Techo Karma

IBM Shows Off Power7 HPC monster

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:03:00 +0000

IBM Shows Off Power7 HPC monster: "Big Blue unveils 'Blue Waters' server node."

Acer Plans to Launch a Chrome OS Netbook in Late 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:52:00 +0000

Acer Plans to Launch a Chrome OS Netbook in Late 2010: "

Can’t wait to try out Google’s Chrome OS on an actual netbook? You might have to wait until the second half of 2010, as that’s when Acer – the first company that announced the development of a Chrome-based netbook – plans to release theirs.

Digitimes reports that Acer has been developing the netbook since mid-2009. If you remember, Acer was the first company to launch a dual-boot Android/Windows netbook, which was quickly forgotten, partly due to the fact that Chrome OS arrived and kicked Android back to where it belongs – the smartphone world.

Chrome OS – Google’s try to reinvent the browser as the operating system – has attracted a lot of interest, but we’re yet to see how the users will react to it when they try to use it on an everyday basis.

Reviews: Android, Google

Tags: Acer, Chrome OS, Google, netbook

Facebook’s Road to 350 Million Users

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:41:00 +0000

Facebook’s Road to 350 Million Users: "

Mark Zuckerberg’s note about Facebook’s latest privacy changes also contained an announcement about another important milestone for Facebook: 350 million users.

It’s a flabbergasting number, but even more amazing is the speed with which Facebook has managed to achieve it, trouncing its competitors, including the once mighty MySpace, in the process.

Back in August 2008 – less than one and a half years ago – Facebook has had 100 million users. It took about 5 months to reach 150 million, and after that Facebook has been adding another 50 million users roughly every three months, going from 150 million to 350 million in less than one year.

And despite its humongous size, Facebook is still growing when it comes to traffic. After a short summer slumber, Compete’s stats show solid growth for Facebook in October.

When it comes to social networks, history has shown that it’s hard to stay on top; sites like Bebo, hi5, and even MySpace, have all lost much of their former glory. But Facebook is getting bigger and bigger, with no strong competitor in sight. Will they become the Google of social networking, or is it just a matter of time until some new kid on the block takes away their users? Please tell us what you think in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Norebbo.

Reviews: Bebo, Facebook, Google, MySpace, iStockphoto

Tags: facebook, social networking

Google May Limit Free News Access

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:40:00 +0000

Google May Limit Free News Access: "You know how, if you want to read a paywalled newspaper article, you can just paste its title into Google News and get a free pass? Those days may be coming to an end. Reader Captian Spazzz writes: 'It looks like Google may be bowing to pressure from folks like News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch. What I don't understand is what prevents the websites themselves from enforcing some limit. Why make Google do it?' (Danny Sullivan explains how they could do that.) 'Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google, the company has announced. The concession follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages. Publishers will join a First Click Free programme that will prevent web surfers from having unrestricted access. Users who click on more than five articles in a day may be routed to payment or registration pages.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Martian landscapes

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:22:00 +0000

Martian landscapes: "

Since 2006, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been orbiting Mars, currently circling approximately 300 km (187 mi) above the Martian surface. On board the MRO is HiRISE, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, which has been photographing the planet for several years now at resolutions as fine as mere inches per pixel. Collected here is a group of images from HiRISE over the past few years, in either false color or grayscale, showing intricate details of landscapes both familiar and alien, from the surface of our neighboring planet, Mars. I invite you to take your time looking through these, imagining the settings - very cold, dry and distant, yet real. (35 photos total)

Intersecting swirling trails left by the earlier passage of dust devils across sand dunes, as they lifted lighter reddish-pink dust and exposed the darker material below. Also visible are darker slope streaks along dune edges, formed by a process which is still under investigation. More, or see location on Google Mars. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

How scientists determined how many humans two lions ate in 1898

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:25:00 +0000

How scientists determined how many humans two lions ate in 1898: "How do you gauge the magnitude of a series of lion attacks that occurred over a century ago? In 1898, construction on the Ugandan Railroad in East Africa was halted due to deadly, nightly lion invasions that took the lives of Indian and African laborers who were working on the project. By some estimates, over 100 people had been devoured by these animals, hungry because drought and disease had reduced the number of natural prey. But researchers at UC Santa Cruz published a report this week that gave a more accurate estimate of how many humans the two male lions really ate. They did it by running chemical tests on their carcasses:

Scientists hoping to figure out the actual number of people eaten decided to study the remains of the two male lions, now on display at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, testing the types of carbon and nitrogen in their teeth and hair.

