Techno-News Blog

October 3, 2012

Turn Your Old iPod Into A New iPhone Using FreedomPop

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:25 am

 by ADAM POPESCU, ReadWriteWeb

The iPhone 5 is out, but it’ll cost you. The iPhone 4 is free with a contract, but that’s so 2010. What if you could spend $99 and turn your old iPod touch into a new iPhone? With no contract to enslave you to the telecom companies? Well, there is. Meet the FreedomPop. The $99 iPhone sleeve case turns your iPod Touch (generation 4) into an iPhone with all the connection speed of the latest model plus 1GB of free data every month, enough for basic email and iMessage texting. And all for less than $100, without a contractual commitment. FreedomPop does this by using a 4G LTE hotspot built right into the case, allowing the iPod to access the Net at high speed over Wi-Fi. Be your own hotspot, says the maker of FreedomPop.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/turn-your-old-ipod-into-a-new-iphone-using-freedompop.php

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Has Apple Peaked?

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:20 am

By JOE NOCERA, NY Times

Apple’s halo remains powerful. But there is nothing about it that is especially innovative. Plus, of course, it has that nasty glitch. In rolling out a new operating system for the iPhone 5, Apple replaced Google’s map application — the mapping gold standard — with its own, vastly inferior, application, which has infuriated its customers. With maps now such a critical feature of smartphones, it seems to be an inexplicable mistake. And maybe that’s all it is — a mistake, soon to be fixed. But it is just as likely to turn out to be the canary in the coal mine. Though Apple will remain a highly profitable company for years to come, I would be surprised if it ever gives us another product as transformative as the iPhone or the iPad. Part of the reason is obvious: Jobs isn’t there anymore. It is rare that a company is so completely an extension of one man’s brain as Apple was an extension of Jobs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/opinion/nocera-has-apple-peaked.html

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For the Home Workshop, a GPS for Power Tools

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:15 am

By ANNE EISENBERG, NY Times

Now computers and their tireless calculations may bolster the skills of many people who want to create well-cut picture frames, inlays or furniture but lack the dexterity. Alec Rivers, a Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and colleagues have created a prototype for a compact, computerized addition to power tools that automatically performs precision measuring and cutting. The system, which has a tiny camera, motors and a video screen, takes part of the pain out of woodworking, by using what Mr. Rivers calls “tool GPS.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/computer-precision-for-power-tools-novelties.html

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October 2, 2012

Free Speech in the Age of YouTube

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:25 am

By SOMINI SENGUPTA, NY Times

“We are just awakening to the need for some scrutiny or oversight or public attention to the decisions of the most powerful private speech controllers,” said Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor who briefly advised the Obama administration on consumer protection regulations online. Google was right, Mr. Wu believes, to selectively restrict access to the crude anti-Islam video in light of the extraordinary violence that broke out. But he said the public deserved to know more about how private firms made those decisions in the first place, every day, all over the world. After all, he added, they are setting case law, just as courts do in sovereign countries. Mr. Wu offered some unsolicited advice: Why not set up an oversight board of regional experts or serious YouTube users from around the world to make the especially tough decisions?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/sunday-review/free-speech-in-the-age-of-youtube.html

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The innovation curve hasn’t hit education yet

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:19 am

BY Janko Roettgers, GigaOM

Educational apps and interactive textbooks may look flashy, but we still have a long way to go before we can truly leverage tech in the classroom: That was one of the key takeaways from a mobile education panel at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference, where Rafter CEO Mehdi Maghsoodnia complained that most educational applications still feel like mobile apps before the iPhone, adding: “The innovation curve hasn’t hit educational content yet.” Maghsoodnia was joined onstage by Vineet Madan, SVP of New Ventures and Strategic Services for McGraw-Hill Education, who agreed that there is still lots of room for innovation. “The answer isn’t putting a piece of paper on a screen,” he said. McGraw-Hill Education has partnered with Inkling for some interactive publications, and Madan said that the feedback has been very positive. “It’s certainly gotten a lot of buzz,” he said, adding that these kinds of interactive experiences offer much richer forms of engagement than print ever did.

http://gigaom.com/mobile/open-platforms-for-education-mobilize/

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Can HP jumpstart its cloud computing effort?

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:14 am

BY Barb Darrow, GigaOM

Cloud computing has been designated a top priority for Hewlett-Packard which sees its legacy PC, server, and printing businesses under fire. Now it looks like the company is retooling that key cloud effort, according to a report from Bloomberg News. A new division, headed by Saar Gillai, is charged with weaving the disparate pieces of HP’s cloud strategy and together, according to the report which cites an internal HP memo as its source. One of HP’s problems has long been that it fields a diverse and sometimes incomprehensible array of products and services. That may have been fine when HP was top dog and could sell anything. Now, that lack of clarity is a serious problem for a company that’s been trying to downsize its way to profitability. (HP will cut 29,000 jobs before October 2014.)

http://gigaom.com/cloud/can-hp-jumpstart-its-cloud-computing-effort/

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October 1, 2012

Texts, Chat Slowly Killing Voicemail?

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:25 am

by Boonsri Dickinson, Information Week BYTE

According to USA Today, people aren’t leaving as many voice mails as they used to. USA Today used data from Vonage, an Internet phone company, and found that the number of voice mails is down 8% in July from a year ago. The article draws the conclusion that texting and chat apps are replacing voice mails and that voice mail soon will be dead. I can’t help but agree. If I want to leave a message, I just text it. Chances are you probably do the same. Just look at the top apps in the social networking category in Apple’s iTunes store: WhatsApp Messenger, TextPlus, Tinychat, the Facebook chat app, Kik messenger, Skype, Tango Video Calls, and Voxer. Has America become too impatient to leave and listen to voice mails? I think so.

http://www.informationweek.com/byte/personal-tech/mobile-applications/texts-chat-slowly-killing-voicemail/240006718

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Has The iPhone Peaked?

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:19 am

by Larry Seltzer, Information Week BYTE

Even before the iPhone 5 announcement Wednesday there was widespread speculation that nothing really new, innovative, or surprising would be in the new iPhone, and so it turned out. The announcement matched the rumors pretty closely and nothing in the phone made anyone go, “Wow!” Has the iPhone peaked? That’s not necessarily a bad thing, at least not in the short term. “Peaked” is another way of saying that the iPhone is at the top of its game. I admire how Apple handled some of the changes in the new phone, such as making the screen taller, but not wider. It achieved a better aspect ratio without the regrettable side-effect, too common in the industry, of making the phone so wide that you can’t reach the other side with your thumb. And while the need to support two screen geometries will make for modestly fatter binaries, I believe Apple when they say that it’s not hard for developers to adapt apps to run optimally on the new screen.

http://www.informationweek.com/byte/personal-tech/smart-phones/has-the-iphone-peaked/240007266

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One Lousy Day So Far With iOS 6

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:15 am

by Larry Seltzer, Information Week BYTE

My “upgrade” to iOS 6 has left me an unhappy customer. Some things don’t work and some things work badly, Nothing about it is meaningfully better for me. I hate the soap opera aspects of industry coverage but, like a lot of people, I have to wonder if Steve Jobs would have let a product in this state out the door. Apple CEO Tim Cook’s effort to “[double] down on product secrecy” seems more about avoiding product testing than preventing press leaks. The most famous part of this is the poor quality of the new Maps app.

http://www.informationweek.com/byte/personal-tech/smart-phones/one-lousy-day-so-far-with-ios-6/240007749

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