tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70954327198108354072024-03-14T04:21:27.040-07:00TechnologyAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-55523886546182275592013-04-01T14:13:00.001-07:002013-04-01T14:13:17.765-07:00A Photo Service That Understands the Contents of Your Images<span style="font-family: MillerDisplay, Georgia, serif; font-size: 4.8rem; line-height: 5.75rem;">A Photo Service That Understands the Contents of Your Images</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: NHaasGroteskDSW01-45Lt, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; line-height: 30px;">Everpix organizes photos after analyzing them with software that can detect things such as animals, outdoor scenes, and people.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdJAlHqjVadkQKN7sMvw3AQaIJH6w3NfmI_a8MNZ2c-p4njIWKUI3Hy1EDuHgL4K1m-aZNApniaBO5oYuDgksfggFH088if5fe53ZuRRW1j8HsSn6de8_6JX4xcZCeWCp4aPUJwa_JcPs/s1600/everpixx299.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdJAlHqjVadkQKN7sMvw3AQaIJH6w3NfmI_a8MNZ2c-p4njIWKUI3Hy1EDuHgL4K1m-aZNApniaBO5oYuDgksfggFH088if5fe53ZuRRW1j8HsSn6de8_6JX4xcZCeWCp4aPUJwa_JcPs/s320/everpixx299.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem;">Browsing digital photos usually means scrolling through them chronologically, unless they have been sorted into folders and collections. This week a startup company called</span><span style="font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem;"> </span><a href="http://www.everpix.com/" style="border: 0px; color: #206f96; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">E</a>verpix<span style="font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem;">began offering an alternative: a system that uses machine vision software to analyze each photo for its content so that photos can be browsed using categories such as “city,” “animals,” “people,” and “nature.”</span><br />
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The category-based view, called Explore, is now a feature of the company’s iPad and iPhone apps. It joins an existing feature of those apps and the company’s website that provides a way to browse the “highlights” from a collection of photos in a particular year. Those highlights are compiled into a scrollable collage by software that looks for signals suggesting that a photo is high-quality and interesting.</div>
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Thanks in part to the ubiquity of smartphone cameras, many people’s digital photo collections now contain thousands of images. At that size, they are becoming unmanageable with conventional tools such as Apple’s iPhoto, says Pierre-Oliver Latour, CEO and cofounder of Everpix, which is based in San Francisco. “We’re building something to solve this big problem that is coming where people are going to have too many photos and they begin to miss out on them and neglect them,” he says.</div>
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Many people have already reached that point, says Latour. Since launching quietly in 2011, Everpix has attracted tens of thousands of users to its service, which until this week cost at least $49 a year. The average new user uploads more than 10,000 photos, from sources including Windows and Apple PCs, mobile devices, and Facebook accounts, says Latour. A new free tier of the service, launched this week, offers a user access to just the last 12 months’ worth of photos; paying $49 a year allows access to an unlimited number.</div>
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Most photo organizing software relies on time stamps and user-created categories and folders, although some, such as Apple’s iPhoto, Google’s Picasa, and Facebook, use facial recognition as a way to find photos of particular people.</div>
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Everpix does not use facial recognition, but in a demonstration at the company’s offices, Latour and cofounders Kevin Quennesson and Wayne Fan showed evidence that their software understands much more than the categories its software now exposes to users. The software can identify when an uploaded image contains plants, babies, animals, water, or snow, for example. A database of word meanings has been integrated into the system so it can understand other ways to refer to the label it’s applied to a photo.</div>
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The image analysis software was trained by having many thousands of images labelled by crowdsourced workers, and the new Explore feature correctly categorises photos most of the time. When it doesn’t, a user can provide feedback to help Everpix train its software further.</div>
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Latour says future features will take advantage of the deeper understanding his company’s technology can mine from photos. During the demonstration, a search interface developed for internal research purposes was able to accurately find photos in response to queries such as “city photos with crowds from April 2012” and “city photos with people that are close to the camera.” Latour wouldn’t say whether that same interface would later appear in the Everpix website or apps.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-44480853704781626512013-04-01T14:12:00.003-07:002013-04-01T14:12:29.465-07:00HTC May Be Taking Another Swipe at a Facebook Phone<br />
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HTC May Be Taking Another Swipe at a Facebook Phone</h1>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh587pUGv1M9LJbPoSHikL-WfWtDMjaWvifRJ8S3daKWEc8AYSF0ROmfpfwq-Spu7kgGmPEIFa8_Go-gMMnkU8Fx1jc060fAZruVwlXRdLZmu_QMt55OClK9GxN9qU_gcGrPkaQrFQR6O0/s1600/htc.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh587pUGv1M9LJbPoSHikL-WfWtDMjaWvifRJ8S3daKWEc8AYSF0ROmfpfwq-Spu7kgGmPEIFa8_Go-gMMnkU8Fx1jc060fAZruVwlXRdLZmu_QMt55OClK9GxN9qU_gcGrPkaQrFQR6O0/s320/htc.jpg" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px;">Despite Mark Zuckerberg himself saying last fall that a Facebook phone wouldn't make sense for his company, leaked specs are pointing to another possible HTC-manufactured, Facebook-branded device. The new reports come as the social network continues to refine and improve its mobile strategy, and as HTC looks to kickstart its fortunes in the smartphone market.</span><br />
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A day after Facebook announced a mobile-centric makeover of its News Feed, rumors have resurfaced that HTC may be working on a phone that features special integration with the social network. The spark for speculation is the Friday publication on the Web of the device's specifications.</div>
The smartphone is reportedly named the HTC Myst, with a possible U.S. launch set for the spring.<br />
Reports of the Myst join a long line of rumored and actual smartphones with Facebook integration. HTC has been here before, launching the ChaCha -- later rebranded as the Status -- in summer 2011. That phone sported a button with the Facebook logo for direct access to the social network.<br />
UK-based INQ launched the Cloud Touch and Cloud Q phones in late 2011; the Android OS on those phones offered several paths to the social network from the home screen.<br />
Neither the INQ nor the HTC phones posed sales challenges to the iPhone and Samsung smartphones, and Facebook soon started paying more attention to improving its mobile device app.<br />
"We don't comment on rumors or speculation," Facebook said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by Ulysses King of The Outcast Agency.<br />
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The Myst's Listed Specs</h2>
Specs for the Myst #UL, which is apparently the HTC Myst's proper appellation, were first leaked last month, but Friday's reports listed more details.<br />
The device's processor will be a 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 system on a chip instead of the MSM8930 Snapdragon previously reported.<br />
The smartphone will apparently have a 4.3-inch 720p display with a pixel density of 320 PPI and front and rear cameras rated at 5 MP and 1.6 MP, respectively. It will reportedly run Android Jelly Bean, and will come preloaded with the Facebook app, Facebook Messenger and Instagram.<br />
The Myst #UL will reportedly support Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11 a/b/g/n, WiFi, LTE and Category 14 High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). Category 14 HSDPA offers a maximum data rate of 21.1 Mbits/sec.<br />
"HTC does not comment on rumors and/or speculations," the company said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by Elena Caldwell of Waggener Edstrom Worldwide.<br />
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From Buffy to Opera</h2>
In November 2011, Facebook reportedly tapped HTC to build a smartphone with the social media network integrated into the device, code-named "Buffy." It was supposed to run on a version of Android that had been heavily modified by Facebook to deeply integrate its services and to support HTML5.<br />
The project had been in the works for two years and was led at the time by Facebook's then-chief technology officer Bret Taylor.<br />
This news was followed by a report in November 2012 that Facebook had picked HTC to manufacturer a smartphone tied to the social network. This device was to be called the HTC Opera UL. However, the project had been delayed.<br />
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What's In It for HTC?</h2>
HTC may be looking to stand out from the smartphone pack by manufacturing a branded Facebook phone, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the <a class="story-keyword-offsite" href="http://www.enderlegroup.com/" style="color: #154296; text-decoration: none;">E</a>nderle group.<br />
"HTC is in trouble, they haven't had one really breakout phone from the standpoint of sales in a while, and they need something to give them an edge," Enderle told TechNewsWorld. "I think they are thinking social media may be something that can be done better, but the strategy is likely born of desperation."<br />
The manufacturer's reason for possible involvement with a Facebook phone "may be the same reason Nokia did a Windows phone: Because a sponsor is paying them to do it," Carl Howe, a vice president of research at the Yankee Group, told TechNewsWorld. "It is an ad-network supported phone with exactly one advertising network: Facebook's."<br />
Facebook's mobile ad revenues nearly doubled in the fourth quarter, accounting for 23 percent of its total ad revenue compared to 14 percent in the previous quarter. Ad revenue for the quarter totaled $1.33 billion.<br />
Other benefits for HTC: Facebook would help promote the device, and it "might anticipate features that Facebook hasn't yet released," said Enderle. </div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-49681226574682139622013-04-01T14:12:00.001-07:002013-04-01T14:12:09.013-07:00Something to Jump Up and Down About: Dish Hopper<br />
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Something to Jump Up and Down About: Dish Hopper</h1>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFGHbVhevqaF_nJibpKBHekwmCEZ40LV1TJbPaxrfPWJSd6h_4fSciyeaNMzx5wM7a4zo5OfuTOvwod0YGOlHd835BqexxqwGVbIMvh6o9zXxl8LYJ8wTpJ9Vk3dYgQzTuQvIQ7hXZziM/s1600/dish-hopper.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFGHbVhevqaF_nJibpKBHekwmCEZ40LV1TJbPaxrfPWJSd6h_4fSciyeaNMzx5wM7a4zo5OfuTOvwod0YGOlHd835BqexxqwGVbIMvh6o9zXxl8LYJ8wTpJ9Vk3dYgQzTuQvIQ7hXZziM/s320/dish-hopper.jpg" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px;">The Dish Hopper was eventually named CES' "best of show," but only after a brouhaha that ended with CNET being chopped as the nominator of candidates for show awards. The Hopper became the center of controversy when CNET's editors got a memo from CBS head honchos directing them to exclude it from the running. CBS is CNET's parent company, and the Hopper offers a few things network executives don't care for so much.</span><br />
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PrimeTime Anytime essentially lets users have access to up to eight days of prime time content from ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC -- sorry CW, you don't get the love. This means no scheduling to manage on the DVR, as long as you can watch a show within eight days of its airing. For TV junkies who may have missed something everyone's talking about at the water cooler, this is a nice feature.</div>
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Hopper doesn't get its catchy name for recording shows to the DVR, though. Just as its kangaroo icon can do a little hopping, so can its AutoHop feature -- it hops right over commercials in select prime time shows. In fact, this DVR asks at the beginning of the show if you'd like to have commercials skipped.</div>
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The result is, in a word, fantastic -- if you aren't a Madison Avenue ad executive. From the advertiser's perspective, this could be the worst thing to happen to TV since the Internet started to pull eyeballs away. No wonder CBS execs weren't exactly thrilled about this "award-winning technology."</div>
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In practice, the Hopper's functionality lives up to its promise. The service takes a few seconds to recognize a commercial, then zaps to the moment before the show resumes. If there is a complaint, it is that it leaves no time to go refill a beverage or head to the bathroom, but that's why we have pause buttons.</div>
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That Sling Thing You Do</h2>
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The AutoHop and PrimeTime Anytime features would be enough to justify giving the Hopper the "best of show" CES award this year. These are great features, and cable providers are going to be hard- pressed to compete.</div>
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However, Dish takes things a step further with its Sling functionality. Cable providers such as Comcast -- the service I subscribe to -- do offer viewers the ability to catch up with programming on demand via the Internet. However, the Hopper With Sling allows you to view anything on your DVR anywhere, on a computer or mobile device.</div>
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So you're on a business trip or vacation and want to catch your favorite program but don't want to rush back to the hotel? No worries -- log onto Dishanywehre.com and the content can be streamed from your own DVR, local ads (which you can AutoHop over) and all.</div>
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In tests, this feature was quite good, and at least on par with watching programs via Hulu, YouTube, Amazon or any of the networks or other content providers. It was actually a little easier to fast-forward than many of those.</div>
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As with most streaming video, there were some moments when the computer/tablet had to allow the content to cache, but this is to be expected and is really a problem with the network connectivity more than the service.</div>
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I was able to do a hand's-on test with hotel WiFi. It was interesting to be in one city and have local programming from another, and to watch <em>Modern Family</em> -- a show I hadn't scheduled to record -- an hour after it ended. While ABC makes such content available online, it typically doesn't do so until the next day. With the Sling, I was able to watch immediately after it aired. For those who want to avoid spoilers, this could be a true game-changer.</div>
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Easy Transfers</h2>
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The downside to Sling is that it is only good for those times and occasions when you're actually able connect to the Internet. Sling doesn't do its thing in the air. That's where Hopper Transfer comes into play.</div>
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It's similar to the Sling, but it allows recordings from the Hopper with Sling to be transferred to an iPad for offline viewing. The biggest downside to this is that it is at present just an iPad option, but there are rumblings that an Android version is in the works.</div>
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Another downside is that those transfers to an iPad are, in a word, large. Even with compression, it takes about 2 GB for each hour of recording. This is enough to make those mega-large iPads suddenly look a little more inviting.</div>
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Friendly Features</h2>
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The Hopper is packed with a plethora of additional features, including the Dish Explorer app, which allows users to discover what other viewers are watching and tune in via the Hopper. The box also offers streaming of music via Bluetooth and access to more than 70 SiriusXM satellite music channels, including album art.</div>
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The Hopper features a 2 TB hard drive, or enough for about 500 hours of HD recordings -- plenty of space, even for hard-core TV viewers. This is welcome news for those who take a two-week vacation and want to ensure they don't miss their shows.</div>
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Picture and sound are certainly comparable to cable TV but lag behind Blu-ray for movie viewing. I recorded and ran a head-to-head-to-head test with <em>Saving Private Ryan</em> -- a movie that sounds good and looks good -- and Dish and cable were neck-and-neck. At some points, Dish had a little less artifacting or pixelating than cable, but neither had quite the audio performance of the lossless Blu-ray. That's to be expected.</div>
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The Hopper is for those who love TV, but it's not quite up to par for the true videophile. Otherwise, there is really little dirt to dish. For those who can't always be home during prime time and don't want to wait to get home to watch their shows, the Hopper With Sling is the Dish to serve up.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-50666870209132294422013-04-01T14:11:00.001-07:002013-04-01T14:11:33.358-07:00Hackers Escalate Reign of Malware Terror on Android<br />
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Hackers Escalate Reign of Malware Terror on Android</h1>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ryDMgkNUCUaJYE1Ql57g28XVSSK80L7TSZcwmW1ZpJSHTkn6okGnJjurFbSE60ujPvklqiAZXBrBHUAna1A4Ua7dpm6EFa2jYp4qj7dbZJVZblWxgDgQlDoIwA9I06D-uTKoxzUFxWQ/s1600/android-malware.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ryDMgkNUCUaJYE1Ql57g28XVSSK80L7TSZcwmW1ZpJSHTkn6okGnJjurFbSE60ujPvklqiAZXBrBHUAna1A4Ua7dpm6EFa2jYp4qj7dbZJVZblWxgDgQlDoIwA9I06D-uTKoxzUFxWQ/s320/android-malware.jpg" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px;">The relatively open nature of Google's Android OS makes it far more vulnerable to malware than Apple's highly controlled iOS, but F-Secure's report that it attracted 79 percent of mobile malware attacks in 2012 still comes as a bit of a shock. "For hackers, the app store is basically paradise, because they can upload a malicious app and infect thousands of devices with very little effort," said nCircle's Lamar Bailey.</span><br />
