America's Broadband Dilemma

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For millions of people around the world, broadband Internet access is big part of modern life. We download movies and music, play online games, share photos, and upload information to social-networking sites--all at ever-increasing speeds.

Rates of at least 50 megabits per second--enough to download a DVD-quality movie in about 10 minutes--have become mainstream in cities from Seoul to Stockholm. In the United States, however, the broadband landscape is different: the average download speed is about 10 megabits per second, according to the broadband testing firm Ookla, and only 23 people in 100 have broadband subscriptions, according to the International Telecommunications Union (see "The Global Broadband Spectrum").

Statistics from the Organization for Economic Coöperation and Development rank the United States behind more than a dozen other countries--including South Korea, Japan, Canada, the U.K., Sweden, and Belgium--in both broadband penetration and average advertised speed.

Further Reading: here

A software that make PC Working While Sleeping?

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A particularly troubling aspect of enterprise computer deployment is the need for end user machines to remain switched on day and night. Fully on mind you, not in low power sleep mode. Computer scientists from the University of California, San Diego have developed a software solution which allows PCs to remain on the network even when placed in sleep mode at the end of a working day. The software creates a virtual representation of the computer on the server to handle many of the common overnight tasks, only waking up the physical machine at pre-programmed commands or when it encounters something that it can't deal with itself.

Dubbed "sleep-working" by the scientists who created the SleepServer software, the solution ensures that PCs remain connected and available on a network even after users have placed the machines in low-power mode. The software creates a lightweight virtual image of each computer in an enterprise environment. When a user places a machine in sleep mode at the end of a working day, the SleepServer software activates and the virtual PC image masquerades as the physical PC on the server, responding to network events on behalf of the dozing computer.

Further Reading:

http://www.gizmag.com/computer-sleep-mode-active-server-software/15539/

10 Information Technology Projects for 2010

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By: Eric Lundquist

IT projects can help you achieve your goal to return to stability or even growth carefully.

Maybe your company is different, but most companies I deal with do not start getting serious about their IT budgets for next year until after Labor Day. While the 2009 budget is thrown out the window by many IT executives as the economy turned downward, in 2010 looked more promising. So if you are one of the executives seek return to stability and maybe even some growth carefully, what the 10 IT projects that can help you reach your destination? This is a project of growth and standbys are not constant security, storage and hardware maintenance and upgrades. Standbys old man must be fed, but they will not fuel growth soared.

1. Mobility. It's time to think about developing applications with mobile devices as main clients. Your top executives and sales force you to use their phones as their primary way of keeping in touch with the company. Your customers are more likely to respond to offers made through mobile messages. Rather than thinking of ways to mobilize enterprise applications are older, think about mobility as the beginning of the project. And by the way, if you have an application developer with a track record of mobile? I recently named Mobile as one of five developing enterprise applications you need now.

2. Social network. This is one you'll hear a lot about. What you will not hear much about is how to build reporting tools necessary for successful social networking programs. Instead of sending all the people from Twittering and run a Facebook page, start with what you want to accomplish first. Do not hesitate to click into my article on how to build a successful business applications of social networking. Remember, if you can not measure it, you do not know if it is successful or not.

3. Enlarge your company's product development team. Remember the motto, "The customer is always right"? Technology companies like Dell has brought success to its customer base in the process of product development. Did you make it easy for customers to recommend new products and improving existing products and services? You should.

4. Get with the cloud and virtualization. One of the problems with the way technology companies have marketed cloud computing and virtualization is a field that most of the cost of cutting. However, cloud computing is also offer a way for companies to quickly provision of technology infrastructure startups in their own company. A recent article by Fortune magazine profile of the browser pioneer Mark Andreessen explained why startups will breed in the era of cloud computing. Does your company have a plan in place quickly to support the internal startups with technology or whether the startup team sat collecting dust as they wait for a database, server and trade in services that will be used?