Those chemical ratios were compared with the carbon and nitrogen found in modern lions in the region, in lions' normal prey animals and in humans.

Bones and teeth store carbon and nitrogen isotopes over long periods, while the ratios in hair change more rapidly, allowing the scientists to determine the long-term diet and how it changed in the lions' last months.

Humans made up at least half of the diet of one of the lions in the last months of his life, consuming at least 24 people, they concluded. The other lion had eaten 11 people, they found.

In other words, even a century later, you are what you eat.

Study: Man-eating lions consumed 35 people in 1898

Image via Tambako the Jaguar's Flickr

"

Now Anyone Can Host Their Own (Experimental) Google Wave Server

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:41:00 +0000

Now Anyone Can Host Their Own (Experimental) Google Wave Server: "

Back in May, when Google Wave first made its debut on the stage of the Google I/O conference, we chronicled what we believed to be the top 6 game-changing features of Google Wave.

While we discussed some big ones such as Wave extensions and its wiki-like interface, the feature that we said “may be the most important aspect of Google Wave” was its open-source nature.

Not only did Google promise to let developers improve the code, but they promised federation for Wave, meaning that anyone could take the Wave code and run their own private or public wave server. Today, Google took the first step towards the full federation of its real-time communication platform by announcing that the developer sandbox version of Google Wave is open for experimental federation.

Let’s be clear: this is a very early stage test of federating the Google Wave code onto non-Google servers. It only affects the developer sandbox, meaning that the preview version of Wave that most people are using is not a part of this test. However, it is a big step in making it a widespread product, rather than only a tool of early adopters. Businesses and individuals can begin testing their own local copy of Wave. This is just the beginning of Google’s legitimate attempt to upend email as the standard for web correspondence and communication.

If you’re a developer with a sandbox account and want to get started, Google has published some installation instructions for a Java version. Be warned though: there will be a lot of changes occurring over the next few weeks, many of them based on developer feedback.

More Google Wave Resources from Mashable

- Testing Google Wave: This Thing is Tidal

- The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave

- Google Wave: 5 Ways It Could Change the Web

- Google Wave Extensions: An Inside Look

- Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication?

- Twave: Google Wave + Twitter

Reviews: Google, Google Wave

Tags: Federation, Google, Google Wave, Google Wave Federation

We do it right. Everytime!

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:39:00 +0000

ScaleAdvice is an emerging leader in enterprise and web-enabled solutions that allow corporations to operate more efficiently, quickly bring products to market, and rapidly achieve their business objectives. Guided by a philosophy of attracting and retaining professionals who possess well-rounded domain and technical expertise, ScaleAdvice builds teams of focused professionals who capitalize on their combined experiences to deliver innovative, practical solutions.

Our clear methodology includes a focus on key business drivers, an emphasis on analysis, and efficient IT infrastructure. ScaleAdvice domain knowledge, technical expertise and creative minds offer adaptive solutions that evolve with the changing requirements of global business.

For more info visit, Scale Advice.

Verizon’s Motorola Droid Demo [VIDEO]

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:59:00 +0000

Verizon’s Motorola Droid Demo [VIDEO]: "

Verizon’s very first phone running the Google Android mobile operating system launches next Friday, November 6. We’ve seen the marketing campaign, the commercial, and the iDon’t care spoof of the commercial — and today Verizon offers a demo video of the highly-anticipated phone.

First a refresher on the specs: 3.7-inch touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera, 3G, Wi-Fi, both physical and virtual keyboards, 16 GB microSD memory card included and a beta version of the Google Maps Navigation feature we just wrote about earlier today. Head on after the break to watch the official demo video.

Let us know: are you sweating the Motorola Droid? Will you consider picking up the phone when it launches, or are you interested in another forthcoming Android device (relatedly, be sure to cast your cost in our smartphone smackdown this week!)?

