Techno-News Blog

June 30, 2012

Statistics Unmask Phony Online Reviews

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by Neil Savage, Technology Review

Searching for hotels in cities they’ve never visited, people often turn to customer-written reviews on websites such as TripAdvisor. But how do they know those reviews weren’t written by the hotel manager, or by someone paid to post fake opinions online? The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has issued fines when it has uncovered such “opinion spam,” but there’s no easy way to spot it. Now researchers from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, have come up with a scientific method of detecting whether someone has been posting fake reviews online.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428222/statistics-unmask-phony-online-reviews/

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Privacy Laws Turn Europe into Economic Laboratory

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by Lucas Laursen, Technology Review

In the tradition of printed newspapers, most news websites reserve the prime real estate “above the fold” for their biggest headlines. Since late May, however, sites including the Financial Times and the Economist have instead been greeting visitors with a text box warning them that they are being tracked. The notifications explain to readers that the publications have placed a cookie in their browsers—a bit of code that allows the sites to record what pages they visit. Cookies are hardly unusual: many websites (including Technology Review’s) place a half-dozen in visitors’ machines. What is unusual is that a website would bother to tell anyone.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428051/privacy-laws-turn-europe-into-economic-laboratory/

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Twitter Mischief Plagues Mexico’s Election

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by Mike Orcutt, Technology Review

The top contenders in Mexico’s presidential campaign are engaged in a Twitter spam war, with armies of “bots” programmed to cast aspersions on opposing candidates and disrupt their social-media efforts. This large-scale political spamming could foreshadow online antics that campaigners may increasingly resort to in other countries. Twitter has been especially prominent in Mexican political theater this year as the country prepares for general elections on July 1, when citizens will elect a new president and fill a number of national and state leadership positions. One reason is that even before the election, Mexicans were frequently turning to the service as a source of information about events in northern areas of the country, where fear of violent retribution prevents news outlets from reporting about drug cartels, says Andres Monroy-Hernández, a researcher at Microsoft Research who has been closely studying Mexican Twitter usage.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428286/twitter-mischief-plagues-mexicos-election/

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June 29, 2012

Cicso Networking Academies: A Picture of the Future

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by Tom Vander Ark, Huffington Post

Cisco is the leading manufacturer of network routers, switches, and related technology. It’s worth almost $100 billion. Cisco sponsors a line of IT Professional certifications. There are five levels of certification and eight different paths: Routing and Switching, Design, Network Security, Service Provider, Service Provider Operations, Storage Networking, Voice, and Wireless. The Cisco Networking Academy is part social responsibility, part workforce development, and part demonstration product. With more than 1 million enrolled students and about 40,000 assessments weekly, it is also the biggest classroom in the world. Cisco partners with more than 11,000 high schools, technical schools, colleges, and training organizations worldwide to deliver advanced networking skills. Blending onsite and online learning, Cisco Academies model innovative simulation-based instruction and assessment.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-vander-ark/cicso-networking-academie_b_1607612.html

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A first look at Microsoft’s new Surface tablet

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by Peter Bright, ArsTechnica

Microsoft has unveiled Surface: a pair of tablet PCs and a pair of covers-cum-keyboards, designed for, and designed around, its Windows 8 operating system. Microsoft’s intent with the Surface tablets is to create hardware that puts the software front and center; to provide the hardware necessary to allow Windows 8’s strengths to really come to the foreground. At the launch event, however, the software took the back seat. This was all about the hardware, and with good reason. The Surface tablets are smart, good-looking, carefully considered, well built, slick pieces of kit, and there’s nothing even close on the market today. Of course, they’re not on the market today either, but unless the PC OEMs inject a serious dose of quality in their their build and design processes, the Surface units will stand alone when they eventually go on sale.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/a-first-look-and-feel-of-microsofts-first-pc/

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10 Ways K-12 Is Becoming More Like Cisco Academy

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by Tom Vander Ark, Getting Smart