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Android has become a mobile malware magnet, according to F-secure.</div>
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A whopping 79 percent of all mobile malware targeted the Google OS in 2012, based on a new report from the firm. That was up from 66.7 percent in 2011 and just 11.25 percent in 2010.</div>
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The fourth quarter of 2012 was particularly bad, it said, with attacks on Android spiking to account for 96 percent of all mobile malware.</div>
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It would be easy to make the case that malware is gravitating toward Android because of its growing popularity -- but what then would explain the lack of malware heading toward Apple's iOS, which is just about as popular as Android?</div>
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A trifling 0.7 percent of mobile malware targeted Apple's platform, F-Secure found.</div>
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There are obvious differences between Android and iOS. For starters, Apple is known for keeping tight control over its system.</div>
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"Android is a far more open system, and it is becoming the most popular platform in the world,cloudmark researcher Andrew Conway told LinuxInsider, "so it is naturally the one that the bad guys will attack."</div>
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The Overseas Factor</h2>
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There are other factors that are fueling the rise of Android malware, such as growth in the number of overseas users.</div>
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"Android has been a massive malware magnet for some time now, largely because it is used heavily in China and Eastern Europe, and both piracy and side-loading are rampant there," Rob Enderle, principal of the <a class="story-keyword-offsite" href="http://www.enderlegroup.com/" style="color: #154296; text-decoration: none;">E</a>nderle group, told LinuxInsider.</div>
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"It is almost like Google is fueling a massive upswing in criminal activity on their devices, albeit unintentionally, through their free model," he said. "This is crippling security efforts like Samsung's Knox, which can't hope to secure data on a platform that itself resists being secure."</div>
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There are other problems with Android devices, Lamar Bailey, director of security research and development for <a href="http://www.ncircle.com/" style="color: #154296; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">nCircle</a>, told LinuxInsider.</div>
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OS updates sometimes don't get to users quickly enough, he said, and sometimes they don't get there at all.</div>
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"Google may send out an update, but it's pretty much up to the hardware and carrier vendors to get these to users," noted Bailey. "Android phones are hitting the market so fast they are out of date within a few months, and the handset vendor and the carrier both want you to upgrade often -- they're not focused on security."</div>
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Another problem is the lack of oversight in the Android app store, he added. Anyone can write an app and submit it to Google Play, even someone with no security knowledge at all.</div>
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"This problem is compounded by users that aren't even considering security when they shop for apps," said Bailey. "They are only looking at functionality and reviews. For hackers, the app store is basically paradise, because they can upload a malicious app and infect thousands of devices with very little effort, or attack popular apps with weak security."</div>
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More Questions Than Answers</h2>
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Despite the eyebrow-raising numbers -- 79 percent! 96 percent! -- the F-Secure report raises almost as many questions as it does answers, said Daniel Ford, chief security officer atFixmo.a</div>
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"This report didn't talk about how they collected their data or what the sample size was," he told LinuxInsider. "It doesn't discuss in detail which version of Android is attracting the most malware and why."</div>
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Malware has been on the rise since, well, forever, said Ford. "I can't really say there is anything new about the findings in this report.</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-66236954138454050562013-04-01T14:10:00.001-07:002013-04-01T14:10:51.705-07:00Intel Inside iPhones, iPads Would Let Apple Kick Samsung Out<br />
<h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, verdana; font-size: 18pt; margin: 10px 0px 5px;">
Intel Inside iPhones, iPads Would Let Apple Kick Samsung Out</h1>
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px;">The latest rumor involving Apple: It is in talks with Intel to have that company make the chips for iOS devices. That job currently belongs to Samsung, which is battling Apple in retail over smartphone sales, and in the courts over patent issues. The move could help lower costs for Apple while also giving the company deeper access to Intel's famous chip manufacturing expertise.</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF-XDFTS2T_gaA7ksBZQ7MXbozkasH9B81CeC_xf_-4Bt4mSulbqeaU5ITZZLBX8pkDxoEIHgXx-SEGCtS3SoFQP55ZEq4aW270SCZzV2P6RmHlFpVQHzAAtyJARERQFRKbwksY5zlg7Q/s1600/apple.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF-XDFTS2T_gaA7ksBZQ7MXbozkasH9B81CeC_xf_-4Bt4mSulbqeaU5ITZZLBX8pkDxoEIHgXx-SEGCtS3SoFQP55ZEq4aW270SCZzV2P6RmHlFpVQHzAAtyJARERQFRKbwksY5zlg7Q/s320/apple.jpg" /></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">Intel's reported plans to provide more contract manufacturing of processors are renewing speculation that it will seek a deal with Apple to make chips for its iPads and iPhones, according to published reports. That could leave Samsung, which makes chips for iOS devices, out of the picture.</span><br />
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
"This is very good news," said Trip Chowdhry, managing director for equity research Global Equities Research. "It should have happened two years ago."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
Negotiations between Apple and Intel about a mobile chip deal are ongoing, Reuters reported Thursday, citing people who have knowledge of the talks.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
The report appeared a week after Sunit Rikhi, vice president and general manager of Intel's custom foundry division, said the chipmaker would be ramping up operations to accommodate a major mobile customer.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
Apple did not respond to a request for comment for this story.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
"The Reuters piece is highly speculative including the assertions about Apple," <a href="http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/homepage.html" style="color: #154296; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Intel</a>spokesperson Chuck Mulloy told MacNewsWorld. "As is our normal practice, we don't comment on speculation like the Reuters piece."</div>
<h2 class="subhead" style="font-size: 10pt; margin: 17px 0px;">
Faster Time to Market</h2>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
A move to Intel would speed up the time it takes to manufacture chips for its iPhones and iPads, said Doug Freedman, an analyst withRBC Capital Markets in New York City.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Freedman stirred the rumors about an Apple-Intel pact two months ago. In a research note, he said the deal would involve Intel making Apple's iPhone chips in exchange for Apple using Intel processors in the next generation of iPads.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
"When you move to Intel's manufacturing process, it is, at a minimum, nine months ahead of anything available in the general purpose foundry market," Freedman told MacNewsWorld.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Not only would that improve Apple's time-to-market for its mobile products, Freedman said it would also give Apple a nine-month head start on using technology like 14 nanometer chip design.</div>
<h2 class="subhead" style="font-size: 10pt; margin: 17px 0px;">
Filling the PC Gap</h2>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Intel is a recent possible option for Apple; in the past, it didn't allow outside companies access to its manufacturing processes. However, the ailing PC market may be forcing Intel to change its ways.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
"Intel is looking for ways to leverage the investment it's made in leading edge manufacturing technologies," Freedman said.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Another factor making Intel a more attractive mobile partner for Apple is the chip maker's increased focus on power efficiency for its products.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
"In the past, Intel's processor technology was tailored to high performance computing and not applicable to low-powered, battery-operated devices," Freedman said.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
"As the PCs and ultrabooks are pushed into lower and lower power form factors, Intel's processor technology is now well-suited for battery-powered devices," he added.</div>
<h2 class="subhead" style="font-size: 10pt; margin: 17px 0px;">
Lower Costs</h2>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Delivering its mobile business to Intel would relieve another pain point for Apple: Doing business with rival Samsung.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
"Why should Apple be funding their prime competitor's R&D?" Chowdhry asked.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
By having Samsung make processors for its iOS devices, Apple is putting its intellectual property at risk, he added. That won't be the case if Apple's chips are produced in the United States by Intel.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Apple could also reduce the cost of producing its chips with an Intel deal. "Costs will be five to 10 percent lower than they are now," Chowdhry estimated. "You don't have to incur the costs of flying your executives half-way around the world and you don't have to spend on transportation costs to bring the chips back to the United States."</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-79419931783575656622013-04-01T14:09:00.001-07:002013-04-01T14:09:53.626-07:00Storage Analyzer: A Must-Have App That Has No Business Being Free<br />
<h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, verdana; font-size: 18pt; margin: 10px 0px 5px;">
Storage Analyzer: A Must-Have App That Has No Business Being Free</h1>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px;">Storage Analyzer can analyze your SD card, external SD cards, USB storage devices and system partitions. It can order content by size, number of files, date or name. It sees the space used by applications using App2SD -- the .android_secure folder. It can include or exclude folders from the mediascan of the Android Gallery. It filters out content you're aware of to make the rest more noticeable. It deletes unnecessary data.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTsm93nzok8YY1o3FceEyPtA7pbVdz2RbJwcwNxfOUcnz-HCN9P9elgCW_YtbFWji9LY39y-v0IB3gd-653o1zGJJa65xGvK6jdOaqdUZXIhyNBjeS5SUymk7XrAQg0rElNU810avbr8A/s1600/sd-card-android.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTsm93nzok8YY1o3FceEyPtA7pbVdz2RbJwcwNxfOUcnz-HCN9P9elgCW_YtbFWji9LY39y-v0IB3gd-653o1zGJJa65xGvK6jdOaqdUZXIhyNBjeS5SUymk7XrAQg0rElNU810avbr8A/s320/sd-card-android.jpg" /></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">I've been running into major headaches with file-storage memory on my Android tablet. If you too have been having problems getting files to fit on your device, it may not be that your device's memory or SD card is full, but that phantom files are hogging resources.</span><br />
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
I'm usually -- carefully -- buying cheap gear. In the device business, that usually means limited on-board memory. I justify these self-imposed memory limits to myself by arguing that I generally stream media and don't use file-sharing. Therefore, I don't need much memory. I believe myself.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
Of course, we all know that this memory Scrooge-ery doesn't work. You need as much memory as you can get your hands on. Or do you?</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
<strong>Mission Possible</strong></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
I got to find out the other day when I was trying to perform a simple, lean PDF download from a Web browser. The minuscule file failed to download. Reason: Memory was full. This had happened a few times and was beginning to turn into an irritation.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
A file exploration with the stock-file manager and then Root Explorer -- which requires root -- didn't find any voluminous files that could be using resources. There were no photo albums or movies on the device, and I'd already cleared out the topographic map tiles I hoard.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
I was about ready to do an onerous factory reset when a Web-based search prompted my discovery of LeveloKment's free Storage Analyzer tool in the Google Play Store.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
The app promised to identify bulky, space-consuming files and folders.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Would Storage Analyzer let me identify an outsized, space-hogging file that was making a device useless? The answer is, yes it did.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Within a few seconds of install and launch, it had identified an overweight DCIM image thumbnail. The multiple-gigabyte file had taken on obese proportions and was in need of gastric surgery. A simple file delete got rid of it, the device didn't blow up, and I was able to continue. Nice job.</div>
<h2 class="subhead" style="font-size: 10pt; margin: 17px 0px;">
Impressive Features</h2>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Unlike other storage optimization apps -- like Kalyani's SD CARD Storage Optimizer Pro, for example -- LeveloKment's Storage Analyzer searches for bloated files across partitions. That means it looks in hard-to-find SD Card partitions, obvious SD cards, and on the system itself. That results in a better chance of finding the corpulent file. A quirk in Android file structure means that multiple SD card partitions can be used -- all named "SD Card."</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Files can be ordered graphically by size with this app, so it's amazingly easy to see where the problem is.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
For those rooted, root options allow file size-readings in the data folder. A simple "use su rights" check box gets you superuser rights and lets you into the troublesome folder.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Data folders can hold file chunks left over by removed apps, so it's a good source of space- liberation. Even if you're not rooted, you might be able to free-up space by checking data folders on your accessible SD card or cards.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
For my purposes, all I needed was the large file-size functions. However, included features that may come in handy sometime include ordering by the amount of files, copying and moving, and including or excluding folders.</div>
<h2 class="subhead" style="font-size: 10pt; margin: 17px 0px;">
In Conclusion</h2>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
This is one of those must-have apps for anyone who has owned an Android tablet or smartphone for a while. Redundant files accumulate with time. Before going out and buying a new device because memory is full, or even investing in an upgraded SD card, run LeveloKment's Storage Analyzer.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
You may not need more memory, or a new device. LeveloKment -- you need to charge for this.</div>
<h2 class="subhead" style="font-size: 10pt; margin: 17px 0px;">
Want to Suggest an Android App for Review?</h2>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Is there an Android app you'd like to suggest for review? Something you think other Android users would love to know about? Something you find intriguing but aren't sure it's worth your time or money?</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Please <a href="mailto: patrick.nelson@newsroom.ectnews.com" style="color: #154296; text-decoration: none;">s</a>end your ideas to me, and I'll consider them for a future Android app review.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
And use the Talkback feature below to add your comments</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-22274353186420073392013-04-01T14:08:00.003-07:002013-04-01T14:08:59.027-07:00How to Move Into Your New Rented Office 365<br />
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<h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, verdana; font-size: 18pt; margin: 10px 0px 5px;">
How to Move Into Your New Rented Office 365</h1>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUGElhMLQ0IsopIEv-mU62oDzqvmo_EKRYjkmAJqj5kkKdGwaPanUACNqI6c-4Hu-HXN9hI7RaiUy3LidHUdosWyi9v95DGdJu6jv_3kpU6Jxv2m0KO7YmMrWRzsbzKPCuRkgIGpehd2s/s1600/microsoft-office-365.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUGElhMLQ0IsopIEv-mU62oDzqvmo_EKRYjkmAJqj5kkKdGwaPanUACNqI6c-4Hu-HXN9hI7RaiUy3LidHUdosWyi9v95DGdJu6jv_3kpU6Jxv2m0KO7YmMrWRzsbzKPCuRkgIGpehd2s/s320/microsoft-office-365.jpg" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px;">Many PC users have become familiar with Microsoft's suite of Office applications in their workplaces but have not taken advantage of it at home, due to its steep price. Earlier this year, Microsoft launched a cloud-based version designed specifically for home use. It includes all the familiar applications, and users can rent it for just $9.99 per month or $99 per year.</span><br />
<div class="story-body" style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
Office 365 Home Premium, the 2013 Windows 8 version of Microsoft's latest version of its Office product, amusingly remains a suite of applications that run under the Windows desktop -- as in earlier, non-tiled versions of Windows.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
Although Office installs quick launch tiles, each core element, like Word or Excel, is an application, not a ballyhooed app. Go figure.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
