Techno-News Blog

by Technology Review

How good an idea is a “now you feel it, now you don’t” keyboard? I’ve blogged about Tactus before (see “A Smart Phone with the Mumps”). Basically, the idea behind Tactus’s technology is this: what if your smartphone or tablet could essentially “grow” a physical keyboard, only when you need it? You’re watching a Netflix movie on your tablet, with its flat touchscreen. But then the movie is over, and it’s time to search for a new one. Tactus, using it’s “microfluidics” technology, would be smart enough to sprout physical buttons from your screen, just for the duration of input. As the device nears the market–2013 is meant to be the year Tactus enters production, reportedly–CNET goes hands on.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/511336/the-rise-or-fall-of-the-tactus-keyboard/

By David Talbot, Technology Review

President uses State of the Union address to launch effort to protect infrastructure against a “growing threat.”Citing a “rapidly growing threat from cyberattacks,” President Obama said last night that he has issued an executive order that would strengthen the computerized defenses of the United States. The order will increase information sharing and coöperation among government agencies and companies, and establish standards for responding to threats. Both are considered important components of effective cyber defense.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/511251/obama-announces-plan-to-shore-up-us-cyber-defenses/

By Robert D. Hof, Technology Review

Steve Jobs couldn’t hide his frustration. Asked at a technology conference in 2010 whether Apple might finally turn its attention to television, he launched into an exasperated critique of TV. Cable and satellite TV companies make cheap, primitive set-top boxes that “squash any opportunity for innovation,” he fumed. Viewers are stuck with “a table full of remotes, a cluster full of boxes, a bunch of different [interfaces].” It was the kind of technological mess that cried out for Apple to clean it up with an elegant product. But Jobs professed to have no idea how his company could transform the TV.

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/511091/apples-next-innovation-tv/

By Dave Lee, BBC News

A car that is able to drive itself on familiar routes has been shown off at an event at Oxford University. The technology uses lasers and small cameras to memorise regular journeys like the commute or the school run. The engineers and researchers behind the project are aiming to produce a low-cost system that “takes the strain” off drivers. Other companies, such as Google, have also been testing driverless vehicle technology. The search giant has pushed for law changes in California to allow its car to be tried out in real-life situations.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21462360#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

by the BBC

The Facebook activity of users aged between 13 and 17 would have limited visibility in the network’s new “social graph” search facility, the firm said. Posts which could identify the teens’ age or location should only appear in searches by friends and “friends of friends” in the same age group. If an adult were to search for “single females aged 17”, for example, no results would appear, it explained. Facebook said it was strict about its rules regarding age.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21472219#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

By Don Reisinger, eWeek

Apple on Feb. 13 announced that it had updated its MacBook Pro with improved processors. The company also said that it would drop the price of its high-end Retina-display-equipped MacBook Pro to an entry point of $1,499. The company’s thin and lightweight 13-inch MacBook Air can now be purchased for $1,399 to differentiate it from the Pro’s price cut. In other words, it’s now cheaper than ever to buy a MacBook Pro with Retina display or a MacBook Air. But price isn’t the only reason that someone would want to buy one of Apple’s notebooks. The iPhone maker has for years been delivering high-quality Macs.

http://www.eweek.com/mobile/slideshows/macbook-pro-macbook-air-upgrades-10-reasons-to-buy-them-now/

by Erik Caso, All things D

The cloud has a dirty little secret: It is expensive.

These days, it seems as soon as some new technology begins to gain traction, VCs and journalists herald the arrival of a new technological order. While these predictions often end up being true eventually, many of us are left aggravated that the status quo sticks around for so long. Perhaps no such case is as true as with the cloud. The cloud has, without question, resulted in truly revolutionary benefits to enterprises and consumers, but it always seems to be presented in a very autocratic way: Stop what you are doing and do things a new way.

