IT and beyond

Internet Distraction Disorder

2011-03-27T19:08:00.000-07:00

by: Mike Elgan

The digital revolution has created an unexpected challenge: How do you get work done when a world of amusements is always just a click away?

Illustration: Jeffrey PeloI'll tell you how later. But first, let's understand the problem.

Our primary work tools: PCs, laptops, cell phones and tablets, plus the software and websites that we access through those devices are the same tools that can instantly conjure up distracting, fun and entertaining content.

Hmm. Which to choose? Finish those TPS reports, or check your Facebook page? Get started on next week's presentation, or watch a few videos on YouTube? Proofread Bill's 12-page spreadsheet, or check the standings of the office March Madness pool?

People can easily waste an entire afternoon struggling with online distractions. It's a growing problem that keeps getting worse. Here's why:

• The human mind is hardwired to pursue curiosity, play and social interaction. Fighting online distractions is really a battle against human nature.

• When we mix professional activities with online distractions, it's easy to believe that we're combining a lot of work with a little play, when in fact we're really engaging in a little work and a lot of play. If we intend to work, if we are stressed about work, then we feel like we've been working even if we haven't actually accomplished much. People tend to evaluate their own performance by asking themselves: "How much work did I do today?" That's the wrong question. Ask yourself: "What did I accomplish?" For many, the honest answer is: "Not very much."

• Distractions are constantly evolving, and we aren't. In all spheres of online entertainment - games, blogs, social networking - creators are inventing new ways to make their content more addictive. Sites like Facebook are taking over the Internet because they're better at compelling people to engage.

The worst part of all of this is that as Internet distractions gobble up more of our time and attention, we feel like we're working harder while our real work keeps piling up. So we force ourselves to work more and longer hours and bring more of our work home.

The more we work, the more our minds rebel and gravitate to the amusements. It's a self-reinforcing phenomenon that results in not really enjoying fun, and not getting our work done.

Both at work and at home, we're never fully working and never fully enjoying our time off.

How to Overcome Internet Distraction Disorder

The problem is that we use the same tools for work and amusement. The solution is to use separate tools. It's as simple as that.

You probably already have a desktop PC or a laptop as your main "work" device. What you need is a separate "play" machine. A touch tablet, such as an Apple iPad, is ideal for that purpose. But a second laptop would do just as well.

Now tease apart the software and services. Set up separate Work and Play email accounts, RSS feeds, Twitter accounts, and so on. Uninstall the games and other fun stuff from your work machine.

Never use Facebook or other fun sites on your work machine. Never check work email or do anything productive on your play device. Never use both at the same time. Multitasking is a myth.

Go ahead and bring your play gadget to work. When you need a break, switch to that system. The important thing is to be very clear in your mind about when you're really working, and when you're really not. By doing that, you'll achieve undisrupted "flow" in your work, and you'll enjoy guilt-free fun when you choose to take a break.

You can automate the task of keeping yourself focused by taking advantage of tools like these:

Instapaper

If you haven't tried Instapaper, I highly recommend it. It's the single most powerful productivity and educational tool I know of.

Here's how Instapaper works: You sign up for an account. Click on the "Extras" link at the top right, and drag the "Read Later" button to your browser's Bookmarks bar. Add the custom Instapaper email address they give you to the contacts list in your work email system.

Now, whenever you're on the job and you run across an interesting but non-work-related article, blog post or other content, just click "Read Later" or forward it to your Instapaper email address. Instapaper will save it all for when you're in play mode.

Best of all, Instapaper gives you a clear, clean interface to read everything with focus, complete with picture thumbnails and live links.

If you have an iPhone or an iPad, I highly recommend the Instapaper apps; they're worth every penny of the $4.99 you pay for them (pay once for the apps on both platforms).

Unsubscribe

With all of the new social distractions out there, it's easy to forget what a colossal time sink email can be. Unless you take action, the number of various "lists" you're on - spam, email newsletters, alumni panhandling organizations, chain letters - will grow and grow. But who has time to slog through the confusing unsubscribe processes that emailers set up?

Unsubscribe does. Just install the app, and when you're looking at an email sent via any kind of list, Unsubscribe will automagically figure out how to get you off the list and delete the message.

Note that even though I'm an email list publisher myself (gratuitous self promotion: Mike's List), I'm happy to tell my subscribers about Unsubscribe. Why? Because people often unsubscribe from quality content out of frustration with the overall quantity of junk. But the ability to easily get rid of the junk makes room in people's lives for the good stuff. But I digress.

Unsubscribe will help you purge your work email in-box of a lot of distracting garbage, and it will give you more time for the important emails that help your career.

FocusWriter

Sometimes you need to write without the distracting stuff on your screen. Several tools exist to help you do that. One of the best is FocusWriter, and it's among the few with both PC and Mac versions.

Just download the zip file, drop the files into a folder and launch the executable. All the menus and buttons are accessed by sliding the mouse pointer up to the top of the screen. You can change the colors, fonts, sounds and so on, and also add spell check and other goodies.

If you use these tools and keep your work and play systems completely separate, you'll be able to purge distractions from your work life.

Bottom line: The cure for Internet distraction disorder is to never play on your work machine and never work on your play machine.

You'll accomplish a lot more in less time. And you'll enjoy your leisure more.

Can Your Browser Really Stop Sites from Tracking Your Web Browsing?

2011-03-19T18:43:00.000-07:00

by: David Daw

Something like this has happened to all of us lately: You shop for a watch for a friend's birthday and for a week afterwards every site you visit features ads for watches. It seems like everyone from Google on down is tracking where we go and what we do on the web and using that information to send us targeted advertisements.

Microsoft recently announced that Internet Explorer 9, will support the Do Not Track standard, which sends a message to Web sites that you would like to opt out of tracking. Combine that with Do Not Track support in Firefox 4 and Chrome and it seems like opting-out is the new hot browser feature of the year. But how does Do Not Track work and what value does it bring to users?

While several solutions to the online tracking problem have been proposed (such as users blocking tracking code or using cookies to opt-out), Do Not Track is a relatively simple solution that adds an html header to every piece of information you send out to Web sites indicating that you don't want to be tracked. This header can this be read by sites that will, in theory, then opt you out of their tracking.

At the moment, however, that header doesn't have any effect on tracking. The standard depends on each tracking site honoring the do not track header and so far no tracking service complies with the standard - or has even said it plans to. For now Do Not Track is more the promise of a solution than an actual escape from online tracking.

A second problem is a lack of nuance in the standard itself. Chrome and Firefox treat Do Not Track as a simple binary, you either allow tracking or you don't. While this is probably good for most users, I have to wonder: Don't we WANT to be tracked sometimes? I can't say I'd cry myself to sleep if random Web sites stopped showing me targeted ads, but when Amazon suggests products to me, based on tracking my recent purchases and the pages I've viewed on the site, those recommendations are actually fairly useful. Sometimes the fact that the Internet knows a freakishly large amount about me is actually helpful.

Of course, this binary state of affairs isn't likely to last forever. In fact, IE9 will give you more control over Do Not Track technology by allowing for exceptions for certain sites, such as Amazon, that you might feel produce something you value by tracking you.

So is Do Not Track the way of the future? I'm certainly glad the checkbox is available in the next generation of browsers but I'm not willing to call this a real solution to the problem. There are too many hurdles, both in the acceptance of the standard by Web sites looking to track us and in the on/off nature of Do Not Track on most browsers, to get excited just yet.

1 Billion Tweets are Sent Every Week

2011-03-15T23:16:00.000-07:00

by: Juan Carlos Perez

Twitter is celebrating its fifth birthday this month, so the company has released a fresh set of stats about its growth and usage, such as the fact that it took more than three years for users to send the first 1 billion "tweets," a feat now accomplished every week.

Over the past year, the average number of Twitter messages sent per day has increased from 50 million in March 2010 to 140 million this month, the company said in a blog post.

Currently, an average of 460,000 Twitter accounts are created every day, while the number of Twitter mobile users has spiked 182 percent year-on-year.

Despite that growth, Twitter seems to have a lot of room for expanding its user base. In December, The Pew Internet & American Life Project reported that 8 percent of U.S. residents use Twitter.

As Twitter turns 5 years old, it finds itself increasingly at odds with some of the external developers who have built complementary applications for the microblogging service.

Over the past 12 to 15 months, Twitter has been adding native functionality to the service that in many cases replicates and competes against applications built by these developers, leading to tension and complaints from them.

Most recently, this weekend the company stated that it doesn't want developers creating client applications that replicate Twitter.com's basic user functionality.

Twitter also cautioned that developers of existing client applications will be held to stricter enforcement of terms and conditions.

Twitter said it needs to do this to make the overall user experience more uniform and of higher quality, but some affected developers are crying foul, saying Twitter doesn't want people using alternative client applications so as not to dilute Twitter.com's traffic and fledgling ad business.

The iPad 2: What Wasn't Said

2011-03-06T13:41:00.000-08:00

by: Ian Paul

The next iteration of the iPad is coming to an Apple Store near you on March 11. Apple's new iPad 2 features an Apple-branded 1GHz A5 dual-core processor, 9.7-inch screen with 1024-by-768 resolution, front- and rear-facing cameras, up to 1080p video out support via HDMI, 10 hours of battery life, accelerometer and three-axis gyroscope, and separate GSM and CDMA 3G connectivity options. The iPad 2 will be available in black or white.

That's what the company said, but what about the things it didn't say? Apple hinted at a few interesting points Wednesday about where the company might be going in the future. Here are a few noteworthy items that may not get much press, but are well worth noting.

Post-PC

Welcome to the post-PC era, at least according to Apple. Company CEO Steve Jobs and several other executives took great pains to mention the term 'post-PC' during the iPad 2 announcement Wednesday. To understand what 'post-PC' means you have to look back to Jobs' appearance at the D8 conference in June. "PCs are going to be like trucks," Jobs said at D8. "They are still going to be around...but they are going to be used by one out of x people." Apple is looking forward to a time when most people will use a tablet as their main computing device, and only a small minority of users will hang on to traditional PCs such as laptops and desktops. It appears Apple may even be hoping for the PC-to-tablet switch to happen this year, as it's calling 2011 the "Year of iPad 2."

But is a post-PC world realistic or even practical? The iPad is a great tool for casual Web surfing, videos, and light e-mail use. But when you need to create a word processing document while researching information on the Web, the iPad just isn't up to the task of switching quickly between windows like a desktop PC is.

Then again, many critics believe the iPad and other tablets, such as Motorola's Android-based Xoom, will take a healthy bite out of the PC market this year. Market research firm IHS iSuppli on Wednesday said tablets are a major reason that demand for hard disk drives (HDD), the most common form of storage in PC devices, is dropping. HDD demand will drop 3.9 percent in the first three months of 2011, according to IHS iSuppli predictions. The research firm also believes netbooks are particularly vulnerable to being decimated by the demand for tablet devices.

There's just one problem with all this post-PC hype. If the iPad 2 is truly a post-PC device, then why does it rely on a PC for activation?

Honeycomb Is A Threat

During Wednesday's iPad 2 event, Jobs took a shot at Google's new mobile OS, Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). The Apple chief pointed out that there are more than 65,000 native apps for the iPad, while iPad competitors have at most about 100 tablet apps. Jobs also argued the iPad has beaten out Android tablets in price and popularity, at least so far.

In 2010, Apple's only real competition was the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab. But with a slew of Honeycomb-powered iPad competitors out this year including the Xoom, Galaxy Tab 10.1, LG G-Slate, and Dell Streak 10, as well as Research In Motion's Blackberry Playbook and the WebOS-powered TouchPad, Apple appears to be feeling the competitive heat.

The iOS X Singularity Continues

Apple has taken the OS X JavaScript engine, called Nitro, and put it into iOS 4.3 for Web browsing that is up to two times faster than iOS 4.2--the ability to render JavaScript quickly is a common benchmark for browser speeds.

This is just the latest move by Apple to swap and share capabilities between OS X and iOS--iOS is based on OS X. In October, Apple gave a sneak peek at the next iteration of OS X, dubbed Lion. The event was all about how the company was transferring some of the best aspects of iOS to its new desktop OS such as more multi-touch integration, iOS-style home screens and full screen mode for most apps.

With the two operating systems merging capabilities--not to mention Apple's constant talk of a post-PC era--you have to wonder how long it will be until all Apple devices are powered by one unified OS.

HDMI Out Is All Business

The iPad 2's capability to output high definition video to an external display via HDMI may be nice for viewing photos at home. But this is Apple's move to make the iPad the must-have tool for business people, teachers, and anyone else who spends a lot of time giving presentations. The company also has two new pages dedicated to explaining why the iPad 2 is an ideal gadget for business and education professionals.

Intel Countdown?

Since the introduction of the original iPad in January 2010, Apple has been putting its own processors into its mobile devices. The iPad 2 is continuing this trend with Apple's new 1GHz dual-core A5 processor, and it's a good bet the rumored iPhone 5 expected in June will also be rocking this chip. The new A5 processor is twice as fast as the single-core A4 chip and offers graphics processing that is 9 times faster than the A4, according to Apple.

So far Apple processors have only shown up in the company's mobile devices. The big question is whether Apple will ever start developing desktop processors for the Mac, instead of using Intel chips.

NASA's Humanoid Robot Launching Into Future

2011-02-26T11:33:00.000-08:00

by: Sharon Gaudin

With 38 computer processors and working arms and hands, the humanoid robot onboard NASA's space shuttle Discovery is expected to be the centerpiece of a dramatic step forward in the evolution of humans and robots working together in space.

Dubbed Robonaut 2 or R2, the 300-pound robot is stowed aboard Discovery, which is set for a final launch this afternoon.

Robonaut will accompany six NASA astronauts on an 11-day mission that includes the delivery of supplies and spare parts to the International Space Station . The crew is also slated to undertake scientific experiments during the trip.

"It's difficult to imagine any robot we've shipped in the past being able to some day cook dinner for an astronaut," said Kris Verdeyen, an electrical engineer on NASA's Robonaut project. "Now we can think about something like that. Someday [astronauts] can keep working and say, 'Robonaut, go pop my food in the microwave.'"

Such possibilities are exciting to the engineers charged with getting Robonaut ready for space flight.

"If you're talking about the evolution of humans and robots working together, these kinds of things now seem possible," added Verdeyen. "It's a big step in the evolution of human/robotic work."

For the better part of the next year, however, the robot will mostly be undergoing tests to make sure the trip to the space station caused it no trouble. The testing period should give the astronauts aboard the station a chance to get used to large, heavy and imposing Robonaut 2.

The robot, which is fitted with velocity and speed controls to help make sure it doesn't injure an astronaut, will have some time to prove itself - both in terms of its abilities and to ensure it works safely.

"The astronauts and mission controllers need to get comfortable with it," said Verdeyen. "This is the first humanoid robot in space. I imagine it will be pretty scary to begin with. If you've ever watched a movie with a robot, they can be pretty scary.

"It's not a cylon or whatever, but there's going to be a period where we have to, as a team and robot, prove ourselves to the astronauts that we can be useful and we can be trusted. I think that will happen but I don't know how long it will take," he added.

Robonaut 2, which has been in the works for nearly 11 years, wasn't originally conceived for space travel. In fact, Verdeyen said Robonaut 2 was simply a lab experiment until mid- 2010. At that point, engineers started working to get the robot ready to both survive a turbulent trip to the space station and operate there over a long period of time.

"We found out that he was going to the space station so it required an overhaul of his electronics," said Verdeyen. "We had to turn around and make it space ready. It was unprecedented."

One of the biggest challenges for NASA engineers was to retrofit all of the robot's electronics to withstand radiation in space.

They also worked to make Robonaut 2 as "smart" as possible.

The robot has a total of 38 Power PC processors, including 36 embedded ones. The embedded chips are running in the machine's joints -- its hands, shoulders, waist, elbows, neck and five large joints in each arm.

Each of the embedded processors control senses and movement in each joint. However, the embedded processors don't communicate with each other; each one communicates with the robot's main computer chip.

NASA also plans on periodically upgrading Robonaut 2 in the coming years.

The first upgrade, according to Verdeyen, is to add a set of legs. Right now, the robot consists of two arms and hands, a torso and a helmeted head. Legs have been built for it but there was no time to get them ready for the Discovery mission.

At this point, the robot will be attached to a pedestal on the space station and it will work in place. By the end of the year, engineers hope to ship one or two leg attachments for installation to the station.

With a pair of legs, the robot could around the station. A single leg, meanwhile, could be easily attached to the robotic arm outside the space station so it can assist astronauts during spacewalks.

Next year, NASA hopes to upgrade the robot's torso, giving it new electronics and computer chips. And at some point, engineers want to add a battery so Robonaut can move freely about the space station -- as well as outside it -- without being plugged in.

"We took something that was meant to live in a lab on Earth and we upgraded it in a few months to the point that it's sitting on the shuttle waiting for launch," said Verdeyen. "It's a pretty great robot."

Mobile Makers Seek to Finalize 1Gbps Mobile Standard

2011-02-21T18:50:00.000-08:00

by: Ralph Jennings

The world's top handset makers are meeting this week to finalize a version of an advanced mobile communication standard that would raise data transfer speeds to 1Gbps, an event organizer said on Monday.

About 800 people, from companies such as HTC, Nokia and Samsung Electronics, will agree on final terms for the Long-Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-Advanced) standard at a meeting of the 3GPP standards body in Taipei this week.

With speeds up to 1Gbps, the technology will be ideal for people who download audio-visual files onto their handhelds, said Feng Wen-sheng, wireless communications director with a lab under the event sponsor, Taiwan's government-funded Industrial Technology Research Institute.

LTE-Advanced will also give machines another way to communicate with one another, for example allowing them to connect sensors detecting changes in air temperature that could signal a fire or a burglary and then passing messages to emergency personnel such as search and rescue teams, Feng said.

This type of data transfer is expected to help especially with earthquake relief.

"Mobile voice technology is pretty advanced already, so this time it's all about data transfers," Feng said. "We've been trying to get LTE-Advanced out there for some time, and in Taipei we expect to confirm a final version."

The International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency, has adopted LTE-Advanced and WiMax-derived WirelessMAN-Advanced standards for its IMT-Advanced program to define future mobile networks. It says both are substantial improvements over current wireless systems.

After Friday, the LTE Advanced standard will be ready for manufacturers to design smartphones and network equipment, Feng said, as participants at this week's conference discuss patents and cross-license deals relating to the technology.

The 7 deadly sins of software development

2011-02-18T16:07:00.000-08:00

by: Neil Macllister

Being a good developer takes a lifetime of training and practice. But without proper discipline, even the best programmers risk falling prey to their worse natures. Some bad habits are so insidious that they crop up again and again, even among the most experienced developers. I speak of nothing less than the seven deadly sins of software development. Read on to hear how lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride may be undermining your latest programming project as we speak.

1- Lust (overengineering)

Modern programming languages tend to add features as they mature. They pile on layer after layer of abstraction, with new keywords and structures designed to aid code readability and reusability -- provided you take the time to learn how to use them properly.

At the same time, the discipline of programming has changed over the years. Today you have giant tomes of design patterns to pore over, and every few months someone comes up with a new development methodology that they swear will transform you into a god among programmers.

But what looks good on paper doesn't always work in practice, and just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. As programming guru Joel Spolsky puts it, "Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it." Programmers who fetishize their tools inevitably lose sight of this, and even the seemingly simplest of projects can end up mired in development hell. Resist your baser impulses and stick to what works.

2- Gluttony (failing to refactor)

Nothing is more gratifying than shipping software. Once you have a working product out in the wild, the temptation is strong to begin planning the next iteration. What new features should it have? What didn't we have time to implement the first go-round?

It's easy to forget that code seldom leaves the door in perfect shape. Then, as features accumulate with successive rounds of development, programmers tend to compound mistakes of the past, resulting in a bloated, fragile code base that's too tangled to maintain effectively.

Instead of gobbling up plate after plate of new features, restrain yourself. Evaluate your existing code for quality and maintainability. Make code refactoring a line item on your budget for each new round of development. Clients may see only the new features in each release, but over the long term, they'll thank you for keeping off the fat.

3- Greed (competing across teams)

The excessive desire for wealth and power -- how else to explain the motives of programmers who compete with their own coworkers? It starts when other teams are left off email lists, then proceeds to closed-door meetings. Next thing you know, one team has written a library that reimplements more than half of the functionality already coded by another team.

Programming teams seldom reinvent the wheel out of malice, but lacking clearly defined objectives, they can easily latch onto responsibilities much broader than are strictly necessary. The result is a redundant, unmanageable code base, to say nothing of the budget lost to duplicated efforts. One of the top priorities of managing a development project should be to make sure each hand knows what the other is doing, and that all the teams are working toward a common goal. Share and share alike should be your motto.

4- Sloth (not validating inputs)

The list of basic programming mistakes is long, but the sin of failing to validate input is so pernicious that it bears special consideration. Why this seemingly amateur error still crops up in code written by experienced programmers is baffling. And yet, many commonplace security vulnerabilities, from buffer overruns to SQL injection attacks, can be traced directly to code that operates on user input without validating it for correct formatting.

Modern programming languages provide many tools to help coders keep this from happening, but they have to be used properly. Remember, a Web form that uses JavaScript to validate its inputs can be easily sidestepped by disabling JavaScript in the browser or not using a browser to access it at all. Input validation should be baked into the core of your application, not sprinkled onto the UI. Anything less is simple laziness.

5- Wrath (not commenting code)

What act could be more hostile to your fellow programmers than failing to comment your code? I know, I know: Well-written code is its own best documentation. Well, guess what? Those methods you wrote at two in the morning last Thursday weren't exactly well-written code. (And if you're a Perl hacker, you owe me nine Hail Marys.)

It's easy for programmers to forget that the code they write today may live on long after they've left the job. To the programmers who replace them falls the unenviable task of figuring out what each snippet of code actually means. So have mercy, and leave them a few hints.

But remember, unintelligible comments or commenting too much can be as bad as not commenting at all. Comments like "this is broken" or "don't touch this ever" aren't much help to anybody. Neither are redundant comments explaining simple operations, such as variable initializations. Code is its own best documentation of what it does; comments should be there to explain the why.

7- Pride (not unit testing)

It's often tempting to pat yourself on the back for a programming job well done. But how do you know it's well done? What are your metrics?

Unless you've validated your code against specific test cases, you have no idea whether it works as advertised and is completely free of defects. But all too many developers fail to produce unit tests for their code. They claim time spent testing is time not spent implementing features. In fact, some developers fail to even write QA testing into their project budgets.

What can I say, except that pride goeth before a fall? By the time defective code arrives in the client's hands, it's too late to undo the mistake. The more you plan for unit testing before your code ships, the more damage control you can avoid later.

The Daily - daily news publication for iPad

2011-02-07T10:01:00.000-08:00

The Daily is a first-of-its-kind daily national news publication built exclusively as an application for tablet computing. It provides readers the engaging experience of a magazine combined with the immediacy of the web and the need-to-know content of a newspaper, all while elevating user experience beyond the printed word. The Daily is a subscription-based news product, published 365 days a year, at the cost of $0.99 cents a week or $39.99 a year.

It is built from scratch for the iPad by some of the best in the business to bring you a package that’s smart, attractive, and entertaining.

On Wednesday, February 2, Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of News Corporation, announced the launch of The Daily on the iPad. Also present were Jon Miller from News Corporation, Eddy Cue from Apple, and The Daily’s Editor-in-Chief Jesse Angelo.

It takes full advantage of the iPad’s storytelling and sharing capabilities.Stories, photos, video, audio and graphics come alive the more you touch, swipe, tap and explore.

It publishes 365 days a year covering breaking news, sports, pop culture, entertainment, apps, games, technology, opinion, celebrity gossip and more.

It is absolutely free for two weeks from the time you download it to your iPad.

It is available through Apple’s iTunes subscription service and via the iPad App Store for $0.99 a week or $39.99 a year.

It will be offered on additional tablets over the coming months.

While The Daily lives on the iPad, web-friendly versions of most of The Daily’s articles and features can be easily shared via Facebook, Twitter and email.

It covers news, sports, gossip & celebrity, opinion, arts & life, and apps & games.

Launch advertisers on The Daily include HBO, Macy’s, Paramount, Pepsi Max, Range Rover, Verizon and Virgin Atlantic Airways.

It has bureaus in New York and Los Angeles, and stringers across the country.

Some highlights of The Daily include:
* Original content every single day of the year
* Original videos
* 360-degree photos you can explore by swiping
* Immersive photography
* Interactive charts, info-graphics and clickable hot spots
* The option to save articles to read later
* Web-friendly versions of articles you can share via Twitter, Facebook and e-mail
* Your favorite sports teams’ scores, news and photos
* In-app commenting — including audio comments
* Your local weather
* Crossword and sudoku puzzles every day

The Daily is available now on the App Store

Blocking Internet Cost Egypt at Least $90M

2011-02-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

by: Martyn Williams

The Egyptian government's five-day block of Internet services cost the national economy at least US$90 million, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Thursday.

The Paris-based organization said telecommunications and Internet services account for between 3 percent and 4 percent of Egypt's GDP, so the daily loss amounted to around US$18 million.

The Internet block was lifted on Wednesday, but it might be much longer before the true cost of the government's action on the economy is known.

By cutting telecommunications links, the government severed links between domestic and international high-tech firms and the rest of the world. As a result, the OECD warned, Egypt could find it "much more difficult in the future to attract foreign companies and assure them that the networks will remain reliable."

Egypt's major Internet service providers stopped routing traffic just after midnight local time on Friday as protests against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak gathered momentum in Cairo.

In minutes the amount of Internet traffic flowing between Egypt and the rest of the world was reduced to a trickle, according to monitoring by Massachusetts-based Arbor Networks.

"We have never seen a country as connected as Egypt completely lose Internet connectivity for such an extended period," said Craig Labovitz, chief scientist at Arbor Networks, on the company's security blog.

"Unlike periods as recent as a decade ago, governments of technically developed countries cannot disrupt telecommunication without incurring significant economic cost and social / political pressures," he said.

HTML5 Logo

2011-01-18T21:11:00.000-08:00

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has created a fancy logo for HTML5.
It stands strong and true, resilient and universal as the markup you write. It shines as bright and as bold as the forward-thinking, dedicated web developers you are. It's the standard's standard, a pennant for progress. And it certainly doesn't use tables for layout.

2010 - Internet in Numbers

2011-01-12T21:39:00.000-08:00

What happened with the Internet in 2010?

Email:
* 107 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2010.
* 294 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
* 1.88 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
* 480 million – New email users since the year before.
* 89.1% – The share of emails that were spam.
* 262 billion – The number of spam emails per day (assuming 89% are spam).
* 2.9 billion – The number of email accounts worldwide.
* 25% – Share of email accounts that are corporate.

Websites:
* 255 million – The number of websites as of December 2010.
* 21.4 million – Added websites in 2010.

Web Servers:
* 39.1% – Growth in the number of Apache websites in 2010.
* 15.3% – Growth in the number of IIS websites in 2010.
* 4.1% – Growth in the number of nginx websites in 2010.
* 5.8% – Growth in the number of Google GWS websites in 2010.
* 55.7% – Growth in the number of Lighttpd websites in 2010.

Domain Names:
* 88.8 million – .COM domain names at the end of 2010.
* 13.2 million – .NET domain names at the end of 2010.
* 8.6 million – .ORG domain names at the end of 2010.
* 79.2 million – The number of country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
* 202 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains (October 2010).
* 7% – The increase in domain names since the year before.

