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Monday, January 31, 2011
Hackers increasingly using telnet for attacks, port 23 looking younger than ever
Hands-On With T-Mobile?s 7-Inch Tablet, Due Feb. 2
For those of you with lengthy tech-toy wish lists and not-so-deep pockets, T-Mobile?s new tablet offering may provide the answer you?ve been waiting for.
Beginning Feb. 2, the Dell Streak 7 tablet will be available for $200, after a $50 mail-in rebate and two-year contract, T-Mobile has announced. Off-contract, the tablet will retail for $450.
The new 7-inch Streak is a bump up in size from Dell?s last 5-inch offering, as well as a dip in price from the $300 charged for the 5-inch�AT&T version. But unlike its teensy predecessor, the Streak 7 will be able to connect to T-Mobile?s HSPA+ 4G network ? although as we?ve recently noted, the term ?4G? seems to be in the eye of the beholder.
We got our hands on the Streak 7 today, and our first impressions are generally positive. (We?ll follow up with a full review later in the week.)
It?s chunkier in shape than the iPad, but with rounder edges than the Galaxy Tab. It rests comfortably in one hand or two, suggesting it will serve just as well for passive reading and video watching as it will for more-active browsing.
The interface will be familiar to anyone who?s used Android, and neither T-Mobile nor Dell have mucked up the basic operating system with too many widgets.
The screen is bright and somewhat responsive, although it?s a little ?jumpy.? While the screen moves quickly, it?s not quite as smooth as the iPad at tracking your finger motions when you swipe or pinch the screen. It?s as if the makers decided to compensate for the touchscreen?s lack of sensitivity by making the screen move faster, and the result is that the screen sometimes feels as if it?s jumping ahead of your finger.
Web browsing and video playback were all quite smooth, and stereo speakers built into the case provide decent if somewhat anemic audio.
The Streak will come packing one of Nvidia?s much-hyped dual-core Tegra 2 processors, while touting the suite of recent tablet debut standards ? SD card slot, Wi-Fi access, Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity, 5-megapixel back-facing camera for photos and 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera with video-chat capability.
T-Mobile is targeting the lower-priced end of the tablet market with the $200 tag, beating out the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which recently dropped its sticker price to $250, after a $50 mail-in rebate. Though the Streak?s off-contract $450 isn?t exactly a bargain-basement price, its still 50 bucks cheaper than the lowest-priced iPad.
The Streak 7?s debut comes at the forefront of a 2011 tablet-debut onslaught. Rumors of a March release for HP?s new webOS-powered ?Topaz? have been circulating recently, with the Android-fueled Motorola Xoom soon to follow. While the Streak may have a leg up on Motorola in terms of pricing ? leaked screenshots suggest a hefty $800 price tag for the tablet on debut ? it might be at a disadvantage running the antiquated Android version 2.2 (Froyo) against the version 3.0 Honeycomb-powered Xoom.
But despite version-fragmentation issues, a relatively low-cost option like the Streak 7 may be impetus enough for shoppers to jump on one of the first big tablet offerings of the year.
Photos: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com
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Verizon Wireless Launches iPhone 4 Countdown Timer
It remains to be seen how many people will jump at the chance to own one now that the iPhone 5 is expected to launch this summer, but we're sure Verizon customers who have waited years for this moment may not be able to hold out. There's even a countdown timer to get you even more excited (if that's even possible). Will you be committing on 2/3/11? Holding out for the iPhone 5? Not switching to Verizon at all? Let us know!
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Hokies give (tactile) sight to the blind so they can drive, no word on turning water into wine
HTC Evo Shift 4G Review
Sprint continuously brags about its flagship 4G Android phone the HTC Evo. It is a great piece of hardware, but it is also a relatively large device with a premium price tag. Enter the HTC Evo Shift, currently Sprint's least expensive Android 4G phone. The Shift runs Android 2.2, includes a slide-out keyboard and is noticeably smaller than the EVO and Sprint's other slide-out 3G/4G phone, the Samsung Epic (see specs below). The Shift is also priced at $150 (with a two-year contract and mail-in rebate) compared to $199 for the HTC Evo and the Samsung Epic. It is a responsive, well performing smartphone that we liked in many ways. But, in exchange for the slide-out keyboard and lower price, it doesn't include all of the features of some other high-end smartphones. For instance, it lacks a front-facing camera and doesn't include HDMI output...
Turn Your iPhone Into a Fake Windows Phone 7 With This Hack
Maybe Windows Phone 7 can gain some presence with the help of the iPhone?s hacker community.
Recently released as a public beta, a new hack transforms the interface of the iPhone to mimic the main screen of Windows Phone 7.
So gone will be the springboard UI we?ve all grown accustomed to on the iPhone and Android OS, and in its stead will be the tile-based interface of Windows Phone 7.
Of course, the iPhone theme doesn?t work exactly the same as the real thing. The authentic Windows Phone 7 uses tiles to represent ?Hubs? containing the main experiences of the phone. So for example, the photo hub has your camera, and after you snap a photo it brings up another feature to share the photo on a social-working site or e-mail the pic. Microsoft calls these ?threaded? experiences.
The iPhone hack doesn?t replicate the threaded Hub functionality of Windows Phone 7. It�just repurposes your individual apps into Windows Phone 7-like tiles and mimics the process of adding or removing these tiles. Check out the video below for a demo.
Windows Phone 7 offers a fresh and brand-new UI compared to competing smartphones, but that hasn?t been enough to win over a large number of customers yet. Microsoft has been cagey about initial Windows Phone �7 handset sales numbers, but according to a new report by NPD, the OS is off to a slow start. Windows Phone 7 debuted with 2 percent of the smartphone OS marketshare, which is lower lower than the debuts of WebOS and Android, according to NPD.
So maybe you?ll more likely see an iPhone running this fake Windows Phone 7 theme as opposed to the real thing.