Major differences from earlier Office versions include heavy SkyDrive cloud integration and Skype Voice over IP telephony. Cloud functionality allows full-featured Office applications to be streamed to any Internet-connected PC. With its personalization features, your settings are remembered wherever and whenever you sign in.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
For the first time, there is no software-loaded CD for purchase -- you can only get Office 365 Home Premium online. Any store-bought product ultimately pulls the software from the Internet. Online-only ostensibly allows for continual version upgrades -- and presumably reduces the manufacturing costs.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
Office 365 Home Premium is the first version to be launched in this rentable format. Other versions, including office Home & Student and the products geared for business, can be purchased outright only.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
You can try Office 365 Home Premium for a month for free; you can buy it for US$99.99 per year or $9.99 a month. The one-subscription license is for five PCs or Macs and multiple Windows 7.5 and higher phones and tablets. PCs can be running Windows 7 and higher; Macs can be operating Mac OS X 10.6 or higher.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
The license includes version upgrades.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Office applications within this version will install depending on device; they include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access. Access previously was bundled only with pricey business versions.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
You can try Office 365 Home Premium for a month for free; you can buy it for US$99.99 per year or $9.99 a month. The one-subscription license is for five PCs or Macs and multiple Windows 7.5 and higher phones and tablets. PCs can be running Windows 7 and higher; Macs can be operating Mac OS X 10.6 or higher.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
The license includes version upgrades.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Office applications within this version will install depending on device; they include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access. Access previously was bundled only with pricey business versions.</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-27768930096191338242013-04-01T14:08:00.001-07:002013-04-01T14:08:22.710-07:00The Puzzling Case of the Chromebook Pixel<br />
<h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, times, verdana; font-size: 18pt; margin: 10px 0px 5px;">
The Puzzling Case of the Chromebook Pixel</h1>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFEeXD5XJw7xRYq1QTtZOQTAsn7qoIhG3-N4gj9oaK5QjfrCAoVz0k0jPlMLTFHaLAdcKaZfgglbqlre_9OSf5hlBn4nTa6MFtD01SxqX1xAqwDBqlxSFc7fGWu-xOcTgGpMuHT4IKvqY/s1600/chromebook.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFEeXD5XJw7xRYq1QTtZOQTAsn7qoIhG3-N4gj9oaK5QjfrCAoVz0k0jPlMLTFHaLAdcKaZfgglbqlre_9OSf5hlBn4nTa6MFtD01SxqX1xAqwDBqlxSFc7fGWu-xOcTgGpMuHT4IKvqY/s320/chromebook.jpg" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px;">"To steal a line from Austin Powers, 'How about NO ya loonie!'" said Slashdot blogger hairyfeet. "I mean who is THAT stupid, because frankly I'll be happy to sell them some magic beans to go with their Pixel. It's a THIN CLIENT, folks, that is ALL it is. You are gonna pay TOP DOLLAR for a system that is a brick if your Wifi goes out?</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="story-body" style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
Here in the Linux blogosphere, most fans of FOSS are nothing if not outspoken with their many opinions.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
Those opinions tend to be unequivocal on matters large and small, so it's always notable when a new technology comes along that leaves bloggers scratching their heads in uncertainty.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
That's a rarity, needless to say, but just recently a shining example emerged in the form of the Chromebook Pixel.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
<strong>A Resounding 'Why?'</strong></div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Starting at US$1,300, Google's new laptop entry is clearly priced at the high end of the market. It also boasts an impressive array of high-end specs.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
What's confusing to many, however, is that it's still essentially a browser-based portal to the Web -- incapable, it may seem, of making full use of its own inherent capabilities.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Ever since its release, a single word has dominated the musings of countless geeks around the world -- namely, "Why?"</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
<strong>'What Is the Point?'</strong></div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
"Why Google bothered to make the Chromebook Pixel" was one effortto ansver question over at PCWorld.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
"Google Pixel Chromebook: A Marvel of Technology or Oddity?" was <a href="http://www.linuxadvocates.com/2013/02/google-pixel-chromebook-marvel-of.html" style="color: #154296; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">t</a>he focus at Linux Advocates.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
<strong>A High-Profile Thumbs-Up</strong></div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
"Why Google built the pricey, powerful Chromebook Pixel" was CNET's contribution.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
The debates were already raging at full volume throughout the community's blogobars and watering holes when none other than Linus Torvalds himself spoke up to extol the perplexing device.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
It's been standing room only down at the blogosphere's seedy Punchy Penguin Saloon ever since.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 13px;">sphere's seedy Punchy Penguin Saloon ever since.</span></div>
<h2 class="subhead" style="font-size: 10pt; margin: 17px 0px;">
'I Don't See Much of a Market'</h2>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
"I was wondering how long it would take before a Google executive presiding over the latest Google product launch would figure out that there are an awful lot of MacBooks lying around," mused Robin Lim, a lawyer and blogger on Mobile Raptor. "Other than creating a nice, classy device for Google personnel to use, I cannot imagine why Google would create the Chromebook Pixel."</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
The device is "priced too high to be a volume seller," Lim told Linux Girl. "Even at the low US$199 to US$249 prices that Chromebooks are sold on Google Play, it is not like they are selling in the millions.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
"An expensive Chromebook also defeats the very purpose for running a light, but limited, operating system like Chrome," he added. "Outside of Google itself, I don't see much of a market."</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Nevertheless, "despite my less than favorable comments, the Chromebook Pixel is worth every penny for the right kind of user," Lim concluded. "If you need a terabyte of Google Drive storage, you can get a good discount by buying a Chromebook Pixel. If you look at it in that light, as a bonus for heavy Google Drive users, it is a really nice freebie."</div>
<h2 class="subhead" style="font-size: 10pt; margin: 17px 0px;">
'It's Not for High-End Systems'</h2>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Similarly, "it's very cool, but no one is really going to buy it," agreedLinux Rants blogger Mike Stone.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
"I love Chrome OS, but it's not for high-end systems," Stone explained. "No one wants to drop $1200 for a system that only runs Web apps.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
"True, it looks like it can be used for other things, like running other Linux based systems, but so can quite a few other less expensive laptops," he pointed out. "I wish Google all the luck with their Chromebooks, but I just don't see this one as a mega seller."</div>
<h2 class="subhead" style="font-size: 10pt; margin: 17px 0px;">
'My Wallet Will Stay Firmly Shut'</h2>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
And again: "I am still not convinced," said Google+ blogger Kevin O'Brien. "I know that there is a convenience factor in putting everything into the cloud, but I keep having issues. WiFi is not ubiquitous and high-speed right now, which would be a precondition for me."</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
In fact, "my experience is that when I am away from home (e.g. at a hotel), I can just about check my e-mail, but streaming audio or video is just out," he explained. "And Google Apps is not equivalent to a full-featured office suite like LibreOffice."</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Bottom line: "I could maybe imagine buying a $250 Chromebook just for convenience," O'Brien concluded. "But at $1300, my wallet will stay firmly shut. I could buy two good laptops for that amount of cash."</div>
<h2 class="subhead" style="font-size: 10pt; margin: 17px 0px;">
'The Rest Want a Real Computer'</h2>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
Google+ blogger Gonzalo Velasco C. took a similar view.</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
"Chromebooks are meant to get a good piece of the market and attract users to Linux," he explained. "Some of the computer users are 'cloud people,' living online. For them, a good and not-so-expensive note/netbook is a good deal."</div>
<div style="font-size: 13px;">
On the Chromebook Pixel, however, Google "should take care of the price," Gonzalo Velasco C. told Linux Girl. "The rest of the users, like me, want a real computer (hard drive, applications, RAM and processor do work, etc.)."</div>
<h2 class="subhead" style="font-size: 10pt; margin: 17px 0px;">
'Somewhat Inexplicable'</h2>
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Even more so: "It will give me a small amount of pleasure if the Chromebook Pixel fails, as it so rightfully deserves to do," Hyperlogos blogger Martin Espinoza said.</div>
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"Chromebooks are little more than tacit acceptance of Google's inability to bring Chrome to Android in a compelling fashion, and they ought to disappear rapidly when they finally manage it, since all of their design goals are the same as those of Android," Espinoza explained.</div>
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"An expensive Chromebook ought to be a contradiction in terms," he added. "The inexpensive models would seem to provide some of the best value in computing, which makes it somewhat inexplicable that Google should also choose to produce an expensive model which seems to provide some of the worst."</div>
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'It's a THIN CLIENT, Folks'</h2>
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Even stronger: "To steal a line from Austin Powers, 'How about NO ya loonie!'" quippedSlashdot blogger hairyfeet. "I mean who is THAT stupid, because frankly I'll be happy to sell them some magic beans to go with their Pixel.</div>
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"It's a THIN CLIENT, folks, that is ALL it is," hairyfeet explained. "You are gonna pay TOP DOLLAR for a system that is a brick if your Wifi goes out? Seriously?"</div>
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Hairyfeet also had another concern: "Does this mean we can FINALLY put 'do no evil' right next to 'think different,' considering how Google makes their bootloaders an even bigger PITA than Secure Boot?" he asked. "At least with Secure Boot you can turn it off.</div>
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"You can't just turn off Google's locked boot," he added. "Instead you gotta deal with dev mode and a page of CLI hacks just to get the stupid thing to take, and last I checked NO dual booting allowed. At least with a Win 8 system you can install Linux or Win 7 in a dual boot."</div>
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Looking ahead, "I have a sad feeling that if the FOSS community doesn't get behind AMD and help them put up some real numbers, it's gonna be game consoles all the way down," he warned. "You'll have the big three with locked down hardware, and Intel is even talking about soldering the CPU and RAM to the board so if you want more memory, you'll have to go buy a new system."</div>
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'Hitting All the Bases'</h2>
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Blogger Robert Pogson had a more optimistic take.</div>
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"The Chromebook Pixel is a high-end machine -- it competes with the likes of iPad," Pogson told Linux Girl. "Google has long ago overtaken iPhone, but there is still a battle raging for tablets. This is just Google hitting all the bases."</div>
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After all, "Google has the money to invest, and there are buyers for high-end stuff," he added. "Android/Linux will still thrive and expand on the low-end tablets."</div>
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'M$ Cannot Thrive'</h2>
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The presence of "multiple choices of OS on tablets allows GNU/Linux to be seen as just another choice and to be available on retail shelves," Pogson pointed out. "That's happening more often since about 2010-2011, when iThingies took off."</div>
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Today, "Wintel's partners can no longer tell anyone that Wintel is the only choice for anything now that everyone is producing ARMed tablets running a variety of operating systems," he concluded. "Certainly M$ cannot thrive in this space."</div>
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Last but not least, consultant and Slashdot blogger Gerhard Mack neatly summed up what more than a few observers are surely thinking: "It should be interesting to see where Google goes with this."</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-9742964690048449032013-04-01T14:07:00.001-07:002013-04-01T14:07:40.730-07:00Google Adds Cross-Platform Notifications Brick to Chromium Build<br />
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Google Adds Cross-Platform Notifications Brick to Chromium Build</h1>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgceYwmCv86OlPIATRgcrmHGweOFJfgYrALRBuAXeNqVFyQC8cVBe4s3ZcEr5t5ZmliripS6T0H5KDT2FOQ0YYW8I4CIHFpnRmulNoJdgSTZoKXWQYCy_LLw2C6tm_PwghLUYoGcT-331w/s1600/push-notification.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgceYwmCv86OlPIATRgcrmHGweOFJfgYrALRBuAXeNqVFyQC8cVBe4s3ZcEr5t5ZmliripS6T0H5KDT2FOQ0YYW8I4CIHFpnRmulNoJdgSTZoKXWQYCy_LLw2C6tm_PwghLUYoGcT-331w/s320/push-notification.jpg" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px;">Google Now is Android's answer to iOS' Push Notification Service -- both give users updates and notifications on the go. However, Apple fans have enjoyed an advantage with a Notification Center that's also accessible in OS X. This week a French developer spotted a sign that Google Now could soon be making its way into Chrome, setting the stage for a similar cross-platform service.</span><br />
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Google appears to have taken a step toward integrating Android's Google Now notification feature into Chrome.</div>
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French programmer Francis Beaufort revealed Thursday that he spotted a new notification center in the latest Windows Chromium build that includes rich templated notifications.</div>
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This addition to the open source project for Chrome could become a hub for customizable Google Now cards that include information about user preferences and upcoming events, he speculated.</div>
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Google Now is an Android feature that pushes information to Android device users based on contextual data from the device -- such as time of day, the user's current location and location history -- as well as information from other Google products and third-party products.</div>
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Such information could include traffic updates, sports scores, flight monitoring or appointment reminders.</div>
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A Bit About Google Now</h2>
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Google Now includes voice search functionality similar to Apple's Siri. It also lets Android users access detailed weather reports, trip reminders, email, events, news and other information through customizable cards.</div>
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The feature also looks for user behavior patterns to fine-tune the relevance of the information it offers.</div>
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Google Now was formally introduced in the Jelly Bean version of the Android OS.</div>
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The Possible Impact of Rich Templated Notifications<br /><br /><div style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;">
Beaufort's discovery has sparked speculation that Google's Chromium browser will include Google Now for desktops.</div>
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That possibility first emerged in December, when the Chromium website featured a blog poston creating a skeleton for Google Now for Chrome implementation.</div>
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"I would assume that this would happen later rather than sooner," Wayne Kernochan, president of Infostructure Associates told TechNewsWorld. "After all, Android has this now as an advanced feature, and open source typically happens later in the product lifecycle."</div>
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Google might offer Google Now in the latest Chromium version to "build on its differentiation from Apple for developers," Kernochan guessed. "Google now, with its emphasis on effective search rather than Siri's 'humanness' is a case in point."</div>
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The inclusion of Google Now on desktops running Google Chrome and on Chromebooks is "an incremental step in making wider arrays of apps with notification of a wider range of information at one go available to Google users," Kernochan said. "This was previously more of a manual task for app developers, which meant that most didn't approximate this kind of notification, as far as I know."</div>
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Such a development could "presumably make Chromebooks richer and the overall platform more sticky," said Al Hilwa, a research program director at IDC.</div>
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Possible Issues for Google</h2>
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Google has typically tried to ensure that Chrome is a relatively pure HTML5 platform.</div>
