Techno-News Blog

by EVAN WILLIAMS, Florida Weekly

Veterinary technicians, surveyors, network systems analysts and computer software engineers are four careers projected to grow by more than twice the average annual percentage in Southwest Florida through 2017. That is assuming the region recovers from the recession, including in the construction industry, the U.S. Agency for Workforce Innovation says. That hasn’t happened yet, which is one reason why it might still be a long shot to get hired as a surveyor.

http://charlotte.floridaweekly.com/news/2010-06-17/Business_News/Professionals_in_demand.html

By Bridget McCrea, THE Journal

An Arizona elementary school is beefing up its technology toolbox with a new multimedia curriculum in an effort to engage students, teach 21st century skills, and, hopefully, help boost academic achievement. Valerie Gresser wasn’t satisfied with the way her students were learning. A first-grade teacher at Superstition Springs Elementary in Mesa, AZ., Gresser wanted more for this new generation of learners, many of whom were already being exposed to technology on several fronts, and in various venues outside of school. Like many teachers who see new technology available on the market but who can’t capture it owing to limited resources, Gresser said she knew there were better tools available but faced the challenge of having just one computer in her classroom.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/06/17/embracing-classroom-technology.aspx

By Sharon Pian Chan, Seattle Times

Years ago, business technology was driven by corporations that needed Excel spreadsheets to crunch sales numbers. Now it’s also driven by consumers who want to find the nearest happy hour on an iPhone. As Microsoft starts pitching a new version of its Office software to consumers Tuesday, that consumer is riding a power trip in the tech world, driving workplace use of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, devices such as the iPad and iPhone, and free Web apps such as Google Docs. This consumerization of technology has forced Microsoft to do what previously was unthinkable for its $19 billion Office empire — offer it free.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2012118387_microsoftoffice15.html

by UPI

Microsoft founder Bill Gates says the U.S. government should triple spending on basic research and development of alternative sources of energy. Gates and the American Energy Innovation Council want spending increased to $16 billion a year and urge the creation of an independent body to oversee national energy strategy, ABC News reported Sunday. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico underlined the need for progress in the area of alternative sources, Gates told ABC.

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2010/06/13/Bill-Gates-wants-more-energy-RD/UPI-68641276458023/

by Cayley Dobie, University World News

European research institutes have developed a new telecommunication system that will allow for transmitting and receiving of information at a higher speed and more efficient cost. Funded by the European Union, the high-speed electro-optical components for integrated transmitter and receiver in optical communication project began in 2006. Allocated EUR2.6 million, it has since demonstrated a simpler means of upgrading and operating 100 Gigabit Ethernet networks.

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20100610232852682

By Brandon Bailey, Mercury News

What if you could pay one fee to buy a digital movie online or at a retail store, and then watch it on your home computer, a friend’s TV or even a smartphone? “If I buy a movie, I think of it as my movie,” said Matt DiMaria of software maker Sonic Solutions, one of the companies working to create “digital rights lockers,” which are online accounts that would keep track of consumers’ digital video purchases so they can “buy once and play it anywhere.”

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15263757?nclick_check=1

by VS News

Live internet TV is become more and more popular. So how is it that you can combine both the internet and TV to use both for business and entertainment? With the power of todays technology it is now possible to download Satellite TV on your PC. This article will explain some of the benefits of live internet TV and why it is becoming so popular. People have paid thousands for their flat screen televisions and yet many of them are switching to this new technology.

http://viralsocialite.com/live-internet-tv-watch-all-your-favorite-programs-online/1996/

by Jacob Lammers, News Herald

In May, the Ohio State Bar Association issued new jury instructions to directly address modern technology and social media. Jury instructions used to only tell jurors to stay away from newspapers and television and radio broadcasts, Lake County Common Pleas Court Judge Vincent Culotta said. Now, there’s Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. Plus, new technology, like iPhones, Blackberries and other smart phones allow users to access the Internet instantly. “The standard admonition — don’t talk to anyone about this case, don’t let anyone talk about this case with you — that’s the standard,” Culotta said. “The definition of talk has changed. Talk now includes blogging, putting on (your) Facebook account, text messaging, e-mailing.

http://www.news-herald.com/articles/2010/06/13/news/nh2621582.txt

By Julie Henry, the Telegraph

Children should be banned from using computers in schools until they are nine-years-old because the early use of technology is destroying their attention spans, a leading expert said. The premature introduction and overuse of technology is damaging young children whose brains are not yet fully formed, according to Dr Aric Sigman, a psychologist and author. As a result, the “nappy curriculum” – the statutory rules introduced in 2008 which dictate that toddlers should be introduced to computers as early as 22 months of age – is “subverting the development of children’s cognitive skills”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/primaryeducation/7823259/Ban-computers-from-schools-until-children-reach-age-9-says-expert.html

by Maggie Shiels, BBC

Not long after the Red Hat IPO, Mr Young made way for a new CEO. Today, he runs a self-publishing platform called Lulu along the same lines as he ran Red Hat and with the aim of doing good. “I started Lulu not to make money, but to make the world a better place. “I want to enable authors right now who are getting rejection slips from publishers and give them a platform that they decide what they publish and when they publish it and who they publish it for. Last year, Lulu created 400,000 titles and sold over 1.6 million books. The company claims more than 1.8 million users.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/maggieshiels/2010/06/the_open_source_entrepreneur.html

by the BBC

The Social Connector in Outlook unites it with popular social networking sites Microsoft’s flagship Office 2010 software suite has gone on sale worldwide to consumers. The release concludes a long trial programme which saw details of its web-friendly features widely previewed. Microsoft has also released cut-down versions of Office programs for the web and handsets that can be used by those who do not possess the “full” version.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10319582.stm

by the BBC

San Francisco is set to be the first city in the US to require mobile phone retailers to post radiation levels next to handsets they sell. The board of supervisors, or council, voted 10-1 to approve the measure, with final approval expected next week. “This is about helping people make informed choices,” said the law’s chief sponsor, Supervisor Sophie Maxwell.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8744715.stm

