Hisense Launches Ultra HD TV Line

LAS VEGAS — At CES 2013 on Monday, Chinese electronics company Hisense launched its XT900 line of ultra-high definition TV (UHDTV) displays.

The XT900 is available in 65-inch, 84-inch and 110-inch sizes.

UHDTV — formerly known as 4K — boasts 3840 x 2160 pixel resolution panels offering four times the resolution of standard HDTV. Check out the difference between LCD and UHD in the picture below.

It also features active shutter 3D technology on 120Hz panels.

The XT900 also includes a USB-mounted detachable camera, allowing users to access applications such as Skype and take advantage of built-in gesture control and facial recognition functionality.

Hisense first started expand globally in 2007 and has averaged 30% annual growth in annual markets, the company said during its press conference. In 2012, the company said it expected $2 billion in sales and by 2015, it aims to achieve $5 billion in international markets.

"Over the past six years, we have been working hard to build the brand," a Hisense spokesperson said. "The U.S. has been the most important market for our business [for growth]. This year we want to make up about 5% of the market share."

Pricing has not yet been announced.

Source : mashable

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IBM: Computers Will See, Hear, Taste, Smell and Touch in 5 Years

oday's PCs and smartphones can do a lot -- from telling you the weather in Zimbabwe in milliseconds, to buying your morning coffee. But ask them to show you what a piece of fabric feels like, or to detect the odor of a great-smelling soup, and they're lost.

That will change in the next five years, says IBM. Computers at that time will be much more aware of the world around them, and be able to understand it. The company's annual "5 in 5" list, in which IBM predicts the five trends in computing that will arrive in five years' time, reads exactly like a list of the five human senses -- predicting computers with sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.

The five senses are really all part of one grand concept: cognitive computing, which involves machines experiencing the world more like a human would. For example, a cognizant computer wouldn't see a painting as merely a set of data points describing color, pigment and brush stroke; rather, it would truly see the object holistically as a painting, and be able to know what that means.

Cognitive Advantages

"That's a foundationally different way of thinking of computing," Bernie Meyerson, IBM's vice president of innovation, told Mashable in an interview. "You have to change how you think about absorbing data. You can't just take a picture and file the picture. You have to treat the picture as an entity at a very high level, as opposed to just a bunch o' bits."

"[Cognitive computing] makes for some very interesting shifts in capability," he adds. "That's a rather profound sort of driver."

One of the key differences between a cognizant computer and a traditional one is the idea of training. A cognitive system won't just continue to give the same wrong or unhelpful answer; if it arrives at the wrong conclusion, it can change its approach and try again.

"In a cognitive machine, you set it up and run it, but it observes," Meyerson says. "And that's very different because it statistically calculates an end result. However, if that answer is incorrect and you tell it, it'll actually re-weight those probabilities that led it to get the wrong answer and eventually get to the right answer."

Cognition Does Not Equal Intelligence

Attributing human senses to machines can't help but conjure images of androids or self-aware computers capable of independent thought and action. Meyerson says there's a massive chasm separating cognitive computing and true artificial intelligence.

"This is really an assistive technology," he explains. "It can't go off on its own. It's not designed to do that. What it's designed to do, in fact, is respond to a human in an assistive manner. But by providing a human-style of input, it's freed us from the task of programming and moved to the task of training. It simply has -- not more intelligence -- but more bandwidth, and there's a huge difference between the two."

What's your take on cognitive computing? Is IBM on to something with PCs that can taste, smell, touch, hear and see? How would you use the technology? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Source : mashable

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Red Bull Skydiving Mission from Edge of Space a Success

What did you do yesterday?

Austrian energy drink company Red Bull on Sunday celebrated the successful execution of its 'Mission to the Edge of Space' project. Also known as Red Bull Stratos, the mission saw 43-year-old Felix Baumgartner ascend 24 miles into the stratosphere and sky dive back down. Baumgartner set the altitude record for a manned balloon flight on his way up, and records for parachute jump from the highest altitude and greatest free fall velocity on the way down.

Baumgartner had help from one Colonel Joe Kittinger, the man who held the previous records for highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, and fastest speed by a human being through the atmosphere. Kittinger achieved his records in 1960 while taking part a military project called Project Excelsior. Kittinger communicated with Baumgartner while he was in the capsule on his way up and during the process of the jump. He also communicated with him while he was on the way down.

All told, a record-breaking eight million people watched the stunt happen live via YouTube. This is in addition to the millions that watched via television broadcast partnerships established with broadcasters and Red Bull. The event also saw Red Bull gain 180,000 YouTube subscribers in the last seven days.

Red Bull says that all told, there were over 35 moving and still image cameras documenting the mission, including two ground-based optical tracking systems that allowed viewers to track Felix's entire freefall, and five POV cameras on Felix's body, which recorded his entire freefall experience.

Source: tomsguide.com

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Iran starts closing Internet as saber-rattling continues

In New York City, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is talking softly, while his government has started blocking Google services and a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards is threatening a pre-emptive strike on Israel.

While saber-rattling has long been part of Iran's foreign policy towards the West, Iran does finally seems to be making good on its promises to break Internet ties with the rest of the world. According to reports from Tehran in Al Arabiya, an Iranian official has stated that "Due to the repeated demands of the people, Google and Gmail will be filtered nationwide. They will remain filtered until further notice."

Other reports agree that Iranians can no longer reach Google search and Gmail. Your Middle East, a self-declared independent source of news on the Middle East, reports that a high Iranian official in charge of Internet access said that closing the door to Google was in response to the recent YouTube video mocking the prophet Mohammad.

