Techno-News Blog Ray Schroeder, editor, OTEL - University of Illinois at Springfield |
|
|
Technology News for Higher Education Times and Dates Coordinated Universal Time
Subscribe to Techno-News Blog by Email
|
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Blind Mice See the Light - Jocelyn Rice, Technology Review
Blind mice developed rudimentary vision when researchers activated certain retinal cells using a gene commonly found in algae. The mice could not only sense the presence of light, but they also responded to a moving black-and-white pattern, suggesting that they could distinguish objects of a certain size. "You wouldn't see the very fine details, but you'd see some bigger objects," says Botond Roska, a neurobiologist at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, in Switzerland, who led the research along with collaborators at Harvard Medical School. Their results were published online this week in Nature Neuroscience.
Open-Source, Multitouch Display - Kate Greene, Technology Review
The iPhone popularized the idea of multitouch displays, and just last month, Microsoft brought the concept to a larger screen by releasing Surface, a multitouch table with a hefty $10,000 price tag. But now engineers at Eyebeam, an art and technology center based in New York, have created a scaled-down open-source version of Surface, called Cubit. By sharing the Cubit's hardware schematics and software source code, the engineers are significantly reducing the cost of owning a multitouch table. But they're also fostering innovation by giving engineers an open platform on which to develop novel multitouch applications--something that they've previously lacked.
WiMax could be successor to Wi-Fi - Queenie Wong, McClatchy Newspapers
A wireless technology that Sprint Nextel plans to launch within a year makes high-speed and secure Internet access possible from almost anywhere. Called WiMax, it's the heart of a huge telecommunications industry effort to supplant Wi-Fi, the service that most users rely on for wireless Internet connections at broadband speeds. If it succeeds, WiMax technology could be as big a change as the mobile phone revolution. An independent technology consulting firm, Boston-based Yankee Group, estimates that 58 million people worldwide will use WiMax by 2012.... WiMax's faster Internet access also would make long-distance learning more interactive, and its stronger signal would reach more students. Tuesday, May 13, 2008
No CD needed: Taking the office to the Web - Suzanne Choney, MSNBC
Online-based software isn’t a new concept, but it’s starting to garner interest from consumers, and from businesses, to a lesser degree. Microsoft recently announced it is testing an online-based subscription of its Office productivity suite code-named “Albany,” as another way to sell the software. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.) There’s plenty of competition out there already, with some programs being free, including Google’s Docs & Spreadsheet program, which also is in beta testing. Among its appeal is that files can be shared easily via the Web for collaborative efforts. IBM is testing its online Lotus Symphony productivity suite. ZoHo has an online office productivity suite that is free to individual users, and $50 a year for business users. Raju Vegesna, whose title is “ZoHo evangelist,” says there are nearly 1 million users of the product now, with more than 50 percent being consumers and students.
$100 Laptop Program's New President - David Talbot, Linux Today
This week, with orders for its laptop having failed to meet expectations--and the plunging dollar driving up the computer's purchase price--the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program installed a new president who says that he'll seek fresh industry alliances to boost the marketability of the maverick machine. OLPC was founded in 2005, with the aim of improving education in poor countries by putting cheap, rugged, low-power laptops in the hands of schoolchildren. Monday, May 12, 2008
Adobe’s Open Screen Project: Write Once, Flash Everywhere - Erick Schonfeld, Tech Crunch
Adobe is making a big play to make Flash the de facto viewing environment not only for Web apps on your PC, but also on your mobile phone, your TV, and any other screen you can think of. It is announcing the Open Screen Project to make it easier to develop applications across devices—using Flash, of course. David Wadhwani, general manager of Adobe’s platform business (which includes Flash/Flex, AIR, and Cold Fusion), says: We believe it is time for an industry-wide movement for a consistent way to develop across the Web for PCs, mobile devices, and TVs.
