Techno-News Blog

By: Nathan Eddy, eWeek

Ye of great faith can preorder the latest edition of the Apple iPhone through China’s biggest e-commerce Website. While the latest iteration of Apple’s iPhone smartphone, generally referred to as the iPhone 5, hasn’t even been officially announced yet, Taobao, China’s largest e-commerce site, is already offering the device for sale as a preorder, complete with renderings of what the phone will look like, alongside technical specifications, according to a report from Reuters. “Demand is high. Yesterday, someone just bought two phones. Altogether, we have about two dozen orders,” a Taobao seller who goes by the nickname Xiaoyu told the news agency. Anticipation for the latest edition of the iPhone, which is expected to officially debut sometime between August and October, has been building to fever pitch over the past few months, as rumors regarding screen size, technical specifications and design features run rampant.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/iPhone-5-Available-for-PreOrder-Through-Chinese-Site-561227/

By Darryl K. Taft, eWeek

Company executives showed two Windows tablets and accessories that feature significant advances in industrial design and attention to detail. Surface is designed to seamlessly transition between the consumption and creation of content. Conceived, designed and engineered entirely by Microsoft engineers, and building on the company’s 30-year history manufacturing hardware, Surface represents the company’s latest effort to break into the tablet market, and offer a portable PC that has a chance to compete against the likes of the Apple iPad. Two models of Surface will be available: one running an ARM processor featuring Windows RT, and one with a third-generation Intel Core processor featuring Windows 8 Pro. According to Microsoft, these Surface tablets offer a fast and fluid interface that will allow users to take advantage of the upcoming Windows 8 operating system, as well as apps designed for the new OS.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Microsoft-Surface-Tablets-Set-the-Stage-for-Windows-8-519835/

by Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider

One surprise finding of our big research report, “The Secret Lives of Teens” is that kids aged 12-17 have very little use for Twitter. A majority of them text and check Facebook everyday, but look how few use Twitter during an average 24-hours: Seriously, the “never” use it. So what gives? Is this a horrible sign for Twitter? Maybe not. One theory we’ve been kicking around: One reason it appears teens hate Twitter, is that what they actually hate is news (they never read it online) and Twitter’s best use is as a news-delivery service.

http://www.businessinsider.com/teens-hate-twitter-2012-7

by Jessica Leber, Technology Review

Facebook is dodging questions about plans to open its network to young children, two concerned House lawmakers said today. In June, the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook was exploring technology that could allow kids on the site under parental supervision. Responding to a letter from the House representatives, Facebook explained it had not yet made a final decision about officially allowing the under-13 audience. It also did not answer questions about what kinds of data it would collect or advertisements it might show to them.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428508/facebook-stays-quiet-on-plans-to-let-children/

By Philip Michaels, ComputerWorld

The references books I used to thumb through on rainy day visits to the library as a kid–your almanacs, your encyclopedias, your reference books–are all going digital. If the results are as good as what Barefoot World Atlas has to offer, that’s not a bad trend at all. Barefoot World Atlas is an iPad version of the Nick Crane-authored and David Dean-illustrated book of the same name. The app arrives courtesy of Touch Press, the same outfit that offers the terrific iPad version of The Elements. The same care and quality that went into that visual display of the Periodic Table of the Elements can be found in this kid-focused atlas app.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229079/Barefoot_World_Atlas_for_iPad

By Rob Lever, AFP

The new reporter on the U.S. media scene takes no coffee breaks, churns out articles at lightning speed and has no pension plan. That’s because the reporter is not a person, but a computer algorithm, honed to translate raw data such as corporate earnings reports and previews or sports statistics into readable prose. Algorithms are producing a growing number of articles for newspapers and websites, such as this one produced by Narrative Science: “Wall Street is high on Wells Fargo, expecting it to report earnings that are up 15.7 percent from a year ago when it reports its second quarter earnings on Friday, July 13, 2012,” said the article on Forbes.com. While computers cannot parse the subtleties of each story, they can take vast amounts of raw data and turn it into what passes for news, analysts say.

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/computers/stories/new-reporter-call-him-al-for-algorithm

by David Zax, Technology Review

“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks. But as people moved more towards urban centers, people started to get into cars. I think PCs are going to be like trucks.” A certain famous CEO said this in June of 2010. Since then, America’s love affair with the smartphone and tablet has grown unabated. But by no means was Steve Jobs the first to “call” the death of the PC. An interesting post from tech commentator Robert X. Cringely reveals how he predicted the death of the personal computer back in 1992, in his book Accidental Empires. He called the death for right about… now.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428507/predicting-the-post-pc-era-20-years-ago/

by The Physics arXiv Blog

Engineers have long known that the best way to build stuff is in modules. If one module goes wrong, it’s then straightforward to replace it. For example, the graphics card on a computer, the alternator in a car or a camera in the Hubble Space Telescope. By contrast, when a single complex system goes wrong, it’s hard to fix, since all the parts are interdependent. Think of the economy or financial markets. It might come as no surprise to discover that nature has also learnt this trick. Biological system tend to be modular, particularly those that can be thought of as networks, such as brains, gene regulatory networks and metabolic pathways. (Networks are modular if they contain highly connected clusters of nodes that are only loosely connected to other clusters.)