Reviews: Android

Tags: android, Google, Google Maps Navigation, Mobile 2.0, motorola droid, verizon

The Next App Store: Google Wave

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:35:00 +0000

The Next App Store: Google Wave: "

Google Wave may still be in its infancy, but it’s already looking towards the future – a future that includes monetization. And part of that monetization will apparently come from an iPhone (or Android)-like app store, where developers can market Wave apps and consumers can buy them, with Google presumably taking a cut.

According to The Next Web, Google confirmed an app store is in the works at an event in London on Monday. The blog speculates that “a Wave marketplace could stock in-Wave applications, along with desktop applications, browser extensions and a world of devices, from laptops, phones, tablets and more with built in Wave support.”

The development doesn’t come as much of a surprise, as Google Wave already has an extensions platform for adding functionality. Back in June, we wrote that “we wouldn’t be surprised if entrepreneurs created robots or gadgets for businesses they could charge for, and expect applications that rival the usefulness of Twitter apps.”

However, an app store is only attractive to developers if there are users. Between iPhone and iPod Touch, there are more than 40 million of them – hence, why you now have more than 100,000 apps, with every other mobile platform far behind. Wave was just rolled out to 100,000 users last month, who are slowly getting invites so they can add friends and colleagues.

We have a long way to go until a Wave app store becomes a reality, let alone a viable business, but it’s an interesting possibility to think about.

Reviews: Google, Google Wave, Twitter

Tags: Google, Google Wave

iPhone News App by ScaleAdvice Consulating Inc.

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:26:00 +0000

iPhone News App by ScaleAdvice Consulating Inc.: "

iPhone News App by ScaleAdvice Consulating Inc.

Android Phone Turned Into Virtual Reality Goggles

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:10:00 +0000

Android Phone Turned Into Virtual Reality Goggles: "andylim writes "After years of hype surrounding virtual reality, including the classic '90s movie The Lawnmower Man, few of us can claim to have experienced virtual reality at home. But what if you could build your own virtual reality goggles without having to spend a fortune? Using an HTC Magic and Google Street View, Recombu.com made a simple pair of virtual reality goggles that let you immerse yourself in distant locations. As the article points out, you can also use these goggles with augmented reality apps — although you probably don't want to walk around with them all day long."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Caves of the Moon

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:14:00 +0000

Caves of the Moon: "jeno passes along this excerpt from New Scientist: 'A deep hole on the moon that could open into a vast underground tunnel has been found for the first time. The discovery strengthens evidence for subsurface, lava-carved channels that could shield future human colonists from space radiation and other hazards. ... The hole measures 65 meters across, and based on images taken at a variety of sun angles, the hole is thought to extend down at least 80 meters. It sits in the middle of a rille, suggesting the hole leads into a lava tube as wide as 370 meters across.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mozilla Raindrop: Is the Intelligent Inbox Coming?

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 03:24:00 +0000

Mozilla Raindrop: Is the Intelligent Inbox Coming?: "

Mozilla Labs announced a new project today: Raindrop is an “exploration in messaging innovation” brought to you by the same team behind the Thunderbird open source email client.

Built around the idea that “email isn’t fun anymore,” Raindrop aims to be a sort of intelligent inbox filtering system that kicks minor messages and notifications to the sidelines while foregrounding messages from Mom and other important people you actually know.

Raindrop also wants to pull in messages from Twitter, Facebook, IM, and eventually any other communication platform with an API. Direct messages and @replies would be seen as more important and therefore foregrounded over regular not specifically to you messages. The idea is to make a people-centric communication tool that brings your various services together in one interface, instead of constantly playing a game of “find that browser tab” when you want to check up on a particular conversation or thread.

While the concept is extremely exciting to those of us very weary of slogging through almost unparseable email accounts and wielding a formidable array of web-based communication tools, Raindrop is still in the very, very early stages. In fact at a lowly version 0.1 release, the platform is still only available to developers at this point.

Still, we look forward to seeing what comes out of Raindrop. Like Google Wave, it’s an attempt to re-imagine web-based communication for the modern era from the ground up. Raindrop will also borrow some elements from Wave like the ability to view images and videos inline, and it will be interesting to see what other parallels might emerge between the two.

