Techno-News Blog

By Charles Pullman, Techie Insider

Alcatel-Lucent is a company with a long tradition in technology and they are now announcing something new which can even benefit the environment here in the US and around the world. There new lightRadio is designed to extend wireless broadband and reduce the visible footprint of existing cell towers. This is something new and promises to provide for the future in many different ways. The small device, which is a cube which can fit in the palm of your hand provides for a much smaller unit to transmit wireless transmissions. This recent announcement has a ways to go and it is expected to be tested sometime in 2011. It is expected to be successful and begin being sold to wireless carriers in 2012.

http://www.techieinsider.com/news/6279

by Technology Review

A marketplace sells unused computing capacity—but a lack of transparency may put off some customers. For big computing jobs, such as data analysis or video processing, it’s often cheaper for businesses to use rented resources rather than hardware they own. They can lease access to hardware for a specific period of time, or they can use a cloud computing service, which charges for the amount of computer power used. Now a service launched this week by Toronto-based Enomaly will let companies buy and sell unused computing capacity.

http://www.technologyreview.com/web/32345/?p1=MstRcnt

By Tom Simonite, Technology Review

IBM builds a search engine aimed at the estimated fifth of the world’s population that cannot read. Some 10,000 people worldwide use a version of the Web like no other: it is operated by voice over the telephone. Called the “Spoken Web,” it is the result of an IBM research project attempting to re-create the features and functions of the text-based World Wide Web for people in developing regions with low levels of literacy and technical skills.

http://www.technologyreview.com/web/32342/?p1=A3&a=f

by Ben Wieder, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Watson’s human competitors made Wednesday’s final Jeopardy! match more competitive, but, in the end, the IBM supercomputer came out on top—by more than $50,000. Ken Jennings, who, along with Brad Rutter, made up the computer’s competition on three episodes of the game show beginning Monday, had a sense of humor about the drubbing. “I for one welcome our new computer overlords,” the former Jeopardy! champion scrawled below the answer to the competition’s final question. The victory made one group of people very happy.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/ibms-watson-triumphs-at-jeopardy-to-computer-scientists-delight/29851?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

By Christiaan Patterson, Daily Sundial

CSUN students with disabilities are encouraged to seek assistance and support from the Center on Disabilities and professors for aid necessary to ensure academic success. Across the nation, the average percentile of any university’s student body who have registered disabilities is about 4.7 percent, said Jodi Johnson of the Center on Disabilities. For CSUN, this means an estimated 1,645 students out of 35,000 have disabilities. “The biggest challenge to helping these students is their reluctance to identify as a disabled student because of the stigma,” Johnson said. “It’s usually the second semester when they come to us, after having academic problems in the first.”

http://sundial.csun.edu/2011/02/adaptive-technology-eliminates-roadblocks-to-education-for-disabled-students/

By Christopher Dawson, ZD Net

ePals, creator of the world’s largest learning network, has partnered with Dell to add its newly announced SchoolMail365 and its LearningSpace communication and collaboration solutions to Dell’s Connected Classroom hardware, software, and services stack. Dell’s Connected Classroom is almost more of a philosophy than any particular set of products (although it includes everything from netbooks to interactive projectors). Company reps have explained, quite rightly, that you simply can’t drop off hardware anymore. Schools with stretched budgets, limited time, and limited internal expertise need a trusted partner who can assess their needs and provide customized solutions for them.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/dell-and-epals-take-the-connected-classroom-to-the-cloud/4493

by Francis Tan, The Next Web

We’ve heard a lot of buzz about the rumored smaller, cheaper “iPhone Nano”, but a new report from Digitimes, claims that the fifth generation iPhone may be equipped with a 4-inch screen rather than the current 3.5 inches. The component suppliers noted that the production lines for Apple’s next generation iPhone have begun testing, and Apple is interested in expanding the screen size to 4-inches to support the tablet PC market as the vendor only has a 9.7-inch iPad in the market. The trend is evident with Android smartphones featuring 4-inch or bigger screens for high-end devices. To keep on par with Android’s 4-to5.5-inch screen market, Apple will probably be joining in with its 4-inch screen phones.