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"Whether they'd add more richness to it and define a platform on top of other platforms is an interesting question," Hilwa told TechNewsWorld.</div>
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The search giant so far has positioned Chromebooks as pure Web engines.</div>
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"Adding richness beyond the standard will, over time, increase the surface area for security issues and such," Hilwa said.</div>
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Playing Catch-up</h2>
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The incorporation of Google Now into the Chrome browser will see Google's and Apple's operating systems mirror each other even more closely.</div>
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"Certainly they appear to be converging over the last year or so," Kernochan said. "Note, however, that Apple appears to be coming out with a major change in the industry less often, which allows Google to do this. Certainly this type of mirroring is more in Google's DNA than Apple's."</div>
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Both Apple's iOS and Mac OS X operating systems already have push-notification systems, and iOS puts all its notifications into its Notification Center. The Notification Center became available to Mac users as part of OS X Mountain Lion last year. That brings up the question of whether Google is perhaps playing catch-up.</div>
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"Google may have done it later, but Google is also different in the types of rich information it emphasizes," Kernochan pointed out. "On the other hand, differentiation may matter less in the future if developers view both sides as more or less equivalent, which would probably be a good thing for Google."</div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-58143117466036499112013-04-01T14:06:00.001-07:002013-04-01T14:06:40.061-07:00Google Open Source Program Manager Chris DiBona: Best of Both Worlds<br />
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Google Open Source Program Manager Chris DiBona: Best of Both Worlds</h1>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglp7rfifLIzx0Vms8Jq6geS-KznCOpoP27k3WCM-UqYcFWIEaGWK-J3onII85e-UbRKxVduN6gveoeIiTLLBClMPzOjU-NpjQGptAaenpr7W8kJERNQ6fddyhlTtz_3U3yy1Rq8ygVCNo/s1600/google-open-source.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglp7rfifLIzx0Vms8Jq6geS-KznCOpoP27k3WCM-UqYcFWIEaGWK-J3onII85e-UbRKxVduN6gveoeIiTLLBClMPzOjU-NpjQGptAaenpr7W8kJERNQ6fddyhlTtz_3U3yy1Rq8ygVCNo/s320/google-open-source.jpg" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px;">"You are not going to get malware on a Chrome OS. You are not going to get security problems on a Chrome OS that has the developer's switch," said Google's Chris DiBona. "But at the same time, if you are a developer, that sort of locking down stops you from innovating. It stops you from developing very quickly. So we wanted to make it possible to have the best of both worlds there."</span><br />
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In 1996, two Stanford University students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, created a unique search engine called "BackRub" that ran on the school's server. After one year, BackRub's bandwidth outgrew the university's needs. Its creators rebranded BackRub into Google, a respelled reference to "googol." It is a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros.</div>
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<img align="right" alt="Chris DiBona" border="0" height="240" hspace="2" src="http://www.technewsworld.com/images/article_images/77100_340x240.jpg" style="border: none; margin: 2px;" width="340" /><br />
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Chris DiBona</div>
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Google began as a business after its founders accepted a US$100,000 funding grant from Sun Microsystems cofounder Andy Bechtolsheim in August 1998. Page and Brin embedded their mission statement in their corporate name. They would organize a limitless amount of information on the World Wide Web.</div>
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Several years later, Google's founders devised a list of 10 things they knew to be true about running their business. Item No. 2 was "it's best to do one thing really, really well." Google is now much more than a unique search engine. And Google does much more than catalog a world of information on its massive servers. Google does many things. But perhaps all of what it does still meets that key founding principle of organizing vast volumes of data on the Web.</div>
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In this interview, LinuxInsider discusses with Christopher DiBona, Google's open source program manager, how Linux, Chrome, Android and a host of Google-created proprietary code all mesh with open source software to maintain Google's massive information infrastructure.</div>
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<strong>LinuxInsider: Given all of the software platform options, what drew you into working with Linux and open source software?</strong></div>
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<strong>Chris DiBona:</strong> Back in the mid '90s, I was working on a science assignment at the time. I had a choice of working in the Sun workstation lab at the school. That was crowded and hot. Or I could dial Linux on a 386 or a 486 (CPU). At the time, I was working in a computer book shop. So I accumulated all these computer books and textbooks. I traded my books for a friend's real Unix machine, an AT&T 381. It was not fully featured. Finally I got involved with a Linux machine. Later when I moved to California, I got involved with running a Linux User's Group. Now here I am 20 years later.</div>
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<strong>LI: How much is Google driven by open source?</strong></div>
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<strong>DiBona:</strong> When you personally go and use Google, like Gmail or our online stuff, on top of that you have software that we've written. We combine our software with what you typically would expect from a server and a desktop. We pull in a standard amount of open source libraries and standard libraries. Some of these are released [as open source] and some of them are not. All of these things come together to make Google -- well, Google.</div>
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Some of what we have added is completely state of the art, such as the Android stack. We've released something like 3,000 projects of various size and quality and development models. So any kind of project you want, we've done that model for our company.</div>
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<strong>LI: How hard is it to tie all of that together for users who are on a Windows box or an Apple product? How do you make it almost platform-agnostic?</strong></div>
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<strong>DiBona:</strong> Take our Chrome platform. Most of the people who use it have no idea that there is this open source Chromium thing inside it. That shows where open source is and where it is going. You have to come to the realization that open source technical people understand and appreciate these things. But most consumers not only don't care, they have literally no interest in it. All they want to know is that their software is good, that their software does what they want, and that it works well. That you got to it by way of open source or that we open sourced it -- they don't care.</div>
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<strong>LI: Do you find that consumer response disheartening?</strong></div>
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<strong>DiBona:</strong> There is satisfaction to be found in that because -- in the case of Chromium -- we know that we are doing that in a way that is very exciting from an engineering perspective with the release of technology. And we are really moving all browsers forward in the way that we work with <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome" style="color: #154296; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Chrome</a>. That's pretty cool. There are a great number of people out there using Chrome and Chromium and have no clue that it is open source. It is one of those things that we are very satisfied in doing the correct amount of work there. We know that the consumers just love the product, and we do what we can to make that persist within the rubric of open source.</div>
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<strong>LI: What differences are there between Chrome and Chromium? Does Chromium really drive Chrome, or are they two separate things?</strong></div>
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<strong>DiBona:</strong> Well, they are not separate by any measure. I would say that Chrome is complementary with Chromium. When you look at what Chrome does, we are very holistically minded about what surfing means online. For instance, if you are going to be running Flash and you have the standard plug-in architecture that a browser has ... Flash sort of exists outside the sandbox. So if Flash breaks down in one tab, it will break down across all tabs. That is not what you want.</div>
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That should really be a red flag. So we do a lot of proprietary things in Chrome with things like Flash and <a class="story-keyword-offsite" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF" style="color: #154296; text-decoration: none;">PDF</a> that we couldn't really do in Chromium because those proprietary offerings are really not available in open source. To really have a plug-in system that works in the sandbox model, you kind of have to have a closed source element. So Chrome is really the closed source stuff merged with the open source stuff called "Chromium."</div>
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Remember that Chromium is all the HTML rendering and all of the browser stuff and all the data-compression stuff. It's pretty amazing. So Chrome exists to have the things that can really not be open sourced. This makes it well secured and well managed by the software, so that people have what we consider to be a very good quality Web surfing. There are some really interesting Chromium offshoots out there. It's neat to see what people do with Chromium.</div>
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<strong>LI: How does the Chrome OS fit into this security scenario?</strong></div>
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<strong>DiBona:</strong> In many ways, the Chrome OS is very much in the spirit of Chromium. What's really remarkable about the Chrome OS is the developer's switch under the battery. Say you leave your Chrome notebook under the seat on a bus and lose it. You can go buy another Chrome notebook and sign into your account and have all of your data restored. It is incredibly secure.</div>
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<strong>LI: How does that feature work?</strong></div>
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<strong>DiBona:</strong> There is lots to why that works. It comes down to that developer's switch under the battery. We have a cryptographically assured chain of custody, if you will, from the chip on the motherboard all the way to the communications for the device. So that's pretty amazing. But the problem with that is people use that same mechanism to make it impossible to update the operating system and do interesting things with Linux, say on the laptop or their tablets.</div>
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What we did instead is said with the flip of a switch, you basically can do whatever you want with this hardware. You can install an operating system without bootloaders or whatever. That makes it possible for the Ubuntus of the world and the Debians of the world to install on a Chrome OS laptop. So when you switch it back, it will say where is the signed binary. It will give you, again, that chain of custody that you want. That's the secured computing environment.</div>
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Chrome is pretty amazing at this. You are not going to get malware on a Chrome OS. You are not going to get security problems on a Chrome OS that has the developer's switch. But at the same time, if you are a developer, that sort of locking down stops you from innovating. It stops you from developing very quickly. So we wanted to make it possible to have the best of both worlds there. So a responsible developer who understands the risks of surfing the Web is going to be able to do that.</div>
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<strong>LI: Based on what you just said, let's talk about the Android OS. It seems to be the direct opposite in terms of security.</strong></div>
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<strong>DiBona:</strong> Oh, I fundamentally disagree. The Nexus devices are extremely open. Take Ubuntu, for instance. Whenever they demo Ubuntu, it is done on a Nexus device. When we, Google, sell a device, it is very specifically unlocked. Or it is unlockable in a very clear manner.</div>
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Things are different with carriers. Things work a little differently in the U.S. People walk into a cellphone store and want a free cellphone. The telephone company or AT&T store or a T-Mobile store or whoever pays for that. They say in return for you getting a $500 device for free, you're committing to this two-year plan. And part of that structure allows them to lock down the phone so you can't change the operating system on it.</div>
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<strong>LI: How do you avoid that?</strong></div>
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<strong>DiBona:</strong> I don't know if the people really pay attention to the terms of those deals -- but I know that developers who are savvy to these restrictions should just go buy a Nexus device or another unlocked device. Or work with a carrier who cooperates.</div>
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For instance, if you have T-Mobile, after the first three or six months into the contract, they will unlock your phone for you. Of course, this only works for certain kinds of phones. There are a lot of things out there that if the developers were just a little conscientious, these things wouldn't have to plague them.</div>
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<strong>LI: It almost seems -- and I don't mean this negatively -- that Google is almost shooting itself in both feet at the same time. It has the Chrome OS, and it has the Android OS. It almost seems they are competing against themselves.</strong></div>
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<strong>DiBona:</strong> I would not characterize Google as shooting itself in both feet. Google actually develops a number of OSes. There is the Nexus Q; there is Google TV; there is Chrome OS; there is the Android. We are actually in this operating system-rich environment.</div>
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Google is not a small company any more. Just on the Google side alone, we have over 30,000 employees. Then there are the Motorola employees. Chrome OS and Android have different philosophies on what they are presenting to the users. I think that Google as a company is big enough both as a company and personnel-wise that that is OK.</div>
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Some customers respond extremely well to the Chrome OS model, especially those that use Google services like docs and spreadsheets. That's also true of the Android. But it is really a different way of approaching the user. Now they both have Chrome in common. You can have the Chrome browser in Android, and that is obviously fundamental with the Chrome OS.</div>
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<strong>LI: Don't those conflicting choices make for a confusing marketing strategy?</strong></div>
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<strong>DiBona:</strong> It may seem odd that people are consuming both of them. We are very happy with the outcome. It is sort of like when you have two children who are kind of competitive with each other. You wouldn't get rid of one of your kids. They are both great kids. You just have to make sure that their competitiveness does not hurt each other.</div>
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<strong>LI: What do you see as your biggest obstacles as a manager indealing with all of this?</strong></div>
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<strong>DiBona:</strong> You shouldn't over expand on what my job actually is. The primary focus of my job -- and it is very cutting-edge, actually, and is very exciting -- is open source compliance; making sure that we don't screw up with other persons' licenses. It involves making sure that when we choose a license for a project that we release, that it is consistent with our values and our philosophies for that project.</div>
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Chrome is a great example of that. We used BSD because we wanted the code to get back into the webkit and be used by other browser vendors. BSD was the most common denominator in Firefox and the webkit. And even Microsoft could use it.</div>
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We wanted to get the technology in the hands of everybody -- not just our browser, but everybody's browser. In a lot of these projects now, we have to provide infrastructure for development in the form of Git and Gerrit. Gerrit is a code review front end for Git (a distributed revision control and source code management system). That means that whenever we buy a company, we have to make sure that they are in compliance. I hate to say it, but I am a very high-functioning bureaucrat who looks after licenses</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-43732508036159938352013-04-01T14:05:00.003-07:002013-04-01T14:05:45.135-07:00Book publishers blast Amazon's plan to control domain names<br />
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Book publishers blast Amazon's plan to control domain names</h1>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhED2PpA20dKEkd3vyC5V_j5Eat1whf-g4b0c7cL-Cfp6i-ysBbfiJ-nes7Rj-0XTN-yCdpinwtgyzDb2LRJhgQ_GlUd6UgM_VPQVkSSeZLiB9f1Z1M4kCMkumJPJL-BzT2vZIZeedFz8s/s1600/Internet5_610x426.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhED2PpA20dKEkd3vyC5V_j5Eat1whf-g4b0c7cL-Cfp6i-ysBbfiJ-nes7Rj-0XTN-yCdpinwtgyzDb2LRJhgQ_GlUd6UgM_VPQVkSSeZLiB9f1Z1M4kCMkumJPJL-BzT2vZIZeedFz8s/s320/Internet5_610x426.jpg" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #768696; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24.390625px;">Two industry groups argue that the retailer's plan to control several generic top-level domains, including .book, .author, and .read, would be anti-competitive.</span><br />
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Amazon's effort to control dozens of new generic top-level Internet domain names is drawing fire from a pair of publishing industry groups.</div>