It?s a neat theme, and if you?re tired of the iOS UI but don?t want to ditch the iPhone just yet, this will be a fun hack to tinker with. Visit the ModMyi forum for a quick tutorial on installing. Jailbreaking is required.
From Gizmodo
BlackBerry PlayBook may be able to run Android apps, thanks to Dalvik
In theory, a Dalvik VM running on a BlackBerry device could be capable of running an Android .APK. However, since most apps are closely tied to OS-specific APIs, there's also a very good chance that most Android apps wouldn't do anything noteworthy on future RIM devices. Still, the possibility is an exciting one -- and the ability to handle Android apps would definitely make BlackBerry a bit more enticing to both developers and users.
Tags: .apk, android, apk, blackberry, dalvik, java, mobile, playbook, rim, virtual machine, VirtualMachine, vm
Best of Smartphone Experts, 30 Jan 2011
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Facebook Once Again Hangs Up on Phone Rumors
Facebook issued a flat denial Wednesday to persistent rumors that the company is developing its own branded cellphone. Talk of a Facebook phone surfaced last fall, and it was brought to life again Wednesday with a report stating the company would bring two phones to Mobile World Congress. The company's said it's not building a phone, and for some, it's a very believable denial.
Facebook is not -- repeat NOT -- developing a mobile phone, a company representative told TechNewsWorld Wednesday, trying to waylay the latest rumor that the social media giant might be looking to add a new identity -- "Phonebook," perhaps? -- to its mega-popular worldwide brand.
The latest gossip -- that HTC will launch two such phones at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona -- was reported by City A.M. Wednesday.
Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android operating system might display Facebook messages and home-screen news feeds, the report claimed. Friends and Family plans, so familiar to AT&T (NYSE: T) users, might be called "Facebook Friends and Family" plans, with users emailing and calling one another with information stored on their Facebook pages.
But details remain rumors, and "might" is indeed the operative word. As proprietor of an enormous store that combines social media, online shopping, and apps galore, Appitalism Simon Buckingham watches such developments closely -- and like Facebook officials, refuses to believe.
"I'd be willing to go on the record and say that I don't think a Facebook phone will materialize," Buckingham told TechNewsWorld. "The whole idea just doesn't pass the smell test."
Hardly Hardware
"Before we get into this, I want to apologize for the miscommunication," was how Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg started off a September interview with TechCrunch about some early Facebook phone rumors.
The interview quickly started sounding like former President Bill Clinton's famous "what the definition of 'is' is" discussion. "When people say 'building a phone' they actually can mean very different things," Zuckerberg said. "Internally, the way we talk about our strategy, it's like the opposite of that. Our whole strategy is not to build any specific device or integration or anything like that. Because we're not trying to compete with Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) or the Droid or any other hardware manufacturer for that matter."
Exactly, says Simon Buckingham. "I don't think Facebook is hardware driven," he explained, citing several recent instances of Facebook's software-specific approach.
"We're trying to build a social layer for everything," Zuckerberg told TechCrunch, later diving into a conversation about the company's grand plans for HTML5, which is hardly hardware.
"Facebook has long been talking about how they're planning to use HTML5 to extend their brand," Buckingham explained. "It's another part of their general software approach."
Triumphant Triangle
Today's Facebook phone tales closely follow yesterday's news that Google is launching a mobile version of Cloud Print. If the rumors were true, the stories' close proximity might suggest a driving dynamic behind Facebook's desire for a phone.
Even if the rumors are not true, Facebook-Google-Apple may still be evolving into an oligopoly resembling the movie studios and auto makers of yore: a trilateral group of giants whose business decisions profoundly affect one another.
Though Cloud Print's value "is inconclusive at this point," Radware virtualization solutions director Kelly Hair told TechNewsWorld, Google is pressing ahead anyway because the search giant "has recognized the value of providing services to mobile phone customers."
Likewise, the value of a Facebook phone is inconclusive, but -- if the rumors were true -- the company might be pressing ahead anyway for a simple reason economists know well: Members of an oligopoly cannot afford not to follow or even imitate each other. If Google has recognized the value of mobile, so then must Facebook.
"They're 'frenemies,' if you will," Appitalism's Buckingham said. "People are always looking at Apple, Google, and now Facebook. Apple nailing the whole hardware space has got to have generated some serious envy. Their respective decisions are also a function of the employee pool. Sure, they're all getting employees from Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) -- everybody's getting employees from Yahoo -- but they're also getting employees from each other."
And those employees share ideas.
Zuck-worthy Denial
Radware's Hair said he shares links from his Android phone to Facebook, and that if true, a Facebook phone "will further cement the Facebook experience."
Nonetheless, "Facebook has already developed excellent integration apps for smartphones, including the iPhone and Android platforms," Hair explained.
Indeed it has, Appitalism's Buckingham said, and all with one goal in mind. "A Facebook phone doesn't help them reach that goal -- growing and monetizing their membership base," he said.
Facebook officials seem to agree, with comments that make the argument moot -- for now.
"Facebook is not building a mobile phone," Facebook spokesperson Stephen Naventi told TechNewsWorld. "As we've long said, our mobile strategy is to enable people to not only have access, but also a great Facebook experience from any mobile phone they choose. We're working across the entire mobile industry with operators, hardware manufactures, and app developers to bring Facebook to mobile phones in a variety of unique and exciting ways. Some of these include deep integrations of Facebook within the device, but are not 'a Facebook phone' as sometimes referred to by commenters."
It's a denial worthy of Zuck himself.
Hands-On With the iFusion iPhone-to-Landline Converter
Apple sought to reinvent the phone with the iPhone, and now a company is trying to reinvent the landline with an iPhone accessory.