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/02/15/will-the-iphone-5-adopt-a-4-inch-screen-to-keep-on-par-with-android/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNextWeb+%28The+Next+Web+All+Stories%29

by Sara Bernard, Mind Shift

For students seeking study guides and educators needing specific content, here’s another robust online resource: HippoCampus, a project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE), provides multimedia homework and study help to high school and community college students and instructors free of charge. As part of MITE’s National Repository of Online Courses (NROC), HippoCampus content focuses on general education topics like algebra and biology and is largely donated by universities and other educational institutions. It was a surprise to us … but probably more than 80 percent of HippoCampus use is happening in classrooms.“Teachers work hard; they don’t have a lot of time,” says Gary Lopez, executive director and co-founder of both the Monterey Institute and HippoCampus. “If you put in a search online for the Boston Tea Party, ninety percent of the stuff that turns up is irrelevant. The purpose of HippoCampus is that we do the work for you. We make sure that it’s relevant to your needs and your curriculum, that it’s vetted so you don’t have to go through all the craziness [on the Web] to find the right stuff.”

http://mindshift.kqed.org/tag/national-repository-of-online-courses/

By Ashley Hill, Marietta Times

As a student enrolled in Marietta City Schools, Geogerian, 14, struggled with his grades, had difficulty focusing on his school work and got himself into a lot of trouble at school. His parents, Daniel and Emily Geogerian, decided to enroll him in the Ohio Virtual Academy, an online school, for the first time this school year, and so far, things are going well. “He’s a really bright kid but just gets distracted easily, and so the home environment … it’s just different from his peer setting where he’s distracted and wanting to make poor choices and say things to make people laugh, so it’s been a good fit for him this year,” Emily Geogerian said. Noah’s not alone. According to data from the Ohio Department of Education, as of June 2010, there were almost 30,000 Ohio students enrolled in e-schools full-time.

http://www.mariettatimes.com/page/content.detail/id/533432/Perspectives–Online-e-schools-offer-an-alternative-to-traditional-education.html?nav=5002

By MEG WAGNER, ABC News

You’re planning a trip. You log onto your favorite travel-booking site, pull out your credit card, type in your name, address, security code. Not all of that goes to the hotel, of course. A commission of $25 is probably going to the travel site. But it’s that commission, that extra $25, that may be costing states across the country millions and millions in revenue — at a time when states are facing massive budget deficits.

http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/booking-travel-online-costing-states-half-billion-revenue/story?id=12845262

By Kate Greene, Technology Review

A team led by Charles Lieber, a professor of chemistry at Harvard, and Shamik Das, lead engineer in MITRE’s nanosystems group, has designed and built a reprogrammable circuit out of nanowire transistors. Several tiles wired together would make the first scalable nanowire computer, says Lieber. Such a device could run inside microscopic, implantable biosensors, and ultra-low-power environmental or structural sensors, say the researchers.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/32302/?p1=A1

By Tom Simonite, Technology Review

The signal your cell phone receives typically comes from a large microwave transceiver a few miles away. Now it can be supplied—over a short range, at least—by a device the size of a USB memory stick. Two U.K. firms—PicoChip and Ubiquisys—have developed such pocket-sized, USB-powered devices, which connect to nearby cell phones using the same frequencies of a conventional tower. The gadgets use the Internet connection of a computer or other device to link back to the wider cell network and relay calls or data. PicoChip’s is the size of a USB stick, while Ubiquisys’ design is the size of a small cell phone.

http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/32282/?p1=A2

By Erica Naone, Technology Review

Microsoft researchers are exploring ways to personalize search without skewing the results or alienating users. Search engines already use certain clues, such as a person’s geographical location or whether she is searching on a phone or PC, to offer more personalized results. Google goes a step further by mining a person’s past searches, if they have enabled a feature called Web History; and Bing is experimenting with using data collected via a user’s Facebook account to improve search results. But personalized search is far from perfect. For one thing, trying to predict too much can make search results overly narrow—only returning pages relevant to recipes, for example. And many users are hostile to the idea of search engines using their search history. The new research suggests ways for search engines to experiment with more personalization without skewing results or alienating users.

http://www.technologyreview.com/web/32281/?p1=A3&a=f

By: Clint Boulton, eWeek

Google Translate for iPhone is a native app that supports full-screen mode and speech synthesis to let users hear their translations spoken aloud in 23 different languages. Google Feb. 8 introduced Google Translate for iPhone, a free native application that Apple handset owners can use to help them translate a word or phrase from more than 50 languages. The app is the latest in a handful of mobile applications Google has released in the last several months to reside on Apple’s popular iPhone as a native app rather than a Web application that lives in Google’s cloud computing environment.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Google-Translate-for-iPhone-Leverages-Speech-Synthesis-586140/

