Techno-News Blog

by Sean Coughlan, BBC

Children who cannot use a mouse or keyboard can play computer games using their eyes Computer games which can be controlled by eye movements are being developed by researchers at a UK university. The project at De Montfort University aims to allow severely-disabled youngsters to play computer games. Learning to control games by eye tracking is also intended to help disabled children navigate real-world environments. Eye control “adds a whole new level of intelligence to games”, says research leader Stephen Vickers. The use of eye tracking as a way of interacting with devices has been explored for a number of years, says Dr Vickers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17179405

By: Nathan Eddy eWeek

Microsoft launched the Windows 8 consumer preview—the next milestone of the Windows operating system, to the press at Mobile World Congress in a two-hour presentation in which Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows division, joined by other Microsoft executives, provided demonstrations of the touch interface and how the operating system functioned on a number of devices, including tablets, desktop PCs and notebooks, as well as next-generation Ultrabooks. The emphasis was on the “fast and fluid” nature of the interface, which uses the four corners of a notebook’s screen to go from an application back to the “start” screen (bottom left) zoom (bottom right) switch between multiple applications (top left) or sharing functions (top right). “With a mouse, you get a precise pointing device, but it is not great for gestures,” explained vice president of Windows Web services

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Applications/Microsoft-Windows-8-Features-Fast-Fluid-UI-MWC-854917/?kc=rss

by the BBC

The Raspberry Pi is a bare-bones, low-cost computer created by volunteers mostly drawn from academia and the UK tech industry. Sold uncased without keyboard or monitor, the Pi has drawn interest from educators and enthusiasts. Supporters hope the machines could help reverse a lack of programming skills in the UK. “It has been six years in the making; the number of things that had to go right for this to happen is enormous. I couldn’t be more pleased,” said Eben Upton of the Raspberry Pi Foundation which is based in Cambridge.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17190918

BY MIGUEL RODRIGUEZ, Media Tapper

Circle Count is a tool that has been with us Plussers since the beginning of time (Google Plus time that is). It is the benchmark on popularity by numbers of sharers that use the API’s provided by Google to create its lists. But did you know that it also offers you other tools to help you analyze and improve your posting behavior?

http://mediatapper.com/taking-advantage-of-circle-count-features/

by JON RUSSELL, the Next Web

Last week Web-calling giant Skype announced a new record as it saw 32 million people using it at the same time. That record has already been surpassed after the Microsoft-owned service recorded 34 million users online concurrently at peak on Monday. Though the figure is some way short of the active user bases of Twitter (100 million per month, as of last year) and Facebook (766 million per month and 60 million to mobile apps) Skype’s number is impressive as it is represents real-time usage. In a post on the Skype blog, social media director and blogger-in-chief Jennifer Caukin speculates what might have seen last week’s record surpassed so quickly:

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/02/28/another-week-another-record-as-skype-sees-34-million-users-online-at-the-same-time/

by MARTIN BRYANT, the Next Web

At Mobile World Congress today, Facebook has announced a new initiative aimed at making life easier for mobile Web app developers. The W3C Mobile Web Platform Core Community Group is a consortium of over 30 device manufacturers, carriers, and developers grouping together to standardize mobile browsers. As Facebook notes in its announcement today, “For developers, this makes it easier to understand your app’s potential reach and to help prioritize which browser capabilities are important to you.” Meanwhile, Facebook is also launching Ringmark, a new mobile browser test suite. This is available from today and the W3C Mobile Web Platform Core Community Group will be able to build upon it. It’s designed to help developers understand which mobile browsers support the functionality their apps need.

http://thenextweb.com/mwc/2012/02/27/facebook-backs-new-industry-effort-to-tackle-mobile-browser-fragmentation-with-new-standards-for-apps/

By Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Ed

For students in South Africa, mobile phones aren’t just for texting. They’re often the surest route to the Internet, especially for the many who have little or no reliable computer access off campus. And, as in much of Africa, cellphones are ubiquitous. A 2007 study found that 98.5 percent of the country’s university students had one. Laura Czerniewicz thinks a lot about how students really use those phones in a higher-education setting. She’s an associate professor of education at the University of Cape Town and the founding director of the Centre for Educational Technology. Ms. Czerniewicz used to work in commercial publishing. She made the jump to higher education in part to figure out fresh ways to get content to people who need it. She now heads the OpenUCT Initiative, which makes Cape Town research and teaching and learning resources openly available online.

http://chronicle.com/article/Technology-Director-Turns/130937/

by PAUL SAWERS, the Next Web

The Next Web is out and about at Mobile World Congress this week, and at the Showstoppers event tonight we met some of the tech companies looking to make a name for themselves at this year’s flagship mobile industry event in Barcelona. One of these companies was HzO, which was demoing its neat ‘invisible coating’ which protects a gadget’s components, essentially letting you completely submerge, say, your iPhone underwater.

