Techno-News Blog

by Christopher Mims, Technology Review

Publishers are beginning to figure out that an imperfect form factor means tablets aren’t the be-all and end-all. Users and the iPad are having an extended honeymoon, mostly because it’s so much better than what came before — nothing. But that doesn’t mean the iPad and other tablets that share its form factor are perfect, or even close to it. And these devices’ failure to deliver in certain roles illustrates just how far short of the ideal they are.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428397/why-are-we-in-denial-about-the-flaws-of-tablets/

by the Physics Arxiv Blog, Technology Review

Javier Lopez Pena at University College London and Hugo Touchette at Queen Mary University of London reveal an entirely new way to analyse and characterise the performance of soccer teams and players using network theory. They say their approach produces a quantifiable representation of a team’s style, identifies key individuals and highlights potential weaknesses. Their idea is to think of each player as a node in a network and each pass as an edge that connects nodes. They then distribute the nodes in a way that reflects the playing position of each player on the pitch.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428399/pagerank-algorithm-reveals-soccer-teams/

By Angela Chen, Chronicle of Higher Ed

An Internet-rights petition, called the Declaration of Internet Freedom, started on Monday and has already gathered more than 20,000 signatures. Supporters include Mozilla, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Reporters Without Borders. Individual signatories include Andrew McLaughlin, a former White House deputy chief  Technology officer, and Nick Grossman, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, as well as professors from Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Stanford University Law School’s Center for Internet and Society.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/?p=37637

By Darryl K. Taft, eWeek

At a June 18 event in Hollywood, Calif., Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled the company’s new Surface: PCs built to be the ultimate stage for Windows. 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.

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

By: Darryl K. Taft, eWeek

Mozilla announced that its project to build a smartphone operating system (formerly known as “Boot to Gecko”) based on Web standards is now known as Firefox OS for mobile devices and it will be on devices in 2013. Mozilla said the Firefox phone is the real deal and should start hitting the scene in 2013. Mozilla announced a clear and distinct increase in momentum behind its plans to launch an open mobile ecosystem based on HTML5, including new commitments from device manufacturers and carriers to support the strategy and deliver devices powered by an open Web-based OS.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Mozillas-Firefox-OS-to-Bear-Smartphone-Fruit-in-2013-439196/

By Don Reisinger, eWeek

Google unveiled Android 4.1, the latest version of its mobile operating system, code-named Jelly Bean, at the annual Google I/O developers’ conference. The operating system follows in the path of its predecessors and allows smartphone makers to modify software to best suit their handset designs. Since it’s an open-source platform, modifications are easily made and, in many cases, deliver much-needed improvements. Even so, out-of-the-box, Jelly Bean appears to be a winner. From a new way of handling notifications to improved performance, the operating system seems to be one that can do a much better job than its predecessors in competing with Apple’s own iOS. In essence, Jelly Bean is Google’s answer to iOS 6, an operating system that Apple says will launch this fall. Android customers will be happy to hear, though, that Jelly Bean is launching in mid-July on a host of products.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Android-41-Jelly-Bean-10-New-Features-That-Make-It-the-Best-Version-Yet-140400/

by Tom Simonite, Technology Review

Workers in Qualcomm’s factory in Hsinchu City, Taiwan, operate the same kind of equipment found in other display-making factories on the island, which are the source of more than a third of the LCD panels in new computers, tablets, and smart phones. Yet displays from this plant are like no others. They create color images by borrowing an optical trick at work in the iridescent wings of some butterflies. Each pixel in the new Mirasol display is made from microscopic structures that function like imperfect mirrors, reflecting back incoming light but altering its color. Full-color images can be created even in direct sunlight. Since these displays use reflected light rather than emitting their own as conventional displays do, they consume far less energy than LCD displays. Yet unlike other low-power displays, such as the one in Amazon’s black-and-white ­Kindle e-reader, these render full-color images and can refresh quickly enough to show video.