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428504/computer-scientists-reproduce-the-evolution-of/

by Rachel Metz, Technology Review

The device, for streaming music and video, looks cool, and it’s easy to use, but it’s also way too expensive. Entertainment orb: Google’s Nexus Q looks good but has very limited video- and music-streaming capabilities, especially considering its $299 price tag. The small black orb sitting next to my TV is the Nexus Q—a new music- and video-streaming device from Google. Its combination of quirky styling, extremely limited functionality, and a $299 price tag has me completely mystified. Set to start shipping this month, the Nexus Q can stream music or videos that you have purchased from the company’s online store, Google Play, or uploaded to Google’s servers, as well as videos from YouTube. You can only set up and truly control it using certain Android smartphones and tablets

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428457/review-googles-nexus-q/

by Conor Myhrvold, Technology Review

The success of “crowd-funding” inspired one researcher to create a Kickstarter-like service for scientists. Boston-based startup IAMScientist hopes to apply the crowd-funding approach pioneered by Kickstarter to research funding. The company has already enjoyed modest success as a matchmaking service for companies and scientists. For a fee, it will tap its network of researchers—mainly in medicine and the life sciences—to find an available expert in a specific research area. But IAMScientist recently started allowing users to advertise projects for others to fund as well. The approach is analogous to Kickstarter, a website that has raised almost $100 million for a wide range of entrepreneurial projects in 2011. But, of course, there’s a big difference: it’s unclear if IAMScientist’s audience of scientific researchers will want to contribute their own funds towards other researcher’s projects.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428475/a-kickstarter-for-academic-research/

by David Zax, Technology Review

Don’t you wish voting were “more fun and social,” in the parlance of social startups? Now, with a new collaboration between CNN and Facebook, it will be. The two have joined forces to make the “I’m Voting” Facebook app, an app that enables Facebook users to endorse candidates and issues, and to commit to voting. If you use the app and commit to voting for someone, that information appears in your timeline, news feed, and real-time ticker. During CNN’s political coverage this fall, CNN personalities will use the app to poll users on issues. This isn’t the first time CNN and Facebook have teamed up, pointed out CNN’s KC Estenson.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428493/facebook-cnn-and-the-rise-of-social-voting/

by Kevin Bullis, Technology Review

GE officially opened a sprawling, $100 million battery factory in Schenectady, New York, with a dramatic battery-powered show of lights, music, and pyrotechnics. The factory, which will eventually employ 450 people, makes a new kind of battery—based on sodium and nickel. GE says the technology, which is more durable and charges more quickly than lead-acid batteries, will make off-grid power generation more efficient and help utilities integrate power from a wide range of sources, including intermittent ones such as wind and solar power. While GE will have strong competition for new grid battery technologies from companies such as Aquion Energy and Liquid Metal Battery, the manufacturing giant clearly has high ambitions for its technology, recently forming a new business unit to commercialize the battery technology.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428452/ges-novel-battery-to-bolster-the-grid/

by Northwestern University

Engineers are therefore seeking alternatives to CMOS that would allow for highly efficient computer logic circuits that generate much less heat. Northwestern University researchers may have found a solution: an entirely new logic circuit family based on magnetic semiconductor devices. The advance could lead to logic circuits up to 1 million times more power-efficient than today’s. Unlike traditional integrated circuits, which consist of a collection of miniature transistors operating on a single piece of semiconductor, the so-called “spin logic circuits” utilize the quantum physics phenomenon of spin, a fundamental property of the electron. “What we’ve developed is a device that can be configured in a logic circuit that is capable of performing all the necessary Boolean logic and can be cascaded to develop sophisticated function units,” said Bruce W. Wessels, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and one of the paper’s authors. “We are using ‘spintronic’ logic devices to successfully perform the same operations as a conventional CMOS circuits but with fewer devices and more computing power.”

http://phys.org/news/2012-07-million-efficiency.html

by the Telegraph

San Francisco plans to suspend purchases of Apple computers after the company stopped participating in an environmental certification program used by governments and universities to make purchasing decisions. San Francisco’s 50 departments and 28,000 employees will no longer be able to use city funds to buy Apple desktops, laptops or monitors because the Cupertino, California-based company dropped out of the rating system called EPEAT, created to track the environmental impact of computers, Jon Walton, the city’s chief information officer, said yesterday in an interview. The city’s policy doesn’t apply to iPhones and iPads, he said.  Apple’s plan to drop participation in the program may have broad consequences because many governments and universities rely on the EPEAT registry when making purchasing decisions.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/9391266/San-Francisco-abandons-Apple-Macs-over-green-credentials.html

