Techno-News Blog

by Darryl K. Taft, eWeek

According to SEO expert firm BrightEdge, Websites with Twitter share buttons get seven times more social exposure than sites that do not. BrightEdge, provider of an enterprise-class SEO platform that helps brands rise above the increasing clutter of the Web, said a first-of-its-kind, in-depth analysis of more than four million tweets shows pages that display Twitter share buttons get seven times the social media mentions than sites that do not.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Web-Services-Web-20-and-SOA/Twitter-Share-Button-Drives-7-Times-More-Exposure-BrightEdge-420123/?kc=rss

By: Fahmida Y. Rashid, eWeek

Nearly 99 percent of enterprise-level networks have a serious gap in their IT security defenses enabling advanced malware to easily slip through, according to FireEye. Successful attacks typically exploit zero-day vulnerabilities and frequently change the attacking domains and code binaries to avoid detection, according to a new FireEye report. About 80 percent of enterprises in the report were hit with more than 100 new infections per week in the first half of 2011, according to a report from FireEye Malware Intelligence Lab released Aug. 31. If that number wasn’t high enough, 98.5 percent of enterprises have at least 10 infections a week, the report found. Malware authors tend to employ dynamic “zero-day” tactics to exploit vulnerabilities no one else knows about and can’t defend against. Even so, 94 percent of malicious binaries are being “morphed” or modified within 24 hours of releasing them to stay undetected by security tools. The attackers also change the malicious domains hosting the malware within hours.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Advanced-Malware-Targeted-Attacks-Compromise-Enterprises-via-Security-Gap-622155/?kc=rss

By: Nicholas Kolakowski, eWeek

How will Microsoft’s Windows 8 match up against Apple’s Mac OS X? Certainly, both operating systems are reflections of their respective companies’ evolving needs and philosophies. In the case of Windows 8, widely expected to be released in 2012, Microsoft finds itself confronted with two considerable tasks: convince a billion-strong user base that it needs to upgrade so soon after Windows 7, and make inroads into the tablet and mobility markets. For Apple, the ultimate goal seems to be bringing Mac OS X more in line with iOS, which powers the iPad and iPhone—in the process, emphasizing Apple’s self-focus as a mobility-tech company.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Applications/Windows-8-Mac-OS-X-Lion-Show-Apple-Microsoft-Philosophies-441530/?kc=rss

David Zax, Technology Review

Rumor has it that Apple’s working on a TV set, one that might run a variant of the iOS operating system. But does it make sense? Apple has long been in the set-top box market; you can already buy Apple TV for $99. But would Apple ever manufacture a set of its own? Apple, after all, has been trending upwards where screen size is concerned. The iPhone swelled to the size of the iPad. Could the iPad now grow into the iTV? VentureBeat thinks it’s “almost certain” that Apple is already working on a device, citing “multiple sources in Silicon Valley.” A venture capitalist who used to be on TiVo’s board, Stewart Alsop, thinks it’s a likelihood, and even predicts a 2012 launch date.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/helloworld/27117/?p1=blogs

by David Zax, Technology Review

In the age of the iPad, why should we rely on the same old slideshows? We shouldn’t. How does it work? It takes the metaphor of aviation, with one pilot and a series of passengers. (Okay, it might be a bit hokey to imagine a meeting as a “flight through ideas,” but the metaphor works, as you’ll see.) The pilot boots up her presentation on her iPad; any PDF file is fair game. Up to 15 passengers–the presentation’s audience–check in on their own iPads via WiFi or Bluetooth. Now the pilot steers the presentation. She swipes over to the next slide, and the action is replicated automatically on the passengers’ screens. She zooms in, and their iPads zoom in as well. They’re along for the ride. As one of the developers said at the Tech Meetup: “It literally keeps everyone on the same page.”

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/helloworld/27127/?p1=blogs

So you got one of those $99 TouchPads. Congratulations.  But wait. You just bought a tablet belonging to an ecosystem that is, if not outright dying, then at least obsolescent. The manufacturer has all but pulled the plug on that ecosystem–at least as far as smartphones and tablets are concerned.  What if you want that tablet to last you a couple years? What if you want to put new apps on it? Teams of coders are coming to the rescue. Or at least, they’re trying to. They call themselves “Touchdroid,” and they’re a group of Android enthusiasts. They’re working on porting the Android system over to TouchPads, and if they succeed, you should be able to get a longer useful life out of that HP device you just bought. The team is led by a fellow named Thomas Sohmers, a self-professed “geek, inventor, and entrepreneur.”

