Techno-News Blog

by Chris O’Connor, ReadWrite

The booming mobile applications market is a hot topic right now at many a water cooler in Silicon Valley and beyond. I’ve toiled in the mobile market since 2007 and in those years I’ve witnessed more than my fair share of changes – some entirely predictable – others not so much. Relying on the wisdom that comes with a decade-plus in the business, I’d like to offer a few educated guesses as to what’s next in enterprise mobile apps.

http://readwrite.com/2013/02/08/7-essential-predictions-for-mobile-applications-in-the-enterprise

by Vianney Lecroart, MailGun

A couple weeks ago Meteor announced integration with Mailgun, which allows any Meteor app to send email effortlessly. Today I’m going to go through an example that shows how quickly you can get a sample app up and running. For those that missed the last post, Meteor is an open-source platform for building top-quality web apps in a fraction of the time, whether you’re an expert developer or just getting started. Meteor also comes with a built integration with Mailgun for sending emails without any configuration whatsoever when you deploy your app on the Meteor platform. This combination makes creating email enabled web apps extremely fast and simple.

http://blog.mailgun.net/post/41958103075/create-a-web-app-from-scratch-in-under-5-minutes-with

by SARAH PEREZ, Tech Crunch

A new report from German researchers reveals the five main ways people are organizing the applications on their smartphones. Despite the somewhat esoteric focus of a study like this, the resulting analysis has a broader impact on our digital lives. The content found in mobile app stores is growing at an exponential rate. There are over 800,000 iOS applications, just under that on Android, and app downloads are nearing the point where they’re double that of songs. Songs! And yet, even though we’re heading into a world where we’ll soon have over a million applications at our fingertips, the methods for discovering applications, downloading them to our devices, and managing them once there, are holdovers from the desktop era.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/10/the-five-ways-users-organize-their-apps-and-what-app-designers-can-learn-from-this/

by Sanjay Poonen,GigaOm

There is widespread agreement—across the globe and in every industry—that mobile, big data, and cloud computing are the three cornerstone issues of tomorrow’s business environment. In fact, a strong organizational response to each of these issues is already critical to competitive survival. As a result, CIOs, business strategists and IT leaders are working furiously to make sure their businesses have plans in place to stay ahead of these challenges. But there is one subtlety that is frequently overlooked: When it comes to mobile computing, big data and the cloud, what we have is not three problems but one.

http://gigaom.com/2013/02/10/the-secret-to-tackling-mobile-cloud-and-big-data-treat-them-as-one/

By NICK BILTON, NY Times

Dick Tracy had one. As did Inspector Gadget and James Bond. A watch that doubled as a computer, two-way radio, mapping device or television. Though such a device has been lost to science fiction comics and spy movies of the era before smartphones, the smart watch might soon become a reality, in the form of a curved glass device made by Apple. In its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., Apple is experimenting with wristwatch-like devices made of curved glass, according to people familiar with the company’s explorations, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they are not allowed to publicly discuss unreleased products. Such a watch would operate Apple’s iOS platform, two people said, and stand apart from competitors based on the company’s understanding of how such glass can curve around the human body.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/disruptions-apple-is-said-to-be-developing-a-curved-glass-smart-watch/

by electronista

Google may be creating a touch Chromebook of its own, if a promotional video for the device is confirmed as real. The Chromebook Pixel would in theory have a 2560×1700 resolution display with multitouch, running on Chrome OS, and is claimed by the tagline “Designed by Google. Down to the last pixel.” The video first appeared in a Google+ post by Francois Beaufort, a developer that has previously leaked details about notifications and the possibility of Google Now in the Chrome browser. The video was seen to be created by an agency called Slinky.me, the CEO of which claimed that hackers had attacked their servers and took information relating to company projects, including the Pixel. The video itself has since reappeared online.

http://www.electronista.com/articles/13/02/10/promotional.video.for.touchscreen.notebook.possibly.a.hoax/

by David Talbot, Technology Review

Researchers at IBM have assembled 10,000 carbon nanotube transistors on a silicon chip. With silicon transistors approaching fundamental limits to continued miniaturization, the IBM work points toward a possible new way of continuing to produce smaller, faster, more efficient computers. Earlier work by IBM showed that nanotube transistors could run chips three times faster than silicon transistors while using only a third as much power. And at just two nanometers in diameter, the nanotubes—carbon molecules resembling rolled-up chicken wire—are so small that chip makers could theoretically cram far more transistors on a chip than is possible with silicon technology. But controlling the nanotubes’ placement in arrays numerous enough to be useful—ultimately, billions of transistors—is a major research challenge.

