.

Operating System Technology :: Why Desktop Apps Would Be Bad News for Windows 8 Tablets

2012-02-26T01:00:00.000-08:00

Windows 8 represents a huge departure for Microsoft.

First, the platform is slated to run on both x86 processors for PCs,and on ARM chips for tablets. Second, it’s a single OS platform withtwo distinctly different user interfaces. You’ll be able to divide yourtime between the touch-optimized Metro, which borrows its look, feeland navigation from the Windows Phone OS, and a traditional Windows7-like desktop experience.
On desktop PCs, this dual-interface approach shouldn’t be a problem.Metro doesn’t demand many resources. It should run on PCs just fine.

But there’s still a nagging question: How will legacy desktopapplications run on ARM-based tablets, if they run on ARM at all?Desktop apps can be resource hogs, and ARM-based tablets may not havethe horsepower to run these programs quickly and elegantly. Not onlycould application performance suffer, but desktop apps could also suckbattery capacities dry.

Well, a bit of clarity is maybe, possibly emerging. A Thursdayreport says Microsoft might allow a limited number of Windows 8 desktopapps to run on ARM-based tablets.
Microsoft is considering “a restricted desktopfor Windows 8 ARM,” sources at The Verge say. Applications would haveto earn special certification, and would likely be limited to InternetExplorer and Microsoft Office. This jibes with reports that Microsofthas been working on a lighter-weight version of Office for tablets.

We asked Microsoft to clarify, and received a “no comment.” However,past statements from Windows lead Steven Sinofsky suggest ARM tabletswon’t support the desktop component of Windows 8.
“We’ve been very clear since the very first CES demos and forwardthat the ARM product won’t run any X86 applications,” Sinofsky said toinvestors at a financial analyst meeting in September. “We’ve done abunch of work to enable a great experience there.”

So how do developers feel? Alexandre Brisebois, a senior .Netdeveloper at RunAtServer, thinks it would be best for Microsoft tooffer the same Metro and desktop interfaces everywhere, on both x86 andARM devices. Conversely, Darren Baker, the business developmentdirector at Sogeti Global (a company that makes custom Windows productsfor businesses), says offering a desktop interface of any kind could beproblematic for new tablet users.

“People would buy an ARM tablet, and think they have this copy of MSoffice that’s going to run there, but it won’t,” Baker says.

Nonetheless, the Windows 8 dual user interface scheme does offer Microsoft and hardware companies a chance to rethink the tablet space as it exists today. This could lead to a tablet that’s both interesting and well-integrated with other Windows products.

“You’re actually going to see tablets that are focused on a specifickinds of tasks: video acceleration for media, or you have legacy appcompatibility for desktop users,” Baker says. “It’s not really aboutthe tablet itself. It’s about what you can enable with the tablet.”
Baker used a theoretical United Airlines app as an example scenario for different use cases:

“If they develop an app for end users, it’s going to be‘I need to use this to get information quickly, then move on with mylife.’ They will develop an app for the Metro UI. It’ll launch, get youflight details, and then you can go on to what you want to do next. Ifan app’s geared toward someone who’s sitting at a desk, they may notneed the Metro UI at all, just the desktop interface. Then they couldjust have a Metro tile that gives you Metro information as needed.”

With the beta of Windows 8 coming out later this month, Microsoft’stablet plans should soon be revealed. But for now, only one things’sfor sure: Regardless of whether the desktop U.I. will appear on ARMtablets, Windows 8 tablets will offer a dramatically differentalternative to Apple and Android tablets.

Software :: Microsoft Office for iPad: Why You’ll Need It, How You’ll Use It

2012-02-25T17:43:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Office has been a desktop computer staple for decades, andnow it looks like it might finally migrate to modern touchscreentablets. But does Microsoft’s mouse- and keyboard-dependentproductivity software even belong on a tablet? And if it does make the transition to touch, how will we actually use it?

Yesterday, a report by staff of The Dailyclaimed that Microsoft Office for iPad apps are definitely in theworks, and could be released “in the coming weeks.” The story includedphotos and descriptions of a purported hands-on demo. Microsoftrepresentatives were quick to shoot back both on Twitter and in an official statement stating The Daily had its facts wrong and that its reporters had not, in fact, seen an actual Microsoft product on the tablet.

Nonetheless, The Daily‘s Peter Ha later insistedthat a working version of the app was demoed to the digital publicationby a Microsoft employee. It’s a he-said-she-said situation, but atleast one key industry watcher feels Office for iPad makes sense.

“I can say that based on the products Microsoft currently has in themarket, launching additional Office apps for Apple devices would be alogical extension of their existing strategy,” Forrester analyst SarahRotman Epps told Wired in an e-mail. Microsoft already has Mac and iOSproducts like Office for Mac, a note-taking app called OneNote, SkyDrive for cloud storage, and Lync, points out Rotman Epps.

Rumors that Microsoft would be bringing Office to the iPad have been circulating for a while, particularly since The Daily reported in late November that the suite would arrive in early 2012 at a $10 price point.
If what The Daily reported Tuesday is true, it’s possiblethat Microsoft Office for iPad could land concurrent to — or evenonstage with — Apple’s first public iPad 3 demo, which is expected tobe held the first week of March.It would certainly make for an interesting presentation, as Appledoesn’t actively evangelize its Microsoft synergy. Microsoft will bedemoing its Windows 8 OS consumer preview on Feb. 29 so the timing ofan early March Office for iPad unveiling would seem to work:Microsoft’s big platform-wide announcement wouldn’t be upstaged by itssmaller Apple announcement.
So let’s assume Office is coming to the iPad. How precisely will you use it?

“You’ll use it for content curation. And it’s very unlikely you’llbe using the iPad in native tablet touch mode,” Sachin Dev Duggal, CEOof Nivio, told Wired. Niviois a cloud platform that lets you access your desktop and its files —including Windows and Microsoft Office — with a touch-controlled mousepointer as input. “In most cases, you’ll have it docked into a screenor a keyboard,” Dev Duggal said of the rumored Office app.

However, a second use case — passively browsing through documents —definitely lends itself to the iPad’s simple touch-controlled datainput. And don’t underestimate the value of full document support. Byloading native Office docs directly into Office, you ensure filesrender with proper formatting, a talent not always manifest incompetitors like Documents to Go Premium. In this case, “The pure gesture-based control works great,” Dev Duggal said. “It translates to a tablet experience.”

OK, so Dev Duggal paints an interesting picture of how the app willbe used, but, again, is there a desperate need for Office on the iPad?Many of us have been getting by just fine without it. Well, accordingto Resolve Market Research,18 percent of those who decided not to purchase an iPad 2 did sostrictly because it didn’t come with Microsoft Office programs. That’snot a number to balk at.
Dev Duggal thinks students and small businesses will be interestedin Office for iPad. And there’s also another prime user group: peoplewho don’t want to spend money on multiple devices. “If they cancross-utilize devices to also do productivity, thats a huge costsavings,” Dev Duggal said.

Elaine Coleman of Resolve Market Research concurs with Dev Duggal.“Tablets are a critical dual-purpose device,” Coleman told Wired,adding that close to 70 percent of personal tablet users also use theirdevices for business.

Indeed, the iPad has a growing role in the world of enterprisecomputing, with a large percent of Fortune 500 companies adopting thetablet (this was a touch point in Apple CEO Tim Cook’s recentfirst-quarter earnings call). So, no doubt, the addition of MicrosoftOffice to the enterprise mix would be welcome.

But Microsoft has waited a long time to deliver this product — perhaps too long.
“Every day that Microsoft does not have Office apps for iPad, theylose potential sales to competitors,” Rotman Epps said. Suchcompetitors include: Apple’s own iWork office suite; Quickoffice, aniPhone alternative for viewing, sharing and editing Microsoft Officedocuments; and SlideShark, an iPad-based PowerPoint platform.

Rotman Epps pointed out that these and a host of other productivityapps are all top performers in Apple’s App Store. Indeed, Apple’sPages, Keynote and Numbers (in other words, the iWork suite) make upthree of the top five spots in the Top Charts for paid Productivityapps in the App Store. And with OS X Mountain Lion’s heavy iCloud integration, using Apple’s iWork suite will make even more sense for users who own multiple Apple products.

Whether people who already use Office alternatives would switch toMicrosoft-brand products is “hard to say for sure,” says Coleman. “Ithink in the enterprise many still believe ‘Office is King’ and willcome back.”

Regardless, if Microsoft Office for iPad did make its debut onstagefor the iPad 3 in a few weeks, it would be the first time the two techgiants teamed up at an Apple event in 15 years. Considering what happened last time, it would be a landmark occasion. For both companies.

Software Technology :: CloudOn Brings Microsoft Office to iPad

2012-02-25T06:00:00.000-08:00

Probably the biggest thing stopping many users from switching to theiPad full time is the lack of Microsoft Office on the tablet. It mightbe a bloated, slow, convoluted mess that makes you want to toss yourcomputer out the window whenever you use it, but Office–andparticularly Word– are pretty much mandatory for many jobs.

Enter CloudOn, a combination of app and web service, which lets youcreate and edit Office documents using your iPad. It works by runningOffice-compatible software on the CloudOn servers, meaning you need tobe online to use it. But as the server-session uses a native app as afront-end, you open mail attachments, say, with the usual “Open with”service.

CloudOn also pulls your documents in from Dropbox for editing, andsends them back when done. The free app has currently been pulled fromthe App Store due to overwhelming demand, but from screenshots you cansee that the interface isn’t really very touch-friendly, and comes offmore like a regular desktop app squeezed onto a small screen.

Still, if you really need to do some tracking of changes on the go,you might want to sign up to be notified when the app goes back in thestore. I really think that the developers missed a trick by making thisapp free, especially as it uses some presumably expensive server-power.I’d pay $10 for it just to have it when I need it, and I hate MS Wordwith a passion.

Gadge Technology :: Could Microsoft Office Go Multi-Platform For Mobile?

2012-02-25T04:00:00.000-08:00

Traditionally, Microsoft has been a software company, leveraging itsoffice suites and operating systems, but selling applications for anycompatible hardware and platform. For smartphones in particular, itsstrategy has been to supply the software and let other companies worryabout developing the phones. So why not go all the way and sell itssoftware for every device on every platform?

That’s what Business Insider’s Dan Frommer proposes the company do:“Microsoft should develop Office apps for the iPad, Android, Chrome OS,BlackBerry tablet, and any other computing platform that is likely tobecome popular over the next 5-10 years,” adding that “if Microsoftwants to keep people tied into its Office suite, it needs to go wherethe people are going.”

Office is integrated into the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 OS, butwould compete on several fronts in smartphone and tablet platforms,including iWork on Apple’s iPad, Google Docs on the mobile web, andDataviz’s multi-platform Documents To Go, just acquired by Blackberry maker RIM.

Frommer sees RIM’s purchase of Documents To Go as a defense against the possibilityof Microsoft introducing an Office app for Blackberry. Ironically, ifRIM stops active development of Documents To Go for other platforms,that could create just the multi-platform opening needed to enticeMicrosoft to swoop in.

Technology :: 'Fountain of youth' enzyme lengthens mouse life

2012-02-24T17:42:00.000-08:00

FINALLY, a contender for the elusive fountain of youth: an enzyme found in humans appears to lengthen the life of mice.

Researchers hoping to slow the march of age were dealt a blow in 2010, when signs that an enzyme called sirtuin 2 extended the life of worms were shown to be false due to flawed experimental design.

Mammalshave seven types of sirtuin, so Haim Cohen and Yariv Kanfi at Bar-IlanUniversity in Ramat Gan, Israel, turned to sirtuin 6 instead. Theycompared mice genetically engineered to have increased levels of SIRT6with normal mice, engineering the mice in two different ways to controlfor genetic influences.

Malemice from both strains lived 15 per cent longer than normal mice orfemales. Older modified male mice metabolised sugar faster than normalmice and females, suggesting that SIRT6 might extend life by protectingagainst metabolic disorders such as diabetes.

WhySIRT6 didn't affect females is a puzzle, but may be related todifferences in genes that regulate ageing in males and females.

Technology :: Now You Can Edit Collaboratively with Google Docs for Android

2012-02-24T03:30:00.000-08:00

Just a few short weeks after giving users of Google Docs for Android offline access to their documents, Google on Wednesday announced another highly sought-after addition to the software.

Specifically, users of the word processing app can now collaboratewith others on their documents, with updates appearing in real time asparticipants type on their computers, tablets, and phones. Users needonly tap the document to join the collaboration.

“We want to give everyone the chance to be productive no matter where they are, so today we’re releasing a new update to the Google Docs app for Android,” wrote Google software engineer Vadim Gerasimov in a Wednesday blog post announcing the news. “We've brought the collaborative experience from Google Docs on the desktop to your Android device.”

Easier Editing on the Go
Alongwith the new collaboration capabilities in Google Docs for Android,Google has also updated the software's interface to make it easier towork with documents on the go.
Users can now pinch to zoom and focus on a specific paragraph, for example, or see the whole document at a glance.

“Wealso added rich text formatting so you can do things like create aquick bullet list, add color to your documents, or just bold somethingimportant,” Gerasimov explained.
The video below demonstrates the new Google Docs app in action.

Presentation Discussions
Also on Wednesday, Google followed up on an update to the Google Docs presentations Web application that it previewed last fall.
Not only is that enhanced preview now enabled for all new presentations, but Google has also brought the discussions feature already familiar to documents users over to the presentations side as well.
Withdiscussions in presentations, users can now comment on a shape or anentire slide, for example, or send an email notification by addingsomeone to a comment, software engineer Michael Thomas explained in a blog post announcing the news.

Converting Existing Presentations
Usersof the new feature can also resolve comments to let collaborators knowthat they’ve been addressed, and they can give others the ability tocomment on a presentation without being able to edit it. The videobelow demonstrates the new discussions feature in action.

To convert existing presentations to the new version of the editor,users should create a new presentation and import their slides byselecting “Import slides” from the “File” menu, Thomas said. Furtherdetails are provided on the Google Docs support site.
Google is also hosting a Google+ Hangout at 2:30 pm EST on Thursday to discuss the new presentation updates.

Technology :: Nehalem and Swift Chips Spell the End of Stand-Alone Graphics Boards

2012-02-24T01:00:00.000-08:00

When AMD purchased graphics card maker ATI, most industry observersassumed that the combined company would start working on a CPU-GPUfusion. That work is further along than you may think.

What is it?
While GPUs get tons of attention, discrete graphics boards are acomparative rarity among PC owners, as 75 percent of laptop users stickwith good old integrated graphics, according to Mercury Research. Amongthe reasons: the extra cost of a discrete graphics card, the hassle ofinstalling one, and its drain on the battery. Putting graphicsfunctions right on the CPU eliminates all three issues.
Chipmakers expect the performance of such on-die GPUs to fall somewherebetween that of today's integrated graphics and stand-alone graphicsboards--but eventually, experts believe, their performance could catchup and make discrete graphics obsolete. One potential idea is todevote, say, 4 cores in a 16-core CPU to graphics processing, whichcould make for blistering gaming experiences.

When is it coming?
Intel's soon-to-come Nehalem chip includes graphics processing within the chip package, but off of the actual CPU die. AMD's Swift(aka the Shrike platform), the first product in its Fusion line,reportedly takes the same design approach, and is also currently on tapfor 2009.
Putting the GPU directly on the same die as theCPU presents challenges--heat being a major one--but that doesn't meanthose issues won't be worked out. Intel's two Nehalem follow-ups,Auburndale and Havendale, both slated for late 2009, may be the firstchips to put a GPU and a CPU on one die, but the company isn't sayingyet.

USB 3.0 Speeds Up Performance on External Devices
TheUSB connector has been one of the greatest success stories in thehistory of computing, with more than 2 billion USB-connected devicessold to date. But in an age of terabyte hard drives, the once-coolthroughput of 480 megabits per second that a USB 2.0 device canrealistically provide just doesn't cut it any longer.

What is it?
USB 3.0 (aka "SuperSpeed USB")promises to increase performance by a factor of 10, pushing thetheoretical maximum throughput of the connector all the way up to 4.8gigabits per second, or processing roughly the equivalent of an entireCD-R disc every second. USB 3.0 devices will use a slightly differentconnector, but USB 3.0 ports are expected to be backward-compatiblewith current USB plugs, and vice versa. USB 3.0 should also greatlyenhance the power efficiency of USB devices, while increasing the juice(nearly one full amp, up from 0.1 amps) available to them. That meansfaster charging times for your iPod--and probably even more bizarreUSB-connected gear like the toy rocket launchers and beverage coolersthat have been festooning people's desks.

When is it coming?
The USB 3.0 spec is nearly finished, with consumer gear now predictedto come in 2010. Meanwhile, a host of competing high-speedplugs--DisplayPort, eSATA, and HDMI--will soon become commonplace onPCs, driven largely by the onset of high-def video. Even FireWire islooking at an imminent upgrade of up to 3.2 gbps performance. The portproliferation may make for a baffling landscape on the back of a newPC, but you will at least have plenty of high-performance options forhooking up peripherals.

Wireless Power Transmission
Wirelesspower transmission has been a dream since the days when Nikola Teslaimagined a world studded with enormous Tesla coils. But aside fromadvances in recharging electric toothbrushes, wireless power has so farfailed to make significant inroads into consumer-level gear.

What is it?
Thissummer, Intel researchers demonstrated a method--based on MITresearch--for throwing electricity a distance of a few feet, withoutwires and without any dangers to bystanders (well, none that they knowabout yet). Intel calls the technology a "wireless resonant energy link,"and it works by sending a specific, 10-MHz signal through a coil ofwire; a similar, nearby coil of wire resonates in tune with thefrequency, causing electrons to flow through that coil too. Though thedesign is primitive, it can light up a 60-watt bulb with 70 percentefficiency.

When is it coming?
Numerous obstacles remain, the first of which is that the Intel projectuses alternating current. To charge gadgets, we'd have to see adirect-current version, and the size of the apparatus would have to beconsiderably smaller. Numerous regulatory hurdles would likely have tobe cleared in commercializing such a system, and it would have to bethoroughly vetted for safety concerns.
Assuming those allgo reasonably well, such receiving circuitry could be integrated intothe back of your laptop screen in roughly the next six to eight years.It would then be a simple matter for your local airport or evenStarbucks to embed the companion power transmitters right into thewalls so you can get a quick charge without ever opening up your laptopbag.

Search Technology :: Why Google Digital Glasses Are a Prescription for Disaster

2012-02-23T17:37:00.000-08:00

We’ve seen accident after accident of people texting, gaming, or web surfing while walking. The U.S. government is now considering banning all automobile phone calls, including hands free.

Now, Google reportedly will have digital glasses on sale by the end of the year, according to the New York Times. Doesn't it seem like a bad time to develop digital displays in front of our eyes?

That’s right: Android-based lenses overlaying your world withinformation like maps and data. We all knew this augmented realityproduct was eventually coming, but it is now looking literally like adisaster (or more) waiting to happen.

How They Work

We’ll apparently pay between $250 and $600for glasses with one computerized lens, PCWorld’s Daniel Ionescu notedearlier Wednesday. The lens will be a contextual heads-up display thatcan tell you, for instance, how far you are from your destination. Theyaren't designed for continuous wear, however.

Like Android phones, these goggles will be licensed to third-partycompanies and will use a 3G or 4G connection to download data. And howwill you control the menus? By nodding and bobbing your head.
Watch out for that tree!

Early reports say that the glasses aren’t designed for everyday wear,but that’s akin to saying that smartphones aren’t meant to be carriedall day or home computers were only for certain tasks--before wecarried our smartphones all day and used home computers for most tasks.I doubt that Apple planned on people texting while walking, either.

Glasses are actually the final piece to Google’s mission: To knowwhat a user doing every single moment of the day. The search giantalready is unifying some 60-odd products into one log-in for continuous online tracking. And, as we reported last week, it’s enticing you to use Google to come up with those web passwords.

Yeah, the digital glasses will be pretty strange and, at worse,pretty dangerous. Here are the very likely problems with Google’sambitious product.
Google’s power, however, comes from knowing everything you doonline. By wearing Android-powered glasses, you’re giving Googleunprecedented access to:

Your location at all times
Your most common interactions
Your closest companions through facial recognition
Your eating, shopping, and traveling habits

Remember the fiasco with the Google van snooping on people’s Wi-Fi?You can imagine us having that same conversation about Google recordingour movements, our moments, and our life without permission.

Grand Theft Sunglasses

As some commenters have pointed out,glasses theft could definitely rise once these expensive specs comeout. If so, that might parallel the high number of iPod and iPhonethefts that occurred when those technologies first arrived.
Worse, imagine being the boy or girl at school with computerizedlenses. Aren’t four-eyed school kids getting harassed enough withoutwearing Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge eyewear?

Coupons 24 hours a day--Now in Your Eyes!

It’s all about location, location, location, and Google's goggleswill have a direct bead on you 24 hours a day. On one end are Groupon,Living Social, and other mass-coupon services, and on the other areFourSquare, Gowalla, and other check-in companies. Google jumped intothe middle of the fight last year with its Google Coupons app and, more recently, with Google Latitude check-ins.
Both Google Coupons and Google Latitude aren’t making much of a dentin the competition, but having tracking data on users 24/7 would be ahuge coup for both services. It would be automatic check-ins, pushedsuggestions, and coupons. Lots and lots of coupons.
It’s easy to picture a major food chain, like McDonald’s-ownedChipotle, paying for a top spot on your eyeglasses, kind of like an adon Google search.
The message could offer you a coupon every time a Chipotlerestaurant is within a mile radius (which, at least in my neighborhood,is often). The Times estimates that the glasses will be priced like high-end smartphones,so you can bet that cheaper, subsidized goggles will come along forthose willing to see tons of ads throughout each and every day.

See more like this:
google,
future technology

Technology :: Will the FTC Investigate Google's Safari Gaffe?

2012-02-23T03:30:00.000-08:00

Privacy advocates and now some members of Congress say Google should answer for its practice of bypassing the default privacy settings of potentially millions of users of Apple's Safari browser.

Three members of the U.S. House of Representatives are asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google's Safari workaround. The Electronic Privacy Information Center is going further, asking [PDF] the FTC to find that Google violated its recent settlementwith the federal agency regarding its Buzz privacy practices. Google,meanwhile, says it was merely using "known functionality" in Safari andany resulting privacy violations were just a mishap the company "didn'tanticipate."

Goofari

The Wall Street Journalrecently reported that Google was bypassing the default privacysettings in Apple's Safari for both desktop and mobile devices.Google's privacy violations potentially include users of iPhone, iPodTouch, iPad, and Mac OS X devices, as well as Safari for Windows users.Safari's defaults prohibit third parties such as advertising and webanalytics firms from setting tracking cookies without userauthorization. This presented a problem for Google, since the companywanted to identify when users were signed in to their Google accountsin order to deliver pernalized advertising and the ability to +1(similar to a Facebook like) items online.

To get around this issue, Google inserted an invisible web form intoits advertising if a user clicked on the company's +1 buttons embeddedin Google advertising. Safari would then think the user interacted withthe invisible form and allow the browser to accept further cookies.

This workaround also enabled Google to track users across the webeven though their privacy settings said they didn't want to be tracked.Google responded to the accusations by saying it was only providingfeatures that signed-in Google users had enabled using "knownfunctionality" in Safari's web browser. But, the company said, itdidn't anticipate that Safari's "known functionality" would have theside effect of allowing other tracking cookies to be set as well, suchas cookies from its advertising service, DoubleClick.
So should the FTC chalk this up to a big misunderstanding and amistake, or investigate Google's potential misbehavior? Regardless, ofGoogle's motives, I think the FTC should investigate and here's why.

Broke the Rules

"We used known Safari functionality to provide features thatsigned-in Google users had enabled," says Rachel Whetstone, Google'ssenior vice president of communications and public policy in responseto the Journal's report. "Unlike other major browsers, Apple’s Safaribrowser blocks third-party cookies by default. However, Safari enablesmany web features for its users that rely on third parties andthird-party cookies...Last year, we began using this functionality toenable features for signed-in Google users on Safari."
Whetstone argues that Google was only enabling "known functionality"in Safari to carry out the wishes of signed-in Google users. But wasthis the best plan? Instead of using this workaround couldn't Googlehave used a browser pop-up or a web page redirect to alert users theyneeded to change their cookie settings to enable this kind of activity?Instead, the company chose to use an invisible method beyond thecontrol of the user.

Popularity

Thanks to the popularity of Apple's Safari browser on iOS, theresult of Google's workaround is that the privacy of perhaps millionsof users was violated. Apple's Safari currently accounts for 55 percentof all smartphone and tablet browsing activity worldwide, according to metrics firm Netmarketshare.

Same old Song and Dance

Every time Google is found to be up to no good, the company usesvirtually the same excuse: "Oops, sorry, that was a mistake, we didn'tknow we were doing that." This time around it was Whetstone saying thatGoogle "didn't anticipate" its Safari workaround would allow it to settracking cookies the user hadn't explicitly authorized.

When privacy concerns were raised over Google's failed social networking platform, Buzz, in February 2010, the company responded,"We quickly realized that we didn't get everything quite right. We'revery sorry for the concern we've caused." Google then promised to dobetter.

A few months later, in May, Google was caught collecting user datafrom unencrypted Wi-Fi networks as it used its Street View cars tocreate a worldwide database of Wi-Fi routers to help improve thecompany's mobile location services. "We have been mistakenly collectingsamples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFinetworks, even though we never used that data in any Google products," Google said.

More recently, in January, Google was accused of trying to weaselmoney out of small business owners in Kenya, Africa by falsely claimingthat it was in a joint venture with Mocality,a Kenya-based crowd sourced business directory. And what was Google'sresponse this time? "We were mortified to learn that a team of peopleworking on a Google project improperly used Mocality’s data andmisrepresented our relationship with Mocality," said Nelson MattosGoogle's vice president for product and engineering in Europe andemerging markets. "We’re still investigating exactly how this happened,and as soon as we have all the facts, we’ll be taking the appropriateaction with the people involved." Oops, we didn't know -- again.

Four serious gaffes and each time Google said it didn't realize whatit was doing. That may in fact be true in each case, but does oversightexcuse the error? How many times can Google say, "Oops, we goofed, wedidn't know" before the company is held to account for itsself-inflicted stupidity? Accident or not, Google should beinvestigated for its bad behavior and held accountable for its actions.

Technology :: The Future of Mobile Phones

2012-02-23T00:30:00.000-08:00

Use Any Phone on Any Wireless Network
Thereason most cell phones are so cheap is that wireless carrierssubsidize them so you'll sign a long-term contract. Open access couldchange the economics of the mobile phone (and mobile data) businessdramatically as the walls preventing certain devices from working oncertain networks come down. We could also see a rapid proliferation ofcell phone models, with smaller companies becoming better able to makeheadway into formerly closed phone markets.

What is it?
Two years is an eternity in the cellular world. The original iPhone wasannounced, introduced, and discontinued in less than that time, yetcarriers routinely ask you to sign up for two-year contracts if youwant access to their discounted phones. (It could be worse--in othercountries, three years is normal.) Verizon launched the first volleylate last year when it promised that "any device, any application"would soon be allowed on its famously closed network. Meanwhile, AT&T and T-Mobile like to note that their GSM networks have long been "open."

When is it coming?
Open access is partially here: You can use almost any unlocked GSMhandset on AT&T or T-Mobile today, and Verizon Wireless begancertifying third-party devices for its network in July (though to datethe company has approved only two products). But the future isn't quiteso rosy, as Verizon is dragging its feet a bit on the legal requirementthat it keep its newly acquired 700-MHz network open to other devices,a mandate that the FCC agreed to after substantial lobbying by Google.Some experts have argued that the FCC provisions aren't whollyenforceable. However, we won't really know how "open" is defined untilthe new network begins rolling out, a debut slated for 2010.