That said, Your Middle East also reported that Mohammad Soleimani, a lawmaker heading a parliamentary communication committee and former Minister of Communication and Information Technology, said that "the establishment of the 'National Internet' will not cut access to the Internet," because ”cutting access to the Internet is not possible at all, because it would amount to imposing sanctions on ourselves, which would not be logical. However, the filtering will remain in place."

Google's own numbers show a minor reduction in Iranian Internet traffic, but they doesn't show a major dip. That may be because tech-savvy Iranian Internet users have long used virtual private networks (VPNs) and proxy servers to slip around the Iranian national firewall.

This is not the first time Iran has cut the country's Internet users off from global Web services. In February, Iran temporarily blocked access to Gmail, Facebook, Hotmail and Yahoo. Since June 13, 2009, Iran has censored YouTube.

Is this the beginning of Iran moving to its own Internet? That seems unlikely. What does seem possible is that Iran, which has been subject to numerous cyber-attacks, is starting to implement its own version of China's great firewall.

Source : zdnet.com

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QWERTY Or Touchscreen? Survey Reveals Input Preferences

 Every time we hear about a new phone with a hardware QWERTY keyboard, we get a little excited. That’s not because we’re necessarily fans of any one input method over another, but considering how few models have keyboards nowadays, and how even fewer of them are really top-tier devices, it’s always nice to get some more options. Nokia was curious exactly what users looked for in their phones, so it recently ran a survey to get an idea of just where these preferences lie.

The results are interesting, showing a much larger share of users that prefer QWERTY keyboards than we might have expected, given the lackluster attention many manufacturers give to such models. Worldwide, nearly half of all respondents voiced support for QWERTY. Pure-touchscreen devices only captured about 35% of of the vote, with the remainder split between voice commands and numerical keyboards; Nokia still makes plenty of phones with touchscreens as well as number pads, so it wanted to get data on those, too.

It turns out that this data also reveals some trends of differences between certain nations. In the US, for instance, QWERTY support take a dive, and it moves down to 33% while touchscreens take the lead at 47%. There’s also much more interest in voice commands; we can’t help but think that all these changes might be a consequence of iPhone popularity.

What camp do you fall into? Are keyboards a thing of the past, or would you rather that your next phone feature a hardware keyboard?

 

 

Source : pocketnow.com

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Olympics Finale Sparked Fewer Tweets Than Grammys, VMAs [INFOGRAPHIC]

In Olympics speak, Sunday’s Closing Ceremony on NBC failed to medal in the competition of most-popular entertainment event in social TV history.


Propelled by musical performances from the Spice Girls, One Direction and Jessie J, the ceremony attracted 2.7 million comments on Twitter and Facebook, data from Bluefin Labs shows.
The Opening Ceremony incited more activity, netting 5.0 million comments. This year’s Grammys (13 million), BET Awards (7.98 million), Academy Awards (3.8 million) and last year’s VMAs (3.1 million) also placed higher.

Bluefin’s statistics for the Olympics finale account for negative commentary, including the outrage over NBC’s decision to interrupt the ceremony to show a commercial-free episode of the new sitcom Animal Practice.

Despite that hiccup and viewers’ frustrations with tape delay throughout the 17-day Olympic Games, NBC’s primetime showing of the Closing Ceremony roped in 31 million viewers.

The entire Olympics garnered 82.6 million social comments — 36 million of which were specifically about the TV telecast. Bluefin, which tracked 19,175 Olympics-related terms, tabulates English-only commentary such as hashtags, athlete and team names/handles and celebrities.

Meanwhile, Twitter reports people generated 150 million tweets of any language during the Olympics.

 

Source :  mashable.com

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Nano Printer Can Put Portraits on a Strand of Hair

We hope you’re ready for that new inkjet you just bought to look positively prehistoric. That’s because a team of researchers in Singapore have managed to build a printer that can create detailed color images a mere 50 micrometers across, the width of a single human hair.

Built by the Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (ASTAR), the nano-printer works at a resolution of 100,000 dots per inch (most magazines, by comparison, are printed at 300 dots per inch). Each of the dots it prints is actually made from four tiny pillars of nano-particles, each capped with silver and gold nano-disks. Changing the distance between these dots alters how they reflect light, which produces different colors without having to use pigment like traditional printers.

According to ASTAR’s researchers, the resolution they’ve achieved is at the limit of what can be discerned by human vision, and going any smaller would simply result in indecipherable smudges. You know, the kind you get from those old-timey ink printers.

Source : mashable.com

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Israel tests missile attack warning system via SMS

Summary: Country starts week-long test of system which informs civilians of areas likely to be hit by missile strikes and more specific safety guidelines through text messages, hopes it will reduce unnecessary casualties. 

 The Israel Defense Force (IDF) Home Front Command commenced a week-long test of an alert system which sends a text message to mobile phones located in areas likely to be hit by missile strikes.

The "personal message" system which commenced on Sunday was developed in the past few years and is expected to be operational within a month, Xinhua news site reported Sunday. It will send area-specific warnings, based on projections of incoming trajectory of unguided rockets or ballistic missiles and aims to offer more specific guidelines to residents than existing air raid sirens.

As part of the drill, messages wil be delivered to several geographic areas, reading "The Home Front Command, checking cellular system", followed by a serial number, and will be sent in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian and English.

This comes on the heels of a possible Israeli attack on Iran to stop its nuclear program, which has spurred public concern on how to prepare on the home front.

It is hoped that the system will help save lives in case of emergencies and save unnecessary casualties in the event of a war, a source from IDF told the news site.

Israel is not the only country using mobile phones for military purposes. Last month, the South Korean government revealed it is developing battlefield applications for Samsung and other Android-based smartphones and regards mobile software as assets to the country's armed forces.

