Video Resumes: Feel the Future

Resumes are one of the most important components in an individual's professional career. In fact, it is probably one of the most underrated and under appreciated components by a professional. We often perceive resumes as tools needed only when we are looking for new, or better, opportunities. In reality, resumes should be viewed as living entities. Its contents should be constantly monitored and updated. In fact, an inert resume could be considered a direct link to career suicide.

In addition to its contents constantly changing, the actual resume component itself is frequently receiving changes in presentation, style, format, and delivery mechanisms. The latest and most notable change is in the methods of presentation and delivery. Recently, the video resume has emerged as an industry buzz for resume presentation. As a new and innovative way of submitting resumes, it is becoming more and more popular to many. While this may be a creative way of presenting oneself to potential employers, one must inevitably ask is it in their best interest?

Despite all of its positive potential, its negative potential should raise red flags for many. Video resumes have the undesirable potential of making it slightly easier to discriminate against job candidates. Sure, the potential for discrimination is present with today's methods of distribution; however, the occurrences are hopefully few and far between. I am sure that some of you have heard of, or experienced, scenarios where an employer has chosen a candidate based on a favoritism of a particular quality totally unrelated to the posted position. Nevertheless, one must agree that the possibilities of this happening in today's market are slim, as opposed to the occurrences that are possible through the increased usage of video resumes.

Using today's resume delivery and presentation methods, the perspective employer cannot hear nor see the applicant. This places each applicant on somewhat of an even playing field. While there is no way to fully level it, the current landscape is far better than the one that could potentially be created with the increased usage of video resumes. Currently, if an employer, or hiring manager, has any biased preferences, then they cannot completely rule out all individuals of a particular group until after the face to face interview. However, with the video resumes, they can now rule out an individual based on collective biases not related to the job during the resume screening process. This would in effect reduce, if not eliminate, the candidate's opportunities for face-to-face interviews. If discrimination occurred at this stage of the interview process, then all that they have to do is say that the candidate was not qualified due to their resume. But, in reality, they were ruled out based on some bias made visible during the video presentation.

Some may say that this form of discrimination in the job market is rarely, if not ever, seen today. Yet, this is a topic that should not be taken lightly, if we are truly interested in a diverse market full of equal opportunity for all. Video resumes have the potential to uneven the playing fields for job candidates. What if it's you?

Everett Lockhart
Copyright © 2008 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved.

Toshiba to launch first 512GB Solid State Drive (SSD)

Toshiba said Thursday that it will show off a new line up of NAND-flash-based solid state drives with the industry's first 2.5-inch 512GB SSD. The drive is based on a 43 nanometer Multi-Level Cell NAND and claims to offer a high level of performance and endurance for use in notebooks as well as gaming and home entertainment systems.

"The solid state drive market is evolving rapidly, with higher performance drives to meet market requirements, and differentiated product families targeted for appropriate applications", said Toshiba Semiconductor VP Kiyoshi Kobayashi.

"This new 43nm SSD family balances value/performance characteristics for its targeted consumer applications, through use of MLC NAND and an advanced controller architecture."

It has a maximum sequential read speed of 240MB per second and maximum sequential write speed of 200MBps meaning faster boot and application loading times. The drive also offers AES data encryption to prevent unauthorized data access.

Samples of the second-gen drives will be available to during the first quarter of 2009 meaning that ultraportable SSD-packing computers, such as the MacBook Air or the Lenovo X300 may offer the larger capacity towards the end of the year but Toshiba doesn't expect to ramp up mass production until the second quarter.

Source : International Business Times
© 2008 The Ibtimes Company

Tata to Sponsor Ferrari

India's largest outsourcer Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said on Thursday that the Tata logo will be displayed on the Ferrari F1 car for the 2009 Formula One season.

TCS said Thursday the company had entered into an agreement with Ferrari for an "enhanced technology and marketing partnership". TCS has been a technology partner of Ferrari at the Formula One since 2005, a statement from TCS added. Details will be announced shortly, TCS said.

Indian outsourcers are aiming at building global brands similar to those of larger competitors like IBM and Accenture. But this is the first time an Indian outsourcer will have its logo on display in a high-profile motoring event. Having the Tata logo displayed on the Ferrari F1 car will also have rub-off benefits for other Tata group companies.

Source PCWorld
© 1998-2008, PC World Communications, Inc.

Perceptual Illusion of Body Swapping

Copyright: © 2008 Petkova et al.
Directly taken from Research Article of Valeria and Henrik of Department of Neuroscience, Stockholm, Sweden

We all experience our body to be part of ourselves. The question of how this comes about has been discussed by philosophers and psychologists for centuries. Recent advances in experimental science have made it possible for cognitive neuroscientists to begin to investigate how we perceive our body as an object distinct from the external world. Having the experience of being the owner of one's body is clearly adaptive, and its function probably relates to the problem of localising and correctly identifying oneself in the sensory environment a problem faced by all central nervous systems. Consider a fight between two or more individuals. Survival depends on rapid identification and accurate localisation of one's own body. From neurology we know that these functions can break down as people with pathological conditions affecting frontal and parietal lobes can sometimes fail to recognise their limbs as belonging to themselves. Similarly, damage to, or abnormal physiology of, frontal, parietal and temporal regions can be associated with feelings of being outside the body. Although these neurological observations suggest that certain brain regions might be responsible for generating the habitual experience of being located within one's body and of owning it, they tell us little about the underlying processes.