5. Thinking outside the box your technology. Yes, easier to manage your technology resources when everyone uses the same laptop, same operating system, the same database, etc. But if your company will take advantage of new business intelligence tools hosted in the cloud or new applications from companies such as Salesforce.com or e-commerce tools from companies like Amazon, you should start small. You must find and fund technology pioneer in your company or you will get stuck in habits the same technology as last year.

6. Be a leader. How did you develop the talent of new technologies in your company? While your travel budget may have been destroyed by economic recession, you have many opportunities in a virtual trade show, e-seminars and smaller local events. Do you track your employees' e-seminar? Do you have a way to evaluate the e-SEM and virtual trade show offers the best value? Do you recognize employees who have been out of their way to learn new technologies and bring them to your company's talent pool? You should. Here is a calendar of seminars offered by e-my company, Ziff Davis Enterprise.

7. Thinking outside the box your company's business. How much time do you spend to see how competitors to your company uses technology? Does their web interface? How easy or difficult it was to order the product from a competitor? Sign up for their newsletters, mobile alerts and e-seminars where they may be the presenter. Now, take some time to get away from your industry and see how technology is used by startups. Do they utilize Geolocation services? What are their offerings such as on mobile devices like the iPhone App Store? It's not just web-surfing is called a competitive analysis, and if you structured about it, you can find some good ideas for your company.

8. Understanding new online service contractor. Web companies like ELance are changing the way hired contractors. If there is upside to the strained economy, it is there are many good contractors was suddenly available. You really need to understand how the new service is Web-based contractors to work if you will know how to get resources for application programming and developing your new projects.

9. Rethink your company's IT infrastructure. I know this article is approximately 10 projects for new services, but if you're like most companies, most of your IT budget is still entered into the lights and keep the server running. Reducing these costs is where you release a new construction dollars. New part is that you have a wider range of hosted services to see even compared to previous years.

10. Be structured about seeing a new victim of the old vendor. Soon you will be asked about Windows 7 and offers a host of new applications from Oracle, Cisco's new video services and new business applications from Google. The large vendors have not slept, but has been waiting for some economic sunshine before making a marketing push their products. How many of the big platform switch you can make in a year? How stiff is the ROI that you can attach to this offer? Executives from these companies play golf with your boss, and you must have a reason why or why not you're ready to take major projects that will consume most of the new dollar project and human resources.

BTW, you can follow me on Twitter at ESLundquist.

Microsoft's glasses-free 3D display technology

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The popularity of the film 3-D TV and 3-D bubble-capable of leading our family room, but almost every technology ready for 3-D still requires that you are not a set of special glasses. Microsoft has developed a lens that can help change all that. With the ability to track the viewer's position and send images directly to each eye separately, a new prototype display eliminates the need for 3-D glasses.

Many technology companies 3-D trend surfing and researching ways to better provide stereoscopic images without the need for users to wear goggles. Sharp, for example, has conducted field research since 2002 and Nintendo (with the new 3DS) and Fujifilm (with a Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D display W1) has entered the world of 3D glasses-free.

However innovative, one of the limitations (and Sharp other companies') approach is that users need to stand in the right place in relation to the screen to experience stereoscopic vision. Microsoft Applied Research Group, however, went a step further: the system uses cameras to track the movement of each viewer and then sends the light in the right direction, directly into their eyes, and even allows for two separate users to experience 3-D vision simultaneously.

The key to Microsoft's experimental system is a strange lens that projects light towards the viewer by switching on and off the light Emitting Diodes are placed along the lower edge of it. Thanks to the trick of optics, light entering through the lower edge of the lens and then refracts within the lens itself to achieve the desired angle, and then finally sent to the viewer. This method also means that unlike traditional projectors, the structure - including the lens itself - is thin and can be inserted into a standard LCD screen without too much fuss.

The number of viewers that the system can track simultaneously screen refresh rate is limited to that: so, while the standard 240Hz LCD can track two users (four 60Hz channels, one for each eye) much faster refresh rate will allow for more users to share experiences 3 - D is the same at the same time. Another limitation of the viewing angle is small - currently at only 20 degrees, although the researchers hope to increase this amount up to 40 degrees with the lens design tweaking.