By: Nicholas Kolakowski, eWeek

Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad tablet and two new webOS phones will compete in a crowded marketplace against Apple’s iPad and iPhone, as well as Google Android devices. Hewlett-Packard whipped back the curtain Feb. 9 on a new family of devices it hopes will not only compete against Apple’s iPad and iPhone, but begin fulfilling new CEO Leo Apotheker’s mission of making the company “cool.” The centerpiece of HP’s San Francisco presentation, the 9.7-inch TouchPad, will hit store shelves this summer at an undisclosed price. As with the two smartphones introduced alongside it, the TouchPad utilizes the webOS operating system, part of the assets inherited during HP’s $1.2 billion purchase of Palm last summer.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/HPs-TouchPad-Phones-Will-Compete-with-iPad-iPhone-115562/

By Michelle Maisto, eWeek

Teardowns of the Verizon Wireless iPhone 4 by repair site iFixit and analyst firm IHS iSuppli revealed that, while on the surface they appeared largely identical, Apple has done quite a bit of work on a phone that, in a matter of months, is “set to be antiquated by the iPhone 5,” iFixit’s Kyle Wein wrote in a Feb. 7 report. Apple made changes to the phone’s battery and vibrator, but most important are new design choices regarding the Verizon iPhone’s CDMA technology and antenna, and the switch from a Broadcom chip to a Qualcomm MDM chipset. Such changes, wrote iSuppli senior analyst Wayne Lam, in a report the same day, “likely foretell of future updates coming in the next major model release of the Apple iPhone later this year.” The Verizon iPhone will officially go on sale Feb. 10.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Verizon-iPhone-4-Teardown-Hints-at-Apples-Future-224534/

by the BBC

Software-based disease alert systems are considered to be excellent indicators Type in a search for flu in Google and you will not only find out how sick you are but your data will also be recorded on its flu monitoring service. The service, which is part of the search engine’s philanthropic arm, google.org, is just one of many software-based disease alert systems dotted around the worldwide web. By gathering aggregate data from millions of people or by scouring the web for online news reports, blogs and chat room postings, these programs are considered to be excellent indicators of disease levels across the globe. “We’ve found what people search for are actually very good indicators of influenza in a population,” Google Flu Trends spokeswoman Corrie Conrad told BBC World Service’s Digital Planet.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12176180

by Maggie Shiels, BBC

Search giant Google is trading barbs with search upstart Bing, owned and operated by the world’s biggest software company, Microsoft. At the heart of this dispute is a claim by Google that Bing has been watching what people search for on Google and then taking those results and using them to improve the results that Bing dishes up to users. “I’ve got no problem with a competitor developing an innovative algorithm. But copying is not innovation, in my book,” Google fellow Amit Singhal told the industry blog SearchEngineLand.com.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/maggieshiels/2011/02/google_and_bing_in_war_of_word.html

by the BBC

Pope Benedict XVI has said Catholics should use digital technologies responsibly. The Catholic Church has approved an iPhone app that helps guide worshippers through confession. The Confession program has gone on sale through iTunes for £1.19 ($1.99). Described as “the perfect aid for every penitent”, it offers users tips and guidelines to help them with the sacrament. Now senior church officials in both the UK and US have given it their seal of approval, in what is thought to be a first. The app takes users through the sacrament – in which Catholics admit their wrongdoings – and allows them to keep track of their sins.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12391129

by the BBC

Material that is published on Twitter should be considered public and can be published, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has ruled. The decision follows a complaint by a Department of Transport official that the use of her tweets by newspapers constituted an invasion of privacy. Sarah Baskerville complained to the PCC about articles in the Daily Mail and Independent on Sunday. The messages included remarks about being hungover at work. She complained that this information was private and was only meant to be seen by her 700 followers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12393893

by the BBC

Security firms have seen an increasing number of viruses targeting mobile devices Almost one third of internet users in the European Union caught a PC virus despite the majority having security software installed, statistics show. Viruses were most prevalent in Bulgaria and Hungary, the survey of 30 countries reveals. The 2010 figures, released by the EU’s statistics office to mark Internet Safety Day, show the safest countries were Austria and Ireland. The figures also detail financial losses online. They show that 3% of net users in the 27 EU states lost money due to phishing attacks or fraudulent payments.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12390650