If we want to understand why our centre of awareness, or sense of ‘self’, is located inside our body, illusions of bodily self-perception could be invaluable. The study of illusions is a classical approach adopted in psychology to learn more about the basic processes that underlie normal perception. Indeed, some important initial insights into the mechanisms underlying self-perception of one's own body have been gained through illusions. One such is the so called ‘Rubber Hand Illusion’ where people have the experience that a prosthetic hand is actually their own hand. In this illusion, synchronous touches applied to a rubber hand in full view of the participant, and the real hand, which is hidden behind a screen, produce the sensations that the touch originates from the rubber hand and a feeling of ownership of the artificial hand. This suggests that the temporal and spatial patterns of visual and somatosensory signals play an important role in how we come to experience that a limb is part of our own body.

Another important factor in determining how we perceive our own body is the adoption of the first person perspective. When we look at ourselves directly, our limbs and body always present themselves in certain orientations because our eyes are fixed to our skull. By changing the visual perspective, it is possible to induce the feeling of being in a different place or, even, illusory ‘out-of-body experiences’ where people seem to lose ownership of their own body when observing it from the point of view of another person (which we refer to as the third person perspective).

On the basis of this previous knowledge, we hypothesized that it would be possible to induce illusions of owning an entire body other than one's own by the experimental manipulation of the visual perspective in conjunction with correlated visual and sensory signals being supplied to the respondent's body. Our experiments reveal that healthy volunteers can indeed experience other people's bodies, as well as artificial bodies, as being their own. This effect is so robust that, while experiencing being in another person's body, a participant can face his or her biological body and shake hands with it without breaking the illusion. The existence of this illusion (and the identification of the factors triggering it) represents a major advance because it informs us about the processes that make us feel that we own our body in its entirety.

For details about experiment and results visit Plosone

Multicore Is Bad News For Supercomputers

More cores per chip will slow some programs [red] unless there’s a big boost in memory bandwidth [yellow].

With no other way to improve the performance of processors further, chip makers have staked their future on putting more and more processor cores on the same chip. Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories, in New Mexico, have simulated future high-performance computers containing the 8-core, 16-core, and 32-core microprocessors that chip makers say are the future of the industry. The results are distressing. Because of limited memory bandwidth and memory-management schemes that are poorly suited to supercomputers, the performance of these machines would level off or even decline with more cores. The performance is especially bad for informatics applications - data intensive programs that are increasingly crucial to the labs’ national security function.

Follow the below link for complete article from IEEE Spectrum

Source : IEEE Spectrum

Nokia Fighting back with new N97

Nokia today unveiled its new flagship phone, the N97, which is clearly meant to compete with the iPhone and Google's Android platform. Unlike the iPhone, however, the N97 has a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard. In terms of its other hardware features, the N97 also clearly outperforms the iPhone. The N97 supports up to 48 GB of storage, including the 32 GB that are already built-in. The phone has a 5 megapixel camera (with an LED flash) and its GPS is capable of giving turn-by-turn directions. The resolution of the phone's 16:9 touchscreen is 640x360.

The phone will also be able to make use of Nokia's updated mapping product, which will feature 3D landmarks and, according to Nokia, is more versatile than Google Maps. These new maps themselves pose a major challenge to Google, as Nokia will, at some point in the near future, allow users to point their phones at a building and get relevant information about that building on their phone. N96 is also equiped with a built in accelerometer and a compass.

Of course, the iPhone's real advantage was never its hardware, but its operating system and the overall elegance of its user interface. Earlier Nokia N-series phones also featured extremely capable hardware, but the operating system made it extremely hard to make good use of these features. In terms of software, Nokia does have one ace up its sleeve, and that is the N97's ability to play Flash videos and games. The OS also supports copy and paste, which is still sorely missing on the iPhone.

The main feature of the phone's touch-enhanced Symbian OS is its support for widgets, which will be open for third-party developers and are available for download through an application on the phone itself. Nokia calls the N97 a 'mobile computer,' and a lot of its success will surely depend on the applications that third-party developers will develop for the phone. Apple's App store already features over 10,000 native applications, so Nokia definitely has to play catch-up here.

Overall, the N97 looks like a formidable challenger (especially with regards to its hardware specs), but much of its success will depend on the quality and ease of use of its user interface.





Source www.readwriteweb.com
© ReadWriteWeb

SearchWiki: Make search your own

Another new innovation from Google - "SearchWiki"; a way of customizing your own Google Web Search results. You can rank, remove and add notes to any result page and see those tailored results anytime you do that search while you're logged in to your Google Account.

SearchWiki gives a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don't feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future. SearchWiki is available to signed-in Google users. Google store your changes in your Google Account. If you are wondering if you are signed in, you can always check by noting if your username appears in the upper right-hand side of the page. SearchWiki lets you edit the position of the results you’re getting, and add comments to them. SearchWiki was in experimental stage for some time now. The changes you make only affect your own searches. But SearchWiki also is a great way to share your insights with other searchers. You can see how the community has collectively edited the search results by clicking on the "See all notes for this SearchWiki" link.

There’s more to SearchWiki: you can annotate your results (click on the balloon at the right of "similar pages"; and you can remove search results that you don’t like (by clicking on the X beside the arrow). As well, you can see what they community has done with particular search results (by clicking on "See all notes for this SearchWiki" found above the footer).

Specifically, you’ll be seeing three icons accompanying results, and further options below the listing:

Up vote: An up arrow, similar in functionality to what you may know from social sites like Reddit or Digg. Clicking it will turn the icon green and move this specific result up one position. Once upped, a down arrow appears as well, which will trigger the result to fly to the bottom of the listing. (Your changes are available only when you repeat the query and, in some cases, for similar queries). That means you can’t remove a web page or a domain from all search results.)