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The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers oppose the Internet retail giant's plan to control so-called generic top-level domains (gTLD) that end in suffixes .book, .author, and .read, arguing that such influence would be anti-competitive.</div>
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"Placing such generic domains in private hands is plainly anticompetitive, allowing already dominant, well-capitalized companies to expand and entrench their market power," Authors Guild President Scott Turow wrote to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, the nonprofit that oversees the world's Internet domain names. "The potential for abuse seems limitless."</div>
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Rival bookseller Barnes & Noble has also objected to the scheme, contending in a letter to ICANN that Amazon would use its control of gTLDs "to stifle competition in the bookselling and publishing industries, which are critical to the future of copyrighted expression in the U.S."</div>
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"Amazon's ownership would also threaten the openness and freedom of the Internet and would have harmful consequences for Internet users worldwide," the company said in its objection early last month.</div>
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CNET has contacted Amazon for comment and will update this report when we learn more.</div>
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Amazon is one of the biggest names vying for control of domains in what has been labeled as the greatest land grab in Internet history. The organization has let anyone with the money and technical knowledge bid for the right to run a gTLD. ICANN is expected to roll out hundreds to new addresses later this year.</div>
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In addition to .amazon and .kindle, Amazon has also applied for .free, .like, .game, and .shop gTLDs. In all, Amazon has applied for control of 76 gTLDs, but 30 of them are contested and might not end up in its control. Google, which has applied for 101 gTLDs, seeks 23 of the same address strings as Amazon.</div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-57410864906606427952013-04-01T14:05:00.001-07:002013-04-01T14:05:05.315-07:00Fake Facebook pages promise free gifts in exchange for 'Likes'<br />
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Fake Facebook pages promise free gifts in exchange for 'Likes'</h1>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg61OdjKfAQTRBh8qwqIzPuwsI00CB4VVsHi9BU4d0TLabuNRJA2faXelB7o399NVNUGK36aWj6yYZ4ptubOShrI2stdZa7vDPVQvZh4-m4gPwB4iMkQqTgtuyKUG6X1-qXKibU4ffwOI/s1600/applefakegiveaway.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg61OdjKfAQTRBh8qwqIzPuwsI00CB4VVsHi9BU4d0TLabuNRJA2faXelB7o399NVNUGK36aWj6yYZ4ptubOShrI2stdZa7vDPVQvZh4-m4gPwB4iMkQqTgtuyKUG6X1-qXKibU4ffwOI/s320/applefakegiveaway.jpg" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #768696; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24.390625px;">Promotions purporting to be from Apple and Beats Electronics offer "unsealed" hardware in exchange for "Likes" in an apparent scam to build fan page numbers.</span><br />
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A new hoax is making the rounds on Facebook, promising to giveaway expensive personal electronics items in exchange for a simple "Like."</div>
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One of the earliest examples of this hoax popped up a couple of days ago, inviting Facebook users to "Like" a page for a chance to be randomly picked to receive high-end headphones from Beats Electronics that allegedly couldn't be sold because they had been unsealed.</div>
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We have got 1,239 boxes of Dre Beats and 250 Monster Beats By Dr Dre Studio Limited Edition that can't be sold because they have been unsealed. Therefore we are giving them away for free.<br />
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Want a pair? Just Share this photo & Like our page and we will choose 1,239 people completely at random on March 15th.</blockquote>
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A spokesperson for Beats Electronics, the company founded by hip-hop producer Dr Dre and music mogul Jimmy Iovine, told CNET it was not affiliated with the fake offer and contacted Facebook to have the page removed.</div>
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An apparently fake promotion that hasn't disappeared yet is one for dozens of Apple tablets on an official looking Facebook page that identifies itself as "Apple" and includes a banner with images of Apple products.</div>
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We have got 82 boxes of iPad Mini's [sic] that can't be sold because they have been unsealed. Therefore we are giving them away for free.<br />
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Just Share this photo & Like our page and we will choose 82 people completely at random on March 17th.<br />
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Good luck!</blockquote>
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The page already has nearly 47,000 "Likes" by people apparently unaware that Apple sells plenty of refurbished hardware, making such a giveaway unnecessary and unlikely. Apple, which has a legitimate Facebook page with nearly 9 million "Likes," has been contacted for comment and we will update this report when we learn more.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-87890183907291626722013-04-01T14:04:00.003-07:002013-04-01T14:04:17.821-07:00There is speculation that some of Apple's best talent might quit because the company can't create the sorts of products it wants in Cupertino. But whose fault would that be?<span style="background-color: white; color: #768696; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24.390625px;">There is speculation that some of Apple's best talent might quit because the company can't create the sorts of products it wants in Cupertino. But whose fault would that be?</span><br />
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There is something slightly entertaining about the alleged crisis at the world's most famous and successful company.</div>
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Just because a bunch of greasy-haired speculators have decided that Apple's shares are worth less than Google's (this week), garments are rended and teeth gnashed.</div>
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And then there's teens. Apparently, they're all fleeing the brand and rushing toward Microsoft's Surface. Which, apparently, isn't selling well.</div>
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In times of such rampant face-contorting and mind-numbing, I always remember the words of Mitt Romney: "Companies are people, too."</div>
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And so it is that in a rather more measured discussion about the future of Apple, Daring Fireball's John Gruber and his guest -- iPhone and Mac developer Guy English -- talked for quite a long time about Apple's real problem: people.</div>
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Gruber's fear is that the best engineers may decide that they cannot be satisfied at Apple.</div>
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"The problem isn't that Apple is bleeding talent, the problem is that they could," he said.</div>
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Some might suggest that there also <i style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">could</i> be an earthquake centered on Cupertino or that North Korea has better nuclear missiles than we think.</div>
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But the point is important because of the cult of personality (sometimes fostered by, well, Apple) that has always surrounded the company.</div>
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There's been a constant belief that Apple was really a lot of Steve Jobs, a fair dollop of Jony Ive and a touch of occasional fascination from Scott Forstall.</div>
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The greater truth has always been that there were many extremely wise and talented engineers having large ideas, but -- in public, at least -- small names.</div>
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One example was Tony Fadell, who left Apple to create Nest, a revolutionary thermostat.</div>
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English speculated that once you've created, say, the first iPhone, that might feel like your life's work. Whatever comes afterward -- at least within the markets that Apple operates -- may feel like so much of so what.</div>
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There will be those who imagine that all the speculation surrounding Apple's supposed, alleged, putative iWatch might suggest this is being created as some clever person's vanity project.</div>
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Perhaps this might have come out of some amusement on the part of a few Apple engineers, who wanted to see it emerge into real life.</div>
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Apple, though, is quite serious about entertainment. As serious as it is about design. It's hard to believe it would suddenly commit itself to frippery for frippery's sake. Yes, even wearable, profitable frippery.</div>
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In the end, every company's problem resides in retaining those people who really do the work.</div>
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Some employees don't want to be famous. They simply want their work to be famous. They simply want to feel as if they going to create products that everyone will talk about -- and, hopefully, covet.</div>
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It's not exactly every engineer who wants to hog the limelight. Somehow, limelight-hogging just isn't many engineers' thing.</div>
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Apple's biggest problem -- as with many companies -- will always lie in creating an atmosphere where everyone who works there believes that there is no better place for them to be a better creator.</div>
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It's inevitable for many to fear that Apple's ability to create new markets through surprising products is waning.</div>
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It's hard to avoid the perception that Tim Cook is less of a visionary and more of a supremely efficient manager.</div>
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Sometimes, though, supremely efficient managers are supremely wise in creating opportunities for their best people to consistently achieve.</div>
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That's Apple biggest test -- and potentially biggest problem.</div>
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It isn't merely about creating great products. It's about its people believing that creating great products is still possible.</div>
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Which leaves one little question: is there really one more gadget that humanity needs in order to make its existence easier and more pleasurable?</div>
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What gadget would that be?</div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-35353589395664331652013-04-01T14:03:00.001-07:002013-04-01T14:03:12.134-07:00Gadget Gets Under the Hood to Bring Analytics to Driving<span style="font-family: MillerDisplay, Georgia, serif; font-size: 4.8rem; line-height: 5.75rem;">Gadget Gets Under the Hood to Bring Analytics to Driving</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: NHaasGroteskDSW01-45Lt, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; line-height: 30px;">A $70 device will tell you how efficiently you’re driving, and can even call 911 for help in the event of an accident.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi-U22hiqHwXeGjLkPeTtAttE86XnZ-LvJnGJH7KTH_j-tTRyX4y8TDYk9rydsvZaiezU0t6qFrlUIu5KvHsUjOrtp7RTgIjP25LH2-yhyoteD5Hxis1QoHhwLn1-gQXKEem9jQwoRX5I/s1600/automatic.car_.techx299.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi-U22hiqHwXeGjLkPeTtAttE86XnZ-LvJnGJH7KTH_j-tTRyX4y8TDYk9rydsvZaiezU0t6qFrlUIu5KvHsUjOrtp7RTgIjP25LH2-yhyoteD5Hxis1QoHhwLn1-gQXKEem9jQwoRX5I/s320/automatic.car_.techx299.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem;">You probably have a rough idea of how much you spend on gas each week, but chances are you don’t calculate the cost of each trip down to the penny. Unless you’re Ljuba Miljkovic, that is, who knows that in a recent week he spent $7.50 to drive over 47 miles.</span><br />
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Miljkovic is a cofounder of Automatic, an automotive tech startup that offers a small gadget that connects to your car’s onboard computer and wirelessly transmits the data it collects to your smartphone. This can reveal how efficiently you’re driving, how much individual trips are costing you, and tips for solving potential engine troubles. It can also determine where you parked your car and, if its built-in accelerometer senses you’ve been in an accident, call 911 for help.</div>
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The device combines two burgeoning trends—the “Internet of things,” where traditionally offline gadgets are connected to the Internet to amplify their usefulness (see “50 Disruptive Companies 2013: Nest’s Smarter Home”), and the mining of data that’s collected by our devices for meaning (see “Every Step You Take, Tracked Automatically”). By putting these two together, the company thinks it can get users to conserve gas and spend less—and make a profit itself while doing so.</div>
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“Your car is a black box today. You don’t know anything about it,” cofounder Thejo Kote says. “Using the information that is already there, and just presenting it in a useful way to people can have a really big impact on behavior and hopefully help people save money.”</div>
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Automatic grew out of research conducted by Kote and another of the company’s cofounders, Jerry Jariyasunant, while both were in graduate school in the systems engineering department of the University of California, Berkeley. Specifically, it blossomed from the realization that most people don’t really know anything about their cars, or about how much it really costs to drive, Kote says.</div>
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Automatic’s gadget plugs into the diagnostic port of your car—an outlet below the steering wheel of every car sold since 1997 that connects to the vehicle’s onboard computer and is used mainly by car mechanics for identifying and solving problems. The device will be available for people to preorder starting Tuesday, for $70, and will start shipping in May.</div>
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Phil Magney, who leads automotive electronics analysis at market researcher IHS, says the market for products that attach to your car’s diagnostic port and transmit data to your smartphone is growing. He adds that Automatic’s emergency-calling feature is a shrewd addition, giving it the ability to compete against telematics companies like OnStar.</div>
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The first step is to plug the device in and pair it with an Automatic app on your phone. When you start your car, the device will begin reading data—such as your speed—and send it to your smartphone via Bluetooth. That data is uploaded to Automatic’s servers for processing, and then sent back to the app in more user-friendly formats such as a driver score, on a scale of 1 to 100, that considers how often you brake hard, accelerate rapidly, and drive over 70 miles per hour (three factors that have a large impact on fuel efficiency).</div>
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A diagnostic feature can give you advice about what may be wrong if your “check engine” light comes on, and also enables you to turn the light off. A “beta” 911-calling feature uses the device’s built-in accelerometer to detect a car crash and notify Automatic to robocall your nearest 911 center with your name, car type, and approximate location.</div>
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Since the in-car device doesn’t have GPS—a decision Miljkovic says helps keep costs down—the app occasionally uses the phone’s GPS to reconstruct trips, determine where you parked, and estimate how much trips cost (the 1.4-mile trip to my office costs 33 cents, Miljkovic says). When you stop driving, the app automatically logs your location. And the device can tell when you add gas to the car, and which gas station you stopped at.</div>
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Initially, the company will offer only an iPhone app, since the two latest iPhones support low-power Bluetooth, but Kote says Automatic plans to release an Android version in the fall.</div>
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Sven Beiker, executive director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford University, says that while there are similar products on the market and in development aimed at “green” driving, Automatic’s solution is inexpensive and looks uncomplicated to use, which could help it catch on. “Very often if just the interface is appealing and easy to use, people will start changing their behavior,” he says.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-67551095997982215202013-04-01T14:02:00.001-07:002013-04-01T14:02:23.384-07:00Electronic Sensors Printed Directly on the Skin<span style="font-family: MillerDisplay, Georgia, serif; font-size: 4.8rem; line-height: 5.75rem;">Electronic Sensors Printed Directly on the Skin</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: NHaasGroteskDSW01-45Lt, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; line-height: 30px;">New electronic tattoos could help monitor health during normal daily activities.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDCopoB-a4YAFGpIQbEy4kGola6ZSzCHO1AAf1D7tM6NdHTDo85jy7CTfx10Yo-AbOyn9RLq8AlFkaxyYSEz6LOOHYmG-6kTDJCf_-Ioqfx8ZLBz4BsChoSfNwxVTJXCvkuWGVTmDcN5E/s1600/printable.skin_.electronicsx299.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDCopoB-a4YAFGpIQbEy4kGola6ZSzCHO1AAf1D7tM6NdHTDo85jy7CTfx10Yo-AbOyn9RLq8AlFkaxyYSEz6LOOHYmG-6kTDJCf_-Ioqfx8ZLBz4BsChoSfNwxVTJXCvkuWGVTmDcN5E/s320/printable.skin_.electronicsx299.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem;">Taking advantage of recent advances in flexible electronics, researchers have devised a way to “print” devices directly onto the skin so people can wear them for an extended period while performing normal daily activities. Such systems could be used to track health and monitor healing near the skin’s surface, as in the case of surgical wounds.</span><br />