Internet Users:
* 1.97 billion – Internet users worldwide (June 2010).
* 14% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
* 825.1 million – Internet users in Asia.
* 475.1 million – Internet users in Europe.
* 266.2 million – Internet users in North America.
* 204.7 million – Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
* 110.9 million – Internet users in Africa.
* 63.2 million – Internet users in the Middle East.
* 21.3 million – Internet users in Oceania / Australia.

Social Media:
* 152 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
* 25 billion – Number of sent tweets on Twitter in 2010
* 100 million – New accounts added on Twitter in 2010
* 175 million – People on Twitter as of September 2010
* 7.7 million – People following @ladygaga (Lady Gaga, Twitter’s most followed user).
* 600 million – People on Facebook at the end of 2010.
* 250 million – New people on Facebook in 2010.
* 30 billion – Pieces of content (links, notes, photos, etc.) shared on Facebook per month.
* 70% – Share of Facebook’s user base located outside the United States.
* 20 million – The number of Facebook apps installed each day.

Web Browsers:
* Internet Explorer: 46.9%
* Firefox: 30.8%
* Chrome: 14.9%
* Safari: 4.8%
* Opera: 2.1%

Videos:
* 2 billion – The number of videos watched per day on YouTube.
* 35 – Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.
* 186 – The number of online videos the average Internet user watches in a month (USA).
* 84% – Share of Internet users that view videos online (USA).
* 14% – Share of Internet users that have uploaded videos online (USA).
* 2+ billion – The number of videos watched per month on Facebook.
* 20 million – Videos uploaded to Facebook per month.

Images:
* 5 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (September 2010).
* 3000+ – Photos uploaded per minute to Flickr.
* 130 million – At the above rate, the number of photos uploaded per month to Flickr.
* 3+ billion – Photos uploaded per month to Facebook.
* 36 billion – At the current rate, the number of photos uploaded to Facebook per year.

Source: Pingdom

The Best of CES 2011

2011-01-09T20:01:00.000-08:00

Motorola Xoom Tablet

HTC Thunderbolt Smartphone

Clever USB Thumbdrives From Casio and Olympus

Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc Smartphone

Eton's Shoulder Bag Boom Box

Human Touch Massage Chair

TP-Link's Wireless Pan/Tilt Surveillance Camera

Live Streaming From CES, Up Close and Personal

MSI Butterfly Concept Tablet

Android Phone Gaming from Nvidia

RIM PlayBook Tablet

Lenovo ArcadeDock

Buffalo CloudStor 2TB Storage

IoSafe's Rugged Storage After Torture Tests

iBuyPower's Liquid-Cooled Erebus PC

Nvidia's Keg Computer Casemod PC, Complete With Cold Beer

Samsung flexible and transparent displays

Can A Computer Be Emotionally Intelligent?

2011-01-03T19:37:00.000-08:00

by: Traci Pedersen

Computers may eventually be able to decipher human emotions, according to researchers at the University of Cambridge.

“We’re building emotionally intelligent computers, ones that can read my mind and know how I feel,” said Peter Robinson, Ph.D., a professor who is leading a team determined to explore the role of emotions in human-computer interaction. His research is highlighted in the film The Emotional Computer.

“Computers are really good at understanding what someone is typing or even saying. But they need to understand not just what I’m saying, but how I’m saying it,” said Robinson.

Human emotions are understood through facial expressions, tone of voice and body language. Even when a person is interacting with a computer, he still puts out these emotional cues, but computers have been unable to decipher them.

The University of Cambridge research team is working closely with Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and the University’s Autism Research Centre team. Researchers there know the difficulties individuals with autism have in understanding emotions, and this knowledge is extremely helpful in the computer-human interaction research.

Since facial expressions are such an important aspect of reading emotions, one system was developed to track a person’s facial features and then analyze facial movements in order to infer emotions from them. It is accurate more than 70 percent of the time, which is about the equivalent of a human observer.

Other emotion-reading computer systems infer emotions by analyzing speech intonation, body posture or gestures.

“Even in something as simple as a car we need to know if the driver is concentrating and confused, so that we can avoid overloading him with distractions from a mobile phone, the radio, or a satellite navigations system,” said Ian Davies, a member of Robinson’s team.

Not only would Robinson like for computers to be able to read emotions, but he also strives for computers to be able to express emotions as well, such as in the form of a cartoon animation or a physical robot. Various team members have been working on creating these forms and giving them believable human expressions.

“The key to scientific research is to avoid preconceptions and to expect surprises. I just recruit the best graduate students from around the world, make sure that they have the resources that they need and then just let them get on with it. They bounce ideas off each other and solve problems together,” Robinson said.

“The team has to combine results from many disciplines, and this is true for many research problems in computer science. We need to understand psychology, signal processing and statistical machine learning as well as systems engineering to tackle these problems. Because the university has experts in all these fields it’s a perfect place to do the research.”

Scottish Researchers Claim 1000-Core Processor

2011-01-02T16:22:00.000-08:00

by: Maxwell Cooter

Researchers at a Scottish university claim to have made a breakthrough in the drive towards more powerful processors while conserving energy too. The team, from Glasgow University, led by Dr Wim Vanderbauwhede, have succeeded in squeezing 1000 cores on a single chip.

The researchers, working in conjunction with colleagues from University of Massachusetts, Lowell, used a chip called a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) which can be configured into specific circuits by the user rather than relying on the factory settings. This technology allowed Dr Vanderbauwhede to divide up the transistors within the chip into small groups and ask each to perform a different task thus creating 1000 mini-circuits -- or to put it another way, creating a 1000-core processor.

To demonstrate the chip's effectiveness, the research team used it to process an MPEG algorithm at a speed of 5Gbps, about 20 times faster than processors used in current PCs.

Dr Vanderbauwhede, who hopes to present his research at the International Symposium on Applied Reconfigurable Computing in March, said: "FPGAs are not used within standard computers because they are fairly difficult to program, but their processing power is huge while their energy consumption is very small because they are so much quicker - so they are also a greener option.

However, he warned that the research was an early proof-of-concept work but added that he hoped "to demonstrate a convenient way to program FPGAs so that their potential to provide very fast processing power could be used much more widely in future computing and electronics."

How You Know When It’s Time to Switch to Linux

2010-12-31T12:40:00.000-08:00

by: Katherine Noyes

It's easy to be content with your computer installation as long as it keeps doing what you want it to without too much trouble. When frequent problems arise, however, it's hard to remain faithful for long.

The majority of the computing world "grows up" on Windows, of course, since Microsoft's operating system still holds by far the largest share of the market. Not everyone stays there, however.

Growing numbers, in fact, are switching to Linux every day, and for good reasons. How do you know when it's time to switch to Linux? Here are just a few (mostly) serious signs.

1. You're Tired of Paying for Software

You wake up one day and realize you're tired of paying for an operating system that's more bogged down with bugs than most alpha builds are. What, exactly, are you paying for here? Then, of course, there's also all the antivirus software you have to buy to keep it running. With Linux, on the other hand, countless developers around the world are working around the clock to keep the 100 percent free operating system at the head of its class.

2. You're Tired of Upgrading Hardware

If you find yourself upgrading perfectly good hardware just because resource-hungry Windows demands it, you might be using the wrong operating system.

3. You're Tired of Malware

Your older hardware probably still is fundamentally pretty good; too bad there's all that malware dragging it down. Thanks for sharing that love, Windows! Note to Microsoft: a stronger permissions system would have been a lot better, just FYI.

4. You've Seen One Too Many Patch Tuesdays

You've experienced your share of Patch Tuesday repair efforts, and they aren't getting any more fun. In fact, they're getting worse. It wouldn't be so bad if you didn't know how long the bugs had been there, flapping in the breeze, before they finally got fixed.

5. You Don't Have the Time

Who among us doesn't enjoy spending hours at a time scanning for viruses and spyware and defragmenting? Well, probably all of us don't enjoy that, actually. Then, too, there's all that unplanned downtime. Don't we have other things to do?

6. You Like Speed

If Windows' boot speed were faster, when would you make your coffee? Right. Sadly, that argument doesn't quite cut it anymore.

7. You Like Sharing

Your business associate in Berlin tried to send you an .ODP file--based on the international standard file format--but PowerPoint wouldn't read it properly. So much for interoperability.

8. You Don't Actually Love Internet Explorer

It's no accident Internet Explorer's market share is slipping, and vulnerabilities are a big part of it. Then, too, there's the monoculture effect making it all worse.

9. You Want to Be in Control

It's no longer fun waiting to see when Microsoft will fix bugs, or what new features it will come out with. You're ready to start driving changes like that yourself.

10. You're One of a Kind

Though it can be altered in very small, superficial ways, Windows can't hold a candle to Linux when it comes to customizability. Are you just another face in the crowd? Of course not, and Linux recognizes that.

Is Linux perfect? Certainly not. But it is a lot better than Windows in so many ways. Isn't it time for you to finally make the switch?

If I Knew Then What I Know Now: Advice for Young Creatives

2010-12-29T19:17:00.000-08:00

This video is shared from Ontwik

Google Body Browser

2010-12-17T14:20:00.000-08:00

Try it now

by: JR Raphael

First, a warning: Google Body Browser probably won't load in your browser. The app uses WebGL, a plug-in-free programming interface, to power its 3D graphics. WebGL is a relatively new standard, and most major browsers are still testing its implementation. For now, you can grab the latest beta version of Chrome or Firefox to check it out; eventually, the stable versions of those browsers (and most others) will offer integrated WebGL support.

When you open Google Body Browser in a WebGL-enabled program, you're greeted with an image of a woman standing face-forward wearing minimal workout attire (view full-sized image). Controls on the left side of the screen let you zoom in and out and rotate the woman's body. You can also just click and drag with your mouse to spin her around 3D-style.

Good times, right? You bet. But the most interesting part is when you start using the Google Body Browser layering tool. Located below the zoom controls, the layering tool lets you peel back layers of the body (of the body, buddy, not the clothing -- get your mind out of the gutter) to see detailed views of the human anatomy.

Bumping down one level sheds the skin and gives you a glimpse of the muscular structure. The next level goes skeletal. Keep going and you'll get organs, arteries, and veins - then eventually nothing but nerves.

Want to learn more about what you're seeing? Just click the "Labels" option, and Google Body Browser will serve as your virtual biology book. With the option activated, tiny labels will appear on every item in your current view, letting you know exactly what you're looking at.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Google product without search. Type any muscle, bone, or organ into the search box at the top of the page, and Body Browser will instantly zoom into the appropriate part to show you where it is.

One other neat feature worth mentioning: Body Browser adjusts its URL as you move along, so if you ever want to save a particular view or share it with someone else, all you have to do is copy the current Web address and you're good to go.

Help 'Dreams For Kids' this Holiday Season

2010-12-11T12:21:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays!

In an effort to make dreams come true for Kids this holiday season, I've helping my friend Stever Robbins and his favorite charity - Dreams for Kids.

Stever is providing his best-selling audio coaching product "You Are Not Your Inbox" where he teaches You how to Overcome Email Overload, fast, easy, and forever, for just a small $7 donation to DREAMS FOR KIDS.

100% of the proceeds will be donated to Dreams For Kids. To learn more about this special organization and to make your donation and get your Free Copy of Stever's Product, click here.

Thanks for your help to make kids' dreams come true this holiday season!

http://www.youarenotyourinbox.com/dreams-for-kids/

IP Address Meltdown - from IPv4 to IPv6

2010-12-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

by: Keir Thomas

The world is running out of IPv4 Internet addresses, without which the Internet can't function in its existing form.

This has been known for some time, of course, but the situation has become a little more urgent with the news that in October and November, nearly all of the remaining blocks of addresses were assigned to various Regional Internet Registries (RIR) around the world.

The allocations brings the total number of available blocks to an almost depleted level, and potentially triggers an "end days" agreement in which most of the remaining blocks are automatically assigned to the five RIRs.

In other words, there's nothing left. Almost all possible IPv4 Internet addresses have been assigned--all 4,294,967,296 of them.

Although of concern on a global scale, the IPv4 depletion is less of an immediate concern on the ground in homes and businesses. The addresses assigned to the RIRs are handed onto Internet Service Providers and organizations within each of the countries the RIRs cover. As such, there's no immediate crisis until the RIRs themselves have assigned all their addresses.

However, if the number of Internet devices keeps growing (and it's extremely certain it will, with the boom in smartphones and tablet devices) then we're almost certainly going to see this within a year or two.

The solution is to switch to IPv6, which has been widely heralded for about 10 years and brings with it about 340 trillion addresses--arguably enough to last the world for a century or two. The trouble is that organizations are extremely hesitant to do so. The number of Websites offering IPv6 entrances barely breaks into the two-digit range.

Additionally, you might have noticed that your ISP has yet to send you any correspondence about the need to migrate to IPv6. I recently switched to a new service provider and received a cutting-edge new router, for example, but there's no sign of any IPv6 functionality--either on the LAN-side on the hub or gateway component, or the WAN-side, or on the router or DSL connection.

Most major operating systems are entirely compatible with IPv6 and have been for some time, although without widespread deployment it's not yet possible to see how effective such technology is. It's not cynical to expect a bug or two.

The rather strange desire to avoid switching to IPv6 has even lead to reports that some Internet Service Providers are enacting Network Address Translation (NAT) at their data centres. In other words, their customers at homes and businesses are being given addresses that are routable only on the ISP's network, and not on the wider Internet.

To simply even further, this means that while such customers will be able to browse the Web and grab e-mail just like everybody else, they'll be unable to use file sharing services, or some services such as video conferencing--effectively, they'll be denied any service that involves one computer directly talking to another across the Internet.

It's a little like being only half a person on the Internet. Some commentators have suggested that it turns a user into nothing more than a content consumer, who can be fed data by their ISPs, but who doesn't have the freedom to go out and fetch what they want, or experience new services that require a genuine, routable IP address.

Of course, not all IPv4 addresses that have been assigned are in use. In fact, the ratio of assigned to in-use addresses is probably lower than many might think. I suspect many organizations are holding onto IP addresses they've been assigned by their ISP or RIR, but have no intention of using. It simply makes business sense to do so in order to prepare for possible future developments. This has certainly been the case at businesses I've worked at in the past.

Some kind of amnesty whereby organizations surrender unused addresses is a possibility, but it's extremely unlikely to become a reality. If nothing else, the biggest question would be who would organize and administer such a scheme, and what financial benefits they would receive (and who would pay).

Any measures such as this can only be temporary because, as must be obvious, IPv6 is coming whether we like it or not. It's simply the most sensible and correct solution. If you haven't already, get in touch with your Internet Service Provider and ask when they're planning a switch to IPv6, and what the implications will be for you. Will you need a new service contract, for example? New hardware?

Additionally, it might be wise to start experimenting with IPv6 addressing within your organization; there are many books and guides out there explaining how, and it's surprisingly easy to do.

Supercomputer Contest Hits New Level

2010-11-28T14:48:00.000-08:00

by: Patrick Thibodeau

There is an international race to build an exascale supercomputer, and one of the people leading it is Peter Beckman, a top computer scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory.

The DOE has been working on exascale computing planning for two years, said Beckman, but the funding to actually build such powerful systems has not been approved. And unless the U.S. makes a push for exascale computing, he said, it's not going happen. The estimated cost of an exascale project will be in the billions of dollars; an exact cost has not been announced by the department.

The most powerful systems today are measured in petaflops, meaning they're capable of quadrillions of operations per second. The fastest system, according to the latest Top500 supercomputing list, released this month, is China's 2.5 petaflop Tianhe-1A. An exascale system is measured in exaflops; an exaflop is 1 quintillion (or 1 million trillion) floating point operations per second. China, Europe and Japan are all working on exascale computing platforms.

Beckman, recently named director of the newly created Exascale Technology and Computing Institute and the Leadership Computing Facility at Argonne, spoke to Computerworld about some of the challenges ahead.

What is the exascale effort at this point?
It is the realization or the understanding that we need to move the hardware, software and the applications to a new model. The DOE and others are looking to fund this but have only started with initial planning funding at this point.

The software effort that I'm leading with Jack Dongarra [a professor of computer science at the University of Tennessee and a distinguished research staff member at Oak Ridge National Laboratory] and some of the co-design pieces have planning money to get started, but the next step is for the government to put forward with a real ambitious plan and a real funded plan to do this.

What's happening, and I'm sure your readers and others know, is power constraints, budgets, architecture, clock speeds, have transformed what happens at every level of computing. In the past, where you had one CPU, maybe two, you are now looking at laptops with four cores, eight cores, and we just see this ramp happening where parallelism is going to explode. We have to adjust the algorithms and applications to use that parallelism.

At the same time, from a hardware and systems software perspective, there's a tremendous shift with power management and data center issues -- everything that's happening in the standard Web server space is happening in high-performance computing. But in high-performance computing, we are looking forward three to five years.

Think of it as a time machine. What happens in high-performance computing then happens in high-performance technical servers, and finally your laptop.

We're looking at that big change and saying what we need is a real organized effort on the hardware, software and applications to tackle this. It can't just be one of those. In the past, the vendors have designed a new system and then in some sense it comes out, and users look at it and ask: "How do I port my code to this?" or "What we're looking at is improving that model to 'co-design'" -- a notion that comes from the embedded computing space, where the users of the system, the hardware architects and the software people, all get together and make trade-offs with what the best optimized supercomputer will look like to answer science questions.

In the end, it's about answering fundamental science questions, designing more fuel-efficient cars, designing better lithium batteries¸ understanding our climate, new drugs, all of that.

How far along is this? What stage are you at?
We've been doing it for a better part of a decade in less formal venues. IBM is a partner with Argonne and Lawrence Livermore Lab, and together we designed Blue Gene/P and Blue Gene/Q. In that partnership, we paid money to IBM to design the prototype for Blue Gene/P and Q and then all of our scientists did constant evaluation and discussion about trade-offs. For example, would we rather have a memory management unit than another core? But it was sort of, what I would say, in the small. We didn't take it out to the broader community.

In the exascale thrust, the DOE has said we're going to launch a series of co-design centers that will cover several applications areas, fusion, materials, chemistry, climate, etc., and those communities will then have a voice in speaking with the companies designing the platforms.

Is this a national or international effort?
The DOE piece is a national effort, but Jack Dongarra and I also lead the International Exascale Software Project (IESP). In it, we bring together representatives from Asia, Europe and the U.S. to focus on software. That's something that transcends national boundaries at this point. People work on codes from open source.

Because software is ubiquitous in that way and is really shared and improved inter-globally, the IESP has organized a road map for what the software for exascale needs. We have spent the last year and half developing that road map and have now turned our attention to co-design. That's mostly a collaborative effort.

The DOE has funded a very specific program to start the planning for exascale. They have been given planning funding. But until there is a congressional budget that funds it, it is still just in planning mode.

Is there concern about getting funding for exascale development?
There is. Budgets are tight, and the change in politics, in representation in Washington, means that things that were sort of in the plan now have to be looked at a second time. There is a concern that this initiative has to be pushed forward and has to get funded or we're going to lose our leadership position. The DOE has been planning this for the last couple of years, so this is not a new thing.

Is exascale development as predictable as people believe?Will exascale systems arrive in the 2018 time frame?
In some sense, we've become so predictable, but that's only because we invested in a particular goal. If we don't have an exascale push in the country, it's not going to happen.

Is there any comparison between what's involved in reaching petascale with what's involved in reaching exascale?
There was a period of time of about 15 years where the maximum level of parallelism in the biggest systems in the world really didn't change much. The biggest systems had tens of thousands of processors. We are now on an exponential ... like this [he points up], where Blue Gene has 200,000 [or] 300,000 cores now; the next version is going to have a million cores as we go up. The application codes need to be radically improved in order to take advantage of all this parallelism.

Are the programming languages developed for it?
That is a big issue. If you were to go to 10 different big application folks and ask, "What's your programming model for the future?" you will see a lot of concern in their expression and maybe not a lot of certainty in their answer. The path to harvest all this parallelism and put it to use is not clear yet.

What can exascale systems accomplish?
The key thing that people are looking at is moving from simulating and sort of understanding basic behavior to predictive simulation. What we want to be able to do is not just characterize a jet engine and understand how its combustion works but move aggressively to be able to predict the design of an engine that would get 20% better fuel efficiency and reduce our carbon emissions.

As we look to electric vehicles, all the technology hinges on the battery. If we can move from a basic manipulating of chemistry to predicting the optimal new battery designs, we could change to an electric vehicle economy. The single biggest impact on how we can change our everyday life is if we could move to eliminate the need for burning fossil fuels.

What can this do for national economic development?
We are a country that loves to invent its way out of problems. When we see a problem, we like to find a solution that's inventive, that's creative, that's new. When I look at healthcare, transportation, generating power, basic materials, chemistry -- we want to be the country that invents solutions for these problems.

All those things require government funding because they involve basic sciences, more so than say 100 years ago, correct?
This is something that many people don't understand. [At an earlier time] one guy could actually invent and do a bunch of stuff. Nowadays, it still can be one guy but he's on a pyramid that has millions of community-developed components and other pieces of technology that he is relying on.

To get really far advanced, to really push that state of the art, you are on top of a collaborative community of scientists. Science has done more and more in a partnership with other people at universities, laboratories and industries and other countries, and it really requires the government to keep invested.

The education piece is also key. Finding the postdocs and finding the students that come to work in our laboratories is becoming increasingly difficult.

Why is that?
We are not producing enough high-quality science and technology Ph.D. students. When we open up a postdoc position for an expert in this particular computer science field, we have to look hard to find people. There is not an overflow of these people, it's a thin group.

I was at a workshop in Tennessee recently and a Ph.D. student gave a talk and afterward several of us and went up and asked, "Have you decided where you are going to go?" At lunch, he had three people courting him trying to get him to come work for them.

How many are there like you in the U.S. devoting quality time to exascale development?
In terms of people working full time on the exascale problem, I would say there are handfuls at best.

What do you want to see happen in the next year to give you confidence that this is moving ahead?
The budgets in Washington have to get straightened out to actually fund this exascale initiative. And then we have to work very quickly to find the hardware partners that are capable of responding and doing this in partnership with the co-design centers and the software.

Is there is competition with Europe, Asia?
If you look at what's happening in China, there are countries that are realizing that building and educating in science and technology and engineering is what will make the difference with competitiveness 10 years from now.

The countries who win that effort to build and educate in science and technology will dominate the competitive landscape in the future. If you look at what's happening in China, they are making their investments appropriately with that strategic goal in mind.

If you look at Europe and what they are doing with their supercomputer centers, in some sense, they've already put money where their mouth is with their plans for exascale. If you look at the top 10 supercomputers right now, half are in foreign countries. This is a new thing for us -- half of the top 10 machines are in other places.

With this competition, is the timing good to get money for exascale?
It may be good. However, we seem to always be a reactive country, and it would have been better to not be in this situation than to have to react to it. But I'll take reacting.

What we really need is to build and continue to maintain the expertise of designing and educating and bringing that whole package together. The reason, in some sense, I'm not too focused on the purchase part is that any country can buy [a supercomputer].

The question is, who designed the technology, software and the applications? Because that's the place where it matters to science and technology engineering in the U.S. Right now, we're still in the lead, but our competitors are working hard.

Google eBook - 20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web

2010-11-21T17:39:00.001-08:00

Read Download

by: Jared Newman

The nature of the Internet doesn't exactly make for an exciting bedtime story, but that's how Google is presenting "20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web."

Google's Chrome team wrote the e-book in HTML5, presented as interactive pages that you can fold and flip by clicking and dragging the mouse. The book is fun to read, at least for a little while, and educational if you're not a know-it-all. It advocates for updating to a modern Web browser (i.e., not IE6) and argues that plug-ins are relics (unless they're integrated into the browser itself, as Chrome does with Adobe Flash).

But above all, it got me wondering, what's up with Google Editions, the cloud e-book service that was supposed to launch over the summer?

Time's running out on that plan. Sandoval noted that Google could miss the holiday season and fall behind in a race against Apple, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. That seems like a given now.

But who knows? Maybe "20 Things" is a hint that Google's e-book plans are coming together. The interface was nice, and I enjoyed curling each page as I read. It didn't work nearly as well on an iPad though, with no animations and just buttons instead of gesture controls. Maybe this isn't a glimpse of Google Editions, but it's something.

RockMelt - A Social Networking Spin on Google Chrome

2010-11-12T18:39:00.000-08:00

by: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Would you like to do your Web browsing while keeping a constant eye on what your Facebook friends are doing? If so, then RockMelt is for you.

RockMelt is actually a combined Facebook front end and Web browser. It is built on the foundation of Google's open-source Chromium Web browser, which is also the basis for Google's popular and fast Chrome browser.

I tried RockMelt out on a Dell Inspiron 530s PC running Windows XP. RockMelt will also run on Macs, but there is no Linux build available. On my XP system, it ran quite quickly, like Chrome does.

You can't download RockMelt without logging into Facebook. Once you have the application (which is still invitation-only), you must log into Facebook and give RockMelt permission to show and manipulate Facebook data before you can install it.

Like most traditionally formatted browsers, there are separate search and address fields (instead of the combined search and address bar that Chrome has). When you use the search box, the results are displayed in a panel. Otherwise, RockMelt acts pretty much like Chrome, with easy-to-use multiple tabs on the top and fast, accurate Web page rendering.

But there is a major difference: In addition to the top-level toolbars, RockMelt also has toolbars on either side of the browser. On the left, you'll see your Facebook friends' icons, and on your right, you'll find icons for your Twitter and RSS feeds.

These tiny icons are color-coded so you can tell when someone is active online and/or has recently posted something. When you click on these mini-icons, a panel opens up that shows you what your friends are up to, lets you IM with another buddy on Facebook and so on. In the case of the RSS feeds, the panel displays a listing of current news items.

At this time, there doesn't seem to a way to scroll up and down the list of icons. So, for instance, you'll only see your most recently active Facebook friends on the left -- you can't scroll down to see others who haven't made any recent updates. You can, however, pick out specific Facebook friends and display just their status on the left sidebar.

Because RockMelt is an early beta, not all its features are available. For example, the Twitter component doesn't work yet. RockMelt staffers say the Twitter component will provide access to your buddies' tweets, let you retweet them, reply to them or enter your own tweets.

RockMelt isn't the first browser to offer social networking along with the Web. If it sounds familiar, that's because at least one other browser, Flock (based both on Mozilla Firefox and Google's Chromium), also tries to be both a social-network front end and a Web browser. However, while Flock uses a sidebar for its social network and RSS feeds, RockMelt uses the edges of the interface.

In the end, the real question will be whether RockMelt's interface works for you. I found it too busy. If you spend a great deal of your day keeping up with your friends on Facebook and you want a fast browser, you may like RockMelt. I think most social networkers will be just as happy with their regular browser and a separate social networking tool such as TweetDeck or Gwibber.

Google Instant Preview Shows a Piece of Every Page

2010-11-09T15:05:00.000-08:00

Try it NOW

by: Jared Newman

The idea seems so obvious when you think about it: Instead of showing only text in search results, Google Instant Preview will soon display an image of every website.

After Google rolls out Instant Preview over the next few days, search results will have a small magnifying glass icon next to them. Clicking on it will bring up a snapshot of the website in question, often with text from your search highlighted on the page.