Seriously. That?s the gist of the iFusion accessory, which consists of an iPhone power-charging dock and a Bluetooth receiver that pairs the device with a traditional telephone handset as well as a speakerphone. There?s also a USB port on back to connect the device straight to a PC or Mac for syncing the iPhone with iTunes.
The company said customers would enjoy the handset?s ergonomic design. However, unless you have miraculously good iPhone reception, I?m not sure why you?d get this.
I tried placing a call to my friend Heather with the iFusion. I heard her loud and clear when she picked up through the iFusion handset, but she hung up after she couldn?t hear a word I was saying (I think).
Showcased at Macworld Expo, the iFusion Smartstation iPhone dock costs $170. The accessory ships April 2011.
Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com
YouTube on the Shift 4G, HTC Thunderbolt love [from the forums]
What a week. Android news has been hopping and as we head on into the weekend make sure you folks check out whatever it is that you may have missed out on. We've got some contests happening that will need to be closed down soon plus, hit up the Android Central podcast if you've not had a chance to do so as of yet. Make sure you jump on into the forums as well at some point this weekend. Lots of discussion happening and as always, more is welcome.
If you're not already a member of the Android Central forums, you can register your account today.
�
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Silhouetter Turns Your Photos into iPod Ads
Oddly, the Silhouetter app for the iPad and iPhone doesn?t mention its ?inspiration? anywhere in its description. But then, it doesn?t really need to, so obvious is the ?homage? to the iconic iPod ads.
That said, the app is actually pretty cool in a single-serve kind of way. You choose a photo from your camera-roll, pinch to crop and then pick one of nine juicy colors. Wait for a second or ten while the app cranks away and works out which parts of the picture need to be colored and then you can tweak things. Standard mode gives two sliders: one to fade the effect between a full-on silhouette and the original image, the other adjusts the contrast.
Opt for ?expert? mode and you can tweak highlights, mid-tones and shadows separately before moving into the basic mode screen to finish things off. Images can be saved or sent to the usual places: Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.
The app has some quirks in action. It seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to cropping, zooming in from your own chosen setting (although your settings do stick when the image is output). And when you?re done with an image, you get bumped back to the instructions screen, which you surely don?t need to read every single time you choose an image. Finally, there is a lag every time you move a slider, but that?s likely to be processor and memory limitations.
It?s a fun, single purpose photo app, and it does what it says it does. I doubt Apple will be using this for iPod ads in the future, but who cares? Silhouetter costs a buck. Surely a half hour of entertainment is worth that?
Silhouetter app [iTunes. Thanks, Jeshua!]
MSI's GT680 gaming laptop reviewed: potent at 720p, some battery life too
Fantastic Plastic, Part 1: Polymers in Computing
Brittle, inflexible, toxic, chemical-filled silicon has to be purified in refineries before any money can be made with it -- and that is a very difficult and expensive process. As a result, chip manufacturers are always looking for viable alternatives to silicon, which is beginning to share its dominance of the semiconductor world with a range of materials based on polymers. Enter the era of organic microchips.
Not all polymers are plastics, but all plastics are polymers. And organic (carbon-based) polymer plastics, known mostly for being insulators, in some cases make excellent conductors and semiconductors.
The term "all-polymer semiconductor" (with electrical conductivity intermediate between that of an insulator and a conductor) sounds almost like an oxymoron. Plastic is generally considered a poor medium for conducting electricity and an excellent material to resist the flow of electric current and magnetism, which is why it's used as insulation for cables, casings and sockets.
And an all-polymer visual display unit sounds equally dubious, since the stimulated emission of light is the domain of inorganic materials such as doped metal phosphors. But light-emitting polymers (LEPs), which involve an electroluminescent conductive polymer that emits light when connected to an external voltage, are used as a thin film for full-spectrum color displays in laptops and handheld computers.
"Polymers are the key enabler in electronics, from semiconductor manufacturing, to chip packaging, to circuit boards, to display materials, to memories, to solar and wind energy devices," explained Jeffrey T. Gotro, president of InnoCentrix, a California-based consulting firm that services companies using polymers in products.
InnoCentrix specializes in supporting customers who use polymers and composites in electronic applications such as die attach paste and film adhesives (both conductive and non-conductive), underfills and encapsulants for semiconductor and board-level packages, multilayer circuit board laminates, pre-impregnated composite fibers and composites, disk drive coatings and polymers for storage technology applications.
"Of course, long-term applied research needs to be coupled very tightly to the voice of the market to ensure that the right technology is being developed to meet the emerging market needs," Gotro told TechNewsWorld. "This is what I call 'customer-pull innovation' versus 'technology push.'"
The Polytronic Spree
Polymers are gigantic chain-like molecules that contain hundreds or even thousands of repeating units ("poly" means "many," "mer" in chemistry means a "repeat unit"). The repeating fundamental molecular elements that make up polymer chains are called "monomers." Polymerization is the linking process of converting a monomer or a mixture of monomers into a polymer. Plastics consist of long polymer molecules.
"Polytronics" (polymer electronics or organic electronics) is a branch of electronics that deals with conductive polymers, plastics or small molecules. It's called "organic" electronics because the polymers and small molecules are carbon-based, like the molecules of living things. This is as opposed to traditional metal electronics, which relies on inorganic conductors such as copper or silicon.
Technological developments in the electronics and semiconductor industries have led to the creation of electroactive polymers (EAPs) -- polymers that change shape on the application of voltage. The biggest application for EAPs lies in their future use as actuators and sensors, which in turn opens up applications in the fields of electronics, medical, sensing and solar energy generation.
According to a Feb. 2010 report "Global Electroactive Polymers Market (2009-14)" from Research and Markets, the global EAP market was at US$1.7 billion in 2008 and is expected to be worth $2.78 billion by 2014, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.3 percent, mainly due to the already existing demand for new applications being commercialized in the next five years. The North American market is expected to account for nearly 65 percent of the total revenues.