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/helloworld/27125/?p1=blogs

By Prachi Patel, Technology Review

A microfluidics approach could be ideal for harnessing electricity from footsteps. A new way to harvest footfall energy could someday let shoes generate enough power to keep cell phones and laptops topped up. University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have come up with a microfluidics technique that scavenges considerably more energy from human footfalls and converts it into electric power. Previous attempts to make energy-harvesting shoes have yielded less than a watt of power, but the new approach could lead to a shoe-mounted generator that produces up to 10 watts, says Tom Krupenkin, a mechanical engineering professor who led the work.

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/38469/?p1=A6

By Tom Simonite, Technology Review

Enabling software to punt its toughest tasks to humans should result in smarter mobile apps and other programs, say the founders of the newly launched company MobileWorks. The startup makes it possible for programmers to build human intelligence into their software using crowdsourcing—the practice of parceling out relatively small parts of a larger problem to many different people over the Web. Sites such as Amazon Mechanical Turk already provide a place to post tasks to be solved by a crowd of anonymous workers, paid small amounts for each task they complete. But Anand Kulkarni, one of MobileWorks’s three founders, says that Amazon’s service and others are too inaccurate and slow to be built into software that needs to solve problems with a quick turnaround.

http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/38447/?p1=A4&a=f

By Tom Simonite, Technology Review

Connecting the two could make it possible to perform complex calculations that are far beyond the power of conventional computers. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, have become the first to combine a quantum processor with memory that can be used to store instructions and data. This achievement in quantum computing replicates a similar milestone in conventional computer design from the 1940s.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/38495/?p1=A3

by the BBC

The partners say they expect the market for small and medium-sized LCDs to grow rapidly. Hitachi, Sony and Toshiba are planning a joint venture to make small and medium-sized LCD displays for tablet PCs and smartphones. They will use money from the Japanese government to help them compete with rivals from Taiwan and South Korea. They have hesitated to invest in the LCD business because of expectations that prices are likely to fall. The company will be operated by Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), a government-backed firm.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14727594

By Caroline McClatchey & Simon Bajkowski, BBC News

It is at once a thing of delicate beauty and robust science. Encased in its own glass world, a miniature laboratory keeps a tiny thread of tungsten burning brightly. There is even a touch of romance in its soft flare, as it casts a painterly glow over the room and the faces of its occupants. The 60W has long been the bulb of choice for the modestly-sized rooms in the typical British home. But this very domestic species will be put on the endangered list on Thursday 1 September, when an EU-wide ban on the manufacturing and importing of 60W incandescent clear light bulbs comes into force. Customers will still be able to get hold of a 60W bulb but once stocks run out, it will go the same way as candlelight and gaslight before it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14715301

by the BBC

Almost half of UK internet users are going online via mobile phone data connections, according to the Office for National Statistics. Some 45% of people surveyed said they made use of the net while out and about, compared with 31% in 2010. The most rapid growth was among younger people, where 71% of internet-connected 16 to 24-year-olds used mobiles. Domestic internet use also rose. According to the ONS, 77% of households now have access to a net connection.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14731757

By Nathan Eddy, eWeek

It’s that time of year again, when the lazy days of summer recede into memory and it becomes time to crack the books back open and settle down into the school year. Just how many books you’ll actually physically be carrying is up for debate, though, as e-readers and tablets start to enter more prominently onto college campuses and into lesson plan formats. Now more than ever, college students have an abundance of gadgets to suit their studies—or distract them from what they should be doing. In an increasingly digital world, connectivity to the Internet is a must-have capability for many students, as well as the ability to easily pick up their devices and carry them around without taking up lots of space. And of course, no college student wants to lug around something that isn’t hip. Whether it’s a notebook, smartphone or even an external hard drive, the “cool factor” is never far from their minds.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Midmarket/10-MustHave-Gadgets-for-Back-to-School-436825/?kc=rss

By: Nicholas Kolakowski, eWeek

Apple may have lost an iPhone prototype in a California bar, in a bizarre repeat of an incident from last year. Oops. In a bizarre repeat of a similar incident last year, an Apple employee apparently lost an iPhone prototype in a Northern California bar, sparking a frenzied hunt by Apple investigators and San Francisco police. “Apple electronically traced the phone to a two-floor, single-family home in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood,” but failed to find the device, according to CNET. CNET quoted an unnamed “source familiar with the investigation” in reporting the story.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Apple-iPhone-5-Prototype-Maybe-Lost-In-Bar-218212/?kc=rss