Remove: An X icon, which will make the result disappear in an animated puff. It won’t be completely gone for you, though; at the bottom of the page you’ll see the note "You have removed results from this page" with an option to hide them altogether, or restore them.

Comment: A Speech Bubble icon which lets you make a comment on the result. The comment will be public, Google disclaims. Once saved, you’ll still be able to edit or delete your comment later on. Others are now able to upvote your comment or flag it as innapropriate, like on the "All SearchWiki notes" page. (That page also serves as the next best thing to see the pure vote-based ranking.)

Add result: The plus icon is shown below the organic results, and it lets you add any URL at all to your result page.

This new feature is an example of how search is becoming increasingly dynamic, giving people tools that make search even more useful to them in their daily lives.

Official Google Blog: SearchWiki: make search your own

BlackBerry Storm hitting US today

Verizon today marked the official launch of the BlackBerry Storm on its network. The device matches the $199 contract price of the rivalling iPhone 3G at AT&T and is widely regarded as Verizon's best alternative to the Apple handset in features and focus. The Storm has a similarly-sized 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen meant for finger input but relies on a unique click action that requires a physical push downwards for some actions, simulating a physical button press.
The phone also shares a mixture of advantages and disadvantages over its chief competitor. Although the first-ever touchscreen BlackBerry operates on both CDMA and GSM networks with 3G on either, reports claim that Verizon may have consciously removed both Wi-Fi and North American HSPA bands to both push greater use of its paid network services as well as to discourage unlocking the phone for use with AT&T. Its core GPS is more advanced with traditional turn-by-turn navigation but lacks the feature-finding software of the iPhone's Google Maps, including the just-added Street View that also exists on the Android-powered T-Mobile G1.

Only a single model of the Storm is available with 1GB of built-in memory and microSDHC storage to add more. A new, more touch-specific media player app on the phone itself as well as Media Sync for Windows PCs help users synchronize the phone with iTunes for unprotected content. RIM's new phone also plays home to the App Center, a new carrier-customizable central portal for downloading and managing third-party software.

Verizon's holiday sales are expected to hinge on the Storm but may have been temporarily set back by a claimed shortage at the last minute, though Electronista hears from sources that initial supplies were anticipated as running below demand from the beginning.

Source [electronista]

IBM Tries to Bring Brain Power to Computers

IBM Research on Thursday is expected to uncover work it is doing to bring the brain's processing power to computers, in an effort to make it easier for PCs to process vast amounts of data in real time.

The researchers want to put brain-related senses like perception and interaction into hardware and software so that computers are able to process and understand the data quicker while consuming less power, said Dharmendra Modha, a researcher at IBM. The researchers are bringing the neuroscience, nanotechnology and supercomputing fields together in an effort to create the new computing platform, he said.

The goal is to create machines that are mind-like and adapt to changes, which could allow companies to find more value in their data. Right now, a majority of information's value is lost, but relevant data can allow businesses or individuals to make rapid decisions in time to have significant impact, he said.

There is a problem in the core philosophy of computing and a new approach is needed, Modha said. Today's model first defines objectives to solve problems, after which algorithms are built to achieve those objectives. "The brain is the opposite. It starts with an existing algorithm and then problems [are] second. It is a computing platform that can address a wide variety of problems," Modha said.

For example, the new approach could help efficiently manage the world's water supplies through real-time analysis of data that could help discover new patterns, Modha said. A network of sensors could monitor temperature, pressure, wave height and ocean tide across the oceans. "Imagine streaming this data to a global brain that discovers invariant patterns and associations that no algorithms of today can do," Modha said.

It will also be able to sense the world's markets, like stocks, bonds and real estate, extracting patterns and associations in the way the brain extracts information from those environments.

It's a long and arduous research project that may lead to a number of technological breakthroughs, Modha said. He didn't provide a timeline for implementation of the platform. If the company succeeds in making this platform, it will lead to an entirely new computer architecture and programming paradigm that could overwrite the traditional ways of computing, Modha said.

Source [PCWorld]

BlackBerry's Storm review

PC World Reports the BlackBerry's Storm an Awkward and Disappointing.

Research in Motion's BlackBerry Storm looks handsome enough, but it will disappoint prospective buyers hoping for a credible touch-based iPhone alternative.

Microsoft Announces Free Anti Virus for Windows XP, Vista and 7

Microsoft plans to offer Windows users a new antivirus package designed to protect the OS from viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans. The new software is tentatively code-named Morro, and will be available for free to Windows XP, Vista and 7 users sometime in the second half of 2009.

The new software will reportedly use very minimal resources, which means it should work well with older PCs. If fact, Microsoft says Morro has been specially designed for older PCs and low-spec machines popular in developing nations. In addition to its minimal processor demands, Morro has been developed to use very little bandwidth, making it ideal for those without broadband connections.

Morro will replace Microsoft’s current, paid service, Windows Live OneCare, which has been available on a subscription basis for $50 per year.

While a free, antivirus solution that ships with Windows would be a boon for the average user, it could also mean trouble for third-party software solutions. Given that a bundled solution could raise antitrust concerns - and would no doubt see competitors like McAfee and Grisoft reaching for the lawyers - Microsoft will be offering Morro as a separate download.

Assuming Morro can deliver decent security it should be a welcome free addition to Windows, but we don’t suggest throwing away your third-party software just yet. Antivirus software suites will likely continue to hold an edge over Morro by offering additional handy tools - like password managers, identity theft protection and browser-based phishing protection.

Still, if you’ve been running Windows with no antivirus software at all, Morro will no doubt be better than nothing, and it’s hard to argue with free.