Demand for polymers and conductive polymers in the electronics industry will grow at a projected CAGR of 26 percent, from an estimated $1.9 billion in 2010 to about $5.9 billion in 2015, according to a Jan. 2011 report "Electronic Chemicals and Materials Market" from BCC Research in Wellesley, Mass. Most of the projected growth is attributable to conductive polymers.
All of this is, of course, amounts to only a fraction of worldwide semiconductor revenues estimated by market research firm iSuppli at $304 billion in 2010 (up from $229.5 billion in 2009). And silicon remains the principal component in the majority of semiconductor devices, most importantly integrated circuits (microchips).
But brittle, inflexible, toxic, chemical-filled silicon has to be purified in refineries before any money can be made with it -- and that is a very difficult and expensive process.
As a result, chip manufacturers are always looking for viable alternatives to silicon, which is beginning to share its dominance of the semiconductor world with a range of materials based on polymers. Enter the era of organic microchips.
In a world of polymer electronics, virtually any company could become a chipmaker. A plastics fab plant does not need to be ultra-clean and expensive like silicon fab plants that require low humidity and sophisticated dust-free vacuum systems. Another advantage is that these new plastic circuits can be manufactured in a roll-to-roll apparatus like that used in producing flexible solar cells. Thanks to inks made from conductive and semiconductive polymers, it will soon be possible to print circuits on almost any surface using an inkjet printer or offset press.
Printed logic circuits for RFID tags
Developers must first overcome some technical challenges related to the use of various synthetic polymers in high-tech applications. Plastic transistors have nothing like the switching speed of those made from crystalline silicon. Other potential poly downsides include possible flammability, thermal effects and the toxicity of gaseous byproducts of pyrolysis.
Even so, business considerations can make technical issues seem like the least of the problems.
"Polymer technical development needs significant new investments to foster innovation," Gotro told TechNewsWorld. "Existing polymer companies need a well-defined innovation strategy with the right balance of short-term versus long-term product development projects."
Exhibit A: Plastic Logic
Plastic Logic, headquartered in the Mountain View, Calif. (with R&D in the UK and manufacturing in Germany), is a spin-off from Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory. The company was founded to make thin film transistors, but moved into manufacturing organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) for various applications.
Plastic Logic utilizes the simplest invention in plastic electronics -- a single transistor that switches a particular pixel on or off. The real potential in this technology is in creating plastic integrated circuits capable of complex functions.
In recent years, Plastic Logic focused on backplanes for flexible e-reader displays, particularly backplanes for electronic paper -- a display technology designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper.
While e-paper is typically thin and flexible, a rigid display results when it is combined with a glass-based amorphous silicon backplane. Plastic Logic developed a flexible backplane technology, thus enabling the display, and therefore the reader device, to become flexible, thin, light and robust so it feels more like a sheet of paper.
Plastic Logic's Que proReader was to be the first digital reading device made out of plastic electronics and designed specifically for professional use. The company raised more than $200 million and used much of that to build a plastic electronics factory.
However, in August 2010, Plastic Logic canceled its Que electronic book reader due to an inability to get manufacturing off the ground. In addition, a price war was occurring in the electronic books market.
On Jan. 18, the state-owned Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies (Rusnano) announced a $700 million investment in Plastic Logic.
"Flexible plastic electronic displays will provide another major milestone in how people process information," said Georgy Kolpachev, Rusnano's managing director. "Entering this new disruptive segment at the stage of its inception gives Russia a chance to win a leading position in the global market of future electronics."
Elements of the Plastic Logic saga fit into a larger trend described by Debbie Hauser, principal of California-based Best Impressions, a veteran sales and marketing management services firm supporting the plastics industry.
"Because high-tech devices are no longer manufactured for the most part in the U.S., this entire business sector has disappeared from the U.S. economy," Hauser told TechNewsWorld. "This has put many molders out of business and affects the entire supply chain. For instance, the material suppliers are no longer building new plants in the U.S. -- they are now being built in China, India, etc. So many jobs are gone and will not return."
High-Tech Polymers
The arrival of conductive polymers on the high-tech scene has been a long time coming.
Naturally occurring "biopolymers" include wood, animal and vegetable fibers, bone, horn, starches, cellulose, latex, even the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) inside cell nuclei and the membrane that separates one cell from another in all living things, as well as messenger RNA which makes possible proteins, peptides and enzymes.
Then there's the family of artificially manufactured industrial, synthetic polymers, the main man-made component in many common plastic materials. Produced commercially on a very large scale and having a wide range of properties and uses, synthetic polymers are formed by chemical reactions in which large numbers of monomer molecules are joined sequentially, forming a chain. Plastics and other synthetic polymers play an essential role in virtually every product.
The first electrically conducting polymers were discovered in 1977 by Hideki Shirakawa, Alan MacDiarmid and Alan Heeger. These scientists demonstrated that polyacetylene was electrically conductive and that by doping it with iodine vapor, they could enhance its conductivity by eight orders of magnitude, taking its conductance close to that of a metal. Today, polyacetylene is used, among numerous other applications, in the foil packaging for computer components to dissipate static.
That simple discovery kick-started research into a whole new technology based on conducting and semiconducting plastics. The maturation of the field of conducting polymers was confirmed by the awarding of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Shirakawa, MacDiarmid and Heeger "for the discovery and development of conductive polymers."
By the late 1980s a number of other polymers had been shown to exhibit a piezoelectric effect or were demonstrated to be conductive. The poly-march was on.
Pockets of Polytech
The U.S. has a number of polymer business clusters connected with major universities.
