Techno-News Blog

by WRAL

Think of all the things you need a password for – bank accounts, computers, billing websites, etc. Keeping track of all the codes can be tough, but there are strategies for creating and remembering secure passwords. Remembering passwords is the No. 1 frustration about today’s technology, according to a Consumer Reports survey.

http://www.wral.com/5onyourside/story/8119698/

By Trent Batson, Campus Technology

As Mely Tynan, the first speaker and moderator for the day said, “You’ve held it together, or you’d like to think so.” Tynan’s comments opened the morning session, dedicated to a scan of the IT environment in higher education; the afternoon would focus participants’ attention on leadership issues. Tynan also pointed to alarming statistics that should concern technology leadership on campuses: The U.S. is only 23rd in the world in broadband. The U.S. can boast of only a 30 percent graduation rate after two or four years of college, which places us 15th in the world in graduation rate. There is a U.S. Department of Education “National Technology Plan 2010,” and Tynan “assigned” all those in the room to read at least the executive summary. Another assignment: Pay attention to the New Media Consortium’s annual Horizon Report. In it, IT leaders can see the trends in technology–more mobility, more visualization, more immersive environments–that can inform IT planning on campus.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2010/08/11/report-from-the-campus-technology-2010-executive-summit.aspx

by Joe Wolverton, II, New American

Pedagogy is defined as the art or science of teaching. In the age in which we live, there is as much of one as of the other in classrooms around America. Teachers and professors compete with a variety and availability of stimuli that would astound their predecessors of another time. The noble goal of educating the rising generation has come along way from the days of etching words on clay tablets. The tablet itself, however, may just now be coming into its own. Earlier this week, USA Today asked the question: “Can college students learn as well on iPads, e-books?” The iPad and its biggest rivals, Amazon’s Kindle and the Nook by bookseller Barnes & Noble, are being tested in schools and universities across the country and the measure of their success is still sketchy. That is to say, despite their flash, power, and popularity, these newest technological tools are still on academic probation.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/computers/4270-ipad-on-academic-probation

By Maggie Shiels, Technology reporter, BBC News

Net neutrality supporters have hit out at secretive negotiations and deals An industry body representing some of the biggest names in technology has hosted a closed-door meeting to discuss the future of the open internet. Public advocacy groups said such back-room dealings were detrimental. The meeting follows the publication of a controversial plan by Google and Verizon that could allow net providers certain types of internet traffic to be given priority over others.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11032409

by the BBC

Britons are increasingly overlapping their media habits – tapping out e-mails while watching TV, reading a paper while answering texts from friends. But, asks Hugh Wilson, does media multi-tasking mean instead of doing a few things well, we are just doing more things badly? I was watching a documentary the other day about an educational issue that – as the father of a child about to start his first year at school – held more than a passing interest. At the same time, I was actively participating in a three-way text message conversation about the coming weekend. It’s fair to say that, by the end of the evening, I had only a vague understanding of the message of the documentary and the weekend remained largely unplanned. I had multi tasked, but I hadn’t done it particularly well.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11035055

by the BBC

Kenya has great ambitions to establish itself as a tech-hub for Africa. But can it really keep up the pace of innovation? The BBC’s Egon Cossou visited iHub, Nairobi’s innovation hub. This functions as an incubator, bringing together creatives, developers and investors. He spoke to Jessica Colaco, manager of iHub, and Sam Gichuru of Ideas Africa.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11037013

by Wolfgang Gruener – source: Tom’s Hardware US

Consistent capacity growth in hard disk drives (HDDs) has become something we take for granted. It isn’t so trivial if you think about the fact that there are in fact physical limits to how much data you can store on one disk and every now and then we are nearing a limit that can’t be topped anymore. The last limit was hit in 2005 and the next seems to be arriving in the 2013 – 2015 timeframe. However, a new technology breathes new life into HDDs. HAMR will bring massive storage growth and propel the industry far beyond 100 TB.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/hdd-ssd-harddrive,11048.html

By Louis Porter, Times-Argus

With the dust beginning to settle after the announcement that Vermont will receive a large amount of federal stimulus money to expand broadband, telecommunications and government officials are starting to sort out what it could mean for Vermonters. The money, about $81 million in grants given by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and another $35 million in government-backed loans, will go to Vermont Telephone Co., or VTel, vastly increasing the size of the company, which serves 19,000 telephone lines in its territory around Springfield. That money will go to provide fast-speed Internet service to underserved parts of the state, primarily through wireless technology.

http://www.timesargus.com/article/20100810/NEWS02/708109913/1003/NEWS02

By Dan Nystedt, Bloomberg Business Week

A shortage of the main memory chips used in personal computers could send prices of the chips higher in the second half of this year, market researcher iSuppli warned on Monday. DRAM makers face two supply problems currently, an inability to obtain needed production equipment and tricky work implementing advanced new technology, iSuppli noted. A DRAM shortage would spell trouble for the global computer market. At a time when personal computer shipments are soaring – at a 22.4 percent year-on-year clip in the second quarter according to IDC – DRAM makers are still trying to recover from the downturn last year.

http://www.businessweek.com/idg/2010-08-09/isuppli-warns-of-looming-dram-shortage.html

by Ina Fried, CNet news.com

Imagine your own PC watching your every click and reporting back every song you listen to, every movie you watch, or every book you read. That may sound like a nightmare scenario to some, but that is exactly the reality that HP Labs director Prith Banerjee is preparing for. In an interview Thursday, Banerjee told CNET that gathering that information–with a device owner’s consent–has the potential to tailor devices to be much more useful.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20012851-56.html

by Adam Phillips, VOA News

As the world becomes increasingly dependent on the Internet and computer technology to conduct its business, its social and international relationships and its wars, the threat to those networks from terrorists and criminals becomes more dire. A three day FBI-sponsored conference on cyber-security was attended by leaders in law enforcement, industry, government, and the military and reports on some of the issues involved and strategies proposed. In the 20 seconds it will take to listen to this paragraph, the world will conduct 680,000 Google searches and send 88 million emails. The world’s half billion Facebook users will post 140,000 status updates, and the “Automated Clearing House” computer network that connects all American financial institutions will process 12,000 electronic payments.

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/usa/US-Law-Enforcement-Holds-Meeting-on-Cyber-Security-100148859.html

By Dion Hinchcliffe, ZDNet

It’s a story as old as the IT department: New technology arrives in the market, it makes some type of work easier to accomplish, the business asks for it, and IT reacts and delivers it. Not always however, and usually somewhat slowly. It was this way with PCs, it was this way with the Internet, and now IT is faced with what is turning out to be a veritable perfect storm of technology and social change. Will a new vision of IT (let’s call it CoIT) let us resolve this perfect storm?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/coit-how-an-accidental-future-is-becoming-reality/1368

By Lilian Presti Tribune Media Services

The average American child spends four to five hours a day in front of a screen — that’s roughly one-third of their waking time either in front of a TV or a computer, and all that screen time could be adding up to poor health. The trend toward more time in front of the tube or online is not surprising given our increased reliance on technology for entertainment and communication. However, negative health effects are many, and include weight issues, impaired attention, even increased aggression. There’s also the problem of exposure to negative stereotyping and risky behavior such as unprotected sex, drug use and heavy drinking.

http://bit.ly/cqv5pf

by Kristen Abraham, ABC WJRT

From the governor’s race to local house and senate seats to millage renewal requests, polling locations in Saginaw County expect to be busy Tuesday. But new technology should make things a little easier. Kempton Elementary School is one of 22 precincts where an electronic poll book will be used for the first time in Saginaw. “I don’t expect any problems,” said May Woods of Buena Vista Township, who has been helping with elections in Saginaw for 15 years. “I wanted to feel like a gave a contribution.”

http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=news/local&id=7589045

by Ben Schott, NY Times

Stress and frustration caused by slow computers. A study by Intel Canada found that 55 percent of Canadian high school students and more than 60 percent of post-secondary students had been frustrated by slow-running computers, Jameson Berkow reported in The National Post: Intel dubbed the problem “hourglass syndrome,” in honour of the spinning icon many computers display when processing a large amount of data. The survey attributed the apparent rise in cases of hourglass syndrome to the rise in student dependency on computers for success in school.

http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/hourglass-syndrome/

By Jacqui Cheng, ars technica

E-readers are becoming increasingly popular, due in part to plummeting prices and the growing availability of books in various digital formats. One area where these companies are notoriously weak, however, is accessibility—and we’re not talking about the Internet kind. One of the big strengths of digital books should be their easy support for technologies like screen reading and large print, tools that can help the visually impaired. But as it turns out, such progress has been slow and unsatisfactory for many users. The accessibility problem was highlighted when several universities recently settled a lawsuit with the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and the American Council of the Blind (ACB). At issue was the schools’ plan to deploy the Kindle DX among students, thanks to accessibility limitations on the device.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/08/for-visually-impaired-most-e-readers-barely-measure-up.ars

By Nicholas D. Evans, Computerworld

Social computing is among the most disruptive technologies making their way into the enterprise. The ever-growing number of users in social networks (half a billion for Facebook as of last month) has the potential to radically change how we do business and challenges our traditional notions of workforce collaboration and productivity. In fact, Bill Gates has said that “social networking-type applications will become as ubiquitous in the workplace as Microsoft Office tools and will likely replace e-mail as the dominant form of corporate communications.”

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9180218/Social_computing_s_evolution_in_the_enterprise

by Maggie Shiels, BBC

Here amid the lush mountains of Lake Tahoe in Northern California, technologists have been discussing what has been billed as “a new philosophy of progress” at the first ever Techonomy Conference. The organisers are hoping the name will soon become common parlance but for the moment they are quite happy to explain their thinking behind the event as one that discusses the role that technology has in solving some of the world’s thorniest problems from climate change to education to innovation. “Society’s problems are so grave that we have to really work to solve them more wilfully and consciously using technology in all of its guises,” said conference co-founder David Kirkpatrick.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/maggieshiels/2010/08/the_new_world_order.html

by Susanne Rust, California Watch

A new technology could increase solar cell efficiency to rival that of oil. A major breakthrough in harnessing the sun’s energy has just been announced by a team of Stanford University researchers. Instead of just harvesting light energy from the sun – or alternatively, just the sun’s heat – the researchers found a way to combine the two forms of energy into a highly efficient system. And they say the technology is so inexpensive it could rival oil.

http://californiawatch.org/watchblog/new-5-solar-power-technology-could-rival-oil-37

by Business Wire

Initial Tests Expected to Demonstrate Real-World Download Speeds Ranging from 20-70 Mbps, Significantly Faster than the 5-12 Mbps Expected from Other Operators in the U.S. “Clearwire’s unmatched spectrum and all-IP network make us the only service provider in the U.S. able to conduct tests of this nature and on this scale,” said Dr. John Saw, Clearwire’s chief technology officer. “As we have consistently stated, we remain technology agnostic, but WiMAX provides us with unique advantages to meet the needs of our customers today. Ultimately, consumers don’t care about technical acronyms, but they do care about quality and affordable Internet services that work where and when they want, and that’s what we’re focused on delivering. Part of our technical due diligence at Clearwire is to be prepared to leverage a number of possible opportunities as we future-proof our network, and that’s the goal of these tests.”

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/clearwire-announces-new-4g-lte-technology-trials-expected-to-yield-unmatched-wireless-speeds-in-the-us-2010-08-04?reflink=MW_news_stmp

by eSchool News

Student response system (SRS) technology has caught on in classrooms nationwide as a tool for boosting class participation, as well as helping teachers ensure that students understand what’s being taught before they move on to another concept. But the current generation of the technology has its limitations.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/08/04/technology-takes-formative-assessment-to-a-whole-new-level/