Source : zdnet.com

 

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New Tool Enables Wireless Tethered Photography

When it comes to tethered photography, wires can be the bane of any cameraperson’s existence.

Enter CameraMator, a tool that allows users to preview and share photos beyond a camera’s viewfinder, wirelessly.

For the uninitiated, tethered photography involves connecting a camera to a computer or tablet via firewire or USB cable, but it can also be wireless.

CameraMator lets users upload photos to their iPad or iPhone sans wires or cables. They can also preview and edit images while shooting. The result? An efficient and economical photo shoot, according to the tool’s Kickstarter page.

The CameraMator consists of a wireless component that attaches to a DSLR, and the CameraMator iPad/iPhone app, which controls the camera and displays the images, its creators said. Users just log their Apple devices on to the same network as the CameraMator, launch the app and start photographing.

So far, the project has raised nearly $4,000 of its $80,000 goal on Kickstarter.

Source : mashable.com

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Airbus designer reveals plans for 3D printed planes by 2050

An Airbus designer is drawing up plans to create a plane from a 3D printer the size of an aircraft hanger by 2050.

Airbus employee Bastian Schafer envisions an 80-metre-long aircraft with a curved body made from transparent material, so passengers feel as though they're flying among the clouds, reports Forbes. Airbus proposed the concept of a 2050 self-cleaning aircraft with inbuilt neural networks, antioxidant enriched air and body heat harvesting facilities in 2011, but how such an aircraft would be built was not explained.

It turns out Schafer has been working on the concept for the past two years, pooling together a team of ten Airbus industrial designers with the ominous promise, "we have an opportunity to do something different".

Despite the cost of building such an obscenely large 3D printer and the feats in technology that need to be mastered before it is even a possibility, the argument is that the resulting lightweight aircraft (65 percent lighter than a normal one, according to parent company the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company) will be far cheaper to operate. As rocketing fuel prices show no sign of slowing, the idea is appealing.

The innovation arm of Eads opened a £2.6 million Centre for Additive Layer Manufacturing (CALM) back in 2011 with the University of Exeter to exploreopportunities for 3D printing in industry, and is already looking to pioneer 3D-printed plane parts. After making a few changes to ensure its model is regulation-ready, Airbus plans to have 3D printed components in the cabins of its A380s by the end of 2012. Its Eurofighter Typhoon military jet already has some internal 3D printed components.

These are mere baby steps towards the production of a plane constructed entirely of 3D printed parts. But it's not just the sheer size that will be an obstacle for Airbus (D-Shape, the biggest 3D printer currently in operation, has only ever made structures of a few metres in height). A type of transparent aluminum sturdy enough to make up the aircraft's body currently only exists in the imagination of the designers and technicians, as do the biopolymers proposed for some of its internal components. Schafer and his team are not too troubled by this, believing that multi-material 3D printers -- such as the one built by Objet -- can be used to generate the new materials. Objet currently offers consumers a range of 107 different materials that can be used with its printer -- this gives engineers the tools to experiment with bonding different materials to create prototypes.

"It's not theoretically impossible," said David Benjamin, a New York architect working with Airbus. "You can design new products that are not all solid and aluminum, but a composite material. You're designing new substances.

"You can dial in the different elasticity of an object, the color properties, or a continuous piece of material that is different properties over the piece. Certain parts of an airplane need to be strong and flexible [and 3D printers can create objects] strong just where they needed to be strong, or light where they needed to be light."

This may be some way off, however, and in the meantime, Schafer is happy to focus on the baby steps. He hopes consumers will be kicking back in 3D printed cabin seats by by 2013.

Source : wired.co.uk

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Seeking a Laptop? What You Need to Know

If you’re looking to buy a laptop, there’s no shortage of sites to help you choose one. Just type “laptop b” into Google, and the search engine will auto-complete with “laptop buying guide.” (Apparently “laptop bacon” is not as popular as I thought).

The results of that search, most likely, will tell you to keep track of these things: the processor’s speed, the amount of memory, the brand and the model of graphics card.

But for most of us, worrying about such features is a waste of time (with one exception).
First off, I want to reiterate — for most of us. If you need a laptop that will let you render 3-D graphics while also managing La Guardia’s air traffic control system, stop reading and come back next week. You can continue to buy laptops the old-fashioned way.

For those of you who are still reading, there are a few features that you should worry about that are unlikely to have come up in your search. You want a portable computer to get you online, and to allow you to watch some movies, answer some e-mails and work on a document, spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation.

So here’s a guide to help you figure out what’s worth paying attention to, and what you can skip.
WEIGHT Anything more than six pounds is a pain in the shoulder. Any number of laptops weigh far less than that (down to around two and a half pounds), so there’s no reason to get anything heavier.
SCREEN SIZE The smallest displays are about 10 inches, measured diagonally. This is too small. The next step up is around 11 and a half inches, which is great for a second laptop that you can take traveling. But for most of us, 13 inches is the sweet spot — big enough but still portable enough to be thrown in a bag.

Laptops with 15-inch displays are just a bit too big for that, to say nothing of IMAX-size 17- and 18-inch models, which are awkwardly huge and at eight pounds or more, violate our weight rule.
PROCESSOR Doesn’t matter. Seriously. Does the laptop you’re looking at have a 2nd Generation Intel Core i3-2377M Processor running at 1.4GHz with a 3MB L3 cache? That’s wonderful. Oh wait, it doesn’t? Still wonderful. For regular people, all processors are fine. Don’t get bogged down in the details — and don’t pay more for some optional chip that offers an incremental speed boost. For what you need a laptop to do, it’s fine as is.