- Ohio: The original "Polymer Valley," the main U.S. center of polymer research and production, is a five-county region in Northeast Ohio concentrated around Akron (the "Rubber Capital of the World" and home to the world's four major tire makers -- Goodrich, Goodyear, Firestone and General Tire). The area holds 45 percent of the state's polymer industries, with more than 400 companies in the region manufacturing polymer-based materials. The University of Akron supports the industry with both the world's first College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering and a specialized laboratory and research facility, the Goodyear Polymer Center.
Dr. Stephen Cheng, dean of the College of Polymer Science & Polymer Engineering at the University of Akron, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2008 for the development of materials for liquid crystal displays and the elucidation of structure-property relationships in polymeric materials.
"The most important issue or challenge here is to develop a new generation of manufacturing fabrications for polymers in high-technology applications," Cheng told TechNewsWorld. "Bench research and test tube inventions alone will not generate a substantial impact on our economics."
- Gulf Coast: More than half of all polymer products made in the U.S. are produced in the Gulf Coast in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi along the southern part of I-59. Boeing (NYSE: BA) and Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) at Stennis Space Center are just two of the many companies located along the I-59 technology corridor. U.S. News and World Report recently recognized the University of Southern Mississippi's School for Polymers and High Performance Materials as one of the nation's top 10 polymer science programs.
- North Carolina: North Carolina is the seventh largest plastics manufacturing state in the nation. There are plastics companies in all areas of the state, with more than 200 plastics manufacturing companies in the Charlotte region. This area accounts for 30 percent of the state's plastic employment in manufacturing and distribution, as well as more than 37 percent of plastics companies in the state. The Polymers Center of Excellence (PCE), located in Charlotte's University Research Park, is a not-for-profit organization that operates out of its own facility in and works globally to provide a full array of services to the plastics industry, including training, product development, materials sciences, testing and injection molding.
- Massachusetts: North Central Massachusetts features the largest plastics industry cluster in the northeast U.S., and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst was ranked in 2007 by U.S. News & World Report as having the nation's #1 Polymer Science and Engineering Department.
- California:The University of California Santa Barbara's Center for Polymers and Organic Solids (CPOS) is an interdisciplinary effort that merges efforts in physics, chemistry, polymer science and biology. It draws upon expertise from these fields to conduct fundamental research on conjugated organic polymers with delocalized electronic conductivity, anisotropic linear and nonlinear optical properties, and novel electrochemical properties. Researchers at CPOS are currently finding ways to reduce the cost of solar cells. Their goal: to make photovoltaics at least as cheap as the grid. Alan Heeger, a CPOS professor of physics and materials engineering, won the 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry with two other scientists for the discovery and development of electrically conducting polymers.
The Center on Polymer Interfaces and Macromolecular Assemblies (CPIMA) is National Science Foundation sponsored partnership among Stanford University, IBM (NYSE: IBM) Almaden Research Center, the University of California Davis and the University of California Berkeley.
A diverse group of investigators are involved in research in polymer and materials chemistry and nanoscience in the department of chemistry in the School of Physical Sciences at the University of California Irvine.
Stay tuned for "Fantastic Plastic, Part 2"
Facebook to enable site-wide HTTPS and name-that-face social authentication
Facebook will also step up its policing of suspicious activity by using an exciting new form of CAPTCHA called "social authentication." If Facebook detects something odd with your account -- such as a login from two geographically disparate locations -- you will be asked to identify some of your friends. The idea is that hackers might have worked out your password, but they probably don't know what your friends look like. Unless you're being hacked by one of your friends, of course...
Looking forward, Facebook hopes to enable HTTPS by default, but no exact timeline is given. Incidentally, if you want to browse the entire Web while secured by HTTPS, check out our secure surfing guide.
Tags: facebook, https, security, social networking, socialnetworking, ssl, web
Facebook Puts HTTPS Security Guard on Full-Time Duty
By John P. Mello Jr.
TechNewsWorld
01/27/11 9:18 AM PT
Facebook says it will beef up its user security policy by enabling full use of encrypted HTTPS connections, rather than just encrypting data when the user signs on to the service. The feature will roll out on an opt-in basis. The social network will also make use of a more personal approach to CAPTCHAS, asking users to identify photos of friends rather than a set of sloppy numbers and letters.
Facebook announced new measures Wednesday aimed at improving users' security when visiting the site. The news came with an intriguing twist: Mere hours prior to the announcement, it was revealed that the Facebook fan page of the company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, was compromised by a hacker.
While some online skeptics linked Facebook's new security features -- broader use of the HTTPS protocol and a new form of authentication -- to the Zuckerberg hack, at least one security expert discounted that connection.
"It was coincidental," Chet Wisniewski, a security adviser with Sophos, a cybersecurity firm based in Burlington, Mass., told TechNewsWorld "The amount of effort it takes for them to enable their systems to provide something like SSL or social authentication is months of research and work on their behalf."
Facebook attributed the Zuckerberg hack to a "bug" which it said it has squashed.
Facebook announced the new security measures at its company blog. It linked the measures to Data Privacy Day, which is being celebrated Friday. The day is an effort to boost security awareness mounted by governments, businesses and advocacy groups around the world.
Secure Connections
Facebook already uses HTTPS, which encrypts information sent over a computer network, to protect passwords sent to the system. That has now been expanded to cover all communication with the service, not just the moment when the user signs on. "Starting today, we'll provide you with the ability to experience Facebook entirely over HTTPS," Facebook security engineer Alex Rice wrote in the company's blog.
Maintaining an HTTPS connection throughout one's Facebook session should thwart attempts by hackers snooping on others via public networks by using tools like Firesheep, a Firefox plug-in that Net Security.org.
"You should consider enabling this option if you frequently use Facebook from public Internet access points found at coffee shops, airports, libraries or schools," he added.
Members should use HTTPS even more often than that, asserted Wisniewski. "Facebook should turn it on by default," he said. "I don't like the idea that users should be forced to opt in to something that's good for them.