http://www.technologyreview.com/demo/427705/iridescent-displays/

by Martin LaMonica, Technology Review

Imagine spray painting the side of your house and it not only produces power from the sun, but can store the energy for later as well. A novel approach to battery design from Rice University researchers could enable that and other types of spray-on batteries. The research, published last week in Nature, seeks a new approach to battery fabrication by using materials that can be spray-painted onto various surfaces.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428390/spray-on-batteries-could-reshape-energy-storage/

by David Talbot, Technology Review

A recent study suggests that computers could be better than seasoned police analysts at predicting when and where crime will strike next in a busy city. Software tested in Los Angeles was twice as good as human analysts at predicting where burglaries and car break-ins might happen, according to a company deploying the technology. When police in an L.A. precinct called Foothill division followed the computer’s advice—and focused their patrols within the areas identified—those areas experienced a 25 percent drop in reported burglaries, an anomaly compared to neighboring areas. “We are seeing a tipping point—they are out there preventing the crime.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428354/la-cops-embrace-crime-predicting-algorithm/

by David Zax, Technology Review

New Energy Technologies, a solar energy startup here in the US, has developed a technique to manufacture “spray-on” photovoltaic windows. The technique should ramp up production speed and bring down costs. First of all, what’s meant by a spray-on window? New Energy Technologies gives a good run-down of the product, which they call SolarWindow, on their site. The tech uses an organic solar array made up of extremely small solar cells–they measure about a quarter of the size of a grain of rice.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428366/spray-on-photovoltaic-windows/

by David Zax, Technology Review

ReadWriteWeb has an interesting take on one of the unintended consequences of the MacBook Pro’s new high-res retina display: an epidemic of headaches for web designers. The site’s John Paul Titlow reports that web designers now have to perform a delicate balancing act: designing web pages that won’t look lousy on the retina display, while also not forgetting the millions of people out there who will be sticking to their old-fashioned non-retina displays for the time being.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428381/will-the-retina-display-influence-web-design/

by Tom Simonite, Technology Review

A new personal-assistant app for the iPhone, Cue, offers an alternative to painstakingly compiled to-do lists and electronic calendars filled with information pulled from work and personal e-mail accounts and social networks. The idea is to automatically retrieve crucial information just before you need it. Daniel Gross, who cofounded Cue with Robby Walker, says the app is needed because the number of ways we share information has exploded, making it that much harder to corral everything we need to go about our lives. The average person receives 63,000 words a day through e-mail, social networks, and other accounts, he says. “It’s getting worse and worse over time—human capabilities are not growing at the same pace the information volume is.”

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428321/a-personal-assistant-mines-your-life-to-help-out/

By Ginny Mies, PCWorld

At the Day One Android keynote and Google I/O this morning, Google revealed the latest update to the Android operating system. Android 4.1, also known as Jelly Bean, is more of a minor upgrade than a complete overhaul of the operating system. That’s not to say that there isn’t some interesting new features in the next version of Android: the homescreen and camera app get a makeover, the keyboard is smarter and the operating system as a whole is much faster. But the most fascinating additions to Jelly Bean are in Search–what Google does best.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/258450/google_now_and_search_revamp_the_most_exciting_updates_in_android_jelly_bean.html

by Rachel Metz, Technology Review

Google has been paying close attention from the sidelines, and now it’s ready to join the party with the Nexus 7, a tablet it developed with the help of Taiwanese computer maker Asus. The Nexus 7, announced this week at Google’s annual I/O conference in San Francisco and due out in July, takes plenty of cues from the Fire, from its seven-inch display to its $199 price tag. Yet while the Fire is a great little tablet, Google’s ability to control the hardware, software, and app ecosystem make the Nexus 7 even greater. And since the Nexus 7 will be bundled with a $25 Google Play credit, the price is really more like $174. It will feature Google Now, Google’s answer to Apple’s personal assistant, Siri. To use Google Now, just press the virtual Home button at the bottom of the display and swipe upward. This brings up a page with a search box and a series of on-screen “cards” that you can scroll through to see things like local weather and traffic, nearby businesses, calendar appointments, and information on flights or sports teams you’ve previously searched for.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428373/review-googles-nexus-7-tablet/

by Gary Woodill, Float Learning

It is well enough to purchase mobile devices for your employees, but what about the “mobile content” that goes on them? The concept of content comes to us from the “instructionist model” of mobile learning, that is, the approach based on classroom metaphors or presentations of “learning materials” and testing. But, content for learning can be almost anything, including Web pages that were not specifically designed for education and training, access to databases of information of interest to the person who is asking for it, or, any online mobile experiences that we learn from. They can also be “real life experiences” where mobile devices are used to augment the information in the physical environment, or where mobile devices are used to store and transmit information that the user wants to save or send to others.

