Techno-News Blog

By STEVE LOHR, New York Times

Microsoft’s assault on Google in Internet search and search advertising may be the steepest competitive challenge in business today. It is certainly among the most costly. Trying to go head-to-head with Google costs Microsoft upward of $5 billion a year, industry executives and analysts estimate. Microsoft has gained some ground. Its Bing search site has steadily picked up traffic since its introduction two years ago, accounting for more than 14 percent of searches in the American market, according to comScore. Add the searches that Microsoft handles for Yahoo, in a partnership begun last year, and Microsoft’s search technology fields 30 percent of the total.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/technology/with-the-bing-search-engine-microsoft-plays-the-underdog.html?_r=1&ref=technology

by James Harpur, Sydney Morning Herald

A professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Chris Dede, argues there are three core challenges facing schools: shifts in the knowledge and skills society values, development of new methods of teaching and learning, and changes in the characteristics of learners. To put it another way, students are increasingly learning differently, teachers are teaching differently and society wants different skills. The common link between the three is the impact of emerging technology. New technology is causing us to think and act in new ways. One would imagine, then, that coming to terms with emerging technology might lie at the centre of new curriculum Sadly, instead of the educational transformation that many of us hoped would be engendered by a national curriculum, educators are faced with core curriculums that hark back to 20th-century educational beliefs.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/new-technology-yet-we-tread-the-same-old-path-20110731-1i6aw.html

by Laura Englehart, Dayton Business Journal

As students head back to college in coming months, they will bring with them the latest technology, including Android phones and iPads. But their personal devices are just part of the high-tech world of collegiate education. Rapid industry changes have forced universities to abandon previous teaching methods and evolve their classrooms to better relate to students.

http://www.bizjournals.com/dayton/news/2011/07/31/technology-invades-college-campuses.html

by Michael Santo, Tech Buzz Examiner

A new report outlines a technology available that can track a user, and there’s nothing a user can do about it, aside from avoiding the site. The technology comes from a company named KISSmetrics. A study was released on Friday by a team of UC Berkeley privacy researchers. Noted privacy researcher Ashkan Soltani, part of the team, said, “The stuff works even if you have all cookies blocked and private-browsing mode enabled. The code itself is pretty damning.”

http://www.examiner.com/technology-in-national/new-tracking-technology-bypasses-incognito-mode-browser-cookie-deletion

by Don Reisinger, CNet news.com

According to the SEO by the Sea blog, which first reported the purchase, Google bought patents that stretch across several different markets, including one for “Web-based querying” and another for the “fabrication and architecture of memory and microprocessing chips.” Google’s newly acquired patents also relate to servers and routers, The Wall Street Journal reported. The price tag for the patents hasn’t been publicly disclosed. Google’s acquisition of IBM’s patents is a consolation prize for the search giant. Late last month, Apple, Microsoft, Research In Motion, and a few other companies announced that they had acquired 6,000 patents and patent applications from bankrupt telecom-equipment company Nortel Networks. Google had initially offered $900 million for that patent portfolio.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20085418-17/google-acquires-over-1000-ibm-patents/?tag=topTechContentWrap;editorPicks

by Declan McCullagh, CNet news.com

Microsoft has collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world and makes them available on the Web without taking the privacy precautions that competitors have, CNET has learned. The vast database available through Live.com publishes the precise geographical location, which can point to a street address and sometimes even a corner of a building, of Android phones, Apple devices, and other Wi-Fi enabled gadgets. Unlike Google and Skyhook Wireless, which have compiled similar lists of these unique Wi-Fi addresses, Microsoft has not taken any measures to curb access to its database. Google tightened controls last month in response to a June 15 CNET article, and Skyhook uses a limited form of geolocation to protect privacy.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20085028-281/microsofts-web-map-exposes-phone-pc-locations/?tag=topTechContentWrap;editorPicks

by Kent German, CNet news.com

Will the iPhone 5 resemble its predecessor, the iPhone 4?In a big change from the previous three events, Apple’s 2011 Worldwide Developers Conference didn’t reveal new iPhone hardware. Sure, attendees got details of iOS 5 at the June 6 keynote address, but true iPhone fans also left the session without any hint of what a new handset might offer or when it would arrive.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-20073431-233/iphone-5-rumor-roundup/?tag=topStories2

By: Fahmida Y. Rashid, eWeek

The latest member of the Microsoft Malware Protection Center family is open and fully operational in Germany, according to Microsoft. The new malware research facility is in Munich and will monitor threats in the region, Microsoft said July 26. The facility will be looking at both active threats as well as proactively looking for malware that may affect Windows users in the future. Microsoft selected Munich for its central location in Europe and for its proximity to various Microsoft development organizations and support centers, Tim Rains, director of product management with the Trustworthy Computing group at Microsoft, told eWEEK. The facility will also be near several of Microsoft’s “talented researchers” located in Central Europe, Rains said.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Microsoft-Malware-Protection-Center-Research-Laboratory-Opens-in-Munich-575644/?kc=rss

By Fahmida Y. Rashid, eWeek

System administrators have a difficult job. They have to keep track of what users are doing, what applications are running and what information is leaving and coming into the corporate network. Despite repeated reminders, users click on links or open suspicious attachments requiring the administrators to intervene to contain the infection and clean up the mess. If employees, even if it’s the CEO, are uploading sensitive files to Google Docs to be able to access them from home, that’s a breach to worry about. Sometimes, users are so readily convinced the problem is with the network, the computer or that a problem is due to a virus infection that they don’t bother taking simple trouble-shooting steps to see if there really is a problem at all. Kaspersky Lab passed along the following tips to eWEEK on things users can do before picking up the phone or sending an “SOS” email to that overworked system administrator. If it’s necessary to call for help, don’t hesitate, but keep in mind the following tip from the team: “Don’t follow up your ‘Help’ email with a phone call—we see it—and don’t abuse the ‘High Importance’ mark. Better yet, use the little-used ‘Low Importance’ mark.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/10-Ways-to-Give-Your-System-Administrators-a-Break-586011/?kc=rss

by Clint Boulton, eWeek

Google’s Page Speed Service works like a Web hosting service, fetching content from publishers’ servers, tweaking the pages and serving the content from its own servers. Google July 28 moved to extend its sphere of influence by offering Websites the opportunity to accelerate the loading of their Web pages by 25 percent to 60 percent. Web page loading speed is a huge deal for publishers because their visitors won’t stick around if a Website stutters while rendering content. However, some industry watchers believe this new Page Speed Service is geared to give Google more control over Websites. Here’s how Page Speed Service works. Publishers will sign in and point their Website’s DNS (domain name system) entry to Google. Page Speed Service pulls content from publishers’ servers, rewrites the pages to make them faster and serves them to users via Google’s servers.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Networking/Google-Page-Speed-Service-Raises-Eyebrows-439347/?kc=rss

by the BBC

It has launched its own operating system, Alyun OS, in a bid to capture the fast-growing Chinese market. The launch comes as sales of smartphones in China, the world’s largest mobile handset market, are expected to grow rapidly. Alibaba is one the world’s biggest internet conglomerates. The company said the operating system will feature services such as email, internet search and support web-based applications.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14337914

by the BBC

Apple has become the world’s biggest seller of smartphones, according to industry analysts. The US firm overtook both previous leader Nokia and Samsung in the second quarter of the year, when total smartphone sales hit a record 110m. The figures from Strategy Analytics also showed that 361m handsets were shipped, up 13% on the previous year. Nokia remained the biggest seller of all types of handsets, but the numbers shipped and its market share fell.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14337388

by the BBC

Apple now has more cash to spend than the United States government. Latest figures from the US Treasury Department show that the country has an operating cash balance of $73.7bn (£45.3bn). Apple’s most recent financial results put its reserves at $76.4bn. The United States is currently spending around $200bn more than it collects in revenue every month. Apple, on the other hand, is making money hand over fist, according to its financial results. In the three months ending 25 June, net income was 125% higher than a year earlier at $7.31bn.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14340470

by Tom Simonite, Technology Review

When Victor Lortz’s phone buzzes, it may not be just an e-mail or text message. He gets updates from his car, too. Anytime something hits or shakes his parked Infiniti sedan with significant enough force, an app on his smart phone lets him know, and streams live video from the vehicle. Lortz is a senior research scientist at chipmaker Intel’s research labs in Santa Clara, California. He’s working on a project that connects the electronics inside a car to the Internet, so that mobile apps can provide a car owner with updates on his vehicle when the two are apart. The system developed by Lortz and colleagues at Intel involves installing a custom circuit board with Atom mobile processors (the type used in some notebook computers). That board interfaces with the car’s electronics, and connects the car to a cloud server over a mobile network.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/38147/?p1=A5

by KFC, Technology Review

The idea is straightforward (no really!). Metamaterials can be made to behave like ordinary space with two dimensions of space and one of time. But they can also be made to behave like other types of spaces, with two dimensions of time and one of space, for example. Smolyaninov points out that an interesting situation occurs when these two materials are place end on. If a time dimension is perpendicular to a space dimension, it simply hits a dead end. In other words, time runs out. “This situation (which cannot be realized in classic general relativity) may be called the “end of time”,” he says in a paper with a couple of colleagues. Not content with merely thinking about such a scenario, these guys have gone ahead and built it using a plastic called polymethyl methacrylate or PMMA deposited in stripes onto gold film. The light takes the form of plasmons moving across the surface.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27030/?p1=blogs

