounded in IBM's decision to make its Power microprocessor architecture and related technologies fully available to partners and customers…"First, we are licensing the microprocessor technology to other companies openly -- meaning they get to look at the blueprints for the processor and the software ... and will be able to hire IBM or other companies to manufacture the processors and other related chips…Second, the Consortium will harness the open-collaboration business model [under which] companies that join will share innovations with one another and collaborate on specific technology development projects…Lastly, the initiative takes advantage of the open-source Linux operating system ... the [OS] of choice in cloud data centers…”

39.    50 shades of window? 'Smart glass' blocks heat, light at flip of switch  http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-smart-glass-blocks-heat-tint-dark-electricity-switch-20130814,0,7674149.story  “…Researchers say they have created a new kind of "smart glass" – one that can, at the flip of a switch, block heat and still stay transparent, or grow dark to reduce the sun’s glare. This material…could one day help slash energy costs and reduce pollution from buildings…Windows allow…unwanted heat to filter in on a hot one – which can seriously hike up a business’s power bills…Milliron and her colleagues designed a window that uses nanocrystals loaded with free electrons to help them absorb certain wavelengths of light…To block heat, the researchers focused on absorbing infrared light…The researchers took these heat-blocking nanocrystals and embedded them in niobium oxide glass, which can darken to block visible light…the nanocrystals…force the glass particles around them into a new formation – one with a lot of empty spaces that make it easier for electrical charge to pass through…By running a very low electrical current, the researchers say they can make a clear window block some of the sun’s heat and still stay clear. Then, applying a little more voltage, they can also tint the windows and block the light on an unpleasantly bright day. Flip the switch, and they can turn it back to a normal, unassuming window, letting all heat and light through…”

Leisure & Entertainment

40.    How to get better images out of your smartphone  http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/how-to-get-better-images-out-of-your-smartphone-8762171.html  “…Most phones are now made with reasonably powerful front and rear cameras, and the picture quality keeps getting better…Small, covert and always close at hand, mobile phones even offer advantages over point-and-click pocket cameras. Even professional photographers are turning to smartphone technology, one advantage being the anonymity it can offer; a camera phone makes a professional indistinguishable from a regular tourist. For example, Ben Lowy, a contributor to The New York Times…writes…that using an iPhone to take photos is "a liberating experience" – and the results are stunning…here are some tips for getting better images out of your smartphone…Robert Clark, National Geographic photographer and the author of Making the Most of Your Smartphone…recommends investing in a selection of apps to create different visual effects…Most camera phones allow you to override the white balance and exposure manually…if there are people in your photos, turn on the 'face detection' or 'facial recognition' tool – this can help a lot by making focusing dramatically faster, but also accurate exposure based on your subject's skin tone. On an overcast day…Changing this to the 'cloudy' setting would result in much warmer and more natural colours. For bright beach scenes and snow scenes…increase the exposure; +1.0 is a good starting point…having the sound on can cause blur with some models…if you've got the vibrate function on, it could ruin your image…try different angles; people have a tendency to take pictures from eye level but sometimes if you kneel or stand on a bench you might get the better shot…It's best to wait for good light at the beginning of the day or late evening…If you have to take your shot in the middle of the day, just turn it to black and white – it looks instantly better…”

41.     Brainwaves to raise the tech game  http://www.thenational.ae/business/industry-insights/technology/brainwaves-to-raise-the-tech-game  “…Companies around the world have been trying for years to tap the power of the mind to control different gadgets, as executives hope to one day make buttons and dials obsolete for navigating technological features. One such device now fuelled by brainpower includes the Puzzlebox Orbit, a US$89 to $299 toy helicopter that operates through a headset which records electrical activity from the mind…Then there is the robotic quadcopter used in a study by researchers…who found "subjects were able to quickly, accurately and continuously pursue a series of foam ring targets and pass through them in a real-world environment using only their 'thoughts,'"…some of the technology within these helicopters could be harnessed in an array of devices to assist individuals who otherwise cannot access certain features with their hands or fingertips. "Mind-controlled technology may help disabled patients to gain ability to move or control devices…It may also allow healthy subjects to enhance their functionality such as improving driving…”

42.    Google Glass to get '3D Space Invaders mixed with Missile Command' game http://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2013/aug/12/google-glass-games-shoot-em-up  “…Developer Sean McCracken has revealed details of his first game made for Glass. It's called Psyclops, and…will be "like a 3D Space Invaders mixed with Missile Command"…McCracken has since published a better-quality video on YouTube showing Psyclops running on a Kindle Fire tablet, to make it clearer what players will see on their Glass' screen…McCracken is one of a number of developers building games for Glass. Other examples include location-based strategy game Swarm!...and Battleships-style game GlassBattle.”

Entrepreneurism and Technology

43.    How LinkedIn Became A Wall Street Juggernaut  http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/17/how-linkedin-became-a-wall-street-juggernaut/  “In 2010, had you suggested to the smartest Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors that LinkedIn would have a larger market value in 2013 than Groupon, Zynga or Twitter, you would have been laughed at…While LinkedIn circa 2010 might not have been as exciting as its go-go Internet brethren, the company was clearly doing something very right, building out a product roadmap, company strategy and team that has paid handsome dividends since the company’s IPO…Why has LinkedIn worked so well as a public stock? What can we all learn from its IPO and after-market performance?...I’ll…make four arguments as to why LinkedIn has performed so well: The value of beat-and-raise methodology on Wall Street…Creating a deep competitive advantage and position…Building multiple growth vectors…Designing a product that gets better as it gets bigger…”

44.    Quad Copter Camp Teaches Engineering and Business Skills  http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2013/8/19-25791_Quad-Copter-Camp-Teaches-Engineering-and-Business-_story-wide.html  “More than two dozen high school students learned how to fly right as technology entrepreneurs during a four-week summer camp at The University of Texas at Dallas. Students…spent a month assembling and learning to operate small, unmanned aerial vehicles called quad copters, which are remote-controlled flying robots. “The campers not only built the vehicles from a kit and learned how to fly them, they also had to come up with a business plan for their use,” said Dr. Kenneth Berry…director of the University’s first Quad Copter Camp…each team came up with a company name and determined a problem that its robot would address. They then conducted market and feasibility analyses and developed a business plan. “It’s important to get our young folks excited about business and engineering at an early age. Innovation is key to job creation and is the future of our economy, ” said Dr. Joseph Picken…He designed the innovation and entrepreneurship portion of the camp curriculum…”

45.    Vancouver’s GROW Conference: Canada’s Growing Startup Scene  http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/18/grow-vancouver-2013/  “…Vancouver hosted the fourth edition of the GROW conference, a two-day event (plus one for outdoor activities around the city) that brings together startups from all over Canada and the West Coast. Four years ago, the inaugural event attracted 400 people. This year, over 1,200 made the trip to Vancouver’s Convention Center, which will also play host to TED next year…GROW has become one of the premier networking conferences, as it’s a great way to take the pulse of the Canadian startup scene…In British Columbia, more people now work in tech jobs than in fields like mining, forestry and oil gas…Besides the networking, one thing that always makes GROW stand out for me is that the conference program tends to have a strong focus on providing very practical advise for startups…the event keeps the hype low and usefulness high…”

46.    TechStars launches a connected devices incubator  http://gigaom.com/2013/08/19/techstars-launches-a-connected-devices-incubator-with-ad-firm/  “TechStars, the seemingly ubiquitous startup accelerator, has launched an internet of things program…The R/GA Connected Devices Accelerator will be based in New York City…The program is looking for startups doing basically all that is hot right now in the connected device and maker sector. A list on the site includes: wearables, 3D printing, “sensor-driven devices and networks,” connected toys, “socially enabled products and services focused on achieving personal goals,” products that interact with smartphones and services that make all this connectivity easier to develop…”

Design / DEMO

47.    Designers Weave the Digital World Into Everyday Lives  http://www.wired.com/design/2013/08/design-and-the-digital-world/  “…the Walt Disney Company has been engaged in a secretive effort to redesign the Disney World experience. It’ll go like this: You buy your ticket online and plan all the details of your visit. Then you’ll get a wristband in the mail, which will be a passport…Snug around your wrist, the so-called MagicBand will use radio frequency to communicate with sensors around the park, all orchestrated by software that effectively turns Disney World into a computer interface. You can enter the park by holding your hand up to a kiosk; you can arrive at shows with 30 seconds to spare, having already reserved your seats; you can jump onto rides you’ve selected at preselected times without waiting in long lines…An It’s a Small World character could call you by name and wish you happy birthday…it is…a glimpse of the future: an integrated experience, a smooth hybrid of real-world and digital interactions. This represents a new frontier for design. Over the past 30 years…designers have focused on perfecting user interfaces—placing a button in just the right place for a camera trigger or collapsing the entire payment process into a series of swipes and taps. But in the coming era of ubiquitous sensors and miniaturized mobile computing, our digital interactions won’t take place simply on screens…they will happen all around us, constantly, as we go about our day. Designers will be creating not products or interfaces but experiences, a million invisible transactions…”