Obviously, Instant Preview won't be worthwhile if it's too slow. Google claims that preview results are usually delivered in under one-tenth of a second, and once you click the magnifying glass, Google begins loading other page previews in the background.

The company claims that users are 5 percent more likely to be satisfied with the search results they click on when using Instant Preview.

Microsoft's Bing has offered page previews since its inception, but without actual snapshots of the page. Instead, Bing clips what it thinks are the most relevant parts of a page, such as contact information and store hours for businesses, and displays it in a small box.

I don't think Bing's approach is necessarily inferior to Google Instant Preview. In fact, both search engines are playing to their strengths. Bing is best at delivering answers to your queries directly on its own search results pages, and sometimes its page previews can be more valuable than visiting the actual website. Google does a better job of sending you to useful websites, and Instant Preview provides a better idea of which sites have the information you need. As the company explains, Instant Preview can be useful for determining if a how-to page has images, or whether you've visited the website before.

Bloggers are the Ultimate Storytellers!

2010-11-05T20:59:00.000-07:00

Humans May Form Backbone of Mobile Networks

2010-10-31T18:02:00.000-07:00

by: Anuradha Shukla

In the future, small sensors carried by members of the public, in devices such as next-generation smartphones, may communicate with each other to create potentially vast body-to-body networks (BBNs).

This possibility is being investigated by engineers from Queen's Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT).

Ultra High Bandwidth

Researchers from Queen's University Belfast say the novel sensors could create new ultra high bandwidth mobile Internet infrastructures and also reduce the density of mobile phone base stations.

It is proposed that in future, members of the public could form the backbone of powerful new mobile Internet networks by carrying wearable sensors. The engineers of ECIT are researching this further based on the rapidly developing science of body-centric communications.

This research is expected to deliver significant improvements in mobile gaming and remote healthcare. It could also help precision monitoring of athletes and real-time tactical training in team sports.

Commercial Rewards

Interaction between the new sensors would ensure transmission of data and also provide 'anytime, anywhere' mobile network connectivity.

Dr Simon Cotton, from ECIT's wireless communications research group, said a significant amount of research has already been undertaken into antennas and systems designed to share information across the surface of the human body.

However, researchers still have to find out how that information can be transferred efficiently to an off-body location.

"If the idea takes off, BBNs help to alleviate public perceptions of adverse health associated with current networks and be more environmentally friendly due to the much lower power levels required for operation," said Dr Cotton. "Success in this field will not only bring major social benefits, it could also bring significant commercial rewards for those involved. Even though the market for wearable wireless sensors is still in its infancy, it is expected to grow to more than 400 million devices annually by 2014."

Wi-Fi Direct vs. Bluetooth 4.0

2010-10-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

by: Ian Paul

The fight is on for wireless device-to-device networking supremacy between a refreshed incumbent, Bluetooth 4.0, and a newcomer, Wi-Fi Direct. Both specifications are promising to make it easier for you to quickly transfer pictures, files and other data between two wireless devices such as your smartphone and laptop without the need for a Wi-Fi network or USB cable.

The Wi-Fi Alliance originally announced the Wi-Fi Direct specification in December, promising speedy data transfers over long distances between two devices. On Monday, the alliance said it has started certifying Wi-Fi Direct products that should hit store shelves before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group announced in July that it would soon start certifying Bluetooth 4.0 devices. Just like Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 4.0 is promising speedy device-to-device transfers over long distances, and Bluetooth 4.0 devices should also hit the market in the coming months.

Can Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth 4.0 complement each other or will one crush the other in a wireless specification battle for the ages? Only time will tell. Until then, here's a quick look at the major highlights of Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi Direct.

Wi-Fi Direct? I thought Wi-Fi devices already had an ad hoc mode.

In Wi-Fi Alliance terms, ad hoc refers to an aging Wi-Fi device-to-device transfer method that was painful to set up and maxed out at data transfer speeds around 11 Mbps. Wi-Fi Direct, on the other hand, promises regular Wi-Fi speeds of up to 250 Mbps. Wi-Fi Direct also promises to be much easier to set up and use than ad hoc.

What's up with Bluetooth 4.0. Didn't we just get Bluetooth 3.0?

Bluetooth 4.0 is an upgrade from Bluetooth 3.0 that includes a power-saving feature called "low-energy technology." Basically, Bluetooth 4.0 is three Bluetooth specs in one. Bluetooth 4.0 not only uses the new low-energy technology, but also relies on high-speed data transfers introduced in Bluetooth 3.0 and so-called classic Bluetooth technology found in older Bluetooth specifications. The tricky thing is that Bluetooth 4.0's low-energy technology is not compatible with existing Bluetooth devices. However, that doesn't mean your new Bluetooth 4.0-equipped smartphone wouldn't be able to work with a Bluetooth 2.1 headset.

It means that a device that only uses Bluetooth's low-energy technology wouldn't be able to talk to an older Bluetooth device. Let's say you have a Bluetooth pedometer that only has Bluetooth 4.0's low-energy feature baked in (and not the other parts of the Bluetooth 4.0 spec). You wouldn't be able to transfer via Bluetooth the pedometer's data to an older laptop equipped with Bluetooth 2.1.

It should be pointed out, however, that manufacturers could incorporate low-energy technology into a newer device using Bluetooth 2.1 or Bluetooth 3.0. So the backward compatibility problem only affects older Bluetooth devices, and not the actual Bluetooth specifications.

Bluetooth 4.0 vs. Wi-Fi Direct: Speed

Wi-Fi Direct promises device-to-device transfer speeds of up to 250Mbps, while Bluetooth 4.0 promises speeds similar to Bluetooth 3.0 of up to 25Mbps. Both Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi Direct use the 802.11 networking standard to reach their maximum speeds. But whether Bluetooth or Wi-Fi Direct speeds will run as fast as promised in the real world remains to be seen. In other words, don't believe the hype and keep an eye on independent data speed tests to see how each specification performs.

How far can these specs travel?

The Wi-Fi Alliance is claiming that Wi-Fi Direct devices can reach each other at a maximum distance of 656 feet (more than two football fields) away. Why you would ever need that kind of distance between two devices is beyond me. Sufficed to say, it shouldn't be a problem for the laptop in your bedroom to communicate with the printer in your den via Wi-Fi Direct.

The Bluetooth SIG says that Bluetooth 4.0's maximum range is not dependent on the specification, but on the capabilities of the Bluetooth device. That said the Bluetooth SIG suggests a distance of at least 200 feet for a Bluetooth 4.0 device.

Security

Bluetooth 4.0 is using AES 128-bit encryption, while Wi-Fi Direct relies on WPA2 security, which uses AES 256-bit encryption. Both forms use key-based encryption and authentication methods, and both offer enough security for the average consumer.

Who's got the power?

Both the Bluetooth SIG and the Wi-Fi Alliance are claiming their specifications will use power-saving technology for battery-powered devices. The Bluetooth SIG says the new low-energy technology (PDF) feature means that Bluetooth 4.0 chips are optimized to run on a coin cell battery for a year or longer. But low-energy technology is only meant to be used when transferring short bursts of data. It also won't work if you are trying to talk to an older Bluetooth device that lacks the low-energy feature. That means laptops and mobile phones with Bluetooth 4.0 will have to switch between the new low-energy technology and so-called classic Bluetooth technology depending on the device they are talking to and how much data they are transferring. The bottom line is that while Bluetooth 4.0's power-saving feature sounds impressive, it's not clear how often you will get to take advantage of it in the real world.

The Wi-Fi Alliance says Wi-Fi Direct devices can support the WMM Power Save program that promises to improve a device's battery life by 15 to 40 percent.

Backward compatibility?

Wi-Fi Direct devices will be able to communicate with legacy Wi-Fi devices. That means if your next laptop has a Wi-Fi Direct chip, you will be able to create a device-to-device connection with your old wireless printer or wireless digital picture frame.

As I've already said, Bluetooth 4.0's new low-energy technology means that compatibility with older Bluetooth devices could get a bit messy. Some Bluetooth 4.0 devices such as pedometers and glucose monitors will only come with Bluetooth's low-energy feature using a single-mode Bluetooth radio. Since these single-function devices are meant to be small and mobile, they use the new power-saving feature to save space and battery power. But that means they are also incompatible with, say, an older PC equipped with Bluetooth 2.1.

More complex devices using Bluetooth 4.0, such as PCs and mobile phones, will use a dual-mode radio to take advantage of all three Bluetooth 4.0 technologies - low-energy, high-speed transfers and classic Bluetooth. This will make it possible for newer Bluetooth 4.0 devices to communicate with legacy Bluetooth tech.

It's also important to note that so-called "streaming devices" such as hands-free headsets for mobile phones or stereo equipment cannot use Bluetooth low energy technology. That means new Bluetooth headsets for your iPhone 4, Droid X or Samsung Focus should not be affected by Bluetooth 4.0's use new low-energy technology.

Availability

Bluetooth 4.0 products should start hitting the market before the end of the year or early 2011. But it looks like Wi-Fi Direct may be first out the gate. The Wi-Fi Alliance recently announced that five wireless networking PC cards from Atheros, Broadcom, Intel, Ralink and Realtek are Wi-Fi Direct ready and should be available before the end of the year.

HP Updates Mobile Platform With WebOS 2.0

2010-10-19T18:37:00.000-07:00

by: Agam Shah

Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday announced the next-generation Palm OS, calling webOS 2.0 the "most significant upgrade" since the mobile platform was introduced in 2009.

HP's new Palm Pre 2 smartphone, which will first be available on Friday in France from wireless carrier SFR, will be the first to ship with webOS 2.0, HP said. The Palm Pre 2 will become available in the coming months in the U.S. and Canada through Verizon Wireless.

The Palm Pre 2 has a 3.1-inch screen, runs on a 1GHz processor and will include a 5-megapixel camera, a company spokesman said. It weighs about 145 grams (5.1 ounces) The spokesman declined to comment on the phone's pricing.

HP has said that webOS 2.0 will go into many other devices besides smartphones, such as tablets.

The new OS has many new features such as multitasking, HP said. Users will be able to run and easily switch between multiple applications. It also features a new "Just Type" feature from which users can search for data on a device or the Internet, and also start writing e-mails or update status messages before opening an application. Customized shortcuts help enable these actions.

WebOS also supports Flash 10.1 and HTML5 for users to watch video on the Internet. A feature called Synergy can automatically connect and populate the smartphone with data from e-mail services like Microsoft Exchange, or from websites such as Google and Facebook.

Applications including Skype Mobile will also run on the OS, and users will be able to call other Internet users, or land lines and cell phones at low rates. It also integrates Google Docs, and includes Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite, which will allow users to view Microsoft Office files. It also allows users to connect to VPNs and access their corporate networks.

WebOS will compete in the mobile OS space against competitors from Apple, Google and Microsoft, which last week introduced Windows Phone 7.

Get-It-Done Guy's 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More

2010-10-06T09:17:00.000-07:00

Do you remember Get-it-Done Guy podcast by Stever Robbins on iTunes?
Now Stever Robbins's new book was released: Get-It-Done Guy's 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More (Quick & Dirty Tips)

Simply, this book is awesome, you'll impressed by the very first words of the book.
Robbins starts the book with some tips and facts:

The bad news is that we spend so much of that working, we probably end up with less actual fun during our lifetime.
Want to win an argument? Just say, “My idea will make us more productive.” No one even bothers to ask. And that’s a real shame
Get their chaos under control so they can start working less, doing more, and having the life of their dreams
Untether yourself from your technology, or learn how to beat distractions and focus better.

then come the 9 steps that will help you work less and do more in no time:
Step 1: Live On Purpose
Step 2: Stop Procrastinating
Step 3: Conquer Technology
Step 4: Beat Distractions to Cultivate Focus
Step 5: Stay Organized
Step 6: Stop Wasting Time
Step 7: Optimize
Step 8: Build Stronger Relationships
Step 9: Leverage

I'll provide you with some notes and tips from the first two steps.

STEP 1: LIVE ON PURPOSE

You Need To Identify Your Goals
The first step in living on purpose is to get really good at identifying goals. Big goals, little goals, medium- sized goals. Everything you do at any moment has a bunch of goals attached, goals don’t hang out alone; they travel in packs

Make Sure Your Actions Match Your Goals
Living on purpose means stopping to make sure your actions still match your big goals.
But you need to keep the big picture in mind to do this. Without knowing your higher-level goals, you don’t know whether your actions are helping

Use a Goal Ladder to Check Your Actions and Goals
You can build a goal ladder around your actions to check them. A goal ladder is a quick, written recognition of how your actions and sub-goals link to your larger goals. It lists your actions, the goals the action is trying to reach, the goals of that goal, and so on.

How to Identify Your Top Goals
If your actions don’t match your projects, or your project doesn’t fit the strategy, you can work your butt off and it won’t help the company one bit.

Create A Life Map So You Can Live On Purpose!
A Life Map is simply a general goal ladder for your life. Rather than doing a separate goal ladder for every action you take, a Life Map lays out an overview of the different levels of goals in all aspects of your life.
Your Life Map starts with whatever a full, satisfying life is for you. It is the destination at the very top of your personal ladder of goals.

Identify Your Life Vision
We all had dreams as children. Some of them made us wet our beds and wake up screaming in terror. Those dreams, you can leave in childhood. But too many of us also left our inspiring dreams in childhood. We left them in favor of “being sensible.” Our dreams don’t go away.

Make Sure Your Life Maps Are Aligned
Review your Life Map starting at the bottom. Ask Why for each line. The answer should connect to the goal above. If not, you’ve found a disconnect to fix.

Use Your Life Maps to Stay on Purpose, Daily
My Life Map tells me when to say yes or no so I don’t waste time working on something that won’t help me reach my goals.

When to Review Your Life Map
When you have five conflicting to- do’s and there’s only time to do three, look over your Life Map and use it to get a sense of which are more important in the grand scheme of things.

When Your Life Maps Don’t Line Up, It’s Time for a Change
Mismatches make far more work in the end. Your actions will take you far from where you want to be, and later you’ll have more work to get back on course.

Step 2: STOP PROCRASTINATING

When we procrastinate, we do everything except work less and do more!
Explore how procrastination comes from things under our control, which means the answer to it is also under our control

Turn Tasks into Habits to Stop Procrastinating
Establish a habit by making it regular. Put it on your calendar to remind you. When the time comes, treat it as an appointment

Use Baby Chunks
Taking baby chunks isn’t about breaking your project into pieces; it’s about breaking time into pieces.
When there’s an end in sight, it’s easy to buckle down and power through. That’s why we like speed dating.

Use Daily Action Packs
Gather your major projects and figure out what daily dose will be enough to move each project forward.

Create a Wealth Inventory
We can always whine to convince ourselves to do something later.
What are your life resources? You know people, you have money and things, and you have skills. At any moment, you think of one or two of these at best. But if you make a wealth inventory, you can jog your memory whenever you need.

Use Other People
When we know someone else is expecting us, we feel compelled to live up to the expectation.
First, you need a friend. Any kind will do.
Next, you each get out your Daily Action Pack and look at the measures you chose for it.

Use Action Days
Resist the temptation to chat. Stay focused on making things happen.

Motivate Yourself
Get yourself moving, find something about your situation that does excite you enough to commit.
Many people who work in nonprofit or government jobs are motivated by the service they are providing for others.

Use Your Life Map to Get Moving
Life Map is driving your need to do the task.
Knowing the link between your task and your motivation for doing the task is good information, but not always enough to turn into action.
If questions trigger automatic action, let’s design some questions to get us moving.

When All Else Fails, Use Carrots and Stick
Self- bribery is most powerful when the bribe expires.
Gluttons for punishment can turn the motivation all the way up to eleven by pairing rewards with punishments.

Pay Attention to Your Procrastination
Overcoming procrastination is an adventure that will bring you closer to the world of working less and doing more.

This is one of the books I really liked, not only because it's Stever's book, but it has a different taste, the only thing that I found annoying, some tips are mixed or repeated, this is mentioned by the author, but after all they serve the topic.

Mozilla Seabird Phone is a Glimpse of the Future

2010-09-25T00:55:00.000-07:00

by: Nancy Gohring

The hottest concept mobile phone right now doesn't come from Apple, Google, Motorola or HTC. It was developed by a designer in his spare time as part of a Mozilla Labs project.

Seabird is designer Billy May's vision for a phone that aims to address some of the frustrations people have when interacting with small devices. "While mobile CPUs, connectivity and development platforms begin approaching that of desktops, the lagging ability to efficiently input information has grown ever more pronounced," he wrote in a blog post describing the phone.

Seabird has two pico projectors. When placed in a dock it uses one of them to project the screen on a nearby wall for easier viewing and the other to project a full-size, virtual keyboard on the table where it sits. A user can then type on the virtual keyboard instead of a tiny on-screen or physical keyboard on the phone.

A small Bluetooth dongle fits into a slot on the back of the phone. It can be popped out and used as an earpiece. Or, users can wave the dongle in space to move a cursor on the phone screen, clicking the dongle to select an item on the screen. May says it lets users "pan and zoom in 3D space."

The dual pico projectors, located on the sides of the phone, could also be used without the dock to project half a keyboard each -- one on each side of the phone. "The Seabird, on just a flat surface, enables netbook-quality interaction by working with the projector's angular distortion to deliver interface, rather than content," May wrote.

Seabird features other standard smartphone components like an 8-megapixel camera, a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack and a mini-USB port. May envisions that it can be charged wirelessly.

The concept phone is built on Android and has an unusual shape. With a flat face and no physical buttons, it tapers to just a sliver at the bottom, with a bulge protruding from the top at the back. That bulge elevates the projector lenses enough to project an image onto the surface that the phone sits on.

While Mozilla says it has no intention of developing a phone like it, the technologies in it are either already available or not terribly far-fetched. We will wait and see.

IE9 - 5 Features and Drawbacks

2010-09-16T19:02:00.000-07:00

by: Ian Paul

Microsoft launched Internet Explorer 9 Beta on Wednesday, and the software giant has packed a lot of functionality into its new Web browser including site-specific jump lists, task bar shortcuts, a new layout and a unified search and address bar. With IE9 Microsoft has focused on extending the browser's compatibility with modern Web technologies such as HTML 5 and CSS3. Microsoft says IE9 is faster than previous versions of Explorer because it maximizes your computer's hardware components, specifically your graphics processing unit (GPU), instead of improving browser speed solely through software tweaks.

Beyond Microsoft's claims, the new browser is starting to win over critics for being a fast, attractive, and easy-to-use browser. However, some are criticizing Microsoft for not extending IE9 to Windows XP users, but if you're a Windows 7 or Vista user, IE9 is well worth checking out.

Here's a quick look at some of IE9's top features, and a few tips and tricks to help you get the most out of Microsoft's next-generation Web browser.

Sites As Apps

Internet Explorer 9 lets you turn your favorite websites into launch icons on your taskbar, essentially creating Web apps. All you have to do is grab the tab of the site you're visiting, and drag it down to the taskbar. This creates an icon in your taskbar based on the site's favicon (the little picture that sits next to the address bar). If a favicon is not available, then Windows uses the standard IE logo.

The new functionality is a great addition, and is similar to Prism, the Mozilla Labs experiment for Firefox. But IE9's pinned sites have a few drawbacks, because the windows for your new pinned sites are slightly different than a standard IE9 window.

First off, each Web app functions as a separate window, and despite the fact that IE9 added tearoff tabs (more about that later), you cannot grab a tab from one pinned site and join it with another. Say, for example, you pinned Facebook and Twitter to your taskbar. Once you open each site from the taskbar, you cannot join the two together as two tabs in one window. Once you open a site from the taskbar it is locked in its own separate window.

If you happen to use a password manager that functions as an add-on toolbar, such as Lastpass, you may also lose access to your passwords within the Web app window. I turned Twitter, Facebook and Gmail into Web apps, and was unable to get the Lastpass toolbar to show up in the separate windows for each site. I rely on Lastpass to save long and complicated passwords for almost all of my Web-based accounts, so not having easy access to my password manager was a real problem. I'm not sure if the problem is on Lastpass' end or if this is something Microsoft will have to address. Either way, it's something to be aware of if you use a browser-based third-party password manager.

Pinned sites also lose IE9's homepage icon found on the right side of the browser window. Granted, that's a minor complaint, but it's worth being aware of.

Jumplists

Pinned sites may have a few minor problems at the moment, but the new jumplist feature is a great addition to IE9. Once you've pinned a site such as Twitter, Facebook or even PC World to your taskbar, just right-click on the icon to see a selection of shortcuts for that site. Right-click on Facebook, for example, and you have quick access to your Newsfeed, Messages, Events and Friends list. Twitter's jumplist options include the ability to write a new tweet, see your direct messages, mentions, favorites and search.

Configuring jumplists is up to the site owner, so it's hit or miss right now on whether your favorite sites will include this functionality. At the time of this writing, for example, many sites lacked jumplists including The New York Times, Gmail, and oddly enough even Microsoft sites such as Live.com and Hotmail. Hopefully more sites will add jumplists for IE9 in the coming months.

Look Right

IE9 has simplified its controls and shifted the home, settings and bookmarks icons over to the top right of your browser window. The bookmarks icon (the star) has tabs for your bookmarked sites, browsing history and RSS feeds. Settings (the cog) contains functions such as Internet Options, print functions, the add-ons manager and a new downloads manager.

Unified search and address bar

Microsoft is taking a page from Google Chrome and giving you a unified search and address bar in IE9 called the OneBox. Since this is Microsoft's browser, the default search engine is of course Bing. But if you prefer Google or Yahoo, it's easy enough to switch. Click on Settings (the cog icon to the right), Manage add-ons, and in the new window that pops up click on "Search Providers" in the left pane. Then, down on the bottom left side of the window click on "Find more search providers." This will open the Internet Explorer add-ons gallery where you can add search providers such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia and many others.

If you don't find the search provider you want, you can make your own by clicking on "Create your own Search Provider" at the bottom of the Add-ons gallery page, and following the instructions.

In my brief tests, IE9's OneBox search function worked pretty well, but it often wouldn't work with advanced search operators such as "site:" for site-specific searches or "filetype:".

Other goodies

Some of the features Microsoft has added are basically playing catch-up with other browsers. Tear-off tabs, where you create a new browser window by dragging a tab out of its current window, is a great addition and standard in most other browsers. You can also consolidate regular browser tabs by dragging them back into one window. Just remember this feature does not work with sites pinned to your taskbar.

IE9 also has a new downloads manager as mentioned earlier that lets you pause, restart and cancel downloads.

Overall, IE9 Beta is a great start for Microsoft's next-generation browser, and is well worth trying out if you're a Windows 7 or Vista user.

Google Instant Searches the Web As You Type

2010-09-08T22:33:00.000-07:00

by: Jared Newman

Google has rekindle its love for speedy Web searches with Google Instant, a new version of the search engine that displays results as you type.

When typing a search query with Google Instant, results appear after the first letter is entered, and they update as the user types. Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search and user experience, said results are actually delivered "before you type," because Google Instant predicts and automatically completes search terms.

According to Google, a typical searcher spends nine seconds entering a query, and 15 seconds searching for answers. Google hopes to shave two to five seconds per search using Google Instant.

Google claims that Instant won't considerably slow down Internet connections, because the amount of data delivered for search terms is relatively small, and because the system only sends parts of the page that change when more typing alters a search result. For connections that are already slow, Google Instant automatically turns off, and users can also shut off the service through their user preferences or by clicking the drop down box to the right of the search bar.

Google Instant is rolling out today in the United States, and works in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer 8 and Safari. More information is available at Google's Website, where users can try the service and set it as their home page. Users in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Russia will get Google Instant over the next week.

Mobile access to Google Instant is planned, but not available now.

Digeus System Optimizer - boost your PC speed

2010-08-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

Do you suffer from a slow computer, do you have to wait a lot for windows and programs to load, do you think your computer get stuck for no reason, your mind will come up with a good idea, “what about REINSTALLING windows?”, hold on, did you ever heard about maintenance software?

One of the best tools for this job is Digeus System Optimizer 8.2

What is in the package?

Optimize:
* Registry Cleaner
* Registry Defragmenter
* Unnecessary Files Cleaner
* Duplicate Files Finder
* Disk Space Analyzer
* Privacy Protection
* Process Manager
* Service Manager
* Startup Manager
* Smart Uninstaller
* Memory Cleaner
* Junk Files Cleaner

Tweak:
* System Info
* Icon Manager
* IE Manager
* System Speed Optimizer
* Multimedia Settings Tweaker
* Repair System Settings
* System Customization
* Drivers and Programs

Security:
* Data Encryptor
* File Shredder
* System Security Tweaker

and many other links to Windows tools and features.

System Optimizer Features

* Automatically identifies and repairs common Windows problems
* Finds and deletes duplicate files - regain valuable hard disk space
* Removes invalid registry entries increasing system performance
* Eliminates system crashes, freezes and slowdowns
* Improves PC boot up and response time
* Cleans over 50 different types of junk files
* Cleans your Internet History and other personal traces

OS Requirements

support all windows versions 95/98/ME/NT/XP/2000/2003/Vista x32, Vista x64, Windows 7

Pros

* Tweak and Security tools are very good
* Simple for non experienced users
* Makes use of Windows built-in configurations, and help you access it easily
* Microsoft certified
* Prevents Windows crashes and BSOD

Cons
* Provides a little description about each feature but the online help is great
* System Settings Repair are a bit risky !!
* Some tools crashed for no reason, but worked again later

Get it now

Google Brings Voice to Gmail With Free Calls

2010-08-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

by: Jared Newman

Google just shattered the pay wall between VoIP and telephones, letting Gmail users make free voice calls to the United States and Canada.

Google promises that phone calls will remain free "for at least the rest of the year," while calls to other countries start at $0.02 per minute. The voice service for Gmail will roll out to users over the next few days. To get started using the service, you will have to install the free "voice and video chat" Web-based service to your Gmail account here.

Here's how it works: First, you'll need Google's Voice and Video plug-in. Within Gmail's "Chat" window, a "Call phone" option will appear. Up pops a little number pad, on which you can dial the phone you'd like to call. Your Google Voice number, if you have one, will appear as the outbound caller ID, and can be used to receive calls within Gmail. Otherwise, a generic number is shown, Search Engine Land reports.

Google doesn't mention whether free VoIP calls will be possible from cell phones, and an official blog post on the subject only shows Gmail's desktop application. However, the number pad that pops up for placing calls has the proportions of a cell-phone screen; maybe that's a hint of things to come.

With the introduction of voice calls in Gmail, Google probably just made a few enemies. The first is Skype, which only allows free VoIP calls to other Skype users. With Gmail, all calls within the United States and Canada are free. I imagine Gmail's calling feature won't go over well with home phone alternatives such as Vonage and MagicJack, not to mention telcos that offer digital phone service.

But Google's going to make a lot of people happy, as well. Home offices could use the Gmail service in lieu of a dedicated landline, and people who don't have landlines and want to cut down on their cell phone minutes could use Google's service for long conversations. If Gmail phone calls remain free beyond this year, it may be time to invest in a wireless headset and a mic.

Facebook Places: What You Need To Know?

2010-08-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

by: Ian Paul

Facebook on Wednesday launched its new location-sharing feature called Places. Similar to other location-based services such as Gowalla and MyTown, it allows you to signal your presence at a bar, restaurant, arena, or other location via Facebook. The social network's focus appears to be on simply sharing your location with your friends as opposed to including gaming elements or promotional check-in incentives that you find with other location services such as Foursquare.