Source [Microsoft]

Transmeta finds a buyer

Transmeta, a company that once hoped to rival Intel and Advanced Micro Devices to power portable computers, announced Monday that it would sell itself to Novafora for $255.6 million in cash. Novafora said it hopes to use Transmeta's people and technology in its video processing chips.

"Transmeta's innovative technology and the expertise of its employees are valuable additions to Novafora," Novafora CEO Zaki Rakib said in a statement.

The deal to sell itself puts at an end the company's efforts to figure out what to do with its technology, which was once a top-secret effort to unseat Intel in the low-power PC market.

"We believe the deal is a win for all our stockholders," Transmeta President Les Crudele said in a statement. "We have spent the past several months extensively exploring our strategic options and believe that the agreement with Novafora best serves the interest of our stockholders."

Intel officially launches Core i7

Intel's next-generation micro architecture has arrived. Intel made the debut of the Core i7 processor official on Monday afternoon, launching the processor at an event in San Francisco. PC makers, including Dell and Gateway, quickly followed suit with announcements.

"The Core i7 processor speeds video editing (and) immersive games...by up to 40 percent without increasing power consumption," the Intel said in a statement.

Combining the i7 with super-fast solid state drives will lead to significant jumps in performance, according to Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. "When you couple what is Intel's biggest leap in chip design with other incredible innovations like Intel's solid state drives, the Core i7 processor has redefined the computer of tomorrow," he said in a statement.

The i7 also packs a technology called Turbo Boost that accelerates performance to match a computer user's needs and workloads. Through an on-chip power control unit, Turbo Boost automatically adjusts the clock speed of one or more of the four individual processing cores without increasing power consumption, Intel said.

The new chip also has the latest Intel power-saving technologies, allowing desktops to go into sleep states formerly reserved for Intel-based notebooks. And it ushers in the age of the "monolithic die" for Intel. (AMD has been doing this for over a year now.) The core i7 is one of Intel's first processors to put four cores on one piece of silicon, referred to as a monolithic die. Previous Intel quad-core chips cobbled together two dual-core die.

Other features include QuickPath, which doubles the memory bandwidth of previous Intel "Extreme" platforms, and Hyper-Threading Technology, which allows multiple computing threads to run simultaneously, effectively enabling the chip to do two things at once.

Each Core i7 processor features an 8 MB level 3 cache and three channels of DDR3 1066 memory.

Source [cnet]

Yahoo's Yang to Step Down as CEO

After a bungled buyout offer from Microsoft, a deal with Google that fell apart and two rounds of layoffs Jerry Yang is calling it quits and stepping aside as chief executive of the company he cofounded, Yahoo said Monday.

Yang, who became CEO in June 2007, will take on his former title of "Chief Yahoo" once a successor is found and remain on the board.

He has been under intense pressure from shareholders in recent weeks for a string of perceived missteps that began in February with Microsoft's US$45 billion offer to buy Yahoo. Microsoft was offering $33 per share for its Internet rival but Yang rejected that price as too low.

Eventually Microsoft withdrew its offer and Yang went on to talk with News Corp. about a venture with MySpace and with TimeWarner about a merger with AOL but they came to nothing. In June he struck an advertising deal with Google but that too fell apart in the face of opposition from the U.S. Department of Justice.

With Yahoo shares currently trading at less than $11 the Microsoft offer, with the benefit of hindsight, looks like a very attractive one thus the discontent from some shareholders. Yang appears to recognize this and at an Internet conference in San Francisco two weeks ago made a thinly veiled initiation to Microsoft to come back to the negotiating table.

Yang needed to step aside to give Yahoo a chance to start fresh, said David Wertheimer, the former president of Paramount Digital Entertainment and now the chief of the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California.

Yahoo is seeking to replace its embattled CEO, who will be stepping down from his post after a successor is found.Two names that industry players and headhunters point to as having a possibly good fit already have Redmond running through their veins. One is former Microsoft online and Windows chief Kevin Johnson, who recently left to take a CEO post at Juniper Networks and the other is Brian McAndrews, senior vice president of Microsoft's Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group, who came by way of the aQuantive digital advertising acquisition. The search process could take approximately 50 days.

Source [cnet, PCWorld]

Easier Way To Embed Objects Into Video

Suppose you have a cherished home video, taken at your birthday party. You're fond of the video, but your viewing experience is marred by one small, troubling detail. There in the video, framed and hanging on the living room wall amidst the celebration, is a color photograph of your former significant other.

Solution

But what if you could somehow reach inside the video and swap the offending photo for a snapshot of your current love? How perfect would that be?

A group of Stanford University researchers specializing in artificial intelligence have developed software that makes such a switch relatively simple. The researchers, computer science graduate students Ashutosh Saxena and Siddharth Batra, and Assistant Professor Andrew Ng, see interesting potential for the technology they call ZunaVision.



Video courtesy Stanford News Service
© Stanford University. All Rights Reserved.

They say a user of the software can easily plunk an image on almost any planar surface in a video, whether wall, floor or ceiling. And the embedded images don't have to be still photos - you can insert a video inside a video.

Here's the opportunity to sing karaoke side-by-side with your favorite American Idol celebrity and post the video to YouTube. Or preview a virtual copy of a painting on your wall before you buy. Or liven up those dull vacation videos.

There is also a potential financial aspect to the technology. The researchers suggest that anyone with a video camera might earn some spending money by agreeing to have unobtrusive corporate logos placed inside their videos before they are posted online. The person who shot the video, and the company handling the business arrangements, would be paid per view, in a fashion analogous to Google AdSense, which pays websites to run small ads.