By Christopher Mims, Technology Review

A recent study on the use of Twitter during natural disasters neatly illustrates the paradox of conversational micro-blogging. The majority of information that was retweeted during the 2009 record flooding of the Red River in North Dakota was news — as in, information that did not already exist on Twitter or even the web. But a great deal of the utility of the service is demonstrated not by this new information, which constituted less than 10% of tweets culled from a representative sample of Twitter accounts during the disaster, but the derivative and synthetic tweets that followed in the wake of these original tweets.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/guest/25334/

By Heather Clancy, ZD Net

If you live in New York state and have neglected your spring cleaning, you may want to hold onto your old electronics doo-dads a bit longer: Your state just passed what some are calling the “most progressive” electronics waste recycling law in the country. There are a couple of things that make this law unique.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/green/almost-halfway-there-new-york-becomes-23rd-state-to-adopt-e-waste-recycling-law/12365

By Associated Press

Work has begun on a supercomputing facility outside Cheyenne that will contain one of the world’s most powerful computers. The $100 million supercomputing center will be used to study climate change, air quality, severe weather, space weather and other science topics. The supercomputer is expected to rank in the top 25 by the time it becomes operational in 2012. If operational today, it would be the second-fastest computing machine in the world.

http://technologyreview.com/wire/25601/?a=f

By David Talbot, Technology Review

Security experts said this week that they were cheered by calls from General Keith Alexander, head of the new U.S. Cyber Command, for global rules of engagement for cyber-war, and for increased engagement with nations that are major sources of cyber crime and espionage, including Russia and China. Following through on these calls will be crucial to securing cyberspace, says Ronald Deibert, who directs the Citizen Lab Internet think-tank at the University of Toronto. “There is a major imperative for governments to negotiate the ‘rules of the road’ for engagement in this domain, or risk increasing chaos and mutual insecurity,” he says.

http://www.technologyreview.com/web/25526/?a=f

by Christopher Mims, Technology Review

If you want to know whether or not the tides are high enough to get your sloop out of Ockway Bay in Cape Cod, you could consult NOAA’s tide tables. Trouble is, less’n you’re a pipe-smoking old-timer who’s handy with the lobster cages and a sextant, they’re as likely to get you stuck going in and out of the bay as they are to tell you, with sufficient accuracy, whether the already-shallow draft below your boat is enough to let you safely navigate the muddy shoals of your home port. That’s where the internet comes in, and not the kind that’s stuck behind a desk, twiddling with an iPad – we’re talking about the Internet of Things. Cape Cod resident and ioBridge hobbyist Robert Mawrey is able to broadcast to his entire community near real-time data on actual sea level

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/guest/25315/

By David Talbot, Technology Review 

OLPC may drop “$100 laptop” in an attempt to develop an innovative $75 tablet computer. The philanthropic organization One Laptop per Child (OLPC) never quite managed to hit its price point for its “$100 laptop,” but now the organization is sketching a concept for a $75 tablet computer that it hopes will further decrease power consumption and pioneer the first flexible LCD display. “A tablet is simpler than a laptop, so it’s easier to make a tablet cheaper,” says Ed McNierney, OLPC’s chief technology officer. But beyond that basic advantage, he says, the key to achieving super-low cost while also innovating is by working to establish common designs that can be broadly adopted and customized by other companies.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25482/

By Tim Wilson, DarkReading

Mobile Active Defense, an upstart vendor chaired by security expert and author Winn Schwartau, yesterday launched the MAD Enterprise Unified Threat Management system, which lets IT organizations control and manage iPhones and other smartphones according to company security policy from a central management console. MAD Enterprise UTM is a centrally administered system that provides security capabilities remotely for smartphones, but does not require downloading of applications to each device. “The problem with the smartphone [security] technology so far is that it all requires apps to be loaded onto the phone,” Schwartau says. “If you want antivirus, you have to load it. If you want malware detection, you have to load that. But the smartphone only has so much memory — you can’t use it all up doing security.

http://www.darkreading.com/security/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225600176&cid=RSSfeed_DR_News

By Jai C.S., TMCnet Contributor

eyeSight Mobile Technologies, a developer of Natural User Interface solutions for mobile phones and consumer electronics devices, has unveiled a new technology which enables Android (News – Alert) device manufacturers to offer their clients for the first time control over their handsets by using simple hand gestures. eyeSight’s software-based Touch Free Interface allows people to interact with mobile devices by simple hand gestures. The technology is said to employ advanced image processing and machine vision algorithms to track users’ hand motions in front of the mobile phone’s camera, and converts them into commands that are sent to phone’s applications. With this announcement, users of Android devices can now silence an incoming call, navigate between GPS menus, activate their MP3 player, play games and carry many other tasks by simply swiping their hand over the device.

http://headsets.tmcnet.com/topics/headsets/articles/87998-eyesights-touch-free-interface-technology-now-android-devices.htm

by Michael Warren, the Detroit News

By using textbooks approved in Texas and adopted elsewhere, schools become wedded to educational standards with which they might disagree. Why should educators across the nation cede their best judgment to Austin? The best way to beat Texas is to make the textbook irrelevant. Although textbooks are easy, they are outdated, inflexible and dull. By leveraging the Internet, learning programs and different source materials, learning can be student-focused, flexible, timely and interactive. Learning can dramatically improve by abandoning textbooks.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100610/SCHOOLS/6100357/1026/schools/New-technology–changing-curriculums-mean-it-s-time-to-change-how-schools-use-textbooks