Facebook's Rice warned members that enabling HTTPS could make the service appear to run slower. "That's bupkis," Wisniewski declared.
"If you can tell it's 50 milliseconds slower, then you may notice," he explained, "The reality is that the experience won't really change for users. It will just enhance their security."
A New Kinda CAPTCHA
Another new security feature is something Facebook is calling "social authorization." It's similar to the CAPTCHA systems found at many websites to foil automated spam attacks.
Instead of using a CAPTCHA puzzle -- typically an image consisting of words in distressed and distorted type -- social authorization requires a Facebook member to identify photos of their friends. "Hackers halfway across the world might know your password, but they don't know who your friends are," Rice reasoned.
The system may be effective against automated attacks by "bots" on a member's account, but less effective against more intimate intruders. "The bot won't be smart enough to identify your friends," Wisniewski explained. "But it won't stop your kid sister or your wife or someone who knows you well enough to get past it."
While praising Facebook's latest security moves, some privacy watchers maintained that the social network still has a long way to go in that area.
The security measures can help foil active hackers, noted Michael Fertik, CEO of Reputation.com, a Redwood City, Calif.-based maker of privacy software. The real concern for the public, however, is what happens to private information as it's used by websites, applications and by third parties, he maintained.
Thick Walls Riddled With Open Doors
Although Facebook's move may bolster the security of its system, the issue of what the social network does with the information it holds remaining a burning one. "The walls have gotten thicker, but there are 50 open doors," Fertik told TechNewsWorld.
Additional Facebook security features are always welcome, said Zeljka Zorz, news editor at Net Security.org. However, as much as users might complain and assert that Facebook should stop sharing their information, it's not likely to ever do so.
"Face it -- it's never going to happen," she told TechNewsWorld. "So you might as well use your judgment and decide not to enter information you don't want to share with the world." [*Correction - Jan. 28, 2011]
*ECT News Network editor's note - Jan. 28, 2011: In our original publication of this article, Zeljka Zorz was quoted as saying "Facebook should stop sharing our information, but let's face it. It's never going to happen. You have to use your judgment and decide what information you don't want to share with the world." In fact, her exact words were, "We often complain about Facebook's economic agenda whose goal is to make as much of our private information public and available to advertisers, and every time they do enforce new features, we say that's all good and well, but they should stop with the sharing of our information. Face it -- it's never going to happen. So you might as well use your judgment and decide not to enter information you don't want to share with the world."
Gadget Lab Podcast: Sony?s Next-Generation Portable, Verizon iPhone and Macworld
This week?s episode of the Gadget Lab podcast packs a healthy mix of mobile goodies.
We take a quick look at Sony?s new version of the PlayStation Portable, dubbed the Next-Generation Portable. It?s equipped with an OLED display, two touch panels and a cartridge reader, similar to the Nintendo DS. Most interestingly, it features a quad-core Cortex A9 processor ? a hell of a lot of power for a portable gaming device, which makes me wonder about the battery life.
I segue into the upcoming Verizon iPhone and just how much it will cost compared with the AT&T iPhone. The monthly prices aren?t very different, though AT&T?s tethering plan is a bit worse in terms of value.
Nothing is quite worse in value, however, than an accessory I saw at Macworld Expo that converts your iPhone into a pseudo landline. That?s just kind of a sad invention.
We close the podcast goofing off with Bebot, a music-synthesizer robot app for iPhone and a cutesy iPad game called Max Adventure.
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Like the show? You can also get the�Gadget Lab video podcast via iTunes, or if you don?t want to be distracted by our unholy on-camera talent, check out the�Gadget Lab audio podcast. Prefer RSS? You can subscribe to the Gadget Lab�video or�audio podcast feeds
Or listen to the audio here:
Gadget Lab audio podcast #101
Sonos Brings Rdio Streaming Music To The Entire Home
It's something that was once reserved for only the highest of the high-end home cinema setups, and the average Joe simply never considered wiring his home for whole home audio. But these days, as technology has improved, blossomed, and become cheaper and easier to install, having whole home audio isn't the chore that it once was. Largely due to improvements in wireless protocols as well as the explosion of handheld wireless devices (smartphones and tablets come to mind), Sonos has been able to exploit a growing niche.
The company's forte is to put audio into every room and just about every device in your home, and this week they have announced that Sonos customers in the United States and Canada can enjoy unlimited, on-demand music courtesy of social music service Rdio.� This means that if you have a Sonos system already set up, you can search, browse and play anything from Rdio's more than 8 million song library, as often as you'd like, throughout your entire home. Starting today, you'll find Rdio on Sonos under the More Music menu on any Sonos Controller, and it'll hit your credit card for $9.99 per month.
There's a 7-day trial available for those who aren't members yet, but there's no discount on picking up that pricey Sonos gear to begin with.
Sonos Brings Rdio to Every Room of the Home
�
SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Jan. 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Sonos, the leading developer of wireless multi-room music systems for the home, today announced that even more great music is now available on the award-winning Sonos Multi-Room Music System.� Starting today, Sonos customers in the United States and Canada can enjoy unlimited, on-demand music courtesy of social music service Rdio. �
"Our goal at Sonos is to provide music lovers with access to all the music on the planet," said John MacFarlane, CEO, Sonos, Inc. "By continually adding innovative services like Rdio to the experience, Sonos customers will be able to discover and enjoy unlimited music possibilities in any room of their home."
Rdio provides Sonos customers with a unique social music discovery experience at home.� Search, browse and play anything from Rdio's more than 8 million song library, as often as you'd like, throughout your entire home. Plus, follow the musical tastes of friends and influencers, share your favorite songs and playlists, explore thousands of themed playlists, and even check out what's in "heavy rotation" by other Rdio listeners.