Places promises to be an interesting addition to Facebook, and could increase the popularity of location sharing in general. But before you start checking in to every restaurant, movie theater, and bar you visit, here's what you need to know.

Places Basics

At launch, Places will be available to U.S. users only. You can check into a location in two ways: through the Facebook iPhone application or by pointing your mobile browser to touch.facebook.com. The browser-based version of Places will work only if your device supports HTML5 and geolocation.

Just tap the Places icon and you'll see a list of nearby Places. Tap on your location from the list, and you can check in, tag any friends who are with you, and add a status update. When you tag a friend, you will be checking them in if they allow third party check-ins. If your friend doesn't allow third party check-ins, then tagging them will be just like tagging them in a status update. No actual check-in will happen.

You can only check in people who are on your Facebook friends list and only when you first check into a location yourself. You can see who else is at your location under the "People Here Now" section for that place.

Facebook says all Places check-ins are visible only to friends by default unless your master privacy control is set to "Everyone."

Plays Nice With Others

Facebook has decided not to wipe other location-based services off the face of the Earth. Instead these services can use Places to enhance their own offerings.

It's not entirely clear how this will work, but Gowalla Chief Technical Officer Scott Raymond said in an interview with VentureBeat that Gowalla's plan was to allow users to push their check-ins from Gowalla into Facebook's Places feature. It appears you will also be able to import your check-in badges, pins, and Gowalla passport stamps into Facebook.

Bing Maps

It should come as no surprise that Facebook is using Microsoft's Bing Maps to pinpoint locations in Places.

Microsoft made a considerable investment in Facebook several years ago, and other Microsoft services such as Bing search and Microsoft Docs are already integrated with Facebook.

Not Yet Fully Functional

Some have reported seeing messages that Places is not yet available in their area, while others say they can activate Places but the check-in function is not operational.

If you're experiencing similar problems, hold tight the functionality is coming soon. Facebook is slowly rolling out the service and will make it available across the U.S. over the next few days, according to TechCrunch.
The Onslaught Begins Thursday

Facebook says it plans on turning on the Read API for third-party functionality on Thursday. What that means is that third-party services will be able to read your check-ins when you interact with those apps as well as the check-ins of people on your friends list (if their privacy settings allow it), according to programmableweb.

Any third-party application that wants to use your check-in data must specifically ask you for it when you authorize the app, according to Facebook. However, be aware of some downsides.

It appears there's no way to deny access to your Places data and still use the application. So if you want to use an application that requires your Places data, you either must deny the application completely or accept the fact that the application will be harvesting your location data. You can find out more about Facebook's privacy permissions here.

Privacy Concerns

The first criticisms over Places and privacy appear to be from the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. The civil rights group doesn't like the fact that there isn't a flat out "No" option to stop friends from checking you in.

If someone checks you in at a location, you receive a mobile notification that a friend has checked you in. Then you must decide to either permanently authorize third-party check-ins or deny them by selecting "not now," according to the ACLUNC. The concern is that by selecting "not now," the request to authorize third-party check-ins may come up again and again until you finally say yes. Also, if you use Places to check yourself in, then third-party check-ins are turned on automatically unless you adjust your privacy settings, according to the ACLUNC.

The ACLUNC also says that the "People Here Now" feature doesn't have enough granular control. The feature only has an option to be turned on (everyone can see your check-in) or turned off (no one can see your check-in). The ACLUNC would prefer to see an option that allows only your friends to see you under the " People Here Now" feature. It also appears that "People Here Now" is turned on by default "if you have previously selected that "Everyone" can see even a single piece of your information," according to the ACLUNC.

Why Linux Is More Secure Than Windows?

2010-08-06T21:24:00.000-07:00

By Katherine Noyes

"Security through obscurity" may be a catchy phrase, but it's not the only thing that's catching among Windows users.

The expression is intended to suggest that proprietary software is more secure by virtue of its closed nature. If hackers can't see the code, then it's harder for them to create exploits for it--or so the thinking goes.

Unfortunately for Windows users, that's just not true--as evidenced by the never-ending parade of patches coming out of Redmond. In fact, one of Linux's many advantages over Windows is that it is more secure--much more. For small businesses and other organizations without a dedicated staff of security experts, that benefit can be particularly critical.

Five key factors underlie Linux's superior security:

1. Privileges

Linux systems are by no means infallible, but one of their key advantages lies in the way account privileges are assigned. In Windows, users are generally given administrator access by default, which means they pretty much have access to everything on the system, even its most crucial parts. So, then, do viruses. It's like giving terrorists high-level government positions.

With Linux, on the other hand, users do not usually have such "root" privileges; rather, they're typically given lower-level accounts. What that means is that even if a Linux system is compromised, the virus won't have the root access it would need to do damage systemwide; more likely, just the user's local files and programs would be affected. That can make the difference between a minor annoyance and a major catastrophe in any business setting.

2. Social Engineering

Viruses and worms often spread by convincing computer users to do something they shouldn't, like open attachments that carry viruses and worms. This is called social engineering, and it's all too easy on Windows systems. Just send out an e-mail with a malicious attachment and a subject line like, "Check out these adorable puppies!"--or the porn equivalent--and some proportion of users is bound to click without thinking. The result? An open door for the attached malware, with potentially disastrous consequences organizationwide.

Thanks to the fact that most Linux users don't have root access, however, it's much harder to accomplish any real damage on a Linux system by getting them to do something foolish. Before any real damage could occur, a Linux user would have to read the e-mail, save the attachment, give it executable permissions and then run the executable. Not very likely, in other words.

3. The Monoculture Effect

However you want to argue the exact numbers, there's no doubt that Microsoft Windows still dominates most of the computing world. In the realm of e-mail, so too do Outlook and Outlook Express. And therein lies a problem: It's essentially a monoculture, which is no better in technology than it is in the natural world. Just as genetic diversity is a good thing in the natural world because it minimizes the deleterious effects of a deadly virus, so a diversity of computing environments helps protect users.

Fortunately, a diversity of environments is yet another benefit that Linux offers. There's Ubuntu, there's Debian, there's Gentoo, and there are many other distributions. There are also many shells, many packaging systems, and many mail clients; Linux even runs on many architectures beyond just Intel. So, whereas a virus can be targeted squarely at Windows users, since they all use pretty much the same technology, reaching more than a small faction of Linux users is much more difficult. Who wouldn't want to give their company that extra layer of assurance?

4. Audience Size

Hand-in-hand with this monoculture effect comes the not particularly surprising fact that the majority of viruses target Windows, and the desktops in your organization are no exception. Millions of people all using the same software make an attractive target for malicious attacks.

5. How Many Eyeballs

"Linus' Law"--named for Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux--holds that, "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." What that means is that the larger the group of developers and testers working on a set of code, the more likely any flaws will be caught and fixed quickly. This, in other words, is essentially the polar opposite of the "security through obscurity" argument.

With Windows, it's a limited set of paid developers who are trying to find problems in the code. They adhere to their own set timetables, and they don't generally tell anyone about the problems until they've already created a solution, leaving the door open to exploits until that happens. Not a very comforting thought for the businesses that depend on that technology.

In the Linux world, on the other hand, countless users can see the code at any time, making it more likely that someone will find a flaw sooner rather than later. Not only that, but users can even fix problems themselves. Microsoft may tout its large team of paid developers, but it's unlikely that team can compare with a global base of Linux user-developers around the globe. Security can only benefit through all those extra "eyeballs."

Once again, none of this is to say that Linux is impervious; no operating system is. And there are definitely steps Linux users should take to make their systems as secure as possible, such as enabling a firewall, minimizing the use of root privileges, and keeping the system up to date. For extra peace of mind there are also virus scanners available for Linux, including ClamAV. These are particularly good measures for small businesses, which likely have more at stake than individual users do.

It's also worth noting that security firm Secunia recently declared that Apple products have more security vulnerabilities than any others--including Microsoft's.

Either way, however, when it comes to security, there's no doubt that Linux users have a lot less to worry about.

Should Anonymous Comments be a Right?

2010-07-18T12:10:00.000-07:00

Should people be allowed to comment anonymously online? That question is currently making its way through the U.S. legal system. A New York couple has issued dragnet subpoenas to Google and Yahoo demanding the identities of users behind 10 email accounts, 30 blog operators, website administrators, and the identities of anyone who had ever commented on those sites. That's hundreds of people! Riding to the rescue of our privacy and freedom are our heroes -- the EFF.

Miriam and Michael Hersh allege a "sweeping conspiracy led by family members and their acquaintances to accuse the Plaintiffs of mistreating their children and to cause a public controversy." This couple who, among other complaints, allege "intentional infliction of emotional distress" are the parents who made headlines in 2008 when news reports were published saying they had their then 16-year-old son, Isaac, taken to a privately owned correctional institution in Jamaica.

But my concern is not with the reason people were writing the anonymous comments. I'm alarmed over the possible consequences to privacy because of these wide-sweeping "dragnet" subpoenas. So is the EEF.

"The First Amendment protects individuals' right to speak anonymously and forces litigants to justify any attempts to unmask anonymous critics," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "Litigants cannot forcibly identify entire communities of online speakers -- which include many speakers who no one would claim did anything wrong -- simply because the litigants are curious."

The EFF urges the court to protect privacy and anonymity. The EFF's motion to quash states, "Under the broad protections of the First Amendment, speakers have not only a right to publicly express criticism but also the right to do so anonymously. Accordingly, the First Amendment requires that those who seek to unmask online speakers (critics or otherwise) demonstrate a compelling undefinedneed for such identity-related information before obtaining such discovery. No such need is implicated in this case."

If anonymity is allowed to be pierced in this case, it could change our lives. Who would be targeted next? Trolls? Flamers? People who disagree? If this is allowed to go forward, users on Digg, Reddit, Stumble Upon, Twitter, Facebook, Windows Live Messenger, political commenters - users anywhere could be targeted next.

"Overbroad subpoenas targeting anonymous speakers without cause naturally creates a chilling effect that may discourage others from exercising their constitutional rights to participate in conversations that take place online," said Zimmerman. "We are asking the court to enforce these reasonable safeguards so that the rights of innocent speakers do not become collateral damage in a dispute between others."

Apart from identity-related information, the Plaintiffs seek the content of stored communications with an ISP or electronic communications facility. From Google, the Plaintiff wants all documents relating or referring to a list of sites, blogs, pages and/or groups. From Yahoo, the Plaintiffs wants all documents relating or referring to http://geocities.com/saveisaac. Furthermore, the Plaintiffs request all documents relating to and referring to, meaning email communications as well.

The EFF's motion to quash concludes with: "By targeting entire forums in which a wide range of topics are discussed, Plaintiffs attempt to take a shortcut through the legal rights of the forum hosts and their participants. Fortunately, state and federal law bars such attempts."

We will be watching as this case could change history. If comments are not libel or death threats, need the commenter worry about their life being probed and their identity revealed?

iPhone 4's Retina Display

2010-06-09T09:21:00.000-07:00

During introduction of the iPhone 4, Steve Jobs detailed that the upcoming device will make use of what Apple calls the Retina display .

But what exactly is a Retina display and how will it, along with other screen technologies, benefit the new slimmer, HD-ready iPhone? To put it simply, Apple's figurative Retina display is an LCD that boasts a super high pixel density by squeezing a 960-by-640-pixel resolution into 3.5 inches--a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch (ppi).

The Retina display has four times the number of pixels as previous iPhones; its screen size is unchanged, resulting in double the pixel density. When compared to the now $99 iPhone 3GS, which has a 163ppi screen with a 480-by-320 resolution, it's easy to imagine just how this new screen will shine.

While talking about the new display, Steve Jobs went on to detail that after a certain point the human eye fails to distinguish individual pixels. According to the Apple CEO this "magic number," when visible pixelation is no more, is around 300ppi. Therefore, with the iPhone 4's screen coming in at more than 300 pixels per inch (326ppi) the display will supposedly always looks smooth and crisp, with no jaggies in sight.

The photos to the left, taken by PCWorld Senior Editor Melissa J. Perenson, show an icon on an iPhone 4's screen compared to the same icon on the iPhone 3GS's screen. The difference, as you can see, is pretty remarkable.

Apple's retina display also promises an improved contrast ratio. The company claims that the upcoming iPhone 4 will have a contrast ratio four times higher than that of previous models. Beyond the use of more compact pixels the screen, which is a backlit LED, will also adopt In-Plane Switching (IPS) technology to improve viewing angles and enhance color display.

Apple isn't the first to put a super-high-resolution screen in a smartphone. Google's Nexus One, for example, features an OLED screen with a resolution of 800-by-480 pixels, but its subpixel arrangement has some issues.

HP Enables Remote Printing via an E-mail Address

2010-06-07T17:06:00.000-07:00

by: Jeremy Kirk

Forthcoming Hewlett-Packard printers that are priced at more than US$99 will let users print remotely using mobile phones and other wireless devices, without needing a traditional PC, the company announced on Monday.

By next year, more printing will be done from the Web than traditional PC-based word processing programs, a trend that has pushed HP toward developing Web-friendly printing services, said Vyomesh Joshi, head of the HP's Imaging and Printing Group (IPG), during a press event in New York.

HP's Inkjet and Laserjet lines along with other consumer and enterprise-level printers will have the capability, called ePrint, to print from Web-connected devices. Joshi said customers would not pay a "premium" for ePrint.

Each printer with the ePrint capability will be assigned its own e-mail address. If someone wants to print a document from an iPhone, the document will go to HP's data center, where it is rendered into the correct format, and then sent to the person's printer. The process takes about 25 seconds.

The advantage for consumers is that the process does not involve a PC. No drivers have to be installed, Joshi said. The ePrint feature works with mobile devices from Apple, such as the iPad and iPhone, plus Palm, Android and Microsoft smartphone platforms. HP's technology holds a special advantage for iPad users since the device does not have native printing capabilities.

HP envisions scenarios where consumers send photos directly to a printing shop or use their printers -- some of which have scanning capabilities -- to scan documents and load them into Web-based productivity suites such as Google Docs. Those documents could then be accessed and printed by someone else using an HP printer's touchscreen interface.

The printers will also be able to support third-party applications. Live Nation, for example, will have a customized application to print items such as concert tickets and logistical information.

Google is also interested in Web-based printing and is working on Cloud Print, expected to be released by the third quarter. The feature will be designed to offer printer dialog interfaces for Web applications that let users send content directly to a printer over the Internet.

That is particularly important for Google, as it plans a third-quarter release for its Chrome OS, a browser-based operating system that will heavily rely on Web services.

"We want to make it easy for developers to add print capabilities to applications with just a few lines of code," said Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management for Chrome who spoke at the HP event.

For example, a PDF (Portable Document Format) file could be opened in a Web-based viewer such as Google Docs, which would have a printer dialog box embedded. The document could then be sent to a remote HP ePrint printer via its e-mail address.

5 Reasons To Be Proud on Geek Pride Day

2010-05-26T14:44:00.000-07:00

by: Dave Giancaspro

In 1998 a guy named Tim McEachern started “The Geek Pride Festival” in Albany, New York. In 2006 Geek Pride was celebrated in Spain and on the Internet on May 25th. May 25th was chosen to commemorate the premiere of Star Wars in 1977, a momentous day in Geek history. The highlight of the Spanish festivities was when 300 geeks in Madrid formed a human Pac-Man. They should be proud and so should you because today is Geek Pride Day 2010, and here are five reasons to be proud of your geekiness.

1. We are Passionate:

Geeks are a diverse bunch with one common quality, passion. We feel passionate about things the average person just doesn’t get. Even though I like comic books I am not a comic book geek, but show me a circuit or the inside of a machine and my heart beats as fast as any comic book geek’s on a Wednesday.

2. We’re Smart:

Geeks know things. Lots of things. Not just the things that you take tests on but things like the combination to Kirk’s Safe, the name of Chewbacca’s home planet and many other amazing factoids gathered through our geeky explorations. Just don’t hit us with sports trivia. We might not do so well there.

3. We Make Stuff:

Thomas Edison, Steve Wozniak, Linus Torvalds and these are just a few of the geeks who make the high tech world we have today possible. Computers, Video Games, and space travel, geeks have left their mark on the world and in outer space with their tireless pursuit to solve problems.

4. We have a Rich Culture:

We have our own fashion, Geek Chic. Our own music, NerdCore. Multiple cons and gatherings for every interest. The myth of the anti-social geek is just that, a myth. We get together and socialize all over the world to celebrate our geekiness.

5. We Have A Long History

Pythagoras, Isaac Newton, and Benjamin Franklin were all geeks. We have been around since the dawn of time. Geeking out over wheels, circles, science, architecture … you name it. We are part of the history of the world and we are making the future possible.

So get out there today and celebrate your passion ! Whether it’s RPG’s, Star Wars or Steampunk be proud of your Geekiness. Oh and don’t forget to bring a towel because as any Douglas Adams Geek knows today is also Towel Day.

5 Things You’ll Actually Like About the New Hotmail

2010-05-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

by: Edward N. Albro

Hotmail and innovation: Those two words haven't been used in the same sentence for years. But when Microsoft launches an update to the online mail service (officially known as Windows Live Hotmail) sometime this summer, it'll include some features that are genuinely innovative, well-thought-out and useful.

As with Bing, it feels like Microsoft hasn't been content just to copy popular traits from its rivals, but find compelling new ways for people to interact with email. I've gotten a chance to play with the new service early and here are a few of my highlights:

1. New Inbox Views

These automatically generated filters help you find what really interests you in your inbox. The most useful is probably the "From contacts" view, which shows only emails from people in your contact directory. This does a pretty good job of isolating only the messages you really need to respond to, especially if you have all the people you work with regularly in your contacts list.

Another filter shows all your updates from social networks like Twitter and Facebook, while a third finds mail like newsletters and email blasts to large groups. And there are views that find all e-mails with photos or office documents attached or that contain shipping updates.

Of course, you can create some of these filters yourself in a service like Gmail, but lots of people won't go through the hassle. Microsoft has done a good job of recognizing what filters many people would want and building them automatically.

2. Sweeping Out the Junk

These days, most true spam - Viagra ads and porn come-ons - gets caught before it ever gets to your inbox. But you still get semi-spam messages: newsletters that you signed up for, but then found weren't that useful or coupons from a store you no longer shop with. With a little work, you could figure out how to unsubscribe, but Hotmail's Sweep feature makes evicting them from your inbox much easier.

You hover over the sender of a message and can choose to delete all messages, past and future, from that sender or, automatically move them to a different folder, if you want to keep them, but don't want them cluttering your inbox.

3. Active View

Active View, Microsoft's typically obtuse label, actually refers to very cool functionality. Say your friend sends you an e-mail about the latest YouTube video showing accidental damage to a man's nether region. Instead of getting just a link to the video, you see a thumbnail of the pole-vaulting disaster and can play the video in a popup window right in your inbox. In addition to YouTube videos, the system also supports Hulu videos.

Active View also works with pictures. If a friend attaches a few shots from their vacation, you'll see thumbnails of the pictures in the email. You can scroll through the thumbnails in the same window or click on them and see a slideshow in a pop-up window.

Your friends don't have to use Hotmail for Active View to work on your end, but your system must have Microsoft's Silverlight installed.

4. Edit Attachments in Office Online

When someone sends you a document in Word, Excel or Powerpoint, Hotmail will give you the option of opening it in the Office online apps. You can choose to edit the document online, in which case Hotmail will automatically upload it to Skydrive, the Microsoft cloud storage site. Then you can respond with a link to the online document containing your changes. (Note: When I tried editing documents, the system hung for minutes on end with a message saying it was converting my document to be edited online, then threw up an error. Given that the service won't be launched until "sometime this summer" (there is no definite date), it's not too surprising that there are bugs.)

5. Bing Integration

Not surprisingly, Bing, Microsoft's search engine, is heavily integrated with Hotmail. What is surprising, though, is the seamless way the two can interact. When you're writing a message in Hotmail, you can choose to insert information from Bing - images, videos, movie times and information, map data and webpage info. A side panel pops up that lets you search Bing for what you're looking for. Find it and you can simply click Insert below the item. Hotmail will place the image, map or other data directly into your message, along with a link that lets you go to the search result in Bing.

I don't know if the sum of all these improvements will be enough to move me out of Gmail, but they're clearly the product of some innovative thinking that should advance the online e-mail universe.

Quantum Internet May Become a Reality

2010-05-15T12:46:00.000-07:00

by: James Mulroy

Do you think you have slow Internet access with DSL, cable, broadband, or satellite? Do you have internet speeds of 3, 6, 1Artwork: Chip Taylor2, or even 20Mbps? If you still think your Internet access is slow, then quantum Internet may be right for you. And that is exactly what physicists at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics are trying to create.

The physicists have invented what they are calling a "quantum transistor." A traditional transistor is a semiconductor device which amplifies a signal, or opens or closes a circuit. Transistors are in about every known electronic out there and form a vital portion of your pc when it comes to computing speed.

What makes the quantum transistor so special is that it uses the properties of quantum physics in which particles can communicate across open space without ever touching. In this case the quantum transistor uses one beam of light to control the properties of another, meaning that "information" can travel (or be transferred) from point A to point B without ever making the trek.

A similar quantum mechanical transistor, the Double Electron Layer Tunneling Transistor (DELTT), has been developed by the Sandia development team, a laboratory of the Department of Energy (DOE). According to Sandia, the device is capable of running at a trillion operations per second, or roughly ten times the speed of the fastest transistor circuits currently in use.

You can see where this spooky physics could drastically improve the speed of Internet communication and computing. With groups like Sandia and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, the quantum internet and computing age may be just around the corner.

How to Erase Your Digital Tracks on the Web?

2010-05-09T15:29:00.000-07:00

by: Tony Bradley

The Internet never forgets. Search engines crawl and index every last byte of information available on the Web; and once a piece of information goes online, some digital echo of it is virtually guaranteed to persist on a server somewhere.

We visit sites and create profiles throughout the Internet, often at sites that we don't even like and have no intention of ever visiting again. As if that's not enough, all kinds of data and details of our lives are in the public domain--cataloged, indexed, and only a quick Google search away.

User Agreements and Privacy Statements

Luckily for you, Websites and virtually every company and government agency in the world have user agreements and privacy statements that explain exactly what the business or entity may and may not do with your sensitive, private details.

Illustration: Jeffrey PeloAlmost half a billion people are members of Facebook, and you may very well be one of them. But have you read the Facebook Privacy Policy? If you're like most people, the answer is no, in which case you may be only vaguely (or not at all) aware of what that policy's mind-numbing text says with regard to the myriad ways that Facebook may share your information with other parties.

A lot of information is simply public domain--name, address, home value, criminal record, and more. Data that lies in the public domain was available before the advent of the Internet and the Web, but these technologies have made it exponentially easier to find. An answer that would have taken hours of manual sifting through documents to find now takes a Google search only seconds to produce.

Most Websites are up-front with users regarding their privacy and data-handling policies, but most users never take the time to read those policies and accept the sites' terms and conditions without a second thought. No wonder people seem surprised when they learn that their data is out in the open for all to see.

Skeletons in Your Internet Closet

Have you ever googled yourself--that is, run a search for your own name on Google or any other search engine to see what information the Web has on the subject of you? Sites such as WhitePages.com, BeenVerified.com, and PublicRecords.com are all in the business of providing basic background checks based on the volumes of publicly available data stored online. A quick search for your name on WhitePages.com can reveal your home address, your home phone number, your age--within a certain range--and the names of other people who live in your home or are related to you.

Who Owns Your Data?

The fundamental question--according to Linda Criddle, president of the Safe Internet Alliance--is, who owns your information? "We have to get the mindset to change, to say that consumers own their information. Whatever I choose to share with a given Website is granted under stewardship, but I can rescind that access at my discretion," Criddle says.

But even if that mindset existed today, the trick would still be how to successfully rescind access to data that has been shared and transmitted around the globe to social networking contacts, partner sites, and the general public.

You can't completely erase your digital identity, but you can take steps to clean it up and to assert your right to protect your privacy. The first thing you should do is to keep track of the various sites and profiles you have created on the Internet and to remove any you are no longer using.

Your Facebook and Google Data

ZuckerbergFacebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has questioned the reasonableness of expecting to have your privacy preserved on the Internet.If you don't approve of the way Facebook manages or protects your data, you can delete your Facebook account. However, Facebook's privacy policy explains that even if you take this action, various data footprints will remain. According to Facebook's privacy policy, third-party providers with whom you have shared information are authorized to retain that information according to the terms of the agreement with Facebook.

Google DashboardYou do have some control, though. Tools like the Google Dashboard enable you to see and edit--or remove--information about you that various Google sites and services may be storing. The Google Dashboard provides links that jump you to the right places to manage the privacy settings at different services--and your presence on each one.

Google provides links and resources that you can use to remove a page or site from Google search results, to remove specific content, or to report copyright infringement. Google also points out, however, that whatever content or Website page you want removed must also be removed from the Web or blocked from future indexing; otherwise, it will just end up back in Google's database.

Your Data at Public Records Sites

WhitePages.com provides a link that you can click to edit the information it reports about you. In order to do so, however, you must first register with WhitePages.com. You can authenticate with WhitePages.com by using your Yahoo, Google, or WindowsLive ID profiles. It makes sense on some level: WhitePages.com needs to have some way of authenticating that you are who you say you are before allowing you to modify the information.

When you remove your entry, WhitePages.com warns that the data may not disappear right away (though it should within 24 hours), and it offers this additional note similar to Google's: "We take steps to block the re-publication of listing information once it has been removed. However, we continually publish new information from publicly available sources and third-party data suppliers."

Erase Your Tweets

If you have posted tweets on Twitter that you'd rather not leave as a deathless gift to posterity on the Internet, you'll be relieved to know that the site permits you to delete offending tweets--albeit one at a time. If you have lots of unwanted tweets to deal with, you might be tempted to abandon the offending Twitter account and start fresh with a new one, but in that case the tweets would remain where you left them. Another option is to use a tool such as TwitWipe to wipe away your entire tweet history, while retaining your same Twitter account, authentication information, and third-party app connections.

Conducting a Privacy Audit

The best way to start reducing online exposure of information about you is to run a background check on yourself. See what Google or WhitePages.com or BeenVerified.com have to say about you. Once you've done that, you should begin taking steps to clean up incorrect information or lingering skeletons.

If possible, locate the original source of the information--the site or service where your personal data first appeared--and remove it there, rather hopscotching through the numerous sites that may simply be reposting it. Either correct inaccurate information associated with your name (and with the various profiles you have on the Web) or simply delete those profiles entirely.

If you run into resistance when trying to deal with these sites, you can turn to organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Chilling Effects for assistance. To prevent your information from being exposed on the Internet in the first place, use tools like the InPrivate browsing feature of Internet Explorer 8, or resort to proxy services such as Anonymizer or Hide My Ass to shield your personal data.

PowerPoint Makes You Stupid

2010-04-28T11:54:00.000-07:00

by: Preston Gralla

Have you fallen in love with your bulletized slides, nifty transitions, and pretty charts in PowerPoint? If so, you're likely getting more stupid, if the experience of commanders in the U.S. armed forces hold true. In fact, one of the force's top commanders says bluntly, "PowerPoint makes us stupid."

The New York Times has an excellent article today, We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint, about the serious problems the armed forces face because of their over-reliance on PowerPoint. It shows an incomprehensible slide (shown below) designed to show the complex U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, and quotes Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, as saying this tongue in cheek when presenting it: "When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war."