Source [Stanford News Service]
© Stanford University. All Rights Reserved.

AMD launches first 45nm CPUs

AMD has been stuck on the 65nm boat for a while now, and its current chips are now looking pretty crusty when you consider that Intel’s 45nm Xeon CPUs were doing the rounds at the end of last year. However, the wait for AMD’s next-gen CPUs is finally over. The company has now officially launched its first 45nm ‘Shanghai’ Opteron chips for servers and workstations, which may well give us a glimpse of what we can expect from its forthcoming desktop CPUs, codenamed 'Deneb'.

AMD’s move to a 45nm process relies on immersion lithography, where a refractive fluid fills the gap between the lens and the wafer, which AMD says will result in ‘dramatic performance and performance-per-watt gains.’ It’s also enabled AMD to increase the maximum clock speed of the Opterons from 2.3GHz with the Barcelona core to 2.7GHz with the Shanghai core. Given that current Barcelona-based Phenoms top out at 2.6GHz, this could mean much faster clock speeds for AMD’s future desktop chips. 

Shanghai chips also feature much more cache than their predecessors, with 6MB of Level 3 cache bumping the total up to 8MB, and the chips share the same cache architecture as Barcelona CPUs, with a shared pool of Level 3 cache and an individual allocation of Level 2 cache for each core. As well as this, the Shanghai chips use HyperTransport 3.0, allowing bandwidth of up to 17.6GB/sec. Meanwhile, AMD plans to start introducing its six-core ‘Istanbul’ Opteron chips next year.

AMD is expected to launch its 45nm Deneb desktop CPUs before the end of the year, and they will also be fabricated on a 45nm process. However, unless the chips offer a serious improvement in performance over the current Phenom CPUs, the new chips will have a hard time competing with Intel’s recently launched Core i7 CPUs unless AMD dramatically undercuts them in price.

Tethering Coming Soon to iPhone

The ability to use your iPhone as a wireless modem is finally on the way. AT&T is now in talks with Apple to develop "tethering" plans for the devices, a company spokesperson has confirmed. The subject first came up during an interview with AT&T Mobility's CEO at Thursday's Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

Tether Talk

Talk of turning the iPhone into a tethered wireless modem has been floating around for months. The process would let you connect your phone to your computer, then access the Internet through AT&T's 3G network as part of your wireless data plan. A third-party utility called NetShare allowed such functionality for a short time this summer, but Apple removed the program from its App Store without comment at the end of July. (In a strange and never explained twist, the app reappeared a day later for a few hours before vanishing for good.)

Source PCWorld

FCC adopts rules for unlicensed use of Television While Spaces

In its continuing efforts to promote efficient use of spectrum and to extend the benefits of such use  o the public, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today adopted a Second Report and Order Second R&O) that establishes rules to allow new, sophisticated wireless devices to operate in roadcast television spectrum on a secondary basis at locations where that spectrum is open. (This nused TV spectrum is now commonly referred to as television 'white spaces'). The rules adopted today ill allow for the use of these new and innovative types of unlicensed devices in the unused spectrum to provide broadband data and other services for consumers and businesses.

Here is the original FCC announcement.

Introducing Google Earth for iPhone

Today Google introduced Google Earth for iPhone and iPod touch. It may be small, but it brings all the power of Google Earth to the palm of your hand, including all of the same global imagery and 3D terrain.

With Google Earth for iPhone, you can:
• Tilt your iPhone to adjust your view to see mountainous terrain
• View the Panoramio layer and browse the millions of geo-located photos from around the world
• View geo-located Wikipedia articles
• Use the 'Location' feature to fly to your current location
• Search for cities, places and business around the globe with Google Local Search

Official Google Blog: Introducing Google Earth for iPhone

Google Now Search Scanned Documents.. Wow..!

If you've ever had trouble finding scanned documents on Google, it's probably because it was not indexing them. On Thursday, this all changed. Google has announced that it is now indexing scanned documents.

Google is now able to perform optical character recognition (OCR) on any scanned document it finds stored in the PDF format. OCR technology is able to "read" a scanned document and covert it into words that can be searched and indexed.

To people reading these documents, the distinction between words and pictures of words makes little difference, but for a computer the picture is almost unintelligible. Consider a circle. Should it be read it as a zero, the letter 'O', just a circle, or the ring from my coffee cup? People learn to answer this kind of question very quickly, but for the computer it is a painstaking and error-prone process. Now to apply it to all scanned PDF images on the Internet? Very impressive.

Official Google Blog: A picture of a thousand words?

Microsoft Brings Office to the Web Browser

The next version of Office for Windows will contain lightweight versions of its apps that will be delivered through Web browsers. Even though the release is for Windows, Microsoft representatives confirmed for Macworld that the Office Web apps would work with Safari and Firefox.

The company explained the move to the Web at its Professional Developers Conference. Microsoft said it plans to deliver all of its technology as "software plus services," with Office being one those technologies.

The Office Web applications will be lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Using the apps, you can use a browser to create, edit, and collaborate on Office documents.

"We raised the stakes with Office Web applications. With this development, people can benefit from Office as a service on their browser, as a downloadable application on their phone, and as software on their PCs," said Chris Capossela, senior vice president, Microsoft Business Division. "This is the kind of flexibility that our software plus services approach makes possible, and is helping us deliver the kind of innovation that businesses and consumers expect from Microsoft."

Microsoft will deliver the apps through Office Live with ad supported and subscription versions. Business customers have the option of using a hosted subscription service.

"We are deeply committed to offering our customers the technology they need to succeed. To that end, we're investing in software plus services for the long term, something that sets us apart from our competitors," said Capossela.