Microsoft also saw other possibilities for using 3-D lenses. Once integrated into the laptop, one application could be to allow only one user at a time to view the monitor, blocking off prying eyes and ensure privacy in public places. Users can then switch back to mode "standard view of public" where light is scattered in all directions in order to share the screen with more people.

Resource:
http://www.gizmag.com/microsoft-glasses-free-3d-display/15462/

Real-Time Search

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Social networking is changing the way we seek information.

By Nicholas Carr

 How do you parse the tweet? Five years ago, that question would be nonsense. Today, perfectly reasonable, and that's in front of Amit Singhal's minds. Singhal Google search led to insert new data into search results in real time by tracking and ranking updates online content - especially the thousands of messages which of course through the social network every second.

real-time search is a response to fundamental changes in how people use the Web. People used to visit the page, click on the link, and visit other pages. Now they spend much time monitoring of data streams - tweets, status update, headlines - from services like Facebook and Twitter, and also from blogs and news outlets.

Brief info-nuggets are the new currency the Web, and sort through them for useful information is a challenge for search engines. Its the most frightening aspect, according to Singhal, does not collect data. Facebook and Twitter are happy to sell access to their data feed - or "fire hose," which they call - directly to the search service provider, the information that flows directly into Google's computer.

What's really hard about the real-time search is to find out the meaning and value of quick bits of information. The challenge goes beyond spam filtering, though it is an important part of it. People who are looking for real-time data to the same quality, authority, and relevance of what they expect when they engage in traditional Web search. Nobody wants to drink directly from a fire hose.

Google dominates traditional search carefully tracking signal and links to other pages in value as they accumulate over time. But the search for real-time, this does not work. Social-networking message can lose their value within minutes after the written. Google has to measure their value in seconds, or even microseconds.

Source:
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25079/

Portable Foldable Document Camera

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If you find yourself going to meetings, presentations or trade shows a lot then DocExpress from Taiwan's New Image could just help ease the burden of carrying away reams of paper handouts. Instead of lugging all that paper around, pop the document, photograph or even real object under the high speed, portable document camera solution and zap a digitized version instead. The solution can even be used to project, copy, fax, email or record images or video.

Handheld scanners are getting easier to use but what happens when you need scanning up to A3, record some video footage or project a document onto a screen? You probably have to seek out another solution. The foldable and portable DocExpress series from New Image can manage all that and more besides.

Further Reading:
http://www.gizmag.com/new-image-docexpress-portable-document-scanner/15359/

3D Movie Without the Glasses

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Today's 3-D movies are far more spectacular than the first ones screened more than 50 years ago, but watching them--both at the movie theater and at home--still means donning a pair of dorky, oversized glasses. Now a new type of lens developed by researchers in Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group could help make glasses-free 3-D displays more practical.

The new lens, which is thinner at the bottom than at the top, steers light to a viewer's eyes by switching light-emitting diodes along its bottom edge on and off. Combined with a backlight, this makes it possible to show different images to different viewers, or to create a stereoscopic (3-D) effect by presenting different images to a person's left and right eye. "What's so special about this lens is that it allows us to control where the light goes," says Steven Bathiche, director of Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group.

Further Reading:
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25524/?a=f

A giant double-screen PC tablet

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Huge, heavy reference tomes are still a major part of modern study and research. If you've ever wished that those textbooks in front of you could come to life and offer a more engaging experience than just reading through reams of text, then the Kno could be what you're looking for.

Weighing in at 5.5 pounds, the dual-screen electronic textbook will offer students access to a wealth of published educational material as well as wireless access to the internet and multimedia content such as high definition video. Just like with its paper cousin, the Kno will also allow for note-taking, highlighting and bookmarking.

Further Reading:
http://www.gizmag.com/kno-digital-textbook-announced/15390/

Smartphone 3-D

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TR10: Mobile 3-D, Smart phones will take 3-D mainstream.