That bit of dry humor masks a serious problem when the military --- and business as well --- relies too heavily on PowerPoint. At a military conference recently, Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, explained the problem simply, "PowerPoint makes us stupid."

Why does it make us stupid? It's best to turn to Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who spoke at the same conference to understand why. The Times noted that he "banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005." At the conference at which Mattis spoke, McMaster called PowerPoint an internal threat, and explained:

"It's dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable."

The Times goes on to say:

In General McMaster's view, PowerPoint's worst offense is not a chart like the spaghetti graphic [of our Afghan strategy], which was first uncovered by NBC's Richard Engel, but rigid lists of bullet points (in, say, a presentation on a conflict's causes) that take no account of interconnected political, economic and ethnic forces. "If you divorce war from all of that, it becomes a targeting exercise," General McMaster said.

Commanders say that behind all the PowerPoint jokes are serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making. Not least, it ties up junior officers --- referred to as PowerPoint Rangers --- in the daily preparation of slides, be it for a Joint Staff meeting in Washington.

Even more dangerous, the article implies, is that it leads to bad decision-making, with serious consequences:

Commanders say that the slides impart less information than a five-page paper can hold, and that they relieve the briefer of the need to polish writing to convey an analytic, persuasive point. Imagine lawyers presenting arguments before the Supreme Court in slides instead of legal briefs.

In fact, the article even points to PowerPoint as possibly contributing to our flawed Iraqi strategy. The article describes an event in the book about the Iraq War "Fiasco" by Thomas E. Ricks:

Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, who led the allied ground forces in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, grew frustrated when he could not get Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander at the time of American forces in the Persian Gulf region, to issue orders that stated explicitly how he wanted the invasion conducted, and why. Instead, General Franks just passed on to General McKiernan the vague PowerPoint slides that he had already shown to Donald H. Rumsfeld, the defense secretary at the time.

The article also says that tremendous amounts of time are spent in the military on putting together presentations, and that this takes away from true productivity.

Does all this sound familiar in your line of business? It should. Business relies on PowerPoint as much or more than the military, with similar consequences.

By the way there does appear to be some reason to use PowerPoint. The article concludes:

Senior officers say the program does come in handy when the goal is not imparting information, as in briefings for reporters.

The news media sessions often last 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left at the end for questions from anyone still awake. Those types of PowerPoint presentations, Dr. Hammes said, are known as "hypnotizing chickens."

Why Aren't SSDs Getting Cheaper?

2010-04-20T22:21:00.000-07:00

by: Lucas Mearian

Solid-state drives (SSD) have been among the hottest hardware products for more than two years, with a good deal of uptake within the consumer PC, notebook and netbook markets in response to a precipitous drop in pricing in 2007 and 2008.

The fabricators of NAND flash chips, which are used to build SSDs, took a bath for more than a year beginning in 2007, even losing money on the products they sold. Pricing for NAND flash dropped as much as 60% year over year in 2007 and 2008.

"There was a definite oversupply of NAND. The problem was no one was making money in NAND or the memory industry at that point," says Steve Weinger, director of NAND flash marketing at Samsung, the industry's largest producer of NAND flash chips.

After the first quarter of 2009, however, SSD pricing leveled off and even increased as the economy forced NAND flash manufacturers to stop investing in new equipment and demand outstripped supply.

Research firm iSuppli Corp. says surging NAND flash prices last year hurt what was a booming SSD market. The price of a flash memory chips rose to $4.10 in the second quarter of last year, representing a $1.80, or 127%, increase from the final quarter of 2008.

Now, pricing is expected to flat-line until next year, when NAND flash chip fabricators will be able to reinvest their profits to ramp up production and begin selling higher-density products, industry experts say.

Where SSDs are used

SSDs were originally aimed at enterprise-class environments, with the highest quality single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash chips being used to ensure the highest performance and reliability. However, today, multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash, which stores more than 1 bit of data per cell and therefore offers higher capacities, is approaching the same performance and reliability as SLC through the use of special firmware in the drive's controller.

The performance advantage for SSDs in the data center is tremendous. A single SSD, for example, can produce up to 16,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS). In comparison, a high-end 15,000-rpm Fibre Channel drive maxes out at 200 IOPS.

"You can replace 10, 20 -- I've even heard of 30 -- spinning disk drives, with a single SSD," says Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development at Micron Corp., a fabricator of NAND flash memory chips and SSDs.

But you pay a price for that performance. The cost of enterprise-class SSDs can be as low as $350, for a Micron realSSD C300 consumer drive that can be used in a server, or as high as $7,000, for an storage array-class drive, Klein says. It all depends on the features and performance you want.

For mainstream consumers, SSDs also vastly outpace hard disk drives when it comes to performance. In many cases, they have more than twice the I/Os per second, dramatically reducing computer boot-up times and application load times. And, because there are no moving parts -- no actuator arms or motors -- SSDs are more durable and therefore may be better choices for mobile devices.

But lately, with the increase and subsequent stabilization of SSD prices, the benefits of SSDs have largely been lost on consumers who are more attracted to a hard disk drive's higher capacity and lower price.

"The problem today is prices are prohibitively high for the average consumer," says Gartner analyst Joseph Unsworth. "When you consider a hard drive, you can get a terabyte for about $90. If you look at an SSD -- the Intel one I had with 160GB was $400. The point here is SSDs will never, ever be able to match hard disk drives on price per gigabyte."

Unsworth says that, for consumers, the decision to buy an SSD rather than a hard disk drive with greater capacity will come down to understanding and being able to justify the higher cost of an SSD. In other words, they must be able to appreciate "the performance, the boot time, the application acceleration, the reliability aspects and the slightly better power efficiency" of a solid-state drive, he says.

Online retail sales represent 40% of all SSD purchases today, Unsworth says. The people who are buying SSDs online are mostly tech savvy gamers or professional IT workers who shop at sites like Newegg.com, Amazon.com and Pricegrabber.com. The pricier drives give them superior performance for higher-end PCs and laptops.

The other market for SSDs is made up of equipment manufacturers; laptop and netbook vendors such as Lenovo, Dell and Hewlett-Packard are purchasing them for use in their consumer products. But sales of SSDs in that market are by no means booming.

"There have been 6.5 million consumer PC and notebook products sold with SSDs," Unsworth says. "That's far from widespread."

"The demand on the [equipment manufacturer] side is at present modest. It's behind everyone's forecast," Klein adds.

Last year, about 2.2 million SSDs sold in the netbook market, while 2.3 million were sold for use in notebooks and 316,000 were sold for servers, Gartner says. This year, those numbers will double in some cases.

Gartner predicts that in 2010, 3.6 million SSDs will be sold in the notebook market, 6.4 million in the desktop market and 819,000 in the server market.

Revenue is also expected to more than double for SSD vendors. In 2009, consumer and enterprise SSD sales reached $1.3 billion. This year, sales are expected to hit $2.9 billion, Unsworth says. "We expect revenue to double in the consumer space and triple in the enterprise space," he says.

Gregory Wong, an analyst at Forward Insights, believes that for PC, notebook and netbook manufacturers, SSD prices will drop from about $1.90 per gigabyte today to about $1.70. Online shoppers shouldn't see any marked decrease in pricing and can expect to continue to pay $3.00 to $3.30 per gigabyte on sites like Newegg.com.

Compared with hard drives, which cost about 30 cents per gigabyte, SSDs are 10 times more expensive, says Wong. But there's a crossover point where the base cost of a hard drive -- about $40 -- would buy an SSD with about 16GB of capacity. The lower-capacity SSDs could be used to run a PC's operating system and key applications, while files could be stored on a secondary internal or external hard disk drive.

A bright spot

The SSDs that are experiencing stronger sales today are low-capacity models that are purchased for use as "boot drives." Most such drives offer between 40GB and 64GB of capacity and cost about $100.

Last month, vendors such as Intel and OCZ began releasing lower-capacity SSDs, betting that enthusiasts would purchase them as boot drives. Kingston sells a 30GB SSD and Corsair and OCZ have 32GB products.

"It's really about performance," Unsworth says. "They add an external hard drive with half a terabyte, a terabyte or more that's used for backup or as their video library, their multimedia library, etc."

Driving prices down

For SSDs to become more affordable -- and for manufacturers to drop their prices -- NAND flash fabricators must cut their prices first.

"We've come through the worst downturn this industry has every seen," Klein says. "It hasn't really been until the last two quarters that we've been showing a recovery. People may object to the memory guys finally making some money, but frankly this is what allows us to build for their future. This is what allows us to start ramping up our Singapore [fabrication facility]."

Ultimately, only an increase in production will drive SSD prices down, and that isn't expected to begin until 2011, say Klein and others. Until that time, prices may dip somewhat as NAND flash manufacturers begin selling higher density flash chips based on lithography technologies that will drop below 30 nanometers in size.

Lithography is the process of creating cells and transistors in silicon, which are used to store bits of data. The smaller they are, the more data can be fit on a single NAND flash chip. At 25nm, the cells in silicon are 3,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair. But at that level, inter-cell electrical interference becomes a tougher obstacle to tackle.

Today, most manufacturers are using lithography in the 30nm to 40nm range. Micron, Intel and Samsung are using 34nm; Toshiba is using 32nm.

By moving to 25nm technology, manufacturers can double the number of bits stored on a wafer.

Micron and Intel have both announced that they'll be shipping 25nm products later this year. South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor plans to use 26nm manufacturing. Samsung plans a 27nm chip and Toshiba is moving to a 24nm chip.

And, here's the best news of all: Consumers will be the first to get the new SSD technology through the online retail channel, Unsworth says.

"If they're going to use that finer process ... for PC manufacturers, that requires a qualification time," Unsworth says. "They need to test them and make sure the SSDs [are durable], and make sure they don't get those calls from consumers, because that's who'll be calling [the PC and notebook] vendors."

Intel Sensor Records All Home Power Use From One Outlet

2010-04-14T15:22:00.000-07:00

by: Owen Fletcher

Intel showed off a pocket-sized device that monitors power usage by gadgets and appliances across a house, from toasters to computer monitors and video game consoles.

The small black box plugged into a single power outlet and wirelessly sent its data to a partner display device, which had an Intel Atom processor and the MeeGo operating system. A sensor in the box could detect which appliances were being turned on or off by watching for their unique electricity usage patterns. That allows the creation of logs that can show, for instance, at what hours each day an Xbox or certain lights have been turned on.

The setup aims to help users cut back energy usage. The display device, for instance, showed a clock with yellow and red tick marks to indicate when electricity prices peak during a day, so a user can avoid tasks such as washing laundry at those times.

A user could also activate custom settings on the touch screen of the display device, which was about the size of a tall book, to modify the thermostat temperature or to turn off some appliances, Intel said in a statement.

Users also may be able to download applications for the device from Intel's AppUp Store, which the company created as a market for apps on Atom devices.

Intel is working on a reference design for the sensor prototype, said Justin Rattner, the head of Intel Labs, after an onstage demonstration of the technology on Wednesday at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing.

Mary Murphy-Hoye, an Intel engineer who had a similar sensor system set up in her home, told stories during the demo about its usefulness. First, by monitoring her laundry machine's energy use, she found the cold water setting still drew energy because the machine would still partly heat the water, she said. She switched a setting on the machine to prevent that heating and save more energy.

"You can reduce your energy consumption by 15 to 30 percent," she said.

Second, logs that showed the use of each electrical device in the house allowed Murphy-Hoye to see when her son was playing Xbox each day, sometimes at times he was not allowed to, she said.

"No longer can he tell me ... what he wants me to think he did," she said. "Mom's watching."

Rattner "intentionally" did not discuss automated home control systems, but with certain additions a system could automatically do things like turn off a light that is not being used, he said.

Separately, Intel researchers are also looking at other power projects including new ways for households to store energy, Rattner said. For instance, power being stored in electric cars could be fed back into the power grid, he said. Another topic is ways for homes that generate their own power, such as with wind turbines, to store that energy if it goes unused, rather than selling it back to the grid, he said.

Who Needs Transistors? HP Scientists Create New Computing Breakthrough at Molecular Scale

2010-04-08T17:57:00.000-07:00

HP today announced its researchers have proven that a technology they invented could replace the transistor - the fundamental building block of computers for the last half century - leading to a new way to construct computers in the future.

In a paper published in today's Journal of Applied Physics, three members of HP Labs' Quantum Science Research (QSR) group propose and demonstrate a "crossbar latch," which provides the signal restoration and inversion required for general computing without the need for transistors. The technology could result in computers that are thousands of times more powerful than those that exist today.

"We are re-inventing the computer at the molecular scale," said Stan Williams, HP Senior Fellow and QSR director, and one of the authors of the paper. "The crossbar latch provides a key element needed for building a computer using nanometer-sized devices that are relatively inexpensive and easy to build."

QSR works on nanoscale electronic devices that will first supplement, and someday perhaps replace, silicon technology, which is expected to reach its physical limits in about a decade. In addition to exploring the fundamental scientific principles of computing at the molecular level, QSR is also looking at architectural issues and determining how such tiny devices - thousands of which could fit across the diameter of a human hair - could be fabricated economically and in mass quantities.

The experimentally demonstrated latch consists of a single wire acting as a signal line, crossed by two control lines with an electrically switchable molecular-scale junction where they intersect. By applying a sequence of voltage impulses to the control lines and using switches oriented in opposite polarities, the latch can perform the NOT operation, which, along with AND and OR, is one of three basic operations that make up the primary logic of a circuit and are essential for general computing. In addition, it can restore a logic level in a circuit to its ideal voltage value, which allows a designer to chain many simple gates together to perform computations.

Standard semiconductor circuits require three-terminal transistors to perform the NOT operation and restore signals. However, it is generally believed that transistors will not be able to shrink down to the size of a few nanometers and remain operable.

"Transistors will continue to be used for years to come with conventional silicon circuits," said Phil Kuekes, senior computer architect, QSR, another one of the paper's authors, "but this could someday replace transistors in computers, just as transistors replaced vacuum tubes and vacuum tubes replaced electromagnetic relays before them."

Kuekes was previously awarded a patent on the crossbar latch (U.S. 6,586,965) in July 2003, and the Journal of Applied Physics report, titled "The crossbar latch: Logic value storage, restoration and inversion in crossbar circuits," demonstrates the application of the technology. Duncan R. Stewart, a QSR scientist and the third author, performed most of the testing that demonstrated that the device actually works. The paper underwent rigorous peer review before being published.

"We have previously demonstrated that we could make a working memory with molecular-scale junctions and logic devices that could perform simple logic operations such as AND and OR," Stewart said. "With the crossbar latch, we now have the final component theoretically needed for performing the multiple processing steps required for useful computing at the nanoscale."

The research on the crossbar latch was partially supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Are Shortened URLs Truly Trouble on Twitter?

2010-04-04T15:10:00.000-07:00

by: Joan Goodchild

Concern over the danger of shortened URLs may be overblown, according to a report released recently by a researcher with security firm Zscaler.

Zscaler made the announcement in the wake of news from Twitter, which recently said it has implemented a new security system to scan all URLs posted in tweets to protect users from malicious sites. Popular URL-shortening site bit.ly made a similar move in November. But the security may not be as necessary as previously thought. While Twitter and the shortened URLs used in Tweets are often blamed for leading users to malicious sites (CSO wrote about their dangers in 3 Ways Twitter Security Falls Short), Zscaler's Julien Sobrier found otherwise.

Sobrier did an investigation of Twitter links both before the new security scan system and after. The researcher retrieved more than 1 million URLs from the public timeline over what he termed "a couple of weeks" before they put any protections in place. Links were run through the Zscaler infrastructure to find out which links lead to malicious sites. The experiment only looked for malicious sites such as phishing sites, malware, etc., and did not include spam.

Results reveal on only 773 links led to malicious content; a mere .06 percent, according to Sobrier. Bit.ly represents 40 percent of all links, and roughly the same proportion of malicious links, according to Sobrier. Another shortening site, TinyUrl, represents only 5 percent of all URLs and 6 percent of all malicious sites.

"It does not look like bit.ly's phishing and malware protection is making it any safer than other URL shorteners," Sobrier said in a blog posting on the research.

Sobrier goes on to say the key to protecting end users is real-time scanning of both the URL and the content.

"Twitter and bit.ly can only scan the links periodically," he states. "Malicious websites try to hide their malicious content to non-users by checking the user agent or geography and by requiring a real browser which fully understands Javascript, Flash, etc. An attacker can present harmless content to the Twitter or bit.ly scanners, but harmful content to a real user."

Top 10 Endearing Habits of a Geeky Spouse

2010-03-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

by: Matt Blum

What is it about us geeks that makes us such great catches for non-geeks? It’s easy to see how geeks would find partners within the world of geekdom, provided they had compatible geek interests. But many of us have managed to find spouses or significant others who are if not completely “normal,” then at least significantly less geeky than ourselves.

So, how did we do it? Here, as a complementary piece to the Top 10 Annoying Habits of a Geeky Spouse list I wrote in March, here are 10 endearing habits:

10. Always having access to caffeine. And knowing all the various sources, relative amounts and prices. If you’re not a morning person, or need a pick-me-up in the afternoon, you can be sure the geek in your life will be able to find you some caffeine, even if it’s Sunkist or Barq’s.

9. Being romantic in unusual ways. Because who wouldn’t love to be wooed with Shakespeare in the original Klingon or a poem written in Elvish? Red roses are nice, sure, but they’re so … mainstream. When was the last time someone gave you a flashing LED heart?

8.Finding the best deals in grocery stores. Not everyone will notice that, even though the 12-pack of Coke cans is on sale for $3, it’s still not as good a deal per unit as the 2-liter bottle at its regular price of $1.29. But a geek will — we knew math skills would come in handy one day, even if nobody else thought so!

7. Watching, quoting and generally loving the Muppets. Even if the person we’re courting isn’t a huge Muppets fan, there’s no decent person who doesn’t like them at least a bit, right? I can speak from personal experience here: My wife freely admits that one of the things that she found particularly attractive about me was when, on our first date, I knew the punch line to “Good grief, the comedian’s a bear!” (The circumstances under which this fact was revealed are less interesting than you may imagine.)

6. Not being glued to the TV when a sports event is on. Now, I realize that plenty of geeks love sports (I’m a baseball fan myself). But as a general rule, the typical geek is much less inclined than the typical non-geek (particularly the male variety thereof) to insist on watching every minute of every game their favorite team plays in a season.

5. Having a lot of hand-me-down gadgets that are still perfectly good. While I can see how it might not always be endearing that we love to get the latest technology the moment it hits the street, if not sooner, this habit does have a fortunate side effect. “Why do I need to upgrade to the iPhone 3GS? Well … because I know you want an iPhone, too, and this way you can have my 3G!”

4. Owning lots of really good, though not mainstream, books. We geeks tend to read a lot, and we tend to be pretty picky about the books we buy. For instance, it’s only in the past eight years, since the first Lord of the Rings movie came out, that Tolkien has become more mainstream. My wife had never read any Tolkien until we met, so after I pushed her for a while, we read The Hobbit together; she became a fan quickly.

3. Being really good at finding things that go missing. This is an especially important skill in any household with children, since, as every parent knows, nobody is quite so good at losing things that ought not to be lost as is a small child. Geeks, at least in my experience, tend to have a good, methodical approach to finding lost items, and one that usually produces results with less fuss than would likely have ensued otherwise.

2. Providing technical support to friends and family. We may grumble and sigh about doing it so often, and we may get frustrated when our in-laws don’t know the difference between WEP and WPA. But don’t be fooled: We actually enjoy this on some level. Everyone — geeks included — likes to be needed, and geeks also love few things more than to look like an expert. So this is really a win-win: The non-geeks get their computers and gadgets fixed, and the geeks get to look like geniuses for doing things that wouldn’t impress a single one of their geek friends.

1. Cooking. I’m sure there are lots of geeks who don’t like to cook, or don’t think they do, but if you’re one such, I humbly suggest you give it another few tries. Cooking has so much geek potential it’s a wonder it’s not considered a “typical” geek activity: you’ve got lots of different ingredients to pick from, measuring implements, heat, chemical reactions, gadgets galore and a great deal of nuance. Plus, it’s like doing scientific experiments where you get to eat the results! And there are few things more endearing to potential life partners than being able to cook well (and not just on a grill).

Microsoft's IE9 Browser: FAQ

2010-03-17T12:46:00.001-07:00

by: Jeff Bertolucci

Microsoft's next-generation Internet Explorer 9 browser may not be anywhere close to competition, but you can test drive a "platform preview" of the software that provides a taste of IE9's capabilities. So what's the deal with Redmond's upcoming browser, and how does it differ from IE8 and worthy competitors such as Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox, Opera Software's Opera, and Apple's Safari? Here's a quick primer.

What's New in Internet Explorer 9?

Microsoft is touting IE's speedy performance and its much-improved support for Web standards. The browser's strongest attribute is likely its adherence to HTML5, the major revision of Web's core markup language that's still under development. HTML5 will allow IE9 (and other browsers) to move beyond resource hogging browser plug-ins, like the ubiquitous Adobe Flash, to display multimedia content online. Toss in better CSS 3 support (to help Web designers created the right look for their sites) and an improved JavaScript engine (to the crank up the speed of Web apps), and IE9 promises to be a more nimble browser that eschews the slow, lumbering Internet Explorer versions of the past.

How Does IE9's Interface Look?

It's too early to say. Since the Platform Preview isn't a compete browser, it's not a good indicator of IE9's final fit and finish. However, given the growing popular of Google Chrome, a streamlined browser with few menus to befuddle users, there's hope that Microsoft will give IE9 a cleaner look and feel.

So What's the IE9 Platform Preview?

The Preview is primarily a way for Web developers to test their sites and see how they can implement HTML5's capabilities, Microsoft says. Redmond plans to release a new Preview version every 8 weeks or so.

Can I use it in Place of My Regular Browser?

No. The Platform Preview isn't a fully-functional browser. There's no back button, for instance, or an address bar. It opens links in your default browser, not the Preview app. In addition, some of the features may or may not appear in the shipping version of IE9, depending on feedback from Platform Preview testers.

Any Particularly Cool Platform Preview Features?

Microsoft has released a few technology demos that spotlight IE9's improved handling of JavaScript, its HTML5 capabilities, and its support for hardware-accelerated graphics. These are mostly simple demonstrations, such as flying images, map zooming, an HTML5 t-shirt designer, and GPU-powered falling balls. Naturally, you'll need to download and install the Platform Preview to check them out.

Will the Preview Run on My PC?

Yes, if you're running either Windows 7 or Vista. On Vista, however, you'll need to install Internet Explorer 8 (if you haven't already) and the Platform Update for Windows Vista, an OS upgrade that allows Vista to use some Windows 7 technologies. And while the IE9 Platform Preview comes only in a 32-bit x86 version, it'll run on 64-bit Windows 7 and Vista PCs too.

I'm Running Windows XP. What About Me?

Sorry, you're out of luck. The GPU-powered graphics of the IE9 Platform Preview rely on display driver enhancements first introduced in Windows Vista.

When Will IE9 Be Ready?

It's not clear. Microsoft plans to release a beta version of IE9 after feedback from Platform Preview users indicates the technologies are ready for everyday Web browsing. Again, with roughly two months between Platform Preview releases, it's a safe bet that a shipping IE9 is still months away.

What Features Will be in the IE9 Beta?

Microsoft isn't saying. Obviously, however, the features highlighted in the Platform Preview, including support for HTML5 and other Web standards, will be a cornerstone of the new release.

When Four Cores Aren't Enough: Intel's Core i7-980X Extreme Edition

2010-03-11T15:57:00.000-08:00

by: Nate Ralph

Intel has announced its latest Extreme Edition processor, the Core i7-980X. Like the recently released 2010 Clarkdale lineup, the i7-980X (previously code-named Gulftown) brings Intel's turbo boost and hyperthreading technologies to the 32nm process. The i7-980X is also Intel's first processor with six physical cores, offering increased system performance in applications optimized to take advantage of them.

The Core i7-980X will essentially replace Intel's current performance king, the 45nm Core i7-975 Extreme Edition. While the Core i7-975 will still be available, the new six-core processor will be offered at the same $999 price point--that's six cores for the price of four! But how much of a difference can two extra cores make?

At a glance, the Core i7-975 and the Core i7-980X are identical. Both sport a base clock speed of 3.33GHz, report a TDP rated at 130W, and support three channels of DDR3-1066 memory. But two additional cores means that the processor has 12 threads for an application to work with, versus four cores and 8 threads in the i7-975.

Intel GulftownYou'll also find a 12MB L3 cache shared across all six of those cores, as opposed to the 8MB cache in the i7-975. A processor's cache functions as a memory storage area, where frequently accessed data remains readily accessible. A larger L3 cache shared across all six cores allows data to be exchanged among them far more readily, improving performance in multithreaded applications. With a large cache and four extra virtual threads, you'd expect to find the greatest appreciable performance difference between the two chips in applications designed to take advantage of multiple cores--and our test results reflected as much.

For our tests, Intel provided a pair of DX58SO motherboards. Serial upgraders should be pleased to note that the Core i7-980X is compatible with existing X58 chipsets. Just drop it into your existing motherboard, and you're (almost) ready to go; we had to perform a required, but painless, BIOS update. Our second test bed was equipped with the aforementioned Core i7-975 Extreme Edition processor. Both test beds also carried 6GB of RAM, 1TB hard drives, ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards, and optical drives for loading software. We ran all of our tests on Windows 7 Ultimate Edition (64-bit).

Intel Core i7-980XIntel is pitching the Core i7-980X as the the premier part for the enthusiast gaming crowd. In our tests, we did see some improvements over the Core i7-975, but they were marginal. In Unreal Tournament 3 (1920-by-1200 resolution, high settings), the Core i7-980X cranked out 159.9 frames per second as compared to the Core i7-975's 155.4 fps, a 2.8 percent improvement. In Dirt 2, the Core i7-980X offered 73.3 fps, against the Core i7-975's 71.7 fps--a 2.2 percent increase.

Those results are hardly surprising. Despite the proliferation of multicore processors, many modern video games have yet to take full advantage of multithreading. Sega's recently released Napoleon: Total War and Ubisoft's upcoming R.U.S.E. have both touted their Core i7-980X optimization, claiming greater detail and realism thanks to simply having more physical cores to work with.

Other games boasting optimization for more than four processor threads include Ubisoft's Far Cry 2, Capcom's Resident Evil 5, and Activision's Ghostbusters. That being said, if you recently sprang for a Core i7-975 and are strictly a gamer, there's no need to curse your poor timing--at least, not until more developers fully commit to the multithreaded bandwagon.

If, on the other hand, you spend much of your time working with multithreaded applications--including Blender, Adobe Photoshop, and Sony Vegas Pro--coughing up $1000 for your workstation's processor might not necessarily be a bad idea.

The most tangible results will be apparent in applications designed to sprawl across as many cores as possible. Take Maxon's Cinema 4D, 3D animation software used by professionals in numerous industries. In Maxon's Cinebench CPU benchmark--which can utilize up to 64 processor threads--the six-core i7-980X saw a 40 percent improvement in performance over the quad-core i7-975.

When considering a processor with a 130W TDP, there's a good chance that saving a few bucks on your energy bill isn't your chief concern. Nevertheless, the Core i7-980X does offer perceptible gains over the i7-975. With all power-saving features disabled, power utilization at peak levels for the i7-980X was 210 watts, versus the i7-975's 231 watts. That's a 10 percent difference in what seems like the wrong direction, indicative of the potential power savings of the smaller 32nm process.