Cisco is the leading manufacturer of network routers, switches and related technology. It’s worth almost $100 billion (and last week that was twice as much as Facebook). Cisco sponsors a line of IT Professional certifications. There are five levels of certification and eight different paths: Routing & Switching, Design, Network Security, Service Provider, Service Provider Operations, Storage Networking, Voice, and Wireless. The Cisco Networking Academy is part social responsibility, part workforce development, and part demonstration product. With more than one million enrolled students and about 40,000 assessments weekly, it is also the biggest classroom in the world. Cisco partners with more than 11,000 high schools, technical schools, colleges, and training organizations worldwide to deliver advanced networking skills. Blending onsite and online learning, Cisco Academies model innovative simulation-based instruction and assessment.

http://gettingsmart.com/blog/2012/06/10-ways-k-12-is-becoming-more-like-cisco-academy/

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June 28, 2012

You Will Want Google Goggles

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by Farhad Manjoo, Technology Review

The spectacles take the place of his desktop computer, his mobile computer, and his all-knowing digital assistant. For all its utility, though, Google Project Glass Technical Lead Thad Starner’s machine is less distracting than any other computer I’ve ever seen. This was a revelation. Here was a guy wearing a computer, but because he could use it without becoming lost in it—as we all do when we consult our many devices—he appeared less in thrall to the digital world than you and I are every day. “One of the key points here,” Starner says, “is that we’re trying to make mobile systems that help the user pay more attention to the real world as opposed to retreating from it.” By the end of my meeting with Starner, I decided that if Google manages to pull off anything like the machine he uses, wearable computers seem certain to conquer the world. It simply will be better to have a machine that’s hooked onto your body than one that responds to it relatively slowly and clumsily.

http://www.technologyreview.com/review/428212/you-will-want-google-goggles/

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Intel Reveals Neuromorphic Chip Design

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by KFC, Technology Review

The brain is the most extraordinary of computing machines. It carries out tasks as a matter of routine that would fry the circuits of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet: walking, talking, recognising, analysing and so on. And where supercomputers require enough juice to power a small town, the human brain does all its work using little more than the energy in a bowl of porridge. So its no surprise that computer scientists would like to understand the brain and copy its ability. There’s a problem, however. The brain is built from neurons and these work in a rather different way from the silicon transistor-based circuits that lie under the bonnet of conventional chips.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428235/intel-reveals-neuromorphic-chip-design/

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Admen Spot an Enemy: W3C

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by Tom Simonite, Technology Review

The advertising industry is brawling with some of the biggest names in technology: Microsoft, Mozilla, and the World Wide Web Consortium, the standards body for the Web. The fight is taking place because the consortium, known as W3C, is developing a new “Do Not Track” standard so Web users can signal that online ad targeting companies should leave them alone. Advertising industry representatives say the standards-setting process has turned into an existential threat that could mean the end of free online content. “The ad industry is being asked to honor something that could make the majority of Web users nonmonetizable and put it out of business,” says Mike Zaneis, head of the Office of the Interactive Advertising Bureau in Washington, D.C.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428050/admen-spot-an-enemy-w3c/

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June 27, 2012

How Windows 8 is shaping next-generation PCs

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by Andrew Cunningham, Art Technica Mobile

Many new PCs were shown off at last week’s Computex trade show in Taiwan, and while designs and approaches sometimes varied wildly, touch support was a common theme. Windows 8’s final release is still a few months off, but it’s already casting a long shadow over PC hardware makers hoping that the new OS will drive sales of their products. The Metro interface is a big (and sometimes awkward) overhaul for PCs, and hardware makers are responding with correspondingly large changes to their hardware.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/how-windows-8-is-shaping-next-generation-pcs/

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Opera 12 arrives with webcam APIs and experimental WebGL support