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<aside class="img-left" style="border: 0px; clear: both; float: left; font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 14px; margin: 0px 1.5rem 0rem -13.5rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></aside><aside class="caption-left" style="border: 0px; clear: both; float: left; font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 14px; margin: 1rem 1.5rem 0rem -13.5rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; font-size: 1rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: 1.4rem; margin-bottom: 3rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 11.5rem;">
<b style="border: 0px; font-family: NHaasGroteskTXW01-75Bd, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Skin signals:</b> This device, applied directly to the skin, can record useful medical information.</div>
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So-called “epidermal electronics” were demonstrated previously in research from the lab ofJohn Rogers, a materials scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the devices consist of ultrathin electrodes, electronics, sensors, and wireless power and communication systems. In theory, they could attach to the skin and record and transmit electrophysiological measurements for medical purposes. These early versions of the technology, which were designed to be applied to a thin, soft elastomer backing, were “fine for an office environment,” says Rogers, “but if you wanted to go swimming or take a shower they weren’t able to hold up.” Now, Rogers and his coworkers have figured out how to print the electronics right on the skin, making the device more durable and rugged.</div>
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“What we’ve found is that you don’t even need the elastomer backing,” Rogers says. “You can use a rubber stamp to just deliver the ultrathin mesh electronics directly to the surface of the skin.” The researchers also found that they could use commercially available “spray-on bandage” products to add a thin protective layer and bond the system to the skin in a “very robust way,” he says.</div>
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During the two weeks that it’s attached, the device can measure things like temperature, strain, and the hydration state of the skin, all of which are useful in tracking general health and wellness. One specific application could be to monitor wound healing: if a doctor or nurse attached the system near a surgical wound before the patient left the hospital, it could take measurements and transmit the information wirelessly to the health-care providers.</div>
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Rogers says his lab is now focused on developing and refining wireless power sources and communication systems that could be integrated into the system. He says the technology could potentially be commercialized by MC10 (see “Making Stretchable Electronics”), a company he cofounded in 2008. If things go as planned, says Rogers, in about a year and half the company will be developing more sophisticated systems “that really do begin to look like the ones that we’re publishing on now.”</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-87874748661498235182013-04-01T14:01:00.001-07:002013-04-01T14:01:07.072-07:00An Anti-iPad for India<span style="font-family: MillerDisplay, Georgia, serif; font-size: 4.8rem; line-height: 5.75rem;">An Anti-iPad for India</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: NHaasGroteskDSW01-45Lt, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; line-height: 30px;">Suneet Singh Tuli, the man behind the ultracheap Aakash 2 tablet, says the West doesn’t understand mobile business in the developing world.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6xdCGqlu0rpqHWi_AbH8IZ505QpAqiewpH4PyZ9InH3CtBxJCYO1YIpPdvbgYiuU-fYBqrGDmw2rsdYX5WzykZlVzVb0dIslzO5IOPaUX25nWvlVEGGnKCDvtQ8Evq_SlJnlnhisL59Q/s1600/datawind.qax299.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6xdCGqlu0rpqHWi_AbH8IZ505QpAqiewpH4PyZ9InH3CtBxJCYO1YIpPdvbgYiuU-fYBqrGDmw2rsdYX5WzykZlVzVb0dIslzO5IOPaUX25nWvlVEGGnKCDvtQ8Evq_SlJnlnhisL59Q/s320/datawind.qax299.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem;">A devout Sikh, Suneet Singh Tuli, 44, has found his own way to live by his religion’s central belief of</span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: NHaasGroteskTXW01-56It, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">sarbat da bhala</em><span style="font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem;">, or “may everyone be blessed.”</span><br />
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He wants everyone in India to be on the Internet.</div>
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To that end, Tuli’s London company, DataWind, is building very inexpensive tablet computers, which it assembles in China or with the help of support staff at its India offices. The idea, Tuli says, is to pair cheap tablets with ad-supported wireless service as a way to bridge the digital divide between poor and rich countries.</div>
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DataWind began winning attention last year when it struck a deal to supply India’s government with 100,000 of its Aakash 2 tablets, for roughly $40 each, by this March 31. That tablet works only near Wi-Fi points, but DataWind also sells an $83 commercial version called Ubislate 7C+, which comes with an unlimited mobile data plan for around $2 per month. Within 18 months, Tuli says, he hopes to bring the price of a basic tablet down to $25 and make the Internet connection free.</div>
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Tuli’s company is not a charity. DataWind plans to make money with its own app store and by displaying ads in its built-in browser (which also compresses websites for fast delivery over India’s slow wireless networks). <em style="border: 0px; font-family: NHaasGroteskTXW01-56It, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MIT</em> <em style="border: 0px; font-family: NHaasGroteskTXW01-56It, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Technology Review</em> spoke with Tuli about his company’s business model and the future of tablet computing in India.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem; margin-bottom: 3rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: NHaasGroteskTXW01-75Bd, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You’ve said that you never intended to be in the hardware business. What do you mean?</strong></div>
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We think that hardware is dead. A gigahertz processor costs $4. It’s good enough for most everything you’d want to do with a tablet, and not just for poor people in India. Hardware has gotten cheap enough that restaurants or resorts should be giving customers tablets to walk away with for free. Hardware is becoming a customer-acquisition tool.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: NHaasGroteskTXW01-75Bd, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So tablets should be literally disposable, like USB flash drives?</strong></div>
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I don’t like the word “disposable,” but by 2015, you’re going to see tablets reach the stage where you can just pick one up at 7-Eleven. And for consumers in the developing world, tablets will be their first computer.</div>
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We did a study to understand where the inflection point for PC deployment in the U.S. was: when did PCs really take off? Our assessment was that when the cost of purchasing PCs fell to within 20 percent of monthly salary, you started to see them in every home. In a place like India, there are about billion people for whom $50 meets that criterion.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: NHaasGroteskTXW01-75Bd, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What new businesses will ultracheap tablets lead to in the developing world?</strong></div>
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There are going to be applications that will create billion-dollar opportunities, but we may not understand them in the West or be able to relate to them. My epiphany came when I saw a magazine ad in India that showed a minivan with a driver’s seat that could be laid down 180 degrees. I thought, “How dumb is that?” Then I realized that most of these minivans were used as taxis, and the taxi drivers actually slept in them.</div>
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In the same way, the applications of these tablets will be very unique, and I’m not sure that I can comprehend what all of them would be. But I’m hoping that if we own the platform, we can become the conduit for those applications and those businesses.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: NHaasGroteskTXW01-75Bd, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You’re practically giving away the tablets. So what’s your strategy for making this into a business?</strong></div>
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The first killer app on these devices is going to be Internet access. We have 18 patents on how to deliver basic Web access, even on India’s GPRS networks. The idea is to bundle free Internet access with advertising on an affordable tablet. Basic browsing without audio or video streaming would be available for free, and we’d have a banner ad that runs on the top, which pays for the cost of data service and makes us money.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: NHaasGroteskTXW01-75Bd, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Does the Ubislate come with free Internet access right now?</strong></div>
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In India, the free usage model is not in place yet. We have a Rs.98 ($1.80)-per-month data plan for unlimited usage. It is a fraction of what other plans cost, and we intend to drive it down to free.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: NHaasGroteskTXW01-75Bd, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What new opportunities do you see for apps in the developing world?</strong></div>
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Nobody focuses on the problem of creating apps for somebody whose monthly income is $200. Those people are not part of the computer age or the Internet age; most of them are not literate. So we run app competitions in India to try to get people thinking from that perspective. The winner of our last competition was a group of students who designed a commerce app for “fruit walas,” the guys who run around with carts selling fruits and vegetables. These students created a graphically intuitive way of running a small vegetable business.</div>
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There are something like five million fruit walas in India, so if you had an app for them, there could be a lot of money to be made.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-22200424825863810082013-04-01T13:59:00.001-07:002013-04-01T13:59:36.076-07:00Japan’s Economic Troubles Spur a Return to Nuclear<span style="font-family: MillerDisplay, Georgia, serif; font-size: 4.8rem; line-height: 5.75rem;">Japan’s Economic Troubles Spur a Return to Nuclear</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: NHaasGroteskDSW01-45Lt, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; line-height: 30px;">Some of the nuclear power plants shut down after the Fukushima disaster could restart soon.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigNPLcAfbTYd81fSUWHHNaNnWai3i7zfMEZvWPD8YdyRBu6dmJHdDb9VFOySCFZD0MFUwx2Sy1_ItueF_LqFdD9lnHlSIaHgx0pKf-tOI71cqzpH02N_1Mue-fRim85W2wiIJCP9wiLt8/s1600/fukushima.updatex299.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigNPLcAfbTYd81fSUWHHNaNnWai3i7zfMEZvWPD8YdyRBu6dmJHdDb9VFOySCFZD0MFUwx2Sy1_ItueF_LqFdD9lnHlSIaHgx0pKf-tOI71cqzpH02N_1Mue-fRim85W2wiIJCP9wiLt8/s320/fukushima.updatex299.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem;">As the second anniversary of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima nears, Japan is considering restarting nuclear reactors across the country in an effort to ease a recession that began at the end of 2012 after years of economic stagnation.</span><br />
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All 50 of the country’s reactors were shut down after the disaster, when a powerful earthquake and tsunami caused a cascade of problems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that culminated in large releases of radiation. Just two reactors have since been restarted.</div>
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This week, the CEO of <a href="http://www.areva.com/" style="border: 0px; color: #206f96; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Areva</a>, which supplies fuel for Japanese nuclear power plants, predicted that two-thirds of the reactors in Japan will be restarted within the next several years, and that half a dozen may restart by the end of the year. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently promised to begin restarting plants within the year, but it might be hard to meet that goal because the necessary safety upgrades will take some time.</div>
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Public sentiment in Japan turned sharply against nuclear power in the wake of the disaster, which displaced thousands from their homes. But shutting down the reactors has strained the country’s electricity supplies, making it necessary to import large amounts of fossil fuels to make up the difference.</div>
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In Japan, natural-gas power plants can cost several times as much to operate as nuclear power plants, says Paul Joskow, the president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and formerly a professor economics at MIT. But restarting the nuclear plants will require convincing local governments to accept a new regulatory regime that’s been put in place to improve safety, and “that hasn’t happened yet,” he says. A recent survey suggested that half of all Japanese mayors would approve plant restarts if reactors met the new safety regulations.</div>
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The impact of the disaster at Fukushima has been felt around the world. The most striking example is Germany, which quickly shut down some of its nuclear power plants and made plans to close the rest. This has forced the country to rely more on fossil fuels, including coal, even as it attempts to meet strict targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions (see “The Great German Energy Experiment” and “Can Japan Thrive without Nuclear Power?”).</div>
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Even China, which has led the world in nuclear reactor construction, has scaled back its plans and become more selective about where it plans to build its plants, Joskow says. Nuclear power has also stalled in other countries, including the United States, but this is mostly due to the high cost of building new plants, not to the safety concerns emerging from Fukushima.</div>
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Before the disaster, Japan had relied on nuclear power for about a quarter of its energy and had planned to increase that to roughly 50 percent by 2030 to ease dependence on imported fossil fuels and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, according to a report this year from the Institute of Energy Economics in Japan. The country has few domestic sources of energy. The report said that the shutdown of reactors in Japan, and the ensuing increase in fossil-fuel consumption, has hurt the balance of trade and increased electricity prices by 15 to 20 percent. It has also led to the loss of about 420,000 jobs as manufacturing is transferred out of the country, the report said.</div>
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The economic problems seem to be shifting public opinion in Japan. Last September, the ruling party issued a plan to permanently phase out nuclear power (see “Japan Approves Nuclear Phase-Out by 2040”). But it quickly softened its stance (see “Japan Isn’t Going Nuclear Free After All”). In December, the government lost power to Prime Minister Abe’s party, which promised to improve the economy and is emphasizing the need for nuclear power.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-56662249538082040342013-04-01T13:58:00.001-07:002013-04-01T13:58:42.397-07:00The Brain Activity Map<span style="font-family: MillerDisplay, Georgia, serif; font-size: 4.8rem; line-height: 5.75rem;">The Brain Activity Map</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: NHaasGroteskDSW01-45Lt, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; line-height: 30px;">Researchers explain the goals and structure of a new brain-mapping project.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2jxlbmucDw9HGNQJUHiLoDY2VdEZlGy6KH0drksGb2P-7D0TKByR9okYY39zGM3LQf4t-gsj8d55R5StzR7bGcNhd4AUJxNk7qKqySzMOJ6XwVvqExgtd27KFJeRxobs-oYTQIs4lzXc/s1600/brain.mappingx299.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2jxlbmucDw9HGNQJUHiLoDY2VdEZlGy6KH0drksGb2P-7D0TKByR9okYY39zGM3LQf4t-gsj8d55R5StzR7bGcNhd4AUJxNk7qKqySzMOJ6XwVvqExgtd27KFJeRxobs-oYTQIs4lzXc/s320/brain.mappingx299.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem;">A proposed effort to map brain activity on a large scale, expected to be announced by the White House later this month, could help neuroscientists understand the origins of cognition, perception, and other phenomena. These brain activities haven’t been well understood to date, in part because they arise from the interaction of large sets of neurons whose coördinated efforts scientists cannot currently track.</span><br />
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“There are all kinds of remarkable tools to study the microscopic world of individual cells,” says John Donoghue, a neuroscientist at Brown and a participant in the project. “And on the macroscopic end, we have tools like MRI and EEG that tell us about the function of the brain and its structure, but at a low resolution. There is a gap in the middle. We need to record many, many neurons exactly as they operate with temporal precision and in large areas,” he says.</div>
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An article published Thursday in <em style="border: 0px; font-family: NHaasGroteskTXW01-56It, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Science</em> online expands the project’s already ambitious goals beyond just recording the activity of all individual neurons in a brain circuit simultaneously. Researchers should also find ways to manipulate the neurons within those circuits and understand circuit function through new methods of data analysis and modeling, the authors write. </div>
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Understanding how neurons communicate with one another across large regions of the brain will be critical to understanding how the brain works, according to participants in the project. Other efforts to map out the physical connections in the brain are already under way (see “TR10: Connectomics” and “Mapping the Brain on a Massive Scale”), but these projects look at static brains or can only get a rough view of how regions of the brain communicate. The new project will probably start applying its novel and yet unknown technologies on simpler brains, such as those of flies, and will probably take decades to achieve its goals.</div>