BATTERY LIFE Take a look at this fine print about battery-life specs from Best Buy’s Web site: “Battery life will vary depending on the product configuration, product model, applications loaded on the product, power management setting of the product, and product features used by the customer.”
In other words, battery-life specs mean little. Have a power cord with you.
MEMORY Unlike the processor, RAM (random access memory) does matter. You want 4 gigabytes of RAM. A laptop with less than that will seem sluggish, with annoying delays between the time you click on a menu command or hit a key and something actually happens. If a manufacturer tries to sneak beneath a certain price with a model that comes with under 4GB, but you can upgrade for a couple of hundred bucks, you should upgrade.

Do you need more than 4GB? Let me ask you this: Are you a video editor? Do you like to leave more than a dozen applications open at once? If your answer is “no,” you don’t.
STORAGE This used to matter a lot, but with the rise of streaming services and cloud computing, the amount of storage on your computer has become a little less important. Music can be streamed from Spotify, Rhapsody and other services. Documents and other files can live on Google Docs. Photos can be uploaded to iCloud or SmugMug or Flickr. TV shows and movies can be streamed from Netflix, Amazon and Hulu.

Even if you want to keep files stored on your computer’s hard drive so that they can be available when you do not have an online connection, services like Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive can let you select the specific files you want to keep locally, while keeping copies in the cloud. When you make changes to files that live on your computer, they will sync up with their online twin, so you don’t have to worry about which version you were working on.

Videos may also be something you want to see when you are offline, but how many videos do you need to store on your computer? If you’re taking a trip, download some rentals. When you finish watching them, they’ll be gone.

In any event, almost any laptop north of $300 has 500GB of storage, which could hold nearly 500 hours of standard-definition video, or around 8,300 hours of music. An application like Microsoft Office requires three gigabytes.

GRAPHICS CARD See “Processor.” For regular use, any graphics processor is going to do the trick.
WIRELESS Some laptops are Wi-Fi only, but some have built-in cellular chips so the laptop can get on 3G or 4G networks. Get the Wi-Fi-only model. If you need a cellular data connection, you can either wirelessly tether your laptop to your smartphone and use its signal, or you can get a MiFi, a separate device that will share a cell data signal with multiple devices at the same time.

OPTICAL DRIVE This is that slot or tray you have been using for DVDs or recordable CDs and it is falling by the wayside. Music has gone largely digital, forgoing physical media. Video seems next. Applications are increasingly downloaded from online stores. So you don’t need the optical drive.
Might there be a time when you do need one? Perhaps, but it will probably be so infrequent that you would be better off getting a thinner, lighter laptop without an optical drive and then getting an external drive for those rare occasions when you need it. Laptops have better performance and longer battery life if they don’t have to spin a mirrored disk around and shoot a laser at it.
PRICE Spending $500 or so will get you a perfectly fine laptop. Spend twice that or more, and you get into fancier machines that are notably slimmer and lighter. Many of these are called ultrabooks, and they have some things in common.

They are very slim and lightweight, and provide generally good battery life. One of the ways they accomplish these things is by using so-called flash storage (another way is by forgoing the aforementioned optical drive). With flash storage, files are stored on a chip, as opposed to a traditional spinning hard disk. Flash storage, also called solid-state storage, is lighter, faster and consumes less energy. It’s also more expensive and has less capacity than some hard disks. But most flash drives still exceed 300 gigabytes, which is enough for most people.

MAC OR PC It’s an age-old question, but it’s less important now. Most things we do these days are Web-based, so whether you’re in an Apple operating system or not isn’t the main factor. It used to be that Macs cost more than competing Windows machines, but that gap has shrunk. In the ultrabook category, Macs can be the least expensive, so don’t rule anything out.

TRY IT OUT Before buying any laptop, you must get it into your hands. All the specs in the world won’t tell you if the keyboard’s too cramped, the screen is not to your liking or the speakers are tinny. To figure that out, you need to go to a brick-and-mortar store. I’m not saying you have to buy a laptop at a brick-and-mortar store (sorry, brick-and-mortar stores), as lower prices may be found online. But you do need to kick the tires before handing over your cash.

Source : nytimes.com

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You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby! The ’80s Brick Phone, Now With Bluetooth

It seems we can’t get enough of the ’80s. Neon, remakes of classic movies, skinny jeans, leg-warmers … okay, can we please skip the leg-warmers? Just when we thought we were done with revisiting the decade, we spot a product that reminds us the ’80s are back in force.

At least, that’s what Shisa Labs is hoping, with their Retro Brick Bluetooth handset, launching tomorrow, July 13, on Kickstarter. If you weren’t old enough or wealthy enough to have that ultimate ’80s status symbol, the Motorola DynaTAC, this $85 accessory gives you a second chance. But no matter how gung-ho you are to rep your retro cred, don’t ditch that smartphone — the Retro Brick only operates in conjunction with a Bluetooth-enabled handset. And don’t forget your man-bag; this 13-inch whopper won’t be going in your pocket anytime soon.

Shisa Labs’ Vanessa Wright is hopeful that prospective backers will see the practical side of the brick phone, as a more comfortable alternative to long chats on tiny phones. (Even the new breed of larger handsets, like the Galaxy Note, aren’t terribly easy to position near your ear and mouth.)
“It’s kind of a functional product, but it’s also a fun novelty product as well, the best of two worlds,” Wright says. She has at least one vote on that front: Brad Helmink designed a similar brick, and launched it on Kickstarter competitor Indiegogo last month.

What do you think of the old-school obsession? Too much fun, not enough function? Just the right balance of ’80s kitsch and 21st century tech? Let us know in the comments.

