Techno-News Blog

By Clint Boulton, eWeek

Google+ is causing quite a stir among the digerati and social-network elite, offering users a legitimate alternative to Facebook and drawing reviews from even the likes of The New York Times gadget head David Pogue. (He likes it). The social network includes Circles (think Facebook Groups), which let users manually place friends, family, colleagues or just people they want to follow in separate social buckets. There are Sparks, little news feeds (think Facebook News Feed) and Hangouts for group video chats with up to 10 users at once (think project-management meetings). The mobile Google+ application is solid, offering a Huddle group-messaging capability.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboration/Google-Integration-Top-10-Web-Apps-We-Want-to-Add-to-the-Social-Network-613264/

by Fahmida Y. Rashid, eWeek

In a preview of a demonstration at the upcoming Black Hat security conference, a security researcher demonstrated how browser extensions can be used to compromise Chrome OS. The Chrome extension ScratchPad had a wide-range of permissions that made it vulnerable to a cross-site scripting attack, Matt Johansen, an application security specialist at WhiteHat Security said July 14 in a preview of a presentation he will be making at Black Hat. Johansen did his work on the Google CR-48 Beta laptop released last fall, but said malicious extensions would affect any device running Chrome OS, whether it’s the CR-48 or the Chromebook.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Google-Chrome-OS-Hacked-Using-ScratchPad-Extension-in-Black-Hat-Preview-343583/

By Don Reisinger, eWeek

In today’s mobile space, a handful of devices top the list of most consumers around the world. In the smartphone market, Apple’s iPhone 4, Samsung’s Galaxy line of smartphones and even some Motorola devices are desired by customers. In the tablet space, the vast majority of people are looking to buy the iPad 2, while the remaining folks opt for an Android-based tablet, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. But as anyone who has gone to their local big-box retailer knows, there are far more devices on store shelves from a range of companies hoping someone will buy their products. The only trouble is, many of those products aren’t appealing, and when it’s all said and done, they collect dust on store shelves.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/10-Mobile-Products-Nobody-Wants-402316/

by Christopher Mims, Technology Review

With social networks competing for our attention, personal blogs that didn’t professionalize — turning into miniature versions of the publishing behemoths they were intended to overturn in the first place, completing a dance of mutual co-option — simply became ghost towns. No visitors means no comments, and without engagement, what’s the point of sharing your thoughts with the world? Hence, the exodous to Google+, which allows us not merely to update our friends on what we’re up to, but actually to blog, at length, publicly, completing the migration to a centralized platform that Facebook and Twitter began. It’s not that blogs are dead. It’s that they’re ubiquitous.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26986/?p1=blogs

by Christopher Mims, Technology Review

We’re all leaving a trail of digital bread crumbs across the web, some of us more than others. On the Internet, you can’t die so much as join the ranks of the undead. Everyone who’s left has to decide whether they can live with your ghost / zombie / poltergeist popping up and re-inserting itself into your life. The alternative is a double-tap to a loved one’s leftover virtual self, a concerted effort to put one particular expression of a memory down so the rest can live in peace.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26983/?p1=blogs

BY PAUL BOUTIN, Technology Review

Google launched its Facebook competitor, Google+, just over a week ago now. Even though sign-ups have so far been limited to a fraction of Facebook’s 750 million users, it already appears that, for a lot of people, Google+ will become the other social network they need to use. Why? Because a significant fraction of their friends will force them to. It’s not just that Google+ has 10-person video hangouts, or that Google+ is magically free of privacy worries. It’s that Google has created the opportunity for Facebook-weary people to perform what one called “a reset on Facebook,” allowing them to escape from Facebook members they’ve friended over the years but don’t really want to interact with—and can’t quite bring themselves to defriend.

http://www.technologyreview.com/web/38006/?p1=A1&a=f

by Lisa Nielsen, Tech&Learning

Following an iPad in Education workshop led by Meg Wilson (@iPodsibilities on Twitter) that was held at Apple last week, I asked an Apple employee to share with me useful materials for follow up. Here are the sites that were suggested.

http://techlearning.com/article/40044

By Billie Hara, ProfHacker, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Creative Whack Pack, its cousin iOblique, and the original creativity cards, Oblique Strategies (cards developed by the musician Brian Eno and his colleague Peter Schmidt), can jumpstart the writing process, but these tools can help you think differently about what you are doing. For example, here at ProfHacker, we preach all the time about removing the distractions from a writing space. One card in the iOblique set tells us differently, “Pay attention to distractions.”