Your Fingers Do Even More Walking
Last year Microsoft introduced Surface,a table with a built-in monitor and touch screen; many industrywatchers have seen it as a bellwether for touch-sensitive computingembedded into every device imaginable. Surface is a neat trick, but thereality of touch devices may be driven by something entirely differentand more accessible: the Apple iPhone.

What is it?
With the iPhone, "multitouch" technology (which lets you use more thanone finger to perform specific actions) reinvented what we knew aboutthe humble touchpad. Tracing a single finger on most touchpads lookspositively simian next to some of the tricks you can do with two ormore digits. Since the iPhone's launch, multitouch has found its wayinto numerous mainstream devices, including the Asus Eee PC 900 and aDell Latitude tablet PC. Now all eyes are turned back to Apple, to seehow it will further adapt multitouch (which it has already brought toits laptops' touchpads). Patents that Apple has filed for a multitouchtablet PC have many people expecting the company to dive into thisneglected market, finally bringing tablets into the mainstream andpossibly sparking explosive growth in the category.

When is it coming?
It's not a question of when Multitouch will arrive, but how quickly thetrend will grow. Fewer than 200,000 touch-screen devices were shippedin 2006. iSuppli analysts have estimated that a whopping 833 millionwill be sold in 2013. The real guessing game is figuring out when theold "single-touch" pads become obsolete, possibly taking physicalkeyboards along with them in many devices.

Cell Phones Are the New Paper

What is it?
The idea of the paperless officehas been with us since Bill Gates was in short pants, but no matter howsophisticated your OS or your use of digital files in lieu of printoutsmight be, they're of no help once you leave your desk. People needprintouts of maps, receipts, and instructions when a computer justisn't convenient. PDAs failed to fill that need, so coming to therescue are their replacements: cell phones.
Applications to eliminate the need for a printout in nearly any situation are flooding the market. Cellfire offers mobile coupons you can pull up on your phone and show to a clerk; Tickets.comnow makes digital concert passes available via cell phone through itsTickets@Phone service. The final frontier, though, remains the airlineboarding pass, which has resisted this next paperless step since theadvent of Web-based check-in.

When is it coming?
Some cell-phone apps that replace paper are here now (just look at the ones for the iPhone), and even paperless boarding passes are creeping forward. Continental has been experimenting with a cell-phone check-in systemthat lets you show an encrypted, 2D bar code on your phone to a TSAagent in lieu of a paper boarding pass. The agent scans the bar codewith an ordinary scanner, and you're on your way. Introduced at theHouston Intercontinental Airport, the pilot project became permanentearlier this year, and Continental rolled it out in three otherairports in 2008. The company promises more airports to come. (Quantas will be doing something similar early next year.)

Where You At? Ask Your Phone, Not Your Friend

What is it?
LBS was originally envisioned assimply using old-school cell-phone signal triangulation to locateusers' whereabouts, but as the chips become more common and moresophisticated, GPS is proving to be not only handy and accurate butalso the basis for new services. Many startups have formed aroundlocation-based services. Want a date? Never mind who's compatible;who's nearby? MeetMoi can find them. Need to get a dozen people all in one place? Both Whrrl and uLocate's Buddy Beacon tell you where your friends are in real time.

Ofcourse, not everyone is thrilled about LBS: Worries about surreptitioustracking or stalking are commonplace, as is the possibility of a floodof spam messages being delivered to your phone.

When is it coming?
LBS is growing fast. The only thing holding it back is the slow uptakeof GPS-enabled phones (and carriers' steep fees to activate thefunction). But with iPhones selling like Ben & Jerry's in July,that's not much of a hurdle to overcome. Expect to see massive adoptionof these technologies in 2009 and 2010.

Technology News :: What's Hot In.... Technology

2012-02-22T19:00:00.000-08:00

Theyear ahead “will be transformative in relation to how new technologieswill impact our lives,” says Luca Penati, managing director of theglobal technology practice at Ogilvy Public Relations. “We will see therise of the role of consumers in the enterprise, since we all want touse our smartphone or tablet at work as we use it at home, with appsthat make our job easier and more fun.”

Jim Hawker, a principalat UK consultancy Threepipe, best known for its work in the consumerspace, agrees. “Never before has technology been such a driver ofinnovation with consumer marketing,” he says. “The brands that arestanding out and generating great results are those that are technologyaware and incorporating new techniques to provide deeper engagementwith consumers.

“The rise of smartphones and other mobile deviceadoption means we are all carrying around serious bits of kit thatoffer marketers a wonderful platform on which to engage with us bothonline and in the real world. That is such a powerful opportunity thatis there for the taking and consumer and retail brands are moving fastto take advantage.”

Ubiquity and Convergence
Accordingto Scott Friedman, regional director of Text 100 North America, “2012is the year that technology moves from being an industry or a sector tobeing a core part of every business regardless of discipline. Twentyyears ago technology was considered niche; 10 years ago it wasconsidered one of the fastest growing industries. Today it’severything.”

Global spending on consumer technology devices in2012 is expected to top $1 trillion for the first time. “That’s not sosurprising in a world where there are now more connected devices thanpeople,” says Esty Pujadas, director of Ketchum’s global technologypractice, who points to a variety of devices that will continue toproliferate in 2012: “The iPad 3, LTE smartphones, Internet-connectedTVs, cars with augmented-reality windshields, fridges that know what’sinside.”

Pujadas predicts three trends: co-creation(“collaboration between tech companies and experts in seeminglyunrelated fields, or customers, or major players in other industries”);appification (“how we now experience much of life through the mobileapps we download and how that shapes our expectations and behaviors”);and integration (“consumers want either all-in-one devices or at leasta way to combine their personal data, and marketers want the insightsthat come from analyzing all that resulting Big Data”).

“Thesetrends were front and center at the recent Consumer Electronics Show,”she says, “especially if you consider how many non-tech companies likeMercedes-Benz, Ford and Craftsman invested in having a big presencethere. Technology will not only be a growth sector in 2012, it is alsomorphing and overlapping with other industry sectors at record speed.”

HeidiSinclair, global technology practice chair at Weber Shandwick, isanother who see the breakdown of traditional barriers betweentechnology and other practice areas.

Sinclair says that the“consumerization” of IT “is forcing even non-consumer companies tomarket to consumers thus driving the need for consumer technologycommunications expertise.” At the same time, “we are squarely in TheAge of Innovation where every company has an innovation story to tell.Technology communications know-how is being applied to everything fromtelling the science story in shampoo to developer communicationsprograms geared to driving app development for automobiles.”
As aresult Pujadas sees an advantage for full-service firms: “This is areal opportunity for agencies with multiple competencies: companieswill need help going far beyond product marketing and communications–they’ll need help with corporate reputation, public affairs, issues andcrisis—especially around data privacy and security—influencerstrategies, audience targeting, social media and growth in emergingmarkets.”

Conversely, Text 100’s Friedman believes the ubiquityof technology and its convergence with other sectors and disciplines,presents an opportunity for tech specialists to expand.

“Thereisn't a single industry that isn't using technology to innovate andbuild competitive advantage,” he says. “And given that technology hasbeen at the core of all that we do at Text 100, we're now seeing ourexpertise translate into the media, digital, automotive, travel andhealth sectors. Our 'technology' expertise is being sought in sectorswe never thought possible.”

Content
Theproliferation of high-tech devices has implications for technologymarketers and for everyone engaged in communications—a topic we willcover at greater length in our look at what’s hot in digital and socialmedia.

But if there’s one area of activity that’s particularlyimportant for technology clients it’s the creation of original contentthat can be delivered across all of these platforms.

“We’re alsoseeing a surge in requests from our clients in all sectors—but inparticular in technology—for content that can be used acrossplatforms,” says Friedman. “This move to ‘branded journalism’ andmulti-platform content shows the shift in the way technology companiesare integrating their social, traditional, marketing and communicationsplatforms to achieve most relevance with their audiences.”

International Markets
Andwhile there are those who question the potential for growth in theUS—Anne Green of New York-based CooperKatz & Company says that“over recent years our industry has benefited from growth in techstart-ups, but it remains to be seen whether that rate of growth issustainable, particularly in key verticals that have seen a massiveinflux of new companies and competition”—there’s no doubt that there’splenty of growth left in international markets.

The technologysector presents a significant opportunity in the Indian market,according to Varghese Cherian, who leads Edelman’s technology practicethere. He estimates the 50 percent of the top PR spenders in India aretechnology companies.

That’s partly because technology companiesare “early adopters of being in the forefront of accepting and tryingout newer trends makes them the largest spenders” and also because“technology companies have been exposed to global trends more thanother companies and hence they are part of an evolved cycle in usingmodern age communications tools and a strategic approach.”
The other BRIC markets—and China in particular—are also likely to see increased activity.

Coming Clean
Finally,when it comes to hot sectors in the technology arena, cleantechcontinues to generate the greatest interest. Sinclair says greentechnology “has moved from being in start-up mode to a fast-growthbusiness with the associated communications demands.”
Stuart Wragg of Australian firm n2n communications is another who sees growth in the cleantech arena.

“Asthe need to reduce carbon emissions becomes increasingly important,expect to see an acceleration of innovation in clean-tech as businessesseek out solutions that help reduce carbon, increase efficiency andsupport Australia’s transition toward a low carbon economy,” he says.“And don’t expect big business to dominate share-of-voice. Watch outfor start-ups too, keen to grab their share of the action with somedisruptive communications.”

Technology :: The Future of Your PC's Hardware

2012-02-22T17:31:00.005-08:00

What is it?
As its name implies, the memristorcan "remember" how much current has passed through it. And byalternating the amount of current that passes through it, a memristorcan also become a one-element circuit component with unique properties.Most notably, it can save its electronic state even when the current isturned off, making it a great candidate to replace today's flashmemory.
Memristors will theoretically be cheaper and farfaster than flash memory, and allow far greater memory densities. Theycould also replace RAM chips as we know them, so that, after you turnoff your computer, it will remember exactly what it was doing when youturn it back on, and return to work instantly. This lowering of costand consolidating of components may lead to affordable, solid-statecomputers that fit in your pocket and run many times faster thantoday's PCs.
Someday the memristor could spawn a whole newtype of computer, thanks to its ability to remember a range ofelectrical states rather than the simplistic "on" and "off" states thattoday's digital processors recognize. By working with a dynamic rangeof data states in an analog mode, memristor-based computers could becapable of far more complex tasks than just shuttling ones and zeroesaround.

When is it coming?
Researchers say that no real barrier prevents implementing thememristor in circuitry immediately. But it's up to the business side topush products through to commercial reality. Memristors made to replaceflash memory (at a lower cost and lower power consumption) will likelyappear first; HP's goal is to offer them by 2012. Beyond that,memristors will likely replace both DRAM and hard disks in the2014-to-2016 time frame. As for memristor-based analog computers, thatstep may take 20-plus years

32-Core CPUs From Intel and AMD

What is it?
With the gigahertz race largely abandoned, both AMDand Intel are trying to pack more cores onto a die in order to continueto improve processing power and aid with multitasking operations.Miniaturizing chips further will be key to fitting these cores andother components into a limited space. Intel will roll out 32-nanometerprocessors (down from today's 45nm chips) in 2009.

When is it coming?
Intel has been very good about sticking to its road map. A six-core CPUbased on the Itanium design should be out imminently, when Intel thenshifts focus to a brand-new architecture called Nehalem, to be marketedas Core i7. Core i7 will feature up to eight cores, with eight-coresystems available in 2009 or 2010. (And an eight-core AMD projectcalled Montreal is reportedly on tap for 2009.)
After that,the timeline gets fuzzy. Intel reportedly canceled a 32-core projectcalled Keifer, slated for 2010, possibly because of its complexity (thecompany won't confirm this, though). That many cores requires a new wayof dealing with memory; apparently you can't have 32 brains pulling outof one central pool of RAM. But we still expect cores to proliferatewhen the kinks are ironed out: 16 cores by 2011 or 2012 is plausible(when transistors are predicted to drop again in size to 22nm), with 32cores by 2013 or 2014 easily within reach. Intel says "hundreds" ofcores may come even farther down the line.

Technology :: Neutrality Rules Slated to Take Effect this Fall

2012-02-22T02:30:00.000-08:00

Last week, the FCC publishedits final Open Internet rules in the Federal Register, which means theywill formally go into effect later this fall. The publication caps offa two-year process at the Commission to get the rules in place. Whilethe rules won’t change much in terms of day-to-day use of the Internet,it is good news for consumers and innovators that they will at longlast be enforceable.

The rules essentially preserve the status quo online. They preventcable, DSL, and fiber carriers from favoring or disfavoring certainsites or applications over others and prevent mobile carriers fromblocking websites or competing voice and video applications – leavingconsumers to decide which services they might prefer. The onlysignificant change will be that now, if carriers engage indiscriminatory routing or network management practices, those whosetraffic is affected will have a place to go to demand recourse.

The rules themselves reflect a light-touch and flexible approach topreserving the competitive environment that currently exists on theInternet. The rules do not, as some critics declare, amount to“regulating the Internet,” and there is ample evidence that in theabsence of rules carriers might discriminate (as a few have donealready) against some lawful traffic.

The rules are set to go into effect on November 20, but their formalpublication also starts another, more ominous clock. After October 13,Internet neutrality opponents in the Senate will be able to force avote on a joint resolution under the Congressional Review Act thatwould repeal the rules and strip the FCC of the authority to makesimilar rules in the future. (The resolution passed the House alongparty lines in the spring.) Just as significant, the publication ofthe rules also starts the clock on litigation, as Verizon and any otherparties wishing to challenge the rules in court are now free to filesuit.

Repealing the rules would be a huge mistake that would mark a dramatic change in U.S. communications policy. As we’ve written before (here and here),to strip the nation’s communications regulator of any authority overwhat is rapidly becoming the core communications network of the 21stcentury would be absurd. Not having any authority looking out forInternet users’ best interests would leave carriers free todiscriminate amongst Internet applications, picking winners and losers,to the detriment of consumer choice, competition, and online innovation.

Science :: Boy genius's book reveals life in college at age 8

2012-02-21T02:30:00.000-08:00

The one thing 14-year-old Moshe Kai Cavalin dislikes is being called a genius.

All he did, after all, was enroll in college at age 8 and earn his first of two Associate of Arts degrees from East Los Angeles Community College in 2009 at age 11, graduating with a perfect 4.0 grade point average.

Now, at 14, he's poised to graduate from UCLA this year. He's also just published an English edition of his first book, "We Can Do."

The 100-page guideline explains how other young people can accomplish what Cavalindid through such simple acts as keeping themselves focused andapproaching everything with total commitment. He's hoping it will showpeople there's no genius involved, just hard work.

"That'salways the question that bothers me," Cavalin, who turned 14 onTuesday, says when the G-word is raised. "People need to know you don'treally need to be a genius. You just have to work hard and you canaccomplish anything."

And maybe cut out some of the TV.

Although he's a big fan of Jackie Chan movies, Cavalin says he limits his television time to four hours a week.

Notthat he lacks for recreational activities or feels that his parentspressured him into studying constantly. He writes in "We Can Do" oflearning to scuba dive, and he loves soccer and martial arts. He usedto participate in the latter sport when he was younger, winningtrophies for his age group, until his UCLA studies and his writing madethings a little too hectic.

Indeed one of the key messages of his book is to stay focused and to not take on any endeavor half-heartedly.

"I was able to reach the stars, but others can reach the 'Milky Way," he tells readers.

It was a professor at his first institution of higher learning, East Los Angeles City College,who inspired him, Cavalin says. He didn't like the subject but managedto get an A in it anyway, by applying himself and seeing howenthusiastic his teacher, Richard Avila, was about the subject.

Avila, he says, inspired him to write a book explaining his methods for success so he could motivate others.

Ittook four years to finish, in part because Cavalin, whose mother isChinese, decided to publish it in Mandarin, and doing the translationhimself was laborious.

HanShian Culture Publishing of Taiwan put the book in print, and it didwell in Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, as well as in severalbookstores in Southern California's Asian communities. He then broughtit out in English for the U.S. market.

Becauseof his heavy study load, Cavalin has had little opportunity to promotethe book, other than a signing at UCLA, where he also lives in studenthousing with his parents and attends the school on a scholarship.

Afterearning his bachelor's degree, the math major plans to enroll ingraduate school with hopes of eventually earning a degree.

After that, he's not so sure. He points out that he's still just barely a teenager.

"Whoknows?" he says, chuckling at the thought of what lies ahead inadulthood. "That's a very distant future, and I'm pretty much planningfor just the next few years. That's too far into the future for me tosee."

Management :: Best Practices and Common Pitfalls Associated with Suppliers Involvement in NPD

2012-02-20T02:00:00.000-08:00

Involving suppliers in new product development provides organizationswith a range of benefits, including shorter development time, betterquality products, and lower cost of development. In this new in-deptharticle Dr Sanda Berar delves deeper into some of the best practicesand the most common pitfalls associated with suppliers’ involvement inNPD.

Strategic technology suppliers provide organizations with access to keyexternal technologies while also supporting open innovation. In turn,open innovation is seen as critical for increasing a company’scompetitive advantage.

This article sets out to explore some of the best practices and someof the most common pitfalls associated with suppliers’ involvement innew product development (NPD). To achieve this, seven case studies ofNPD in one organization are discussed in the article. The discussion ofthe cases focuses on the role that project level factors play inshaping suppliers’ involvement in NPD.

Several factors are considered here:

correct evaluation of supplier’s technology versus the product requirements;
correct evaluation of supplier’s competence versus product requirements;
trust between buyer and supplier;
prior knowledge of supplier;
complexity of suppliers’ delivery chain and of the R&D set-up;
buyer-supplier power balance;
supplier’s absorptive innovation capabilities.

If ignored or not properly acknowledged and managed, each of thesefactors has the potential to cause NPD failure. The case studiespresent practices through which the organization has been able to solvethe development challenges and successfully launch the new products.

About the author

Dr.Sanda Berar has over 15 years of experience in high-tech industry andholds a PhD in Economics and an MSc in Computer Engineering. She ispresently with Nokia in Helsinki, heading the software department in aproduct unit. Previously, Sanda had worked in several high-techcompanies in Romania. Between 1994-2000, she was a lecturer atBabes-Bolyai University, Romania. She also holds an honoree researchfellow title with the University of Aberdeen, Business School, whereshe is involved in studies related to NPD.

Science :: DNA in Beethoven’s hair sequenced to make one last song

2012-02-20T01:30:00.000-08:00

There's a piece of Ludwig van Beethoventhat still exists almost 200 years after his death — a lock of hishair. The hair even survived through The Holocaust thanks to anenterprising prisoner who knew the safest place to hide it was insidehis behind! But that's not the most fantastic part of the story. Afterthe lock of hair was sold at an auction in 2009, a team of artists andmusicians got their hands on a piece of it, submitted it for a DNA analysis, and actually composed a piece called Ludwig's Last Song using the results.

The details of Beethoven's genes were given to Scots composer Stuart Mitchell who was involved in Cymatics, which is essentially the study of visible sound and vibration. Mitchell decided to assign a note to each of the 22 unique amino acids he found in the DNA sequence. Every note was placed on a musical staff that corresponded to the resonance frequencyof its amino acid. Using these notes, he then arranged a piece for theviola and a piece for the piano, which when combined made up thefinished product that's available for purchase.

But Beethoven fans take heed: the song doesn't sound anything likethe maestro's compositions, as you can hear in the video above. AsMitchell said, "Everyone expected to hear it in the style of Beethovenbut the melody is almost tragic. To me it sounds like somebodyfighting, struggling, a really sympathetic melody with a great deal ofsoul."

Why Filtering Is Not the Solution

2012-02-19T02:30:00.000-08:00

Bill Keller, former executive editor of The New York Times, recently responded to detractors of a column he penned on PIPA/SOPA.

In a blog post, Keller writes, "Much of the mail bristles with resentment of the corporate behemoths that have tried to protect music, film and books by building higher legal walls around their property."

CDT is among the immense and philosophically diverse crowd that bristled during the PIPA/SOPA debate. By now it should be well understood that our objections weren’t focused on rightsholders' desire to protect their work, but rather on the methods by which they wanted to protect it.

Keller continues, "[I]t should be well within the capability of the Internet giants to filter their traffic for the most egregious pirates, just as good citizenship (and in some cases the law) would oblige a bus company to notify police if the bus line was being used to facilitate a crime. At least it’s worth exploring."

In fact, relying on "Internet giants" to filter user traffic is far more problematic than it first appears. This is precisely what was "explored" in the PIPA/SOPA debate – and precisely what made the bills so controversial.

(Incidentally, the analogy to a bus company is off base, in part because it assumes that it is obvious to the bus company when riders are engaged in criminal activity. A better analogy would be requiring the bus company to search riders for contraband or demand that riders disclose the purpose of each trip. In addition, Internet filtering carries technical and international consequences that have no parallel in local bus routes.)

Proponents of PIPA/SOPA rallied behind the proposal that Internet service providers (IPSs) be required by law to engage in domain name system (DNS) filtering; that is, ISPs would interfere with the Internet’s addressing system to prevent domain names from connecting to their corresponding numerical IP addresses. As CDT has explained, including in testimony and letters to Congress, DNS filtering would threaten significant collateral damage without any serious prospect of achieving meaningful reduction in infringement.

DNS filtering is ineffective because there are a variety of easy techniques to circumvent it, including using a simple browser plug-in or bookmarking a site’s IP address. Meanwhile, Sandia National Labs and some of the Internet’s most respected engineers have warned that it would undermine cybersecurity. The White House, after lengthy analysis of the matter, concluded that "[p]roposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the . . . DNS" because such provisions "pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online."

Moreover, if the U.S. government were to embrace this technique to block websites that it deems—to use Keller’s term—"egregious," it would be that much more difficult to advocate that oppressive regimes not block sites they find egregious. As Julian Sanchez of Cato has noted, if we were to embrace DNS filtering, the only thing separating oppressive regimes and the U.S. in this case would be what’s on our respective blacklists. And if each country enforces its own blacklist, the end result would be a highly balkanized Internet. The U.S. State Department is the leading global advocate for a unified, global Internet; embracing a technique that fragments the Internet would seriously erode U.S. credibility in this cause.

Are there other, non-DNS techniques ISPs could use to filter user traffic? Well, they could engage in deep packet inspection to monitor user behavior and ferret out illegal activity. But this kind of pervasive surveillance comes at a high cost to privacy and, like DNS filtering, sets a dangerous international precedent.

Even for Internet entities other than ISPs, filtering carries significant policy implications. Companies required to monitor and filter illegal activity may well overblock in order to play it safe. To ensure they won't be accused of shirking their responsibilities, the tendency will be to block disputed material or anything that carries even a whiff of legal controversy. The risk of lawful speech getting caught up in the filters is especially high when, as with PIPA/SOPA, the filters aim to block entire domain names. Domain names are often shared among multiple users of separate subdomains, and also among multiple uses (such as a company’s public-facing website and internal email server). Domain name filtering is a very blunt instrument that can sweep in lawful content inadvertently.

Finally, we should all be realistic about the long-term consequences at stake here. If we establish both the technical infrastructure and the legal and social norms to support pervasive Internet filtering, its use will be demanded for a wide range of causes. There is, after all, no shortage of undesirable content and behavior online. With "Internet giants" now tasked with online policing functions, the online environment would effectively become subject to a new set of centralized gatekeepers.

That may be an appealing vision to some, but it would jeopardize the many benefits of the Internet’s open and decentralized nature. CDT would urge Keller, and other thought leaders delving into this area of policy as a result of the PIPA/SOPA uproar, not to cast aside the core principles that make the Internet such a powerful force for free expression and innovation. A good place to start in understanding those principles, we would humbly suggest, is the CDT document "What Every Policymaker Needs to Know About the Internet."

None of this is to say that nothing can be done about combating offshore piracy. CDT has suggested that a "follow the money" approach offers a higher likelihood of effectiveness with less collateral damage. But hopefully one of the biggest lessons that has emerged from the months-long national debate over PIPA/SOPA—which included a sea of articles, blog posts, and reports about the risks the bills posed—is that filtering the Internet is not the answer.

Update

CDT Fellow David Post, who helped organize the law professors' letters in opposition to PROTECT IP and SOPA, has posted his take on the bills' flaws and bade them good riddance over at Justia's Verdict blog.

Management :: Four Approaches to Fostering Companies’ Innovation Capability

2012-02-19T01:30:00.000-08:00

For many companies being and continuing to be innovative is essential.But how can companies become ‘more’ innovative? Carmen Kobe & InaGoller asked experts, consultants, and managers how they experiencedsuccessful improvement of innovativeness in their business life. Out ofthe interviews four interventions that are used to develop companies’innovation capabilities could be extracted.

The interventions presented in this in-depth article are aimed atdeveloping companies’ innovation capabilities, and focus on the abilityto develop new products, services and processes and bring themsuccessfully to market:

selection and training of human resources;
implementation of new structures and practices;
creation and implementation of innovation ideas;
establishing new values and norms.

All four strategies are effective and were used in various examplesin a winning way. The main problem for companies seems to be findingthe right intensity and range for their strategy. Looking at humanresources for example, companies often concentrate only on the obviousneeded competencies like creativity, but do forget to dig deeper anddefine the bigger picture (e.g. team skills).

The outcomes of interventions aimed at innovation will depend on thecompany’s strategies, abilities and resources. Sustainable innovationactivity requires a combination of efforts and abilities. Changerequires ongoing, sustained efforts to change based on thoroughanalysis of existing systems, establishment of new goals, changes andtime for effects to emerge. The pace of change in people and everydaybehaviors will be moderate, but even small improvements in innovationcapability can produce greatly improved results.
By Carmen Kobe & Ina Goller

Paving the Road to the 'Learning Health Care System'

2012-02-18T06:30:00.000-08:00

Last week, I participated on a panel as part of the 2012 Stanford Law Review Symposium, The Privacy Paradox: Privacy and its Conflicting Values.The symposium was co-hosted by the Stanford Center for Internet andSociety. Kudos to the Stanford Law Review for including a panel onhealth privacy along with panels on uses of drones for surveillance;big data, politics and privacy; and privacy and conflicts with FirstAmendment and tort law.

Participants on the panel were invited tosubmit essays for publication in the symposium edition of the StanfordLaw Review Online. CDT’s essay explores the way the Health InsurancePortability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule discourageshealth care providers from sharing the results of analysesconducted on electronic medical record data for quality improvementpurposes. CDT recommends that such uses of electronic healthinformation be governed by consistent policies based on fairinformation practices, even in circumstances where the aggregateresults are intended to be shared to benefit the health care system.The essay, Paving the Regulatory Road to the “Learning Health Care System,” builds on work led by CDT in its role as chair of the federal Health IT Policy Committee’s Privacy and Security Tiger Team.

How to Successfully Implement Collaborative Idea Management

2012-02-18T01:00:00.000-08:00

Are you effectively using the creative potential of your employees,customers and partners to address your innovation challenges?Collaborative idea management is a method to learn from the “wisdom ofthe crowd” in order to drive innovation. This in-depth article givesyou an introduction including best practice from how Ericsson, theglobal telecom company worked with introducing and designing asuccessful collaborative idea management system.

Many organizations are facing an urgent need to exploit new ideasand opportunities to meet increasing competitive pressure and changingcustomer demands. The recent economic recession has further acceleratedthe urgency of innovation across industries and globally. But fromwhere do you get those much needed breakthrough ideas to drive growth,productivity and value creation? When innovation is more important thanever, collaborative idea management can help organizations to surfacenew ideas, improve them and make sure they reach the right people. Itis also a way to empower and recognize innovative employees, to measureand stimulate creative activity and to promote a more open andcollaborative innovation culture in the organization.