G1 hands on

The biggest mobile news of 2007 was definitely the Apple iPhone and I think the biggest news of this year is the Google Android.

Specifications: The T-Mobile G1 has most of the same specifications as other higher end devices today and it isn’t really in the specifications where the device stands out from the crowd, but in the operating system. The technical specifications of the T-Mobile G1 are as follows:

Google Android operating system
528MHz Qualcomm 7210 processor
Quad-band GSM (850/1800/1900 MHz)
Dual-band UMTS/HSDPA (1700/2100 MHz)
256MB ROM and 192MB RAM
3.17 inch 480×320 high resolution display
1150 mAh battery
3.2 megapixel camera with geo-tagging functionality
Integrated GPS receiver
Integrated 802.11 b/g WiFi radio
Integrated Bluetooth 2.0 radio with EDR
microSD card slot with support for SDHC cards (1GB microSD card pre-installed)
Dedicated 5-row QWERTY keyboard
Dimensions:
Weight: 5.6 ounces
Length: 4.60 inches
Width: 2.16 inches
Thickness: 0.62 inches



Source [ZDnet]

Google homepage evolution

You can go back and see how Google's homepage evolved in the past 10 years. The video uses cached versions of Google's homepage from Internet Archive.




Source Google Homepage Time-lapse by Alex Chitu

Microsoft’s new ‘M’ programming language

In a software-centric world where we already have many, many languages to program in, from scripting to bytecode compiled languages, to frameworks on top of languages and embedded languages, now Redmond wants to bring ANOTHER language to the table, titled ‘M’ (for Microsoft?).

The new language is to be a part of Microsoft’s new Oslo development and service-oriented strategy, incorporating features from XAML while being textual and domain-specific. M is to be used directly with 2 other components to be released with M along with Visual Studio 2010: Quadrant, a tool for building models visually, and a repository for storing and viewing models in an SQL database.

Microsoft has not said much other than that about the new language, but it will presumably be a compiled .net language (goodbye true native code), and from what Microsoft said, M is to strive to be cross-platform... with a catch.

By "cross platform", Microsoft means, "cross platform as long the other platform authors write a backend for the code, and the SQL database MUST be hosted on MS SQL, a proprietary Microsoft Windows service". It makes perfect sense for being cross platform, if you are Microsoft and trying to purchase many copies of Windows (therefore generating revenue, and presumably the version is Vista or win2k8 since XP is out).

Another source says the language is actually their ‘D’ language (and no, Microsoft did not originally invent D either), only revamped to fit into their new Oslo modeling strategy and renamed to a further letter down the alphabet to attract new interest in an old product. While this may be mostly true, D, which was never really promoted as a .net compilable language (it just kinda disappeared) had many flaws and never really caught on although some were enthusiastic about it (just like Bill Gates said we would write code for OS/2 for the next 10 years after its release).

The fundamentals and principals of the language are attractive, especially for OOP, but its ties to MS SQL and .net would only really make it attractive to Windows-specific applications, although its integration with ASP.net is unclear at this point. The mono project does a descent job of allowing .net code to run on non-windows platforms, and if M adheres to the same standards then after a given time M-written applications will be penguin-friendly as well if Microsoft can get around the MS SQL dependency.

Time will only tell how many will actually use the language outright before Microsoft finds a way to force programmers to use it, most likely by dropping support for some features in all languages except M to promote its usage. For now it appears that the only "non-visual" C/C++ code encouraged for usage with Windows by Microsoft is in fact Windows itself, given the fact that Microsoft’s programmers are on Microsoft’s payroll. But if all newbie programmers learn these new languages, who will manage the billions of lines of C and C++ we currently use in the future, unless it is implied to be completely be rewritten? I’m sure the folks from the original Bell labs team would be interested in the answer to these questions as well.

Posted by Mark in thecoffeedesk.com 

© 2008 The Coffee Desk, All rights reserved.

G Mail adds Mail Goggles

Someone at Google clearly came into work one morning and said: "You know that girl I met in a bar two nights ago? You know, the one who turned her back on me.....the one I regaled with the one-legged Martian and the hermaphrodite pterodactyl joke....yeah, the one who poured her White Russian over my black satin H&M shirt?...well, I sent her an email last night telling her I loved her". Gmail can’t always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today they’re launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind?

The Goggles will sit by your side and electronically whisper into your ear: "Step away from that laptop. There's nothing to see here. Certainly not the way you're seeing things right now. So drink lots of water and go to bed with Winnie the Pooh and Loopy Lou. Tomorrow morning you will be glad we had this conversation."

G1 Vs. iPhone

After the T-Mobile G1 was announced, we went over the features of the G1, compared it to other phones, and listed what was missing. But we think a lot of you are asking if this compares well to the Apple iPhone 3G, and if it's a so-called "iPhone killer." Here's a simple side-by-side comparison chart of the two devices, with what we think are important design and feature differences (Bear in mind that some of these features might change as new applications surface).