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/writers%E2%80%99-bootcamp-success-can-be-in-the-cards-ii/34581?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

by Fred Cavazza, Forbes

Mobile internet has been hot for more than 10 years in asia and scandinavia, but the iPhone started a revolution. The real smartphone revolution was not about technology, it was about unlimited data plan (content and services accessible 24*7*365) and an integrated distribution model (iTunes). The iPhone showed content providers, software makers, and telcos what role a tiny device can play in consumers’ daily usage. A smartphone is much more than a phone, it is the link to tens of millions of users’ digital life. Thus, mobile devices shipment is expected to override PCs shipment in the current year.

http://blogs.forbes.com/fredcavazza/2011/07/11/smartphone-is-the-first-step-to-escape-pc-dependency/?partner=technology_newsletter

By: Clint Boulton, eWeek

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched video chat powered by Skype July 6, pundits immediately took to shaming and flaming the company for launching the service one week after Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) launched its own social network to beta with its own video application. Facebook, the world’s leading social network with 750 million users, took more than seven years to launch a proprietary video chat service it’s borrowing from a partner. Google+ launched out of the gate with Hangouts, a cloud video conferencing platform built in-house using XMPP, Jingle and other real-time communications standards.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/VOIP-and-Telephony/Facebook-Google-Differ-on-Video-Chat-Approach-357436/?kc=rss

By: Nicholas Kolakowski, eWeek

Google may have found a way to challenge not only Facebook, but also LinkedIn: Its new Google+ social network will apparently evolve in a way that allows businesses to build profiles and interact with the public. “We have a great team of engineers actively building an amazing Google+ experience for businesses, and we will have something to show the world later this year,” Christian Oestlien, a group product manager at Google, wrote in a July 6 posting on his Google+ profile page. “The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses.”

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/Google-Will-Target-Businesses-Facebook-Audience-338887/?kc=rss

By: Nicholas Kolakowski, eWeek

Apple’s iPad franchise will continue to dominate the tablet market for some time to come, according to a new analyst report. In a July 7 research note issued by Canaccord Genuity, analyst T. Michael Walkley and his co-authors suggested that the iPad 2’s price point is making it difficult for rival tablets to compete in a profitable way. “Our checks indicate both the Motorola Xoom and RIM PlayBook have not sold well at current price points, as we believe competing tablets must sell at a substantial discount to the iPad 2,” they wrote.Their research note estimates Apple’s share of the tablet market at 56 percent in 2011, followed by Samsung with 12 percent, and Asus with 5 percent. LG Electronics, Motorola and Research In Motion are all given 3 percent of the market, followed by HTC with 2 percent. Although Amazon.com has yet to release a tablet, the note pegs their 2011 share at 5 percent. Nor do those percentages change much for 2012, although Apple loses 5 percent of its overall share to rival manufacturers.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/Apple-iPad-Will-Dominate-Tablet-Market-Through-2012-Analyst-804371/?kc=rss

By Katia Moskvitch, BBC

One cutting edge technology is McLaren’s advanced telemetry system, which uses sensors to monitor data feeds and thus enable real-time strategy and decision making. “We’ve decided to take the aspect of remote condition monitoring of the car, and apply it to monitoring of people,” explains Geoff McGrath, the head of the Applied Technologies department. As he walks along a futuristic transparent walkway, suspended just under the ceiling, Mr McGrath says that the firm has already used this technology on patients undergoing a weight loss programme at a clinic in Norfolk. The patients had medical sensors hooked up to them, transmitting data to the doctors. “In the words of the people on the programme, they essentially had their GP with them, in their pocket,” Mr McGrath explains.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14046449

by the BBC

The best strikers, defenders and midfield players in the robot football world are gathering in Istanbul. The teams and their coaches are there for the climax of the 2011 non-human soccer calendar – the RoboCup. The competition sees teams from all around the world pit their creations, be they made from bolts or bytes, against other robot teams. The 2011 tournament includes one of the UK’s first robot football teams.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14070141