Internet Pop-Culture Memes - Kristina Grifantini, Technology Review
Friday, April 25, was the first of the two-day ROFLCon, an event featuring the people behind current memes of pop Internet culture. The conference, organized by Harvard students and taking place at MIT, was a high-energy crowd of mostly college-age attendees touting signature red ROFLCon lunch boxes. A panel this afternoon looked at the current popularity of LOLCats, a website that lets users post cat photos paired with clever, referential captions written in a unique baby-talk-cum-text-messaging language. The language is supposed to represent how a cat would talk if it could (with poor grammar and misspellings). LOLSpeak has evolved since the website took off last year, with phrases such as "Facebook ur doin it wrong," "I can has cheezburger?" and the familiar "kthxbai!!!" becoming commonplace.
Firefox Goes Mobile - Kate Greene, Technology Review
There's no doubt that it's getting easier to access the Web on a mobile device. Thanks to the iPhone and Apple's Web browser, Safari, millions of people feel as though they finally have the Internet in their pocket. But there's still a lot of work that needs to be done in order to allow for the kind of innovation on the mobile Web that is possible on the traditional Web, says Mitchell Baker, chairman of Mozilla, maker of the Firefox browser. Baker has been instrumental in building the open-source software community that gave the world Firefox, a popular alternative to desktop browsers such as Internet Explorer and Safari. But now Mozilla has turned its attention to the mobile Web. Last October, the foundation announced an initiative to build the first, fully open Web browser for mobile devices. Sunday, May 11, 2008
Why AT&T May Deep-Discount the iPhone - Arik Hesseldahlk, Business Week
The big thing about the next iPhone was supposed to be high-speed Internet access and tools for business. Instead, it's looking like iPhone 2.0 is all about price and that ever-awkward relationship between Apple and AT&T. With less than two months to go before Steve Jobs takes the stage at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, where he's expected to unveil a new iPhone, it appears that AT&T may not be convinced that new bells and whistles will be enough to get droves of new customers to switch from other wireless carriers. So after a year of charting a new wireless business model by selling the vaunted iPhone at premium prices, the nation's biggest phone company may resort to the oldest trick in the cellular book: big discounts.
iPod warning: don't shuffle across the road - Asher Moses, SMH Australia
NSW Police have launched a confronting new campaign urging people to pay attention when crossing the road while listening to iPods and using mobile phones. The graphic campaign, running on the NSW Police website, includes a series of posters showing people lying lifeless on the road with a white headphone cable snaking around their bodies like a chalk outline. "Recent growth in the use of portable media players and mobile phone usage has led to a need for greater awareness among both pedestrians and motorists to ensure these new technologies don't lead to a rise in pedestrian accidents," NSW Chief Traffic Services Commander John Hartley said.
New discovery could lead to better memory - eSchool News
Memory chips that store more data but consume far less power soon could be in store. A new discovery by researchers at Hewlett-Packard Co. has important implications for educators, students, and others who regularly use computers and electronic devices with memory chips. For nearly 40 years, scientists have speculated that basic electrical circuits have a natural ability to remember things even when the power is switched off. They just couldn't find it. Now HP researchers have proven them right, with a discovery they hope will lead to memory chips that store more data but consume far less power than those found in today's personal computers and other digital devices. The newly discovered circuit element--called a "memristor," short for memory resistor--could enable cell phones that can go weeks or longer without a charge, PCs that start up instantly, and laptops that retain your session information long after the battery dies. Saturday, May 10, 2008
How Google Fuels Its Idea Factory - Robert D. Hof, Business Week
Leading up to Google's first-quarter earnings report on Apr. 17, investors couldn't have been more bearish.... Many companies, says Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, can skirt downturns entirely by coming up with innovations that change the game in their industries—or create new ones. (When asked if Google's strategy would change as the economy heads into a likely recession, he replied: "What recession?") In a recent interview in a tiny meeting room next to his Mountain View (Calif.) office, Schmidt told BusinessWeek Silicon Valley Bureau Chief Robert D. Hof how Google manages the tricky process of innovation.
U.S. paper ends print edition to live online - Noam Cohen, International Herald Tribune
With print revenue down and online revenue growing, newspaper executives are anticipating the day when big city dailies and national papers will abandon their print versions. That day has arrived in Madison, Wisconsin. Last Saturday, The Capital Times, a fabled 90-year-old daily newspaper founded in response to the jingoist fervor of World War I, stopped printing to devote itself to publishing its daily report on the Web. (The staff will also produce two print products: a free weekly entertainment guide inserted in the crosstown paper, The Wisconsin State Journal, and a news weekly that will be distributed with the paper.)