http://allthingsd.com/20130214/the-clouds-dirty-little-secret/

By Jon Fingas, Engadget

Google Now holds a place for artwork, but it hasn’t had much visual variety outside of major cities — there’s only so many times you can see a generic mountain landscape before boredom sets in. To our (admittedly mild) relief, Google has quietly spiced up the area for certain users. At least some of us running Jelly Bean now see an optimized version of the latest Google Doodle while we’re busy dictating a search. Not everyone who’s technically capable is seeing the Doodle at this stage, so don’t be disheartened if there’s still a generic backdrop.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/14/google-now-shows-google-doodles-for-some-android-users/

by David Meyer, GigaOm

An EU-funded research project aims to re-engineer the TCP protocol, as well as the way routers work – and all without the need to replace expensive internet infrastructure. There are two main things that can cause a real-time web service to be not-so-real-time: insufficient bandwidth and excessive latency. Bandwidth is an ISP issue, but latency — the time it takes for your computer to contact a server and/or get a response — is largely down to the way the internet is engineered. So a team of researchers from around Europe, with some help from the European Commission, Alcatel-Lucent and BT, is aiming to revise a standard data-transport protocol to effectively re-engineer how the internet runs — without the need for pricey new equipment.

http://gigaom.com/2013/02/14/latency-is-a-pain-and-these-researchers-say-they-have-the-cure/

by the BBC

Pizza can now be bought using the bitcoin virtual currency. Paying via bitcoins can also delay an order, warn the site owners, saying the conversion can mean pizza takes up to 80 minutes to be delivered. While orders for pizza are placed on the Pizza for Coins site, once payment is made they are funnelled to the website of Domino’s pizza to be made and delivered. Links to other pizza companies, such as Pizza Hut and Papa John, would be added soon, said programmers Matt Burkinshaw and Riley Alexander in an explanatory note on the site.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21427505#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

by the BBC

American Express (Amex) has launched a purchase-by-tweet service for its US-based customers. Credit-card holders post a specific hashtag on Twitter to trigger payments from their accounts. Products from Amazon, Sony and Microsoft are being offered at a discount to entice shoppers to use the new service. However, one retail expert dismissed the initiative as a “gimmick” that was unlikely to catch on. This is not Amex’s first tie-up with social media.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21424799#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

by BBC

US officials have been ordered to draw up procedures to reduce the country’s exposure to cybersecurity threats. President Obama warned that the country’s enemies were “seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions and our air traffic control systems”. He added that Congress also needed to pass related laws. The House Intelligence Committee has said it now planned to revive its cyber threat information-sharing bill. The legislation – known as Cispa – had previously been attacked by privacy campaigners and the White House itself had threatened to veto the bill if passed in its original form.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21441957#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

By ALEX WILLIAMS, NY Times

An animated GIF on Mashable.com shows Taylor Swift at the 2013 Grammy Awards. Just as the LP has enjoyed a second spin among retro-minded music fans, animated GIFs — the choppy, crude snippets of video loops that hearken back to dial-up modems — are enjoying an unlikely vogue as the digital accessory of the moment. Hypnotically repeating GIFs are popping up in art galleries in Berlin, Miami and New York. In fashion advertising, they are suddenly as hot as ironic brogues, popping up in online marketing campaigns for brands like Burberry, Diesel and Jack Spade. Online, there are GIF contests both highbrow and low, and “Best of” GIF roundups.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/fashion/common-on-early-internet-gif-files-make-comeback.html

By: Jonah Comstock, MobiHealthNews

In 2011, MobiHealthNews reported on an increasing number of medical schools instructing students to use mobile devices, including the University of California Irvine’s iMedEd program, where each of the 104 medical students in the class of 2014 received an iPad from the school when they started in 2010. Now the evidence is starting to come in that tablets as an educational tool really make a difference in the medical setting. UC Irvine reported this week that the first class to receive the iPads scored an average of 23 percent higher on national exams than previous classes, even though their incoming GPA and MCAT scores were comparable.

http://mobihealthnews.com/20311/ipad-equipped-medical-school-class-scores-23-percent-higher-on-exams/