By Katia Moskvitch, BBC

At the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition in London, scientists make visitors gaze in amazement as small balls vanish before their eyes. This “invisibility stand” is one of the 22 projects being presented to the public this year. Among them are special glasses that help blind people “see”, tanks to capture sunlight and the so-called “smart traffic control”. Royal Society president Sir Paul Nurse told BBC News that the exhibition was a showcase not only for British science, but for the society in general.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14084051

by the BBC

A pair of glasses that can help blind people ‘see’ things has been developed by British scientists. It works with the help of two small cameras hidden in the glasses frame, which are connected to a mini computer. Every time the cameras spot an object, the computer lights up loads of tiny LEDs stuck onto the lenses. The bright lights tell the wearer something is nearby, so they can avoid obstacles and find their way around. A team from the University of Oxford is showing off the invention at this year’s Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/14066269

By Clint Boulton, eWeek

Perhaps one of the worst-kept secrets in the high-tech world today is that Amazon.com, the lord of e-commerce, is building a tablet. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos even told Consumer Reports to “stay tuned” when asked if there was an Amazon device other than a Kindle coming down the pike. Of course, there have been no official confirmations, and gadget blogs are surprisingly in the dark and confined to guesswork on this front. The current rumors have Samsung building the device(s) for Amazon, powering it with Nvidia Kal-el quad-core processors. We don’t claim to know better, but considering that Amazon reportedly will launch the tablet(s) later this year, we need to start figuring these things out. Bezos told Amazon’s shareholders June 7: “Most of our customers shop with us from desktop or laptop computers, but people have a different posture with tablets. They lean back on their sofa. People leaning back on their sofa, buying things from Amazon is another tailwind for our business, so I’m very excited about that.”

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/An-Amazon-Android-Tablet-as-iPad-Rival-10-Burning-Questions-297081/

By Don Reisinger, eWeek

A new study from Pew Research reveals that the number of people who bought e-readers over the last several months easily outpaced those who opted for tablets. The research firm’s findings have helped stoke flames that suggest the future of mobile reading might be done on e-readers, rather than on tablets, as some have forecast. However, when it comes to choosing between a tablet and e-reader, it’s hard to choose the latter when all the devices’ features are taken into account. Tablets, like Apple’s iPad 2 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, boast far more functionality than their counterparts.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Tablets-Are-a-Smarter-Buy-Than-EReaders-10-Reasons-Why-575325/

By Dan Whitworth, BBC Newsbeat

The number of illegally downloaded films in the UK has gone up nearly 30% in five years, new figures suggest. That research, from internet consultancy firm Envisional, indicates that the top five box office movies were illegally downloaded in the UK a total of 1.4 million times last year. Film industry bosses say it is costing £170m every year and putting thousands of jobs at risk. The research also shows a big rise in TV shows being pirated online. Dr David Price led the the team which conducted the research and said there are four main reasons for the increase.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/14029865

by CHRISTOPHER MIMS, Technology Review

Thousands of people all over the world have spent the past 15 years making millions by scalping web domains that people who might put them to legitimate use would otherwise be able to register for less than $10 at their favorite domain registrar. Now ICANN, the Internet’s ruling body, is going to allow anyone to create a new Top Level Domain, potentially exploding the amount of internet real estate available to us all.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26976/?p1=blogs

by Tom Simonite, Technology Review

As soon as it became public knowledge, Google+ was made available to all Google employees, selected journalists and a few others. The service has been slowly rolling out to more users of Gmail, but there’s no sign yet of the doors being thrown wide open. On a handful of occasions it has become possible for existing users to invite others in and every time those invites have become available has resulted in what the engineering director for Google+ called “incredible demand”. Brands are eager to use it too, with many defying a clause in the terms of use requiring users to be real people and creating their own pages. Google says dedicated profiles for companies are coming soon.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/26981/?p1=blogs