Source : wired.com

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Be a High-Tech Rock Star on the Road

For the bourgeoning community of musicians, summer connotes cramming into an AC-less van and setting out for the brightly lit stages and basement dives of America. But drumming up a crowd can be hard with so many likeminded roadbandits filling the clubs. So how does one come to shred above the din? Technology, of course.

To guide us through the digital world of modern touring, a cast of bands and musicians out of Burlington, Vermont (sorry, not Phish) has agreed to share their road-worn know-how. Introducing Waylon Speed, Nuda Veritas, Heloise & the Savoir Faire, and Lowell Thompson.

This how-to should be played loud.

This how-to was written by John Flanagan, a freelance writer who lives and writes about music in Vermont.

Be Here Loud

When it comes to promotion, any band worth its salt knows about Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Waylon Speed go above the usual roundup by adding digital press kits via ReverbNation and Sonicbids, and by bombarding the web with their speedwestern anthems.

 

The Internet Archive

While SoundCloud is the current go-to for making streaming audio accessible on a mass scale, different (The Internet Archive) and perhaps more lucrative (CD Baby) song-sharing options exist. Waylon Speed have their own archivist, Bryan Smith, who records, edits, and uploads each of their shows. While most bands won't be so lucky, the Internet Archive makes sharing huge files a free and easy cinch. There, you can make your tunes available for streaming or download, get reviewed by listeners, and track how many ears you've reached.

 

CD Baby

While releasing your music for free has its perks, you're going to need money for gas and beer in that tour bus. Therefore, in addition to the free services you should try CD Baby, iTunes (if you meet Apple's requirements, and Amazon. Go to CD Baby first. From there, your music can be distributed to the aforementioned honchos and other bigwigs, including Facebook, Google Play, and Spotify. What's the catch? CD Baby charges $49.99 to upload an album ($9.99 for a single) and also takes a modest percentage of your sales. The alternatives? Brave Apple on your own by filling out an application, or just sell your own merch at shows.

Sonicbids

Sonicbids provides one-stop shopping for music marketing. At $4.99 per month for an annual “sonic” membership, Sonicbids will connect you with promoters, agents, and business folk looking to put fresh new hits into ads and movies. The site also sends your music to brands such as Gap and Converse — should you choose to sell out — and it hosts a platform for connecting with fans and promoting your shows via social media. Don't want to commit for a year? Choose the one-month $6.99 option and use it only while you tour. Upgrade to “supersonic” status at $9.99 per year or $12.99 per month.

 

Songkick

Waylon Speed keep fans posted on upcoming shows via JamBase and Songkick, the latter of which distributes tour dates to Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and other social media giants.

Where's the Stage?

Nuda Veritas, aka Rebecca Kopycinski, tours the Northeast in her black Honda Accord, crooning out her haunting brand of operatic, digital folk to the masses. Instead of using a smartphone to find her way, Kopycinski maintains her indie cred with a Samsung Intensity II, which she describes as “essentially a little brick with a screen.” Along with a GPS unit handed down from famed composer David Ludwig, Kopycinski relies mostly on texts to Google. “I swear people don't know about this meek yet powerful tool,” she says. “It's limited, sure, but it gets me around.”

 

Just Get an iPhone

If you've upgraded by now, do as James Belizia, axman for Heloise & the Savoir Faire, does: Use Google Maps. You won't rock any less because of it.

 

Shut-Eye

Occasionally while touring, you'll need to sleep. The first, and most DIY option, is to remove the rearmost seats from your van, and build a loft above your gear. This construct blocks would-be thieves from peeking in on your stuff, too. Don't have a van? Or perhaps you tour with a choir? There's always Facebook. Most bands interviewed for this how-to cite Facebook as the only tool needed for finding “friends” with couches and/or floor space. You could also try begging locals at your shows to let you crash, but this option boosts the risk factor. Hotels are sometimes necessary, but make sure you've tried to get the local promoter or your label (ha!) to pay for it first. A moderately priced hotel room can eat up in one night all of what you make on tour. Check Hostels.com and Hostelworld for cheaper alternatives before making a reservation. And of course, don't forget the merits of camping!

 

Waste Away

As anyone who's been out a bit already knows, a lot of time needs to be wasted on the road. Boring towns, long waits between sound checks and shows, drives that last forever: One needs simple entertainment. Lowell Thompson, the impressively mustachioed Crown Pilot front man, prefers the simplest entertainment of all: “looking out the window.” Though still waters may run deep for Mr. Thompson, the Heloise crew plays Angry Birds. Guitarist Belizia says he's currently ranked 30,653 out of 25,017,704 Angry Birds players, though he's seen the likes of slot 7,104. “I've been slacking, I guess,” he says. The band also cites Instagram as an entertaining way of keeping in touch. Kopycinski chases down public radio stations, while the Speed guys have been known to mash together balls of fireworks and ignite them before discharging the flaming tableau from their moving van — not a Smokey Bear-recommended source of summer fun.

 

Fed to Shred

Staying healthy on the road is essential. As your living conditions will be already prime for inducing illness, eating ammonia-washed beef and sweaty pizza from your nearest amenity may put you out for a gig or two. Drink water, snack on yogurt and nuts, and of course, hunt down fresh, local, and inexpensive food with fervor. Heloise Williams, leader of the Savoir Faire, uses LocalHarvest to find farmers markets, co-ops, family farmers, or any available options for sustainable, organic food. Not only is LocalHarvest a great way to support your immune system, but also you'll meet foodies and support farms in parts of the country set off from the well-worn road.

Source : wired.com
 

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Dailymotion is in Pact with Yahoo for Video Syndication

Dailymotion, the largest streaming video site behind YouTube, has forged a syndication deal with web portal/media company Yahoo, Dailymotion International Content VP Daniel Adams said today at the Beet.tv Global Video Summit.