http://thenextweb.com/mwc/2012/02/26/check-out-these-smartphones-underwater-for-over-90-minutes-and-still-working-video/

by Alex Wilhelm, the Next Web

Internet Explorer 9 is a quantum step over every previous IE edition. More specifically, it renders webpages quickly and accurately enough that you can move from Chrome or Firefox, and not find yourself in trouble. This is not true of Internet Explorer 8; of the entire Internet Explorer franchise, only Internet Explorer 9 is not a vivid pain to use. Through my week, only a very few times was something rendered so incorrectly on a web site that I would call it broken; I did have a few issues in Google Analytics, for example, which is perhaps not too surprising. I had expected a great deal more issues of this sort. My largest complaints with Internet Explorer 9 are its relatively lengthy boot time, its tab structure, and that it feels a mite sluggish when compared to Chrome 17 and 18. Those are, however, smaller issues. The days of Internet Explorer being a foe of the web are all but over.

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/02/26/one-week-with-ie9-a-firsthand-look-at-microsofts-browser/

by JON RUSSELL, the Next Web

Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo has beaten Apple’s Siri to supporting Japanese with plans to release its own Siri-like voice-activated service for its smartphone-wielding customers in the country from March 1. Apple is rumored to be bringing support for Japanese, and a number of other languages including Chinese, to its virtual personal assistant for the iPhone 4S next month, as Siri herself even admits. However, in the meantime, DoCoMo has jumped in first and today it launched its Shabette Concier service. DoCoMo does not carry the iPhone in Japan, as talks with Apple hit a number of issues, and the service is its attempt to rival the functionality that iPhone carriers Softbank and KDDI will offer when Siri gets Japanese support.

http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/02/27/operator-docomo-launches-siri-like-service-for-non-iphones-beats-apple-to-supporting-japanese/

by JON RUSSELL, the Next Web

Norwegian Internet firm Opera has introduced Opera Mini Next, a new mobile Web browser aimed at giving feature phone users a more social Internet experience. Unveiled at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, Opera Mini Next — which is a developer beta of its popular Opera Mini browser — includes ‘Smart Page’, a new tab which gives fast and easy access to social networks from the browser home screen. The company says that the new feature will be rolled out across the entire range of Opera Mini browsers later this year, but it is first coming to the new open beta browser. Like its Speed Dial shortcuts feature — which allows easy access bookmarks — the Smart Page sits on the browser’s launch screen, giving feature phone owners faster and smarter access to Twitter, Facebook, news sources and other services.

http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/02/27/opera-brings-a-more-social-web-experience-to-feature-phones-with-opera-mobile-next/

by NANCY MESSIEH, the Next Web

It’s not at all surprising that open-source champion Mozilla has just announced a partnership which will bring about a platform to end all platforms. Teaming up with telecommunications operator, Telefónica, the pair aim to create a more open Web experience that users can take with them on the go. Mozilla’s Open Web Devices (OWD) aims to provide a consistent experience across platforms, at a fraction of the cost for the end-user, in comparison to currently available smartphone operating systems. The platform is a part of Mozilla’s Boot to Gecko project, which was first announced last July. Using only Web-based technology, which capitalizes on the openness of HTML5, Mozilla is bringing smartphone features at mass market prices.

http://thenextweb.com/mwc/2012/02/27/mozillas-html5-based-open-web-devices-will-gives-users-a-smartphone-experience-at-feature-phone-costs/

by Catherine Armitage, the Age

Their titles will be as wacky to us as ”software developer” must once have been to a baby boomer. Try making sense of a ”virtchandise manager”, an ”outcome aggregator”, a ”data evangelist” or even a ”sensemaking analyst”, for starters.  A quick scan of the online recruitment sites confirms the future is already here. New jobs are spawning faster than we have language to describe them. Firms are looking for ”cloud transformation officers” to shift their data storage off site into the cyberspace ”cloud”. Standard job titles are getting so complex – at least three words is de rigueur – that the personal brand-focused Facebook generation is abandoning convention for something more catchy.

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/call-in-the-sensemaker-the-future-isnt-working-20120224-1tti2.html

By Nicole Casal Moore, Physorg

“In such top-of-the-line processor cores, saving any amount of power without sacrificing performance has been unthinkable up until now. And with multiple such cores used in each computer chip, total power savings can be quite substantial,” said Marios Papaefthymiou, chair of computer science and engineering at U-M. Papaefthymiou is one of the developers of the technology, as well as co-founder and president of Cyclos. For consumers, this savings will translate into improvements in performance, price, and battery life, the researchers say. For operators of large farms of computer servers, it could save hundreds of kilowatts and reduce electricity bills. In the longer term, more aggressive versions of the technology could revolutionize chip design and enable overdue advances in performance, Papaefthymiou said.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-energy-recycling-technology-um-global-amd.html

