Techno-News Blog

By Jason Brooks, eWeek

Chatter over an enterprise apps showdown between Google and Microsoft has gone on for years now, but it wasn’t until the general availability release of Microsoft’s Office 365 service, earlier this month, that the competition began in earnest. Despite the focus of many on Office-type productivity applications, at the heart of the Office 365-Google Apps rivalry is hosted messaging. With both services performing their core email and calendaring tasks well, the choice of which service that best fits your organization boils down to cost, cloud vs. on-premises deployment needs and client access options.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Cloud-Computing/Office-365-and-Google-Apps-Vie-to-Control-Messaging-in-the-Cloud-787888/?kc=rss

By: Clint Boulton, eWeek

Google follows new Facebook privacy controls with options to ignore and block users at a time when the social media noise is building on the nascent network. A few days after Facebook added more granular privacy features for its vast network of nearly 800 million users, Google+ has added two more grains of private sharing: the “ignore” and “block” options. Ignore means users will see less of what a person is sharing. The new block option limits the ways a person can interact with what a Google+ user is sharing, as Google+ software engineer Olga Wichrowska explained in this video. Both are designed to curb some of the social media clutter on Google+.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Google-Lets-Users-Ignore-Block-Other-Users-430163/?kc=rss

By: Nicholas Kolakowski, eWeek

It’s becoming an all-touch-screen world, at least when it comes to smartphones. That’s the prediction of a new report from ABI Research, which suggests that 97 percent of all smartphones will feature touch-screens by 2016. Compare that to the 7 percent of touch-screen-equipped smartphones in 2006, and you have some idea of the incredible popularity behind the form factor. “It was the evolution of screen and touch technologies that triggered the [smartphone] market’s rapid growth,” claimed a note accompanying the Aug. 26 report. “The more economical resistive touch technology has been almost universally replaced in smartphones with the more elegant projected capacitive technology that was first introduced in mobile phones through the iPhone.”

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Smartphones-With-Touchscreens-Set-to-Dominate-Market-115461/?kc=rss

By Dennis Carter, eCampus News

The Apple iPad’s reign as higher education’s computer tablet of choice might be put to the test as Seton Hall University announced a pilot program that will put Android-based tablets—the iPad’s main rival—in the hands of 350 students and faculty members. Officials at the South Orange, N.J., campus announced the pilot initiative Aug. 23, just a day after the Lenovo ThinkPad tablets began shipping to business customers worldwide. The multi-touch 10.1-inch Lenovo tablet features one gigabyte (GB) of memory, 64GB of internal storage, cameras on the front and back, along with Wi-Fi access and a 3G connection.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/ipad-beware-android-tablets-gain-foothold-in-higher-education/

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN, Wall Street Journal

For people used to working in an office stocked with various tech tools and gadgets, starting up a solo enterprise may mean having to face a painful reality. From computers and high-speed Internet to off-the-shelf software and customized programs, technology is often a pricey prerequisite for getting a new business up and running. “You don’t have to get the latest and greatest, but you don’t want to buy the cheapest products either,” says Ramon Ray, editor of tech website Smallbiztechnology.com. Choosing the right kind of hardware and software can be tough, especially if you’re limited to a shoestring budget. Entrepreneurs typically must consider how tech-savvy they are, whether different products and brands can interact with one another and what the future of the company might demand, among other factors.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576535242686107386.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

By Kristina Grifantini

Stretchable electronics promise video displays that could be rolled up and tucked into a shirt pocket, or cell phones that could swell or shrink. Electronic sheets that could be draped like cloth would be a boon for robotic skin and embedded medical devices. Now engineers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have taken a step toward these handy electronics by creating the first fully stretchable organic light-emitting diode (OLED). Previously, researchers had only been able to create devices that are bendable but can’t stretch, or stretchable pieces that connect smaller, rigid LEDs.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/38439/?p1=A2