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 by Ryan Paul, Ars Technica

Browsing Ars Technica in the new version of OperaThe Opera Web browser got a boost today with the release of version 12. The update brings a number of new features, improved performance, and enhanced support for modern Web standards. It also offers a preview of several experimental features, such as full hardware-accelerated rendering. Opera 12 has a lot to offer Web developers. The new version includes preliminary support for WebRTC, an emerging standard that is being drafted by the W3C Web Real-Time Communications Working Group. WebRTC will eventually enable standards-based audio and video chat in Web applications. There is also support for the WebRTC media capture APIs, which allow Web content to capture live media streams from the user’s microphone and webcam. As some readers might recall, we first wrote about that functionality last year when it arrived in the Chrome developer channel.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/opera-12-arrives-with-webcam-apis-and-experimental-webgl-support/

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AT&T splits phones into work and personal partitions, on any carrier

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by Jon Brodkin, ars technica

AT&T’s Toggle lets users switch between the work and personal parts of their smartphones. AT&T AT&T says it has the answer for corporations that want to let employees access work applications from personal phones without becoming a security threat. A new virtualization-style technology that works on both Android and iPhones creates a work container that is isolated from an employee’s personal applications and data, letting IT shops manage just the portion of the phone related to work. This isn’t a new idea. ARM is talking about adding virtualization into the smartphone chip layer. VMware has been promising to virtualize smartphones for some time. What is notable about AT&T’s technology is its flexibility. VMware’s technology hasn’t hit end users yet, largely because it must be pre-installed by phone manufacturers, limiting it to carriers and device makers that want to install it on their hardware.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/att-splits-phones-into-work-and-personal-partitions-on-any-carrier/

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June 26, 2012

Google’s New Brain Could Have a Big Impact

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by TOM SIMONITE, Technology Review

Late last month, Google’s search engine got significantly smarter. A store of information dubbed the “Knowledge Graph” now adds useful context and detail to the list of links that Google serves up. Searching for certain people, places, or things produces a box of facts alongside the regular results. The Knowledge Graph is already starting to appear in a few other Google products, and could be used to add intelligence to all of the company’s software. “Search was mostly based on matching words and phrases, and not what they actually mean,” says Shashidar Thakur, the tech lead for the Knowledge Graph in Google’s search team. Thakur says the project was invented to change that. The Knowledge Graph can be thought of as a vast database that allows Google’s software to connect facts on people, places, and things to one another.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428180/googles-new-brain-could-have-a-big-impact/

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The Most Manipulative Use of Kinect Imaginable

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by David Zax, Technology Review

The good people of GeekWire spotted a patent application from Microsoft that envisions using Kinect to figure out your mood, and target ads at you accordingly. The application, filed back when Kinect was rather new (in December of 2010) was made public this week. (It’s not the first Microsoft patent application expressing an interest in tracking users’ moods.) How exactly would it work? The idea is that Kinect’s motion and facial recognition technology could figure out whether you’re sad or happy, and serve up ads that jive with your mood. The patent application contains unusually colorful language about how exactly the Kinect (or other computing device) might infer mood.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428203/the-most-manipulative-use-of-kinect-imaginable/

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Google Wave’s Inventors Give Gmail a Facelift

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by TOM SIMONITE, Technology Review

In 2009 Google launched a collaboration site called Wave to show the world “what e-mail would look like if it were invented today.” In 2010, after a lukewarm response, the company killed it off for good. Now three leading people from the failed but iconic project, all of whom left Google in 2011, are making another attempt to “fix” e-mail. They recently began sending out invites to Fluent, a site that promises an alternative interface to operate a Gmail account. The service connects to Gmail using the application programming interface (API) that Google provides to allow other software to tap into its service.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428218/google-waves-inventors-give-gmail-a-facelift/

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June 25, 2012

OPERA: The Underdog Browser’s New Features

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BY DAVID ZAX, Technology Review

The press swelled with rumors that Facebook might want to acquire Opera, a mobile-friendly web browsing company, a few weeks ago. Though nothing much has come of that rumor to date, Opera has soldiered along on its own path. This week, it released Opera 12, a new desktop version for Windows, OS X, and Linux. Odds are you use either Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, or Firefox. Opera’s the fifth “major” browser, though with a reported market share of less than two percent, that’s perhaps stretching the definition of “major.” What Opera is is an underdog, and everyone likes an underdog. But how does it measure up?