There's a lot to like here, but that's to be expected--this is a $1000 piece of silicon, after all. As far as gamers are concerned, the i7-980X may not blow the i7-975 out of the water currently, but in this case the performance bottleneck lies in the lack of available multithreaded offerings--a trend that's already begun to change. If this chip is in your price bracket, it's well worth the cost of entry provided that you haven't plunked down for an Extreme Edition processor too recently. And as multicore processors and multicore-optimized applications become increasingly common, you'll be able to put all six of those cores to good use--for work and play.

New Cisco Router Supports 322Tbps, Designed for Internet Video

2010-03-09T16:00:00.000-08:00

by: David Coursey

What can you do with 322 terabits per second? Cisco Systems says it's enough bandwidth to allow every person in China to make a video call--simultaneously. And if that's something you want to do, Cisco says it now has hardware capable of the task.

The company's newest large-scale core router, the CRS-3, is capable of handling such a speed, which Cisco said is 12-times as fast as its closest competitor and three times the speed of its predecessor. It has invested $1.6 billion in the product's design and engineering.

The CRS-3, announced today, is the product that Cisco last month said would "forever change the Internet and its impact on consumers, businesses and governments."

CRS stands for "Carrier Routing System," a reference to the device's use by large telecom providers.

Tbps stands for terabits-per-second and a terabit is a trillion bits. Compare that to the megabits-per-second that today's highest-speed business and consumer broadband connections are measured in.

Among other 322Tbps tasks: Transmitting every motion picture ever made (5 minutes), downloading the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress (1 second), or transmiting the entire DNA sequence of 56,000 people (also 1 second).

Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers announced the new router on a Monday conference call, during which he said the CRS-3 would be available before the end of this year. Field testing is underway and pricing for the new router is said to start at $90,000.

While 322Tbps sounds like--and is--incredible bandwidth, the CRS-3 is merely a response to the growth of video over the Internet.

"Video brings the Internet to life,” said Chambers. “You are moving from a messaging platform to a video platform," Chambers said. He predicted the bandwidth required for Internet video would grow by 200-500 percent per year.

"The Internet will scale faster than any of us anticipate," Chambers said.

Aimed at Internet providers and telecom companies, the CRS-3 is a curiosity for most businesses, but one that demonstrates the demand for bandwidth shows no sign of slowing. Video will play an increasing role in filling the fiber optic pipelines of the future.

Apple vs HTC: a patent breakdown

2010-03-03T15:33:00.000-08:00

by: Tony Bradley

Apple claims that both HTC and Nokia are infringing on its iPhone-related patents with their smartphones. Nokia accuses Apple of infringing on its patents. Motorola is fighting with RIM over smartphone patents. And, Facebook was awarded a patent for the newsfeed. Either patent suits have become simply another business strategy, or the patent system itself is woefully inadequate, or both.

The patent system is a disaster for technology. Granted, it makes perfect sense to have a system in place to protect unique and innovative concepts and ensure that other companies or individuals don't simply copy ideas derived from the blood, sweat, and tears of other's research and development efforts. I get that. I agree with that.

There is a breakdown, however, somewhere in the process. The USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) lists five easy steps for acquiring a patent:

1. Search existing patents to ensure the "new" concept isn't already patented

2. Review the fee schedule to figure out how much money the patent will cost

3. File the application for the patent

4. Check back periodically to see if the patent has been awarded

5. Continue to pay maintenance fees in order to keep the patent in good standing

Let's begin with step one. There are millions--approaching ten million--patents. Some are utility patents, some are design patents, and some are plant patents (I won't even bother getting into how or why someone can patent a plant--let's just say I am pretty sure it has to do with large pharmaceutical companies)--so you can narrow the field somewhat. But, sifting through millions of patents and comparing them to ensure the new patent is unique is a daunting process.

Once the patent is filed, the USPTO still has to examine it, verify that it doesn't violate or infringe on existing patents, and make sure that it meets the criteria that it invent or discover a new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or compositions of matters, or any new useful improvement thereof.

The USPTO received 485,312 patent applications in 2008. It awarded 185,224 of those patents. That means that this government agency was responsible for reviewing over 1,300 patents per day on average, and it awarded almost 40 percent of them.

The sheer volume of patent applications is overwhelming and reviewing and approving them assumes some level of understanding of the concepts and technologies being patented. It's easy to see how seemingly frivolous patents slip through the cracks, especially when one of the criteria essentially allows you to patent a patent infringement since it's allowable to patent a "new useful improvement" of an existing patent.

Ron Gula, CEO of Tenable Network Security, agrees "The issue I have with patents is that the vetting process tries to take into account every possible prior patent and prior art. As we generate more and more content, this problem becomes exponentially more difficult. I've not seen a solution I like which protects inventor rights, but streamlines this process as well."

That brings us to Apple, and HTC, and Nokia, and Motorola, and Facebook. Technology companies are all building on the past and present to create the future. None of them can claim to be solely responsible for the mechanisms and technologies their products are comprised of. It is part of the general evolution of technology, and the patent system--while designed to protect intellectual property rights--has devolved into petty, and costly bickering between companies.

While most patents end up being licensed to competitors for a fee--with royalties being paid to the patent holder for the privilege of using the patented concepts or technologies--the fact is that the patent holder does not have to allow it at all.

The USPTO Web site states "The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, "the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling" the invention in the United States or "importing" the invention into the United States."

In a nutshell, assuming Apple is correct that HTC and Nokia are infringing on its patents, it has the right to simply ban them from making using, offering, selling, or importing the infringing smartphones in the United States. Doing so would seem to be at odds with antitrust regulations, though, since the patent rights imply the authority to monopolize the patented concept.

Technology companies need to have a healthy respect for the fact that they are standing on the shoulders of the past, and building on concepts--many of which competitors came up with. I appreciate innovation and want to see unique ideas and intellectual property protected, but the world of technology patents, and patent litigation as a business strategy seems like a huge mess with no clear winner.

Windows Phone 7: An In-depth Look at the Features and Interface

2010-02-15T16:27:00.000-08:00

by: Ginny Mies

Microsoft took the wraps off of Windows Phone 7 Series (the official name for Windows Mobile 7) here Monday at Mobile World Congress. Slated to launch on handsets by holiday season 2010, Windows 7 is a complete overhaul from previous versions of the OS.

Slick, touch-friendly user interface

If you're familiar with the Zune HD's user interface, you'll feel right at home with Windows 7. Microsoft hinted that the Zune and Windows Mobile teams were working closely and you can definitely see this relationship in Series 7. The menus and interface have the same fluid animations and clean typeface as the Zune HD's.

The Quick Launch screen is a far-cry from the old Windows Mobile start screen. Large, colorful tiles serve as shortcuts to your most-used or favorite apps or Web sites. You can also place live tiles on the screen with links to your Facebook profile or friends.

These tiles are live, meaning if the content of the app or site is updated, the tile will update on your screen. So if you have a link to a friend's Facebook profile on your Quick Launch screen, that tile will update when they change their picture. It is a bit creepy if you don't know them very well, but cool nonetheless.

With a tap and drag, you can easily move them around in any order you like or press a broken heart icon to remove them from the screen. Swiping right takes you to a list of all of your apps. If you want to move one of your apps to your Quick Launch display, you simply press down on the app and select "add to quick launch." When you're in an app, you'll see a row of other menu options at the top of the display. Like the Zune, you can "pan" through these menu items with a flick of your finger. If you want to go back to the previous menu, you simply hit the arrow key at the top of the interface.

Social and Productivity Hubs

The People Hub aggregates you friends from all of your social networks in three screens: Recent, All, What's New. Recent will show you friends who have just updated their profiles or statuses while All will show you all of your friends. What's new quickly aggregates status updates all into a single feed. You can also quickly share your own status update.

The Pictures Hub lets you see all of the pictures on your hub, your most recent pictures and what's new with all of your friends. The phone will pick the latest pictures you uploaded or have taken with your phone. And, like the People Hub, What's New in pictures shows your friend's most recent picture uploads. The Pictures Hub allows you to easily share your own photos with your social networks.

The Office Hub lets you easily sync your documents between your phone and your PC. Office Hub comes with OneNote, for notetaking, Documents and Sharepoint for presentation collaboration. Users will also have access to an Outlook Mail application which gives similar features, like flagging important e-mails, that you'd find on the desktop version.

Zune Player and Xbox Live Comes to Windows Phones

Despite the rumors leading up to the conference, there was no "Zune Phone" announcement, but all Windows 7 phones will ship with the same music and video features as the Zune HD. Users will also be able to manage their music with the Zune PC software. Does this mean the death of the standalone Zune HD player?

If you're an Xbox owner and want to keep tabs on your friends' achievements, Windows 7 phones will come with a mobile version of Xbox Xbox LIVE games, Spotlight feed and the ability to see a gamer's avatar, Achievements and gamer profile. Users will also be able to purchase games and apps easily from the Windows Marketplace as well.

Windows 7 phones will also ship with Bing Maps, which has some unique features that are on par with Google Maps. Bing Maps dynamically update with street-view photos, 3D graphics and directions. It also shows you real-time traffic updates and reviews of local businesses via Yelp.

Microsoft Holds More Control Over Hardware Partners

According to Microsoft, hardware partners will not be able to replace the Windows 7 UI. So if you're a fan of HTC's TouchFLO user interface, which runs over older versions of HTC Windows Mobile phones, you're out of luck. It is a bit surprising that Microsoft has locked in the Windows 7 interface because one draw of the platform was the number of different flavors you could get it in.

Microsoft is also taking further control over the hardware side. All Windows Series 7 phones will ship with three hardware buttons: Home, Search, and Back. They'll also all be capacitive touch-enabled with multitouch.

Microsoft's hardware partners include Dell, HTC, Garmin ASUS, LG, Samsung, SE, Toshiba, HP and Qualcomm. NVIDIA, which provided the Tegra chip in the Zune HD hardware, is noticeably absent. Microsoft had no comment.

Microsoft plans on bringing Windows 7 phones to all four major US carriers, but are working with AT&T and Orange more closely to bring full lines of Windows 7 phones to the carriers. Microsoft plans to have Windows phones in the market by the end of this year for the 2010 holiday season.

Google Buzz Versus Google Wave

2010-02-10T13:35:00.000-08:00

by: Ian Paul

When Google announced Google Buzz, its new social sharing feature for Gmail, company representatives admitted Buzz was inspired by a similar product: Google Wave. In fact, some of the features of Buzz and Wave are so similar you might be wondering why there are two different products in the first place?

Both services are supposed to help you create conversations and give you a richer experience around Web-based media like videos, images ,and regular text. But while Buzz and Wave have a lot in common, there also some key differences that set each service apart.

Wave and Buzz? What the heck are you talking about?

Google describes Wave as "an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more." Basically, Google Wave is e-mail, instant messaging, an online collaboration tool and a wiki all rolled into one service.

But Google Buzz is designed solely to let you share videos, photos, links, and status updates with others just like you would on Facebook or Twitter. You can access Buzz through your Gmail inbox or through your mobile device's Web browser.

Real-time communication versus e-mail conversation

While you will receive Buzz updates very quickly via e-mail, communication in Google Wave is much faster. Unlike Buzz, communication in Wave happens in real time, and you can actually watch someone typing out their response or comment on an individual wave. That's a big difference, since it allows Wave users to easily collaborate on a project.

Wave is about collaboration, Buzz is about conversation

Wave was built on collaborative features like editing a document, planning an event, creating meeting notes, and so on. But if you just want to share photos, videos, or comments that don't require real-time communication, then Google Buzz is probably the better option.

Waving is complex, Buzzing not so much

One of the problems with Wave is that it's a difficult tool to explain to others, and once you understand what Wave is it's even harder to understand everything you can do with it. Buzz, on the other hand, works similarly to e-mail and is focused on one thing: sharing content with others.

Buzz is a gateway to Wave

In a lot of ways, Buzz is a halfway point between regular e-mail and Wave. For example, when you get an updated Buzz in your inbox or Buzz tab, it displays the various comments and media that have been shared as a list. As the Buzz develops, that list gets updated and edited, but you only ever have one copy of an individual Buzz in your inbox.

Similarly, in Wave you only ever see one copy of an active wave, making it easier to track changes to a document or conversation. But new e-mail messages pile on top of one another, and it doesn't take long before you end up with these massive conversation strings that are constantly being replicated every time you hit the reply button.

So my guess, as well as the guess of others, is that once you're comfortable with Buzz, you might be more willing to use Wave for collaborative online projects. But the trick will be to get you to buy into using Google Buzz, and that may be a tough sell if you're already used to sharing items with your existing networks on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.

Have you tried Google Buzz yet? What's your take?

IBM Launches Eight-core Power7 Processor, Servers

2010-02-09T11:24:00.000-08:00

by: Agam Shah

IBM on Monday launched its latest Power7 processor, which adds more cores and improved multithreading capabilities to boost the performance of servers requiring high up time.

The Power7 chip has up to eight cores, with each core able to run four threads, IBM said. A Power7 chip can run 32 tasks simultaneously, which is quadruple the number of cores on the older Power6 chip. The Power7 will also run up to eight times more threads than Power6 cores.

Power7 chips will run between 3.0GHz and 4.14GHz, said Ross Mauri, general manager of IBM's Power Systems unit, during a press event in New York on Monday. The chip will come with four, six or eight cores.

The chips are being made using the 45-nm process technology. The company has made memory-level improvements that should enable the processor to execute tasks faster.

Power7 systems will deliver twice the performance of older Power6 systems, but be four times more energy efficient, Mauri said. The systems will run operating systems including AIX and enterprise Linux offered by Red Hat and Suse.

The new chip also has TurboCore technology, which allows customers to crank up the speed of active cores for performance gains. The technology also puts memory and bandwidth from eight cores behind the four active cores to drive up the performance gains per core.

The company also launched four Power7-based servers. IBM Power 780 and Power 770 high-end servers are based on modular designs and come with up to 64 Power7 cores. The IBM Power 755 will support up to 32 Power7 cores. The company also launched the 750 Express server. The Power 750 Express and 755 will ship on Feb. 19, while the Power 770 and 780 will become available on March 16.

In addition to boosting performance, the Power7 servers can save more energy, IBM said. A technology called Unique Intelligent Energy allows parts of a system to be switched off to reduce power drawn. The technology also allows the processor clock speed to be cranked down on a single server or across a pool of multiple servers, which can reduce power consumed.

IBM representatives declined to provide server pricing, but said it would be competitively priced. The servers will deliver better performance and bang for the buck than existing Power6 systems, said Rod Adkins, senior vice president of IBM's Systems and Technology group.

IBM officials called the chip the "world's fastest processor," but emphasized that system performance will be measured by the ability to deliver "intelligent" performance.

"As we conceived this Power7 system... raw performance was a given. What you will see is a tremendous focus around ... intelligent performance," Adkins said. A mass of data will flood servers as computing expands to devices like mobile devices and smart meters, he said. This data will need to be collected, processed and analyzed on the fly. For example, collecting data will allow utilities to instantly analyze energy usage patterns, and new ways to acquire energy from multiple sources.

Readings from devices like smart meters and sensors could create billions of transactions and petabytes of data, most of which will be unstructured, Adkins said. That will also drive the need for patterning, analytics and prediction capabilities, and IBM has tuned its software stack to take advantage of the highly threaded, high performance scalable architecture of Power7 systems, Adkins said.

In addition to optimizing applications like Websphere and Lotus Domino, the company also worked with SAP to tune applications for multithreaded execution on Power7 cores.

The chip is aimed at industries that require servers with high up time, such as the financial or electric industries, IBM said. The chips is designed for Internet, database or analytical workloads that process a large number of concurrent transactions, the company said.

Emeter, a software company that writes applications for smart meters connected to grids, said the Power7 systems are scalable and able to analyze data faster than their predecessors. Such systems will enable the company to read smart meters faster and provide flexibility to introduce new forms of billing, like charging customers based on electricity usage at different locations.

Rice University has seen the Power7 systems deliver faster computational yields for data analysis related to its cancer research, said Kamran Khan, vice provost of IT at the university. The 128 cores in Power7 systems are able to process data faster, which is critical in research areas including genomics sequencing and molecular dynamics, Khan said.

IBM's Power7 launch could set off a new battle in the high-end microprocessor market where it competes with companies like Intel, which offers the Itanium chip, and Sun Microsystems, which offers the Sparc chip.

Intel is expected to launch the latest version of the Itanium chip code-named Tukwila on Monday. The Itanium chips go into high-end servers offered by Hewlett-Packard, which competes with IBM in the server space.

During the third quarter of 2009, IBM was the leader in server revenue with 31.8 percent market share, with HP in a close second with a 30.9 percent market share.

The Unix market -- including hardware and applications -- is considered to be flat or falling with the onslaught of x86 servers into the server market. During the third quarter of 2009, Unix server revenue declined by 23.4 percent compared to the third quarter of 2008, according to IDC. But Adkins said that as data collection increases, the need for faster and reliable Unix servers will grow.

"The Unix market is a pretty sizeable and healthy market," Adkins said. The market is expanding to the tune of billions of dollars, and Power systems will continue to rule the space, he said. IBM is providing more aggressive pricing options for Unix servers, which could put Power7 systems in competition with servers in "traditional" areas, Adkins said.

Symbian OS Now Fully Open Source

2010-02-04T18:48:00.000-08:00

by: Paul Krill

The Symbian Foundation will move forward on Thursday with offering up the full Symbian smartphone platform to open source.

Symbian OS Now Fully Open SourceThe Symbian 3 platform, including applications, middleware, and the kernel itself, will be offered under terms of the Eclipse Public License and other open source licenses. "You can download it, you can modify it," said Larry Berkin, head of global alliances for the foundation. Previously, the kernel was made available via open source.

"We're open-sourcing 108 packages that will be available at the source code level," Berkin said. Handset manufacturers can modify the code and build differentiated handsets, he said. Originally due to be fully open-sourced by June, foundation members accelerated the process, said Berkin. Code, more than 40 million lines of it, will be available at this Web page at 6am Pacific time.

"End users will see, ideally, differentiated devices, converged devices that are based on Symbian that range from smartphones [to converged devices]," such as cameras or a phone that is a gaming device, he said.

Open-sourcing possibly could result in incompatible, forked versions of the platform, Berkin said. Manufacturers will need to be responsible for their work with Symbian. The market can be self-correcting in situations such as this, he said.

There are 330 million Symbian-based devices in use, according to Berkin. Five manufacturers currently build Symbian devices: Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Fujitsu, and Sharp.

Symbian technology had been driven by Symbian Limited, the majority of which was owned by Nokia, which then spun it out as an open source project.

Putting Symbian into open source will boost the platform in the marketplace, said analyst William Stofega, program manager for mobile device technology and trends at IDC. "I think it's good for Nokia and it's also good for Symbian in terms of its viability over all in terms of market share and being able to compete with the likes of Apple and Android and the others," he said.

Also available for download are development kits for building Symbian applications and mobile devices. These include the Symbian Developer Kit and the Product Development Kit.

In November 2009, Nokia put the Linux-based Maemo OS on its high-end N900 "mobile computer," which features a phone and capabilities like email, Web browser and video. But the company remains a backer of Symbian, Nokia representatives said.

8 Things That Suck About the iPad

2010-01-30T15:45:00.000-08:00

HELLO! - watch more funny videos

by: Adam Frucci

Big, Ugly Bezel
Have you seen the bezel on this thing?! It's huge! I know you don't want to accidentally input a command when your thumb is holding it, but come on.

No Multitasking
This is a backbreaker. If this is supposed to be a replacement for netbooks, how can it possibly not have multitasking? Are you saying I can't listen to Pandora while writing a document? I can't have my Twitter app open at the same time as my browser? I can't have AIM open at the same time as my email? Are you kidding me? This alone guarantees that I will not buy this product.

No Cameras
No front facing camera is one thing. But no back facing camera either? Why the hell not? I can't imagine what the downside was for including at least one camera. Could this thing not handle video iChat?

Touch Keyboard
So much for Apple revolutionizing tablet inputs; this is the same big, ugly touchscreen keyboard we've seen on other tablets, and unless you're lying on the couch with your knees propping it up, it'll be awkward to use.

No HDMI Out
Want to watch those nice HD videos you downloaded from iTunes on your TV? Too damned bad! If you were truly loyal, you'd just buy an AppleTV already.

The Name iPad
Get ready for Maxi pad jokes, and lots of 'em!

No Flash
No Flash is annoying but not a dealbreaker on the iPhone and iPod Touch. On something that's supposed to be closer to a netbook or laptop? It will leave huge, gaping holes in websites. I hope you don't care about streaming video! God knows not many casual internet users do. Oh wait, nevermind, they all do.

Adapters, Adapters, Adapters
So much for those smooth lines. If you want to plug anything into this, such as a digital camera, you need all sorts of ugly adapters. You need an adapter for USB for god's sake.

Update: Why stop at 8? Here are more things we are discovering that suck about the iPad.

It's Not Widescreen
Widescreen movies look lousy on this thing thanks to its 4:3 screen, according to Blam, who checked out some of Star Trek on one. It's like owning a 4:3 TV all over again!

Doesn't Support T-Mobile 3G
Sure, it's "unlocked." But it won't work on T-Mobile, and it uses microSIMs that literally no one else uses.

A Closed App Ecosystem
The iPad only runs apps from the App Store. The same App Store that is notorious for banning apps for no real reason, such as Google Voice. Sure, netbooks might not have touchscreens, but you can install whatever software you'd like on them. Want to run a different browser on your iPad? Too bad!

Apple iPad Specifications "What Apple Announced"

2010-01-27T15:34:00.000-08:00

by: Jason Cross

Unless you've been living under a particularly heavy rock, you're aware that Apple unveiled its iPad today. We'll have lots of coverage of the device, but here's a quick look at the announced specs. Many of our hardware questions have been answered, but many questions still remain.

Display: 9.7 inch IPS

It's particularly interesting that Apple is going with IPS (in-plane switching) technology. These are usually found in higher-end desktop monitors because they provide better color reproduction and wider viewing angles. Nearly all notebooks use TN (twisted nematic) panels, which are generally considered inferior. Resolution is 1024x768 - not quite as wide as 720p video (1280 pixels) but a little taller (720 pixels).

Size and Weight: 9.56 by 7.47 by 0.5 inches, and 1.5 to 1.6 pounds

It looks like the devices has a somewhat convex back, much like the iPhone 3G, making it half an inch thick in the center but "feel" slimmer on the edges where you hold it. Either way, this looks like a reasonable thickness and weight for something you're meant to hold in your hands all the time. The 3G option adds a tenth of a pound (about 6.6% additional weight).

Processor: 1GHz Apple A4 Chip

This is a fairly big deal, not because the chip runs at 1GHz, but because it's labeled the "Apple A4 Chip." Apple bought the semiconductor company PA Semi in 2008, this must be what they're doing with it. We know precious little about the chip besides that. Given that iPhone apps run unmodified, we can assume it's based on the ARM architecture. There's a world of difference in performance between the ARM11 cores found in the original iPhone and the ARM Cortex A9 cores just announced at CES, after all. How much RAM does this chip have? What's the 3D architecture like (does it use a licensed PowerVR core, like the iPhones)?

Storage: 16, 32, or 64GB flash

This is sort of a no-brainer. 128GB might be nice in a device this size, but it's probably cost-prohibitive.

Battery life: 10 hours battery life, over 1 month standby

Apple didn't provide details on how this number was derived, but did mention that you could watch video on the entire flight from San Francisco to Tokyo. The specs page lists "Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music." The battery is a 25 Watt-hour lithium polymer battery.

Connectivity: 802.11n Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

It's great to see 802.11n support, and Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR (enhanced data rate) will be useful for some accessories. Apple said there will be models with 3G through AT&T. Data plans in the US will cost $14.99 for 250MB and $29.99 for unlimited data. There is no contract commitment. The plan will come with free access to AT&T hotspots, just as AT&T does with other laptop 3G data customers. If you don't like AT&T, good news: all iPad models are unlocked, and use the new GSM micro SIMs, so you could theoretically go with another carrier.

Other Features: Accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, 30-pin connector

It sounds as though it will use the same connector as the iPhone and iPod Touch, and includes similar internal "extras" as the iPhone 3GS with the accelerometer and compass. So what's missing? The camera! There appears to be no front-facing nor rear-facing camera. There are volume buttons and a headphone jack along the right hand side (when held vertically). There is a physical switch on top (for power? Wi-Fi?).

Apple will release physical keyboard dock accessory that looks like a standard Apple keyboard. No pricing info on that.

Price: "Starts at $499"

That's a fairly low price, but that only gets you the 16GB model with no 3G. Adding 3G to any model costs $130 more, and each tier of storage is $100 more. So that's $599 for the 32GB model without 3G, and $829 for the whole enchilada - 64GB and 3G.

Sony to Launch First TransferJet Devices This Week

2010-01-19T16:01:00.000-08:00

by: Martyn Williams

Sony will launch the first laptop containing the new TransferJet short-range wireless system on Saturday. Sony hopes TransferJet will replace cables for shifting data between gadgets, but the technology's success will depend on its use in products from the big-name consumer electronics companies that have pledged to support it.

TransferJet, under development for more than two years, works over a distance of up to 3 centimeters. Its speed is supposed to rival USB2.0 and because of its short range its developers have opted not to implement the device pairing and security set-up functions of other wireless systems such as Bluetooth.

The first products to support it -- Sony's Vaio F laptop and TX7 and HX5V digital cameras -- will be launched in Japan on Jan. 23 and Feb. 5 respectively and will hit international markets from February. They were demonstrated on Monday at a Tokyo news conference.

To send pictures between cameras a user initiates sending on one camera, brings it close to the receiving camera and the rest happens automatically. During the demonstrations it worked well, accomplishing the transfer of pictures between cameras and from a camera to a photo frame and PC in just a few seconds. It appeared easy to use and required little work from the user.

But this first batch of products will suffer from a limitation common when a new technology debuts: they're not quite up to speed.

When it announced TransferJet in January 2008, Sony said it would run at 560Mbps and users would see actual transfer rates of up to 375Mbps after networking overheads. However, first-generation products will be much slower, with transfers from a Cybershot TX7 camera to a Vaio F laptop running at about 40Mbps, Sony said Monday. The slower speed -- about one-tenth of the maximum possible -- is due to software overhead in the PC and data processing, the company said.

There'll be no TransferJet chip in the first Cybershot cameras to support the technology. Instead, the radio chip will come in an optional 8GB Memory Stick card so users will be required to purchase the card if they want to make use of the functions in the cameras' firmware. The card will cost US$100, a $30 premium on a similar card without TransferJet.

Sony said it isn't fitting TransferJet as standard because of the fierce price competition in the digital camera market. Adding the chips would increase the price of its cameras, and with few users requiring the technology they would become less competitive.

Sony will also launch a TransferJet USB adapter. It demonstrated this on Monday, connected to a Bravia TV and digital photo frame receiving images from a camera. The TJS-1 adapter will cost US$150.

Whether TransferJet achieves its goal of replacing cables will depend in large part on how quickly it is added to other products.