David F. Carr, Information Week

Professors at top research universities are highly skeptical of the value of the instructional technologies being injected into their classrooms, which many see as making their job harder and doing little to improve teaching and learning. That’s the conclusion of “Technological Change and Professional Control in the Professoriate,” published in the January edition of Science, Technology & Human Values. Based on interviews with 42 faculty members at three research-intensive universities, the study was funded under a grant from the National Science Foundation and particularly focuses on professors in the sciences, including chemistry and biology, with anthropology thrown in as a point of comparison.

http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/classroom-technology-faces-skeptics-at-r/240148217

By Jason D. O’Grady, ZDNet

I’m a big fan of wearable computing and was thrilled to see today’s news from The New York Times and Wall Street Journal that Apple is working on a iOS-based wristwatch. According to Nick Bilton in the NYT Bits blog Apple is experimenting with wristwatch-like devices made of curved glass. When Apple released the sixth-generation iPod nano in September 2010 Steve Jobs commented that an unnamed Apple board member jokingly planned to wear it as a watch. Ever since, a cottage industry has cropped around solutions to wear the new nano as a watch. Most notably, the Lunatik watch kit raised almost a million dollars on Kickstarter — the most successful project to that point.

http://www.zdnet.com/i-hope-that-the-apple-watch-is-more-than-a-dumb-terminal-7000011157/

By Matt Baxter-Reynolds, ZDNet

I’d used Android kit for work, but that’s not the same as living with it. So I bought a Nexus 4 when they came back into stock in the UK, the idea being to spend the least amount of money possible as I presupposed it would disappoint as much as first- and second-generation Android devices had. What I received was a fantastically good phone, and one that within an hour had relegated my iPhone to the “list of phones I used to use”. Whereas a year or two ago Android versus iPhone was about as fair a fight as a stone-age tribe against going up against a squadron of time-travelling F-15s, today a cheap Android phone is a very good phone. And that’s a real problem for Apple, and also for Microsoft and BlackBerry.

http://www.zdnet.com/a-cheap-android-phone-is-now-a-good-phone-your-move-apple-7000011165/

by Mary Jo Foley, ZD Net

Summary: In his first AMA on Reddit, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates calls WinFS the Microsoft product he most wished had made it to market. From the introduction, it seemed clear Gates intended to focus the AMA on his job heading the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (“Many of you know me from my Microsoft days. The company remains very important to me and I’m still chairman. But today my full time work is with the foundation.”) But one of the first questions Gates answered was about Microsoft.

http://www.zdnet.com/bill-gates-biggest-microsoft-product-regret-winfs-7000011136/

by Isaac Brekken, The New York Times

Apple, for the first time in years, is hearing footsteps. The maker of iPhones, iPads and iPods has never faced a challenger able to make a truly popular and profitable smartphone or tablet — not Dell, not Hewlett-Packard, not Nokia, not BlackBerry — until Samsung Electronics. The South Korean manufacturer’s Galaxy S III smartphone is the first device to run neck and neck with Apple’s iPhone in sales.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/technology/samsung-challenges-apples-cool-factor.html

by Stan Schroeder, Mashable

Google has launched a new ad for its Nexus 4 smartphone during the Grammys, and it’s all about Google’s personal assistant, Google Now. In the ad, people around the world are using the service to learn about the weather conditions and public transportation, check their appointments and converse in different languages. The ad is in fact quite similar to the first Nexus 4 video ad, released in October 2012, which also focuses on Google Now.

http://mashable.com/2013/02/11/google-now-nexus-4-ad/

By Tanya Roscorla, Center for Digital Ed

Over the next five years, six technologies will continue to gain traction in colleges and universities, according to the 2013 NMC Horizon Project released Monday, Feb. 4. About 50 experts spent time narrowing down a list of 80 potential technologies to these six: In a year or less, massively open online courses and tablets could become mainstream. In two to three years, games and gamification, and learning analytics could follow suit. And four to five years down the line, 3D printing and wearable technology could see widespread use. The most surprising technology on the list is 3D printing, which made an appearance in the first Horizon Report in 2004, said Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium. The technology was too expensive back then, but as costs started coming down with the work of a company called MakerBot, it could have education applications soon.

http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/6-Emerging-Technologies-Higher-Ed-2013.html