What is idea management?

Idea management is a structured process for the collection,handling, selection and distribution of ideas. It may include supportfor gathering, storing, improving, evaluating and prioritizing ideas byproviding methods and tools, such as templates and guidelines. Ideamanagement is an integrated part of the innovation process. Ideamanagement is relevant for all types of ideas, from incrementalimprovements to new and disruptive business opportunities. The scopecan range from being limited to one internal unit, to cover the entireorganization, to include also external stakeholders, such as customersand partners. Some companies that have implemented idea managementsystems are IBM, Accenture and Whirlpool. Ericsson startedcollaborative idea management in 2008 by developing a generic solutionaligned with the existing collaboration platform and strategy.

Addressing challenges

The handling of ideas in organizations involves several challenges.First, the more people you engage the more difficult it gets toevaluate and give feedback on all the ideas. You need an alternative tochanneling all idea through one central point that quickly gets choked.Second, larger organizations typically have numerous and diverseinnovation needs throughout the organization. Defining the innovationneeds is a critical success factor to focus idea management efforts onthe relevant themes and challenges. But how do you channel the rightideas to the right places when the landscape of innovation needs is noteasily defined top down? Third, for an idea management system to besustainable you need to look beyond an IT solution. You need aninfrastructure with guidelines and processes that is integrated withthe overall innovation and collaboration efforts and aligned withorganizational culture. That is easier said than done! A fourthchallenge is to engage employees to come up with new ideas and tocontribute them. In a recent blog post, Hutch Carpenter argues thatemployees are intrinsically motivated to come up with new ideas. Everyday, employees think of ideas relevant to the organization. It is justhappening as a part of their daily work. The challenge fororganizations is to harness these motivations and provide an outlet forthem. Finally, organizations must ensure that their collaborative ideamanagement initiatives actually deliver on the “wisdom of the crowd”promise. If the perception is that you just get more mediocre ideas,the effort will not be long-lived.

Designing a system

The basic components of collaborative idea management is support forusers to submit new ideas, comment and develop already existing ones aswell as support for managers to capture, track and further developpromising ideas. Finally you need support to administrate, measure andfollow-up. The following design rules, based on the initial experienceat Ericsson and insights from other organizations, might help whenconsidering getting serious about idea management.

Invite everyone to engage the entire organization. Several studiesshow that employees are the number one source of innovative ideas.
Use the principle of self-organization to handle complexity. Letinnovation needs be defined bottom-up and use the IT tool to match ideasupply and demand.
Embrace collaboration to leverage expertise and a diversity ofperspectives. Openness will enable users from different parts of theorganization to improve and comment on ideas.
Secure feedback and recognition for a sustainable initiative. Makesure idea owners can see everything what is happening to their ideas.Reward good ideas.
Integrate idea management into your overall collaboration effort.Benefits are a connected workflow, unified user interface andsimplified support.

Release the creativity

It makes sense to try to utilize the collective creativity of allemployees and even include external stakeholders to generate those muchneeded breakthrough ideas. Under the right conditions, a collaborativeidea management system of tools and practices can help you to do justthat. Tapping into the innovation energy of employees, customers andpartners might improve your ability to respond to what emerges, finddifferentiating opportunities, drive a culture of collaboration andinnovation, and create a sense that every employee contribution isimportant for the future of the organization. By Karin Wall, chief editor

Comp Techno :: New Virtual Helper Challenges Siri

2012-02-17T17:09:00.000-08:00

The market for sweetly named smart-phone assistants is heating up,as Siri, Apple's iPhone-based virtual helper, just got a new "frenemy"named Evi.

Created by True Knowledge,a Cambridge, U.K.-based semantic technology startup, Evi, like Siri,can answer questions posed aloud in a conversational manner. But unlikeSiri, which is only loaded on the latest iPhone, Evi is available as anapp for the iPhone and phones running Google's Android software.

Siri and other personal assistants are still fairly limited. As theybecome more popular, established companies and startups will need toexpand the range of tasks they can perform. True Knowledge is hopingthe semantic database it has built up over the past few years couldprovide this edge.

Evi's availability and promise as an artificial intelligence app,coupled with its low price (99 cents on the iPhone and free on Androidphones), caused its popularity to skyrocket following its Mondayrelease, and made it difficult for those downloading it to try it out. Eviisn't the only Siri competitor—and in fact its capabilities aresomewhat different from Siri's offerings—but plenty of smart-phoneusers, it seems, are eager for Evi's help in particular.

Evi uses a platform with hundreds of millions of data points thatTrue Knowledge developed over several years (initially for Web search).Information in this database has been tagged to add meaning andcontext. For example, Apple is classified as a "company" and Tim Cookis classified as a "person" and a "CEO." True Knowledge founder and CEOWilliam Tunstall-Pedoe says this allows the app to understand all sortsof things—people, places, buildings, colors, and more—and how theyinteract, which helps the app find the right answer for a wide range ofquestions. In addition to all this information, Evi, like Siri, canaccess data on some outside websites.

Essentially, the app takes your spoken or typed question and usesits vast store of knowledge along with outside data from websites likeYelp to give pertinent answers. This is similar to how Siri works, butApple's assistant focuses more on accomplishing tasks, such as makingcalls, setting alerts, or dictating text messages, by working with theiPhone's other apps. Evi does not do these things, but Tunstall-Pedoesays it will eventually be able to take on more tasks.

Technology :: Cisco challenges Microsoft takeover of Skype in EU

2012-02-17T16:49:00.000-08:00

Networking company Cisco said Wednesday that it is challenging Microsoft's $8.5 billion takeover of Skype at the European Union's top court to ensure Microsoft won't block other video conferencing services.

Microsoft completed the deal in October shortly after the European Commission, the EU's competition regulator, cleared the takeover. Microsoft Corp. hopes that owning Skype will allow it to better compete with other tech giants including Apple Inc. or Google Inc.

But for Cisco Systems Inc., the world's largest maker of computer networking equipment, the Skype deal creates a serious challenger to its video conferencing systems.

"Cisco does not oppose the merger, but believes the European Commission should have placed conditions that would ensure greater standards-based interoperability," Marthin De Beer, the head of Cisco's video conferencing division, wrote in a blog post.

Video conferencing equipment is a relatively small part of Cisco's overall sales, but it's growing rapidly. Cisco's latest major acquisition was of Tandberg, a Norwegian maker of video conferencing equipment. Cisco spent $3.4 billion for the company in 2010.

Microsoft said it was confident it would prevail in an appeal.

"The European Commission conducted a thorough investigation of the acquisition, in which Cisco actively participated, and approved the deal in a 36-page decision without any conditions," Microsoft said in a statement.

Microsoft is counting on Skype to help it catch up in some the hottest markets in technology and media. Microsoft is looking to grow in areas such as online socializing, mobile phones and digital video to reduce its traditional reliance on its Windows and Office software for revenue.

The U.S. Department of Justice approved the deal in June. Its approvals can't be appealed, while the European Commission does accept appeals.

Cisco wants the General Court of the EU to check whether the Commission was right in clearing the Skype takeover without any conditions. It argues that the Commission should have required Microsoft to guarantee open standards for video conferencing, similar to what exists for mobile phone calls.

Such standards would eventually allow users of Cisco video phones to make calls to users of Skype and other services like Google Voice.

De Beer said that without these standards, Microsoft could "seek to control the future of video communications."

"Making a video-to-video call should be as easy as dialing a phone number," De Beer wrote. "Today, however, you can't make seamless video calls from one platform to another, much to the frustration of consumers and business users alike."

But Cisco fears that Microsoft will end up blocking Skype for users of other services, especially if it starts charging businesses for teleconferencing. Its filing came just ahead of a deadline for appeals.

Skype, with roughly 170 million users, is by far the most popular voice-over-Internet service.

Antoine Colombani, a spokesman for the European Commission, said it will defend its decision in court.

Cisco's stock fell 19 cents to $19.88 in afternoon trading Wednesday, while Microsoft's fell 17 cents to $30.08.

GPS tracking :: Supreme Court Requires Warrant for GPS Tracking

2012-02-17T01:01:00.000-08:00

Washington

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court held this morning that government agents need to get a warrant from a judge before planting a GPS device on a person's car and using it to track the person.
"The Supreme Court today made it clear that it will not allow advancing technology to erode the Constitutional right of privacy," said Gregory T. Nojeim, Director of CDT's Project on Freedom, Security and Technology.

The Justice Department had argued that the GPS device, because it tracked the person's movements only on the public streets, did not raise any concern under the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which generally requires a warrant for searches and seizures. Not a single Justice agreed with the government on that issue.

Instead, all nine agreed that, under the facts of the case, the Constitution required a warrant issued by a judge. Five Justices agreed that any use of GPS planted by the government was a search generally requiring a warrant, effectively settling that issue.

The case also has implications for tracking individuals using cell phone tower data. Five Justices held that a warrant would have been required on the facts of this case even if the government tracking did not involve planting a GPS device. "Cell phone triangulation can be just as precise as GPS," Nojeim said. "Congress should build on this opinion by writing a statute that draws a bright line requiring the government, except in emergencies, to get a warrant before turning your cell phone into a tracking device."

CDT has helped to coordinate a coalition of major Internet companies, think tanks and advocacy groups from across the political spectrum calling on Congress to require a warrant for cell phone tracking.

CDT filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case, arguing that warrant is required for GPS tracking.

Techno :: Why Filtering Is Not the Solution

2012-02-16T02:30:00.000-08:00

Bill Keller, former executive editor of The New York Times, recently responded to detractors of a column he penned on PIPA/SOPA.

In a blog post, Keller writes, "Much of the mail bristles with resentment of the corporate behemoths that have tried to protect music, film and books by building higher legal walls around their property."

CDT is among the immense and philosophically diverse crowd that bristled during the PIPA/SOPA debate. By now it should be well understood that our objections weren’t focused on rightsholders' desire to protect their work, but rather on the methods by which they wanted to protect it.

Keller continues, "[I]t should be well within the capability of the Internet giants to filter their traffic for the most egregious pirates, just as good citizenship (and in some cases the law) would oblige a bus company to notify police if the bus line was being used to facilitate a crime. At least it’s worth exploring."

In fact, relying on "Internet giants" to filter user traffic is far more problematic than it first appears. This is precisely what was "explored" in the PIPA/SOPA debate – and precisely what made the bills so controversial.

(Incidentally, the analogy to a bus company is off base, in part because it assumes that it is obvious to the bus company when riders are engaged in criminal activity. A better analogy would be requiring the bus company to search riders for contraband or demand that riders disclose the purpose of each trip. In addition, Internet filtering carries technical and international consequences that have no parallel in local bus routes.)

Proponents of PIPA/SOPA rallied behind the proposal that Internet service providers (IPSs) be required by law to engage in domain name system (DNS) filtering; that is, ISPs would interfere with the Internet’s addressing system to prevent domain names from connecting to their corresponding numerical IP addresses. As CDT has explained, including in testimony and letters to Congress, DNS filtering would threaten significant collateral damage without any serious prospect of achieving meaningful reduction in infringement.

DNS filtering is ineffective because there are a variety of easy techniques to circumvent it, including using a simple browser plug-in or bookmarking a site’s IP address. Meanwhile, Sandia National Labs and some of the Internet’s most respected engineers have warned that it would undermine cybersecurity. The White House, after lengthy analysis of the matter, concluded that "[p]roposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the . . . DNS" because such provisions "pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online."

Moreover, if the U.S. government were to embrace this technique to block websites that it deems—to use Keller’s term—"egregious," it would be that much more difficult to advocate that oppressive regimes not block sites they find egregious. As Julian Sanchez of Cato has noted, if we were to embrace DNS filtering, the only thing separating oppressive regimes and the U.S. in this case would be what’s on our respective blacklists. And if each country enforces its own blacklist, the end result would be a highly balkanized Internet. The U.S. State Department is the leading global advocate for a unified, global Internet; embracing a technique that fragments the Internet would seriously erode U.S. credibility in this cause.

Are there other, non-DNS techniques ISPs could use to filter user traffic? Well, they could engage in deep packet inspection to monitor user behavior and ferret out illegal activity. But this kind of pervasive surveillance comes at a high cost to privacy and, like DNS filtering, sets a dangerous international precedent.

Even for Internet entities other than ISPs, filtering carries significant policy implications. Companies required to monitor and filter illegal activity may well overblock in order to play it safe. To ensure they won't be accused of shirking their responsibilities, the tendency will be to block disputed material or anything that carries even a whiff of legal controversy. The risk of lawful speech getting caught up in the filters is especially high when, as with PIPA/SOPA, the filters aim to block entire domain names. Domain names are often shared among multiple users of separate subdomains, and also among multiple uses (such as a company’s public-facing website and internal email server). Domain name filtering is a very blunt instrument that can sweep in lawful content inadvertently.

Finally, we should all be realistic about the long-term consequences at stake here. If we establish both the technical infrastructure and the legal and social norms to support pervasive Internet filtering, its use will be demanded for a wide range of causes. There is, after all, no shortage of undesirable content and behavior online. With "Internet giants" now tasked with online policing functions, the online environment would effectively become subject to a new set of centralized gatekeepers.

That may be an appealing vision to some, but it would jeopardize the many benefits of the Internet’s open and decentralized nature. CDT would urge Keller, and other thought leaders delving into this area of policy as a result of the PIPA/SOPA uproar, not to cast aside the core principles that make the Internet such a powerful force for free expression and innovation. A good place to start in understanding those principles, we would humbly suggest, is the CDT document "What Every Policymaker Needs to Know About the Internet."

None of this is to say that nothing can be done about combating offshore piracy. CDT has suggested that a "follow the money" approach offers a higher likelihood of effectiveness with less collateral damage. But hopefully one of the biggest lessons that has emerged from the months-long national debate over PIPA/SOPA—which included a sea of articles, blog posts, and reports about the risks the bills posed—is that filtering the Internet is not the answer.

New Tech :: Shrunken Servers Aim for a Greener Internet

2012-02-16T00:30:00.000-08:00

SeaMicro

Asthe cloud becomes more pervasive—driving everything from socialnetworking to mobile apps—the computers that power it must guzzle moreand more energy. Today, startup company SeaMicro,chip maker Intel, and electronics giant Samsung unveiled a new computerdesign that could make the data centers that power cloud servicesdramatically more efficient.

The new server design uses halfthe energy and takes up a third of the space of servers that do thehard work in most data centers today.

Mozilla, the nonprofit browser maker, and CompSec, which builds cloud computing infrastructure for federal intelligence agencies, are already using the new designs.

SeaMicro, based in Santa Clara, California, has received $60 millionin venture funding and a $9.3 million U.S. Department of Energy grantintended to encourage greater efficiency for cloud infrastructure.

Until now, the startup was known for making small, efficient serverssuitable only for low-powered jobs in a data center. These servers useIntel's Atom chips, originally developed for mobile computers. The newdesign keeps many of the same efficient features but swaps in aconventional server chip from Intel's Xeon line, allowing it to do morecomputationally taxing tasks like running the vast databases at theheart of social networks or online stores.

"We were able to address an important portion of this rapidlygrowing market [before], but by no means all of it," said SeaMicro'sCEO and cofounder, Andrew Feldman, at an event on Tuesday in SanFrancisco. "This allows us to address the entire data center."

Manypeople in the industry are eagerly awaiting the arrival of serversbuilt around smart-phone chips, which are highly energy-efficient, as away to cut data center costs. Those chips are made by a variety ofcompanies, including Qualcomm, Marvell, and Texas Instruments, usingdesigns licensed from U.K. company ARM, a shift that threatens todilute Intel's dominance of the server chip market. Hewlett-Packardannounced late last year that it would launch a line of servers with cell-phone chips inside, in partnership with startup Calxeda.

Compact cloud: This server, containing 64 quad-core processors, consumes roughly half the energy of a conventional server.

Techno :: Global Policy Weekly

2012-02-15T03:31:00.000-08:00

CYBERSECURITY
EU: A proposal to strengthen and extend the lifespan of the European Networking and Information Security Agency (Enisa) got a green light from the European Parliament's Industry, Research and Energy Committee earlier this week. The proposal, if ultimately passed by the European Parliament, would allow Enisa to play a more central, coordinating role with respect to cybersecurity.

UK: The UK Home Affairs Committee has issued a report titled "The Roots of Violent Radicalisation." In the report the Committee "recommends that internet service providers themselves should be more active in monitoring the material they host, with appropriate guidance, advice and support from the Government." It also calls on the British government to "work with internet providers to develop a code of practice for the removal of material which promotes violent extremism."

Brazil: The government of Brazil has filed suit against Twitter, demanding that it remove accounts that are being used to notify citizens of police speed traps and checkpoints. The lawsuit further orders Twitter to pay $290,000 for each day that the accounts stay up.

China: In an effort to clamp down on dissent, the Chinese government has announced that all microblog posters must associate their profiles with their real names by March 16. Users will still be able to display pseudonyms publicly, but will be required register their real names with their microblog platform of choice before they are allowed to post on the site.

GRAB BAG
Mexico: The OECD released a review of Telecommunication Policy and Regulation in Mexico, finding in part that "ineffective competition and impaired regulation . . . have resulted in the incumbent operator having 80% of fixed and 70% of mobile telephony market share."

OECD: The OECD's Science, Technology, and Industry Directorate released a report entitled Machine-to-Machine Communication: Connecting Billions of Devices (see also accompanying blog post)on the Internet of Things). The report "examines the future of machine-to-machine communication (M2M), with a particular focus on mobile wireless networks." The OECD's quarterly Information and Communication Policy News newsletter was published. It includes links to meetings and reports from the OECD over the past quarter.

OECD: The OECD held a workshop in the end of January on Benchmarking of Information and Communication Technologies in Health Systems. The workshop examined how OECD countries are implementing health-related ICT, and how effective government action has been in promoting the use of health-related ICT.

New Tech :: Graphene Competitor Used to Make Circuits

2012-02-15T02:00:00.000-08:00

The first logic circuits made using atom-thick sheets of a materialcalled molybdenite suggest a possible new solution to the problem ofgetting more power out of silicon computer components.

It alsoestablishes molybdenite as a competitor to graphene, the atom-thicksheets of carbon believed capable of solving silicon's shortcomings,and whose creators received a Nobel prize in 2010.
Silicon technology is in trouble because, for years, performance hasbeen improved by shrinking the size of the features on silicon chips,but there is only so much more shrinking that can be done. Chips willgo on sale this year with features as small as 22 nanometers, and atvery small scales, silicon technology faces problems like oxidation,which reduces performance and causes energy losses.

Molybdenite, or MoS₂, could allow electronics to get smaller still without such problems, says Andras Kis,who led a team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology inLausanne, Switzerland, to make the first integrated logic circuits, thebasis of computer chips, using molybdenite sheets.

Sheets of the material 0.65 nanometers thick and roughly 10 micronsacross were pulled from crystals of naturally occurring molybdenite.The sheets were made into transistors by laying them onto a siliconwafer and adding gold electrical connections. The linked up transistorsfunctioned as logic gates, the basis of digital computing components.

Researchers seeking alternatives to silicon have been working withgraphene for years, making, for example, prototype transistors thatoperate at much higher speedsthan silicon ones. However, molybdenite has a crucial advantage, saysKis. "The nice thing about our material is that sometimes it canconduct current, sometimes it doesn't."

To do the job ofsilicon in electronics, a material needs to be able to flip betweenconducting and nonconducting to signal digital 1s and 0s, somethingmade possible by an electronic property known as a "band gap."Molybdenite naturally has a band gap suitable for use in electronics,while graphene does not. Giving graphene a band gap involves complextechniques like layering sheets of the material, cooling it to lowtemperatures, or cutting it into very precise shapes.

New material on the block: Atom-thick sheets of molybdenite at the end of these gold leads act as transistors.

New Technology :: A New Net

2012-02-15T01:00:00.000-08:00

n 2003 Martìn Casado found himself with no small challenge on hishands: he needed to reinvent the technology that underpins theInternet. It had been developed decades earlier and was provingunsuited to an era of cyberwarfare.

Casado, then aresearcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, had beenapproached by a U.S. intelligence agency with a thorny problem.Computer networking technology allowed intelligence agents and othergovernment workers worldwide to stay connected to one another at alltimes. Field agents could instantly share data seized in a raid withexperts anywhere in the world. But the fact that so many computernetworks were enmeshed also aided enemy hackers.
Once they gained entryto one system, they could hop across networks to search for othertreasures. The agency (Casado won't say which one) told him it wantedto keep its large network but reserve the ability to temporarily closeoff parts of it for crucial transmissions, creating a data equivalentof the dedicated telephone hotline that used to link the White Houseand the Kremlin.

Casado ultimately realized that he couldn'thelp. Partly because the Internet was created with unreliableequipment, its creators had wanted to make sure that it would work evenif some parts malfunctioned. Thus, the networking hardware all operatedindependently and without central control. That's good if you wantinformation to keep flowing in dire circumstances, but it's not so goodif you want the option of isolating a specific communication channelwithin that network so as to keep secrets secret. For Casado to do whatthe intelligence agency wanted, each piece of hardware in a networkwould have to be reconfigured in a slow and manual process. "We hackedsomething together which in the end didn't give us the properties theywanted," he says.

That humbling experience has shaped hislife since. Haunted by the problem, he soon left Livermore and enteredgrad school at Stanford University to search for an answer. Hepresented one in his 2007 PhD thesis, which proposed a radical new wayfor computer networks to operate. Now he's cofounded a company calledNicira, which is poised to use that idea to make the Internet morepowerful than ever before. Nicira's technology won't just helpintelligence agencies keep secrets. It should also improve thesecurity, lower the price, and increase the power of any technologythat uses the Internet, unlocking innovation that is too expensive ortechnically impossible to achieve today. Along the way, Nicira (thename is pronounced "Nis-ee-ra" and means "vigilant" in Sanskrit) couldvery well upend some of the world's largest technology companies.

OVERDUE INNOVATION

Casadois 35 and has near-black hair with the faintest flecks of gray. He canappear intense, even nervous, but he is eloquent, with a friendly,didactic manner that shows evidence of five years teaching Stanfordundergrads. He also has the steely determination required to run 100miles in less than two days, something he has done more than four timesas a devotee of the grueling sport known as ultrarunning.

Hisdetermination has surely helped during years spent arguing that one ofthe most successful and ubiquitous technologies of all time needs to berethought. Stanford researchers have reshaped computing before—bothGoogle and early work on the Internet itself came out of their labs—butCasado and his PhD supervisor, Nick McKeown (also a close friend),found their ideas initially unappreciated and even derided by othercomputer scientists. "When we first published, they thought we werenutty," Casado recalls. "We submitted a paper and were literally madefun of in the reviewers' comments. They said, 'This will never work.'"

Thecrux of that supposedly unworkable idea was to take away the stubbornindependence of the network hardware. All those routers and switcheswould take orders from one central piece of software; a single commandcould then reconfigure every piece of a network.

Casado'sPhD thesis showed that it was possible. By writing software that couldreprogram routers and switches, he was able to turn computer networksinto the secure channels that he had been asked for back in 2003. Adifferent intelligence agency put up the money for further trials ofthe technology, and in 2007 Casado, McKeown, and Berkeley professorScott Shenker founded Nicira. Rich entrepreneurs and three of SiliconValley's most prestigious venture capital funds soon put in money oftheir own.
That enabled Casado and his engineers to pushthe technology a crucial step further. To avoid having to install theirspecial software on network hardware, they used a trick known incomputer science as virtualization, which creates a software replica ofa piece of hardware—but the software does the job more intelligently.In Nicira's case, software running on server computers could simulateprogrammable routers and switches. The physical devices themselvescould fade in importance entirely. After four years of quiet hard work,Nicira has just launched that software as its first product. It shouldtrigger a new wave of Internet innovation in everything from mobileapps to online banking security.

That potential is notobvious to a casual observer. The product is clunkily named NetworkVirtualization Platform. It's aimed at the operators of data centers,the computer-stuffed warehouses that run Internet services andwebsites. Casado freely admits that it is hard to impress a laypersonwith his technology: "People do struggle to understand it," he says.

ButNicira, which has received $50 million in funding and filed nearly 50patents, is taking on a problem that limits what the Internet can offerall of us.

The problem is this: cloud computing, even thoughit now might be a household term, hasn't lived up to its hype—and asthings now stand, it can't. It was supposed to turn computing powerinto a cheap utility, like electricity after the advent of powerstations and a national grid. A relatively small number of companieswould offer computing resources by running software in vast, efficientdata centers and piping the results over the Internet to anyone,anywhere. That would push down the price of services that rely oncomputing and allow them to become more sophisticated.

Yet today, even with seemingly cost-effective cloud servicesavailable from the likes of Amazon, most companies still choose tooperate their own computing resources—whether for corporate e-mail orfinancial trading—as if they were homeowners relying on generators forelectricity. One reason they resist cloud computing, Casado says, isthat network architecture is too decentralized to reconfigure easily,which leaves the cloud insecure and unreliable. Cloud computingproviders tend to run entire data centers on one shared network. If,for example, Coke and Pepsi both entrusted their computer systems toone of today's public cloud services, they might share a networkconnection, even though their data stores would be carefully keptseparate. That could pose a security risk: a hacker who accessed onecompany's data could see the other's. It would also mean that a busyday for Coke would cause Pepsi's data transfers to slow down.

Allof that changes when Nicira's software is installed on the servers in adata center. The software blocks the applications or programs runningon the servers from interacting with the surrounding network hardware.A virtual network then takes over to do what a computer network needsto do: it provides a set of connections for the applications to routedata through. Nicira's virtual network doesn't really exist, but it'sindistinguishable from one made up of physical routers and switches.

Todescribe the power this gives to cloud administrators, Casado uses aHollywood reference. "We actually give them the Matrix," he says. Themovie's Matrix manipulated the brains of humans floating in tanks toprovide the sensation that they were walking, talking, and living in aworld that didn't exist. Nicira's version pulls a similar trick on theprograms that reside on a server inside a data center, whether they arerunning a website or a phone app. In practice, this means thatadministrators can swiftly reprogram the virtual network to offer eachapplication a private connection to the rest of the Internet. Thatkeeps data more secure, and Coke's data crunch would affect Coke alone.It also lets the cloud provider set up automatic controls thatcompensate for events like sudden spikes in demand.

BenHorowitz, a partner in the investment firm Andreessen-Horowitz, says heand his partner Marc Andreessen, a cofounder of Netscape, quicklyrealized that Nicira was delivering something long overdue incomputing. "The total lack of innovation in networking compared tooperating systems or storage had been bothering us for a while," hesays. "It was holding back the industry." After meeting Casado,Horowitz invested in Nicira and joined its board. He saw in Niciraechoes of VMware, a company that helped set off the cloud computingboom and has a market capitalization of $40 billion. VMware's softwarecreates virtual computers inside a server, boosting the efficiency ofdata centers and driving down the cost of servers. Nicira's softwarepromises a similar instant upgrade to what a data center can do, byremoving the efficiency bottleneck imposed by networks.

FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT

Niciraalready has roughly a dozen customers, all of them large companies thatoffer services over the Internet. Several, such as Rackspace andJapan's NTT, the world's second-largest telecommunications provider,rent out clouds to other companies, a model known as the "publiccloud." Nicira's biggest opportunity lies in helping such landlords fixthe security and reliability problems that discourage large companiesfrom using the public cloud, says Steve Mullaney, a veteran executivein the networking business who joined Nicira as chief executive in2009, freeing Casado to be CTO. Mullaney left a VP position at PaloAlto Networks, a network security startup on track for a large IPO,because he saw in Nicira "the chance to do something really big." Thepublic cloud is now used by small and medium-sized business and newones like the social-gaming company Zynga, says Mullaney, but gettingvery large enterprises to follow suit promises "the big money." Anestimated $26 billion a year is spent on the public cloud today,according to Forrester Research. Mullaney thinks the market wouldexpand significantly if businesses, which spend $2 trillion a yearworldwide on IT infrastructure, were more inclined to trust thistechnology.