A consortium formed to support and develop TransferJet counts many of the biggest names in consumer electronics as members, including Samsung, Toshiba, Kodak, Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Olympus, Pioneer and Sony Ericsson. The list of companies leans towards camera and cell phone makers, hinting that these sectors could be the first to see greater adoption -- if manufacturers decide it's worth the additional cost.

To date, Toshiba has been the only other company to demonstrate prototype TransferJet devices. At last year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas it showed the transmission of pictures from a prototype PDA to a laptop and TV.

But at this year's show only Sony was demonstrating the technology despite its imminent commercial launch. If that proves to be an indication of the state of development at other companies then the technology could face a tough battle to achieve mass adoption.

HP's First USB 3.0 Laptop Ships; Others on the Way

2010-01-15T12:36:00.000-08:00

by: David Pierce

HP announced today that certain configurations of its Envy 15 laptops will come equipped with the new USB 3.0 spec. This makes HP one of the first computer companies to offer the incredibly fast technology on their machines.

USB 3.0 promises speeds more than 10x as fast as USB 2.0, making the transfer of even things like video files incredibly fast.

At CES last week, no fewer than 17 devices designed for USB 3.0 were introduced, coming from companies like ASUS, Fujistsu, Western Digital, and more. Thanks to speeds up to 5Gbps (compared to USB 2.0’s 480Mbps), 1GB of data can now be transferred in just 3.3 seconds, compared to at least 33 seconds with USB 2.0.

All USB 3.0 devices will be backwards compatible, meaning that they’ll work with USB 2.0 and 1.1 devices, but those devices won’t see the speed increase that USB 3.0-enabled devices will.

USB 3.0 is making its way onto nearly everything that connects via USB, and the early favorite seems to be hard drives, with both LaCie and PQI including USB 3.0 on their new hard drives.

HP, though, is one of the first to actually get a USB 3.0 computer to market, shipping USB 3.0 on Envy 15 laptops that are configured with ATI 5380 graphics and a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, according to CNET. And there are more coming from HP—the business-geared EliteBook will start shipping with USB 3.0 in just a couple of weeks.

Others aren’t far behind, with ASUS having confirmed that it will start shipping laptops with USB 3.0, but HP’s early entry will hopefully set a benchmark, and shift others into overdrive to both include and support the newer, faster technology behind USB 3.0.

What Defines an E-Reader?

2010-01-11T18:12:00.000-08:00

by: Melissa J. Perenson

Until recently, pretty much all e-readers used E-Ink displays like the ones in Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook. However, at CES we've seen a number of concept designs and prototypes-from both Asian contract manufacturers and established companies-that are billed as "e-readers", but use LCD screens like the ones in typical notebooks.

Are these devices truly e-readers? The whole point of electronic paper-based e-readers is that the display, which doesn't use a backlight, mimics the look of physical paper and is easier on the eyes than a bright, backlit LCD. I saw many LCD "e-readers" at the show, but none had those same qualities.

Tech companies are as susceptible to trends as teenage girls and I'd argue that many of the companies making LCD-based e-readers are simply jumping on the craze for these devices. Many of these so-called e-readers are no more than tablet PCs or MID (mobile Internet devices), capable of displaying e-books with e-reader software but not really optimized for that purpose. It's no different, really, than a mobile phone running Amazon's Kindle app, or any other e-reader software for that matter. The only difference between the two categories is the size of the screen.

Much of the hype is just that. After all, this is CES-the place where companies go to put forth ideas and gauge the reception from the media and potential customers.

Which brings me around to the MSI 10-inch dual-screen e-reader concept. The clam-shell prototype device was surprisingly lightweight in my hands, and had a touchscreen that made it easy to navigate around the Windows 7 starter operating system. The screens responded to being reoriented from the vertical position to horizontal; in horizontal mode, the unit has a virtual keyboard with haptic feedback. The prototype is intriguing, to be sure, but, MSI has no plans to bring it to market, and according to a product manager, the product won't be manufactured until at least 2011. Ditto for the company's other concept display, a half-inch-thick (give or take) tablet "e-reader" with touchscreen, running Google Android. Both devices ran e-reader software, had LCD screens, and used full-featured operating systems. They were capable of far more than many traditional e-readers, but will they be optimal if what you really want is a device primarily to read novels on your commute?

Other e-readers, like the Entourage eDge and the Spring Designs Alex Reader, also include multi-purpose LCD screens. But in addition, they have E-Ink displays of equal or greater size that the manufacturers intend for use as the primary reading display.

While many of the tablet/MID devices introduced at CES look promising, none appear ready to replace electronic paper for long-form reading. When the sun set in Vegas, they're still just small PCs that let you access electronic books, along with doing a whole lot of other stuff.

10 Ways the Internet Will Change in 2010

2010-01-06T06:28:00.000-08:00

by: Carolyn Duffy Marsan

1. More people will use the Internet.

Today's Internet has 1.7 billion users, according to Internet World Stats. This compares with a world population of 6.7 billion people. There's no doubt more people will have Internet access by 2020. Indeed, the National Science Foundation predicts that the Internet will have nearly 5 billion users by then. So scaling continues to be an issue for any future Internet architecture.

2. The Internet will be more geographically dispersed.

Most of the Internet's growth over the next 10 years will come from developing countries. The regions with the lowest penetration rates are Africa (6.8%), Asia (19.4%) and the Middle East (28.3%), according to Internet World Stats. In contrast, North America has a penetration rate of 74.2%. This trend means the Internet in 2020 will not only reach more remote locations around the globe but also will support more languages and non-ASCII scripts.

3. The Internet will be a network of things, not computers.

As more critical infrastructure gets hooked up to the Internet, the Internet is expected to become a network of devices rather than a network of internetcomputers. Today, the Internet has around 575 million host computers, according to the CIA World Factbook 2009. But the NSF is expecting billions of sensors on buildings and bridges to be connected to the Internet for such uses as electricity and security monitoring. By 2020, it's expected that the number of Internet-connected sensors will be orders of magnitude larger than the number of users.

4. The Internet will carry exabytes -- perhaps zettabytes -- of content.

Researchers have coined the term "exaflood" to refer to the rapidly increasing amount of data -- particularly high-def images and video - that is being transferred over the Internet. Cisco estimates that global Internet traffic will grow to 44 exabytes per month by 2012 -- more than double what it is today. Increasingly, content providers such as Google are creating this content rather than Tier 1 ISPs. This shift is driving interest in re-architecting the Internet to be a content-centric network, rather than a transport network.

5. The Internet will be wireless.

The number of mobile broadband subscribers is exploding, hitting 257 million in the second quarter of 2009, according to Informa. This represents an 85% increase year-over-year for 3G, WiMAX and other higher speed data networking technologies. Currently, Asia has the most wireless broadband subscribers, but the growth is strongest in Latin America. By 2014, Informa predicts that 2.5 billion people worldwide will subscribe to mobile broadband.

6. More services will be in the cloud.

Experts agree that more computing services will be available in the cloud. A recent study from Telecom Trends International estimates that cloud computing will generate more than $45.5 billion in revenue by 2015. That's why the National Science Foundation is encouraging researchers to come up with better ways to map users and applications to a cloud computing infrastructure. They're also encouraging researchers to think about latency and other performance metrics for cloud-based services.

7. The Internet will be greener.

Internet operations consume too much energy today, and experts agree that a future Internet architecture needs to be more energy efficient. The amount of energy consumed by the
Artwork: Chip Taylor
Internet doubled between 2000 and 2006, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. But the Internet's so-called Energy Intensity is growing at a slower rate than data traffic volumes as networking technologies become more energy efficient. The trend towards greening the Internet will accelerate as energy prices rise, according to experts pushing energy-aware Internet routing.

8. Network management will be more automated.

Besides weak security, the biggest weakness in today's Internet is the lack of built-in network management techniques. That's why the National Science Foundation is seeking ambitious research into new network management tools. Among the ideas under consideration are automated ways to reboot systems, self-diagnosing protocols, finer grained data collection and better event tracking. All of these tools will provide better information about the health and status of networks.

9. The Internet won't rely on always-on connectivity.

With more users in remote locations and more users depending on wireless communications, the Internet's underlying architecture can no longer presume that users have always-on connections. Instead, researchers are looking into communications techniques that can tolerate delays or can forward communications from one user to another in an opportunistic fashion, particularly for mobile applications. There's even research going on related to an inter-planetary Internet protocol, which would bring a whole new meaning to the idea of delay-tolerant networking.

10. The Internet will attract more hackers.

In 2020, more hackers will be attacking the Internet because more critical infrastructure like the electric grid will be online. The Internet is already under siege, as criminals launch a rising number of Web-based attacks against end users visiting reputable sites. Symantec detected 1.6 million new malicioius code threats in 2008 - more than double the 600,000 detected the previous year. Experts say these attacks will only get more targeted, more sophisticated and more widespread in the future.

6 Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2010

2009-12-30T12:35:00.000-08:00

by Sarah Perez

1- Bluetooth 3.0

This is one of the no-brainers on the list. The Bluetooth 3.0 specification will be released this year and devices will start to hit the shelves by 2010. At this point, it's expected that the 3.0 spec will include faster speeds, reportedly transferring files at 480 megabits per second in close proximity and 100 megabits per second at 10 meters. It will also feature an ultra-low-power mode that Gartner predicts will enable new peripherals, sensors, and applications, such as health monitoring. The technology will be backwards compatible, allowing old devices to communicate with new ones, so there's no reason for it not take off in the upcoming years.

2- Mobile User Interfaces + Mobile Web/Widgets

Mobile user interfaces and mobile web/widgets were listed separately, accounting for two items on the list, but we think they can be lumped together. They all point to how mobile computing is rapidly becoming a new platform for everything from consumer mobile apps to B2E (business-to-employee) and B2C (business-to-customer). (Gartner did not include B2B on their list.) Modern day smartphones like the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, the upcoming Pre, and others deliver better interfaces for browsing the web, thus making it accessible to more people. Widget-like applications, including those that replicate thin client technology, will become more common especially in B2C strategies. Yet the mobile web still has challenges ahead. For example, there are no standards for browser access to handset services like the camera or GPS, the report notes.
mobile_widgets.png

3- Location Awareness

Location sensing, powered by GPS as well as Wi-Fi and triangulation, opens up new possibilities for mobile social networking and presence applications. Technology's earliest adopters are already familiar with social networks like Brightkite and Loopt which let you reveal your location to a network of friends. But we're still on the tip of this iceberg. Take for example, the iPhone IM client Palringo, they're just now adding location services to their application. This allows users to see how far away their contacts are, introducing a whole new dimension to mobile communication. Over the next year or two, this sort of technology is expected to become more commonplace, but it will also raise questions about privacy. Will you want your network of online friends and acquaintances to really know your exact location? Will turning off location awareness signal that you're up to something sneaky (so asks the suspicious wife, husband, boss, etc.)? As a society, we will have to answer these questions and more in the near future.

4- Near Field Communication (NFC)

NFC is a technology that provides a way for consumers to use their mobile phones for making payments, among other things. It's something that has taken off in many countries worldwide, but certainly not all, and definitely not in the United States just yet. Unfortunately, Gartner predicts that the move towards mobile payment systems will still not occur this year or the next in mature markets like the U.S. and Western Europe. Instead, NFC is more likely to take off in emerging markets. Other uses of the technology, such as the ability to transfer photos from phone to digital photo frames, will also remain elusive to more developed markets.

5- 802.11n & Cellular Broadband

802.11n, a specification for wireless local area networks (WLANs), initially gave us pause. Although not ratified as an official standard yet, the technology is already commonplace. However, until it "goes gold" so to speak, it won't really infiltrate the mobile world. Even the ubiquitous iPhone only supports 802.11 b/g at the moment.

On the flip side, the other Internet connection technology, cellular broadband, has the potential to make Wi-Fi almost unnecessary, at least for achieving high speeds. In addition to mobile phones, laptop makers will likely continue to incorporate this technology into their netbooks and notebooks using modern chipsets that provide superior performance to our current crop of add-on cards and dongles.

6- Display Technologies

Display technologies will also see improvements in the upcoming years. New technologies like active pixel displays, passive displays and pico projectors will have an impact. Pico projectors - the tiny portable projectors we saw being introduced at this year's CES - will enable new mobile use cases. Instant presentations in informal settings could become more common when there isn't large, cumbersome equipment to set up. The different types of display technologies introduced in 2009 and 2010 will become important differentiators between devices and will impact user selection criterion.

10 things Microsoft did right/wrong in 2009

2009-12-22T11:36:00.000-08:00

The year 2009 was pretty good to Microsoft, even as the weak economy ravaged sales. Microsoft actually did a few things right. The did-wrong list will come later today (not tomorrow as previously posted). For now, I present the list of 10 things Microsoft did right in 2009 -- in no order of importance. They're all important. Microsoft:

1. Flawlessly launched Windows 7. There's a metaphor somehow in Microsoft launching Windows 7 during the 40th anniversary year of the Apollo moon landing. Microsoft's precision reminds of NASA sending man to the moon. While the human risk wasn't as great and many of the engineering challenges were far less than Apollo 11, Windows 7 needed perfect launch and delivery, from testing to release candidate to voluming licensing availability and retail release. Microsoft pulled it off.

It's clear that Microsoft re-engineered the engineering process. The mistakes that led to overlong development of Windows Vista, the dumping of well-publicized features and late delivery (How could Microsoft miss Holiday 2006?) didn't reappear. Microsoft successfully executed a taunt development schedule, improved performance in the right places (like startup and wakeup), made better the user interface and insured that most drivers would be available for popular devices.

Microsoft's success was as much about managing perceptions as developing and delivering a good product. The company clearly worked the blogs that Microsoft influencers, IT managers and some consumers read, as well social networks and forums they might participate in. Early positive reviews and some kick-ass "Laptop Hunters" marketing helped Windows 7 to pull free from the negative reaction gravity that kept Windows Vista from achieving escape velocity.

2. Opened retail stores. Coordinated with Windows 7's launch, Microsoft opened retail stores in Arizona and California and a café in France. The stores are a first step that will need many more to follow. During his Consumer Electronics Show 2009 keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that companies most likely to succeed after a recession make investments during one. Retail stores are one such investment. Apple opened its first retail stores during the 2000-01 recession. Microsoft's situation and timing remind of Apple in May 2001, for starters during a recession. Microsoft's retail strategy will require commitment, if necessary, including running stores at losses for their greater marketing benefit.

3. Offered crapware-free PCs. Microsoft started selling Windows 7 PCs through its online and brick-and-mortar stores in October, free of the preloaded software -- crapware -- that can bog down the performance of even a new system. It's an important change to giving Windows 7 PC users the experience Microsoft engineered out of the box.

4. Launched Bing. Microsoft's "decision engine" may never catch Google. Bing will cannibalize Yahoo search share first. But as a consumer product, with excellent user interface and simply exceptional advertising, Bing already is helping to revive Microsoft's brand outside of the business market. Search is the most popular activity on the Web. By being there with a solid product and big brand, Microsoft can snatch some of the good consumer feeling that Apple or Google gets.

5. Released Security Essentials. Microsoft finally did the right thing by customers and the Windows brand by offering free malware protection. No doubt, Microsoft long resisted the inevitable for the benefit of its anti-malware software partners and for concern about antitrust problems. Security Essentials is reliable malware protection that doesn't overtax Windows. For 2010, Microsoft could make the software better by making it even easier for consumers to get -- say, on new PCs.

6. Promoted Steven Sinofsky. The man who methodically led the team that turned around Microsoft's flagship operating system now leads the Windows & Windows Live division. Sinfosky hugely deserved the promotion to president of the division (see #1). Next up: Turning around Windows Live. Can Sinofsky and team deliver? First answer may come at MIX 10, in March.

7. Released Zune 4.0 software and Zune HD. It's too bad iPod is so popular. Zune 4.0 and Zune HD are both kick-ass products. Microsoft showed that Xbox 360 and Xbox Live aren't flukes. Microsoft can provide good end-to-end solutions in other markets. The company also learned, hopefully, an important lesson: Backwards compatibility isn't everything. Microsoft broke backwards compatibility, by providing new features in Zune HD not available for older devices.

8. Settled antitrust case with the European Union. Last week's browser "Choice Screen" agreement with the EU's Competition Commission is much bigger than it seems. Microsoft's concessions did more than end the browser antitrust case, they effectively sidelined another open investigation, by the company agreeing to release additional interoperability information -- and for products broader than Windows, including Office and SharePoint Server.

9. Improved advertising. Microsoft advertising has long been major lame, particularly the persistent and pointless corporate commercials. From February, Microsoft hit a series of marketing home runs, each stronger than the last:

* "The Rookies," featuring cute kids using Windows Live Photo Gallery.
* "Laptop Hunters," where people shopped for a PC, which they could keep if within their pre-agreed budget.
* "Bing," which commercials made real the limitations of search keywords.
* "Windows 7 was my idea," what anyone's idea of good Microsoft advertising should be.

If 2010 advertising is this good, or even better, Microsoft will get a good branding start for the new decade.

10. Debuted Silverlight 4.0. Microsoft continued making its nearly annual updates to Silverlight, releasing v4 beta during Professional Developers Conference 2009. Sadly, Silverlight 4.0 was the only real light coming out of PDC. Internet Explorer 9 is vaporware and Azure has morphed into last year's Amazon Web Services. But Silverlight promises Adobe AIR-like capabilities, support for microphones and Webcams, standalone Silverlight containers and better HTML support, including HTTP streaming, among other new features. A good thing is getting even better.

10 things Microsoft did wrong in 2009 in no order of importance. They're all important. Microsoft:

1. Let Chris Liddell get away. Liddell has proven to be an exceptionally adept Microsoft CFO. He managed Microsoft finances in better times and bad, doing a resounding good job overseeing difficult cost cutting as global economic crisis sapped software sales. Liddell has an excellent relationship with Wall Street analysts and -- until January (see #4) -- he offered continually conservative guidance to them. His departure is a huge loss at Microsoft's highest executive level.

There is simply no excuse for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and his board of directors letting Liddell leave for General Motors. No incentive should have been enough to keep him, although given Liddell's tight-fisted financial operations during the econolypse, as CFO he might not have allowed it. How ironic is that?

2. Offered no direct Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade. Some Betanews readers will be surprised to read that this only marginally makes the list. From a customer relations and software sales perspective, the Windows XP upgrade path to 7 is a frak up. Windows XP users shouldn't have to backup everything, do a clean installation and restore data from backup. For many enterprises, a fresh image would be business as usual. For consumers and small businesses, Microsoft has placed a huge deterrent to Windows 7 upgrades.

But like with Zune HD (see #7 in the did-right list), Microsoft backed away from the shackles of its longstanding practice of putting backwards compatibility before anything else. From that perspective, the Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade is something Microsoft did right -- and hopefully foreshadows more of it. Microsoft can't support every customer running any old version of its software. Such practice keeps Windows from being the modern operating system it needs to be.

3. Laid off Don Dodge. Microsoft's January announcement of 5,000-plus layoffs showed how quickly the economic crisis waylaid the company. Or did it? In a future post I will apply a magnifying glass to Microsoft layoffs, which appear to have been more about firing highly paid, tenured staff than making necessary cuts of employee fat. Microsoft's ambassador to Silicon Valley, Don Dodge, was the most surprising of the layoffs -- and yet from the perspective of lopping big salaries it was not. Microsoft lost three things with Dodge:

* Vital experience sussing out good startups
* Someone well respected in Silicon Valley
* An ally, who became a competitive enemy

In mid November, less than two weeks after being laid off by Microsoft, Dodge took a job with Google. How the frak did Microsoft executives not see that one coming?

4. Withheld financial guidance. Starting in January, Microsoft stopped giving financial guidance to Wall Street. It was simply a disastrous decision that established an even worse precedent. Sure, the guidance couldn't be good (given sagging sales) and risked further run on the stock, as if the last quarter of 2008 wasn't bad enough for Microsoft and nearly every other public company. But bad guidance would have been better than none. Successful public companies don't just manage finances, they manage perceptions about their performance.

By withholding guidance, Microsoft let uncertainty and gossip determine perceptions about its sales and earnings performance. By comparison, Apple continued to release guidance and, combined with marketing and product launches and leaks, generated positive perceptions. These perceptions helped to lift Apple's share price to new heights. Meanwhile, Microsoft shares remained in the doldrums, even while quarterly results remained relatively buoyant considering economic conditions. Microsoft lost opportunity to generate really positive perceptions on Wall Street during Windows 7's late development and October launch.

5. Botched the mobile phone strategy. Earlier this month, I encouraged Microsoft not to hang up on its mobile phone strategy. But the company has fewer options by the day, as hardware manufacturers hang up on Windows Mobile and shift to Google's Android. In October and mid-December posts, I observed how Google has put together a winning mobile strategy -- in third quarter, according to Gartner, reaching 3.5 percent smartphone market share, up from zero a year earlier.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has got simply nothing to offer. Windows Mobile 6.5, which launched in October, lags behind Android and iPhone OS in critical areas of innovation. Meanwhile, Windows Mobile 7.0 is MIA, with rumors running about delays into late 2010 or early 2011. Microsoft's mobile browser is oh-so early century, and the company is rapidly losing developers to Apple and Google. With sophisticated handsets and smartphones poised to be, with cloud services, the next-generation computing platform, Microsoft's disastrous, run-aground mobile strategy is just short of corporate malfeasance against shareholders.

6. Chased Google in search -- again. Microsoft should just give up its pursuit of Google in Web search from PCs. Google's search share lead is insurmountable. Microsoft's only real hope is mobile, which will be the future of search, but the company's mobile strategy is hosed (as explained in #5). Microsoft frittered away 2008 chasing Yahoo, only to bag a Yahoo search deal in July of this year.

I called the agreement "Google's Christmas-in-July present." As I predicted then, and as recent ComScore numbers show, Microsoft can only take search share from Yahoo; when the deal is complete and implemented, Microsoft will cannibalize Yahoo share rather than combine with it. Microsoft's Google search obsession distracts the company from what's important: Mobile and the cloud, which will be the next-generation computing platform.

7. Retrenched into enterprise. Microsoft responded to the economic crisis by doing exactly what Ballmer recommended against. In January, during his Consumer Electronics Show 2009 keynote, Microsoft's CEO extolled the importance of investing during hard times -- that historically successful companies reaped from research and development and other investments sowed during recessions. But Microsoft did something else: Retreat to the enterprise. Microsoft also killed vital incubation projects (see #9).

Nearly as bad (reiterating #6), Google continued to set the development agenda, with Microsoft again chasing the search giant's every cloud software or service. Aside from some modest Bing features and user interface changes, Microsoft failed to leap ahead of its rival.

8. Allowed netbooks to grow unchecked. Netbooks are a plague, sucking the margins out of the PC industry and from Microsoft. The company should have used every means imaginable to discourage these pesky, cheap underpowered portables. But somewhere inside the hallowed halls of Microsoft's corporate campus, someone freaked about all those early netbooks running Linux, resulting in the disastrous 2008 decision to license Windows XP Home for the little buggers. If Linux on netbooks is so bad an experience, as Microsoft product managers claim, sales collapse should have been the future without Windows licensing.

Instead, Microsoft encouraged netbooks' continued sales surge by licensing Windows 7 Starter Edition for them, all the while pushing costlier, thin-and-light laptops as the better alternative. Cheap rules the day. Gartner predicted that netbooks -- and not Windows 7 -- would lift sagging 2009 PC sales.

9. Killed incubation projects. Microsoft didn't just wield the cost-cutting axe against valuable employees, it whacked vital incubation projects. The nastiness started in earnest with April's gutting of Live Labs. As I blogged then: "Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. Did I not say stupid?" Microsoft continued jettisoning projects all year, again, contradicting Ballmer's January assertion "that companies and industries that continue to pursue innovation during tough economic times will achieve a significant competitive advantage positioning themselves for growth far more effectively than companies that hold back. That's why Microsoft continues to focus on R&D."

Oh, yeah? How is killing incubation projects investing in R&D? Some of Microsoft's best product development over the last three years came from incubation groups that acted more like internal startups. Who's running this company, if the CEO says one thing and underlings do something else -- or, worse, he is the contradiction?

10. Licensed ActiveSync to Google. Synchronization is the killer application for the connected world. So why in hell would Microsoft license its synchronization protocols to competitor Google? Perhaps someone at Microsoft saw advantage for Exchange Server. That's one way Google used ActiveSync, but not where the company got the real bang.

Immediately, Google used ActiveSync for e-mail, calendar and contact synchronization from its cloud services to iPhone and Windows Mobile handsets. Google also used the technology to provide Exchange Server sync with Google Apps, so that businesses could use the hosted service instead of Outlook. Sync is quickly defining Google's mobile handset and mobile cloud strategies, and Microsoft helped move it along faster. How dumb is that?

Bluetooth 4.0 Spec Finalized, Designed Around Energy Efficiency

2009-12-19T15:28:00.000-08:00

by: Chris Brandrick

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) revealed this Thursday a host of new innovations to be featured its next iteration of the popular Bluetooth wireless protocol.

Version 4.0 of the Bluetooth Core Specification comes shortly after the faster 3.0 spec, which was announced back in April of this year. However, unlike 3.0's speed-centric hallmark, the updated 4.0 spec is aimed mainly at consuming less power.

The updated low-energy specification will open new markets for devices that require both "low cost and low power wireless connectivity" according to the Bluetooth SIG, and that "healthcare, sports and fitness, security and home entertainment" businesses will benefit considerably due to the wider availability of products making use of the now cheaper, more attractive, Bluetooth technology.

Version 4.0's has lower peak, average, and idle power modes, and can run on a standard coin-cell battery for several years. If the reduced power consumption wasn't enough, the revised spec also provides full AES-128 encryption and supports sending small data packets at a transfer speed of up-to 1Mbps.

There will be two variants of the updated standard: a single-mode and dual-mode implementation. Dual-mode will integrate the new low energy functionality into existing Bluetooth controllers, whereas the single-mode variation, which the SIG says is best-suited for more compact devices, will use a "lightweight Link Layer" to achieve this ultra-low-power idle mode.

The first set of products to make use of the updated Bluetooth standard should arrive in early 2010. Michael Foley, SIG's executive director, is already encouraging manufactures to make use of the new standard, and said that, "with today's announcement the race is on for product designers to be the first to market."

Microsoft ends 10-year fight with Europe on browsers

2009-12-17T16:05:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has reached agreement with European Union anti-trust regulators to allow European users a choice of web browsers.

The accord ends 10 years of dispute between the two sides.

Over that time, the EU imposed fines totalling 1.68bn euros ($2.44bn, £1.5bn).

The European Commission said Microsoft's legally binding agreement ended the dispute and averted a possible fine for the company.

The Commission's concern was that the US computer giant may have broken competition rules by bundling its Internet Explorer web browser with its dominant Windows operating system.

Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said: "Millions of European consumers will benefit from this decision by having a free choice about which web browser they use."

Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said the company was "embarking on a path that will require significant change".

"Nevertheless, we believe that these are important steps that resolve these competition law concerns," he added.

Better browsers

Ms Kroes said Microsoft's pledge was an incentive for web browser companies to innovate and offer better browsers in the future.

Internet Explorer is used by more than half of global internet users, with Mozilla's Firefox at about 32% and Norway's Opera with 2%.

It was the minnow operator, Opera, that brought the latest complaint about browsers in 2007.

The company's chief executive, Jon von Tetzchner, agreed the move would boost innovation.

"This is a victory for the future of the web. This decision is also a celebration of open web standards, as these shared guidelines are the necessary ingredients for innovation."