48.    Designers Outsmart Feds With Slick Hologram Packaging  http://www.wired.com/design/2013/08/kevin-murphy-lenticular-cosmetic-bottles/  “…Murphy’s company…had to figure out a way to cram line after line of fine print, all translated into multiple languages, on tiny travel bottles—without sacrificing their trademark style…Murphy’s design agency, ContainerMade, found a clever solution inspired by baseball cards and Cracker Jack prizes. The new 3.4 ounce bottles feature lenticular labels, a World War II era technology often used to create simple animations on inexpensive gewgaws. By slightly changing the bottle’s position, regulators will be able to see all of the disclaimers and ingredient lists their laws require while the au courant customers will simply see a dynamic design…”

49.    In the Golden Age of Design, Why Aren’t More Designers Starting Companies?  http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/08/why-arent-more-startups-founded-by-designers/  “We’re supposedly in the midst of a design renaissance, where…we see a design-centric focus in everything from…thermostats (Nest) to email (Mailbox) and even baby food (Plum Organics). And yet, there’s a dearth of designer founders…technology tools for design…have evolved to a point where good design is accessible and scalable. Before, even design-centric product companies had to be founded by technical founders because of the narrow expertise required by the tools, not to mention the lack of user experiences and context at the time. But that’s no longer the case…why then…don’t we see more designers transitioning into entrepreneurship?...What I’m talking about here is the type of entrepreneur where the designer is not an agent or service provider, but rather, part of the founding team that leads and drives the vision for the entire company…if I draw on the data of…a network…of entrepreneurs ready to start their next side projects or companies, there are far fewer designer founders relative to other skill sets…it’s around 15 percent; after correcting for people who are more design-appreciators than designers, it’s probably closer to 6 percent…”

DHMN Technology

50.    Printrbot: One of the rising, inexpensive 3D printer manufacturers  http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/08/inside-printrbot-one-of-the-rising-inexpensive-3d-printer-manufacturers/  “I spent an afternoon with Printrbot, one of the companies currently manufacturing low-cost 3D printers. Hardware that had previously cost thousands of dollars is now being sold by a handful of companies around the world for just a few hundred bucks. Ars editor Lee Hutchinson received an assembled version of the Printrbot Simple (which retails for $299), and will have a hands-on in coming days. As a total 3D printing newbie, he had quite a time with it!...head into Printrbot's lair with us…”

51.     Beyond 3D printing: The all-in-one factory  http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929304.400-beyond-3d-printing-the-allinone-factory.html  “3D PRINTERS are about to get an upgrade. The latest not only prints objects, it can cut and etch them too, making it far more versatile. The Microfactory is a portable, self-contained machine just a little larger than an average desktop 3D printer. As well as the standard printing equipment, it contains a series of milling and printing heads that can cut and etch plastics, hardwoods and some light metals…The machine can be loaded with up to four different coloured plastics or two different materials. Its internet connection allows you to remotely start the machine and monitor its progress, and download a ready-made design from the internet to manufacture directly…The Microfactory then translates the code into three-dimensional positions for the milling heads and builds the part step-by-step. Embedded in each design is code that tells the machine when to switch milling bits or change printhead and colour…Microfactory not only lets users make products out of printable materials, like plastics, but also from wood and metal, which can only be machined. "The key issue is this integration of machining and 3D printing…”

52.    3D printed model of Hyperloop  “…The SpaceX and Tesla Motors magnate unveiled details for the Hyperloop earlier this week. Designers at the 3D-printing company WhiteClouds built the desktop-size model in less than 24 hours. WhiteClouds CEO Jerry Ropelato challenged a team of five designers to create the model. "I thought it would be fun and interesting to take what we do every day and make the Hyperloop concept into something real,"…Each designer worked on one part of the Hyperloop system, designing digital 3D models based on images released by Musk…Three different 3D printers were used to build each part, layer by layer, from a computer aided design (CAD) model. WhiteClouds' Connex 500 printer was used to make the pillars, the ProJet 3500 HDMax was used to make the tubes (from a clear UV-cured resin), and the ZPrinter 650 cranked out the station platform and the pods (in full color, from a sandstonelike material). The team then assembled the various parts to make the complete system…”

Open Source Hardware

53.    DIY Cellphone  http://web.media.mit.edu/~mellis/cellphone/index.html  “The DIY Cellphone is a working (albeit basic) cellphone that you can make yourself. It can make and receive phone calls and text messages, store names and phone numbers, and display the time. It builds on the hardware and software in the Arduino GSM Shield but extends it with a full interface, including display, buttons, speaker, microphone, etc. The source files for the cellphone are hosted on GitHub (hardware, software)…There are two main variants of the DIY cellphone: one that uses a black and white LCD like those found on old Nokia phones and one that uses an eight-character matrix of red LEDs…”