We’re unsure when this deal went into effect, but I’m guessing it’s new since we’ve not seen an official press release about the partnership. Yahoo often makes deals like these to boost revenue or increase traffic to its web portal, such as its recent agreement with Spotify. However, with the Dailymotion deal, Yahoo will actually share a portion of the advertising revenue brought in by the increased video viewing.

And Adams said the main purpose of the deal is to basically do just that: boost video sharing and viewing in addition to what’s already happening organically on the company’s main website. Dailymotion has a library of 25 million videos and brings in 120 million unique users per month. That’s an impressive feat, but putting that content in front of Yahoo’s 700 million global users will certainly increase viewing.

Adams also said Dailymotion is working on making its service available on devices beyond the desktop/PC, such as more smart TV platforms and set-top boxes. Dailymotion video viewing on mobile is also on the rise, according to Adams, with 15 percent of all monthly views coming from mobile devices.

As for Yahoo’s involvement, I think its definitely a good thing. The company desperately wants to jump start its own original content division but will face plenty of competition for attention. Google has committed millions to produce and promote premium original content on YouTube. And while Yahoo might produce its own stellar content — such as its exclusive deal to run Tom Hank’s Electric City –  the real challenge will be in getting people to think of Yahoo as a place to watch videos. The Dailymotion partnership could help fix that, while also making the company some money.

We’re reaching out to both Yahoo and Dailymotion for additional details about the syndication deal and will update the post with any new information.

Source : venturebeat.com
               beet.tv

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Top 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Slow Technology

As fast as your technology may have been on day one, it's probably not quite so speedy now. That doesn't mean you can't restore it to its former glory. Whether its your desktop, laptop, or mobile device, here are 10 great ways to speed up your slow technology.

10. Clean Up Your Drive

Wether your drive is in a computer or a mobile device, if it gets filled up you're probably going to lose some speed in the process. Although you may have a number of important files on that drive, there's still a bunch of stuff you can get rid of. On a desktop computer, the easiest way to find what's taking up a bunch of space is to use a disk space analyzer. Then you can use that information to figure out what to delete. Most Android users can migrate data to a microSD card and call it a day, but if you're rooted you can use an app like SD Maid to clean things up automatically. If you're running iOS, you don't get an automatic method for cleanup but you can view what's taking up all that space. Head on over to the Settings app, tap General, and then tap Usage. You'll get a rundown of which apps are using how much space so you can delete them, or at least delete some of the data they're saving on your device.

9. Install a Custom ROM on Your Android

When Android 4.1 Jellybean is released (and actually on real devices), the OS' sluggishness might be a thing of the past. For those of us still running 4.0 or earlier and are bothered by speed issues, choosing a speed-optimized ROM can help remedy the issue. Speed is probably not the first priority of the ROM that comes with your device, so do a little research to see what's available and if you can flash something better.

8. Speed Up Dropbox's File Syncing Speeds

You can only upload as fast as your connection allows, but Dropbox—by default—limits your upload speeds no matter what. Instead of maximizing your connection, it automatically choices whatever speed it believes is optimal. You don't have to let Dropbox choose for you. You can limit it to any speed yourself, or remove that limit entirely:

On Windows, Click Dropbox in the system tray, then Preferences > Bandwidth; on Mac, click Dropbox in the menu bar, then Preferences > Network > Bandwidth > Change Settings. Once there, change your Upload rate to "Don't limit", or if you're familiar with your network's upload bandwidth and want to exercise a little more control, pick an upload limit that you're comfortable with in the Limit to field.

That's all there is to it.

7. Uninstall Unnecessary Apps

There's nothing wrong with a few apps on your computer, but when you're running a ton of them it can slow things down. If you need them you need them, but there are probably a few you don't. At the very least the apps are using your disk space, if not taking up additional resources, so it's good to audit your collection and uninstall what you don't need. Unsurprisingly, uninstallers can make this process a little easier for you. They give you a list of your apps and let you remove them with a few clicks. You still have to audit the list yourself, but it's a process that's much more simple than manual removal. On mobile devices this isn't so much of an issue as both iOS and Android make it pretty simple to get rid of an app you don't want. Sometimes you end up with a lot of apps and aren't sure what you can get rid of. If you've got an app addiction problem, just follow this guide to help you figure out what should stay and what should go so you can keep your mobile a little tidier.

6. Perform System Maintenance and Optimization

Modern operating systems perform maintenance tasks on their own, but these automated routines aren't perfect. It's a good idea to perform these tasks yourself on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. On Windows, CCleaner will get the job done. It works on OS X as well, but we prefer Onyx.

5. Speed Up Browsing Times by Optimizing Your DNS Settings

The amount of time you spend waiting for a site to load can be a bit faster if you're using the best DNS servers. The problem is, which servers you ought to be using will depend on your location. Namebench is a free utility for Windows, OS X, and Linux that'll run tests to figure that out for you so you can optimize your DNS settings. The test can take a little while to complete, so run it, take a break, and come back to better DNS server suggestions. If you want to learn more about how DNS can speed up your browsing times, check out our guide.

 

4. Install a Lightweight Operating System

Sometimes your computer is just old and any speed gains you can tweak out of it are not going to be worth your time. Instead, it's better to just say goodbye to the machine as you know it and give it a lightweight operating system it can run with ease. Which OS should you pick? You've suggested several options, as well as some good ones for netbooks (which may do just as well for old machines), but generally that means some flavor of Linux. While that'll work for a lot of Lifehacker readers, it won't for everyone. If you'd rather stick with Windows, trim it down to the bare essentials. It may not be as fast as some of those tiny Linux distributions, but it'll be a lot faster than a feature-rich copy of Windows.