Check out an introductory video about Raindrop below and let us know what you think. Do you have any suggestions for the team working on re-inventing online communication? Or do you even plan to get your hands dirty and get involved with the open source Raindrop project?

Reviews: Facebook, Google Wave, Twitter

Tags: communication, email, facebook, mozilla, raindrop, twitter

IBM's Answer To Windows 7 Is Ubuntu Linux

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:26:00 +0000

IBM's Answer To Windows 7 Is Ubuntu Linux: "An anonymous reader writes 'It looks like IBM isn't much of a friend of Microsoft's anymore. Today IBM announced an extension of its Microsoft-Free PC effort together with Canonical Ubuntu Linux. This is the same thing that was announced a few weeks back for Africa (a program that began a year ago), and now it's available in the US. The big push is that IBM claims it will cost up to $2,000 for a business to move to Windows 7. They argue that moving to Linux is cheaper.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

RUMOR: Google to Launch Its Own Phone Through Retailers

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:54:00 +0000

RUMOR: Google to Launch Its Own Phone Through Retailers: "

For as long as we can remember the term “Google Phone” has referred to Google’s Android operating system as opposed to an actual Google device.

But this morning TheStreet.com is reporting that there is an offical Google-branded phone on the way, and it will be the product of a partnership between Google and an unnamed smartphone manufacturer.

Even more remarkable is that the rumors have this Google Phone poised to be released before the end of the year and available through retailers instead of carriers. Essentially, the phone would be something you could purchase regardless of your wireless service provider, and the antithesis to the iPhone and its exclusivity with AT&T.

At the center of the rumor is Ashok Kumar, a Northeast Securities analyst, who claims to have spoken with Google’s design partners about the phone and it’s product release strategy. The article speculates, “If talk of the Google phone plan is true, the entrance of a unlocked, low-cost, Web-friendly touchscreen device will probably undercut other Android phone efforts by players like Motorola, Samsung and Dell.”

We’re quite anxious to see how this rumor develops and if there’s any merit to it. We think it would be a smart and logical move for Google, with the potential to steal customers away from Apple and their wildly successful iPhone, which remains exclusive to AT&T in the US.

Reviews: Android, Google

Tags: Google, google phone

Saturn at equinox

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:54:00 +0000

Saturn at equinox: "

Checking in with NASA's Cassini spacecraft, our current emissary to Saturn, some 1.5 billion kilometers (932 million miles) distant from Earth, we find it recently gathering images of the Saturnian system at equinox. During the equinox, the sunlight casts long shadows across Saturn's rings, highlighting previously known phenomena and revealing a few never-before seen images. Cassini continues to orbit Saturn, part of its extended Equinox Mission, funded through through September 2010. A proposal for a further extension is under consideration, one that would keep Cassini in orbit until 2017, ending with a spectacular series of orbits inside the rings followed by a suicide plunge into Saturn on Sept. 15, 2017. (previously: 1, 2, 3). (23 photos total)

From 20 degrees above the ring plane, Cassini's wide angle camera shot 75 exposures in succession for this mosaic showing Saturn, its rings, and a few of its moons a day and a half after exact Saturn equinox, when the sun's disk was exactly overhead at the planet's equator. The images were taken on Aug. 12, 2009, at a distance of approximately 847,000 km (526,000 mi) from Saturn. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

The Ultimate Limit of Moore's Law

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:49:00 +0000

The Ultimate Limit of Moore's Law: "BuzzSkyline writes "Physicists have found that there is an ultimate limit to the speed of calculations, regardless of any improvements in technology. According to the researchers who found the computation limit, the bound 'poses an absolute law of nature, just like the speed of light.' While many experts expect technological limits to kick in eventually, engineers always seem to find ways around such roadblocks. If the physicists are right, though, no technology could ever beat the ultimate limit they've calculated — which is about 10^16 times faster than today's fastest machines. At the current Moore's Law pace, computational speeds will hit the wall in 75 to 80 years. A paper describing the analysis, which relies on thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and information theory, appeared in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters (abstract here)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Incredible, Rotating Firefox

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:08:00 +0000

The Incredible, Rotating Firefox: "

Actually, it’ll only be rotating if you use it on a laptop that has a built-in accelerometer, similar to the one found in the iPhone. But still, the fact that the new version of Firefox (3.6) can recognize your screen orientation and adapt accordingly is awesome and signifies that we’ll see more and more accelerometer-equipped lappies in the future.