By Stephen Lawson, Computer World

Weeks before the Republican and Democratic national conventions that will anoint each party’s nominee for president, special equipment to boost cellular signals in each party’s venues is already nearly installed. The thousands of participants and armies of reporters that will flock to both events are expected to produce enough calls, Tweets, videos and other mobile traffic to bring an average cellular network to its knees. So TE Connectivity is deploying DASes (distributed antenna systems) all around the facilities where the parties will meet. DAS is a widely used technology for extending cellular capacity and coverage in buildings and in outdoor areas where a lot of people gather. It consists of many small antennas mounted throughout an area and linked to a base station via fiber or cable. Amplifiers boost the signal over the cable so each antenna has enough power to handle the area it’s assigned to cover. To get the most use out of the frequencies available, a DAS may divide a building into multiple areas, called sectors, each with its own set of channels.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228983/Political_convention_sites_brace_for_flood_of_mobile_traffic?taxonomyId=77

By: Wayne Rash, eWeek

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of the Higgs Boson, the discovery of which was announced at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire). Without this particle, you wouldn’t exist. For that matter, the universe wouldn’t exist. That’s because the Higgs Boson creates a field that gives other particles mass, giving weight and shape to all the matter we see in the universe Or, to describe the indescribable, what the Higgs Boson does is create a field of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence, and while they’re in existence those virtual particles provide mass to other particles that are able to interact with them. Photons, which are being created by the bazillion (to use the precise scientific term) by the monitor in front of you, are the particle manifestation of the electro-magnetic field we call “light.” Photons are very real and depending on how they’re observed can appear as either particles or waves.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Cloud-Computing/Higgs-Boson-Discovery-Why-Its-Important-to-All-of-Us-757158/

By Michelle Maisto, eWeek

Apple has a smaller sibling to the iPad planned for this winter’s holiday shopping season, analysts and tabloids have been reporting since at least February. As the tech world nears that date, the rumors and reports are gaining momentum—and details. Most recently, the Japanese tech site Macotakara reported that the tablet, to be called the iPad mini, will be produced at the Brazil factory of Foxconn, the now well-known Chinese company that makes iPads for Apple, as well as devices for the majority of the electronics industry. The report added that the 7.85-inch iPad Mini will be as thin as the iPod Touch (7.2mm) and have a pixel display of 1024 by 768, enabling it to run iPad apps with no need for adjustment. While an untraditionally sized tablet—at 7.85 inches, it would be wider than other, more paperback-shaped 7-inch tablets—an iPad Mini would have plenty of company in its quest to fit into smaller spaces, like purses and very, very large pockets. The new Google Nexus 7 and the Amazon Kindle Fire come to mind right away

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/iPad-Mini-Ready-to-Battle-Other-7Inch-Tablets-From-Google-Amazon-470562/

By: Robert J. Mullins, eWeek

Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner said the company would “respect everyone but fear no one” in going after competitors and detailed, at its partner conference, how Microsoft outperforms each of them.  Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner delivered a spirited pep talk to partners at a conference in Toronto July 11, showing how Microsoft is challenging them in several areas, including cloud computing, virtualization, security, mobile, workplace software and operating systems. With the various new products already introduced–Office 365, Windows 7—and those coming in the near future–including Office 15, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Windows Server 2012–Turner explained to the 16,000 partners attending the Worldwide Partners Conference how Microsoft can beat VMware, Salesforce.com, Google and Apple in the technology sector.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Applications/Microsofts-Turner-Promises-Company-Will-Take-on-Google-Apple-VMware-258537/

by David Zax, Technology Review

No longer just a chimera, that Amazon smartphone I’ve mentioned here before now looks to be real, per Bloomberg’s predictably anonymous “two people with knowledge of the matter.” The phone would reportedly run on the Android operating system; it seems a pretty fair bet that it would look remarkably similar to the Kindle Fire, which runs a “forked” version of Android designed to funnel users into Amazonian content. A number of commentators are skeptical of the value of an Amazon smartphone–Time’s Jared Newman, for instance, sees “many problems” with such a device. And it’s true if Amazon wants to offer, in effect, a premium smartphone (read: an iPhone-like device) at non-premium-smartphone prices, it will have its work cut out for it. It’ll need apps, apps, apps, most of all.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428469/the-latest-on-the-amazon-smartphone/

by Antonio Regalado, Technology Review

Are American workers losing their jobs to machines? That was the question posed by Race Against the Machine, an influential e-book published last October by MIT business school researchers Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. The pair looked at troubling U.S. employment numbers—which have declined since the recession of 2008-2009 even as economic output has risen—and concluded that computer technology was partly to blame. Advances in hardware and software mean it’s possible to automate more white-collar jobs, and to do so more quickly than in the past. Think of the airline staffers whose job checking in passengers has been taken by self-service kiosks. While more productivity is a positive, wealth is becoming more concentrated, and more middle-class workers are getting left behind.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428429/when-machines-do-your-job/

by Jessica Leber, Technology Review

Paying for something from a mobile phone still isn’t an option in most U.S. brick-and-mortar stores. But that reality is obscured in San Francisco. The Bay Area has been an early testing ground for a future full of smartphone-based transactions, with all sorts of companies, from Starbucks and PayPal to Google and startups like LevelUp getting involved [see “Battle of the Electronic Wallets”]. Into this crowded field comes GoPago, a startup that began widely marketing its own payment app in San Francisco this April after expanding from a smaller pilot program in the region.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428453/a-banking-giant-makes-a-mobile-payment-bet/