3. Boost Your Boot Time

You're probably not rebooting your computer with too much regularity, but that can make it all the more frustrating when you have to wait to see your desktop again. While booting up is always going to take a little while, you can speed it up. Windows users have a great tool called Soluto that helps you fix a number of issues that cause slow performance, including problems that affect boot times. If you want to learn how to use it, check out our guide. OS X users don't have such a nice solution, but OS X is pretty quick when it comes to the actual boot screen. More slowness occurs after you see the desktop and all the little things you have installed start to open. If you want to remedy that situation, just head into the System Preferences app, the Users and Groups preference pane, and click on your user. In the Login Items tab you'll have a list of all the stuff that you've set to run when you log in. If there's anything in there that you don't really want, just remove it from the list and your startup time will improve. Users of OS X Lion (or later) may also benefit from disabling the Resume feature, which restores your computer to its previous state as soon as you boot up. You can do this in the General preference pane in System Preferences by unchecking the box next to "Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps."

2. Overclock Your Processor

If you literally want to speed up your computer, that's what overclocking can do for you. Some processor overclocking provides greater speed gains than others, so you'll want to do a little research before you jump right in. The process takes quite a bit of time, commitment, and care, so you don't want to bother if you're in for negligible speed gains. That said, we've got guides for Intel processors and even low-powered PCs and netbooks. You can even overclock your video card, too.

1. Get an SSD

By now, it shouldn't come as a surprise that we think the SSD is the best upgrade you can get for your computer and now is a great time to buy one. When home for the holiday, I stopped in at Microcenter and found 120GB OCZ Vertex and Agility SSDs for under $100. I've seen online deals for even less from time to time. SSDs have never been more affordable and they can make a sluggish computer feel brand new. If you've been sitting on the fence about making the upgrade, now's a great time to make the change. Just know that you'll never go back.

Source: lifehacker.com

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IT Unemployment Rate Half the National Average

The unemployment rate among information technology (IT) professionals remains at about half of the national average at 4.4% in the first quarter of 2012 — and that’s no surprise given the strong demand. Hiring managers are even facing stiff competition in securing some key types of IT skills.

According to this month’s issue of the Dice Report, the most difficult employees to find, hire and retain among the current pool of IT pros are Java developers, mobile developers, .NET developers and software developers. In fact, hiring managers cited those positions about double or triple the frequency of other skill sets in the employment marketplace, Dice found.

Rounding out the top 10 list of most difficult skill sets to find were security, SAP, SharePoint, web developer, active federal security clearance and network engineers.

Technology hiring managers also are not looking for new, young IT graduates straight from college, either. According to the survey, hiring managers are most looking for IT pros with two to five years in the workforce, followed by those with six to 10 years of experience.

Most organizations are no longer training their IT professionals, with most saying they leave the responsibility for training to the individual employee. “Hiring managers say they expect tech professionals to stay with their firm about three years,” Dice notes. “That makes it tough to cross-train, retrain or train at all.”

Source : mashable.com

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Goal-line technology finally approved by International Football Association Board

The International Football Association Board has unanimously voted to approve goal-line technology, in a move that could put an end to crucial split-second decisions going the wrong way. The technology has been debated for years, but a series of controversies — including Marko Devic's disallowed effort for Ukraine against England during last month's Euro 2012 tournament — resulted in FIFA president Sepp Blatter finally deciding that it is "a necessity."

 

There are two systems that meet FIFA's standard: Hawk-Eye, which triangulates the ball's location with six cameras, and GoalRef, which places a microchip inside the ball and triggers a change in a magnetic field around the goal. Both systems transmit a goal confirmation to the referee in less than a second. According to the BBC, the FA Premier League will seek to implement the technology "as soon as practically possible," but UEFA president Michel Platini remains opposed. As such, it may be a while before we see it used in Europe-wide tournaments such as the Champions League.

Source : theverge.com

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Duke researcher achieves high-accuracy indoor navigation with 'learning' app

Despite huge advances in technology like GPS, finding your way through crowded shopping malls and train stations isn’t really any easier than it was five years ago. Companies like Google and Broadcom are working on the problem, but there still isn’t a universal solution that provides the kind of accuracy needed for indoor localization to really be useful. Well, Duke University researcher Romit Roy Choudhury is working on an application called UnLoc (for "unsupervized localization") that uses recursion, filtering, and "invisible landmarks" to work out your indoor location down to 1.6 meters (about 63 inches) — and the accuracy is improving.

Invisible landmarks are things like 3G and Wi-Fi dead zones, and motion signatures from elevators or stairwells, and UnLoc uses them much in much the same way humans do — as points of reference. Your current position is estimated using a filtering algorithm that figures out where you "should" be based on readings from your phone’s sensors, and then updates its estimate as you run into new landmarks. As He Wang, the project’s lead Ph.D. student points out, "the best part of the application is that it is recursive, which means that it starts with zero knowledge but ‘learns’ over time."

 Source : theverge.com

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Rock Paper Robot: You Lose, Every Time (Video)

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a robot that cheats at rock-paper-scissors by detecting the gesture you’re about to throw. It’s the automated equivalent of your jerk friend hesitating a moment before committing to their move — except that it happens at superhuman speed.

R-P-S is a great casual decision-maker. But the game only works if you and your opponent reveal your choices at the same time. Here, the robot perceives and acts faster than the human eye; it’s onto you as soon as your hand begins to form a shape. By the time you’ve landed your move, it’s already countered with the winning one.

It’s a neat AI tech demo, but it also holds an important parable for how to think about intelligence. Rock-paper-scissors is a trivial game, and yet we’ve only decided to focus our energy on it a decade after cracking chess.