54.    OpenDesk.cc Is Like Ikea For Open Source Zealots  http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/18/opendesk-cc-is-like-ikea-for-open-source-zealots/  “Furniture is probably the last thing on the mind of most open source proponents but…OpenDesk is a free, open source line of furniture that you can make yourself or order unassembled from a maker with a CNC machine…OpenDesk is the first project that is compatible with FabHub, a site that allows you to search for fabricators in your area. You could also find someone with a ShopBot to cut the pieces for you and drop them off at your domicile or office. The designs are available for download in .dwg and .dxf formats, machine readable models that allow you to power a robotic CNC…”

Open Source

55.     Canonical Still Winners As The Crowdfunded Ubuntu Edge Smartphone Is Set To Miss Funding Goal  http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2013/08/16/canonical-are-still-winners-as-the-crowdfunded-ubuntu-edge-smartphone-is-set-to-fail/  “Congratulations are due to Canonical for the handling of their Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for the Ubuntu Edge smartphone. The promise of a 4 GB Ram smartphone, with 128 GB of storage, dual-LTE receivers, dual booting to Android and Ubuntu, working as a desktop replacement and a mobile device certainly caught the eye of many people. As a statement of intent for Ubuntu’s mobile edition it can be regarded as a success…The team set an ambitious target of $32 million, but with just over five days to go, they are $20 million dollars short. If they don’t reach the target, the pledges mean nothing. The actual funds raised will be… zero…Going all or nothing made a lot of practical sense for Canonical. Getting a reasonable price on the bill of materials, assembly, and shipping from the factory requires a minimum order in the tens of thousands…I also suspect that if the project does not reach the funding goal, which looks likely, then the engineers who potentially would have been given the task to bring the Edge into the physical world will sleep a little easier. Even with the millions from the crowd-funding it would have been a difficult task to accomplish on time and on budget. The Ubuntu Edge crowd-funding experiment contains a lot of lessons for everyone. From word of mouth and creating a buzz, to promotion and communication, it’s a success…”

56.    Technopark firm develops open source tele-presence robot  http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/technopark-firm-develops-tele-presence-robot-113081901193_1.html  “Technopark-based International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) has developed a low-cost tele-presence robot prototype TR-7 based on open source hardware and software platforms. The prototype has been developed as part of an android R&D project of the Department of Information Technology (DIT),  being implemented by ICFOSS. The  prototype TR-7 was fabricated by Ingen Robotics, a local firm focusing on new-generation robotics, based on specifications provided by ICFOSS. "It is an affordable tele-presence robot, made using locally available components. The user can operate the robot remotely from anywhere in the world using…any linux personal computer on which the remote control and communication software can be run…”

Civilian Aerospace

57.     Grasshopper spaceship 100M lateral divert test  http://www.spacex.com/news/2013/08/14/grasshopper-100m-lateral-divert-test  “…the Falcon 9 test rig (code name Grasshopper) completed a divert test, flying to a 250m altitude with a 100m lateral maneuver before returning to the center of the pad. The test demonstrated the vehicle's ability to perform more aggressive steering maneuvers than have been attempted in previous flights. Grasshopper is taller than a ten story building, which makes the control problem particularly challenging. Diverts like this are an important part of the trajectory in order to land the rocket precisely back at the launch site after reentering from space…” [check out the cool video, real-life science fiction spaceship action! – ed.]

58.    SpaceX buys more land in Texas  “…SpaceX…is considering development of a rocket launch facility near Boca Chica Beach purchased four more lots…The firm now owns 12 lots in Cameron County. The most recent purchases were made in July from a private investor who bought the four lots in 2007 at property tax sales…The Federal Aviation Administration has been analyzing the potential effects of SpaceX’s proposal to launch the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy orbital vertical launch vehicles and a variety of smaller reusable suborbital launch vehicles from the county site. The site that entrepreneur Elon Musk is considering is near Boca Chica Beach, off State Highway 4, about a quarter-mile from Boca Chica Beach and about 3 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The site is about 5 miles south of Port Isabel and South Padre Island. Musk’s staff also has been exploring sites in Florida, Puerto Rico and Georgia…”