http://www.technologyreview.com/demo/510766/how-to-build-a-nanotube-computer/

by Jeff Dunn, Edudemic

Too often do we get dazzled by the shiny objects coming out of Cupertino, Mountain View, and the rest of the technology companies we’ve all come to know and love / hate. We get deluged with technology that we’re told is the most important thing to happen to education since chalk.But it’s not about the technology. We write just about every day about interesting bits of technology, tools, tips, and whatnot to offer resources to the world of education. Just because we write a post that offers a couple dozen apps to do XYZ doesn’t mean we think you should start using every single one of them (or even bother downloading them all.) Instead, we share resources so you, the reader, can have the options presented in a concise and simple manner before making a decision. You can decide to do whatever you want with what we present on Edudemic.

http://edudemic.com/2013/02/when-choosing-edtech-keep-students-front-and-center/

by Katie Lepi, Edudemic

It’s old news that simply getting devices for your classroom is not enough. But to many teachers, figuring out how to use the devices they have (or will have) can be overwhelming. This great infographic from Always Prepped outlines 7 lessons from teachers who use technology that we can all learn from, regardless of how much or little technology usage is happening in your classroom or school. What is so incredible about the habits listed below is that they’re so wonderfully simple. #1 in particular can help a lot of people – don’t just use technology for the sake of using it – make sure you have a good reason and positive outcome in mind, otherwise you’re wasting your time!

http://edudemic.com/2013/02/effective-teachers-who-use-technology/

By David Talbot, Technology Review

By combining data from multiple antennas and frequencies, ultrafast wireless technology is poised to turbocharge 4G. In the latest test of future wireless bandwidth, Chinese handset maker ZTE and carrier China Mobile last week described achieving a peak download speed of 223 megabits per second in experiments involving a network technology known as LTE Advanced. Users’ appetite for mobile bandwidth seems insatiable. Cisco Systems estimates that mobile data traffic will grow by a factor of 18 by 2016, and Bell Labs predicts it will increase by a factor of 25. “Data traffic has been growing,” says Michel Peruyero, senior director of product evolution strategy at Alcatel-Lucent, which is developing small base stations, called small cells, that include the new LTE Advanced features. “If you stay with only LTE, you can only support a certain number of users. With LTE Advanced, you have significant increase in data rates, or the same data for many more users.”

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/509936/lte-advanced-is-poised-to-turbocharge-smartphone-data/

By Will Knight, Technology Review

The U.K. company Canonical, which developed Ubuntu, says the first commercial handsets running the operating system will hit stores at the end of 2013. But an early version of the software will be available free in the next few weeks, along with tools for installing it on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone. The source code will also be released, allowing developers to modify the software so that it can be installed on any Android handset. Pat McGowan, director of engineering at Canonical, demonstrated Ubuntu for phones at an event on MIT’s campus last week. While BlackBerry carpeted several basketball courts for an extravagant Manhattan launch of its new BB10 software the same week (see “BlackBerry’s New Phones Score Points”), Ubuntu’s public debut was more subdued.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/510731/ubuntu-invites-phone-makers-to-cheat-on-google/

By Rachel Metz, Technology Review

As smartphones and tablets become increasingly important parts of our lives, much of our Web browsing will shift to these devices and the applications we use to get online will need to keep up. Swipe to surf: Dolphin Browser offers users a range of features including the ability to surf the Web by drawing gestures on a smartphone’s touchscreen. When surfing the Web on a smartphone, most of us stick with the browser that came with our handset. That experience can be clunky, though, and a slew of mobile browsers are trying to break into a market dominated by Apple and Google. It’s a struggle reminiscent of the “browser wars” of the ’90s, in which Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer fought for dominance on desktop computers—and also of the more recent battle for market share among IE, Firefox, and Google’s Chrome browser on desktops and laptops.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/510486/the-browser-wars-go-mobile/

by Sarah Rotman Epps, ReadWrite

Wearable devices like the Nike+ FuelBand, Jawbone UP, larklife, and future products like the Misfit Shine and Google Glass have been the subject of much discussion, for good reason: They give us access to information about our physical bodies and the physical environment we inhabit, a phenomenon we call Smart Body, Smart World. (Other people have referred to it as “the quantified self.”) Though at Forrester we think the market for fitness wearables is relatively small, the broader potential for wearables is huge. Body-generated data could be applied to any domain, such as relationships, productivity, gaming, shopping, personal safety and identity validation, just to name a few possibilities.

http://readwrite.com/2013/02/04/wearable-devices-next-design-challenge-the-human-brain

by Natasha Loma, Tech Crunch

The affordable Raspberry Pi microcomputer just got even more affordable: the slated $25 Model A Raspberry Pi board has now gone on sale in Europe. The Raspberry Pi Foundation, which created the Pi with the mission to get more kids learning to code, said sales are being restricted to Europe initially but will be opened up to the rest of the world “very soon”. The Foundation’s Pi distributors, RS Components and Premier Farnell/element14, are both selling the board. The Model A pie is $10 cheaper than the $35 Model B, which has sold more than a million to date (including 15,000 bought by Google to give away to U.K. schoolkids). Being cheaper, Model A is slightly stripped back — there’s no Ethernet, only one USB port and just 256MB RAM (rather than 512MB). Model A also consumes around a third less power than Model B — making it suited to projects powered by a battery or solar cells. The board will still run XBMC, according to the Foundation — so can also be used to make a $25 media centre.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/04/25-model-a-raspberry-pi-on-sale-in-europe/