by David Zax, Technology Review

How many times have you encountered this situation? You have engaged in a lengthy conversation or negotiation with a potential employer or partner, a conversation that spanned multiple devices (smartphone, tablet, laptop), a conversation that was decidedly modern, digital, virtual — a conversation that was, in a word, paperless. And then, all of a sudden, to solidify the deal you’ve hammered out, your interlocutor asks you to “simply print, sign, and fax the attached form.” Print? Sign? Fax? What is this, 1998? On Monday, Adobe Systems — frequent accomplices in this faxing frustration, since the form in question is so frequently a PDF opened in your Acrobat Reader — shined a light ahead towards the day when we can finally retire that barbaric, outmoded technology, the fax. On Monday, it announced that it had acquired EchoSign, “a leading Web-based provider of electronic signatures and signature automation.” Adobe explained that it had plans to fold in EchoSign with various Adobe services, and in so doing, saving time and money for businesses, enabling them to “significantly accelerate sales cycles.” As well as finally feel that modernity had at last arrived.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/helloworld/27011/?p1=blogs

by Kristina Bjoran, Technology Review

The collective Internet is reluctant to move on from the dying Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), according to Akamai’s newest State of the Internet quarterly report. Every piece of hardware connected to the Internet—such as Web servers, PCs, cell phones, or printers—gets a unique number assigned by this protocol, which lets devices locate and contact each other. For the past several years, we’ve been warned that IPv4 was running out of numbers. The protocol’s successor, IPv6, provides an enormous pool of new numbers, but adoption has been very slow. The official exhaustion of IPv4 came and went earlier this year, when every possible IPv4 number had been generated and allotted. Many unclaimed IPv4 addresses have clearly now been assigned; Akamai reports that there are 5.2 percent more unique IPv4 addresses in use than there were in the fourth quarter of 2010.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/27038/?p1=blogs

by Erica Naone, Technology Review

How do you show off what a browser can do? To boast about the capabilities of its Chrome browser, Google has enlisted the help of hip music-video-making phenomenon OK Go. The band generated buzz in 2006 for an innovative dance video involving treadmills, and again in 2010 for a video featuring an extraordinary Rube Goldberg machine. For its new single, “All Is Not Lost,” OK Go demonstrates the power of the Chrome Web browser through a kaleidoscopic personalized modern dance routine.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/27040/?p1=blogs

by Ada Brunstein, Technology Review

On Saturday, July 16th in lower Manhattan the sprawling red carpet in the Three Legged Dog Art and Technology Center lit up with flashes from cameras snatching shots of the evening’s stars. But the most photographed woman of the evening wasn’t a Hollywood starlet, it was Marilyn Monrobot, also known as Heather Knight, organizer of the first Robot Film Festival. And the stars weren’t just of the human variety; some of them were battery-powered. A pint-sized humanoid bot made by Aldebaran Robotics donned a flashing bow-tie as he shuffled down the red carpet.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/guest/27044/?p1=blogs

by Chris Matyszczyk, Cnet news.com

Take this fascinating new study from a Canadian psychometric consulting company called AptiQuant. Appearing to have no relationship with the cosmetics of Mary Quant, these people still seem able to create a very pretty visage; this piece of research declared that those who use Microsoft’s fine Internet Explorer browser are quite the most stupid people in the world. Or, at least the most stupid people in the world who actually use a browser. So while all you IE users hurriedly reach to download Chrome, Firefox, or Safari, please let me tell you that users of these browsers aren’t all that much smarter than the doofuses who use IE. To be precise, those who use IE6 are bigger doofuses than those who use IE7. Oddly, though, those who use IE9 are dumber than those who use IE8. Those who use IE8 are still dumber than those who use any other browser.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20085679-71/just-how-stupid-are-ie-users/?tag=cnetRiver

By: Clint Boulton, eWeek

Google’s Android operating system rose to 39 percent U.S. market share through June, up from 38 percent in May, according to Nielsen. Apple’s iOS-based iPhone is still in second place, but rose to 28 percent from 27 percent in May and 26 percent in April. While Android leads by dint of massive exposure across multiple OEMs selling handsets in the United States and all over the world, Apple remains the top smartphone maker in the United States with that 28 percent share.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Android-Hits-39-Smartphone-Share-iOS-at-28-Nielsen-809983/?kc=rss