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Numerous leaders from the fields of neuroscience, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology are expected to collaborate on the effort. “We need something large scale to try to build tools for the future,” says Rafael Yuste, a neurobiologist at Columbia University and a member of the project. “We view ourselves as tool builders. I think we could provide to the scientific community the methods that could be used for the next stage in neuroscience.”</div>
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In addition to deepening fundamental understanding of the brain, the project may also lead to new treatments for psychiatric and neurological disorders. “If we truly understand how things like thoughts, cognition, and other features of the brain emerge, then we should have a better understanding of mood disorders, Parkinson’s, epilepsy and other conditions that are thought to arise from brain-wide circuitry problems,” says Donoghue.</div>
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Details about which technology ideas will be given the green light and how much money will support their development are expected to be revealed in the White House announcement that is still to come. The project is likely to be supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and private foundations, participants say. It’s not yet clear how much money will be needed or which technologies will be given priority.</div>
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Whichever particular technologies emerge, nanotechnology is likely to be involved, in part because of the need for smaller and faster sensors to record neuronal activity across the brain. Existing sensors can record the electrical activity of neurons, but these chips can typically monitor fewer than 100 neurons at a time and can’t record activity from neighboring neurons, which would be necessary to understand how neurons interact with one another.Paul Weiss, director of the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, a participant in the project, says that nanofabrication techniques could address this problem, with smaller chips bearing smaller electrical and even chemical probes. “We’ve had over a decade a fairly substantial investment in science and technology to develop the capability … to control how what we make interacts with the chemical, physical, and biological worlds,” he says.</div>
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Novel optical techniques could also aid the mapping project. Currently, many research groups use calcium-sensitive fluorescent dyes to study neuron firing, but Yuste wants to develop an optical technique that uses voltage-sensitive fluorescent dyes for a faster readout. “Neurons communicate using voltage,” he says. “We would like to develop voltage imaging so we will be able to measure neuronal activity directly.”</div>
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While many things about the project are uncertain, one thing is clear—there is going to be a lot of data to store, share, and analyze. “We have just begun to scratch the surface of how you deal with data in high-dimensional spaces,” says Terry Sejnowski, a computational neuroscientist at the Salk Institute. “If you are talking about one million neurons, no one can even imagine what that looks like–it is way beyond what we can perceive in three dimensions.”</div>
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The <em style="border: 0px; font-family: NHaasGroteskTXW01-56It, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Science</em> article also sketches out a rough time line. Within five years, it should be possible to monitor tens of thousands of neurons; in 15 years, one million neurons should be possible. A fly’s brain has about 100,000 neurons, a mouse’s about 75 million, and a human’s about 85 billion. “With one million neurons, scientists will be able to evaluate the function of the entire brain of the zebrafish or several areas from the cerebral cortex of the mouse,” the authors write</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-14377955270449946792013-04-01T13:57:00.003-07:002013-04-01T13:57:38.124-07:00Micro 3-D Printer Creates Tiny Structures in Seconds<span style="font-family: MillerDisplay, Georgia, serif; font-size: 4.8rem; line-height: 5.75rem;">Micro 3-D Printer Creates Tiny Structures in Seconds</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: NHaasGroteskDSW01-45Lt, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; line-height: 30px;">Faster printing could see the technology move from research labs to industry.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLYFemz6P3i1xN4eTnHrXcWp6bjpHg4UgeVrjcp19iLKAxZV9YNVwRfaiSPVuRU0C0mFdRqVkmAZEmZCn9Ikorlm9kT14FV0EshVdTMfdiA-eXORS8UEBTkmLEskO4yQgZKebI1u8jwoE/s1600/3d.nano_.printer.1x299.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLYFemz6P3i1xN4eTnHrXcWp6bjpHg4UgeVrjcp19iLKAxZV9YNVwRfaiSPVuRU0C0mFdRqVkmAZEmZCn9Ikorlm9kT14FV0EshVdTMfdiA-eXORS8UEBTkmLEskO4yQgZKebI1u8jwoE/s320/3d.nano_.printer.1x299.jpg" /></a>Nanoscribe<span style="font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem;">, a spin-off from the</span><span style="font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem;"> </span>Karlsruhe Institute of Technology<span style="font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem;">in Germany, has developed a tabletop 3-D microprinter that can create complicated microstructures 100 times faster than is possible today. “If something took one hour to make, it now takes less than one minute,” says Michael Thiel, chief scientific officer at Nanoscribe.</span><br />
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While 3-D printing of toys, iPhone covers, and jewelry continues to grab headlines (see “The Difference Between Makers and Manufacturers”), much of 3-D printing’s impact could be at a much smaller scale. Micrometer-scale printing has shown promise for making medical and electronic devices.</div>
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Thiel says it should be possible to speed up his company’s microprinting technique even more in the future. Nanoscribe plans to start selling its machine in the second half of this year.</div>
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Printing microstructures with features a few hundred nanometers in size could be useful for making heart stents, microneedles for painless shots,gecko adhesives, parts for microfluidics chips, and scaffolds for growing cells and tissue. Another important application could be in the electronics industry, where patterning nanoscale features on chips currently involves slow, expensive techniques. 3-D printing would quickly and cheaply yield polymer templates that could be used to make metallic structures.</div>
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So far, 3-D microprinting has been used only in research laboratories because it’s pretty slow. In fact, many research labs around the world use Nanoscribe’s first-generation printer. The new, faster machine will also find commercial use. Thiel says numerous medical, life sciences, and nanotechnology companies are interested in the new machine. “I’m positive that with the faster throughput we get with this new tool, it might have an industrial breakthrough very soon,” he says.</div>
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The technology behind most 3-D microprinters is called two-photon polymerization. It involves focusing tiny, ultrashort pulses from a near-infrared laser on a light-sensitive material. The material polymerizes and solidifies at the focused spots. As the laser beam moves in three dimensions, it creates a 3-D object.</div>
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Today’s printers, including Nanoscribe’s present system, keep the laser beam fixed and move the light-sensitive material along three axes using mechanical stages, which slows down printing. To speed up the process, Nanoscribe’s new tool uses a tiny moving mirror to reflect the laser beam at different angles. Thiel says generating multiple light beams with a microlens array could make the process even faster.</div>
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The smallest features that can be created using the Nanoscribe printer measure about 30 nanometers, says Julia Greer, professor of materials science at the California Institute of Technology.</div>
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“This is very challenging to do, and the Nanoscribe tool excels at it,” Greer says. “I don’t think there is another company out there that is capable of such precision.” Greer’s research team uses the first-generation Nanoscribe printer to create and study materials that could be used for catalysts and to make strong, lightweight structures, but she acknowledges that its slowness is a drawback.</div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-58697961832701508992013-04-01T13:57:00.001-07:002013-04-01T13:57:05.777-07:00Clues Suggest Malware Is Moving from PCs to Mobile Devices<span style="font-family: MillerDisplay, Georgia, serif; font-size: 4.8rem; line-height: 5.75rem;">Clues Suggest Malware Is Moving from PCs to Mobile Devices</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: NHaasGroteskDSW01-45Lt, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; line-height: 30px;">Researchers report signs that moneymaking malware common on PCs is being adapted to mobile phones and tablets.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjErs7X7c9PtvyD_TxOJ9gMXTpFTjX1rAfurmMYS9t0swTPYmlXEtrcLWiVy6vQ2D4oiqyHvypROOOGpKN5ISLeFAcUZuNSGePyu0ey8cvEajZNQjmCZggxvxWwDY_GUY8PyIvvNSXWS6k/s1600/mobile.malwarex299.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjErs7X7c9PtvyD_TxOJ9gMXTpFTjX1rAfurmMYS9t0swTPYmlXEtrcLWiVy6vQ2D4oiqyHvypROOOGpKN5ISLeFAcUZuNSGePyu0ey8cvEajZNQjmCZggxvxWwDY_GUY8PyIvvNSXWS6k/s320/mobile.malwarex299.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: 'NeueHaasGroteskText W01', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 2rem;">The fact that smartphones and tablets don’t need antivirus software or regular software updates is a major reason for their popularity. That could soon change, however, as security companies report evidence that criminals are getting close to finding efficient and profitable ways to compromise many mobile devices at a time.</span><br />
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If that happens, many more people would be exposed to mobile malware, and Apple and Google could be forced to regularly push out security updates for their mobile operating systems just as Microsoft does for Windows.</div>
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Smartphones and tablets don’t support the kind of criminal ecosystem associated with desktop and laptop computers. With PCs, people make money by using malicious Web pages and weaknesses in browsers and other software to install malware that steals login details or sends spam.</div>
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Criminals haven’t yet figured out a reliable business model for mobile, says Chris Astacio, a researcher at security company Websense. So far, attacks on mobile devices have been limited by the need to distribute malicious apps through mobile app stores, where Apple and Google take measures to screen out malware and quickly remove anything that does slip through.</div>
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Astacio believes that attackers will soon deliver mobile malware through Web pages instead, essentially the same approach that drives most infections on conventional computers. In a presentation last week at the RSA security conference in San Francisco, he reported evidence that the software currently causing most infections on laptops and desktops—according to figures from both Websense and another security company, AVG—could soon target mobile devices, too.</div>
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That software is Blackhole, which Astacio is investigating. It’s an example of an exploit kit, a package used by criminals to install malware onto people’s computers when they visit a compromised Web page. Blackhole, found on someNBC websites last month, assesses a victim’s computer so as to covertly offer them malware they are vulnerable to. The kit is an efficient way to distribute moneymaking malware at large scale.</div>
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While reverse-engineering the latest version of Blackhole, Astacio noticed that the software now specifically looks out for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. Astacio believes Blackhole’s developers are preparing to target mobile devices with malware that can take control of a phone or tablet through its mobile browser.</div>
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“This all comes down to efficient hacking for mobile attackers—you already have the infrastructure set up for exploit kits to profile and target mobile devices,” says Astacio. “Mass mobile compromises seem to be the natural progression.”</div>
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Jaime Blasco, who leads the malware research labs at security company AlienVault, agrees with Astacio’s gloomy prediction. “The bad guys haven’t found the right way to get money from the user,” he says, “but probably it will happen.”</div>
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Mobile operating systems, particularly Android, are not particularly difficult to make malware for, says Blasco, and there are signs that criminals are working to adapt methods used to target PCs. “We have found samples of Zeus and SpyEye on mobile,” he says. Those are two common malware packages that have infected millions of desktops and laptops and that steal banking credentials. Blasco says that he believes so-called “ransomeware,” software that locks up access to data and demands payment to release it, will appear on mobile devices, too. Personal data on smartphones such as contact books, text messages, and photos could be a lucrative target.</div>
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Some malware for mobile devices has already appeared that could have a significant impact if coupled with the large-scale distribution offered by Blackhole. An Android app found recently by security company TrustGo on 100,000 phones in China spends victims’ money by abusing an SMS-based payments system. It was distributed and infected 100,000 phones in China through an alternative to Google’s app store popular in the country. Last fall it was found that some Samsung Android phones could be taken over through their browser, and other researchers have demonstrated similar attacks (see “How a Web Link Can Take Over Your Phone”).</div>
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Kevin Mahaffey, chief technology officer and cofounder of mobile security company Lookout, believes that new, profitable malware will eventually force Apple and Google into copying Microsoft’s approach to protecting its Windows operating system. In 2005, the company released a reinvented update tool for its operating system, which at the time was troubled by frequent new security problems. “Microsoft stopped everything to build Microsoft Update,” now a core part of Windows, says Mahaffey, and created a sophisticated workflow able to act quickly to patch new problems.</div>
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Apple and Google currently issue patches for their mobile operating systems only a handful of times each year, so many people can remain exposed to a vulnerability even long after a fix has been developed. Updates to Android devices are particularly rare because mobile carriers choose when to pass along Google’s latest upgrades to their users and many often choose not to.</div>
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“To constantly have to update those devices is a business decision they don’t want to have to make,” says Astacio. </div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-46796580299133232322013-04-01T13:56:00.001-07:002013-04-01T13:56:23.810-07:00Why We Need More Solar Companies to Fail<span style="font-family: MillerDisplay, Georgia, serif; font-size: 4.8rem; line-height: 5.75rem;">Why We Need More Solar Companies to Fail</span><br />
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Solar manufacturers like Suntech are struggling. Hundreds need to die for the industry to recover.</div>
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Suntech, a Chinese company that as recently as 2011 was the world’s largest producer of solar panels, is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. It’s running low on cash, owes bond investors half a billion dollars (which it failed to pay Friday), and is saddled with payments on billions of dollars in loans as it struggles to make money in a market flooded with its product.</div>
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If Suntech fails and shuts down its factories, that might not be a bad thing. Some industry experts say that hundreds of solar companies need to fail to help bring the supply of solar panels back in line with demand. That would slow the fall in prices and, as demand recovers, allow companies to justify buying new equipment and introducing the innovations that will ultimately be needed for solar power to compete with fossil fuels.</div>
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But there’s a good chance that Suntech, and many other companies in China, will be bailed out by local governments, which would delay the much-needed reduction in production capacity. Worldwide, solar companies have the capacity to manufacture between 60 and 70 gigawatts’ worth of solar panels a year, but demand in 2013 is only expected to be about 30 gigawatts.</div>
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The worldwide glut of solar panels—which has lasted nearly two years—is partly the result of big government-backed investments in factories in China, where two-thirds of solar panel production capacity is located. The surplus has been good news for consumers and installers, because it’s helped drive a precipitous drop in solar panel prices. They’ve dropped 60 percent since the beginning of 2011, according to GTM Research. Solar panels sold for $4 per watt eight years ago. Now it’s common to buy them at 78 cents per watt, says Jenny Chase, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance.</div>
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But the rapid decline in prices has been hard for solar manufacturers. As prices have dropped, they have been able to lower costs because the price of materials has been falling and they’ve made incremental imprvements to existing manufacturing equipment. But in many cases costs haven’t fallen fast enough for companies to keep up with the falling prices for their panels, eliminating profits and making it difficult to invest in the new equipment needed to keep reducing costs.</div>