The Samsung B710 phone looks like a typical smart phone, but something unexpected happens when the screen is moved from a vertical to a horizontal orientation: the image jumps from 2-D to 3-D. The technology that produces this perception of depth is the work of Julien Flack, CTO of Dynamic Digital Depth, who has spent more than a decade perfecting software that can convert 2-D content to 3-D in real time. It could help solve the biggest problem with 3-D: the need for special glasses that deliver a separate image to each eye.

Flack's software synthesizes 3-D scenes from existing 2-D video by estimating the depth of objects using various cues; a band of sky at the top of a frame probably belongs in the far background, for example. It then creates pairs of slightly different images that the viewer's brain combines to produce the sensation of depth.

The technology can be used with the much-hyped 3-D televisions announced in January (which require glasses), but its biggest impact will be as a way to create content for mobile devices with auto­stereoscopic 3-D displays, which work by directing light to deliver different versions of an image directly to each of a viewer's eyes. The effect works best over a narrow range of viewing angles, so it is ill suited to television or cinema screens. But phones are generally used by one person at a time and are easily held at the optimum angle. That's why mobile multimedia devices are likely to win the race to bring 3-D into the mainstream.

Further Reading:
http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/25081/?a=f

HaptiHug telecuddle interface

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Think you spend too much time online these days?

It's only going to get worse as mobile and virtual reality technology gets us connected more often, more inextricably and to the detriment of our "real world" social lives. Which is why researchers like the guys at Tachi Labs are starting to work on how to break down the benefits of physical human interaction and see how they can be replicated in a virtual world.

It's early days yet, so the HaptiHug interface and the rest of the iFeel_IM! Affective Haptics suite are painfully awkward and dorky, but this could be a glimpse into the kinds of technologies that can satisfy some of our needs for physical contact and help keep us sane as more and more of our lives go digital.

Source:
http://www.gizmag.com/haptihug-ifeelim-tachi-labs-second-life/14814/

iPhone 4

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As expected, Apple today pulled the wraps off the fourth generation iPhone at the WWDC conference in San Jose. While the phone didn't receive its expected iPhone HD monicker, it's certainly as HD as a phone is likely to get any time soon, with a 960 x 640 resolution equalling a whopping pixel density of 326 pixels per inch. Read on for the rest of the new features.

    * 5 megapixel camera with LED flash
    * Same A4 processor as the iPad
    * Second microphone for noise cancelling
    * 720p (30 frames per second) video recording with tap to focus
    * 802.11n Wi-Fi
    * Quad-band HSUPA (7.2Mbps down, 5.8Mbps up)
    * "FaceTime" video calls (Wi-Fi only)
    * 960 x 640 "Retina" display
    * 3-axis gyro in addition to the accelerometer for PS3-style 6-axis motion control
    * Seven hours 3G talk time, six hours 3G web browsing, 10 hours video playback
    * 9.3mm thick
    * iOS 4.0 with multitasking and folders
    * iMovie app for $4.99
    * iBooks app (free)
    * Official Apple case for $29

Apple is also touting a new and improved build quality, claiming its chemically strengthened aluminosilcate glass is 30 times harder than plastic, and more scratch resistant than previous models. The stainless steel band around the rim is an alloy forged to be five times stronger than "standard" steel.

The iPhone 4's closest competitor is Sprint and HTC's flagship EVO 4G, which debuted on June 4th. At a whopping 4.3 inches, the EVO 4G offers official Wi-Fi hotspot support, micro-HDMI output, and (you guessed it) 4G network connectivity - though early reports claim battery life is the device's Achilles' heel.

The iPhone 4 will be available in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan on June 24, and in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland by the end of July.

Unfortunately we can only tell our US readers the pricing details right now: $199 for the 16GB and $299 for the 32GB model, with that unfortunate two year AT&T contract. For the budget-conscious, an 8GB iPhone 3GS will be available for $99.