59.    Try the poor man's space travel with a parabolic flight  http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/15/travel/cash-strapped-space-travel-zero-gravity-flight/  “…Now taking a break from Newton's laws is easier (and cheaper) than ever. For years, the European Space Agency (ESA) has used a Novespace-owned Airbus to run parabolic, aka "zero-gravity" flights for scientists and astronauts-in-training. Last March, Novespace started selling seats to the general public for a relatively reasonable $7,932…"Zero-gravity" is a bit of a misnomer, as the Zero-G -- the Airbus A300 that performs the missions -- never leaves Earth's orbit…the weightless feeling is a result of the plane's parabolic flight path. The aircraft shoots up at a 47-degree angle at full engine thrust -- at which point everything inside the plane experiences hypergravity, and is heavier. The thrust is then reduced, and the plane is allowed to experience free fall, allowing everything inside to become weightless…we are in a state of freefall," explains Pletser. "With respect to the environment, which is the cabin, your weight will be zero. It's absolute magic."…the experience lasts a mere 20 seconds. To draw out the experience, the Zero-G needs to thrust up and fall down in a series of 30 parabolas (it's no wonder it's nicknamed the "vomit comet…”

Supercomputing & GPUs

60.    Nvidia GPUs power Top2 Russian supercomputers  http://evertiq.com/design/25341  “…the new Russia Top50 supercomputer list reveals that the top two systems are accelerated by NvidiaTesla GPUs. These two supercomputers are housed at Lomonosov Moscow State University, which was recently named a CUDA Center of Excellence, and the Joint Supercomputer Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences…Moreover, GPUs are accelerating 12 of the country's top 50 systems -- up from seven just six months ago. "The challenges of modern science can only be addressed by applying huge computational resources," said Vladimir Voevodin…"Nvidia GPU technologies are one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to address these challenges."…researchers at IMM UB RAS plan to harness their computational power to accelerate algorithms designed to navigate the Soyuz-2-class carrier rocket, determining an optimal orbit trajectory and ensuring a safe arrival at the target orbit. Researchers at the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences are using Nvidia GPUs to run their optic biomedicine diagnostic method, which is aimed at facilitating early detection of cancer, 100 times faster than on a CPU-based system. Researchers at OJSC "Aviadvigatel" are using Nvidia GPUs for acoustic noise generation modeling of aircraft engines. By adding Nvidia GPUs to a CPU-based system, Aviadvigatel reduced the computational time required to run flow modeling simulations from a month to just three days…”

61.     Nvidia CUDA 5.5 Reaches ARM  http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/nvidia-cuda-55-reaches-arm/240159621  “Nvidia has released CUDA 5.5 this month to bring GPU-accelerated computing to ARM platforms for the first time…ARM is agreed to be the world's fastest-growing processor ecosystem and is approximately 10 times larger than the x86 CPU-based market…In addition to native support for ARM platforms, CUDA 5.5 has enhanced Hyper-Q support — now supported across multiple MPI processes on all Linux systems. Hyper-Q technology aims to "slashes CPU idle time" by allowing multiple CPU cores to simultaneously utilize a single Kepler GPU, thereby advancing programmability and efficiency. There is also MPI workload prioritization here to allow application developers to prioritize CUDA streams on the critical path first, optimizing overall application runtime. CUDA 5.5 also offers a full suite of programming tools, GPU-accelerated math libraries, and documentation for both x86- and ARM-based platforms…”

Trends & Emerging Tech

62.    2013 emerging trends hype cycle  http://www.zdnet.com/gartners-2013-emerging-technologies-hype-cycle-focuses-on-humans-and-machines-7000019564/  “The 2013 edition of Gartner's long-running Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies focuses on "the evolving relationship between humans and machines … due to the increased hype around smart machines, cognitive computing and the Internet of Things."…The three main trends are: 1. Augmenting humans with technology…2. Machines replacing humans…3. Humans and machines working alongside each other…In the 2013 hype cycle, Technology Triggers include SmartDust, brain-computer interfaces, and quantum computing, all of which Gartner reckons are 10 years or more from the plateau. It reckons autonomous vehicles and biochips are 5-10 years away…”

63.    Goldman sees 'creative destruction' in these businesses  http://www.cnbc.com/id/100946764  “3D printing could literally break the mold; a growing new asset class threatens the reinsurance industry, and E-cigarettes aren't just blowing smoke at tobacco titans. These are among eight industry themes that Goldman Sachs analysts described as "creative destruction" - trends that are big and disruptive enough to reshape industries…Cancer immunotherapy. LED lighting, natural gas engine technology, software defined networking and big data are among the trends Goldman analysts see as mega trends that will change the behavior of consumers and force companies to "adapt or die…”

*****