The Matrix-like control that Nicira offersshould also make the Internet more reliable. After the Fukushima-Daichinuclear disaster in Japan last March, electricity rationing and scarcesupplies of diesel for generators trapped some Web services offline inpowerless data centers. Last August NTT showed that Nicira's technologycould have kept those systems active by moving them rapidly elsewhere.In tests, software was smoothly transferred between data centers 30miles apart without even having to stop the programs from running. Evenas NTT's software moved to new physical hardware, Nicira's technologymaintained the illusion that nothing had changed. "We can move likeliquid between data centers ahead of brownouts," says Casado. Makingsuch transfers without Nicira's technology would mean laboriouslyreprogramming network hardware and turning off the system beingprotected from the brownout.

Such flexibility could alsomake it cost-effective for companies to call on the cloud only in thecircumstances when they need it most. Many online retailers today,Mullaney says, use roughly 40 percent of their computing infrastructurejust to handle seasonal rushes, leaving it idle for most of the year.Nicira speeds the process of moving into the rented cloud to such anextent that a company could scrap that idle hardware and turn to thecloud temporarily when traffic surges. That would keep it from havingto buy equipment that draws electricity even when idle. In a morefuturistic energy-saving scenario, customers' virtual networks couldmigrate from one data center to another around the world, temporarilysettling wherever power and cooling cost least.

And just as Keanu Reeves's character in The Matrixtweaks the virtual world to halt enemy bullets, Nicira's virtualnetworks could "change the laws of physics" for an attacker who gainedaccess to a computer connected to one of them, Casado says. Computers'apparent location, their apparent activities, and the type of trafficthey appear to be handling could all be altered to confuse a hacker."You have this full God-like control," he says.

Any bigchange to the status quo produces losers as well as winners. But whenasked who might be a victim of Nicira's success, Casado and Mullaney,sitting in Nicira's boardroom, exchange quick glances and are carefulnot to name any companies—even Cisco Systems, the world's leading makerof routers and switches. They're being diplomatic; Nicira has alreadyrecruited engineering and executive talent from Cisco, and Nicira'stechnology poses an even bigger threat. Cisco and other big networkingcompanies, such as Juniper, market their routers and switches on thestrength of the intelligence built into the chips inside, which isdifficult to modify. In Nicira's world, however, a network'sintelligence resides in its control software, and any network hardwarewill do—the cheaper the better. "A few years out, if I'm buying networkinfrastructure I just want the price to be right," says Casado. Recallwhat happened to the price of computer hardware in thepersonal-computing boom of the early 1980s.

IBM's PC standard separatedhardware and software, making operating systems like Microsoft Windowsthe focus of innovation while hardware became a race-to-the-bottomcommodity. Cisco and other vendors of traditional networking equipmentwill need to adapt, fast.
For its part, Cisco hasintroduced virtual versions of some data-center hardware, which offergreater flexibility than its traditional products. Yet it disputes theidea that this approach means hardware will be devalued. Guru Chahal, adirector of product management in the Cisco group that works onvirtualization, agrees that networks need to become more configurable.But he says that the solution will be to design hardware and softwaretogether. "At the end of the day, packets—data—are being forwarded byhardware," Chahal says.
Nicira's team is far from alonein seeking to overhaul the way we shuttle data around. Casado'sacademic collaborators at Stanford, Berkeley, and elsewhere are rapidlyramping up new projects in a field that has become known assoftware-defined networking, or SDN. (The term was coined by Technology Review when Casado and McKeown's work at Stanford was featured in the TR10in March/April 2009.) A handful of other startups are getting funded tocommercialize their own ideas, while large companies likeHewlett-Packard and IBM are creating network hardware that's designedto be more programmable.
But Nicira is establishing itselfmore quickly than other startups. In addition to NTT and Rackspace, itscustomers include AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Fidelity Investments, andeBay. And in Casado, Nicira has a figure widely recognized bycompetitors and colleagues alike as a fierce talent who has generatedand proved many of the very ideas now gaining traction.
Internettechnology has brought us a long way in 25 years, but the time has comefor it to grow up, he says. "Today it needs all this midwifing andmanual care and feeding. That has to change."

IT :: Myths about the FCC’s Internet Openness Rules

2012-02-15T00:31:00.000-08:00

The FCC’s December decision to adoptInternet Openness rules has been the subject of an extraordinary amountof heated rhetoric. If one sets aside the politics, however, thereality of the agency’s order does not come close to living up to thehype. Far from being radical, the FCC’s rules are in fact quitemoderate and leave ample flexibility. This document responds to someof the widely circulated myths about the Internet Openness rules.

Myth:
The FCC rules mean the Internet is now a regulated medium. Once the rules take effect, the government will be “regulating the Internet.”
Reality:
The FCC rules apply only to companies that provide Internet access – that is, the providers of the Internet’s physical “on ramps.” The vast universe of speech, commerce, and civic and social activitythat rides on top of the Internet remains just as unregulated as it wasbefore. In fact, the entire point of the rules is to ensure thatInternet access providers don’t act as de facto private regulators,picking winners and losers among online businesses and services.

Myth:
The FCC rules will radically change how the Internet works. This is a big departure from the status quo.
Reality:
Just the opposite: The rules protect againstradical changes in the way the Internet works, by ensuring thatconsumers will continue to have access the full Internet withouttampering or favoritism. The rules don’t interfere at all with theability of Internet service providers (ISPs) to keep on providingInternet access service as we know it. They merely prevent ISPs fromdiscarding traditional Internet access in favor of a more restricted,supervised offering – something that ISPs claim they have no intentionof doing anyway and that has long been discouraged by federal policyunder the FCC’s 2005 Internet policy statement.
Since the rulesreflect the way the Internet already works, key ISPs such as AT&Tand Comcast have said they don’t object to them. NCTA, the cableindustry association, has said that the FCC’s action “largely codifiesthe broadband Internet access providers’ current conduct, which doesn’tchange the economic status quo, whether in terms of investment or jobcreation.”

Myth:
This is a power grab by the FCC. In the absence of new legislation, the FCC has no jurisdiction over broadband.
Reality:
Ifthe FCC were asserting jurisdiction over all the activity that flowsover the Internet, that would indeed be a remarkable power grab. Butthe FCC is doing no such thing. Its Open Internet rules apply only tothe “pipes” – the physical communications links that connect people tothe Internet.
There is a long history of FCC jurisdictionregarding the provision of physical communications infrastructure. Ensuring that operators of such infrastructure do not abuse theirposition is a core function of the FCC. With respect to datacommunications in particular, in a long-running set of proceedingsstarting in 1971 known as the Computer Inquiries, the FCC focusedspecifically on the relationship between the operation of the physicalcommunications network and the offering of “enhanced services” (theprior label for “information services”). The new Open Internet rulesaddress the same fundamental issues.
Far from terminating thislongstanding FCC role, the 1996 Telecommunication Act effectivelycarried forward the Computer Inquiries regime. Nothing in that Actremotely envisioned that the FCC would be stripped of all authority inthis area at the very moment that data- and computer-related serviceswere assuming an unprecedented role in the nation’s commerce, civicdiscourse, education, and government.
The only real question regarding jurisdiction, then, should be the viability of the specific legal theorythe FCC relied on in its recent order. That will be tested in court –but Congress should keep in mind that the FCC chose its legal theory inan effort to compromise with the major carriers. Far from trying tograb power, the FCC was trying to take a light-touch, compromiseapproach.

Myth:
The existing legalframework has proved perfectly adequate to address any incidents thatarise, as the Comcast-BitTorrent and Madison River examples show. There’s no need to add new rules.
Reality:
Inthe wake of the D.C. Circuit’s ruling in the Comcast case, the priorlegal framework is in shambles. That framework had centered on the2005 Policy Statement and the threat that, if necessary, the FCC couldtake action. The court ruling has exposed that threat as toothless. Soeliminating the FCC rules would not take us back to the regime thatexisted from 2005 to 2010; rather, it would lead to a new, almost totalabsence of safeguards.
Nor does antitrust law offer muchprotection for Internet openness. Absent a clear anticompetitivemotive, network operators likely could curtail Internet openness in avariety of ways without running afoul of antitrust law. In short,antitrust’s prohibition against anticompetitive conduct is a far cryfrom any kind of affirmative policy to preserve the Internet’s uniquelyopen network structure. Nor can antitrust law take into account themajor non-economic reasons for maintaining an open Internet, such asthe impact on independent speech and civic empowerment. Finally, as apractical matter, antitrust cases tend to drag on for many years. Individual innovators and small startup companies – key beneficiariesof Internet openness – are unlikely to be in a position to bringantitrust cases against major network operators.

Myth:
There is no reason for the FCC to act now.Rather, it can wait and see what happens. If ISP practices develop inways that prove to be harmful, the FCC can always intervene at thattime.
Reality:
Once the damage isapparent, it may well be too late to go back. Imagine the FCC tryingto unravel a web of discriminatory deals after significantinvestments have been made and new business plans have been built, allbased on companies’ reasonable assumptions about what the legalframework permits. It would be a hugely difficult undertaking bothpolitically and logistically. Moreover, the very parties that todaysay that no “rules of the road” are needed would surely argue that,since companies had no warning that certain kinds of arrangements mightbe illegal, it would be unfair for the FCC to seek to nullify thosearrangements at a later date. Setting some ground rules in advancewould be far more efficient and effective than trying to reverseestablished “facts on the ground.”
Myth:
Competitionprovides a sufficient safeguard against any possible “bad behavior” byISPs. Consumers can always “vote with their feet.”
Reality:
First,consumers have very limited options for broadband – often just twoproviders. Second, switching ISPs is too big a hassle for consumers todo frequently or lightly. Third, consumers don’t have sufficientinformation; if a particular website or application performs poorly, aconsumer can’t tell if the cause is ISP-level discrimination or someother factor. Fourth, and most important, the bottom line is that oncea consumer has selected an ISP, other online companies and Internetusers can reach that consumer only via the facilities of thatISP. This is the “terminating monopoly” problem: subscribers mayoccasionally switch ISPs, but at any point in time each ISP has aneffective monopoly over the ability to reach its subscriber base. Youcan’t reach AT&T subscribers without handing off traffic toAT&T.

Myth:
The FCC rules helpsome companies at the expense of others. The rules effectively forceISPs to subsidize companies that deliver content and services over theInternet.
Reality:
Nobody issubsidizing anyone. On the Internet, everybody pays their way bycontracting with some ISP to “get connected.” Big users pay more: Amajor corporate provider of online content or services, for example,buys far more capacity than an individual subscriber. Each ISP thenturns around and negotiates with other carriers, including “backbone”providers, to route traffic to and from the rest of the Internet. Under this system, each and every bit that ISPs carry is traffic theyhave previously agreed to carry in the contracts they have negotiatedwith their subscribers and with other carriers. No ISP is somehowforced to carry traffic in excess of what it has already committed todo by contract, and no online content provider gets a free ride.
If anything, the new FCC rules preventsubsidization, by ensuring that ISPs cannot demand to “take a cut”whenever some other company wants to do business with the ISPs’subscribers. Allowing ISPs to run the equivalent of a protectionracket, in which online businesses have to pay the ISP to avoiddiscriminatory traffic handling, amounts to forced subsidization ofISPs by the rest of the Internet economy.

Myth:
TheFCC rules will prevent ISPs from adopting technically sound practicesto deal with the serious challenges of running a network – inparticular, the exploding bandwidth demands caused by the growing useof online video.
Reality:
The FCCrules are plenty flexible to permit reasonable ISP responses totechnical challenges. The rules only bar “unreasonable”discrimination, and they contain an open-ended exception for reasonablenetwork management. In addition, the FCC’s order specifically notesthat ISP actions to address congestion and bandwidth challengesdirectly, by charging for or reining in high-volume usage and users,does not violate the rules. When the concern is really about volume, there should rarely be a reason to discriminate based on the specific content or applicationa user chooses to access. The FCC’s rules do not affect the ability ofISPs to adopt volume-based policies or limits on bandwidth usage.

Myth:
The FCC rules will undermine investment inbroadband networks, because they will force ISPs to continue to relyexclusively on Internet subscribers to recoup costs. Allowing ISPs toseek deals with content providers could help generate additionalrevenues that could spur more deployment.
Reality:
First,jeopardizing the core characteristics that make the Internet such avaluable platform would be a terrible and ultimately counterproductiveway to try to spur investment in broadband. The Internet is a big hitwith subscribers, and demand for it continues to grow, preciselybecause it offers an open platform for a constantly changing array ofinnovative new services.
Second, the FCC’s rules do not precludeISPs from operating multiple services, with multiple revenue streams,over broadband networks. The rules allow the development of“specialized services,” for example.
Third, pay-for-priority arrangements actually discouragebroadband investment, by giving ISPs a strong financial incentive tomaintain bandwidth scarcity. Put simply, it’s hard to sell expresslane service when the regular lane is zipping right along. The moreISPs generate profits from pay-for-priority service, the less incentivethey have to stay ahead of bandwidth demand. Allowing ISPs to extractadditional revenues from online content and applications providers isnot a sound strategy for promoting broadband investment.

In Indonesia :: ‘FPI-Free’ Rally Marked by Fears Over Protection

2012-02-14T17:09:00.000-08:00

A peaceful rally at the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle in Jakarta meantto protest violent tactics used by some religious groups was marred byscuffles and uncertain police protection in the face of possibleconfrontation.

About 15 minutes into the rally, which began at 4p.m., police herded the estimated 150 protestors off the traffic circleto the front of Plaza Indonesia.

Organizers of the rally, agroup that called itself “FPI-Free Indonesia,” announced that policehad told them members of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) might be ontheir way to the site.

Ririn Sefani, one of the spokeswomen forthe event — inspired by the actions of the Dayak tribesmen inPalangkaraya, Central Kalimantan, on Saturday — said police had toldher, “If something happens [after the FPI arrives], it will not be ourresponsibility.”

Still, the majority of protesters, whoincluded a number of celebrities, did not budge. Shortly thereafter, anumber of men began to yank at the banners and posters, shouting“Disband this event! Disband!”

The crowd reacted immediately to prevent the interference, and police intervened in the melee to drag the interlopers away.

“Therewere several people we have had to escort to our post,” Jakarta Policeofficer M. Nababan said at the scene. Witnesses said four people weretaken from the site.

Nababan said he suspected the men were FPI spies or agents provocateur intending to stir up trouble.

“Ihave reminded the [protesters] to please be peaceful, but todayeverything could easily heat up,” he said. “What if it explodes? Whowill save the protesters?”

Sr. Comr. Rikwanto, a Jakarta Policespokesman, said the protesters were only asked to move so they did notdisrupt the flow of traffic in the busy street.

Ahmad SobriLubis, secretary general of the FPI, denied the hard-line group plannedto interfere in the protest but said some sympathizers were present.

“They said they wanted to go to check out the rally,” he said.

He insisted that the group at the traffic circle could not claim to represent all Indonesians.

“Howcould they claim it was the Indonesian people when there were only 60people with them?” he claimed. “The rest were police officers, streetvendors and journalists.”

Tunggal Pawestri, one of the protest’s spokeswomen, said the group was ready to hold another rally in the near future.

AlissaWahid, a daughter of late President Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid, saidif Indonesia wanted to stay on the map, people had to unite againstviolence.

“We want all the people to unite, reject any kind of violence, not only by the FPI,” she said.

DimasHary, another protester, said he was disappointed that the police hadrefused to do their job in the event of an FPI attack.

Web Technology :: The Year on the Web

2012-02-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

We've been living in the age of social media for a long time, but2011 was the year that all the information we share online began toaccrete into something greater than the sum of its parts. It iscreating a layer of intelligence that anyone can mine in Web searchesand that content creators can use to hone their services.

Thisis happening more readily because sharing our opinions and photos andstatus updates online isn't just a stand-alone application anymore—it'snow an activity embedded into other things. If you're reading anarticle online and want to recommend it, you don't have to click overto Facebook to tell your friends you liked it; now that more and moresites are connecting themselves to Facebook's "Open Graph," you canregister your approval on Facebook directly from the article's page.

This means that your friends can be guided to it when they show up at the same site. Google launched something similarthis year, so that you might see certain search results higher ifthey've been recommended by friends. That was just part of Google'sefforts to improve its grasp on social networking this year. Afterfailing last year to gain traction with a Twitter-like network calledBuzz, the search giant rolled out Google+, a service that embeds information sharing into many of Google's services.

At the same time, the data we generate with our sharing continues tomake it easier for advertisers to target product pitches more directly.In some cases, this is leading to new business models, in whichintelligence gleaned from social-media chatter is gathered and brokeredby companies such as Bluefin Labs. It also is turbocharging Facebook's existing ad model, setting the company up for the largest Web IPO of 2012.

The stock market was receptive enough to Web companies in 2011 that several had IPOs, including Zynga, Groupon,Pandora, Zillow, LinkedIn, and Renren, a Chinese version of Facebook.However, they quickly ran into skepticism about the sustainability oftheir growth rates, keeping their stock prices in check.

On the political front, 2011 brought intriguing and important developments as well. We saw the powerful ways social media can amplify dissent and free expression.That challenges authoritarian regimes—and anyone with secrets they'drather keep. Because of government pressure, several payment providersstopped facilitating donations to WikiLeaks, which made for a rocky year for the organization.

Future applications on the Web were enabled this year by the continuing advancement of HTML5, an emerging set of standards that will make websites faster and more elegant. Researchers also made important progress at improving the security of cloud computing services.

Butall the while, our growing reliance on the Web is animating a debateabout the potentially catastrophic effects of a cyberwar—an attack, orseries of attacks, meant to disable consumer or military resourcesonline. A top computer scientist recently suggestedthat the U.S. consider striking first against enemies who would be hardto pin down if they struck first. It's a reminder of the limits ofsocial networking: even as companies like Facebook map more and more ofthe online world, some sectors will remain in the shadows.

New Tech :: How Apple Can Revolutionize Television

2012-02-14T02:00:00.000-08:00

Rumor has it Apple is about to start making the the world's favorite gadget.
In a note sent to clients earlier this week, Piper Jaffray analyst (and longtime Apple TV enthusiast) Gene Munster saidhe’d spoken to a major television component maker that has beencontacted by Apple about the capabilities of its display components.

Somepeople wonder whether Apple would really choose to enter a marketthat’s so crowded, and that offers such slim margins for manufacturers.But similar doubts were raised before Apple launched the iPhone, and,of course, it went on to take over that market, primarily by deliveringa remarkably simple and intuitive user interface and experience.

Withany luck, Apple will bring similar innovation to the living room. Thetelevision interface is a huge mess, and a huge opportunity. Instead ofa multitude of remote controls for different devices and several poorlythought-out graphical interfaces, imagine a simple, intuitive way tonavigate the lineup for an evening's entertainment. Even diehard Appleholdouts would surely welcome that.

I can't think of a betterway to do this than putting Siri, Apple's intelligent assistant for theiPhone, into a television. I’ve been experimenting with Siri for awhile, and talking to experts about how it works. It seems perfectlysuited to a relatively narrow range of tasks like searching for shows,scheduling recordings, and answering simple questions about the week'sschedule. By syncing with iCloud, a Siri-enabled TV could even be usedto dictate e-mails, create calendar entries, and set reminders.

Apple could, of course, also innovate when it comes to deliveringcontent, as it did with music through iTunes. In his note, Munster laysout three ways that the company might approach the TV market: with 1) adevice that offers a better software interface for managing televisioncontent, “much like TiVO”; 2) a device that combines TV from networkchannels with Web-based content; and 3) a device that offers monthlysubscriptions to content from various providers.

Apple may welltry strategy 2 or 3. But I still think the biggest opportunity lies insolving the perennial problem of the televisual user experience. Lookat Google TV; its disappointing sales have largely been blamed on a bewilderingly complex control and interface.

AsMunster wrote in his note to clients: “Apple only enters mature marketswith the goal of revolutionizing them, as it did with the smart phone.”

New Tech :: Printed Stickers Designed to Monitor Food Temperatures

2012-02-13T03:30:00.000-08:00

A plastic temperature-recording sticker that could provide detailedhistories of crates of food or bottles of vaccine would be the first touse all-printed electronics components—including memory, logic, andeven the battery. The cost per sticker could be only 30 cents or less.

ThinFilm Electronics, based in Oslo, Norway, aims to marry the company'sprinted memory with printed transistors from PARC in Palo Alto,California; a printed temperature sensor from PST Sensors, a spin-offfrom the University of Cape Town in South Africa; and a printed batteryfrom Imprint Energy, a spin-off from the University of California,Berkeley. The first prototype using all the components is expectedlater this year.

"There are lots of efforts in academia and research where they playwith printing electronics," says Janos Veres, who manages the printedelectronics team at PARC. What's new is "somebody trying to do itcommercially and figuring out what are the first things you can makewith 10 or 20 bits of memory and a simple battery," he says. "We need alibrary of different building blocks that are made by the same standardmanufacturing process to get this ecosystem working."

The envisioned product will be designed to work either with aprinted display or a contact readout, and include a battery that canlast six to nine months, allowing the sticker to make a continuousrecord of temperature. Existing temperature sensor stickers that costjust pennies offer a crude measurement—using a chemical reaction tochange color when they hit certain thresholds, alerting to possiblespoilage.

Printed power: Printed rechargeablebattery cells, made by a startup spun out of the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, can be made in various shapes. They will be usedto power the temperature monitoring system.

Predicts America's Political Winners

2012-02-13T02:30:00.000-08:00

Data scientists at Yahoo are using prediction markets—along withpolls, sentiment analysis on Twitter, and trends in search queries—tocreate the mother of all political prediction engines. The projectinvolves Web-based prediction markets like Intrade, in which largenumbers of people bet on the outcomes of elections.

The researchers behind this effort, David Rothschild, an economist at Yahoo Research, and Dave Pennock, a computer scientist at Yahoo Research, call their effort the Signal.They plan to produce data visualizations that best convey probabilityto a lay audience, and to publish work on machine learning andfundamental economic models based on the effort.

They'll get the public involved in all this political andmathematical wonkiness with fun and games. Drawing on Yahoo's successwith fantasy sports leagues—for which the company is the biggestcommunity on the planet—Rothschild and Pennock have created "FantasyPolitics," in which users can bet on the outcomes of pretty muchanything.

"We're going to let people [bet on simple predictions] like 'theDemocrats will win California,' " says Pennock. "But if they want togeek out, they could bet on the odds that 'the Democrats will win bothOhio and Florida,' or 'the Republicans will win Florida but lose theelection.' "

Such bets will take Yahoo's political prediction markets, which willroll out in spring, to a level of complexity and predictive power notseen elsewhere, says Pennock.

The Signal will use these markets and other real-time data streams.The prediction markets run by the Signal are polled constantly, as willbe the results of analysis of Yahoo search queries and Twitter.

Sentimentanalysis, or the effort to automatically determine how people feelabout something based on how they communicate about it, is "at aninfant stage," says Rothschild, but it can provide insight that no pollcan match.

ERP :: Wolfram Alpha :: Data Analysis for the People

2012-02-13T01:30:00.000-08:00

Wolfram Alpha looks like a Web search engine but can answer queries such as "how old is President Obama?" or "heart disease risk 50-year-old male."New features launching Wednesday allow users of a premium version toupload their own data to have Wolfram Alpha chart, visualize, andanalyze it. The tools could appeal to those who feel swamped byspreadsheets, numbers, and lists, claims Stephen Wolfram, founder ofthe company behind the site, Wolfram Research. The premium version willcost $4.99 a month, or $2.99 a month for students.

Wolfram Alpha Premium can recognize certain types of data and evencertain types of content inside a file. Uploading an archive from ane-mail mailbox will produce a diagram showing the connections betweendifferent senders (see image at top) or a chart showing your mostfrequent mail recipients. If a spreadsheet contains country or citynames, Wolfram Alpha will automatically offer a shaded map (see page2). It can even draw on its own data sources to enhance thatvisualization with information on population, GDP, or other factors.Users of the service can upload more than 60 different types of data,ranging from audio files and video to 3-D models.

At a briefing yesterday, Wolfram said his site's new capabilitieswill democratize the use of data analysis. "It's time to reduce thethreshold for people doing things with data," he said. "If there's aquestion that can be answered by an expert using data that you have,then you can [now] get it automatically."

Wolfram said he believed that many people who don't normally tinkerwith data would do it if it were made easy enough. He drew an analogywith the early days of Google's search engine. "People might have said,there are very few reference librarians in the world, why on earthwould there be lots of people that want to find things on the Web? Itbecame so easy to do those queries that very many people did it, andthe same thing is happening with data here."

Social graph:The premium version of Wolfram Alpha automatically works out how tovisualize data you provide, in this case mapping connections in ane-mail archive.

In Central Kalimantan Dayak community FPI Decline

2012-02-13T01:00:00.000-08:00

Palangkaraya,

The Dayak in Central Kalimantanrejected if the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) activityin Central Kalimantan. They also rejectthe presence of FPI founder Habib Rizieqwhich will hold a grand sermons inPalangkaraya, Central Kalimantan,on Sunday (2/12/2012) tomorrownight.

Vice Chairman of the Council of Indigenous Dayak(DAD) Kalteng LukeTingkes in Palangkaraya,Saturday (11/2), said it had sent a letter to Police (Police) toprohibit the formation of FPI Central Kalimantan.

The existence of such mass organizations concernedto make people uneasy.Luke said it wouldlower the banners related to FPI andHabib Rizieq eventsin Central Kalimantan. The drop was not done ina way that anarchists. "Notby force," he said.

Chairman of the Youth Movement of Central Kalimantan Dayak Yansen Bint saidhe was informed that the formation of FPI inCentral Kalimantan will be performedat least in Palangkaraya,and Kotawaringin Kapuasand East. Massorganizations are concerned about lead to conflict.

Protest :: Web Protests Weaken Antipiracy Bills

2012-02-12T17:10:00.000-08:00

Online protests mobilized by Google, Wikipedia, and many otherwebsites yesterday have at least slowed the progress of twocontroversial antipiracy bills, with more than 30 senators quicklydropping support for them.

Entire sites, logos, and website backgrounds were “blacked out” inprotest by opponents of the near-identical Stop Online Piracy Act inCongress and the Protect I.P. bill in the Senate. Most participatingsites also posted lengthy criticism of the bills.

Legislators who went public with their opposition to the bills inresponse to the protests included several who had either cosponsored orhelped write them. But the bills still have support, and they arelikely to be amended rather than dropped altogether.

With all the hullabaloo, it was easy to lose sight of what the billswould actually do. The most common objection is that they proposecomplex and potentially problematic workarounds in an attempt to stop the piracy that new technology makes possible.

The bills would make it possible for U.S. courts to order companiesto block access to sites that are accused of serving up piratedmovies, music, or TV shows, or to redirect traffic somewhere else.
Frustrated by the ease with which people can download this stuff,especially through sites hosted outside the United States, contentcompanies have pushed for a technical solution that would at leastblock access from within the country. In truth, the only solution is toforge some sort of legal agreement with the countries in whichinfringement occurs, but this is hardly a likely prospect.
If you’re interested in finding out more about what the bills would do, you can read them for yourselves here:

Media :: Facebook: the revenge of the nerds

2012-02-12T03:30:00.000-08:00

We'll look at the other side of the coin in a moment,but first let's give credit where it's due and admire the obverse: I'mdelighted to see Facebook going public, just deserts for Mark Zuckerberg and his group of very smart techies.