Oh, and it’ll also fuel more Apple Tablet rumors. Why? Because you can’t really imagine this feature being too useful on a regular laptop. It’s much easier to imagine it on a keyboardless, thin, compact device which you can easily turn into a vertical position.

This new feature was announced by Mozilla evangelist Christopher Blizzard. “One new feature that we’re including as part of Firefox 3.6 is support for web pages to access machine orientation information if it’s available. Many modern MacBooks and ThinkPads contain devices and drivers that expose this information. We’ve added support for Linux, Macs and some ThinkPads where drivers and devices are available,” he said.

It’s nice to see a flashy, innovative feature like this announced for Firefox; its recent iterations have been more about bug squashing and stability. To see what Firefox plans for 2010., check out this post.

Reviews: Firefox, linux

Tags: accelerometer, Firefox

I Just Made Love: Web Users Plot their Love-Making on a Map

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:52:00 +0000

I Just Made Love: Web Users Plot their Love-Making on a Map: "

Would you post your love-making locations on the web? Thousands of people are happy to, it seems, on a quirky site called I Just Made Love.

It’s a simple idea: right click on a Google Map to post the location of your passionate moments, select “Indoor” or “Outdoor” and choose from one of 5 positions, as illustrated by the site’s innocuous cartoon figures. (We’re intrigued by why the figures are blue and pink – does this imply only straight couples can add markers?)

Whatever you might think – and we happen to find it pretty funny – the idea is sure to be shared around the web thanks to its mildly saucy spin and wonderful simplicity.

Would you post a marker on I Just Made Love? Let us know in the comments.

Comic for October 11, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:12:00 +0000

Comic for October 11, 2009: "

Mickos Urges EU To Approve Oracle's MySQL Takeover

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:33:00 +0000

Mickos Urges EU To Approve Oracle's MySQL Takeover: "mjasay writes 'Former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos has written to EU Commissioner of Competition Neelie Kroes to urge speedy approval of Oracle's proposed purchase of Sun, including the open-source MySQL database. The EU has been worried that Oracle's acquisition of Sun could end up hurting competition by dampening or killing MySQL's momentum. But in his letter, Mickos separates MySQL-the-community from MySQL-the-company, arguing that Oracle's takeover cannot hurt the MySQL community: 'Those two meanings of the term 'MySQL' stand in a close, mutually beneficial interaction with each other. But, most importantly, this interaction is voluntary and cannot be directly controlled by the vendor.' In a follow-up interview with CNET, Mickos indicated that he has no financial interest in the matter, but instead argues he 'couldn't live with the fact that [he's] not taking action,' and is 'motivated now by trying to help the employees still at MySQL and Sun, and by an urge to bring rational discussion to the matter.''

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nobel Peace Prize Committee Wins the Ig Nobel Prize

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 06:54:00 +0000

Nobel Peace Prize Committee Wins the Ig Nobel Prize: "

This morning the Nobel Peace Prize committee were woken up by a call from the Ig Nobel Prize committee saying, “Congratulations! you have won!” (The Ig Noble prize people have just gone out of business — they cannot parody the Nobel Prize any more.)

Saturday Morning Science Experiment

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:28:00 +0000

Saturday Morning Science Experiment: "

Grab your favorite sugary cereal and pull up a seat. This week, we're finding out what happens to a gummi bear (i.e., sucrose) when it's dropped into molten potassium chlorate.

Got a video you want to see on Saturday Morning Science Experiment? Drop me an email, I'm taking suggestions.

A Donkey With Stripes

noreply@blogger.com (Harshal Patil) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:25:00 +0000

A Donkey With Stripes: "

Reuters has a story on how a zoo in Gaza painted black stripes on a couple of white donkeys and passed them off as zebras. The kids who came to the zoo were reportedly delighted. The other donkeys no doubt went WTF.

And the thought that struck me as I read this news: What a delightful metaphor for media hype.

No?

(Picture courtesy Reuters.)