Nevertheless, we believe that these are important steps that resolve these competition law concerns."

Microsoft's commitments on web browsers will be valid in the European Economic Area for five years.

Dominant bundle

In preliminary findings released in January, the European Commission said Microsoft "may have infringed" a European Treaty by "abusing its dominant market position" by bundling the company's web browser with its Windows PC operating system.

In July, Microsoft proposed a consumer choice screen that allowed users to pick from a number of different browsers.

The Commission then asked Microsoft to improve the choice screen, which it has now done.

In 2004, the EU fined Microsoft and forced it to offer a version of its Windows operating system without Microsoft's own media player.

The company was also told to give rivals more information about how Windows works, so they could make their own software integrate better with the operating system.

Microsoft appealed against the decision but lost its case in 2007.

Outstanding concerns

There remain, though, unresolved areas of dispute between the two parties. Although here, too, progress has been made.

Microsoft has submitted an improved version of undertakings it made in July on interoperability.

These are designed to address EU concerns about improving the compatibility of third-party products with several Microsoft ones, such as Windows and Microsoft Office.

The Commission welcomed this move too, but said it would monitor its impact on the market. Any findings would be taken into account in a pending anti-trust investigation on interoperability, it said.

Google Goggles tries to ID your world

2009-12-09T16:06:00.000-08:00

by: Barbara Krasnoff

On Monday, Google announced, along with its new real-time search feature, a photo-based search it is calling Google Goggles (which is hard to say without -- sorry -- giggling). Goggles lets you send photos of a business card, book cover or even bar code from your Android-based smartphone to Google for quick identification and data manipulation.

What does it do? Once installed, the process is pretty simple: You snap a photo by centering your image in the Goggles screen and pressing a small camera icon at the bottom of the screen. Goggles then scans the image, analyzes it and identifies it. If the image is of a business card, Goggles separates the information into fields and lets you put it into your Google Contacts database. If it's a book, the app offers to let you purchase or research it. If it's a store or a landmark, Goggles fetches Google search info about the location. (Objects such as cars, animals or people aren't, according to the instructions, really identifiable yet.)

What's cool about it? Well, let's face it -- pointing your smartphone at anything, clicking a button and having all the information about that object immediate appear is extremely cool.

How well does It work? As soon as my partner and I heard about Goggles, we immediately grabbed our Droids, installed the app and started clicking away at business cards, books and barcodes. Results were mixed, depending on what we were aiming at.

Goggles did pretty well on books, identifying most, but not all, of the covers we tested it with. For example, Goggles had no trouble with books such as an old copy of R.A. Lafferty's Past Master, or a new book like John Joseph Adams' The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, but there were also several it couldn't handle. When Goggles did recognize a book, it offered links to price comparisons and previews of the book at Google Book Search; it also showed Web search results.

Results were more mixed when we tried it on business cards. While it did well on one or two extremely simple cards, for the most part, Goggles wasn't terribly efficient. It recognized some of the data as phone numbers and e-mail addresses, but on the whole, did a far worse job than most current business-card scanners I've tried.

Trying to identify a storefront was an interesting exercise. While I focused on a local florist's shop, the names of several nearby restaurants drifted back and forth on tiny tags along the bottom of the screen -- no doubt picked up by Google Latitude and/or Maps. If I clicked on one of the tags, I was brought to a series of Web entries for that restaurant. But when I took a photo of stores that were not suggested by the tags, Goggles was not able to identify any of them -- although it tried. The florist's shop, for example, brought up some search entries for an obscure medical condition.

What needs to be fixed? Right now, Goggles is very much a beta, and even sticking to those types of queries that Google suggests, the results are distinctly mixed. As a result, it's currently more a game or an experimental toy than a practical app. But that will change. And, for now at least, it works only on Android phones.

Final verdict: Google Goggles is simultaneously intriguing and just a bit scary. The range of items you can ID is still very limited, and its accuracy level is still very tentative, but both of those are bound to be corrected as soon as the folks at Google Labs continue to tweak this. So what's scary? The day when you can quickly point your smartphone at a person in the street and know within seconds that person's name and particulars may not be all that far off.

Intel's New Concept CPU: 48 Cores On A Single Chip

2009-12-03T17:36:00.000-08:00

by: Alessondra Springmann

A concept chip demonstrated yesterday from Intel's Tera-scale Computing Research Program contains 48 cores on a single silicon chip. Using only as much electricity as a single Intel processor, this experimental chip could enable future generations of laptops to "see" just as we humans view the world through our eyes.

Intel engineers envision this multi-core chip as the future of cloud computing. As all 48 cores of this postage stamp-sized chip use 125 watts at their maximum performance, the advent of similar chips could herald a new era of energy-efficient, smaller data centers, making cloud computing less expensive and more portable.

Applications for these chips include the rapid processing of images, allowing for new methods of interacting with computers with a camera, rather than with keyboards or mice. With so much processing power available in a small area, "virtual dance lessons" and more intuitive controls for video games could become commonplace for laptops.

It could be a while before these chips make their way to the consumer market. Intel plans on sharing 100 of these prototype chips with researchers in order to develop software specially honed for the 48-core chip, but details of the prototypes' availability to industry and academic experts are yet to be released. More information on the chip's design and architecture will be presented at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in February in San Francisco.

First Programmable Quantum Computer

2009-12-01T06:24:00.000-08:00

by: Laura Sanders

Using a few ultracold ions, intense lasers and some electrodes, researchers have built the first programmable quantum computer. The new system, described in a paper to be published in Nature Physics, flexed its versatility by performing 160 randomly chosen processing routines.

Earlier versions of quantum computers have been largely restricted to a narrow window of specific tasks. To be more generally useful, a quantum computer should be programmable, in the same way that a classical computer must be able to run many different programs on a single piece of machinery.

The new study is “a powerful demonstration of the technological advances towards producing a real-world quantum computer,” says quantum physicist Winfried Hensinger of the University of Sussex in Brighton, England.

Researchers led by David Hanneke of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo., based their quantum computer on two beryllium ions chilled to just above absolute zero. These ions, trapped by an electromagnetic field on a gold-plated alumina chip, formed the quantum bits, or qubits, analogous to the bits in regular computers represented by 0s and 1s. Short laser bursts manipulated the beryllium ions to perform the processing operations, while nearby magnesium ions kept the beryllium ions cool and still.

Hanneke and colleagues programmed the computer to do operations on a single beryllium ion and on both of the beryllium ions together. In the quantum world, a single qubit can represent a mixture of 0 and 1 simultaneously, a state called a superposition. A laser pulse operation could change the composition of the mixture within the qubit, tipping the scales to make the qubit more likely to become a 1 when measured.

Both of the qubits together could be entangled, a situation where the two qubits are intimately linked, and what happens to one seems to affect the fate of the other. Different combinations of one- and two-qubit operations made up various programs. “We put all these pieces together and asked, what can we do with the circuit?” Hanneke says.

Hanneke and colleagues chose 160 programs for the quantum computer to run. “We picked them, quite literally, at random,” Hanneke says. “We really wanted to sample all possible operations.”

The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper, which was published online November 15. “Getting this kind of control over a quantum system is really interesting from a physics perspective,” Hanneke says.

Earlier research has estimated that to be useful, a quantum computer must operate accurately 99.99 percent of the time. Hanneke says that with stronger lasers and other refinements, the system’s fidelity may be improved.

Experimental physicist Boris Blinov says that one of the most exciting things about the new study is that the quantum computer may be scaled up. “What’s most impressive and important is that they did it in the way that can be applied to a larger-scale system,” says Blinov, of the University of Washington in Seattle. “The very same techniques they’ve used for two qubits can be applied to much larger systems.”

Tokyo Students Design a New Robotic Muscle Suit

2009-11-25T19:21:00.000-08:00

by: Martyn Williams

Students at Tokyo's University of Science have developed a new version of their muscle suit, a wearable robotic suit that assists the muscles when carrying out strenuous tasks.

The original version of the suit, which has been in production for several years, provides assistance to the arms and back but the new version provides assistance to the back only. That means it is lighter and more compact than the original model.

In a demonstration on Wednesday at the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, a student wearing the suit was able to bend down and lift 15 kilograms of weights with the assistance of the robotic suit. Doing so without assistance would be difficult for many people and could cause injury to some.

The university is still developing the suit and the model demonstrated on Wednesday was the first prototype. A production version is due some time in 2010.

With its greater assistance the original version of the suit will remain the most useful for heavier tasks.

In a demonstration of that model on Wednesday a student was asked to carry 10-kilogram bags of rice. With the suit switched off he could manage up to three bags before they started to get too heavy to carry, but with the suit switched on another two bags could be loaded into his arms. He quickly dropped the bags when the suit was switched off as without assistance it was too much weight to carry.

Such suits are being developed with an eye on assisting the physically challenged and workers carrying out physically demanding jobs.

Earlier this year Toyota Motor unveiled similar robot-assisted suits and has been testing them at factories in Japan with workers who have to lift large or heavy sheets of metal or car parts.

Google Chrome OS Unveiled: Speed, Simplicity, and Security Stressed

2009-11-22T11:24:00.000-08:00

by: Robert Strohmeyer

Google demonstrated for the first time its Google Chrome OS, a Web-centric operating system set to be officially released late 2010.

Google opened its doors to the press Thursday to show off its hotly anticipated Chrome operating system for the first time. In a small auditorium in Mountain View, California, Google VP of Product Development Sundar Pichai took to the stage to give us a demonstration of what Chrome OS actually is. Some rumors were confirmed, others dispelled, as the operating system emerged into the light of day. Here's what we now know about Google's Chrome OS.

"As of today, the code will be fully open," Pichai said. In fact, shortly before the press event began, the unofficial Google OS blog announced public availability of the Chrome OS source code. With this code now in the hands of the open source community, it shouldn't be long before various builds of the code end up trickling onto the Web.

To explain why Google decided to take on the OS project in the first place, Pichai put the project into context of the existing Chrome Web browser, which now has more than 40 million users worldwide. The browser is currently available only for Windows, though Mac and Linux versions will be available before the end of the year. "The Mac version is nearly ready," said Pichai, who is using it as his primary browser on his own machine.

In addition to new versions for Mac OS X and Linux, Google is nearing the release of browser extensions like those found on Firefox and Internet Explorer. One differentiating point is that Chrome extensions will be automatically updated by the browser, simplifying the process of keeping your favorite extensions working when the browser is updated, which is an issue that currently frustrates many users of mainstream browsers.

HTML5 is a core driver behind Google's Chrome OS strategy. "We're all used to running rich games on our personal computer. We wanted to be able to run the same rich games in the browser," Pichai said. An important facet of HTML5 is that it allows Web apps to address the PC's processor and other hardware resources to run 3-D graphics, video, and audio locally on the PC, and address local storage. Perhaps surprisingly, Google has also been working with other browser vendors to increase support for HTML5.

Chrome OS

According to Pichai, one of the principal motivations behind creating a Chome operating system is speed. Pichai repeatedly alluded to Google's desire to make the computing experience more like a TV viewing experience in both simplicity and speed. "From the time you press boot, you want it to be like a TV," he said. "Chrome on Chrome OS will be even faster than Chrome." The meaning here is clear: Google wants to build an instant-on device that lets users get on the Web as quickly as they could turn on a TV. But it also means the company is pushing to make a more streamlined OS that requires less hardware and includes fewer background processes that eat into system resources.

Chrome OS is currently targerted at netbooks and the emerging class of mobile tablets. The convergence of mobile computing devices--laptops to netbooks, and phones to tablets--represents something of a sweet spot for Google, in which a low-profile cloud-based OS could give users a cross between the simplicity and speed of a phone and the more robust experience of a laptop.

The Chrome Interface

With the Chrome interface revealed on-screen--as expected, the interface is barely distinct from that of the Chrome browser--Pichai demonstrated some of the features of the operating system. "In Chrome OS, every application is a Web application. Users don't have to install applications, manage software, nothing," Pichai said.

The interface of Chrome is currently composed of three types of views: windows, tabs, and panels. However, Pichai was quick to point out that this interface is likely to change quite a bit over the coming year, as the open source community contributes new code to the project.

Applications, which are essentially just Web pages, live in tabs, just as they do in most browsers now. In Chrome OS, there are two kinds of tabs: page tabs and application tabs. Application tabs are intended to give users quick access to the Web apps they use most, and any page can be made into an application tab with one click. Application tabs remain persistent at the left of the tabs bar, while ordinary page tabs behave just as they do in current browsers.

Tabs live in windows, which on the Chrome OS are more similar to Linux-style virtual workspaces. You can drag and drop page and application tabs from one window to another to group them according to any organization scheme you like.

The final view is the panel, which is a persistent window that can contain a variety of applications. To demonstrate this, Pichai opened up Contacts and Notepad--two apps included with Chrome OS--in panel views, which sit in the lower-right area of the screen. This view is intended to allow users to interact with specific files or Web content while still viewing another page or app in the main window. Content created in panel apps is instantly shared with the rest of the Google apps, as demonstrated by a bit of sample text being entered into the Notepad panel, and then immediately opened in Google Docs.

Other uses for the panel view include searching for music and playing songs or videos in a smaller view during the course of Web browsing. As with documents, these panels can be quickly opened into a tab or full-screen mode.

Chrome OS will support a variety of types of flash media. As an example, Pichai plugged in a USB drive and Chrome OS opened a tab to view a spreadsheet stored on the drive. "It turns out Microsoft launched a killer app for Chrome OS. Microsoft Live," joked Pichai, as a Microsoft Office Live opened the spreadsheet in the Chrome OS browser.

Under the Hood

One expected advantage of Chrome OS will be security. In contrast to the established PC model, in which applications run locally on the drive and user data is generally stored locally as well, Chrome OS will not allow applications to install locally or make changes to the operating system. At the same time, it will automatically sync all user data to the cloud. Meanwhile the operating system will automatically update itself all the time.

User data on every Chrome device will be encrypted, a move that is intended to protect users in the event that their device is lost or stolen. Matt Papakipos, engineering director on the projected, summed up this move by saying, "If I lose my Chrome OS machine, I should be able to go get a new machine, and have everything back up running in seconds" via the automated cloud backups.

Papakipos reiterated the mantra that Chrome OS "feels much more like a television than a computer." Turn it, it starts right away, and you're on the Web by default. In the demo, Chrome did in fact boot almost instantly on the Eee PC netbook. This is in part because the OS is just reading out of RAM rather than a magnetic drive. But there are other reasons that the OS boots and runs more quickly than most other PCs.

Chrome OS consists of custom firmware, a small kernel optimized to run on a short list of reference devices, and the Chrome browser. Because the list of supported hardware is short, the OS is designed without unnecessary background device support. This prevents the operating system from wasting time looking for devices that aren't there (such as floppy drives), which is a problem with Windows and most other consumer operating systems.

Another aspect of the boot process enhances security. A verified boot process applies cryptographic signature keys to each chunk of code, so the the system can check the validity of module of the operating system before it is allowed to execute. In the event that some element of code doesn't check out--due to malware or other corruption, the system will run an automated recovery procedure repair itself by redownloading the appropriate version of Chrome and reimaging the OS.

As an addition security measure, the root partition of the device's drive is read-only, preventing any application from changing the core code.

Market Strategy

Chrome OS will run on a set of reference hardware that will be developed and sold by device OEMs. Google is working directly with manufacturers to specify which hardware components will be supported. Conspicuously, hard drives won't be on the list. Though the OS is open source, you won't be able to download it and install it on any device you happen to have. Instead, you'll have to run it on a Chrome OS-specific device comprised of hardware components that are explicitly supported by the OS.

Of course, as of today, the Chrome OS source code is readily available for download by anyone. And, according to Pichai, the code will run on select devices that are available today. Soon, Pichai said, developers will be able to find a list of devices that can support the OS, and what changes will need to be made to those devices to make it work.

By this time next year, Google expects to have several devices available in the retail channel in time for the holiday shopping season.

Egypt Applies First for International Web Domain

2009-11-17T18:09:00.000-08:00

by: Jacqueline Emigh

The agency in charge of assigning domain names today began accepting applications for domain names written in non-Latin languages, and Egypt -- a country now drawing heated criticism from human rights advocates -- became the first to apply for a domain name in Arabic.

Following a controversial decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to allow Web sites written in Arabic, Russian Chinese, and other non-ASCII character sets, governments or their designees can now apply for the approval of such names.

Egypt has applied for an Arabic Internet domain name with a suffix equating in the ASCII character set to "masr," meaning Egypt in the Arabic language.

The move to expand domain names to non-Latin languages has been heralded as a way to open up the Web for easier access by the billions of people in the world who speak those languages.

"The first countries that participate will not only be providing valuable information of the operation of IDNs in the domain system, they are also going to help to bring the first of billions more people online -- people who never use Roman characters in their daily lives," ICANN CEO and President Rod Beckstrom said in a recent statement.

On the other hand, ICANN's measure has been criticized as making it harder for people without the right keyboards or other technologies in place to access international Web sites.

Now, another potential controversy could be stirring, because the United Nations' Internet Governance Forum (IGF) decided to gather in Egypt for this week's annual meeting, drawing highly publicized objections from a press freedom organization.

The organization Reporters without Borders has described the IGF's choice of Egypt as "astonishing" in light of Egypt's human rights record.

Criticism of Egypt from the group at a time when Egypt is also applying for a domain name with ICANN does tend to shine a spotlight on human rights abuses in that country.

Some might wonder whether countries with dubious human rights records ought to be permitted to set up domain names that are difficult for people outside those countries to access.

But the fact of the matter is that Web sites have long been written in non-Latin languages, despite the character sets used in their domain names.

Meanwhile, Web sites in some countries -- notably China -- are already using non-ASCII suffixes, anyway, without an official nod of approval from ICANN.

Like it or not, the Internet has long been a multilingual place. Communications are all but invisible to those who don't speak the languages in which a Web site is written, regardless of the domain suffix.

It might be easier for English-speakers to get to a Web site that uses a domain name consisting of ASCII characters. Yet that doesn't mean one can understand what people are saying on the site. Internet translation engines can be a big help, but their accuracy is hardly guaranteed.

Meanwhile, national governments -- even those without good human rights records -- have long had at least some say into how their citizens use -- or don't use -- the Internet, which citizens can access it, and for what purposes (again, see China).

ICANN's nod in the direction of more open access is a nice gesture, but it won't really turn the Internet into any more (or less) of a happy and humane global village.

Google Aims for Faster Web Downloads With SPDY Protocol

2009-11-13T13:23:00.000-08:00

by: Mikael Ricknäs

Google is hoping to make Web pages download up to twice as quickly using SPDY, a new application-layer protocol it's experimenting with.

It wants to improve on the performance of using HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) by minimizing latency. For the protocol to work, the browser and the web server have to be upgraded, but changes to Web pages are not needed, according to Google.

Google's lab tests of SPDY show an improvement in page load times compared to HTTP of between 27 percent and 60 percent, and between 39 percent and 55 percent when using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), it said.

The company still needs to do a lot of work to evaluate the performance of SPDY in real-world conditions, the blog post said.

Google conducted the tests by downloading 25 of the "top 100" web sites ten times each over simulated home network connections, using a prototype Google Chrome browser and a Web server that it has developed.

SPDY uses a number of techniques to speed Web downloads, including allowing many concurrent HTTP requests across a single TCP session, prioritizing the requests, and using compression to reduce the number of packets and overall amount of data sent.

Google doesn't want to start from scratch with SPDY. The protocol still uses HTTP headers, but it overrides other parts of the protocol, such as connection management and data transfer formats.

"That Google is trying to improve download speeds is great, and the numbers are very promising," said Måns Jonasson, a web developer at IIS, which is responsible for the top-level Swedish Internet domain, .se.

For something like SPDY to work everyone has to be on board. The protocol won't become a success unless it's supported in both Internet Explorer and Firefox, according to Jonasson. It might be able to convince Mozilla to implement the protocol in Firefox, but convincing Microsoft will be difficult, he said.

"Microsoft seems to hate everything Google does," said Jonasson.

The source code for the prototype Google Chrome browser is available for download. The code for the server will be released as open source in the near future, it said.

That Google is opening up the code is good, but it also needs to approach standards organization IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), Jonasson said.

Development efforts on other protocols to speed Web downloads, such as SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol) and SST (Structured Stream Transport), have seen little activity in recent years.

Google Dashboard: A Closer Look

2009-11-07T08:44:00.000-08:00

by: Ian Paul

Google showed Thursday it's getting more serious about privacy when it launched a tool called Google Dashboard that aims to give you more control over your personal data stored on Google's servers. From your Google Dashboard you can view the company's privacy policies, easily access your most recent activity for each Google service you use, and manage settings for those services. My initial impression is that Dashboard is a quick and easy way to get greater control over your Google Account activity, and even clean up any services you may have forgotten about.

Accessing the Dashboard

To get into Google Dashboard, sign into your Google Account, click on the settings link at Google.com, and select "Google Account Settings." You can also click on "My Account" from your iGoogle page. Or just follow this link. This will take you to your Google Account page where you select "View data stored with this account" under "Personal Settings." Google will then ask you to enter your Google Account password again as an extra security measure before redirecting you to your Dashboard.

It should also be noted that from your Google Account page you can also see a list of all the Google services you use, but Dashboard gives you more information about what kind of data you have stored on each Google service.

Dashboard

When you land on Dashboard you will see a list of your Google services on the left-hand side. This list contains information about the Google services you use including your recent activity and basic statistics. Under Gmail, for example, you can see you how many messages you've sent, how many conversations are in your inbox, the number of Gmail chats you have saved, and even how many items are in your trash.

The statistics feature in Dashboard was particularly useful for me allowing me to take control of various services I hadn't used for a long time. For example, I'd completely forgotten that I'd signed up to use the social features on a few Websites using Google Friend Connect. But since I don't really visit those sites, or use Friend Connect, I was able to quickly navigate to my settings for this service and "unjoin" my Friend Connect Websites. I also noticed that Google Latitude had access to my Google Account information, but since I don't really use Latitude I easily revoked access for that application as well.

On the left side of Dashboard, you will see several links for managing your settings for each service and links to Google's privacy and help pages. Gmail in Dashboard, for example, lets you navigate directly to controls for your chat, security and general settings.

What's Missing?

While Google Dashboard looks like a handy tool, there are some services still missing. You can find information for Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar, Contacts, Blogger and more. But other popular services absent from Dashboard include Maps, Wave, Chrome Bookmark Sync, Google News, and business-related services like Google Analytics and AdSense. Google says it plans on integrating all Google services into Dashboard in the future. A company spokesperson told me that Google Video and Checkout should show up on your Dashboard in the next few days, and other services will begin to appear after that. Google also plans to integrate future products into Dashboard as they are released.

Dashboard for all?

Dashboard is an informative way to see what kind of data you have spread across Google's Web services. It also got me thinking that other online service providers should consider releasing a Dashboard-like product. Microsoft, for example, has similar services to Google including Bing Search, the beta version of MSN.com, Hotmail, Windows Live Sync, the upcoming Microsoft Office Web Apps and more. Windows Live does have an "all services" list that you can see, but it lacks the statistical overview that Google Dashboard has.

On the other hand some social networks already offer similar functionality to Google Dashboard. Facebook, for example, lets you edit which sites have access to your social networking account on the Applications Settings page (select "authorized" from the drop-down menu). Twitter also lets you see what services you are using under "Connections" on your account's Settings page.

Dashboard and Privacy

It will be interesting to see what privacy advocates have to say about Dashboard considering past criticisms leveled against Google involving Google Maps Street View, Google Latitude and Google Books.

One possible problem I found, for example, was the ability to tell my browser to save my account password for future visits to Google Dashboard. This means anyone could view my Dashboard if they hacked into or stole my computer. This is very different from Yahoo, which requires you to sign in every time you want to access your Yahoo Account information.

That being said, Dashboard does have some handy features that will help you maintain greater control over you data across Google's wide variety of services.

Xperia X10: Sony Ericsson's Stylish Android Phone Debuts

2009-11-03T17:58:00.000-08:00

by: Mikael Ricknäs

Sony Ericsson's first Android-based smartphone, the Xperia X10, comes with a unique user interface that's designed to improve handling and organization of communications and multimedia content. But one analyst said the interface still needs work, particularly when it comes to speed and responsiveness, before the phone hits the market.

The X10 will be flagship model in a family of phones coming to market during the first half of next year, Sony Ericsson said, without providing details of other models in the lineup.

As part of the X10's interface, Sony Ericsson added two applications, dubbed Timescape and Mediascape, to the Android, following in the footsteps of Motorola, HTC and Acer, which have also tweaked the operating system for their own handsets.

These modifications may prove to be important. Apple's iPhone has shown that winning in the smartphone space is about ease-of-use and not hardware specifications, like offering the biggest display or the best camera.

Sony Ericsson hopes that helping users better organize messages and multimedia will help it stand out from other Android handsets. Its Timescape application organizes messages, such as Twitter posts and Facebook updates as well as phone calls and SMS messages, in a number of different views. For example, users can choose to view all messages in chronological order, or view them by user or message type, such as all Twitter posts.

The Mediascape application helps users arrange their multimedia content, including music and videos. The application also gives users access to Web-based content, including YouTube and Sony Ericsson's Playnow store.

The new user interface may be a key part of Sony Ericsson's Android strategy, but the interface still needs work, according to Carolina Milanesi, a research director at Gartner.

Right now, the user interface isn't as snappy as it should be, Milanesi said. But the device is still in development and the interface can still be improved she said, adding that a final verdict will have to wait until the phone ships.

In many respects the X10 is a "me too" device, given that most handset makers are touting the integration of social networking as a key features of their handsets, Milanesi said. But it also shows that Sony Ericsson can get its act together and do something different from the Walkman and Cybershot phones of the past, she said.

Overall, the X10 and its user interface represents a new start for Sony Ericsson, and one the Milanesi thinks should come with a new brand. It's a bit of a shame that Sony Ericsson went with the Xperia brand because the X1 wasn't that well received, she said.

While hardware specifications may not be critical to a phone's success, the X10 offers a range of cutting-edge features.

For example, the X10 has a facial recognition features that can recognize up to five faces in any picture, automatically connecting them with friends listed in your address book and of your communications with that person.

There is no doubt that Sony Ericsson has had the iPhone on its mind when designing the X10, which will also be available in either black or white and lacks a physical keyboard. The two phones weigh the same, but the X10 is slightly larger.

In terms of memory, the iPhone has a larger built-in storage capacity; 32GB versus 1GB. But the Sony Ericsson phone comes with a microSD card slot and ships with a 8GB card.

In most other respects the X10's hardware specifications surpass those of the iPhone and other Android handsets, including the Acer Liquid and Motorola Droid, which will be called Milestone outside of the U.S.

The X10 has the largest screen and the camera with the highest resolution. The 4-inch touchscreen display has a resolution of 854 pixels by 480 pixels. Cameras have for some time been one of Sony Ericsson's major strengths, and the X10 has been equipped with an 8.1-megapixel camera and a LED flash. Added camera features include touch focus, geotagging and smile detection.

X10 users can surf the web over HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) or Wi-Fi networks. They can also listen to music via a standard 3.5 millimeter stereo headphone jack or navigate using A-GPS (Assisted-GPS). The phone has a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor under the hood.

On the software side, the X10 will ship with Android version 1.6 but users will be able to upgrade to version 2, Sony Ericsson said.