If you have the time and inclination, take a walk through Facebook's SEC S-1 filing in preparation for its IPO – you won't regret it. Pay particular attention to the manifesto Zuckerberg calls The Hacker Way and allow this ageing geek (I'll soon be 28) to sing its praises. Consider this verse:

"We have a saying: "Move fast and break things." The idea is that if younever break anything, you're probably not moving fast enough."

Where others have stumbled as they shuffled, Zuckerberg and his ganghave raced to create a technical giant. The infrastructure required tosupport 845 million "monthly active" users that upload 250m photos eachday might not be Google-sized (yet), but it's definitely Google-class.

King geek: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Toshow off this plumbing, Zuckerberg & Co. took a few pages fromApple's (and Google's) stylebook: They stuck to a simple, clean UI –unlike Myspace and its pavement pizza chic.

Facebook's success isn't just a sweet retort to Zuckerberg's critics,it's a confirmation of what makes Silicon Valley tick: techies, geeks,and nerds. While the technoïds aren't always right – far from it – thegreat ones end up making and running great companies.

Theestablishment bluestockings may roll their eyes at the hoodies and barefeet, but look at what happens when the suits take over. Look at HP,Yahoo, or Cisco; regard Apple during its dark age.
It wasn't verylong ago, I recall gleefully, that the kommentariat cluck-cluckeddisapprovingly over the founder's "obvious'' immaturity, his tactlessmanagement style, his poor public-speaking manner. But when you readFacebook's S1, you'll realise how good a negotiator Zuckerberg musthave been early on.
Since its inception, the company has raised about $1.5bn (£952m),an unusually large amount for a startup, and well above the thresholdthat usually translates into management castration as investors demanda bigger share of the spoils, ransom for their assumption of greaterrisk.
Instead, Zuckerberg got investors to go for the radius of the pizzaas opposed to the angle of the slice, their ownership percentage.Zuckerberg may own "only" 28% of Facebook, but he manufacturedagreements that give him effective control of the company with 57% ofvoting rights.
Some will downplay the achievement: "He must have gotten good advice." Of course … but he followedit. When you're in charge, the quality of the advice is no excuse forbad performance; conversely, good advice shouldn't be used to dismissgood results.
Speaking of which, in 2011, the company's revenue was $3.7bn, with a tidy $1bn profit and $3.8bn in cash – to which they'll be adding at least $5bn in the upcoming IPO. This is a nicely profitable company.

The Washington Post's Wonkblog put Facebook's performance in graphic perspective:

Take a look at the number of employees: a mere 3,200. With $3.7bn inrevenue, that works out to $1.2m per worker. Turning to cash per worker($3.9bn/3,200=$1.2m), Facebook is about as rich as Uncle Apple's $1.3mcash per "full-time equivalent" employee. It's a remarkable achievementfor any company, and unheard of for one so young.

But it's not all roses.
As Zuckerberg's Letter To Investors properly contends, Facebook can "change how people relate to their governments and social institutions" and "improve how people connect to businesses and the economy".
Makingtons of money in the process is totally legit … as long as a keycondition is met: informed consent. And "informed consent" mean justthat: information that a reasonably attentive individual – as opposedto an Apple patent attorney – can understand.

On this count,Facebook's actions have been less than transparent. Perhaps it's aconsequence of the Hacker Way: ship first, ask questions later. Orperhaps Facebook is betting we're too lazy and ignorant to read thefine print, just like wireless carriers who try to dazzle us with theirsleight-of-plan hoodwinks.

Furthermore, Facebook's ubiquity and power raises the spectre of yet another Walled Garden:is Zuckerberg's company killing the Open Web by superimposing aproprietary lattice of connections between users, including companiesthat use Facebook to do business with its community?
Many have noted that Google can't really index the Facebook web. As John Batelle puts it:

"Sure, Google can crawl Facebook's "public pages," but those represent atiny fraction of the "pages" on Facebook, and are not informed by thecrucial signals of identity and relationship which give those pagesmeaning."

(True. But does Google want to index Facebook? Behind theOpen posture stands Google's real aim: bulldozing anything and anyonestanding between their ad engines and their targets.)
Lastly, let's consider the Web 2.0 proverb: if the product is free, you are the product. With that in mind, I couldn't help wince at the opening of Zuckerberg's Letter To Investors:

Facebookwas not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplisha social mission – to make the world more open and connected.

It reminded me of the Don't Be Evil puffery in Google's own S-1:

Don'tbe evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be betterserved – as shareholders and in all other ways – by a company that doesgood things for the world even if we forgo short-term gains. This is animportant aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within thecompany.

When I read those words back in 2004, Ithought Google was either incredibly naive or a little too obvious inits do-good posture. Either way, we know what has happened: Googleneeds to be all things to all people, all the time, everywhere, onevery device, in order to irradiate us with its advertising photons.Google's motto should be Disintermediation R'Us. Instead, its mission statement reads:

Organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

… all in the name of selling ads.
In his letter, Zuckerberg comes up with a similarly lofty sentiment:

Thereis a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the worldconnected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society forthe future.

I don't mean to diminish Zuckerberg's accomplishments. He's built an epoch-making company,I'm delighted by the team of highly skilled technologists he'sassembled – a team that includes some dear friends of mine – and thetech culture they evince.

He's surrounded himself with sharpbusiness people and extracted oodles of money from strong investors;he's Bill Gates/Larry Ellison/Page+Brin caliber or above … and I'mthrilled to see the former naysayers now eating out of his hand.
So why not just say something like:

Wehelp people connect in safe, convenient and innovative ways. In doingso, we've built a business of historic proportions. We make moneyselling advertising that is finely tuned to reach our users incost-competitive ways. Because we believe in Facebook's unlimitedpotential, we will manage ourselves for the long term rather than forshort-term profit. We have built an ownership and control structure toaccomplish this goal.

There's good evidence that thepeople who buy Amazon, Google and Facebook shares are willing to letthese companies run for the long term rather than for the next quarter.Smart people don't need lofty mission statements to guide theirinvestments, they watch what the execs do and decide if they're using"the long term" as an excuse or if they're really aiming for it.

Padang Mount sites Older than the Pyramids of Giza

2012-02-12T03:00:00.000-08:00

Of the stone stairs to the top of megalithic sites in the Village of Mount Padang Karyamukti, District Campaka, Cianjur, West Java.

Ancient catastrophic Disaster Research Team strongly suspect the existence of the pyramid at the site of Mount Padang in Cianjur and Mount Sadahurip Garut district, West Java. Was mired in controversy alleged archaeologists and geologists who had examined the sites of geological and archaeological heritage.

According to one member of the Ancient catastrophic Disaster Research Team, Danny Hilman, they drilled to depth of 20 meters on Mount Padang, not far from the megalithic sites, and found three cavities in the body of the mountain. One third of the room measuring 10 meters x 20 meters. Third-story room.
The results were presented on Tuesday, the Office of the Cabinet Secretariat. "So far, archaeologists looked only at megalithic sites in the upper layer. Has not been much research into the deeper parts, "says Danny.

According to him, consider the findings of previous researchers in the Gunung Padang just plain megalithic sites. The results of the drilling team found a base layer of the building foundation was 4700 BC. Older than the pyramids of Giza in Egypt 3500 BC old.

Andang Bachtiar, who is also a member of the research team Purba catastrophic disaster, say, drilling discovered a layer of sand. "We are looking for whether it is the technology layer antigempa," he said.
Not to mention there is clarification of the existence of the pyramids, the team also suspect there are pyramids on Mount Sadahurip. The team also observed the physical form of the mountain like a pyramid.

The discovery at the site and Padang Sadahurip claimed some of its findings Ancient catastrophic disaster team formed the Special Staff of President Field of Social Assistance and Natural Disasters, Andi Arief. Nine-member team of people from various disciplines, such as geology, geophysics, paleotsunami (the science of ancient tsunami), paleosedimentasi, geodinamika, archaeologists, philologists (scholars of ancient manuscripts), and anthropologists.

The team is also investigating several sites elsewhere. The goal is to understand what there is great natural events that destroys human civilization at that time. The study will continue through the next 2.5 years of research approaches, a survey, ancient manuscripts, and others.

Rebuttal
Some geologists and archaeologists deny the existence of pyramid building in the mountain. Sutikno Bronto, geologists who study ancient volcano, said the two mountains was "just" an ancient volcano. Not contain the pyramid mound.

The characteristics of the location of an ancient volcano, continued Sutikno, the constituent rocks of local volcanic activity. Age of an ancient volcano Padang more than 2 million years, while Sadahurip thousands of years.

Geologists of BP Migas, Awang Harun Saty

Web Tech :: TalkTalk loses another 50,000 customers

2012-02-11T01:30:00.000-08:00

TalkTalk has reported a fifthconsecutive quarter of customer defections, with 50,000 lost in thethree months to the end of December as the company continues to traillarger rivals BT Group and BSkyB.
The broadbandand TV provider has lost 170,000 customers since November 2010,bringing its total down to 4.079 million, as BT and Sky continued toattract the lion's share of new broadband customers and poach businessfrom rivals.
However, TalkTalk's share price raced up 9% to 130pin morning trading on Tuesday, as investors cheered a raised profitforecast from chief executive Dido Harding.
Full-year underlyingearnings are now expected to be between 18% and 19% of revenues, upfrom previous guidance of 17% to 18% and an improvement on last year's15.6% margin.
Revenues in the third quarter remained stable,rising £1m from the second quarter to £422m, but were down 5% on thesame period the previous year. However, the business is becoming moreprofitable as the number of customers using its network of lines"unbundled" from BT's exchanges continues to grow.
Average revenue per user for TalkTalk broadband customers increased to £25.30, compared with £24.70 in the previous quarter.
"Weare growing the number of customers on our network every week and thatis what is driving the performance of our business," Harding said.
"Wehave continued to improve our customers' experience with further fallsin customer service call volumes and an increase in the rate of onlineself-service. As a result, churn has stabilised and we remain confidentof a return to positive total net adds in the first half of 2012."
TalkTalkhad originally hoped to start growing customer numbers in the finalmonths of 2011, but a mounting subscriber exodus delayed that target.

Formedthrough the rapid mergers of broadband companies including Tiscali,Pipex and Carphone Warehouse, TalkTalk has been struggling to integrateits billing platforms.

It was fined £3.1m by Ofcom after wrongly billing thousands of Tiscali customers for services they did not receive.

Thegroup has lost 43,000 broadband customers in the past two quarters,including 7,000 of the 200,000 former Pipex subscribers in the mostrecent period.

Levels of customer churn were not disclosed, butTalkTalk said it remained stable on the previous quarter despite thePipex defections, with call volumes to its customer service centre down26% year-on-year and 60% of customer contacts now taking place online.

TalkTalkunbundled – installed its own equipment – in 130 new BT exchangesduring the quarter, bringing the total to 2,338, with a further 119expected in the final quarter.

The work is designed to improvecustomer numbers and profitability, because TalkTalk can offer lowerprices but still make a bigger profit margin on unbundled lines.
The group said 80% of its customers are now on fully unbundled lines.

HomesafeTM,an optional product which blocks pornography and self-harm sites, hasbeen activated by a further 60,000 customers, bringing the total to270,000, despite concerns raised by internet privacy groups over its ability to track every website visited by a user.

The company is about to begin consumer trials of on-demand internet TV service YouView, a joint venture with other backers including the BBC and BT.

YouView and is on track for its scheduled launch this spring, TalkTalk confirmed.
Thearrival of YouView could boost the numbers buying super-fast fibreoptic broadband from TalkTalk, which remain low at just 5,000.

"Atthe moment there are very few households who genuinely really needfibre but that will change over time as demand for multiple live videoviewing within a single household grows," Harding said.

Padang Mount and the Mystery of 2500 BC.

2012-02-11T00:30:00.000-08:00

Padang Mount, located in Mount Campaka, Cianjur, West Java, a mystery buried since 2500 BC. For there are sites that are silent witnesses of past lives.

"Chance was built in 2500 BC and built with the predicted location of full consideration, so it fits all. Site is located in the middle of tea gardens," said the former Chairman of West Java Architect, Dr. Pon Purajatnika, in a discussion titled 'Reveals the veil of civilization and catastrophic disasters early in the archipelago to strengthen the national character and resilience 'in Bakti Krida Building, Jl Veteran, Jakarta, Tuesday (02/07/2012).

In the mountains there are chunks of rock are arranged regularly, so it is impossible allegedly made by nature. There are so climb stairs, terraces punden similar.

"It shows the social order. There is a throne for the leadership. There for smart scholars and so on," said Pon.

The remains of ancient buildings that survive from the past until now indicate the existence of indigenous people who built it. They know how to build a large building strong again.

"There are plaster and stairs. They are wise in making construction. There is a layer of sand retaining lateral force," he added.

According to Pound, this building may be older than the pyramids in Peru, Machu Picchu was built around 1450 BC. "There is a technology similar to Machu Picchu. Lest they imitate us ha ha," Pon said jokingly.

The site is important, because there is no mystery. Because from there you can learn about astrology, form of buildings, irrigation systems, agriculture. There is also an ancient disaster what had occurred there. And how people who used to live in mountain species.

New Tech :: Google introduces Chrome for phone

2012-02-10T17:13:00.000-08:00

Search giant to replace web browser in Android smartphones with revamped version named after its Chrome desktop product.

Google is to replace the web browser in Android smartphones with a revamped version named after its Chrome desktop product, as the search giant redoubles its efforts to knock Microsoft off the top perch in the battle of the browsers.
Chromefor phone, which is faster, links to the user's desktop and allows anunlimited number of pages to remain open simultaneously, begins itspublic "beta" trial on Tuesday, and may move to a full launch thisspring.

The upgrade reinforces Google's push to eat intoMicrosoft's dominance of web browsers. Since Chrome for desktopcomputers was launched in October 2008, Microsoft's Internet Explorer has dropped from a 67% to 37% market share, according to analysis by StatCounter.

Chrome,which has 200 million users worldwide, overtook Firefox, an independentopen source browser funded by a trust, as the second most popular inDecember 2011 and now has a 29% market share, with Firefox at 25%.

Ina move designed to tie users more closely to Google products andservices, Chrome desktop users will be able to call up on their phone,at the touch of one button, the last set of web pages opened on theirdesktop.

The feature should be useful for those leaving theoffice in a hurry: look up the location of a meeting but forget toprint out the map, and the phone can open the map page without havingto carry out a new search. Start work on an online document at theoffice and continue adding to it on the move without having to spendtime retrieving it.
Bookmarks saved on Chrome for desktop arealso automatically available on the browser of any smartphone, tabletor laptop also using Chrome. A user's various Chrome browsers willsynchronise with each other every two minutes.
Google claimsChrome is faster than many other browsers because of technology thatanticipates which page a user is going to click on next so that it canstart pre-loading it, and in a demonstration at Google's Londonheadquarters on Tuesday, Chrome completed the loading of pagescontaining rich media such as photos and videos more quickly thanApple's Safari browser on an iPhone.

Chrome for phone will workonly on the latest version 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich version ofGoogle's Android phone operating system. The browser will only beavailable to Android phones during the trial period, but a Googlespokesperson said it hoped eventually to release versions for alloperating systems including Apple's iOS for iPhones.

Chrome willcome pre-installed on Android phones as the default browser, althoughusers will be free to select a rival such as Firefox, Dolphin andOpera. The advent of an improved browser is likely to slow the adoptionon smartphones of independent alternatives, which have attracted praisein comparison with Android's current offering.

Google calls thisseamless link between devices the "personal web", and it is clearlydesigned to ensure that it retains control of the gateways to theinternet on all devices.

The development is yet another sign thatGoogle is deploying a strategy very similar to Apple's – tyingcustomers into the brand on whatever screen they happen to be using.Unlike Apple, Google does not manufacture hardware, and wants itssoftware to be available on any device its users choose to buy.

Chrome'spresence as an operating system on desktop computers is alsonegligible. But with most activities moving off the desktop and on tothe internet, a suite of tools such as email, Chrome and Google Docs,plus sharing services like Google+ and YouTube, have given the companya daily visibility on Apple and Microsoft machines that no advertisingspend could buy.

So much so that it no longer feels appropriateto refer to Google as a search giant. Although without search dollars,none of these market share building but so far loss-making activitieswould be possible.

Al Shabab Join with Al Qaeda That Which Has Wrong Wrong Docrin

2012-02-10T16:36:00.000-08:00

Themilitant group Al Shabaab Somalia has joined ranks with Al Qaeda, AlQaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri announced via a video message releasedon Thursday.

"Iam announcing a major good news for the creation of our country, whichwould ... disrupt the crusaders, and it is the incorporation of AlShabaab movement in Somalia with the Al Qaeda," Zawahiri said.

Thefirst part of the video footage that showed Al Shabaab leader AhmedAbdi Godane, also known as Mukhtar Abu Zubayr, told Zawahiri, "We willbe with you as a loyal troops.""On behalf of my mujahideen brothers, leaders and soldiers ... I promise to obey," said Zubair."Leadus to the path of jihad and martyrdom in the steps outlined our martyrOsama bin Laden to us," said Zubair, referring to the former leader ofAl Qaeda who died last year in a secret U.S. raid on his hideout inPakistan.

Al Shabaab group claimed allegiance to bin Laden in a videotape distributed in 2009.AlShabab waging this war for several years in an attempt to toppleSomalia's transitional government and UN support for African Uniontroops to combat. The group's name came to light after the deadly attacks in Kampala in July 2010.

U.S. officials said the Al Shabaab group could lead to a wider global threat.Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for attacks in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, on July 11 that killed 79 people. Thebombing was the worst attack in eastern Africa since the attacks onU.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam which is claimed by AlQaeda in 1979.

Washington called Al Shabaab as a terrorist organization with close ties to Al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.

AlShabaab's hardline militia and its allies tried to overthrow thegovernment of President Sharif Ahmed as they launched a deadly attackin May two years ago. Theyface fierce opposition from pro-government militia groups that opposethe imposition of strict Islamic law in the areas of central andsouthern Somalia under their control.

AlShabaab and other militant guerrilla groups want to impose strictIslamic law in Somalia and has also conducted the executions, stonings,and amputations in southern and central regions.Somalia hit by power struggle and anarchy since warlords toppled military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. In addition to piracy, kidnapping and deadly violence also hit the country.

Nature's Book

2012-02-10T03:30:00.000-08:00

he wireless device could hardly be simpler in its appearance, but itrepresents years of research: a small metal rectangle, as thin as acredit card, is dropped into a glass of ordinary water and placed inthe sun. Within seconds, bubbles begin to flow—oxygen from one side,hydrogen from the other.

Daniel Nocera, a professor ofenergy and of chemistry, calls this device an artificial leaf, andindeed it carries out a simple version of the same trick that leavesperform every day: it converts sunlight into a chemical fuel. Thiscounters one of solar energy's biggest drawbacks—the sun doesn't alwaysshine—by making it possible to store the energy indefinitely and use itwhen needed.

The artificial leaf is a sheet ofsemiconducting silicon, the material used in most solar cells, coatedon one side with a cobalt-based catalyst and on the other with anickel-molybdenum-zinc alloy. The silicon turns incoming sunlight intoelectricity that chemically splits water molecules with the help of thecatalysts. First the cobalt compound releases oxygen from a pair ofwater molecules, producing O₂. That process causes hydrogenatoms to be released as ions; the nickel alloy catalyzes a reactionthat recombines them with previously released electrons, yielding H2molecules that can power a fuel cell.

Green light Daniel Nocera’s artificial leaf converts sunlight into a chemical fuel. Credit: Dominick Reuter

Other attempts to use sunlight to split water have relied oncorrosive solutions or on relatively rare and expensive materials suchas platinum, and they required extra equipment like wires, controllers,or batteries. The new device, Nocera says, is wireless and madeentirely of abundant, inexpensive materials. He and his colleaguesdiscovered the potential of the cobalt compound for freeing oxygen fromwater in 2008, but the technology is not yet ready for commercialproduction, since systems to collect, store, and use the gases remainto be developed. "It's a step," he says. "It's heading in the rightdirection."

Ultimately, Nocera sees a future in whichindividual homes could be equipped with solar collection systems basedon this principle. Panels on the roof could use sunlight to producehydrogen and oxygen that would be stored in tanks and then fed to afuel cell when electricity is needed. Such systems, he hopes, could bemade simple and inexpensive enough to be widely adopted throughout theworld, bringing reliable sources of electricity to areas that currentlydon't have them.

Nocera's ongoing research with theartificial leaf, he says, is directed toward "driving costs lower andlower" and improving the wireless system's efficiency, which is nowabout 2.5 percent. Another line of research is to explore the use ofalternative photovoltaic materials such as iron oxide, which might beeven cheaper to work with than silicon. "It's all about providingoptions for how you go about this," he says.

World War :: Israel attack Iran April

2012-02-10T00:30:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta believes Israel may attack Iran in the spring of this year to prevent Tehran has nuclear weapons.

U.S. Defense Secretary Panetta believes there is a strong possibility that Israel would attack Iran on Apri, May or June, before the Iran into what he described Israel as a "zone of immunity" to start making a nuclear bomb, according to an article written by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius.

The article stated Obama and Panetta had warned Israel that the United States against attack, and believe it will derail the success of international economic sanctions and other nonmilitary efforts to stop Iran crossing the nuclear threshold.

Although it believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not taken a final decision to attack Iran, senior U.S. officials are still worried about the "spring guns and unwanted consequences," added the article.

Life Style :: In the U.S., Jews & Muslims 'Unity' For Food

2012-02-09T08:12:00.000-08:00

SALT LAKE CITY

Jewish and Muslim local community held a joint meeting of the 'interfaith roundtable'. "Jewish and Muslim community here has always had a great relationship," says Alan Bachman meeting coordinator, was quoted as saying deseretnews.com, Monday (6/2).

This meeting is part of the show for a month by the Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable, which explores the theme of 'love, harmony and understanding among all faith traditions'.

This meeting is also to promote more than 20 events will be held at places of worship throughout the Salt Lake City, to promote religious understanding growing between the two religions.

Jewish Congregation Kol Ami and the Islamic Society of Salt Lake as an honored guest. Keduannya provide cuisine to be sampled together on Sunday (5/2). Food prepared in line with the principles of both faiths are Kosher and halal foods. Both concepts are intended to symbolize the similarity between the two religions.

"In principle foods, we are more similarities than differences," said Muslim residents, Sharifa Kudiya. Kudiya, who lives in Draper, making halva, pasta desserts including cream of wheat, turmeric and coriander. The halva is eaten with honey cake made by Karen McArthur of Kol Ami.

Jewish rabbi, Ilana Schwartzman welcomes this event. He said the food, especially in the Jewish tradition, promote understanding and unity in times of sadness and joy. "There is so much strife in this world between Islam and Judaism. And we try to find common ground," said Schwartzman.

Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable was first held 10 years ago. Interfaith Week is a time for reflection for both Muslim and Jewish communities to tolerate each other. Currently this week has been used as an interfaith celebration for a month and followed from some other religions.

New Tech :: Apple cracks down on iPhone firms using appayola marketing services

2012-02-09T03:00:00.000-08:00

Ferocious competition on the App Store means many iOS developers eagerly embrace any tool or service promising to send their apps soaring up the charts. However, Apple has reminded app-makers that using some services may lead to them being stripped of the right to release apps for its store.

Theidea of appayola – paying to artificially inflate an app's chartranking – isn't new. A previous Apple crackdown saw developers barredfrom using the platform of US startup TapJoy, which involved offeringfree virtual currency or rewards in one game if a player installedanother.

The latest controversy focuses on an unnamed startup, first referenced by a developer posting on the forum of mobile gamessite Touch Arcade. In it, they claimed to have been contacted by acompany charging $5,000 to guarantee a Top 25 App Store placement for afree app.

"He said he had outsourced someone to build him a botfarm and the bots will automatically download his clients' apps anddrive up their rankings," claimed the developer.

"He even told methat even though I might see my app climb up the app store, they aren't"REAL" at first until it gets to the top and that's when REAL HUMANplayers will start seeing my app and play it."
The post named oneiOS games publisher, CrowdStar, as being one of the heaviest users ofthe unnamed bot farm, although its co-founder Suren Markosian posted a defenceon the same forum thread, suggesting that "I don't think this post isbased on any deep knowledge on how top players are marketing theirgames in the app store".

He pointed to the use by his company andrivals of "legitimate" advertising services including Flurry,ChartBoost and Apple's own iAds.

"While I sympathize with thesmaller developers who may not have as much funding as we do and feelthat we are getting a free ride the fact is we are spending significantmarketing dollars to achieve top ratings," wrote Markosian.

Whatdoes Apple think of this marketing dollars investment, though? Thecompany has responded swiftly to the forum thread and subsequentcoverage online, posting a message on its website for iOS developers warning them off artificial inflation of their apps' chart rankings.
"Onceyou build a great app, you want everyone to know about it. However,when you promote your app, you should avoid using services thatadvertise or guarantee top placement in App Store charts," says themessage.

"Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulatingApp Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do soon your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Programmembership. Get helpful tips and resources on marketing your apps theright way from the App Store Resource Center."
Well, indeed. Theproblem here is that the freemium apps market on iOS – particularlygames – is so crowded and yet so lucrative for the apps that manage tocut through the crowd. It's been that way for a while, too.

In July 2011, analytics company Flurry claimedthat 65% of the revenues generated by the 100 Top Grossing games on iOSwere from freemium titles, up from 39% in January 2011. Apple's own Rewind chart in December 2011 showed that seven out of the ten Top Grossing iOS apps that year were freemium games.

Thepotential rewards mean developers and publishers will continue tohustle by any means necessary to boost their apps and games into theupper reaches of the App Store chart, dancing around Apple's guidelinesas much as they can.

That said, long-term business models are notbuilt on bot farms. The bots aren't buying virtual items or currency,they're not using these apps after the initial download, and they'renot telling their friends about them.

A bad freemium game mightcrack the Top 25 due to appayola firms, but as those "REAL HUMANPLAYERS" start to bite, it will sink quickly. Chart algorithm tweaksemphasising active usage rather than simply downloads may speed thatprocess.

Even so, it's dispiriting to think of the App Store'sTop 25 chart as a ranking of publisher marketing-spend rather than appquality, and as a place where even the great games face having toresort to bots simply to get a fair shot at finding an audience.
Dispiriting,but no surprise to most iOS developers. The interesting question rightnow is not how Apple can squash the bots, but how developers can focuson building sustainable businesses outside the Top 25.

Wireless-sensor networks can monitor factory machinery :: Good Vibrations

2012-02-09T02:30:00.000-08:00

Wireless-sensor networks can monitor factory machinery, trackenvironmental pollution, and measure the movement of buildings andbridges. But while their uses are seemingly endless, wireless sensorshave a significant limit—power. Although improvements have broughtenergy consumption down, batteries still need to be changed. Fornetworks in remote locales, replacing batteries in thousands of sensorsis a staggering task.

To get around the power constraint,researchers are working on harnessing electricity from low-powersources in the environment, such as vibrations from bridges, machinery,and foot traffic. They've developed microelectromechanical systems, orMEMS, that tap into those sources, aiming to eventually do away withbatteries entirely.

Now MIT researchers have designed aMEMS device the size of a U.S. quarter that picks up a wider range ofvibrations than previous designs and generates 100 times the power ofsimilar devices. The team's results appeared in Applied Physics Letters.

Toharvest vibrational energy, researchers have typically looked topiezoelectric materials such as quartz, which naturally accumulateelectric charge in response to mechanical stress. They have exploitedthese materials at the microscale, engineering MEMS devices thatgenerate small amounts of power.