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Although the Chinese government supported the rapid growth in solar manufacturing capacity, it now says the current situation is unsustainable and recommends allowing the least competitive companies to fail. “Beijing knows that you cannot have 500 module makers in China, which is what you currently have,” Chase says. The story is not necessarily the same for local governments, which want to keep companies open to avoid losing thousands of jobs.</div>
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The situation has delayed the commercialization of advanced technology that would have required new manufacturing equipment. For example, Suntech has been promising for years to scale up production of its Pluto solar cells, which are based on designs from the University of New South Wales that set new records for efficiency and can generate significantly more electricity than conventional ones (see “The Chinese Solar Machine”). But that technology has been put on hold.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-48000716530733637782013-04-01T13:54:00.002-07:002013-04-01T13:54:36.447-07:00Here’s Where They Make China’s Cheap Android Smartphones<span style="font-family: MillerDisplay, Georgia, serif; font-size: 4.8rem; line-height: 5.75rem;">Here’s Where They Make China’s Cheap Android Smartphones</span><br />
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Apple and Samsung, beware. Practically anyone can make a smartphone these days.</div>
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A little over a year ago, 38-year-old entrepreneur Liang Liwan wasn’t making smartphones at all. This year, he expects to build 10 million of them.</div>
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Liang’s company, Xunrui Communications, buys smartphone components and then feeds them to several small factories around Shenzhen, in southern China. There, deft-fingered workers assemble the parts into basic smartphones that retail for as little as $65.</div>
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Manufacturers built about 700 million smartphones last year. But the market has taken on a barbell shape. On one side are familiar names like Apple and Samsung, selling pricey phones for $300 to $600; on the other, several hundred lesser-known Chinese brands supplied by a thousand or more small factories.</div>
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The change began in 2011, when computer-chip makers began selling off-the-shelf chipsets—the set of processors that are the brains of a touch-screen phone. Those, plus Google’s free Android operating system, made smartphones much easier to produce.</div>
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The flood of inexpensive devices could hurt struggling phone makers like Nokia and might also force Samsung and Apple to offer cheaper models. “They have reached their peak,” Liang said during an interview near his office in Shenzhen, which has become a hub for electronics makers. “In [manufacturing] technique we are close to the same level. Then the only difference will be the cost and the brand.”</div>
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Larger Chinese companies, like Lenovo and Huawei, have also swarmed into China’s market with midrange phones that cost closer to $200. Lenovo captured 12 percent of China’s market last year.</div>
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<b style="border: 0px; font-family: NHaasGroteskTXW01-75Bd, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cheap phones:</b> Workers assemble $65 smartphones at Guo Wei Global Electronics, one of hundreds of small Chinese factories now building mobile computers.</div>
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Liang’s phones are the ultracheap kind. He builds them at several Shenzhen factories, like Shenzhen Guo Wei Global Electronics, a nondescript building that opened in 1991 as a manufacturer of fixed-line phones and audio equipment. At Guo Wei, young Xunrui engineers lounge about, smoking cigarettes and drinking warm Coca-Cola while playing games on various brands of laptops.</div>
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One floor up, past a metal detector and an enclosure where high-pressured air blows dust and other impurities off workers’ blue smocks, are the production lines—five of them, each with 35 young workers able to solder together and box up 3,000 smartphones a day.</div>
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Guo Wei has had to make some investments to get into the smartphone game, including importing new solder inspection equipment from Korea. One production line costs around $1.6 million to set up, according to Li Li, a production manager at the factory who showed off the equipment.</div>
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“The techniques are very complicated compared to older phones,” says Li, who joined the factory 17 years ago to work in a department that repaired fixed-line telephones.</div>
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But the real reason for the switchover to smartphones was that last year large chip makers, including the Taiwan-based MediaTek and Spreadtrum, started offering “turn-key” systems: phone designs plus a set of chips with Android and other software preloaded. Spreadtrum says it may sell 100 million units this year.</div>
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Each chipset costs $5 to $10, depending on the size of a phone’s screen and other features. In total, Liang says, his cost to make a smartphone is about $40. He says he can manufacture as many as 30,000 smartphones a day for brands such as Konka Mobile and for telecom operators like China Unicom.</div>
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In the United States, a smartphone’s high cost is generally masked by wireless companies, which discount them steeply if consumers agree to a contract. In China that happens as well. Liang says his phones retail for about $65 or $70 but can cost only $35 with a contract.</div>
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That is making China, now the world’s largest smartphone market, a challenging place for foreign firms to compete. Apple accounts for 38 percent of U.S. smartphone sales, but its share in China is 11 percent and falling. Google has even bigger problems making money. Even though the devices use Android, they often don’t come with Google’s apps and search tool installed (see “Android Takes Off in China, But Google Has Little to Show for It”).</div>
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Liang says his aim is to make smartphones that are affordable, even if they aren’t yet as good as an iPhone. That means the camera and LCD screen might not be the best, and the battery life could be shorter. “I always use this word ‘acceptable,’” he says. “A lot of users only need an acceptable product. They don’t need a perfect product.”</div>
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What’s certain, Liang says, is that the quality of the phones his factories produce will rise. “There is no profit at the bottom,” he says. “Everyone is trying to improve their techniques.” </div>
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<em style="border: 0px; font-family: NHaasGroteskTXW01-56It, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Su Dongxia assisted with interpreting and research.</em></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-29766512011486786842013-04-01T13:53:00.004-07:002013-04-01T13:53:50.444-07:00Gadget Gets Under the Hood to Bring Analytics to Driving<span style="font-family: MillerDisplay, Georgia, serif; font-size: 4.8rem; line-height: 5.75rem;">Gadget Gets Under the Hood to Bring Analytics to Driving</span><br />
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A $70 device will tell you how efficiently you’re driving, and can even call 911 for help in the event of an accident.</div>
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You probably have a rough idea of how much you spend on gas each week, but chances are you don’t calculate the cost of each trip down to the penny. Unless you’re Ljuba Miljkovic, that is, who knows that in a recent week he spent $7.50 to drive over 47 miles.</div>
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Miljkovic is a cofounder of Automatic, an automotive tech startup that offers a small gadget that connects to your car’s onboard computer and wirelessly transmits the data it collects to your smartphone. This can reveal how efficiently you’re driving, how much individual trips are costing you, and tips for solving potential engine troubles. It can also determine where you parked your car and, if its built-in accelerometer senses you’ve been in an accident, call 911 for help.</div>
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The device combines two burgeoning trends—the “Internet of things,” where traditionally offline gadgets are connected to the Internet to amplify their usefulness (see “50 Disruptive Companies 2013: Nest’s Smarter Home”), and the mining of data that’s collected by our devices for meaning (see “Every Step You Take, Tracked Automatically”). By putting these two together, the company thinks it can get users to conserve gas and spend less—and make a profit itself while doing so.</div>
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“Your car is a black box today. You don’t know anything about it,” cofounder Thejo Kote says. “Using the information that is already there, and just presenting it in a useful way to people can have a really big impact on behavior and hopefully help people save money.”</div>
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Automatic grew out of research conducted by Kote and another of the company’s cofounders, Jerry Jariyasunant, while both were in graduate school in the systems engineering department of the University of California, Berkeley. Specifically, it blossomed from the realization that most people don’t really know anything about their cars, or about how much it really costs to drive, Kote says.</div>
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Automatic’s gadget plugs into the diagnostic port of your car—an outlet below the steering wheel of every car sold since 1997 that connects to the vehicle’s onboard computer and is used mainly by car mechanics for identifying and solving problems. The device will be available for people to preorder starting Tuesday, for $70, and will start shipping in May.</div>
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Phil Magney, who leads automotive electronics analysis at market researcher IHS, says the market for products that attach to your car’s diagnostic port and transmit data to your smartphone is growing. He adds that Automatic’s emergency-calling feature is a shrewd addition, giving it the ability to compete against telematics companies like OnStar.</div>
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The first step is to plug the device in and pair it with an Automatic app on your phone. When you start your car, the device will begin reading data—such as your speed—and send it to your smartphone via Bluetooth. That data is uploaded to Automatic’s servers for processing, and then sent back to the app in more user-friendly formats such as a driver score, on a scale of 1 to 100, that considers how often you brake hard, accelerate rapidly, and drive over 70 miles per hour (three factors that have a large impact on fuel efficiency).</div>
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A diagnostic feature can give you advice about what may be wrong if your “check engine” light comes on, and also enables you to turn the light off. A “beta” 911-calling feature uses the device’s built-in accelerometer to detect a car crash and notify Automatic to robocall your nearest 911 center with your name, car type, and approximate location.</div>
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Since the in-car device doesn’t have GPS—a decision Miljkovic says helps keep costs down—the app occasionally uses the phone’s GPS to reconstruct trips, determine where you parked, and estimate how much trips cost (the 1.4-mile trip to my office costs 33 cents, Miljkovic says). When you stop driving, the app automatically logs your location. And the device can tell when you add gas to the car, and which gas station you stopped at.</div>
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Initially, the company will offer only an iPhone app, since the two latest iPhones support low-power Bluetooth, but Kote says Automatic plans to release an Android version in the fall.</div>
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Sven Beiker, executive director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford University, says that while there are similar products on the market and in development aimed at “green” driving, Automatic’s solution is inexpensive and looks uncomplicated to use, which could help it catch on. “Very often if just the interface is appealing and easy to use, people will start changing their behavior,” he says.</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-17156839410036802342013-04-01T13:53:00.002-07:002013-04-01T13:53:23.285-07:00The innovation effiency index<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrEPG6_OR-H9RgLbUd7NzbEib8fhHuAHIi3P8PN_5CSNo76LUucvH_ZnDqqiZ829aaypcaQNqm9hqOD24MZZOPEd85PcERzlYUgsWzzd6kCR9XRsUQX5assk-FrlISMHByTYP9eOfTbNE/s1600/upfrontx860.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrEPG6_OR-H9RgLbUd7NzbEib8fhHuAHIi3P8PN_5CSNo76LUucvH_ZnDqqiZ829aaypcaQNqm9hqOD24MZZOPEd85PcERzlYUgsWzzd6kCR9XRsUQX5assk-FrlISMHByTYP9eOfTbNE/s320/upfrontx860.png" /></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16263768044342918830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7095432719810835407.post-52693351638687084872013-04-01T13:52:00.005-07:002013-04-01T13:52:50.073-07:00A Nanofabrication Technique Doubles Hard Drive Capacity<span style="font-family: MillerDisplay, Georgia, serif; font-size: 4.8rem; line-height: 5.75rem;">A Nanofabrication Technique Doubles Hard Drive Capacity</span><br />
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Laboratory advance shows that nano-imprinting could help the hard drive industry meet its long-term goals for data storage capacity.</div>
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Researchers at HGST, a major manufacturer of hard disk drives, have shown that an emerging fabrication technology called nano-imprinting could be used to double the data storage capacity of today’s hard disks. They say the patent-pending work, done in collaboration with a company called Molecular Imprints, could lead to a cost-effective manufacturing process by the end of the decade.<br />
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Hard disk drives store data in magnetic material on the surface of a spinning disk. During production, this material is deposited as a thin film. Information is then written to the disk by changing the magnetic orientation of distinct individual units of the material, known as “grains.” A group of grains together make up a region that can store a single bit. Since the 1950s, when the technology was invented, hard disk manufacturers have continually found ways to keep increasing data storage capacity by reducing the area required to store a bit, most recently by using fewer and fewer clustered grains for each.</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: 1.538em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Now the industry is running up against limits to this strategy, partly because the particles’ magnetism becomes less stable when they are very small, a phenomenon known as superparamagnetism. “If I take a permanent magnet and I make it small enough, it becomes nonmagnetic,” explains </span>Currie Munce<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: 1.538em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, vice president of HGST Research.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: 1.538em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">here are also physical limits how small the recording regions can be. </span>“If you continue to try to push these magnetized areas closer and closer together, they finally reach a point where they can feel their neighbors to such an extent that they have a tendency to flip over,” explains </span>Grant Willson<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: 1.538em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, a materials science professor at the University of Texas at Austin. That causes data loss. Willson is a cofounder of Molecular Imprints, although he was not involved in this research.</span><br />
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Researchers have known for years that patterning a disk with physically isolated, nanoscopic magnetic dots makes it possible to pack in more information than applying the material as a continuous film. The challenge has been developing an economical way to manufacture disks with the precise nanoscopic patterns in the circular tracks needed for the recording head to do its work.<br />
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The HGST researchers announced at last month’s SPIE advanced lithography meeting that they had used their proprietary nano-imprinting process to pattern a disk substrate with 10-nanometer-wide dots, closely packed and in circular tracks. They showed that a recording head can read and write information from these dots, and they reported that their process could print 1.2 trillion “magnetic islands” per square inch—enough to store about a terabyte on a 2.5-inch disk, which is double the capacity of today’s devices. (The most spacious drive currently sold by HGST can store four terabytes of data.) Since the dots can be made even smaller, the method would in theory allow for several more generations of capacity gains.</div>
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Nano-imprinting, a technique that first emerged in the mid-1990s, consists of applying a soft material to a surface and then stamping it with a hard material covered with specific patterns. The resulting imprints then guide modification to the surface, such as etching or deposition of additional material. The soft material is then removed, leaving only the new designs on the original surface. The magnetic recording and semiconductor industries both view the technique as a promising solution to the puzzle of how to reliably manufacture structures and patterns smaller than about 20 or 30 nanometers.</div>
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To design their stamp, the HGST researchers used molecules called block copolymers, which can be engineered to line up in repeating patterns on a treated surface—a technique called “directed self-assembly.” “We think we can implement [the process] in manufacturing,” says Munce.<br />
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HGST’s engineers will also focus on making the dots as small as physically possible (See “Fabrication Trick Offers Fivefold Leap in Hard Drive Capacity”). Munce says around 15 or 20 years from now they will run up against another size limit. By then, he says, provided several further refinements to the technology, “I may have bought myself another factor of 20 in capacity gains.”</div>
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