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428227/the-underdog-browsers-new-features/

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A Side-View Mirror without a Blind Spot

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by David Zax, Technology Review

A professor of mathematics at Drexel University has designed a side-view mirror that could eliminate the “blind spot.” The only problem? Regulations would prevent it from being directly integrated in the production of cars sold in the United States. The mirror was invented by Andrew Hicks, and awarded a patent last month. The mirror strikes an optimal middle ground between flat mirrors (the ones on the driver’s side) that don’t distort objects, and curved mirrors, which present a wider field of view but cause distortion. Hick’s mirror gives something of the best of both worlds: a wider field of view with little distortion. (It remains true, though, that objects in Hicks’s mirror are closer than they appear.)

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428232/a-side-view-mirror-without-a-blind-spot/

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A Virtual Telescope Turns Back toward Earth

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by CONOR MYHRVOLD, Technology Review

A plug-in for WorldWide Telescope lets curious users explore the home planet. WorldWide Telescope is a free piece of software that lets people take a virtual tour through the far-flung corners of outer space. It also helps astronomers share scientific data on cosmological phenomena. Now a new plug-in is turning that virtual telescope back toward Earth. WorldWide Telescope can be downloaded or used in a Web browser. Click on a galaxy or star cluster, and you’ll see properties such as the spectral data and wavelengths emitted by the celestial object in question, in addition to relevant peer-reviewed articles and Wikipedia entries. “Objects in the sky become the hyperlinks themselves,” says Harvard astronomy professor Alyssa Goodman, who has been an active user of the technology since it was unveiled to the public at a TEDx conference in 2008.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428219/a-virtual-telescope-turns-back-toward-earth/

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June 24, 2012

What Facebook Knows

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by TOM SIMONITE, Technology Review

If Facebook were a country, a conceit that founder Mark Zuckerberg has entertained in public, its 900 million members would make it the third largest in the world. It would far outstrip any regime past or present in how intimately it records the lives of its citizens. Private conversations, family photos, and records of road trips, births, marriages, and deaths all stream into the company’s servers and lodge there. Facebook has collected the most extensive data set ever assembled on human social behavior. Some of your personal information is probably part of it.

http://www.technologyreview.com/featured-story/428150/what-facebook-knows/

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There’s a Map for That—Several, Actually

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by Rachel Metz, TechCrunch

Even as it ramps up the competition between the tech titans, Apple’s move into maps also serves as a reminder to consumers that these aren’t the only companies out there working on mobile mapping apps. There are a number of others, including directions and traffic app Waze and 3-D city mapping app UpNext. Chances are that Google Maps and Apple’s forthcoming Maps will be the most popular, but with smart phone and tablet adoption growing at a rapid clip, and continuous improvements in the processing power and memory capacities of mobile devices, and access to high-speed wireless networks, these companies are betting there’s some screen space for them, too.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/16/the-way-things-work/

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Study: Personality Type Drives Facebook Usage More Than Originally Thought

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By Dave Copeland, ReadWriteWeb

Your personality type plays a role in how you interact with social networks, and can factor into how much time you spend on sites like Facebook and Twitter, what kind of information you post and how much you regret posting material that others may consider questionable. While research in the area is preliminary, future studies could be crucial for companies looking to target users who are most likely to comment on a brand page or recommend products to friends through social networks. The findings of the most recent study in the field were recently published in the academic journal Computers in Human Behavior. While limited in scope – the study included 143 college students who completed both phases – researchers Kelly Moore and James C. McElroy said theirs was the first to make use of actual usage data.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/study-personality-type-drives-facebook-usage-more-than-originally-thought.php

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