A commonenergy-harvesting design employs a microchip with a piezoelectricmaterial known as PZT glued atop a tiny cantilever beam. As the chipvibrates, the beam moves up and down like a diving board, bending thePZT. The stressed material builds up an electric charge, which ispicked up by tiny electrodes.

However, the cantileverapproach is limited. The beam itself has a resonant frequency—aspecific frequency at which it wobbles the most. Outside thisfrequency, the beam's response drops off, and so does the amount ofpower generated.

Sang-Gook Kim, PhD '85, a professor ofmechanical engineering, and Arman Hajati, PhD '11, came up with adesign that increases the device's frequency range, or bandwidth. Theyengineered a microchip with a small bridgelike structure that'sanchored to the chip at both ends. Then they deposited a layer of PZTon the bridge, placing a small weight in the middle.

Invibration tests the device responded at a wide range of lowfrequencies, generating 45 microwatts of power—beating current designsby two orders of magnitude.

"Our target is at least 100microwatts, and that's what all the electronics guys are asking us toget to," says Hajati. "For monitoring a pipeline, if you generate 100microwatts, you can power a network of smart sensors that can talkforever with each other."

Indonesia court Graded Only Hard On Poor.

2012-02-08T08:32:00.000-08:00

Supreme Court ruling related to detention for 130 days Rasminah grandmother, considered a bad name in the eyes of the law enforcement community. Legal experts from Unair, Sutandyo Wignyo Soebroto, assess the verdict, an indication that the prosecutor did not want to lose in this case, so that the proposed appeal.

"This court is not the point of winning or losing, but about justice. Seek justice in court," said Wignyo, while talking to AFP on Thursday (2/2/2012) night.

This Supreme Court decision, he added, the more convincing to the general public, if the law in Indonesia is like a knife. Law in Indonesia, he said, sharply down and blunt to the top.

"It mendandakan if the law in Indonesia is very hard for small people. While the above, I think so hard," he explained.

He said the law does not view economic groups of society. He also said the law is to speak to speak with the fact that the evidence, but law enforcement must also be sensitive to the mindset of law from the standpoint of ordinary people.

"Law enforcement should not rigid view that normative laws," he said.

Kennedy Cheating With Worker Apprenticeship in Room Wife

2012-02-08T03:00:00.000-08:00

Retired church workers has revealed how John F. Kennedy had an affair with him for 18 months. Virginity was taken away when he was an apprentice at the White House.

MimiAlford said that he felt powerless to resist the U.S. president as hepulled into the room Mrs. Kennedy and teasing in her bed.

Otherclaims in the newly published autobiography included when Kennedy makesinhaling medication sex during a party at the Bing Crosby and forced toperform sex scenes with Kennedy's assistant and just watched it.

Thestory was expressed in a book of ex-mistress of former President John FKennedy has revealed new details of their relationship.

Whenhe thinks pregnant by the president, his aides arranged for him to seethe doctor the abortion, although abortion is illegal at the time.

They reveal how Kennedy had kissed her and she ignored it every time around. He does not even call him Jack, always talk to him as Mr. President - even when they are in bed together.

Their affair began in the summer of 1962, which lasted until Kennedy was assassinated the following November. Mrs. Alford, who was 19 years old and with Beardsley's maiden name, has started work on the presidential press office. Having met Kennedy, he said the president asked him to give a personal tour.Excerptspublished in the New York Post also explains how Alford, lost hervirginity at the hands of the president after he was invited to theWhite House swimming pool. Whenstaff were drinking cocktails at the end of the corridor, Alfordclaimed President Jackie Kennedy brought to the room where she takesoff her clothes without saying a word.

When he refused for a second, Kennedy asked: "Did not you ever done this before", he answered: No. "On the way home, continues to reverberate in my head, I'm not a virgin anymore."

Mrs Alford, now a grandmother of 69 years, also talked about the party at the farm of Crosby. WhileI was rejoicing in the vicinity, there is a tray of sex drug amylnitrate, he wrote that the President asked him if he wanted to try it.

"I said no," he said, but he went ahead and held it under my nose. I ran crying from the room ".Alford also describes Kennedy as a player are varied and enjoyable sex and said he could tease and funny. He said they often bathe together for long if they spend the night together.

Buthe also revealed complications in the relationship, saying they neverkissed and that he often became the subject of the waiting game inwhich he was told to stay at the hotel until he was called thepresident.

Healso talked about how JFK asked him to take care of his arms thatlooked a little tense when they are swimming in the White House.

"Itwas scary, but I knew exactly what he meant. It is a challenge to giveoral sex. I do not think the president thought I would do it, but I'mashamed to say that I do ... President silently watch," he said.Alford also called upon to entertain Kennedy after the death of her infant son Patrick.

"There'sa pile of condolence letters on the floor beside his chair, and he tookeach one and read it aloud to me ... Sometimes, tears streaming downhis cheeks, he'll write something in one letter, may record the answers.

"But mostly he just read it and cried, so did I," writes Alford.

Thisrelationship apparently continued even after Alford left Washington,and he claims to have slept with Kennedy just days before he was killed.

Alfordsaid she saw President Kennedy for the last time at The Carlyle Hotelin Manhattan on November 15, 1963, just weeks before the assassinationin Dallas.

At that time he was scheduled to be married to his college sweetheart, Tony Fahnestock."He took me into his arms are long and said," I want you to come to Texas. "Thenhe added," I'll call you when I get back. "I was overwhelmed withsadness the sudden." Remember, Mr. President, I will get married. "

"I know that," he said, and shrugged. "But I'll call you anyway."

Accordingto the publisher, Random House, Alford's decision to write a memoirthat comes when he is exposed in "a tabloid frenzy" in 2003 whenKennedy biographer has called "a 19-year .. who intern at the WhiteHouse" as one of the mistresses.

Wow Tech :: The top 50 Android tablet apps

2012-02-07T17:18:00.000-08:00

Apple sold 15.4m iPads in the final quarter of 2011, but there ismore to the market than one manufacturer and OS. Strategy Analyticsestimates that 39% of the 26.8m tablets that shipped that quarter wererunning Google's Android operating system.

Yes,that's shipments as opposed to sales: it's anyone's guess how many ofthose devices remain on shelves and in warehouses. Even so, moreAndroid tablets are emerging, with some – Amazon's Kindle Fire in the US and Samsung's Galaxy Tabs elsewhere in the world – building some momentum.

One of the key selling points for Apple's iPad is the more-than 140,000 native appsavailable for the device. Android devices have a way to go to catch upin terms of overall quantity, but the number of quality apps forAndroid tablets has been improving steadily.

Hence this roundup, following our separate rundown of the 50 best iPad apps in September 2011. Shortly after that was published, we began gathering suggestions for inclusion in an Android follow-up, and have spent the months since then drawing up our own longlist of possibles.

Somecaveats. First, this is aimed more at people unboxing an Android tabletfor the first time, so some of the suggestions may seem obvious toexperienced owners. Second, any selection of this kind will be tingedby the personal preferences of the writer.

In both cases, yourcriticisms and alternative suggestions are welcomed in the commentssection. We have also opted against restricting the list to appsoptimised for Honeycomb-only software, given the existence of a numberof tablets running earlier versions of Android.

A third caveat:Android being what it is, we can't guarantee that all 50 apps will beavailable or run well on all the devices out there, particularly at thecheaper end of the market.

Proceed with caution, but please do report back on your experiences with specific devices. On with the show...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SOCIAL MEDIA / WEB

FEEDLYfree. Looking for an Android alternative to Flipboard? Feedly is wortha look, promising a personalised magazine pulling in stories fromGoogle Reader, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and other services.
FIREFOX free. Now optimised for tablets as well as smartphones, Firefoxoffers a useful alternative to the default Android browser, includingthe ability to sync bookmarks and history with the desktop version.
IM+ PRO£2.99. This catch-all messaging app combines Skype, Facebook Chat and ahost of instant messaging services into one, with the option to pingtext, photos and voice notes to contacts.
NEWS360 FOR TABLETSfree. Another news aggregator, News360 gets content from more than10,000 news sites, promising to learn from your social and RSS accountswhat you like to read about, in order to filter accordingly.
TABLIFIED MARKET HD£0.94. If this article is a starting point for discovering new Androidtablet apps, Tablified Market should be your next port of call. It's adiscovery app that promises to 'find Tablified apps so you don't haveto'. A good database with regular updates.
TAPTU – DJ YOUR NEWSfree. Another social news-reading app, this, which accesses storiesfrom sites using their RSS feeds. At its most useful when you dive intoits tools to "remix" different feeds into single streams about whatevertopic you like.
TWEETCOMBfree. Keen Twitter users should appreciate TweetComb, which is aTwitter client focused on tablets running the Android Honeycombsoftware. It makes good use of the larger screens, and itsnotifications can be tweaked to your preferences.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CULTURE

BBC NEWSfree. The Beeb's official news app was updated with an Android-focusededition in January 2012, with a choice of landscape and portrait modes,swipe-based navigation through stories, and – later in the year – alive stream of the BBC News channel itself.
CNN APP FOR ANDROID TABLET free. News network CNN'sAndroid app is a very polished way to get the latest stories, includingtext and video reports. Its tablet-optimised design stands out, whileits iReport feature aims to get users filing their own stories.
COMICSfree. ComiXology's combined comics store and reader app boasts of beingthe only one offering titles from both Marvel Comics and DC Comics. Awide catalogue of titles is available to buy in-app, while the reader's"Guided View" technology works well for finding your way through cells.
GOOGLE BOOKSfree. Google Books is a tablet window to Google's cloud-based e-booksservice, where you can shop for e-books to read across multipledevices, or choose from a wide selection of free titles.
GOOGLE READERfree. The existence of apps like Taptu and News360 is sometimes used asan argument for RSS being old hat – even though they rely on thetechnology to pull in content. If you're more old-school in your RSShabits though, Google Reader is very good.
IMDB MOVIES & TVfree. The world's biggest database of film and TV information is reallyimpressive on Android tablets, enabling you to browse the database andwatch trailers. There's a US focus, but it's still useful.
KINDLEfree. A firm favourite on iPad as an alternative to Apple's own iBooks,the Kindle app is also a must-have on Android tablets. Buy fromAmazon's e-store and then read the e-books on your slate, syncing withany other devices you use too.
NETFLIX free. Netflixlaunched in the UK in January 2012, meaning that its impressive tabletapps now have an audience on this side of the Atlantic too. Browse itscatalogue of films and TV shows, then watch them on the device.
THE CAT IN THE HAT£1.90. The Dr. Seuss classic has been turned into a faithful book-appthat looks as good on tablets as on smartphones. The illustrations arefamiliar, while there's voice narration and zooming words to aid youngreaders.
TUNEIN RADIO PRO£0.61. The TuneIn Radio app has been a huge success on variousplatforms, and while it doesn't make major use of tabletbells'n'whistles, we'd still recommend it for Android slate owners.Find radio stations from around the world and, well, tune in.
ZINIOfree. An increasing number of magazines are launching bespoke apps foriPad, if not Android tablets. One good way to plug the gap is Zinio,which sells digital replicas of a large range of mags from its in-appstore.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GAMES

ANGRY BIRDSfree. Okay, somewhat obvious. But amid all the big-number milestonesand commercial spin-offs, it's easy to forget that at its core, Angry Birds is a very, very good game. It's just as suited to tablets as smartphones too.
BACKBREAKER THD£3.09. The Super Bowl may be over for another year, but NaturalMotion'scasual gridiron game is fun all year round, as you dodge and spin pasthordes of defenders. This version showcases the Nvidia Tegra processorsinside some Android tabs.
BLOOD & GLORY (NR)free. Glu Mobile's take on the Infinity Blade beat 'em up is notablefor two reasons: first it's on Android, unlike its inspiration. Andsecond, it's a freemium title, so you don't have to pay to initiallyplay it.
DUNGEON DEFENDERS SECOND WAVEfree. This is another game that'll show off the graphical grunt of your(high-end) Android tablet. The gameplay is a mixture of action-RPG andtower defence, as you set your defences then run around swinging atattackers as they pile in.
GRAND THEFT AUTO III£2.99. 10 years after it was first released for consoles, GTA IIIreturns for tablets (and smartphones). It has dated wonderfully, withits mix of crime and, well, more crime still feeling fresh. What'smore, it has survived the transition to touchscreen tablets, with wellthought-out controls.
MINECRAFT: POCKET EDITION£4.29. Tablets lend themselves to relaxed usage while loafing about ona sofa. The perfect game for this scenario is Minecraft, as you wandera blocky landscape digging, building and admiring the views.
ONLIVEfree. Streaming games service OnLive turns your Android tablet into afully-fledged games console, complete with (if you buy it) a joypadperipheral. Assuming your Wi-Fi connection is up to the task, this istechnically impressive, with an increasing catalogue of games to havefun with.
OSMOS HD£3.18. Currently part of the excellent Humble Bundle for Android, Osmosis a trippy puzzle game that involves absorbing glowing "motes",complete with an atmospheric electronica soundtrack.
SHADOWGUN£3.49. First-person shooter Shadowgun is a visual feast, as you battlean army of cyborgs and droids inside "maniacal genius" Dr. EdgarSimon's mountain base. It's shooting to become the mobile and tabletworld's Halo, and on this evidence, that's not a crazy ambition.
SLEEPY JACK£1.99. 3D shooter Sleepy Jack runs as a universal game across Androidtablets and smartphones, and is addictive enough that you'll want toplay it on both. 40 beautiful worlds to fly through provide plenty ofdepth.
ANOMALY WARZONE EARTH HD£2.49. A simple twist on the tower defence genre makes Anomaly WarzoneEarth instantly stand out from the herd: you play the attackers ratherthan the defenders. A deep campaign mode and attractive visuals makesit even more of a treat.
WORLD OF GOO£2.99. Just as much of a joy on Android as it is on iPad, World of Googets you dragging and stretching virtual goo-balls into objects to getyou through puzzle-packed levels. Wonderfully tactile, and challengingwithout ever making you throw your tablet through the window. A goodthing, really.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PRODUCTIVITY / TOOLS

CATCHfree. Early Honeycomb tablet owners were buzzing about this cloud app,and justifiably so. Not a million miles away from Evernote, it's aboutscribbling notes, recording voice memos and taking photos, then storingthem in the cloud – with a Streams feature particularly useful forcollaborative work.
DROPBOXfree. An increasingly essential service no matter what device you own,Dropbox gathers your photos, documents and videos – among other files –for access on the go. As on other platforms, the interface is clean andefficient, for speedy use.
EVERNOTEfree. As with Catch and Dropbox, Evernote's strength comes when you useit across several devices, not just one tablet. Sync text notes, lists,voice memos and photos across them all, with sharing features built intoo.
FILE MANAGER HDfree. Another app from the early days of Honeycomb, which offers asimple-yet-slick way to manage files on your tablet, browing by listsor grids. One of those apps that might not be sexy on the surface, butwhich will be used regularly.
GOOGLE DOCSfree. Another of Google's own apps, this, which aims to provide a neatnative way to access Google Docs – including offline – on Androidtablets. Again, simplicity and speed is the focus, to make it quick toedit and share documents.
HD WIDGETS£1.29. Widgets are one of the ways Android obviously differs from iOS,and HD Widgets offers a bunch of examples, from clocks to weatherreports. Tablet tweakers will love it.
MINDJET FOR ANDROIDfree. If Evernote and Catch are more about notes, Mindjet is more aboutricher brainstorming sessions, making good use of the large tabletscreen to organise your thoughts and make them understandable forfuture reference.
QUICKOFFICE PRO HD£12.97. If you're not ready to move into Google's cloud, what aboutthis app for creating, editing and sharing Microsoft Office documents?Support for documents, spreadsheets and presentations makes itflexible, and it also plays nice with Evernote and Catch.
SKITCHfree. Evernote's second app in this list is more for fun, letting youscribble on photos and images to annotate them. It's very easy to use,and while doodling rude things on friends' mugshots is the obvious use,there are work applications too.
SLIDEIT KEYBOARD£3.79. Android tab owners are spoiled for choice when it comes toalternative on-screen keyboards, so we've chosen two of the best here.SlideIT delivers on its promise of speedier typing with finger-tracingrather than tapping.
SPLASHTOP REMOTE DESKTOP HD£4.56. Remote access used to be a corporate thing, but nowadays evenconsumers are keen on the idea of accessing their main PC or Mac fromtheir tablet. Well, some consumers. SplashTop Remote is one of the bestknown ways to do it, and one of the friendliest too.
STICKY NOTES HD TABLET WIDGET£1.22. You could argue that shoehorning virtual sticky notes onto adigital device is pure nostalgia. You might have a case. Even so,Sticky Notes HD does it well, stacking the virtual Post-Its neatly soyou don't lose your reminders.
SWIFTKEY TABLET X KEYBOARD£3.49. The second soft-keyboard app in this roundup comes fromSwiftKey, with its clever prediction algorithm to guess what word youmight be typing next. Cleverer still is the way it can learn your mostcommon words by tying into Facebook, Twitter and Gmail.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LIFESTYLE / SCIENCE

ADOBE COLLAGE £6.99. At a time when social media startup Pinterest is gathering a head of steam, Adobe'sCollage app looks onto a good thing. It's about making moodboards witha mixture of photos, scribbles and text, importing several file-typesand content from Google and Flickr.
ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOUCH£6.99. Another Adobe app here, but one that'll be more familiar toveterans. It's a touchscreen-optimised reboot of the Photoshop editingsoftware, with some powerful features if you know what you're doing,and syncing back to the desktop version if necessary.
ACCUWEATHER FOR HONEYCOMBfree. Whether sunshine, rain or the kind of snow that brings Britain'sinfrastructure to a halt (i.e. two inches), AccuWeather offers atablet-friendly window on the weather around the world.
GOOGLE SKY MAPfree. It's currently being cut loose – sorry, open sourced – by Google,but its in-house Sky Map app remains a joy. Hold your tablet in the airat night, and get an instant guide to what all those stars are called.A handy search mode is good for planet-spotting too.
GOOGLE EARTHfree. Zooming around the planet is as fun a tablet experience onAndroid as on iPad, with 3D buildings and some nifty tweaks forlarger-screened devices.
OPENTABLEfree. Restaurant reservations service OpenTable does a very good job offinding nearby eateries, plotting them on a map, and helping you decidewhether they're worth booking.
SKETCHBOOK PROfree. Autodesk's painting and drawing app has been tuned forHoneycomb-toting tablets, helping you sketch on-screen. Professionalsmay get most out of it, but the app is fun and rewarding even for lessartistic Android owners.

Padang Mount sites Older than the Pyramids of Giza

2012-02-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

Ofthe stone stairs to the top of megalithic sites in the Village of MountPadang Karyamukti, District Campaka, Cianjur, West Java.
Ancientcatastrophic Disaster Research Team strongly suspect the existence ofthe pyramid at the site of Mount Padang in Cianjur and Mount SadahuripGarut district, West Java. Wasmired in controversy alleged archaeologists and geologists who hadexamined the sites of geological and archaeological heritage.

Accordingto one member of the Ancient catastrophic Disaster Research Team, DannyHilman, they drilled to depth of 20 meters on Mount Padang, not farfrom the megalithic sites, and found three cavities in the body of themountain. One third of the room measuring 10 meters x 20 meters. Third-story room.The results were presented on Tuesday (7/2/2012), the Office of the Cabinet Secretariat. "So far, archaeologists looked only at megalithic sites in the upper layer. Has not been much research into the deeper parts, "says Danny.

According to him, consider the findings of previous researchers in the Gunung Padang just plain megalithic sites. The results of the drilling team found a base layer of the building foundation was 4700 BC. Older than the pyramids of Giza in Egypt 3500 BC old.

AndangBachtiar, who is also a member of the research team Purba catastrophicdisaster, say, drilling discovered a layer of sand. "We are looking for whether it is the technology layer antigempa," he said.Notto mention there is clarification of the existence of the pyramids, theteam also suspect there are pyramids on Mount Sadahurip. The team also observed the physical form of the mountain like a pyramid.

Thediscovery at the site and Padang Sadahurip claimed some of its findingsAncient catastrophic disaster team formed the Special Staff ofPresident Field of Social Assistance and Natural Disasters, Andi Arief.Nine-memberteam of people from various disciplines, such as geology, geophysics,paleotsunami (the science of ancient tsunami), paleosedimentasi,geodinamika, archaeologists, philologists (scholars of ancientmanuscripts), and anthropologists.

The team is also investigating several sites elsewhere. The goal is to understand what there is great natural events that destroys human civilization at that time. The study will continue through the next 2.5 years of research approaches, a survey, ancient manuscripts, and others.

RebuttalSome geologists and archaeologists deny the existence of pyramid building in the mountain. Sutikno Bronto, geologists who study ancient volcano, said the two mountains was "just" an ancient volcano. Not contain the pyramid mound.

The characteristics of the location of an ancient volcano, continued Sutikno, the constituent rocks of local volcanic activity. Age of an ancient volcano Padang more than 2 million years, while Sadahurip thousands of years.

Geologists of BP Migas, Awang Harun Satyana, say, Indonesia recognize the shape of the pyramid, namely punden terraces. To prove the existence of pyramids in Sadahurip and Padang, thorough research is needed.

Only in Indonesia :: year, Asmat Cabuli Children Bladder

2012-02-07T08:29:00.000-08:00

Police Kediri, East Java, arrested Asmat (50), village residents Kartosari, District Kandat, Kediri, the molestation case against NS (13), his daughter. Now police are still investigating the case of misconduct continue to develop this.

Chief of Police Public Relations Subdivision Kediri Ipda Suarningsih Ni Ketut said the case came to light of a report to the police that the victim was represented by his family. Of development of the report is known, the victim becomes a slave of abuse almost a year, starting from April 2011 until January 2012. "The recognition of victims, sexual intercourse carried out 12 times," says Ni Ketut Suarningsih Tuesday.

Ni Ketut explained, the victim was still sitting dibangku primary school and is the second of four brothers son Asmat. During this time the victim and his brother was raised by his grandmother because their mother works as a labor force in Malaysia.

Asmat worked as a fisherman in Madura and just go home within a certain time. When I got home that Asmat often immoral actions without the knowledge of other families. Every act, the perpetrator threatened to kill with a knife.

While the Asmat suspects confessed blunder. The action was happening because he was not able to resist sexual desire due to long separation from his wife. However, the Asmat admitted only to abuse as much as six times and that too without any coercion. "I swear I never threatened him, but he was glad I love mobile phones, often I love money, as well as snacks," I Asmat while in Mapolres.

Over this incident, the victim suffered trauma. While the suspects will be subject to Law Number 23 Year 2002 on Child Protection, under penalty of 15 years in prison.

Only in Indonesia :: Indonesia :: police Personal Immoral Darkness girlfriend Police: Maybe It's 500 time ...!

2012-02-07T03:00:00.000-08:00

BripkaAD, police officers who served in the Police Drug Investigation Unit ofMedan, North Sumatra, were allegedly intimidating yps (19) as much as500 times. Not only that, the police were carrying off bike yps.
"Ifthe count since we were going out, it may be 500 times we have sex," hesaid when met at Police Headquarters yps Medan, North Sumatra (NorthSumatra), Thursday (02/02/2012).

Ypscame to report the incident to the Police Services Center forIntegrated (IFMS) North Sumatra Police Headquarters on Thursdayevening. Theyoung woman came accompanied by someone who calls the mother, namedLinda Waty (45), a resident of Jalan Klambir V, Gang Family No. 11,Village Lalang.Encounteredafter the report, yps told that the forbidden love affair between thetwo has been known to last long without his parents.

"Wehave long been associated, since May 2011 until January 30, 2012.Finally on 30 January. He (Bripka AD) made off with my bike," said yps.Yps said, the first time he was sexually abused at the Hotel Lonari, Padang Bulan, Medan. At that time, yps carried Bripka AD persuasions to have intercourse. According yps, the effort was made forcibly by Bripka AD, with little violence.

"Promise me not to marry. Finally, I would," said yps."Myparents did not have to agree with our relationship. So, I brought tolive in boarding-lodging Jalan Gatot Subroto. We rented a room, it isalso always moving when it was noticed by my family," said yps.Still according to yps, often forcing Bripka AD. Infact, when yps were absent, AD is known to already have a wife andthree children were kept in ignorance and impose its will on yps.
He also said, Bripka AD often threatened him with sharp weapons and fire his weapon when refusing to have sex.

"I'vealso been threatened with being shot if he did not have intercoursewith him. We engage in various places, most often in theboarding-lodging in Jalan Gatot Subroto. In fact, after the act ofintercourse, a few moments later he (Bripka AD) is still asked her to have intercourse again, "he said.

Yps claimed his parents in Malaysia. He also claimed to be Peranakan Malaysia and Taiwan. According yps, AD Bripka Drug Unit served in the Police Field Unit II. The report cases of abuse against him contained in the evidence to the police report number TBL/III/II/2012/SPKT.
Meanwhile,the Invisible Police Field Investigation Drug Court Commissioner inJuly can not ensure that Bripka AD, members of whom he knew, and whoreported yps.

"Yes,there I am a member of the same name by name. But is that peoplereported, I do not know," said Agung in July via his cell phoneconversation on Thursday night.

According to him, if guilty, then the members can be reported according to law."Yes, go ahead, love-love the report. Kan baseball there this affair to me," he said, disconnect the phone.

Hundreds killed in the tragedy of Football

2012-02-06T01:30:00.000-08:00

Bloodytragedy which killed at least 74 people after a fight Al-Ahly versusAl-Masry in Port Said, Egypt, Wednesday (02/01/2012), re-cut sense. For the umpteenth time, football returned to take its toll because of negligence or political motives.
In football history, has a lot of tragedies that resulted in the deaths of many people. Onaverage the tragedy occurred because of bigotry and rage of supporters,but also there is negligence of the security forces or the stadiumfacility that is not feasible.
Following a series of football tragedy if korbanya add up to hundreds of people.
March 9, 1946(Bolton Wanderers vs Stoke City)This party between Bolton Wanderers FA Cup opponents Stoke City at Burden Park Stadium. Suddenly, the walls of the stands collapsed, hit the audience. As many as 33 people reportedly died and more than 400 people were injured.
May 24, 1964(Peru vs Argentina)This hot battle between Peru versus Argentina in the Olympic qualifiers. The match was held at the National Stadium, Lima, the capital of Peru.
Supporters became emotional when referee annulled a goal Peru, two minutes before the game was over. Moreover, Peru in conditions up and eventually lost. Supporters began to rage and stormed the field. A total of 318 people were killed and over 500 injured.
June 23, 1968(River Plate vs Boca Juniors)This is the hottest derby in Argentina, even among the hottest in the world. However, this is more due to the negligence lapagan officers. The fans who want to leave the stadium, passing the wrong way and the door remains closed. They turned around, but the group behind him forward.
As a result, pushing, trampling, and the noise was getting out of control. As many as 74 people reportedly died and 150 people injured.
January 2, 1971(Celtic Vs Rangers)It's also one of the hottest derby in the world. Match two of the biggest clubs in Scotland is like to end the series without a goal. A minute before the game was over, scoring Celtic and Rangers fans were disappointed. They were leaving the stands.
However, the Rangers players, Colin Stein, then scored the equalizing position and the match ended 1-1 draw. However, some Rangers supporters who had already been disappointed on the way out.
Too many spectators who tried out in almost the same time. Jostling ensued. Many fell and were trampled and eventually 66 people reported dead and over 140 people injured.
October 20, 1982(Spartak Moscow Vs Haarlem)UEFA Cup matches this most horrible that was held in Moscow, Russia (former Soviet Union still). Thepolice considered to be the party guilty of forcing a mass exit througha narrow street, just moments before the game was over.
Apparently, in the final seconds of a goal. Massa is on the way out was shocked and wanted to re-enter. Unbridled chaos ensued.
The Soviet government officially announced that the death toll at 61. However, another version called the death toll reached 300 people more.
May 11, 1985(Bradford City Vs Lincoln City)It's the cigarettes, Valley Parade stadium grandstand venues bradford City versus Lincoln City on fire. The fire quickly spread causing 56 people dead roasting.
May 29, 1985(Juventus Vs Liverpool)This is the final Champions League (formerly Champions Cup) the most terrible. Liverpool and Juventus fans taunting each other. Liverpool fans attacked supporters and opponents.
Match at Heysel Stadium, Brussels, Austria is also distorted. Fence separating the fans on both sides collapsed. The fight ensued. Reported a total of 39 Juventus supporters died.
March 12, 1988Kathmandu, NepalAt least 93 people were killed and 100 others were injured when fans try to get out of the football stadium. Apparently, most of the stadium doors closed. Thus, the noise and jostling ensued until the victim fell.
15 April 1989(Liverpool Vs Notthingham Forest)This is the worst tragedy in British football. Notthingham Liverpool against Forest in the FA Cup at Sheffield's Hillsborough Stadium.
Police are concerned about the number of Liverpool fans outside the stadium. The police then opened the main gate to allow them entry. Apparently, too many fans that go from the gate quickly. Tribune was immediately crowded and the noise occurs. Many fans are crushed or trampled. Reportedly, 96 Liverpool fans died in this tragedy.
October 16, 1996(Guatemala vs. Costa Rica)The match versus Guatemala in Costa Rica has become one of the dark history of football. As the game progresses, the stands collapsed causing chaos, up to 84 people died.
11 April 2001(Kaizer Chiefs vs Orlando Pirates)
Two meetings of this club is the hottest derby in South Africa. On 11 April 2001, meeting Ellis Park Stadium tinged attack that killed 43 people.
30 April 2001(Lupopo Vs Mazembe)Democratic Republic of Congo League game between opponents Lupopo Mazembe tinged unrest. As many as 14 people were reported to be dead.