Chess used to be the brass ring of AI research, but projects like the R-P-S robot point to a different kind of intelligence — a physical kind. We’re used to thinking about intelligence in terms of brains versus brawn, but as it turns out, making machines that can exercise their muscles takes a lot of smarts, too.

As more digital things cross over into the physical world, it’s that physical intelligence — the ability to move and perceive in space — that’s going to really make the difference.

Source : wired.com

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Top 5 Things The Cloud Is Not

It’s clear that the technology industry is moving from the PC era to the cloud era in several significant ways.  While cloud represents a new way for IT to deliver — and end users to consume — IT applications and services, this transition also represents a significant change in how applications, services and systems are defined.  The move to cloud computing is the most important technology disruption since the transition from mainframe to client-server, or even since Al Gore invented the internet. While industry veterans like Oracle’s commander in chief declared it a fad, this is a decade-long trend that is here to stay, and one that will define the next generation of IT.

The movement itself has been in play for the last decade, however there continues to be a lot of (mis)information in the marketplace about the cloud. So much so that it is difficult for organizations to figure out what is real and what is not to help them develop a successful cloud strategy, or simply learn about technologies  that have been specifically designed and purpose-built to meet  this dramatic shift in technology. While it’s important to know what the cloud is, it’s just as important to separate the wheat from the chaff, and for IT to understand what cloud is not.

To this end, I encourage you not to add yet another definition of the cloud to your glossary, but to truly understand the top 5 things the cloud is not.


1. Cloud is not a place. People often talk about moving to the cloud as if they were moving to another city. But the cloud is not a place. In fact, the cloud can be anywhere, in your data center or someone else’s. Organizations that believe they are moving to a strategy that leaves legacy apps and systems behind are in for a rude awakening. The single most important way for enterprise organizations to prepare themselves for the cloud is to understand that the cloud is a radically new way of delivering, consuming and adopting IT services in a far more agile, efficient, and cost-effective manner, which will spread throughout the ether and be a mix of public, private, managed or hybrid clouds. By looking holistically at the cloud, organizations can optimize its benefits for their budgets, privacy needs, geographies and overall business needs.

2. Cloud is not server virtualization. Despite what many believe, and what many will tell you, the cloud is not the same as next-gen server virtualization. It doesn’t surprise me that many believe that by virtualizing their data center they will create a private cloud. Some vendors are intentionally trying to blur that line, aiming to convince customers that their vCenter clusters somehow deliver a private cloud. On the contrary, that is a gross exaggeration of the term cloud.
If you take a look at the way Amazon has built its cloud architecture, it becomes very clear that there are some fairly stark differences between a server virtualization environment and a true cloud architecture.  While Amazon starts with Xen virtualization technology, the brains of its architecture comes with a new layer of software that Amazon built in an effort to create a new control plane, a new cloud orchestration layer that can manage all the infrastructure resources (compute, storage, networking) across all of their data centers. This is at the heart of the cloud’s technology disruption.  Some analysts refer to this as the “hypervisor of hypervisors,” or a “new software category of cloud system software.”
The fact of the matter is that some of the major players are doing cloud without server virtualization. Take Google for example. They have deployed a cloud architecture that is not using server virtualization, but rather a bare metal infrastructure. So while virtualization can be an important ingredient of cloud, it is not always a requirement.

3. Cloud is not an island. Depending on what you’re reading, you’ll hear a lot about public clouds versus private clouds, and it may feel as if enterprises must make a wholesale decision on which way to go. But the cloud is not an island, it is not a place where you put all of your IT services, and then lose all interconnectivity and access. The recent Amazon outages have proven this to be an important point for any organization leveraging the cloud. The right cloud strategy will be one that enables you to have a hybrid approach with the ability to easily connect private and public clouds. Even the recent move by NASA to include Amazon Web Services as part of its cloud rollout after a significant investment in the build-out of its own technology proves that the market is moving to open, interoperable multi-cloud environments.

4.  Cloud is not top-down. The cloud has up-ended the traditional IT approach to delivering services. The lines of business have been leading the charge in making the decision to move to cloud computing. With specific needs to get to market quickly, functional business leaders are consuming cloud services to avoid traditional IT processes. But we don’t need surveys to clarify this movement.  The reality is that with the simple swipe of a credit card and the creation of an account, end users can gain instant access to infinite pools of IT resource to help test out a new idea, get their job done or even become more agile in their daily work.  This is part of why this revolution is so powerful.  The Consumerization of IT is driving this new movement. Users are already there and the C-level offices are just now trying to catch up with them.  Those that embrace this move sooner rather than later will learn how to use the cloud as a strategic weapon before their competitors do.  So the cloud is not top down, but rather a bottoms-up phenomenon.

5.  Cloud is not hype.  As I started this piece, I wrote about the (mis)information that has flooded the market and slowed progression and adoption of the cloud for some organizations. I’ve spoken with people in many organizations who are still skeptical of the cloud and believe that it is something that is very far off into the future. No doubt there is a lot of noise in the market with many claiming early victory in the hearts and minds of developers, with open source momentum, or beta products. The reality is that the cloud is ready now, and Citrix has more than 100 organizations that are running clouds in production today. Companies like AutoDesk, Edmunds.com, Nokia, Chatham Financial and others, already reaping the benefits.
My words of advice to companies considering a move to the cloud – learn from others who have already built highly scalable, successful clouds that have helped them transform the way they deliver and consume IT resources.

This is just the beginning of the discussion. There are many more topics that we will continue to talk about in the coming weeks, months, years (such as, cloud is not only an infrastructure and cloud is not just for service providers). All with the goal of helping organizations and the market understand what the cloud is and what it is not.

Source : wired.com

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