Starting today, you'll find Rdio on Sonos under the More Music menu on any Sonos Controller.� Rdio on Sonos costs $9.99 per month.� Not a Rdio subscriber?� Try it for free with a 7-day trial at www.rdio.com/Sonos. �
Rdio on Sonos adds to the broad choice of music services built directly into the Sonos music experience.�� On Sonos, you can tune in to more than 100,000 Internet radio stations, shows and podcasts ? from around the world.� You can also search and play songs, playlists and radio from the world's most popular music services like iheartradio, Last.fm, Napster, Pandora, Rdio, Rhapsody, SiriusXM Internet Radio, Spotify, Wolfgang's Vault, and more.� And, Sonos can play your entire digital music library (like iTunes) stored on a computer or Network Attached storage drive in any or every room.
For more information about Sonos or to locate an authorized Sonos dealer in your area, please visit www.sonos.com or call 877.80.SONOS.�
Zipcar adds the plug-in Prius PHEV to its fleet, probably not changing name to Zapcar
Silhouetter Turns Your Photos into iPod Ads
Oddly, the Silhouetter app for the iPad and iPhone doesn?t mention its ?inspiration? anywhere in its description. But then, it doesn?t really need to, so obvious is the ?homage? to the iconic iPod ads.
That said, the app is actually pretty cool in a single-serve kind of way. You choose a photo from your camera-roll, pinch to crop and then pick one of nine juicy colors. Wait for a second or ten while the app cranks away and works out which parts of the picture need to be colored and then you can tweak things. Standard mode gives two sliders: one to fade the effect between a full-on silhouette and the original image, the other adjusts the contrast.
Opt for ?expert? mode and you can tweak highlights, mid-tones and shadows separately before moving into the basic mode screen to finish things off. Images can be saved or sent to the usual places: Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.
The app has some quirks in action. It seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to cropping, zooming in from your own chosen setting (although your settings do stick when the image is output). And when you?re done with an image, you get bumped back to the instructions screen, which you surely don?t need to read every single time you choose an image. Finally, there is a lag every time you move a slider, but that?s likely to be processor and memory limitations.
It?s a fun, single purpose photo app, and it does what it says it does. I doubt Apple will be using this for iPod ads in the future, but who cares? Silhouetter costs a buck. Surely a half hour of entertainment is worth that?
Silhouetter app [iTunes. Thanks, Jeshua!]
Sharp Plans To Bring Back Elite TVs
It wasn't long ago that Pioneer was selling a line of Elite plasma HDTVs. In 2009, Pioneer abandoned the TV business to focus on other efforts. Now, it appears the Elite brand will be available on TVs once again.
Sharp will license Pioneer's Elite brand for a line of high-end flat-panel displays the company plans to introduce in the US and Canada this year. Pioneer currently uses the Elite brand with lines of high-end audio/video receivers, Blu-ray Disc players and speakers.
"As a leader in large-screen LCD TV, we are excited to collaborate with Pioneer to bring a high-end LCD TV to the Elite consumer," stated John Herrington, Sharp Electronics Marketing Company of America president. "The Elite brand is highly respected in the high-end market, and Sharp can deliver the quality and innovation that Elite customers demand."
By licensing the Elite brand, Sharp hopes to expand the distribution of its large-scale TVs into high-end specialty A/V dealers. Pioneer will also gain from the availability of large-screen TVs that complement its line of home-theater components. The new Elite line of LCD TVs will be marketed by both Sharp and Pioneer.
"Adding a line of high-end flat-panel TVs fills a market need in the industry and will help reinforce the strength of a complete Elite home-theater offering," said Russ Johnston, Pioneer USA home electronics department executive VP. "With its cutting-edge LCD technology and unmatched production capabilities, Sharp is an important strategic collaborator that will deliver a whole new dimension to the large-screen home-theater experience."
Google censors torrent, download terms from suggestions and Instant
Google, indexing torrent sites and facilitating piracy, has been given plenty of flack from just about anyone with a copyright. It makes Google complicit, copyright holders argue. Fine, Google says, we won't suggest them any more when a users enters something like "Ubuntu tor."
Don't fret, searchers, you can still get your results. It just means you have to type "Futurama torrent" and hit enter instead of "Futurama to" and then pausing while Instant loads up what is probably the most commonly used pairing on Google anyway.
Tags: autosuggest, copyright, download, downloading, filesharing, google, instant, megaupload, p2p, piracy, rapidshare, search, suggest, torrent, web
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Insidia is a dark-yet-forgiving platformer -- Time Waster
That's where Insidia starts off. Now that you're on the planet, you have to navigate its complex maze of rooms and corridors in search of repair kits for your craft. Once you find all ten repair kits, you'd be able to leave the planet (and win the game).
Unlike many other platformers, Insidia is not linear. As you progress through the game, you reveal more and more passages and rooms, but you also go through some places more than once. When you hit M you get a nice map that shows everywhere you've been so far and gives you a sense of how much is still to be explored.
As you walk around, you find items that improve your abilities (a double-jump power-up, for example). And when something kills you, you just respawn at the last "save point", with all of your items and abilities intact. I love that, because it means dying is not a big deal ? it's just a part of the game, and it doesn't make you feel like you're failing.
All in all, this is a platformer I could certainly spend some time with.
Tags: aliens, flash, fun, game, insidia, platformer, time waster, time-waster, time-wasters, TimeWaster, web
Ubuntu's Warm and Fuzzy Qt Embrace
The changes are flying fast and furious in the land of Ubuntu, and one of the many shake-ups causing users joy and consternation is that post-Natty Narwhal, Ubuntu will incorporate Qt interface libraries. Reactions in the Linux community ranged from "Bravo, Mr. Shuttleworth," to "This seems like a horrible mistake."
It seems fair to say that the Ubuntu community's collective head is already spinning at the very thought of all the changes coming down the pike for its favorite Linux distribution.