Politik di Malaysia :: Anwar Ibrahim Bantah Minta Dukungan Indonesia

2012-02-05T13:00:00.000-08:00

Mantan Wakil Perdana Menteri Malaysia Anwar Ibrahim membantah kedatangannya di Indonesia untuk meminta dukungan menghadapi Pemilu Malaysia pada 2013.

"Saya kesini karena memenuhi undangan ke ITB dan CIDES, tidak ada rencana untuk meminta dukungan," ujarnya, usai menyampaikan pidato kebudayaannya di Teater Kecil, Taman Ismail Marzuki, Jakarta, Senin malam.

Anwar yakin akan mendapatkan dukungan dari rakyat, apalagi setelah dirinya divonis bebas dari dakwaan sodomi pada 9 Januari 2012.

Bagi mantan Menteri Keuangan Malaysia itu, para pendukungnya yang tergabung dalam kubu oposisi di parlemen Malaysia, kasus Sodomi ini adalah konspirasi dari rezim UMNO.

Ia menuturkan dengan berbagai tuduhan, termasuk kasus sodomi yang sudah dua kali menimpa Anwar, pemerintahan Partai UMNO dan koalisi Barisan Nasional yang mereka galang berupaya menggerus perjuangan oposisi pimpinan Anwar.

"Saya yakin insya Allah seandainya Pemilu itu bebas dan adil, kita mampu menang dalam pemilu yang akan datang," ujarnya.

Anwar menambahkan jika nanti terpilih menjadi perdana menteri ia akan berupaya membina hubungan baik antara Indonesia dengan Malaysia dengan lebih baik.

"Tentunya apa isu yang mendasar apakah itu tentang perbatasan atau soal TKI atau budaya, sebenarnya kita ini kan satu rumpun kami akan menciptakan hubungan lebih baik dengan negara-negara tetangga lainnya," ujarnya.

Flora and Fauna :: Ular Piton 150 Kg Menunggu Gelar Guinness

2012-02-05T09:30:00.000-08:00

Sejumlah pengunjung Edge of Hell Haunted House, Kansas City, AS, mengangkat Medusa, ular berukuran 8 meter dan berat 150 kg.

Kepala Medusa, ular piton berukuran panjang 8 meter dan berat 150 kg yang hidup di Kansas City, AS.

Edge of Hell Haunted House dikenal sebagai rumah paling angker di Kansas City, Amerika Serikat. Tingkat "kengerian" rumah itu bertambah karena seekor ular piton yang beratnya sekitar 150 kg menjadi salah satu penghuninya.

Oleh pelatihnya, Larry Edgar, ular itu dinamai Medusa. Dia membelinya ketika Medusa masih bayi, tujuh tahun lalu.

"Tujuh tahun lalu, panjangnya cuma sekitar 60 cm, besarnya seukuran jari saya," kata Edgar.

Kini, bobot Medusa sudah lebih dari 150 kg dan panjangnya sekitar 8 meter. Diperlukan 15 orang untuk mengangkatnya.

Medusa memang belum bergelar ular peliharaan terbesar di dunia. Gelar itu akan dipastikan setelah Guinness Book of World Records mengukurnya pada Oktober mendatang.

Medusa diharapkan bisa menggantikan Fluffy, seekor ular piton dengan panjang 7,3 meter yang bergelar ular peliharaan terbesar. Tahun lalu Fluffy mati di Columbus Zoo and Aquarium di Powell, Ohio, Amerika Serikat.

Flora and Fauna :: Ular Piton Itu Menakutkan Warga

2012-02-05T08:27:00.000-08:00

Ular piton sepanjang lebih dari empat meter ditemukan warga sekitar kawasan sungai yang mengalir di belakang Perumahan Jala Utama II, Kelurahan Pampangan, Kecamatan Lubuk Begalung, Kota Padang, Sumatera Barat.

Ular yang ditemukan Senin sore kemarin diungkapkan penemunya, Kasril Rajo Intan (61) pada Selasa .
Ular dengan diameter sekitar 37 sentimeter itu membuat warga kompleks perumahan ketakutan. "Saya sudah empat tahun tinggal di perumahan ini, dan memang kerap kali merasa khawatir ada ular yang berkeliaran," kata Nelfida (50), salah seorang warga.

Kasril mengatakan, sebelum dijadikan perumahakan, kawasan itu dulunya merupakan areal persawahan dan kebun bambu. Ia mengatakan, dalam sepekan terakhir saja sudah dua ekor ular piton dengan panjang sekitar empat meter dengan diameter sama ditemukan di kawasan permukiman itu.

Anak Dua Tahun Nyaris Dimangsa Piton

Seorang anak berusia dua tahun nyaris dimangsa seekor ular piton saat asik bermain di halaman belakang rumahnya di Port Douglas, Australia. Kejadian itu diwartakan koran lokal setempat, Cairns Post, Kamis, sesuai penuturan sang ibu.

Saat sang ibu memergoki kejadian mengerikan tersebut, ular piton itu sudah menggigit kaki, membelitnya, dan bersiap-siap untuk menelan anak malang tersebut hidup-hidup.

"Saya mendengar dia menjerit secara mengerikan. Ular itu sudah menggigit kaki dan membelitkan tubuhnya ke seluruh tubuh anak saya dan mulai mengencangkan belitannya," ujar sang ibu. Sayangnya, ia hanya bisa menjerit tanpa tahu harus melakukan sesuatu untuk menolong anaknya.

Beruntung sejumlah tetangga datang menolong dan melepas belitan ular tadi. Sang anak pun langsung dilarikan ke rumah sakit terdekat. Dia mengalami empat luka gigitan. Setelah dirawat selama 24 jam, sang anak diperbolehkan pulang.

Menurut dokter hewan setempat, Rod Gilbert, kejadian seperti itu baru kali pertama terjadi. "Saya menduga ular itu tidak bisa membedakan antara si anak dan seekor walabi yang biasa menjadi makanannya. Kejadian macam begini bisa terjadi," ujarnya.

Politik di Malaysia :: Beda Korupsi Indonesia dan Malaysia Versi Anwar Ibrahim

2012-02-05T06:30:00.000-08:00

Mantan Wakil Perdana Menteri Anwar Ibrahim punya cara sendiri mengkritik soal korupsi yang terjadi di Indonesia, maupun negaranya, Malaysia. Dengan gaya setengah bercanda, Anwar menyebut praktek korupsi di negaranya, lebih canggih. Di Indonesia, lebih blak-blakan.

" Di Malaysia, tahap korupsinya itu tinggi, tapi tidak kelihatan" kata Anwar di sela-sela pidato kebudayaan dengan tema "Kepemimpinan dalam Dinamika Perubahan Ekonomi Politik" di Taman Ismail Marzuki, CIkini, Jakarta Pusat Senin malam. "Itulah hebatnya kita (Malaysia).

Menurut Anwar, modus koruptor di dua negara ini bisa berbeda karena kondisi latar belakang penjajahan kedua negara. Di Malaysia, menurut Anwar, karena bekas negara jajahan Inggris, di depannya terlihat santun, tapi di belakangnya, modusnya pelan tapi canggih. " Inggris ini kan level sophiscation-nya hebat" kata Anwar. "Jadi dia sudah canggih ketika kemudian diadopsi oleh koruptor Malaysia"

Adapun di Indonesia, pengaruh budaya Belanda sebagai negara penjajah juga mempengaruhi. Belanda, menurut Anwar, dikenal sebagai negara yang keras sehingga ketika diadopsi Indonesia, modus koruptor juga berbeda dengan Malaysia. "Di sini di atas meja, di bawah juga ada" kata Anwar yang disambut tawa hadirin.

Karenanya, kata Anwar, cara korupsi di Indonesia tak dapat diterapkan di Malaysia. Soalnya gaya dan modusnya berbeda, jadi modus rasuah di Indonesia pun jika diterapkan di Malaysia bisa diangap curang atau malah dibilang tidak beradab. Padahal, esensinya sama: korupsi." Apa pun bentuknya, korupsi itu sangat tidak bermoral" ujarnya

Anwar menegaskan, masalah utama yang harus dihadapi seluruh bangsa saat ini adalah keserakahan para pemimpin."Negara semiskin (sumber daya alam) apapun jika diurus dengan baik, maka akan mampu menjaga rakyatnya dengan baik," ujar Anwarnya.

Keserakahan akan kekuasaan dan kekayaan ini, kata Anwar, yang membuat pemimpin lupa mengurus rakyatnya. Untuk itu, lanjut dia, diperlukan pemimpin yang benar-benar memikirkan rakyat. "Untuk itu perlu adanya guiding idea yang harus sesuai dengan kenyataan, tak hanya sekedar ide, tetapi harus diikuti dengan praktik," katanya." Inilah pentingnya ketegasan melawan korupsi"

Politik :: Jejak Setoran ke Angelina Sondakh Kian Terang

2012-02-05T05:30:00.000-08:00

Dugaan keterlibatan Angelina Sondakh dalam kasus suap Wisma Atlet SEA Games makin terkuak. Setelah Yulianis dan Mindo Rosalina Manulang, bekas anak buah M. Nazaruddin, bersaksi di persidangan, kesaksian juga datang dari Gerhana Sianipar. Keterangan Direktur Utama PT Exatech Technology Utama, anak usaha Grup Permai, perusahaan yang dimiliki Nazaruddin, itu makin mengukuhkan dugaan keterlibatan Angie--sapaan akrab Angelina.

Dari dokumen yang diterima Tempo, Gerhana mengaku diminta Rosa membuat pengajuan kas sebesar Rp 2 miliar. ”Nak, ajukan kas untuk artis,” demikian pengakuan Gerhana dalam dokumen itu saat diminta Rosa mengajukan kas ke perusahaan. Artis yang dimaksudkan adalah Angie. Menurut Gerhana, kas yang diminta Rosa itu akan diserahkan ke Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat melalui Angelina Sondakh. Sebelumnya terungkap pula rekaman percakapan dengan Rosa bahwa Angie pernah menagih »semangka” Rp 3 miliar kepadanya.

Tempo menyambangi Gerhana di rumahnya di kawasan Bekasi. Tapi, menurut sang kakak, Desi Sianipar, adiknya itu selalu pulang larut malam dan sering ke luar kota. Desi mengakui adiknya sudah lama mengenal Rosa. ”Sekitar tiga tahun lalu,” ujar Desi.

Menurut dia, adiknya bekerja di kantor Rosa, sebuah perusahaan kontraktor di Jakarta. ”Tapi saya tak tahu nama PT-nya,” ujar dia. Ihwal kasus Wisma Atlet, Desi mengatakan adiknya itu tak sekali pun bercerita. ”Untuk urusan itu, dia tertutup.”

Adapun Angie tak terlihat di kantornya di DPR. Dihubungi melalui telepon, panggilan tak diangkat. Pesan pendek yang dikirim juga belum dibalas. Namun, dalam berbagai kesempatan, dia selalu membantah keterangan sejumlah saksi yang mengaitkan dirinya dengan kasus Wisma Atlet. »Bicara ke saya saja tidak pernah, apalagi meminta atau menerima,” ujarnya, beberapa waktu lalu.

Kesehatan :: Sering Tidur Malam Picu Diabetes dan Penyakit Jantung

2012-02-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

Kebiasaan tidur malam yang buruk sering membuat Anda merasa lelah dan kesal. Selain itu, gangguan tidur malam yang buruk selama enam kali berturut-turut, juga dapat memicu timbulnya diabetes dan penyakit jantung.

Profesor Philippe Froguel dari Imperial College London mengatakan,
"Kontrol gula darah adalah salah satu dari banyak proses yang diatur oleh jam biologis tubuh," katanya. Salah satu jam biologis tubuh adalah tidur. Terganggunya proses tidur itu akan berdampak pada kontrol gula darah.

Penelitian baru terkait kebiasaan tidur yang digelar beberapa waktu lalu menunjukkan bahwa gejala diabetes sudah muncul saat mengalami gangguan tidur selama tiga kali berturut-turut. Hasil penelitian ini dipublikasikan oleh Nature Genetics yang diberitakan Daily Mail.

Nature Genestics melakukan penelitian ini terhadap 20 ribu pekerja shift malam, dan dari hasil penelitian, terbukti untuk pekerja shift malam rentan terhadap penyakit diabetes dan penyakit jantung. Studi penelitian ini menemukan empat varian gen yang beresiko terkena diabetes maupun penyakit jantung.

Flora and Fauna :: Ular Piton Tujuh Meter Ditangkap Warga

2012-02-05T03:30:00.000-08:00

Warga Jalan Pematang Keramat Kelurahan Betungan, Kecamatan Selebar, Kota Bengkulu, Provinsi Bengkulu, berhasil menangkap seekor ular piton dengan panjang mencapai tujuh meter dan diameter 25 sentimeter.

"Kami berhasil menangkap seekor ular piton itu saat akan memangsa seekor kambing, ternak milik seorang warga setempat," kata Dartim, warga Jalan Pematang Keramat Kelurahan Betungan di Bengkulu, Senin. Ia mengatakan, ular itu memiliki berat badan sekitar 60 kilogram, sedangkan jenis kelaminnnya betina dengan usia diperkirakan tujuh tahun.

"Ular piton ini ditangkap warga karena akan memangsa dan menelan bagian kepala seekor kambing dewasa milik salah seorang warga, Buyung (38) sedang berada di sekitar kebun karet dan kelapa sawit," katanya.

Aksi ular itu cepat diketahui, maka beberapa warga berusaha mengusirnya. Mereka berhasil membebaskan kambing itu dari cengkeraman mulut ular. Hewan melata itu kemudian lari ke rawa sekitar tempat kejadian. Puluhan warga mengejar dan berhasil menangkap hewan melata itu, kemudian dimasukan dalam sebuah karung yang sudah disiapkan, sedangkan bagian mulut ular itu diikat dengan tali agar melawan.

Ular piton tersebut sekarang menjadi tontonan warga. Masyarakat sekitar berduyun-duyun melihat ular besar itu. Ada juga merogoh kantong membayar uang lelah penangkapnya rata-rata Rp1.000 setiap penonton.

"Sekarang ular piton itu diletakkan pada tempat teduh dan dikelilingi pagar pengaman agar tidak mencelakakan warga, sedangkan tubuhnya pun selalu disiram dengan air agar tidak kepanasan," kata Dartim.

Ia mengatakan, telah mencoba menjual ular piton tersebut ke warga di Desa Ngalam, Kecamatan Air Periukan Kabupaten Seluma, namun pembelinya menolak karena terlalu besar dan panjang, sehingga sulit untuk dipelihara. "Saya akan menjual ular itu dengan harga Rp 95.000 per meter. Uangnya akan dibagikan pada kelompok penangkap," katanya.

Seorang warga Desa Jenggalo setempat Tapsili mengatakan, ular jenis piton itu sudah banyak ditangkap warga karena habitatnya berada di sepanjang Sungai Jenggalo setempat.

"Kami selama ini sudah menangkap belasan ekor dengan ukuran sama. Ular itu bila tidak ditangkap akan memangsa ternak ayam dan kambing bahkan anak sapi juga ditelannya," ujar Tapsili.

Kesehatan :: Tidur 'Melestarikan' Kenangan Buruk

2012-02-05T03:00:00.000-08:00

Setelah melewati peristiwa tak mengenakan yang memicu stres, semua orang seringkali berjuang untuk mengurangi respon emosional. Ternyata, solusinya adalah membiarkan mata Anda tetap terjaga.

Penelitian yang dilakukan University of Massachusetts, Amherts menemukan temuan unik yang dipublikasikan dalam Journal of Neuroscience mengenai respon emosional seseorang setelah mengalami peristiwa yang menaikkan emosi.

Peneliti menemukan, orang yang memilih tidur untuk melupakan peristiwa yang tak mengenakan justru malah membantu mempertahankan dan memperkuat emosi terkait peristiwa tersebut.

Dalam penelitian, peneliti menunjukkan sejumlah foto kepada 106 pria dan wanita pada layar komputer, termasuk beberapa foto yang bergambar tidak menyenangkan, seperti kekerasan, perang, kecelakaan mobil dan sisanya foto bergambar netral. Kemudian, partisipan disuruh menilai respon emosional mereka dari satu hingga sembilan.

Sekitar 12 jam kemudian, peneliti menunjukkan kembali foto-foto tersebut. Ada beberapa foto baru, namun sisanya masih berupa foto lama. Partisipan kembali diminta menilai respon emosional mereka. Sebelumnya, sebagian partisipan diminta untuk tidur, dan sisanya diminta untuk tetap terjaga.

Partisipan yang tidur tak lama setelah melihat foto tersebut menganggapnya sebagai foto yang mengganggu ketika mereka diminta untuk melihatnya lagi.

Peneliti berkesimpulan bahwa orang yang tidur setelah melewati peristiwa traumatik akan memperkuat memori atau kenangan tersebut untuk kembali, dibandingkan mereka yang tetap terjaga. Para ilmuwan beranggapan bahwa otak memperkuat kenangan sekaligus mengikat respon emosional terhadap kenangan tersebut.

"Apa yang kami temukan adalah tidur tidak hanya melindungi memori Anda tapi juga 'melestarikan' respon emosional yang kita miliki selama peristiwa emosional itu terjadi," ungkap Dr Rebecca Spencer, seperti dilansir melalui Dailymail,

Kesehatan :: Jangan Lakukan Hal Ini Sebelum Tidur

2012-02-05T02:30:00.000-08:00

Tidur, selain bertujuan untuk mengistirahatkan diri dari kepenatan aktivitas sehari-hari, juga saat yang tepat untuk mengistirahatkan fisik dan mental. Cukup tidur tak hanya ditentukan dari kuantitas atau lamanya waktu tidur, tetapi juga dari kualitas tidur itu sendiri.

Tetapi ada banyak orang yang merasa kesulitan untuk memulai tidur. Mau tahu hal-hal apa saja yang harus Anda hindari agar bisa tidur dengan nyenyak?

Sebelum tidur biasanya kita menyempatkan diri untuk meminum segelas teh atau kopi, padahal hal ini akan mempersulit waktu tidur Anda. Begitu juga dengan minuman beralkohol karen abisa menyebabkan kegelisahaan atau tubuh menjadi aktif.

Berolahraga mendekati waktu tidur, minum banyak air, juga harus dihindari karena akan menimbulkan rasa ingin buang air kecil semasa tidur. Akibatnya, Anda jadi sering terbangun karena ingin buang air kecil.

Pada sebagian orang, tidur siang perlu dihindari karena akan membuat lebih sulit tertidur di malam hari. Jika Anda tidak bisa tertidur, bangunlah dari tempat tidur, tinggalkan kamar dan bacalah bacaan yang ringan sampai Anda merasa mengantuk.

Flora and Fauna :: Flora and Fauna :: Piton Menyapu Populasi Mamalia

2012-02-05T01:00:00.000-08:00

Studi terbaru mengungkap bahwa meningkatnya populasi ular piton di Taman Nasional Everglades Amerika Serikat menurunkan secara drastis populasi mamalia.

Berdasarkan studi yang dipublikasikan di Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences. populasi mamalia berukuran kecil hingga sedang menurun hingga 99 persen. Ilmuwan khawatir bahwa dampak penurunan populasi ini akan mempengaruhi keseimbangan rantai makanan di eksosistem.

"Efek penurunan populasi mamalia pada ekosistem Everglades secara keseluruhan, yang membentang hingga lebih dari batas taman nasional, bisa jadi besar," kata John Wilson, peneliti dari Virginia Tech University, seperti dikutip AP, Selasa.

Puluhan ribu piton yang berasal dari Burma yang berasal dari Asia Tenggara dipercaya hidup di Everglades. Piton-piton itu semula dibawa ke Amerika Serikat sebagai piaraan namun diduga terlepas. Piton juga diduga lepas saat terjadinya badai pada tahun 1992 dan terus bereproduksi hingga sekarang.

Piton bisa berkembang hinga ukuran 8 meter dengan berat mencapai 91 kilogram. Mereka juga dikenal bisa memakan hewan sebesar aligator. Mereka membunuh dengan terlebih dahulu melilit mangsa.

Pihak taman nasional yang menghitung mendapatkan fakta bahwa ada 1.825 piton Burma yang ditangkap di Everglades sejak tahun 2000. Piton terberat yang ditangkap memiliki berat 70 kg dengan panjang sekitar 5 meter.

Untuk mendapatkan hasil studi ini, peneliti melihat wilayah sepanjang sekitar 63.000 km di Everglades selama tahun 2003 hgingga 2011. Peneliti menghitung populasi satwa liar dan membandingkannya dengan populasi pada tahun 1996 dan 1997.

"besarnya penurunan menggarisbawahi kepadatan piton yang luar biasa di Taman Nasional Everglades," kata Michael Dorcas, professor di Davidson College di North Carolina, pimpinan studi ini.

Meski tak bisa begitu saja dikatakan bahwa piton membunuh mamalia, namun tetap, piton adalah tersangka utama. Penurunan jumlah mamalia terjadi secara bersamaan dengan kenaikan jumlah piton. Sementara, faktor lain seperti penyakit, kurang kuat dijadikan sebab. Satu penyakit takkan mungkin menyerang beberapa spesies sekaligus.

Lalu, bagaimana efek keseluruhan pada ekosistem nantinya? Sangat sulit diprediksi. Penurunan rubah yang memakan kelinci mungkin terjadi akibat banyak kelinci yang dipakai piton berpesta. Di sisi lain, penurunan musang yang memakan telur mungkin saja meningkatkan populasi buaya, burung dan penyu.

Florida telah melarang pemeliharaan dan impor piton sejak tahun 2010. Hasil penelitian menegaskan pentingnya larangan itu.

Again, the pig's head was found outside the mosque.

2012-02-03T03:30:00.000-08:00

Police say yet know the motive for the laying of a pig's head outside a mosque.

Police in Malaysia say a pig's head was found outside a mosque in Sentul, Kuala Lumpur, on Thursday (2/2).

It is the discovery of the third pig's head in the past month and BBC correspondent in Kuala Lumpur, Jennifer Pak, says the head of this pig is a symbol of insult to Muslims.

So far not known who put the pig's head outside the mosque.

But non-Muslim politicians said the pig's head was intended to fuel tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Pig's head, which was found in three separate areas in this month, located near the entrance.

Actors seem to want to make sure that those who would enter the mosque for Fajr prayers to see the pig's head.

The officials also said they were not able to determine the motive for the laying of a pig's head outside a mosque.

Tension
Our correspondent says tensions between Muslims and Christians increased in Malaysia after allegations of missionaries forced the Muslims to embrace Christianity in recent months.

Beyond the case of the spread of religion among Muslims and Christians in Malaysia is also dispute about the use of the word "God" in the Gospels.

Nearly two-thirds of Malaysia's population converted to Islam and the government banned the circulation of the Gospel that use the word "Allah" to refer to God.

Ban the use of the word "Allah" has been criticized by some Christian leaders.

They said the ban does not have a solid foundation for long before Islam, the word "Allah" is usually used to refer to God.

The court ruled in 2009 that the ban violates the constitution, but the Malaysian government appealed.

Technology :: Laser marking for unique identification

2012-02-02T01:30:00.000-08:00

2-D Data Matrix code has more information density than bar code
By Geoff Shannon

A unique and global identification mark system, known as a UID, offers many advantages for tracking and traceability in the aerospace, automotive, electronics, defense, or medical industries. In some areas where personal safety is a key concern, such a system has frequently been mandated. In many more cases, organizations or market sectors are looking to this type of system to gain logistical financial benefits. Table 1 indicates a few of the main sectors where a global implementation has occurred.

Table 1. Industries that have or will implement global marking standards

Industry	Primary verification standard
Aerospace	SAE AS9132
Automotive	AIM DPM-1-2006
Defense (DoD)	MIL SPEC 130
Electronic components	EIA 706
Medical devices	Awaiting specification

The standards relating to direct part marking (DPM) are specific to Data Matrix (DM) code symbology. This 2-dimensional (2-D) machine readable code differs distinctly from the familiar 1-D barcode found on most consumer goods; it has much greater data density, can be read more reliably, and can withstand code damage.

The laser is an excellent tool for DPM, because it offers a non-contact process, a permanent contrasting mark on metals and many plastics, ability to mark text, codes or graphics, and highly flexible and reliable implementation for production.

Comparing the barcode and the Data Matrix code
We are all very familiar with barcodes that appear on all consumer items, consisting of a series of contrasting light and dark lines that represent letters, numbers or both. The barcode is an analog code that has two key drawbacks: information density is low and it may lack readability. The barcode is physically large, and must be almost perfect in terms of both high contrast and element positioning to enable consistent readability. Many different barcodes exist, though typical barcodes used are 2 of 5, 39, and 128.
The DM, ID or 2-D code is fundamentally different from the barcode, because these codes are digital, with characters and symbols coded by a 2-D array of light and dark cells. The digital read means that the reading algorithm simply divides the code up according to the number of rows and columns and then checks each square for either a light or dark cell. The DM code comprises a square or rectangle with solid and broken borders. The solid borders indicate the start of the code, and the broken borders allow the reader to establish the size of the code. By contrast with the barcode, the DM code has extremely high information density and is much easier to read.

As shown in Figure 1, the DM code has solid and broken borders indicating code orientation.

Figure 1. Data matrix code compared to barcode. Left: The data is encoded in the light and dark "cells" contained within the red dotted square. Right: A general size comparison between Data Matrix Code both containing "unique identification marking" and barcode 39 shows the much higher data density of the DM code.

Table 2 provides information on density and code size, according to a nominal 0.01-inch cell size. The DM code also contains error correction capability that enables a read to still be made if part of the code has been damaged.