Consumers Not Yet Buying Into Blu-Ray - Channel Web
Consumers are still taking a ho-hum attitude toward Sony's Blu-ray high-definition DVD technology, despite the end of the format war with HD DVD that was supposed to clear the way for hesitant customers to finally pull the trigger on Blu-ray sales. It will take another 12 months to 18 months before the Blu-ray market "kicks into gear," according to a new study from ABI Research. Part of the problem is that prices on Blu-ray players remain high while functionality remains low. Friday, May 09, 2008
The open life of Second Life - Howard Wen, LinuxWorld.com
On January 2007, the source code of the client viewer for the online virtual world community Second Life was released as Open Source. It was seen in some circles in the Second Life community as questionable, raising concerns about security and speculation as to why Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, would do such a thing. The popularity of, and media hype for, their virtual real world was huge at the time. So why did the company feel the need to do it?
New spam technique targets your calendar - Yahoo! Blog
In the last few weeks a new type of spam has been on the rise: Meeting requests that are sent using the calendar system in Microsoft Outlook and Google's online calendar tool. I call it "c-spam." I've been hit with three of these c-spam messages in the last week (I use Outlook) and they present a real challenge over regular spam for a variety of reasons: First, they appear to bypass most spam filters, which generally only scan standard messages and skip meeting requests. Second, even if you simply delete the message without accepting the request, the meeting request still shows up in Outlook.
Wi-Fi Cafes: Easy To Find, But Free Is Fading Away - W. David Gardner, InformationWeek
McDonald's and Starbucks are both moving to broaden Wi-Fi offerings in their restaurants, but their Wi-Fi isn't free to all comers yet, leaving some smaller restaurant chains with an advantage. In recent days, AT&T announced that its Wi-Fi service will be available this year at 7,000 Starbucks locations in the U.S. The AT&T service, whose national deployment got underway in San Antonio earlier this month, will be available through various free (for subscribers of other AT&T services) and paid plans. Consumers already using T-Mobile paid plans at Starbucks locations can continue to do so for the time being because of a clause in the Starbucks/AT&T contract. McDonald's Wi-Fi supplier -- Wayport -- reported this week that it has successfully outfitted more than 10,000 McDonald's restaurants in the U.S. with the wireless technology. Thursday, May 08, 2008
Digital inclusion strategy for UK - Jane Wakefield, BBC News
A strategy to get the last third of unconnected Britons online is being drawn up, said Paul Murphy, minister for digitial inclusion. In his first speech since his appointment, he revealed the strategy could be in place by summer. Some 17 million citizens in the UK did not have access to a computer, either at home or at work, he said. The minister did not set a timescale, but said it would be in line with EU plans to have the gap by 2010.
The Revolution Will Be Twittered - ASHLEY PHILLIPS, ABC News
Before traveling to Egypt to work on his graduate school thesis, James Buck, a 29-year-old American student at the University of California Berkeley, had never heard of the social blogging site Twitter. Buck began using Twitter, which allows users to send out 140-character messages to their Twitter feed via e-mail, instant messaging or cell phone text-messaging. Twitter operates somewhat like a personal RSS feed; people who subscribe to your feed will receive all of the messages you send out. As Buck and his translator tried to leave the protest in a taxi, Buck says they were chased and then detained by Egyptian police. As their cab driver drove the pair to the police station under direction by the police, Buck sent out a single-word message from his cell phone to his Twitter feed: Arrested. "I sent it to 10 different people, including Twitter. Right away I got [text messages] back from people saying, 'Right now? What do we do?'" Buck said. "I made use of sort of every second I could, trying to tell them to call the embassy immediately."
New Google Tech Could Make Image Searches Smarter - Tech News World
A pair of Google researchers have developed a way to quantify the characteristics of an image and rank their relevance to a search term. The technology, which Google is calling "VisualRank," has applications for e-commerce and marks an advancement in machine learning, the researchers said. Fair Use |