Source:
http://www.gizmag.com/

String Rail

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Trains might be a reasonably cheap transport option - but rail infrastructure is very costly to build. Monorail, maglev systems and high speed rail are more expensive again - and prices really skyrocket when you have to build bridges, tunnels and winding mountain routes, or cover difficult terrain. Which is why Anatoly Unitsky's String Transport Systems look like they've got so much potential. The system uses solid steel/concrete rails, reinforced with extremely high tension steel wires, to provide an efficient and smooth rail system anywhere between 3 to 30 meters above the ground. It's earthquake, hurricane and terrorist-proof, and capable of supporting vehicle speeds over 500 kmh, too, making it a genuine high-speed rail alternative, for a fraction of the price of road or ground rail alternatives. Fascinating stuff!

Further Reading :
http://www.gizmag.com/unitsky-string-transport-rail-suspended/15300/

Bicycle Charger Kit

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It is Bicycle Charger Kit from Nokia, a stroke of genius.

Cyclists are already doing their bit to help the environment by eschewing a fossil-fuel guzzling transport option. Now they can do a little bit more using Nokia’s newly unveiled Bicycle Charger Kit which lets cyclists charge their mobile phone using pedal power. The kit employs a bottle dynamo that is driven when in contact with the front wheel like those found on ye olde time bicycle lights.

Charging times will obviously vary depending on the phone and cycling speeds, but Nokia says cycling for 20 minutes at 20 kmh (12.4 mph) will power up a Nokia 1202 for around one hour of talk time, or 74 hours of standby time. Charging starts when the cyclist hits walking speed, or around 6 km/h (3.7 mph), and at 12 km/h (7.4 mph) it will charge your phone as efficiently as a mains charger. And there’s no need to worry about going to fast and sending a power spike to your phone as the charger will cut out if you somehow exceed 50 km/h (31 mph).

Further Reading:
http://www.gizmag.com/nokia-bicycle-charger-kit/15312/

Smartbooks

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Smartbooks, the future of mobile computing?

Since the launch of the first lines of netbooks, I’ve had some concerns that they weren’t truly beneficial for mobile workers. The low battery life, lack of optical drives on some models, limited resources for programs, and their small form factor are not really conducive to mobile productivity.

Smartbooks just may change that perception. The target market seems to be those who need a small form factor device that can allow the user to do more than read e-mail and browse the Internet. These will be the newest twist on the netbook, mini-notebook, sub-compact design but will feature the ARM chip as opposed to Intel’s Atom chip.

What does that mean for mobile workers? The ARM chip will provide for longer battery life (eight hours is a number being tossed around). The Smartbooks will also run on Linux instead of Windows, and is that really a bad thing?

While it is stated that the ARM chips results in lower computing power compared to the Intel Atom, software companies and developers appear to be ready to start creating applications that will take advantage of the ARM chip and still provide mobile workers with the ability to use multimedia programs.

The Smartbook name follows on the path of Smartphones which evolved from basic cell phones to mobile devices that offer the user more and hopefully better ways to be productive. We may even see Smartbooks that have removable displays to be used as a variation of an e-reader. These variations would use the Tegra chip which is another ARM product.

So no matter the name you choose to call this new mobile device you can be sure that it will change the way you can work and how well you work while traveling. It will be interesting to follow the developments and see which companies chose to get involved with making these a more robust machine.

Source: The New York Times – Bits

ASUS Eee Tablet

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Taiwan's own AsusTek kicked off Computex 2010 today with Chairman Jonney Shih announcing of three tablets, the Eee Tablet, the 12" Eee Pad EP121 and the 10" Eee Pad EP101TC. The biggest surprise? Asus is claiming an iPad-like ten hour battery life for all three devices. With battery life being such a crucial benchmark for tablets, we hope this figure holds up to real world usage.

ASUS Eee Tablet

An amalgam of the notepad and the e-reader, the Eee Tablet will likely appeal to as many artists as it does students. Instead of e-ink, Asus has used a backlight-less 8-inch (1024x768) TFT-LCD display with 64 shades of grey, which gives the Eee Tablet the ability to turn pages in just one tenth of a second. With a touch resolution of 2450 dpi, this is apparently one of the most accurate touch displays available. Lecture slides can be snapped with the 2 megapixel camera and "written" on instantly. Expansion is provided by USB and microSD slots.

Further Reading:
http://www.gizmag.com/asus-eee-tablet-eee-pad/15266/