Table 2. Information density and code size

Symbol Size (row x column)	Information capacity: numeric	Information capacity: alphanumeric	Code size for 0.01" cell
12 x 12	10	6	0.12"
18 x 18	36	25	0.18"
24 x 24	72	52	0.24"
32 x 32	124	91	0.32"

Formatting data matrix information
Although DM codes can contain a large amount of information, the code is used more as a basic part identification that may contain the manufacturer and serial number, and the unique identification tag to a database that contains the critical information of the marked item. After the item is shipped, the database can be updated dynamically, providing lifetime data availability. For each industry, the required database fields will be different, but the premise is the same, providing traceability of safety critical components, tools or devices.
For example, a UID for the Department of Defense must not contain more than 78 characters, and must use the following format:
<>03<>17V0B107<>MTM-001-A320<>35149<><>
Data Identifiers: RS = record locator; GS = Group Separator, EOT = End of Transmission
When this code is read, the ASCII codes are embedded in the text to create the required data identifiers. In this case, these are found under ISO/IEC 15418. The coded data format clearly indicates the data segments and end of the data

Figure 2. Engraved mark in steel marked to UID MIL-STD-130 specifications.
Laser marking ideal for unique identification part marking
The laser is able to place contrasting marks on both metals and plastics for direct part marking. For certain applications, the code must be engraved to a certain depth for wear resistance, but in other instances minimal material penetration is needed. The laser is a highly flexible marking tool that can achieve both types of marks in a wide variety of materials. The marking software is extremely flexible, and can create the code with the necessary ASCII character delimiters and tilde symbols that can be edited as needed directly within the software. The generation of each mark with incrementing information can be pulled into the marker via a database and dynamically updated in the Data Matrix code and human readable text.
Geoff Shannon (geof@muc.miyachi.com) is with Miyachi Unitek, Monrovia, Calif.

Technology :: Innovation Award Laser Technology

2012-02-01T02:00:00.000-08:00

Honoring outstanding innovations in laser technology

Technological fields of interest: the whole range from development of new laser beam sources and systems for use in laser materials processing to the qualification of innovative laser manufacturing processes for use in an industrial production environment
Eligible applicants: Individuals or project groups working for universities, R&D centres or companies established in Europe
Condition: The innovation must have been implemented in industry no more than 3 years prior to application for the award
Jury: An international panel of experts
Prize money: 10,000 euros
Closing date for applications: January 20, 2012
Official presentation: May 9, 2012 at the International Laser Congress Aachen AKL´12 (www.lasercongress.org )

Technology :: Call for applications for the Innovation Award Laser Technology 2012

2012-01-31T09:00:00.001-08:00

The call for proposals is open for the Innovation Award Laser Technology, a European research prize provided with 10,000 Euro prize money and awarded at 2-yearly intervals jointly by the associations Arbeitskreis Lasertechnik e.V. and the European Laser Institute (ELI) in recognition of outstanding innovative work in the field of laser technology.

Closing date for applications is January 20, 2012. Download application forms. The official presentation of the award will take place in Aachen´s town hall on May 9, 2012 at the International Laser Technology Congress AKL'12 .

Objectives:
The award can be conferred on an individual researcher or on an entire project group. The scientific and technological projects in question must center on the use of laser light in materials processing and the methods of producing such light, and must demonstrate commercial value to industry.

Eligible applicants:
Applications are accepted from individuals working in industry or at universities or independent research centers who have successfully conceived and implemented an innovative idea relating to laser technology, following the project through from early-stage laboratory research to ultimate industrial application. The range of possible fields extends from the development of new laser beam sources and systems for use in laser materials processing to the qualification of innovative laser manufacturing processes for use in an industrial production environment.

Prize money and fellowship title:
The best three applicants will be awarded. The prize winner will also receive the sum of 10,000 euros and be awarded the title of "AKL fellow" and "ELI fellow".

Official presentation:
The official presentation of the award will take place at the International Laser Technology Congress Aachen AKL'12.

Jury and selection procedure:
A shortlist of the best candidates will be compiled by an international jury consisting of 10 members recruited from industry and the research community. The prize-winner as well as the second and third places are selected on the basis of merit. Any and all legal recourse is explicitly barred.

Conditions for entry:
The innovation must have been implemented no more than three years prior to application for the award. Applicants must work for universities, R&D centers or companies established in Europe.

Closing date for applications:
No later than January 20, 2012 (time of receipt)

For application documents and further information: www.innovation-award-laser.org

Contact persons:
Axel Bauer, General Secretary of Arbeitskreis Lasertechnik e.V., Ph: +49/241/8906-194, email: axel.bauer@akl-ev.de

Dr. Stefan Kaierle, President of the European Laser Institute, Ph: +49/241/8906-212, Fax: +49/241/8906-121, email: kaierle@europeanlaserinstitute.org

Traveling :: Terpukul Revolusi, Puluhan Agen Perjalanan Tunisia Terancam Bangkrut

2012-01-31T08:13:00.001-08:00

Revolusi yang sudah berlangsung setahun di Tunisia tidak saja berdampak kepada kehidupan sosial dan politik negara tersebut. Sektor pariwisata Tunisia juga ikut terpukul. Puluhan agen perjalanan pariwisata Tunisia terancam tutup apabila pemerintah baru tidak segera memberikan bantuan langsung.

Kepala Federasi Agen Perjalanan Tunisia (FTAV), Mohammad Ali Toumi mengatakan puluhan agen terpaksa tutup dalam beberapa hari mendatang kecuali ada solusi cepat pemerintah Tunisia untuk membantu mereka keluar dari krisis.

"Di Tunisia terdapat 700 agen perjalanan, dari jumlah itu mereka mampu menyerat 8.000 tenaga kerja. Bayangkan apa yang akan terjadi bila mereka terpaksa tutup," kata dia seperti dikutip alarabiya.net.

Sebelumnya, FTAV sudah meminta bantuan pemerintah untuk melakukan pemotongan pajak dan meminimalisir prosedur birokrasi serta mempermudah izin agen perjalanan untuk segera menangani ibadah umrah dan haji ke tanah suci Mekkah.

Sayang, permintaan bantuan itu meski sudah disampaikan pada pemerintah belum juga mendapatkan respon. "Kami belum mendapat respon apapun. Jika kondisi ini tidak berubah, kami akan bertindak," kata dia.

Sebagai informasi, Tunisia sangat mengandalkan industri pariwisata untuk menggerakan perekonomian negara itu. Penggulinggan rezim Zine El Abidine Ben Ali meruntuhkan industri pariwisata.

Information Technology :; Cloud Storage Company Symform Celebrates a Busy January

2012-01-31T03:09:00.000-08:00

Cloud storage provider Symform has had quite a start to 2012 already, from adding two top executives to its burgeoning team to netting $2 million in venture funding from new backer Westfield Capital.

Last week, Symform basked in some belated holiday cheer as it announced two additions to its executive team, which rounds out a proven leadership group that brings global experience across startups and multinational tech companies, according to company officials.

Chris Boscolo will be joining Symform as vice president of engineering, along with Candace Grisdale, who will assume the role of Symform’s new vice president of worldwide sales. Over the past few months, Symform has actively sought out market leaders to join the company to help expand upon its mission to construct a global distributed cloud storage network.

“Symform is rapidly building a massive peer-to-peer global cloud storage and backup network. This requires a senior management team comprised of proven technology executives,” said Matthew J. Schiltz, CEO of Symform. “With the addition of Candace and Chris in these vital positions, I am confident our fast growth will gain even further momentum.”

Boscolo, who brings 15 years in the networking, security and cloud industries to the job, previously served as chief technology officer at Napera Networks and chief software architect at WatchGuard Technologies (News - Alert). While at WatchGuard, Boscolo managed software development of Firebox, a Firewall/VPN appliance.

For Grisdale, prior to teaming with the cloud storage company, she ran channel sales at DocuSign, where she defined the company’s new channel strategy. With more than 20 years in sales leadership, Grisdale also served as vice president of sales at Sesame Communications, and as a general manager at Microsoft (News - Alert).

Symform has more to celebrate than just its new recruits as the cloud storage company has also netted $2 million in venture funding from new backer Westfield Capital, which joined existing investors OVP Venture Partners and Longworth Venture Partners to bring total funding for this Series A round to $7.5 million. The Seattle-based company also revealed that its user base has grown 800 percent in the last six months.

Want to learn more about cloud communications? Then be sure to attend the Cloud Communications Expo, collocated with TMC’s ITEXPO East 2012 taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. The Cloud Communications Expo will address the growing need of businesses to integrate and leverage cloud based communications applications, process enhancement techniques, and network based communications interfaces and architectures. For more information on registering for the Cloud Communications Expo click here.

Discuss :

Do You Know, Air Pressure Experiments ?

2012-01-31T01:00:00.000-08:00

As we know air is everywhere and we can't survive without air. It consists of various gases, dust particles, water vapors, etc. Air exerts a particular pressure on every single thing. Air pressure is calculated by barometer and according to it, earth's atmospheric pressure is 14.7 psi (pounds per square inch). We can't feel this pressure because it is everywhere. But if we are in a vacuum or in the outer space where there is no air we have to use pressurized suits to protect our body, this is the reason why astronauts wear space suits. Here we are going to perform some air pressure experiments which will prove the existence of air pressure and will show that it has weight too.

Water Glass Experiment
This is one of the best examples of air pressure experiments with water. Take a glass and fill one-third of it with water. Place a cardboard over the mouth of the glass. The cardboard should be bit bigger than the mouth. Now put some pressure on the cardboard from the left hand and invert the glass with the right hand. Slowly remove the hand and see what happens. The water does not fall from the glass, retaining the cardboard and the water in the same place as before. This takes place because the air pressure outside, i.e., 14.7 psi, is heavier than the combining weight of the water and air inside the glass.

Balloon Experiment
This is one of the air pressure experiments with balloon which will show you what air pressure can do. Take a balloon and blow it. Now stretch the mouth of the balloon, pinching the ends of the mouth so that you can hear a loud squeaking noise. You can also alter this sound and pitch. But the question is why a balloon makes such noises? The reason for it is the air pressure. When you stretch its mouth it leaves very little space for the air to come out. So because of the air pressure the mouth of the balloon vibrates which makes such noise. Ask someone else to perform this experiment so that you can touch below the mouth of the balloon and can feel the vibration.

Egg Experiment
Take a hard-boiled egg and remove its shell. Take a bottle whose mouth is large enough to squeeze the egg inside it without squashing it but should also not easily allow the egg to enter the bottle. Now light a matchstick put it inside the bottle and immediately close its mouth with the egg. The match stick will utilize the oxygen inside the bottle and will create a low air pressure. High pressure outside the bottle will push the egg inside. This experiment with the air pressure shows how strong it can be.

Paper Experiment
Take a sheet of paper and hold the edges near to your lips. Place it at the bottom of your lips and try to blow hard. You may have to put the paper in different places to find the exact position. Now when you blow it the paper will fly up. This is because of the air pressure. As you blow from the upper side of the paper it creates an area of low pressure above the paper and high pressure at the bottom of the paper. This high pressure forces it to fly in an upwards direction. By this concept you can understand how do airplanes fly. They reach the height only because of the air pressure.

Some Air Pressure Experiments
The experiments given below are easy to perform and need few things which are easily available at home. These air experiments for kids should be performed in the supervision of elders. Kids can also use these experiments as their physics projects.

Marshmallows Experiment
Take a glass jar and empty it completely. Add small pieces of marshmallows inside the jar and seal it with a wine vacuum cork. Attach a manual pump over the cork and try to pump as much air out of the jar as you can. This will make the marshmallows pieces swell and you will observe them growing. Now break the seal. As soon as the seal breaks and the air comes rushing inside the jar the marshmallows cramps down and returns to its old size.

I hope you had a good time reading such simple, interesting and useful experiments to prove the air pressure around us. These air pressure experiments are basically for kids but elders can also enjoy doing it at home. So, try them and yes do let me known about your experiences.

Do you understand, what is Information Technology?

2012-01-30T05:00:00.000-08:00

Definition of Information Technology

Information Technology can be defined simply as the study of and the complete process involved in the development and use of computer based information systems. This includes the design stage, the development, implementation, support and management of information systems.

Businesses and individuals use information technology in various ways and these includes the following:

IT that enhances functionality – this may be for personal use at home or individual use in the workplace.Examples are Word processors and database application software.
IT that enhances communication – examples are emailing systems, blogs, wikis and electronic conferencing.
IT that enhances management – these are management information systems that process organizational information and improve decision making.
IT that enhances enterprise goals – these are specialist application systems that control how big organizations and business process and use information technology, examples are CRM and health management systems.

Information Technology Basics

Information technology basics or ICT basics involve the use of computer software and hardware to complete some basic tasks within the home or office environment. Basic use of information technology includes:
The use of a computer system to perform essential tasks with the aid of an operating system. The operating system software helps you to literally operate your computer by performing such tasks as, creating files and folders, save, copy or delete files, clean up and manage your computer.
The use of application software to perform fundamental tasks. Examples of such application software are :

Spreadsheets, normally used for accounting and bookkeeping.
Word processors to create text documents.
Database to store records.
Presentations for meetings and conferences.
The use of the Internet to browse and search for information.
The use of electronic mailing system to send and receive mails both externally and internally.
The use of common peripherals such as a printer or fax machine with a computer system.

Role of Information Technology in Business
Role of information technology in a business setting can be classified into four major categories; these are function, communication, management and enterprise.

Function IT Systems
Function IT systems enable individuals to carry out their tasks effectively in their place of work. Functional systems include spreadsheets, word processors, statistical analysis software and computer aided design (CAD). Employees can work and carry out their task independently or collectively using these software technologies.

Network IT Systems
Network IT systems enable effective communication within or outside an establishment. Examples of these systems are straightforward e-mail (electronic mail) systems, blogs, wiki, IM (instant messaging) and electronic conferencing. These technologies help interaction and collaboration between working groups and also make possible rapid information flow at all levels within an organisation.

Management IT systems
MITS can be defined as a planned application that is designed to process data and transform it into useful information for management decision making. MIS may be regarded as a division of Enterprise IT systems. Nevertheless, because of the crucial role MIS plays in a business environment, it is considered as a key information technology system for businesses.
Management operates at different levels, so it is possible to apply management information systems at any level. Simple examples of MIT systems are human resources management systems, marketing management information systems and financial management information systems.

Enterprise IT Systems
Enterprise IT systems are applications designed to integrate and handle entire business processes for big organisations. In general, enterprise application software is hosted on large servers over a computer network. Transmission of information is possible internally or externally.

Some enterprise information systems are accounting software, health care specific software or electronic data Interchange (EDI). A further example of software in this group is CRM (Customer Relationship Management Software).

Information technology plays different roles in business, and provides a wide range of capabilities that boost management performance. It is thus crucial to understand the four main categories of IT systems and their functions in a business setting.

Benefits of Health Information Technology
The integration of information technology into the health sector system of operations is generally referred to as ‘Health Information Technology’ – HIT.

HIT has led to an overall improvement in health care quality, safety and efficiency in the health care delivery system.

The health care sector is positively impacted by the use of electronic health records (EHRs), virtual healthcare teams, telemedicine, e-health grids and various specialist health care information systems.

EHRs facilitate easy communication of medical data between health care teams. In addition, the use of electronic health records (EHRs) has drastically reduced medical errors. The advantages of reducing medical errors include:

Reduction in health care costs
Increase in quality of health care delivery due to timely and accurate dissemination of information to health care providers
Increase in administrative efficiency by reducing paperwork thus, increasing data processing accuracy as well as effectiveness.

Through the use of e-health grids, very large amount of data can be computerised and well managed for further information needs.

The use of health information systems (HIS) help to reduce operation cost by reducing duplication of data, time and efforts. In addition to this, HIS aided increase in operational efficiency, as well as capability to share data across multiple health care teams.

A major concern in the use of HIT is possible security issues and lack of complete privacy in utilising electronic health records.

What is Information
Information is simply processed data. In information technology, when data goes to the process of input, collation, formatting and handling, it comes out as an output that has meaning to the user. This type of data is called information. Sometimes the word ‘data’ and ‘information’ are used interchangeably.

Do You Know, The Best IT Certifications for 2012

2012-01-30T02:52:00.000-08:00

IT certifications are a way to certify and validate an individual's IT skills. There are many certifications available from a number of institutions. But which are the best and most rewarding ones to pursue in 2012? Read on to learn more.

An IT certification is no ordinary exam. It is not a simple case of studying from textbooks and study material. IT Certifications require a good combination of practical and technical know-how. While majority are multiple choice questions, some certifications require a practical exam or on-job experience. In the ever changing IT market of today, a certification is an important piece of paper, for both experienced and fresh candidates. In this article, the best IT certifications for 2012 are listed below, with a short description of each.

CompTIA Security+: Maintaining a secure system, across large and small networks, involves a lot of steps and technical expertise. The basics and advanced knowledge of computer security, from handling access rights to cryptography, is taught and validated in the Security+ certificate from CompTia. To take this exam, the professional should have 2 years of networking experience and have completed the CompTia Network+ certification.

Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH): An ethical hacker or penetration tester is employed by a company, to attempt to penetrate or hack into the network or computer systems, so that weaknesses and failings in their security system can be exposed. As illegal hacking is rapidly becoming a serious threat in any organization, ethical hacking is gaining popularity as a popular testing method for network security. This vendor neutral certification is provided by the International Council for E-Commerce Consultants.

Global Information Assurance Certification (GIAC): One of the leading institutions handling information security certifications, in a number of security disciplines. GIAC measures an individual's specific knowledge areas in the field of information security, for nearly 20 job specific responsibilities, like firewall analyst, intrusion analyst or security expert to name a few. It is a highly valued certification in the field of information security.

Certified Information Security Manager (CISM): This is an advanced certification from the ISACA, for experienced professionals in the field of information security. A CISM certificate exam validates an individual's management skills and know-how of large, enterprise-level information security handling. It is of key value to those trying to upgrade their job position, from that of a security professional to a managerial position. It has been accredited by the ANSI and requires at least 5 years of work experience in IT security.

Cisco Certifications: The networking field is the fastest and best IT field in terms of growth and opportunities. And Cisco is the brand leader in networking certifications. For any level of networking expertise, be it entry or experienced, Cisco has a certificate and in a variety of networking subjects like security, installation and design. Here are some of the best IT certifications for networking from Cisco:

    Cisco Certified Entry Networking Technician (CCENT)
    CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) in Security, Voice, Wireless, Routing and Switching
    Cisco Certified Security Professional (CCSP)
    Cisco Certified Wireless Professional (CCNP Wireless)
    Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP)

Project Management Professional (PMP): This certifies the management know-how and skills of an IT professional, in handling projects and tasks at a managerial level, within a budget and time limit. Its prerequisite is educational qualifications and experience. A PMP is a renowned and internationally accepted certification in the management field.

Why is an IT Certification Needed?

Certifications provide that much-needed edge, which differentiates one professional from the other. It gives experienced workers a chance to update themselves in their respective areas of expertise. Instead of going in for another degree, they can add to their education with a certification. Certifications prove how dedicated a professional is to the field they work in.

For fresh graduates, it gives them a hiring advantage over their competitors. It is a given IT industry fact, that an inexperienced but certified professional, is a better choice than an non-certified one. A certificate can be used as a proof of competency. And for the inexperienced, certification knowledge is more valuable for a job, than what they may have learned during their education. For example, during a four-year degree course in engineering, one learns a little bit of different languages, like Java or SQL. But when a student of engineering is considered for a job, if certified in SQL, that individual is more valuable to an organization, since he is already well versed in the specific technology.

Best In Demand IT Certifications for 2012

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): This certification tests your skills and expertise in a specific technology. For example, the MCTS ASP.NET certification focuses on the .NET 3.5 ASP.NET suite. There are currently 20 specializations, with 5 broad subject categories which are Office, .NET framework, SQL Server, Windows and business intelligence. This is the first level of certification exams for Microsoft.

Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCTIP): This certification is extremely useful for experienced professionals, as it validates the skill set to perform a particular job role. It tests the ability of the candidate, to use Microsoft technologies in performing an IT job role, like database administrator or server administrator. To give this exam, one or more compulsory MCTS certifications must be obtained first.

CompTIA A+: This is a vendor neutral certification, that covers multiple operating systems and technologies. This certification ensures basic knowledge of software and hardware components. It is intended for professionals, with at least 500 hours of hands-on experience, as the questions are based on practice, not theory. The A+ certification is especially used as a bench mark for computer support technicians, as the key exam areas are installation, networking, maintenance and troubleshooting of computer systems.

Apple Certified Technical Coordinator (ACTC): For those interested in working with the Mac OS X, this is one rare and necessary certification. It targets entry-level system administrators, who provide support for and maintain Mac OS X client server environment.

Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA): Red Hat certifications are the best and most sought-after Linux certifications. They carry out actual practical exams, instead of the normal multiple choice questions. The RHCSA is the entry level-exam to pursue a Red Hat certification. It deals with basic system administration and there is no experience prerequisite. It is the mandatory base exam for higher Red Hat certifications like RHCE.

Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP): A certification from the non profit International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC2). It deals with information and network security, highly important subjects in any industry and organization. This particular certification is accredited by ANSI, and is highly regarded as an information systems standard. It requires a minimum of 5 years, full-time, security work experience.

IT certifications have been a source of debate for industry experts. In recruiters minds, the key factor for deciding to hire an individual is experience. However a certification cannot replace experience. Also, you can get pigeonholed in that technology, and your company might hesitate to promote you. Find out if a certification will result in a pay raise or make you considerable for a promotion. And see how flexible your schedule is, so that you can actually study for the exam. In the long run, your talent and skills are the key factors that contribute to your success in the IT field.

Information Technology :: Load Balancer Company KEMP Technologies Receives $16 Million in Funding

2012-01-29T09:30:00.000-08:00

“As bandwidth requirements of corporations large and small continue to increase, KEMP Technologies’ effective and efficient load balancing products are mission critical for managing infrastructure,” Lenard Marcus, principal of Edison Ventures who also led the investment noted.

Founded in 2003, KEMP Technologies prides itself on creating solutions that are affordable for small-and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The company first entered the load balancer industry with its LoadMaster technology, catered specifically to the SMBs. Since then, the company has continued to enhance its technology and most recently the company made over its LoadMaster family of server load balancer appliances and application delivery controllers.

Two weeks ago, the New York-based company unveiled LoadMaster 6.0, the latest version of the LoadMaster family, that boasts a flashier look for the New Year.

“The goal of LoadMaster 6.0 is to deliver reliable and high performing server load balancing and application delivery hardware or software-based virtual platform,” Peter Melerud, vice president of product management at KEMP Technologies, told TMCnet. “LoadMaster 6.0 introduces pre-configured application templates that are designed to reduce the time and effort required to optimally deploy business-critical applications. The LoadMaster 6.0 will deliver the next generation of capabilities for more efficient and cost-effective optimized datacenter performance.”

Its advances in the market are certainly paying off as key investors are taking note.

The recent financial news comes at a good time for KEMP Technologies, according to a recent blog post written by the company, as it is looking forward to entering into new partnerships.

“As you know, KEMP addresses an essential need in the SMB market that has been ignored,” officials wrote. “The funding will allow us to expand product development, accelerate sales expansion and extend our international presence. Most importantly, we now have the resources to better support our loyal customers.”

And those customers certainly want more from KEMP Technologies.

As expressed by Tom Vander Schaaff, an Edison Partner that led the investment round, “KEMP’s customers viewed the technology as a must have and commended the reliability of the technology Edison’s operating experience, particularly in sales, marketing and channel development will help to accelerate KEMP’s growth.”

Added Eric Filipek, managing director of Kennet Partners, “KEMP has delivered greater than 100 percent growth with success both in North America and Europe. The company has done a great job at building out a channel that can scale. We look forward to working with the investor group and management team to build a global-category leading business.”

.

Operating System Technology :: Why Desktop Apps Would Be Bad News for Windows 8 Tablets

Software :: Microsoft Office for iPad: Why You’ll Need It, How You’ll Use It

Software Technology :: CloudOn Brings Microsoft Office to iPad

Gadge Technology :: Could Microsoft Office Go Multi-Platform For Mobile?

Technology :: 'Fountain of youth' enzyme lengthens mouse life

Technology :: Now You Can Edit Collaboratively with Google Docs for Android

Technology :: Nehalem and Swift Chips Spell the End of Stand-Alone Graphics Boards

Search Technology :: Why Google Digital Glasses Are a Prescription for Disaster

How They Work

Grand Theft Sunglasses

Coupons 24 hours a day--Now in Your Eyes!

Technology :: Will the FTC Investigate Google's Safari Gaffe?

Goofari

Broke the Rules

Popularity

Same old Song and Dance

Technology :: The Future of Mobile Phones

Technology News :: What's Hot In.... Technology

Technology :: The Future of Your PC's Hardware

Technology :: Neutrality Rules Slated to Take Effect this Fall

Science :: Boy genius's book reveals life in college at age 8

Management :: Best Practices and Common Pitfalls Associated with Suppliers Involvement in NPD

Several factors are considered here:

About the author

Science :: DNA in Beethoven’s hair sequenced to make one last song

Why Filtering Is Not the Solution

Management :: Four Approaches to Fostering Companies’ Innovation Capability

Paving the Road to the 'Learning Health Care System'

How to Successfully Implement Collaborative Idea Management

What is idea management?

Addressing challenges

Designing a system

Release the creativity

Further reading

Comp Techno :: New Virtual Helper Challenges Siri

Technology :: Cisco challenges Microsoft takeover of Skype in EU

GPS tracking :: Supreme Court Requires Warrant for GPS Tracking

Techno :: Why Filtering Is Not the Solution

New Tech :: Shrunken Servers Aim for a Greener Internet

Techno :: Global Policy Weekly

New Tech :: Graphene Competitor Used to Make Circuits

New Technology :: A New Net

IT :: Myths about the FCC’s Internet Openness Rules

In Indonesia :: ‘FPI-Free’ Rally Marked by Fears Over Protection

Web Technology :: The Year on the Web

New Tech :: How Apple Can Revolutionize Television

New Tech :: Printed Stickers Designed to Monitor Food Temperatures

Predicts America's Political Winners

ERP :: Wolfram Alpha :: Data Analysis for the People

In Central Kalimantan Dayak community FPI Decline

Protest :: Web Protests Weaken Antipiracy Bills

Media :: Facebook: the revenge of the nerds

Padang Mount sites Older than the Pyramids of Giza

Web Tech :: TalkTalk loses another 50,000 customers

Padang Mount and the Mystery of 2500 BC.

New Tech :: Google introduces Chrome for phone

Al Shabab Join with Al Qaeda That Which Has Wrong Wrong Docrin

Nature's Book

World War :: Israel attack Iran April

Life Style :: In the U.S., Jews & Muslims 'Unity' For Food

New Tech :: Apple cracks down on iPhone firms using appayola marketing services

Wireless-sensor networks can monitor factory machinery :: Good Vibrations

Indonesia court Graded Only Hard On Poor.

Kennedy Cheating With Worker Apprenticeship in Room Wife

Wow Tech :: The top 50 Android tablet apps

SOCIAL MEDIA / WEB

CULTURE

GAMES

PRODUCTIVITY / TOOLS

LIFESTYLE / SCIENCE

Padang Mount sites Older than the Pyramids of Giza

Only in Indonesia :: year, Asmat Cabuli Children Bladder

Only in Indonesia :: Indonesia :: police Personal Immoral Darkness girlfriend Police: Maybe It's 500 time ...!

Hundreds killed in the tragedy of Football

Politik di Malaysia :: Anwar Ibrahim Bantah Minta Dukungan Indonesia

Flora and Fauna :: Ular Piton 150 Kg Menunggu Gelar Guinness

Flora and Fauna :: Ular Piton Itu Menakutkan Warga

Politik di Malaysia :: Beda Korupsi Indonesia dan Malaysia Versi Anwar Ibrahim

Politik :: Jejak Setoran ke Angelina Sondakh Kian Terang