By David Talbot, Technology Review

Struggling smartphone maker BlackBerry—the company previously known as RIM—launched a comeback in the form of two new phones today: a Z10 with touch screen and a Q10 offering a retro tactile QWERTY keyboard, both running on its new BlackBerry 10 operating system. If technology alone were enough to make the difference, a comeback might be all but assured. The devices impress: they offer a slick way to sweep between multiple running apps without having to shut one or more down, and useful ways to separate work and personal functionality. For avid e-mailers and texters, BlackBerry’s traditional fan base, the operating system includes a novel word-suggestion interface that, among other things, can switch automatically between different languages.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/510556/blackberrys-new-phones-score-points-on-technology/

by Dawn Casey-Rowe, Edudemic

This week’s Top Ten Learnist boards are dedicated to the theme of coding, web design, and all things technical. There is a conversation ensuing between educators, policy makers, and industry leaders about the importance of teaching students coding and web design to prepare them for 21st century careers and entrepreneurship. Some are saying this is part of the Common Core Standards in technology, while others insist it’s actually another literacy, and should be treated as such.

http://edudemic.com/2013/02/tech-savvy-teacher/

by Jeff Dunn, Edudemic

Students, teachers, and administrators are some of the biggest users of school printers I know of. As someone who tries to avoid printers at all costs, it’s painfully obvious when I have to use one. Basically, I use it as the absolute last resort. I may soon be in luck as printers in schools (and most everywhere else) may soon be a thing of the past. That’s according to recent data that shows how printing as we know it is on the decline … textbooks are going digital … and students are opting for tablets over pens and papers. The times, they are a-changing. This infographic from Education News makes that abundantly clear. What do you think of the future of printers? How many more years will they be a big part of your school?

http://edudemic.com/2013/01/will-school-printers-soon-be-a-thing-of-the-past/

by Colleen Lee, Edudemic

As I began to build my personal learning network (PLN) I didn’t know a hashtag from a MT. But I knew something exciting was happening for educators on Twitter. The road to a robust PLN begins with the signing up for Twitter – then the journey begins…

http://edudemic.com/2013/02/6-steps-to-becoming-a-better-twitter-user/

by Tom Daccord, Edudemic

Progressive school administrators understand that teachers need room to explore and experiment to uncover ways to use technology effectively in the service of learning. These administrators recognize that initial tech integration forays may fall short, or even fail, but they realize that experiences gleaned help build institutional knowledge of best practices. Ultimately, enhanced community-wide knowledge and understanding of tech integration practices reduces fears and uncertainties — at both an individual and school-wide level — and provides a foundation for growth. A common trait of successful education technology programs is a culture of innovation where administrators understand that increasing institutional growth means that failure …. is mandatory.

http://edudemic.com/2013/02/failure-is-mandatory-creating-a-culture-of-innovation/

by Katie Lepi, Edudemic

Libraries are in the middle of a massive disruption right now. That much is known by pretty much everyone. Like the newspaper industry, they’re looking to technology and other methods to enhance their offerings and resources while feeling the pinch of smaller budgets. (Sound similar to schools and pretty much every other industry?) So what are libraries actually doing right now to turn themselves into the perpetually useful spot to dig up the best research, find help with your education, and the many other activities they’re so well known for? For one, the general public is relying on the free services offered by libraries more than ever before. Whether that’s due to the economy or not, it’s a good sign that the future of libraries is bright as long as they’re accurately steered in the right direction.

http://edudemic.com/2013/02/how-technology-is-shaping-the-future-of-libraries/

by FREDERIC LARDINOIS, Tech Crunch

When Google launched its Linux-based Chrome OS in early 2010 and its Chromebook pilot program later that year, most pundits didn’t quite agree with our own MG Siegler’s premise that Google had dropped a “nuclear bomb on Microsoft.” A few years later, it sure doesn’t look like Microsoft has much to fear from Chrome OS. But despite its slow start, it looks as if the Chrome OS momentum is slowly picking up. Google has traditionally been very quiet about Chromebook sales and mostly focused on very large enterprise and educational installs. That’s clearly also the target market for the Chrome OS ecosystem right now, but when Acer says that its $199 C7 Chromebook now accounts for 5-10 percent of its U.S. shipments, it’s clear that some of those devices must have gone to regular users, too.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/03/maybe-those-chromebooks-werent-such-a-crazy-idea-after-all/