 By Chris Preimesberger, eWeek

Data recovery specialist Kroll Ontrack advises some of the world’s largest and most successful companies on best practices for protecting and backing up their data. Through its Ontrack Data Recovery products and services, the Minneapolis-based company uses hundreds of proprietary tools and techniques to help businesses and consumers recover lost or corrupted data from all types of operating systems, devices and storage media. As part of its daily work, the company comes across many different data-loss predicaments that probably could have been circumvented with a little more planning and follow-through. Also, the company sees a lot of the same problems happening over and over again. Based on that experience, Kroll has developed a list of the Top 10 ways an organization can and will lose its data. These “tips” are designed to get organizations thinking about the varied ways they can lose data to help inspire them to take steps to prevent it.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Data-Storage/Top-10-Most-Common-Mistakes-That-Cause-Enterprises-to-Lose-Data-690655/?kc=rss

by Christopher Mims, Technology Review

The struggle to make computers usable for the everyday user is done. Finis. Kaput. My toddler can’t even string two words together and he can already navigate YouTube on an iPad. We can all see where this is going: Apple won, the command line lost, and the future of computing will be molded to our needs, not the other way around. Jobs did it. It’s important to understand that Jobs, Gates and all the other geniuses of their era — the time spanning the birth of personal computers as a hobby to the present, which is shorter than a single human life — weren’t merely exceptional. They also lived at an exceptional time, and so had the chance to create opportunities for themselves on the ground floor of what would become the world’s most transformative industry. Looking around, what problem, what opportunity in any way resembles the earliest era of the PC? There’s only one: energy.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27121/?p1=blogs

by Tom Simonite, Technology Review

A new social network, called Jig, aims to be a place where users do more than just share personal news or play games. It’s a hangout where they can help solve one another’s problems. Jig was founded by Joshua Schachter, the creator of the social bookmarking site Del.icio.us, which in the early 2000s popularized the idea of tagging, as well as the notion of publicly sharing links people found interesting. Schachter’s new site is pitched as halfway between a social network and a marketplace for advice and help, whether restaurant recommendation or diet tips. The Jig homepage greets users with a blank, one-line text box prefaced by the words “I need.” Once a person types in their want, their entry is added to the site’s list of “recent needs” for other users to view and, if they’re feeling helpful, address.

http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/38462/?p1=A2&a=f

 by Simson Garfinkel, Technology Review

Our possessions define us. Yet today the definition of possession itself is shifting, thanks to cloud services that store some things we hold dear on distant Internet servers. When those belongings reside in Netflix’s video service, Amazon’s Kindle bookstore, or Apple’s coming iCloud service, they become impossible to misplace, and easier to organize and access than before. They also gain new powers over us, and slip free of powers we once held over them—powers that have shaped our thinking and behavior for centuries. One consequence is to give the companies that provide cloud services tremendous amounts of unchecked control over these possessions. In some cases, that control has already been abused. Despite the supposed revolution wrought by digitization, mass computing has until now left the fundamental nature of our possessions untouched. Collections of content have adorned the shelves and walls of our homes, schools, and courts since the Enlightenment. Nearly all of us (who are old enough) collected vinyl records in the 1970s, videotapes in the ’80s, CDs in the ’90s, and DVDs in the ’00s. Digitization simply morphed our urge to collect atoms into a thirst for curating bits, piled up on home computers.

http://www.technologyreview.com/web/38391/?p1=featured

By MATT RICHTEL, NY Times

What do app developers think of Google’s union with Motorola? Boink. That’s the name of a mobile dating app developed by Medl Mobile in Orange County, Calif. The app allows two people who each have downloaded Boink to tap their phones together and share personal information about their dating preferences. But Boink has its challenges — at least when it comes to making the app work on Android phones. That’s because Android runs on many kinds of phones, from companies like HTC, Samsung and Motorola, that in many instances must be programmed slightly differently.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/app-makers-like-the-sound-of-googorola/

By NICK BILTON, NY Times

Hurricane Irene, which was traveling at a leisurely 13 miles per hour, took its sweet time arriving in New York. As boredom quickly set in for many, Twitter became a massive chatroom of New Yorkers with nothing to do but tweet, retweet and tweet some more, from their homes. It seems everyone joined in. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg preached caution on his Twitter feed. News outlets used Twitter as a reporter’s notepad, sharing every aspect of the storm’s movement, wind gusts and damage. “Just lost power in Brooklyn…. on my ipad. It’s ok recharging now,” wrote Michael Milberger, an ABC News producer.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/twitter-becomes-adult-playground-during-hurricane-irene/

By Bill Thompson, by the BBC

During June and July 2001, I helped some friends in the BBC’s radio science unit with ‘Go Digital’, a new technology programme that had been commissioned by the BBC World Service for their English language service, where it would sit with programmes on health and science as part of the broader non-news coverage. Working with Tracey Logan, the presenter, we made some pilot programmes that were not intended to be broadcast. Fine-tuning the balance of packages, presenter introductions and conversation with the ‘studio expert’ or ‘presenter’s friend’ who was supposed to turn up each week and offer commentary, background information and – where necessary – a translation of any obscure technical terminology from the interviews and reports that made up the bulk of the show.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9571863.stm