	T-Mobile G1	Apple iPhone 3G
Dimensions	4.60 inches x 2.16 inches x 0.62 inch	5.5 inches x 2.4 inches x 0.48 inch
Screen size	3.2 inch	3.5 inch
Navigation	Touch screen, QWERTY keyboard, trackball and navigation keys. No multitouch-gesture support.	Touch screen, Home button. Multitouch-gesture support.
Camera	3.2 megapixels, no video recording	2.0 megapixels, no video recording
Connectivity	Quad-band GSM, dual-band UMTS, Wi-Fi. Bluetooth-headset profile is supported, but no stereo Bluetooth, no tethering.	Quad-band GSM, tri-band UMTS/HSDPA, Wi-Fi. Bluetooth-headset profile is supported, but no stereo Bluetooth, no tethering.
Accelerometer	Yes	Yes
GPS	Yes	Yes
Maps	Google Maps with Satellite View, Traffic, and Street View. Also has a compass mode that orients the screen as you move.	Google Maps with Satellite View and Traffic. No Street View
Memory	MicroSD-card slot expandable up to 8GB, with MicroSDHC-card support. Comes with a 1GB card preloaded	8GB or 16GB, no expansion slot
E-mail	Push Gmail, POP3, IMAP, no Exchange	POP3, IMAP, Exchange support
Syncing	Over-the-air synchronization	Desktop synchronization, with over-the-air sync for certain cloud-based applications like Web mail and online calendars.
Visual Voicemail	Don't know yet, presumably no	Yes
Music Store	Amazon MP3 Store	iTunes Store
Application Store	Android Market. The SDK is open source and applications don't need to be vetted for approval.	iTunes Application Store. Applications need to be approved by Apple to appear in the store.
Multimedia Messaging	Yes	No
Copy and Paste	Yes	No
Voice dial	Yes	No
Removable battery	Yes	No
Price	$179 with two-year service agreement	$199 with two-year service agreement for 8GB, $299 with two-year service agreement for 16GB
Data plan	$35 a month for unlimited Web, e-mail, messaging, and T-Mobile HotSpot access; $25 a month for unlimited Web, e-mail, unlimited IM on Google Talk, 400 total messages (text, picture messages, non-Google Talk IM), and T-Mobile HotSpot access.	$30 a month for unlimited consumer data plan, $45 a month for unlimited business data plan, $5 a month for 200 text messages, $15 a month for 1,500 text messages, $20 a month for unlimited text messages

 Source [cnet]

Sony's Latest OLED TV Prototype Is 1 Millimeter Thin

Sony has unveiled a prototype OLED (organic light emitting diode) television that's less than a millimeter thin -- that's one third the thickness of its current OLED television and a tenth that of its thinnest LCD (liquid crystal display) set.

The TV measures just 0.9mm and is based on a prototype 0.3mm screen that Sony first showed earlier this year. The prototype set was on show at the Ceatec 2008 electronics expo in Japan and attracted a steady stream of curious attendees, with many of them snapping pictures of it.

OLED is an emerging flat-panel display technology that uses an organic material that emits its own light, so no backlight is needed and that means displays are much thinner. The screens also consume less power than competing technologies, handle fast-moving images better and offer good color reproduction.

Sony's first OLED TV, the XEL-1, was launched at Ceatec 2007 and instantly became one of the most talked-about products at the show thanks to its bright and vibrant picture and thinness of just 3mm. The 11-inch set, which was also the first commercial OLED TV from any manufacturer, was accompanied on Sony's Ceatec 2007 stand by a prototype 27-inch screen that was back again at Ceatec 2008.

Sony still faces production problems in making larger screens, so there's no word on when the larger TV set will be launched.

The 0.3mm panel is based on the same screen that's used in the XEL-1. By carefully grinding down the glass substrate the panel is made thinner but also much more brittle. There were also no details of when the even-thinner 11-inch set might hit the market.

Google Dream Phone Makes Its Debut

NEW YORK - The long-awaited, breathlessly-rumored, Google-powered (and still unavailable until next month) G1 phone was unveiled today with a list price that undercuts Apple's iPhone by $20 but with few design or software elements that had not been anticipated.

The handset is made by HTC and the service is provided by T-Mobile -- but the buzz is all about the completely open source Android platform developed by Google, which allows third-party developers to create applications.

Indeed, it was the unadvertised appearance of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 45 minutes into what had been a routine presentation, that energized the packed media room. The pair skated onto the stage wearing rollerblades, perhaps taking a cue from the legendary, crowd-pleasing marketing prowess of Apple's Steve Jobs.

"I’m a bit of a geek and I really like tinkering with things," Brin said, pulling one of the black flip phones out of his pocket (also available in white and brown).

The G1 comes with three preinstalled applications that premiered in the Android developer contest: Ecorio, which measures your carbon footprint; ShopSavvy (formerly known as GoKart), which scans bar codes to compare prices; and BreadCrumbz to create a step-by-step visual map using photos.

While it doesn’t support DRM protected audio files, there is an Amazon MP3 application with the option of purchasing music directly to the device.

One of the more interesting features is the built-in compass, which displays a 360-degree Google Street view based on location. Other Google apps are also built right into the system, including support for Gmail and YouTube videos.

As for the hardware, the 5.6 ounce device is 4.60" x 2.16" and .62" thick, with a 3.17" display. It is as predicted, a swivel, sidekick-like flip phone with a QWERTY keyboard, and 3.17 inch touch display screen.

The web browser is based on WebKit. "You can think of it as 'Chrome Lite,'" says Andy Rubin, senior director of mobile platforms.

The touchscreen works just like the iPhone, but uses what they call a "long press" to zoom in and select objects. The interface is drag-and-drop.

The G1 will be released on Oct. 22 and is priced at $180. Current T-Mobile customers can order it online today. You need to purchase a data plan in addition to a required voice plan. There are two service options available: a basic $25 limited data and SMS plan, or, for an extra 10 bucks you get unlimited messaging and internet.

© 2008 CondéNet, Inc. All rights reserved.

Adobe unveils CS4 suite

Adobe on Tuesday will unveil Creative Suite 4 (CS4), the latest update to the its suite of high-end applications for print, Web, and video professionals. Available in October, the suite consists of 13 products, 14 integrated technologies, and seven services.