by Giulia Rhodes, the Guardian

Cambridge University’s Autism Research Centre is now running a study investigating the previously established link between parents working in hi-tech, scientific and mathematical industries and an increased incidence of children on the autism spectrum. The National Autistic Society reports in its latest member’s magazine that the number of software packages and apps designed specifically for people with autism is rocketing. IT companies in the UK and beyond are actively recruiting an autistic workforce for its highly technical and concentration skills. The relationship between computers and autism is undisputed – and double-edged. Many autism experts agree with Temple Grandin, an author and professor at Colorado State University, herself autistic, who believes that without “the gifts of autism” there would probably be no Nasa or IT industry. Yet the high-profile cases of Gary McKinnon and Ryan Cleary, both of whom have Asperger’s syndrome, are just two examples of how that relationship can go wrong.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/26/computer-geeks-autism

by Edward Moyer, CNET news.com

If you bought a laptop, computer monitor, or TV with a flat-panel LCD display between 1999 and 2006, you could be eligible for a damages payment under a class-action lawsuit. If you bought a laptop, computer monitor, or television with a flat-panel LCD display between 1999 and 2006, and you live in one of the affected states, you could be eligible for a damages payment under a half-billion-dollar settlement of a class-action lawsuit involving price-fixing. The California attorney general’s office issued a statement this week urging residents of the state to visit a new class-action Web site–lcdclass.com–for information on how to file a claim.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57385221-38/buy-laptop-tv-monitor-a-while-back-you-may-be-owed-money/

by Ben Parr, CNET news.com

A few days ago, an aspiring entrepreneur e-mailed me with a simple question: “Do you need to be an expert in coding to build a successful startup, or can you employ experts to do the technical work for you?” This person has demonstrated success as a businessman and a salesman, but he caught the entrepreneurship bug and couldn’t shake it. He wanted to start his own company. I knew what he wanted to hear: You don’t need to know how to code to start an Internet business! It can and has been done! Instead, this is what I told him: “You have to code, not because you need to be good at it, but because technical employees are far more likely to follow a founder with technical experience.”

http://news.cnet.com/8301-33617_3-57384845-276/why-business-co-founders-ought-to-learn-code/

by Steven Musil, CNET news.com

Facebook is being accused of snooping on its users’ text messages, but the social network says the accusations are inaccurate and misleading. The company is among a wide-ranging group of Web entities, including Flickr and YouTube, that are using smartphone apps to access text message data and other personal information, according to a Sunday Times report (behind a paywall). The newspaper said Facebook “admitted” to reading users’ text messages during a test of its own messaging service. The report also says information such as user location, contacts list, and browser history are often accessed and sometimes transmitted to third-party companies, including advertisers. Facebook representatives did not immediately respond to a CNET request for comment, but the company told the Business Insider that the Sunday Times report was “completely wrong.”

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57385429-83/facebook-denies-accessing-users-text-messages/

by Chris Matyszczyk, CNET news.com

There are certain words that online scammers use to suck the unsuspecting into their scams. “Acai” is one. “Mango” is another. A new study also suggests that Americans are generally more susceptible to scams than they’ll admit. At some point in every one of our days, we are moved by particular words. We hear the word “love” directed at us and we melt. We hear “downsizing” and we shiver. And when someone says “Idol,” for many what appears (at least this week) is the image of a 63-year-old rock star. But what does the word “mango” do when you see or hear it? How about “acai”?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57385153-71/why-the-word-mango-might-spell-trouble-online/?tag=mncol;cnetRiver

by Michelle Meyers, CNET news.com

Photo-sharing site Flickr has added Pinterest’s new opt-out code to all Flickr pages with copyrighted or protected images, according to a VentureBeat story published Friday night. Yahoo-owned Flickr did not immediately return an e-mail seeking confirmation on the move, but the site reportedly told VentureBeat that the code appears on all “non-public/non-safe pages, as well as when a member has disabled sharing of their Flickr content…. This means only content that is ‘safe,’ ‘public,’ and has the sharing button enabled can be pinned to Pinterest.” The virtual pinboard site, which is still in private beta, has grown at breakneck speed. And with that growth has come concerns about copyright violation. That led Pinterest earlier this week to release opt-out code that tells pinners: “This site doesn’t allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!”

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57385046-93/flickr-adds-pinterest-opt-out-code-to-copyrighted-photos/

by Larry Downes, CNET news.com

With new legislation authorizing incentive spectrum auctions, it’s tempting to think the crisis in mobile broadband has been avoided. But it will take at least 10 years to put new spectrum to work, and the FCC’s own estimate is that we have only three years left before hitting the wall. With the passage last week of legislation authorizing the FCC to conduct new spectrum auctions, you might think that the looming spectrum crisis has been averted. Nothing could be farther from the truth–or more dangerous to the continued health of the mobile ecosystem. To avoid severe service interruptions or outright collapse of mobile networks, the FCC’s 2010 National Broadband Plan estimated that mobile users will need an additional 300MHz of spectrum by 2015 and an additional 500 MHz by 2020. Many industry insiders believe these estimates are actually low.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57385202-94/averting-a-spectrum-disaster-now-for-the-hard-part/