After all, there's been Canonical's decision to adopt Unity as the next desktop Ubuntu's default interface, and there's been the equally shocking plan to switch away from X.org and onto Wayland as the distro's new graphics system. And that's on top of a raft of smaller but still significant changes!
Well, one can only hope Ubuntu fans have been taking their vitamins lately, because recently word got out that yet another big change is planned. Specifically, future versions of Ubuntu -- post-Natty Narwhal, that is -- will incorporate the Qt user interface libraries; they may, in fact, even include applications based on Qt.
'A Celebration of Free Software's Diversity'
"As part of our planning for Natty+1, we'll need to find some space on the CD for Qt libraries, and we will evaluate applications developed with Qt for inclusion on the CD and default install of Ubuntu," Mark Shuttleworth wrote in a recent blog post.
"The decision to be open to Qt is in no way a criticism of GNOME," Shuttleworth stressed. "It's a celebration of free software's diversity and complexity."
Now in the works, apparently, are dconf bindings for Qt "so that it is possible to write a Qt app that uses the same settings framework as everything else in Ubuntu," he added.
'Smart Moves All Around'
Reactions in the Linux blogosphere have been diverse, to say the least.
"Totally agree with Mark," wrote Indian-Art on The H, for example.
Similarly, "Canonical seems to be making smart moves all around," agreed ricegf on PCWorld. "I'm particularly happy with the decision to include Qt in 11.10 and later, as that would appear to simplify writing apps that easily cross-compile between Ubuntu and MeeGo."
'Not Quite Realistic'
On the other hand: "What it would do in reality is add more fragmentation -- having just another API for a configuration system doesn't really add value but confusion," countered mart on OSnews. "Also, expecting developers to 'write applications for Ubuntu' is not quite realistic.
"Most Qt-only applications are targeted to the most wide target platform (especially Windows and Mac in primis) so expecting them to target a specific Linux distribution (with the hope some other distributions will adopt it, but i wouldn't hold my breath) instead seems not realistic to me," mart added.
Similarly: "Why should authors of Qt applications be falling over themselves to re-write their apps just for the 'honour' of being included on Mr. Shuttleworth's Ubuntu default install CD?" asked lemur2. "Why would it be so hard for Mr Shuttleworth to arrange to do the work of integration, if he wants to include these best-of-class Qt applications on his default CD?"
Linux Girl's Debate-o-Meter was soon screaming. She took to the streets of the Linux blogosphere to learn more.
'Many Good Qt Apps Out There'
"I am surprised it has taken them this long," began Chris Travers, a Slashdot blogger who works on the LedgerSMB project. "There are many very good Qt applications out there, and forcing users to stick with one widget system when there are at least two or three that are widespread curtails what a user can do with his/her computer."
In fact, "it is not uncommon for me to install apps using both GTK and Qt on the same computer," Travers pointed out.
Indeed, "I can't imagine why they wouldn't allow QT apps in the first place," agreed Montreal consultant and Slashdot blogger Gerhard Mack.
'A Horrible Mistake'
Hyperlogos blogger Martin Espinoza wasn't so sure.
"This seems like a horrible mistake," Espinoza told LinuxInsider. "I run Ubuntu and not Kubuntu because I want to use mostly GTK apps.
"I have Qt (or possibly all of KDE for all I know) installed because I am not that picky about what I install, but there's little enough headroom available in the installer image as it is," Espinoza added. "What is it about Linux distributions tending towards bloat? Needlessly depending on Mono is bad enough, now we're pulling in Qt for the base system? What's next, openstep?"
'A Great Service'
Blogger Robert Pogson saw it differently.
Ubuntu "has handicapped itself by sticking with gtk for the default installation from a single installation CD," Pogson opined.
By committing to better integration of Qt applications, Ubuntu "will no doubt be doing desktop GNU/Linux a great service," Pogson concluded. "The question remains what they will chop from their default installation to make room for Qt ..."
In fact, Slashdot blogger Barbara Hudson had a suggestion on that very point.
"Instead of worrying about what might have to be removed to make room for the Qt libraries, wouldn't it make more sense to just stick with a DVD?" asked Hudson, who goes by "Tom" on the site.
'Something Had to Be Done'
"After all, CDs -- if you can find them -- are no longer cheaper than DVDs," she pointed out. "And the argument that 'people in third-world countries don't have the bandwidth to download a whole DVD' ignores the fact that sharing one downloaded DVD with a complete set of applications uses less bandwidth overall than sharing a minimalist CD and then individually downloading applications to 'round out' each computer."
In short, "CDs are dead," Hudson asserted. "Admit it, put out a minimalist DVD of a gigabyte or so if you must, but drop the CD format. Any machines out there that are CD-only are too old to use the 'latest and greatest' anyway."
Meanwhile, the move "most certainly is" a shot at GNOME, Hudson added. "The Gtk toolkit and Gnome looked out of date when originally released, and they're now so far behind Qt and KDE that something had to be done.
"Expect to see many Gnome apps get dropped for their KDE equivalents, because it's better to ship something today than to wait a year for developers to adapt their applications to the new Gtk toolkit," she predicted.
'Bravo, Mr. Shuttleworth'
Indeed, particularly given that "the future is mobile," Canonical's move is a good one, Slashdot blogger hairyfeet opined.
"The Qt framework works on nearly everything from WinCE to Maemo and has WIP ports coming along for all the major mobile platforms like Android and iPhone," hairyfeet explained. "By promoting Qt, Shuttleworth is positioning Ubuntu to be the 'Linux for the masses' by giving developers an easy platform to write to and on that is cross platform."
In other words, with Qt and Mono, "Shuttleworth is making it easy to develop cross platform using Ubuntu AND giving Ubuntu users more apps at the same time," hairyfeet concluded. "That is just smart, and I applaud the man for it. Bravo, Mr. Shuttleworth. Bravo."