One of the biggest changes users will notice right away is the new tabbed interface for applications in CS4. Adobe has given all of its applications the ability to use tabs, so you can have multiple tabs open at the same time, but still be in one window.

Files and objects can be shared across tabs by clicking and dragging them and holding them on a new tab. Of course, if you prefer the multiple window interface of the old Adobe products, you can still use that too.

Major standalone products released as part of CS4 include Photoshop, Photoshop Extended, InDesign, Illustrator, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, After Effects, and Adobe Premiere.

If there is a consistent theme in Creative Suite 4, it's integration. Adobe integrated its Flash multimedia application across the CS4 applications. The company also focused on integrating common functions in other apps, too, as part of an effort to make pro users more efficient.

To allow collaboration Adobe now offers a set of online services on Acrobat.com to allow designers and clients to create and share documents. Groups can also use Adobe ConnectNow to meet live over the Web and share a computer screen. This gives designers the opportunity to get immediate feedback and make any necessary changes to a design without sending documents to clients and waiting for them to be returned.

Focusing on the mobile platform, applications across the suite are now more tightly integrated with Adobe Flash, which allows designers to use the SWF format for mobile devices.

CS4 includes an expanded version of Dynamic Link in the Production Premium suite that enables users to move content between After Effects CS4, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, Soundbooth, and Encore, so updates can be seen instantly without rendering. Other new tools like Photoshop's Content-Aware Scaling automatically recomposes an image as it is resized, preserving vital areas as it adapts to new dimensions.

Adobe made some big changes with sharing and collaboration in CS4. Adobe ConnectNow, can be accessed from InDesign CS4, Illustrator CS4, Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Extended CS4, Flash CS4 Professional, Dreamweaver CS4, Fireworks CS4, and Acrobat 9 Pro, allowing real-time collaboration with two colleagues or clients.

Adobe Kuler, a Web-hosted application for generating color themes, is now accessible from within InDesign CS4, Illustrator CS4, Photoshop CS4, Photoshop Extended CS4, Flash CS4 and Fireworks CS4, and can be shared by designers. Kuler is available for owners of the individual applications or the suites.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 will be available in October. Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium will cost $1799 and includes InDesign, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Flash Professional and Fireworks; Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium will be $1699 and includes Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Fireworks, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Soundbooth, Acrobat and Contribute; and Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium is $1699 and includes After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Flash Professional, Soundbooth, OnLocation and Encore.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection costs $2499 and includes InDesign, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Fireworks, Contribute, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Soundbooth, OnLocation and Encore.

Adobe will offer tiered upgrade pricing from previous versions depending on the applications you own. Details of the upgrades are available from Adobe's Web site.


For more Macintosh computing news, visit Macworld. Story copyright © 1994-2008 Mac Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

Official Google Blog: The intelligent cloud

In coming years, computer processing, storage, and networking capabilities will continue up the steeply exponential curve they have followed for the past few decades. By 2019, parallel-processing computer clusters will be 50 to 100 times more powerful in most respects. Computer programs, more of them web-based, will evolve to take advantage of this newfound power, and Internet usage will also grow: more people online, doing more things, using more advanced and responsive applications. By any metric, the "cloud" of computational resources and online data and content will grow very rapidly for a long time.
As we're already seeing, people will interact with the cloud using a plethora of devices: PCs, mobile phones and PDAs, and games. But we'll also see a rush of new devices customized to particular applications, and more environmental sensors and actuators, all sending and receiving data via the cloud. The increasing number and diversity of interactions will not only direct more information to the cloud, they will also provide valuable information on how people and systems think and react

Official Google Blog: The intelligent cloud

The future of mobile

There are currently about 3.2 billion mobile phone subscribers in the world, and this number is expected to grow by at least one billion in the next few years. They are more prevalent than only 800 milliom Cars registered worldwide. While it took 100 years for land-line phones to spread to more than 80% of countries in the world, their wireless offspring did it in 16. So it's safe to say that the cell phone may be the most prolific consumer product ever invented.

Read Andy Rubin's The future of mobile at the Official Google blog.

Indian Team develops Intel's First 'true' quad-core chip

Intel launched its first "true" quad-core processors on Monday with the introduction of its Xeon 7400 series of server chips, formerly known Dunnington. Designed by Intel engineers in Bangalore, India, the chip lineup includes the first quad-core and six-core chips produced in a single piece of silicon. 

The Xeon 7400 series is the first Intel chip to exit the design centre in Bangalore. Founded in 2002, the center has worked previously in another server chip called Xeon Whitefield. But chip than ever to market. It was canceled in 2005, when Intel revised its product road maps to better compete with Advanced Micro Devices, and India design team then put their attention on Dunnington. 

Moreover, the design centre in Bangalore is the first team outside the U.S. Intel to complete the design of 45 nanometers processors. The chip design Dunnington marks a milestone for Intel, which already uses a monolithic die, the term engineers use to describe the placing of all cores on a single piece of silicon. 

Existing Intel quad-core processor lines use two pieces of silicon, each containing two cores packaged together. That approach made the older quad-core chips easier to produce and avoid manufacturing difficulties impeding the release of AMD Barcelona chip - an x86 server chip with four cores on a single piece of silicon. These difficulties were compounded by AMD in its transition to a new 65-nanometer manufacturing process. 

The manufacture of semiconductors is both art as science, and chip makers can fight for months to obtain high yields of a new manufacturing process. 

With the introduction of Dunnington - and the next line of quad-core Nehalem processors who also uses a monolithic design - Intel waited until their 45-nanometer process was in mass production, presumably overcame the technical difficulties, before making this transition .