http://floatlearning.com/2012/06/more-thoughts-on-categories-of-mobile-learning-content/

By: Nathan Eddy, eWeek

The iPhone 5 by the media, will officially debut in October, according to an analyst note obtained by Mac-centric blog AppleInsider. Sterne Agee analyst Shawn Wu wrote in a research note that the iPhone would also include support for China Mobile’s TD-SCDMA 3G network, which boasts more than 650 million mobile subscribers—China Mobile is the world’s largest cellular operator, suggesting Apple is working to position the latest iPhone as a global device. Wu also wrote that the iPhone will include greater support for Chinese customers through the iOS 6 operating system and digital concierge Siri, with the ability to understand and respond in Mandarin and Cantonese, as well as overall greater integration for Chinese social networking sites like Baidu. Among the other enhancements will be a slightly larger screen size, 4G LTE wireless modem and a general redesign, Wu noted.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/iPhone-5-to-Debut-in-October-with-China-Mobile-Support-Report-847881/

By: Michelle Maisto, eWeek

The Apple iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy S III are both fast, savvy, feature rich, can follow instructions and access hundreds of thousands of apps. A few features, though, set each apart. The most dramatic difference between these phones, in my opinion, is their size. A 4.8-inch display isn’t for everyone, though no doubt some users will be thrilled with the GS III as a gaming interface or a screen for an in-flight movie. If you can, get to a store, have a look, hold them—a lot of camera features is great, but more important, to me, is not inadvertently hitting the volume button each time I turn on the phone—and consider how and what you’d use them for each day. Which phone is the best phone is personal.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/iPhone-4S-vs-Samsung-Galaxy-S-III-Which-Smartphone-Wins-120154/

By: Wayne Rash, eWeek

The iPhone has changed much of the way that the enterprise does business, gains productivity and handles security. But now the iPhone has a lot of mobile company and corporate IT departments are groping for ways to cope with the bring your own device trend.  Five years ago, at the end of June, 2007 the world of mobile IT changed forever, although few realized it at the time. Who could have guessed that the sales of the first iPhone would ultimately lead to significant productivity gains, new lines of business and new headaches for IT. At first all that the iPhone seemed to be was an upgraded iPod music player.  But over time as more and more people realized that their iPhones could do more than make phone calls, browse the Web and play music, the demand to make them part of the enterprise became too much for IT departments to resist.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/iPhone-Turns-5-as-Enterprises-Struggle-With-the-BYOD-Chaos-It-Launched-569761/

by Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica

It took guts for the New York Times to publish an op-ed by Tim Wu, the Columbia law professor who coined the phrase “network neutrality,” arguing that the First Amendment doesn’t protect the contents of the New York Times website. A significant amount of the content on the Times website—stock tickers, the “most e-mailed” list, various interactive features—were generated not by human beings, but by computer programs. And, Wu argues, that has constitutional implications.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/do-you-lose-free-speech-rights-if-you-speak-using-a-computer/

by the BBC

A vending machine that gives customers iced tea in return for tweets has been installed in Cape Town, South Africa. Launched by South African soft drinks company BOS Ice Tea, the vending machine is called Bev. To receive a free sample of BOS Ice Tea, users need to tweet a certain hashtag, the # symbol commonly used on micro-blogging service Twitter to identify topics. The drink is made from Rooibos, a local plant used to make traditional tea. To make the machine respond to tweets, its developers configured a specific hashtag as a filter. When the hashtag appears on Twitter, the vending machine checks it and – if correct – gives out a drink.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18535165#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

by the BBC

In the worst hit offices, hundreds of printers have been spewing out gibberish. Thousands of office printers around the world have been spewing out page after page of gibberish because of a computer virus. Reports from companies reveal that thousands of pages of paper were wasted when the Windows virus hit their PCs. Security firms said the worst hit were large businesses in the US, India, Europe, and South America. The culprit is a malicious program called Milicenso that has been re-used many times by hi-tech crime groups.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18547935#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa