Travelocity, TripAdvisor, Expedia, Sabre Holdings, and several other online travel companies have created the FairSearch.org coalition to try to block Google's acquisition of ITA Software.
In a blog post announcing its launch, FairSearch said that Google "presents a threat to competition and transparency in online travel search, and could lead to higher travel prices and less choice for consumers."
Back in July, Google announced that it intended to acquire ITA for $700 million. The search giant said at the time that ITA, which collects flight, seating, and pricing data from airlines and provides them to online travel search companies, would be used to help people shop for airfare via Google.
Google's representation of online travel.
Google's representation of the online travel industry.
(Credit: Google)
On a site detailing its intentions for ITA, Google states that it wants to "create a new, easier way for users to find better flight information online, which should encourage more users to make their flight purchases online."
Google asserts that its ITA acquisition "will benefit passengers, airlines, and online travel agencies."
But the FairSearch coalition members disagree and specifically cite "The Google Problem."
"If the transaction is approved, consumers should expect to face higher prices and less choice when searching for travel online," FairSearch states on its site. "This anticompetitive deal represents a broader pattern in Google's acquisition strategy--a strategy that threatens online competition, innovation, and economic growth."
In addition to establishing a coalition, the companies are rallying together in a lobbying effort to urge Congress members to block Google's bid for ITA, The Wall Street Journal reported.
But those companies aren't the only stakeholders concerned about Google's intentions for ITA.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice broadened its review of Google's ITA acquisition. The Justice Department is concerned that Google would keep travel companies from using ITA's services. The federal government also wants to ensure that Google won't use ITA to push people toward its own travel offering, rather than direct them to search sites.
For its part, Google has said that the "deal will not change existing market shares." It also plans to "honor all existing agreements" ITA Software has with travel search companies.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Hybrid hard disk market set to take off
The hybrid hard disk drive market is expected to reach 600 million units in 2016, according to market researcher Objective Analysis. This would mean an explosion of mainstream drives that integrate the performance-boosting benefits of flash memory.
Seagate's Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drive can add a lot of performance on certain tasks with just a touch of flash memory.
Seagate's Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drive can add a lot of performance on certain tasks with just a touch of flash memory.
(Credit: Seagate)
The first generation of hybrid drive technology was "well conceived but poorly implemented," according to a report released on Monday by Objective Analysis. "Now that working versions have been implemented the hybrid drive promises to sweep the PC hard drive market."
"We expect the hybrid drive market to nearly double every year for the five years following its initial adoption, reaching 600 million units by 2016," said analyst Jim Handy, who authored the report, in a statement. "This blazing growth will result from hybrid drives replacing standard HDDs in mainstream PCs."
Hybrid drives, in their current form, add a small amount of flash memory to a traditional spinning HDD. But this pinch of flash can deliver a big boost to performance on certain tasks at relatively little extra cost, as CNET Reviews demonstrated with the 500GB Seagate Momentus XT and as other reviews of the Seagate drive have shown.
"The NAND [flash memory] in these hybrid drives will be pretty small. Seagate's Momentus XT does a really good job with only 4GB of flash, and Nvelo's Dataplex software accelerates HDDs very well with only 16GB of NAND," said Handy, responding to an e-mail query.
Handy continued. "We expect the hybrid drives released in 2010 and 2011 to be introduced around the 4GB level, but over the forecast period, the amount of flash per drive should ramp to an average of 16GB."
The upside for consumers is that they're not as expensive as flash-only solid-state drives, which can add hundreds of dollars to the price of a traditional HDD. "A 4GB NAND--using SLC [single-level cell] NAND flash, which is required in this application--should add about $20 to the manufacturing cost of an HDD today, which might translate to an added $30 to 40 to the end user."
He continued. "A lot of consumers would be perfectly happy to spend an extra $30 to 40 to get the performance of an SSD and the capacity of an HDD. So far they have not been happy to spend an extra $200 to 500 to get an SSD that's smaller than an HDD."
In the case of Apple's just-announced MacBook Air, for example, adding just 128GB of flash storage to the base configuration increases the price of the 13-inch model from $1,299 to $1,599. And choosing a 256GB solid-state drive over a 500GB hard disk on a 15-inch MacBook Pro adds a whopping $650 to the price.
Seagate's Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drive can add a lot of performance on certain tasks with just a touch of flash memory.
Seagate's Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drive can add a lot of performance on certain tasks with just a touch of flash memory.
(Credit: Seagate)
The first generation of hybrid drive technology was "well conceived but poorly implemented," according to a report released on Monday by Objective Analysis. "Now that working versions have been implemented the hybrid drive promises to sweep the PC hard drive market."
"We expect the hybrid drive market to nearly double every year for the five years following its initial adoption, reaching 600 million units by 2016," said analyst Jim Handy, who authored the report, in a statement. "This blazing growth will result from hybrid drives replacing standard HDDs in mainstream PCs."
Hybrid drives, in their current form, add a small amount of flash memory to a traditional spinning HDD. But this pinch of flash can deliver a big boost to performance on certain tasks at relatively little extra cost, as CNET Reviews demonstrated with the 500GB Seagate Momentus XT and as other reviews of the Seagate drive have shown.
"The NAND [flash memory] in these hybrid drives will be pretty small. Seagate's Momentus XT does a really good job with only 4GB of flash, and Nvelo's Dataplex software accelerates HDDs very well with only 16GB of NAND," said Handy, responding to an e-mail query.
Handy continued. "We expect the hybrid drives released in 2010 and 2011 to be introduced around the 4GB level, but over the forecast period, the amount of flash per drive should ramp to an average of 16GB."
The upside for consumers is that they're not as expensive as flash-only solid-state drives, which can add hundreds of dollars to the price of a traditional HDD. "A 4GB NAND--using SLC [single-level cell] NAND flash, which is required in this application--should add about $20 to the manufacturing cost of an HDD today, which might translate to an added $30 to 40 to the end user."
He continued. "A lot of consumers would be perfectly happy to spend an extra $30 to 40 to get the performance of an SSD and the capacity of an HDD. So far they have not been happy to spend an extra $200 to 500 to get an SSD that's smaller than an HDD."
In the case of Apple's just-announced MacBook Air, for example, adding just 128GB of flash storage to the base configuration increases the price of the 13-inch model from $1,299 to $1,599. And choosing a 256GB solid-state drive over a 500GB hard disk on a 15-inch MacBook Pro adds a whopping $650 to the price.
Monday, October 25, 2010
China hijacked U.S. Internet data
A Chinese state-run telecom provider was the source of the redirection of U.S. military and corporate data that occurred this past April, according to excerpts of a draft report sent to CNET by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
The current draft of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission's (USCC's) 2010 annual report, which is close to final but has not yet been officially approved, finds that malicious computer activity tied to China continues to persist following reports early this year of attacks against Google and other companies from within the country.
In several cases, Chinese telecommunications firms have disrupted or impacted U.S. Internet traffic, according to the excerpts.
On March 24, Web traffic from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and other popular sites was temporarily affected by China's own internal censorship system, sometimes known as the Great Firewall. Users in Chile and the United States trying to reach those sites were diverted to incorrect servers or encountered error messages indicating that the sites did not exist. The USCC report said it was as if users outside China were trying to access restricted sites from behind China's Great Firewall.
Then on April 8, a large number of routing paths to various Internet Protocol addresses were redirected through networks in China for 17 minutes. The USCC identified China's state-owned telecommunications firm China Telecom as the source of the "hijacking." This diversion of data would have given the operators of the servers on those networks the ability to read, delete, or edit e-mail and other information sent along those paths.
The April incident affected traffic to and from U.S. government and military sites, including sites for the Senate, the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, and the office of the Secretary of Defense, the USCC said. Rodney Joffe, senior technologist at Domain Name System registry Neustar, also confirmed in a recent interview with CNET that the data diverted to China came from Fortune 500 companies and many branches of the U.S. government.
Evidence didn't clearly indicate whether this diversion of data was done intentionally or for what purpose, according to the USCC. But the capability alone raises a red flag.
"Although the commission has no way to determine what, if anything, Chinese telecommunications firms did to the hijacked data, incidents of this nature could have a number of serious implications," said the report excerpts. "This level of access could enable surveillance of specific users or sites. It could disrupt a data transaction and prevent a user from establishing a connection with a site. It could even allow a diversion of data to somewhere that the user did not intend (for example, to a 'spoofed' site)."
The report also commented on an incident in April in which a China-based spy network was accused of targeting government departments, diplomatic missions, and other groups in India. The activity, which also compromised computers in at least 35 other countries, including the U.S., grabbed sensitive documents from the Indian government.
Though the USCC could not definitively link this incident to the Chinese government, the authors of the report do believe there's an "obvious correlation to be drawn between the victims, the nature of the documents stolen, and the strategic interests of the Chinese state."
The excerpts did note some positive news--2010 could be the first year over the past decade that shows a smaller number of logged threats against defense and military networks. This doesn't necessarily mean that the number of attempts have decreased. Instead, the report cites the Defense Department's assertion that its own defensive measures over the past year have prevented a larger number of threats.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission was set up by Congress in 2000 to analyze the national security issues involved in trade and an economic relationship between the U.S. and China.
The current draft of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission's (USCC's) 2010 annual report, which is close to final but has not yet been officially approved, finds that malicious computer activity tied to China continues to persist following reports early this year of attacks against Google and other companies from within the country.
In several cases, Chinese telecommunications firms have disrupted or impacted U.S. Internet traffic, according to the excerpts.
On March 24, Web traffic from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and other popular sites was temporarily affected by China's own internal censorship system, sometimes known as the Great Firewall. Users in Chile and the United States trying to reach those sites were diverted to incorrect servers or encountered error messages indicating that the sites did not exist. The USCC report said it was as if users outside China were trying to access restricted sites from behind China's Great Firewall.
Then on April 8, a large number of routing paths to various Internet Protocol addresses were redirected through networks in China for 17 minutes. The USCC identified China's state-owned telecommunications firm China Telecom as the source of the "hijacking." This diversion of data would have given the operators of the servers on those networks the ability to read, delete, or edit e-mail and other information sent along those paths.
The April incident affected traffic to and from U.S. government and military sites, including sites for the Senate, the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, and the office of the Secretary of Defense, the USCC said. Rodney Joffe, senior technologist at Domain Name System registry Neustar, also confirmed in a recent interview with CNET that the data diverted to China came from Fortune 500 companies and many branches of the U.S. government.
Evidence didn't clearly indicate whether this diversion of data was done intentionally or for what purpose, according to the USCC. But the capability alone raises a red flag.
"Although the commission has no way to determine what, if anything, Chinese telecommunications firms did to the hijacked data, incidents of this nature could have a number of serious implications," said the report excerpts. "This level of access could enable surveillance of specific users or sites. It could disrupt a data transaction and prevent a user from establishing a connection with a site. It could even allow a diversion of data to somewhere that the user did not intend (for example, to a 'spoofed' site)."
The report also commented on an incident in April in which a China-based spy network was accused of targeting government departments, diplomatic missions, and other groups in India. The activity, which also compromised computers in at least 35 other countries, including the U.S., grabbed sensitive documents from the Indian government.
Though the USCC could not definitively link this incident to the Chinese government, the authors of the report do believe there's an "obvious correlation to be drawn between the victims, the nature of the documents stolen, and the strategic interests of the Chinese state."
The excerpts did note some positive news--2010 could be the first year over the past decade that shows a smaller number of logged threats against defense and military networks. This doesn't necessarily mean that the number of attempts have decreased. Instead, the report cites the Defense Department's assertion that its own defensive measures over the past year have prevented a larger number of threats.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission was set up by Congress in 2000 to analyze the national security issues involved in trade and an economic relationship between the U.S. and China.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Obama meets Steve Jobs, sups with Marissa Mayer
President Barack Obama met yesterday with two ascendant Silicon Valley powers: Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Google VP Marissa Mayer.
With Jobs, Obama discussed American competitiveness and education, according to Reuters.
The president's visit to the home of Mayer and husband Zachary Bogue was for a $30,000-a-plate fund-raising dinner less than two weeks before mid-term elections, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Obama had good timing for catching people on the upswing.
Jobs this week revealed sleek new MacBook Air computers and announced Apple's quarterly profit of $4.31 billion.
Mayer--who is vice president of geographic and local services--isn't running Google, but she's a step closer with her promotion to Google's Operating Committee earlier this month. And like Apple, Google just reported its own strong quarter with a profit of $2.17 billion.
With Jobs, Obama discussed American competitiveness and education, according to Reuters.
The president's visit to the home of Mayer and husband Zachary Bogue was for a $30,000-a-plate fund-raising dinner less than two weeks before mid-term elections, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Obama had good timing for catching people on the upswing.
Jobs this week revealed sleek new MacBook Air computers and announced Apple's quarterly profit of $4.31 billion.
Mayer--who is vice president of geographic and local services--isn't running Google, but she's a step closer with her promotion to Google's Operating Committee earlier this month. And like Apple, Google just reported its own strong quarter with a profit of $2.17 billion.
Microsoft puts PC game downloads in the browser
Microsoft wants to let PC gamers know it's still serious about delivering game software and is putting that idea to the test with a new system that places fewer roadblocks in the way of getting gamers connected to digital game downloads.
Today, the company is announcing a new online store that will let gamers buy digital copies of games--old and new--from just their browser. The site, which opens up on November 15th retains the Games for Windows Marketplace moniker, but is an online version of the store that's long been available through the company's Games For Windows Live software client--albeit with a few tweaks.
Users can browse this catalog of around 100 games, find out more about them, then make a purchase that downloads right in their browser. The client software is still needed for large game files, as was to explained CNET in an interview earlier this week with Xbox's group project manager Peter Orullian.
"For people who have the client--the client will morph into a tool they might use for different reasons, but if mostly what people were using the client for was just to go and purchase the games, that's what we've solved, because a lot of those people have said, 'It's just extra work,'" Orullian said.
Another step Microsoft has removed from the PC game buying experience is the need to buy games with Microsoft Points--the tech titan's virtual currency. If users have points in their account from Xbox or Zune marketplace transactions, they can still use those, but there is now an option to just pay with a credit or debit card. When asked if that had been a point of contention from within Microsoft, Orullian said it wasn't.
"I work really, really closely with the business manager [of Microsoft], and not once did he ever express any angst on this. So what I know on this is that this is feedback we had, and we wanted to have a simple way to purchase, and we just kind of marched set drum. We never had any kind of fight on that," Orullian said.
Besides the purchase option, Microsoft is using the refresh of the online games marketplace to change what kind of information can be presented to users. That includes things like add-ons, which if they're a part of the catalog will be included not just on the game page but at the point of purchase. This comes into play with games like Bethesda's Fallout series, which has a large amount of downloadable content. Now you see these downloadable items not just when you're exploring the game on its information page, but when you're just about to buy it--something the company is banking on as pulling in extra buys in the same way a user would buy a candy bar at a grocery stand checkout.
The new marketplace also takes advantage of RSS feeds from developers, so shoppers of the site can see the most recent updates of news items from a particular developer. Orullian explained that this would be otherwise unfiltered, except for somethin
Today, the company is announcing a new online store that will let gamers buy digital copies of games--old and new--from just their browser. The site, which opens up on November 15th retains the Games for Windows Marketplace moniker, but is an online version of the store that's long been available through the company's Games For Windows Live software client--albeit with a few tweaks.
Users can browse this catalog of around 100 games, find out more about them, then make a purchase that downloads right in their browser. The client software is still needed for large game files, as was to explained CNET in an interview earlier this week with Xbox's group project manager Peter Orullian.
"For people who have the client--the client will morph into a tool they might use for different reasons, but if mostly what people were using the client for was just to go and purchase the games, that's what we've solved, because a lot of those people have said, 'It's just extra work,'" Orullian said.
Another step Microsoft has removed from the PC game buying experience is the need to buy games with Microsoft Points--the tech titan's virtual currency. If users have points in their account from Xbox or Zune marketplace transactions, they can still use those, but there is now an option to just pay with a credit or debit card. When asked if that had been a point of contention from within Microsoft, Orullian said it wasn't.
"I work really, really closely with the business manager [of Microsoft], and not once did he ever express any angst on this. So what I know on this is that this is feedback we had, and we wanted to have a simple way to purchase, and we just kind of marched set drum. We never had any kind of fight on that," Orullian said.
Besides the purchase option, Microsoft is using the refresh of the online games marketplace to change what kind of information can be presented to users. That includes things like add-ons, which if they're a part of the catalog will be included not just on the game page but at the point of purchase. This comes into play with games like Bethesda's Fallout series, which has a large amount of downloadable content. Now you see these downloadable items not just when you're exploring the game on its information page, but when you're just about to buy it--something the company is banking on as pulling in extra buys in the same way a user would buy a candy bar at a grocery stand checkout.
The new marketplace also takes advantage of RSS feeds from developers, so shoppers of the site can see the most recent updates of news items from a particular developer. Orullian explained that this would be otherwise unfiltered, except for somethin
Friday, October 22, 2010
Microsoft celebrates Windows 7's first birthday
Like any proud parent, Microsoft wants us to know just how cute its baby is.
To mark the first birthday of Windows 7, Microsoft posted a blog touting its first steps.
(Credit: Microsoft)
Unlike Vista--which was a somewhat awkward toddler--Windows 7 has proven to be a rather good addition to the family. In addition to selling more than 240 million copies, it has helped rebuild the company's reputation.
Here's some other fun facts that Microsoft wanted to show off. (Sorry, no wallet pictures.)
According to Microsoft, people have:
*
Opened the start menu 14,139,925,439 times
*
Used Aero Snap 150,957,478 times
*
Used Aero Shake 20,555,528 times
*
Used their jumplists 339,129,958 times
*
Pinned 12,643 unique applications to the taskbar
Of course, there are also plenty of other cute kids around. Apple is pregnant with a Lion and Google is still carrying Chrome OS, which should be nearing its due date, no?
As for Microsoft, it is planning on having another kid, but refuses to talk about the new baby or give any clue as to when it is due. (Someone did manage to sneak out an ultrasound, though.)
To mark the first birthday of Windows 7, Microsoft posted a blog touting its first steps.
(Credit: Microsoft)
Unlike Vista--which was a somewhat awkward toddler--Windows 7 has proven to be a rather good addition to the family. In addition to selling more than 240 million copies, it has helped rebuild the company's reputation.
Here's some other fun facts that Microsoft wanted to show off. (Sorry, no wallet pictures.)
According to Microsoft, people have:
*
Opened the start menu 14,139,925,439 times
*
Used Aero Snap 150,957,478 times
*
Used Aero Shake 20,555,528 times
*
Used their jumplists 339,129,958 times
*
Pinned 12,643 unique applications to the taskbar
Of course, there are also plenty of other cute kids around. Apple is pregnant with a Lion and Google is still carrying Chrome OS, which should be nearing its due date, no?
As for Microsoft, it is planning on having another kid, but refuses to talk about the new baby or give any clue as to when it is due. (Someone did manage to sneak out an ultrasound, though.)
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Dad and son send HD camera into space with iPhone
Some fathers and sons spend their weekends flying kites in the park.
Luke Geissbuhler and his 7-year-old son Max thought it might be more fun to send an iPhone and an HD camera into space.
The purpose was simple: to film some of that stuff that is beyond us. So they thought they'd attach their equipment to a weather balloon. Once it's up there, they figured, the dearth of atmospheric pressure would ultimately burst it and send it back to Earth.
It all seemed very clever but not exactly foolproof.
As Geissbuhler and son say in their video: "It would have to survive 100 mph winds, temperatures of 60 degrees below zero, speeds of over a 150 mph, and the high risk of a water landing."
Still, the Wright brothers wouldn't have been put off by such uncertainty, and they never had an iPhone with which they could track the route of their flying craft. So father and son did a little low-altitude testing and then wandered off to the spacecraft-launching mecca that is Newburgh, N.Y., and sent their balloon into the sky.
The camera and the iPhone had been placed inside some handwarmers and, on the appointed day, father and son were their own two-man (with help) Mission Control in the park, as they watched their balloon sail off into the vast above.
The balloon burst after around 70 minutes. But it managed to record 100 minutes of footage. As if it knew its own way home, it came back to Earth 30 miles from where it had launched, which Geissbuhler attributed to "a quick ascent and two differing wind patterns."
This is a truly committed father and son partnership, so they searched for their flying machine until they found it "in the dead of night." Yes, it was 50 feet up a tree, but the iPhone's GPS and the camera's external LED light led them to it.
One can only wonder what their self-styled "Brooklyn Space Program" might attempt next. Perhaps a manned (and boyyed) space flight?
Luke Geissbuhler and his 7-year-old son Max thought it might be more fun to send an iPhone and an HD camera into space.
The purpose was simple: to film some of that stuff that is beyond us. So they thought they'd attach their equipment to a weather balloon. Once it's up there, they figured, the dearth of atmospheric pressure would ultimately burst it and send it back to Earth.
It all seemed very clever but not exactly foolproof.
As Geissbuhler and son say in their video: "It would have to survive 100 mph winds, temperatures of 60 degrees below zero, speeds of over a 150 mph, and the high risk of a water landing."
Still, the Wright brothers wouldn't have been put off by such uncertainty, and they never had an iPhone with which they could track the route of their flying craft. So father and son did a little low-altitude testing and then wandered off to the spacecraft-launching mecca that is Newburgh, N.Y., and sent their balloon into the sky.
The camera and the iPhone had been placed inside some handwarmers and, on the appointed day, father and son were their own two-man (with help) Mission Control in the park, as they watched their balloon sail off into the vast above.
The balloon burst after around 70 minutes. But it managed to record 100 minutes of footage. As if it knew its own way home, it came back to Earth 30 miles from where it had launched, which Geissbuhler attributed to "a quick ascent and two differing wind patterns."
This is a truly committed father and son partnership, so they searched for their flying machine until they found it "in the dead of night." Yes, it was 50 feet up a tree, but the iPhone's GPS and the camera's external LED light led them to it.
One can only wonder what their self-styled "Brooklyn Space Program" might attempt next. Perhaps a manned (and boyyed) space flight?
Monday, October 11, 2010
Apple complaint halts sales of iPhone lookalike
Meizu M8
The Meizu M8
(Credit: Meizu)
Remember the M8? It's a smartphone made by Chinese manufacturer Meizu that looks suspiciously like an iPhone. And it's about to become a rare commodity.
Meizu CEO Jack Wong posted on a Meizu forum that Apple's lawyers have convinced China's intellectual property office to shut down production of the M8 and ban the sale of existing devices because they bear too much similarity to Apple's phone.
Wong's quote (translated), according to Engadget:
Apple requested that we cease manufacturing the M8 this month, we agreed but then [Apple] came back and asked for a sales ban instead. I can cope with a production freeze, but not with having our shops closed and thus not being able to use up our inventory. If Apple and the provincial IPO take another insatiable step, I can only go head-to-head against them.
It's not really a shock to anyone--and shouldn't be to Wong--that a product whose premise is its similarity to another more successful product is going to be the subject of a patent complaint. Especially when that company is one as powerful as Apple. The surprise is that it's taken this long--Meizu has a history of building gadgets that look strikingly similar to those coming out of Cupertino.
But the M8 is just one of Meizu's products, and from the sound of it there are more in the making. That is, if the current production and sales ban doesn't put the company out of business first.
The Meizu M8
(Credit: Meizu)
Remember the M8? It's a smartphone made by Chinese manufacturer Meizu that looks suspiciously like an iPhone. And it's about to become a rare commodity.
Meizu CEO Jack Wong posted on a Meizu forum that Apple's lawyers have convinced China's intellectual property office to shut down production of the M8 and ban the sale of existing devices because they bear too much similarity to Apple's phone.
Wong's quote (translated), according to Engadget:
Apple requested that we cease manufacturing the M8 this month, we agreed but then [Apple] came back and asked for a sales ban instead. I can cope with a production freeze, but not with having our shops closed and thus not being able to use up our inventory. If Apple and the provincial IPO take another insatiable step, I can only go head-to-head against them.
It's not really a shock to anyone--and shouldn't be to Wong--that a product whose premise is its similarity to another more successful product is going to be the subject of a patent complaint. Especially when that company is one as powerful as Apple. The surprise is that it's taken this long--Meizu has a history of building gadgets that look strikingly similar to those coming out of Cupertino.
But the M8 is just one of Meizu's products, and from the sound of it there are more in the making. That is, if the current production and sales ban doesn't put the company out of business first.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Google testing previews of pages in search results Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20018743-265.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20#ixzz11w7poQk3
Google is testing a search results page that shows a preview of the pages generated by its algorithms.
Patrick Altoft, a search-engine optimization consultant in the U.K., spotted the test today. Some searchers on Google are seeing a search results page where some results are highlighted with a blue background, and when the searcher hovers over that result with their mouse, Google generates a preview of the page on the right side (over the ads, interestingly) that highlights the text in the original search query.
Google searchers can already refine their searches to generate results with page previews through the "search options" panel on the left-hand side of the search results page, but those previews are much smaller and aren't automatically generated by a hover, like the ones spotted by Altoft. Search Engine Land notes that Ask.com and Microsoft's Bing have offered similar preview options in the past.
Just because Google tests something easily spotted by the search community doesn't mean it will arrive soon for everyone, but those tests aren't red herrings, either. Google Instant was spotted in the wild a few weeks before it went live, as was also the case with the massive search-results page redesign that Google rolled out earlier this year.
Patrick Altoft, a search-engine optimization consultant in the U.K., spotted the test today. Some searchers on Google are seeing a search results page where some results are highlighted with a blue background, and when the searcher hovers over that result with their mouse, Google generates a preview of the page on the right side (over the ads, interestingly) that highlights the text in the original search query.
Google searchers can already refine their searches to generate results with page previews through the "search options" panel on the left-hand side of the search results page, but those previews are much smaller and aren't automatically generated by a hover, like the ones spotted by Altoft. Search Engine Land notes that Ask.com and Microsoft's Bing have offered similar preview options in the past.
Just because Google tests something easily spotted by the search community doesn't mean it will arrive soon for everyone, but those tests aren't red herrings, either. Google Instant was spotted in the wild a few weeks before it went live, as was also the case with the massive search-results page redesign that Google rolled out earlier this year.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Census of Marine Life reveals hidden life in oceans
Researchers have recently completed the global Census of Marine Life, a massive assessment of the world's oceans and the life contained within them.
The decade-long project, which involved more than 2,700 scientists from 80 nations, culminated October 4 with data on 120,000 species.
Tracking migrations across seas and up and down the water column, the study paints a broad picture of the health of the world's oceans. Among the findings are revelations of how much we don't know--an estimated 750,000 undiscovered species and vast areas of ocean that have never been explored.
One of four types of amoebas found living in open waters, the acantharians are fragile creatures, with a skeleton made of a single crystal of strontium sulfate and 20 mineralized spines radiating from their center.
Not much is known of these creatures because the strontium sulfate skeletal system quickly dissolves in the ocean waters after the organism dies, leaving little for the fossil record.
The decade-long project, which involved more than 2,700 scientists from 80 nations, culminated October 4 with data on 120,000 species.
Tracking migrations across seas and up and down the water column, the study paints a broad picture of the health of the world's oceans. Among the findings are revelations of how much we don't know--an estimated 750,000 undiscovered species and vast areas of ocean that have never been explored.
One of four types of amoebas found living in open waters, the acantharians are fragile creatures, with a skeleton made of a single crystal of strontium sulfate and 20 mineralized spines radiating from their center.
Not much is known of these creatures because the strontium sulfate skeletal system quickly dissolves in the ocean waters after the organism dies, leaving little for the fossil record.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Disney taps Yahoo exec to bolster Web efforts
Jimmy Pitaro, who is leaving his job running the powerful media properties at Yahoo, has taken a job as co-president of Disney Interactive Media Group, with John Pleasants.
Pleasants was CEO of Playdom, the online game company that Disney acquired for $763 million in late July.
The appointment of the pair, both of whom will report to Disney President and CEO Robert A. Iger, is a big move by the entertainment giant.
And it looks like another large-scale attempt to clarify and bolster its Web strategy, which has had a long and often rocky history and is the first major reset under Iger.
"I think we've built a framework of assets and now is the time to create a structure in a more focused way," said Iger in an interview this morning with BoomTown. "In splitting the divisions, we can focus more on them better and in a way they deserve."
He outlined the new setup, which will have Pleasants focus on the online gaming landscape and Pitaro on the Web and devices arenas. Iger said he felt Pleasants and Pitaro brought different backgrounds to the task, as well as longtime experiences.
Disney will need that going forward.
Under the previous regime of former CEO Michael Eisner, for example, Disney bought search engine Infoseek and tried to create a portal called Go.com. That failed, and was one of many efforts to define the online media company's Web strategy.
More recently in 2008, Disney gathered most of its Internet properties within DIMG, under Steve Wadsworth. He recently stepped down from his job.
Today, Disney owns a number of big Internet properties, including Disney.com, Family.com, and Club Penguin, although there does not seem to be a particularly cohesive strategy among them.
Of course, that's not surprise, given it is part of a multifaceted media company with a variety of businesses.
Due to its powerful content assets, in fact, it might be a perfect time for a more cogent plan. With the explosion of devices, such as the Apple iPad and others, the importance of cooperation between content and technology is more critical than ever.
News of the appointments of Pitaro and Pleasants had been rumored earlier this week by Silicon Alley Insider and the Hollywood Reporter.
As an interesting aside, Iger said that he was introduced to Pitaro via Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, as well as her husband David Goldberg. Sandberg is now on the board of Disney, and Pitaro came to Yahoo via Launch Media, which was co-founded by Goldberg.
More to come, obviously, but here is the official press release from Disney:
JOHN PLEASANTS, JAMES PITARO NAMED CO-PRESIDENTS,
DISNEY INTERACTIVE MEDIA GROUP
BURBANK, Calif., October 3, 2010-John Pleasants and James Pitaro have been named Co-Presidents, Disney Interactive Media Group (DIMG), it was announced today by Disney President and CEO Robert A. Iger.
John Pleasants, a well-respected new media executive whose career has included top jobs at digital commerce and game companies, will lead Disney's multi-faceted digital games businesses, including online, console, social and mobile. He will also continue to run Playdom, the fast-growing social games publishing company acquired by Disney earlier this year.
James Pitaro, an experienced Internet executive known for consistently delivering great branded web experiences to consumers, will oversee Disney Online, the home of Disney branded web and social media sites.
The new structure at DIMG is intended to enhance the strategic focus and responsiveness of the company's digital games and Disney Online businesses in a marketplace characterized by swiftly evolving consumer behavior and technologies. The structure is designed so that the two businesses can share consumer insights and technological resources and jointly take advantage of growth opportunities.
"Our rapidly growing Disney digital businesses will benefit greatly from the deep experience and distinct leadership skills shown by John and Jimmy," Iger said. "John has shown incredible agility and skill in helping companies achieve success in the ever-shifting digital games business, while Jimmy has vast knowledge of the online world and has been hugely successful at creating and building audiences around branded online content."
"Both have outstanding track records in anticipating trends and delivering to consumers creative, innovative and successful experiences and products," Iger added. "As Co-Presidents, I'm confident they will make Disney's digital content and businesses even more robust and successful."
Pleasants, who will be based in the Bay Area, will oversee Disney's overall games strategy and its global network of game development studios, including recently acquired mobile publisher Tapulous. The games group will include such popular online virtual worlds as Club Penguin and World of Cars as well as console and mobile titles.
Prior to joining Playdom as CEO in June 2009, he was President of Global Publishing and Chief Operating Officer of Electronic Arts Inc., where he led the company's online and mobile business units and its strategic expansion into online and social games. He previously served as President and CEO of Revolution Health and CEO of Ticketmaster, which included Match.com, CitySearch.com and Evite.com.
"I am extremely excited to be working with the DIMG team, and our colleagues across Disney, to advance the mission of enlivening people everywhere through the world's best interactive entertainment," Pleasants said. "Bob's vision and commitment to excellence in new media positions our organization to achieve great things."
In leading Disney Online, Pitaro will be responsible for enhancing the consumer experience on the company's numerous Disney-branded web and social media sites, including Disney.com, the number one global site for kids and families, and Family.com. Pitaro will also oversee Disney's social media marketing agency, DigiSynd.
Pitaro joins Disney from Yahoo! Inc. where he was Vice President and Head of Media. In that role, he significantly expanded Yahoo!'s original video, branded entertainment and editorial content and pioneered using data to enhance the consumer web experience. Pitaro led the successful expansion of Yahoo! Sports prior to being named to lead all of Yahoo!'s media properties, including its news, finance, entertainment and lifestyle sites. Previously, Pitaro ran Business Affairs for online music site Launch Media and practiced law at several New York firms.
"I'm honored to be joining the Disney family and energized to start working with the DIMG team. I've admired Disney for as long as I can remember and am looking forward to bringing my experience to the company and partnering with John to advance our online businesses," Pitaro said.
As Co-Presidents, they will be replacing former President Steve Wadsworth, who over many years established a firm foundation for DIMG's growth. Pleasants and Pitaro will report to Iger and will co-manage DIMG enterprise functions, including business affairs, finance and human resources. They will assume their new roles on October 18, 2010.
Pleasants was CEO of Playdom, the online game company that Disney acquired for $763 million in late July.
The appointment of the pair, both of whom will report to Disney President and CEO Robert A. Iger, is a big move by the entertainment giant.
And it looks like another large-scale attempt to clarify and bolster its Web strategy, which has had a long and often rocky history and is the first major reset under Iger.
"I think we've built a framework of assets and now is the time to create a structure in a more focused way," said Iger in an interview this morning with BoomTown. "In splitting the divisions, we can focus more on them better and in a way they deserve."
He outlined the new setup, which will have Pleasants focus on the online gaming landscape and Pitaro on the Web and devices arenas. Iger said he felt Pleasants and Pitaro brought different backgrounds to the task, as well as longtime experiences.
Disney will need that going forward.
Under the previous regime of former CEO Michael Eisner, for example, Disney bought search engine Infoseek and tried to create a portal called Go.com. That failed, and was one of many efforts to define the online media company's Web strategy.
More recently in 2008, Disney gathered most of its Internet properties within DIMG, under Steve Wadsworth. He recently stepped down from his job.
Today, Disney owns a number of big Internet properties, including Disney.com, Family.com, and Club Penguin, although there does not seem to be a particularly cohesive strategy among them.
Of course, that's not surprise, given it is part of a multifaceted media company with a variety of businesses.
Due to its powerful content assets, in fact, it might be a perfect time for a more cogent plan. With the explosion of devices, such as the Apple iPad and others, the importance of cooperation between content and technology is more critical than ever.
News of the appointments of Pitaro and Pleasants had been rumored earlier this week by Silicon Alley Insider and the Hollywood Reporter.
As an interesting aside, Iger said that he was introduced to Pitaro via Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, as well as her husband David Goldberg. Sandberg is now on the board of Disney, and Pitaro came to Yahoo via Launch Media, which was co-founded by Goldberg.
More to come, obviously, but here is the official press release from Disney:
JOHN PLEASANTS, JAMES PITARO NAMED CO-PRESIDENTS,
DISNEY INTERACTIVE MEDIA GROUP
BURBANK, Calif., October 3, 2010-John Pleasants and James Pitaro have been named Co-Presidents, Disney Interactive Media Group (DIMG), it was announced today by Disney President and CEO Robert A. Iger.
John Pleasants, a well-respected new media executive whose career has included top jobs at digital commerce and game companies, will lead Disney's multi-faceted digital games businesses, including online, console, social and mobile. He will also continue to run Playdom, the fast-growing social games publishing company acquired by Disney earlier this year.
James Pitaro, an experienced Internet executive known for consistently delivering great branded web experiences to consumers, will oversee Disney Online, the home of Disney branded web and social media sites.
The new structure at DIMG is intended to enhance the strategic focus and responsiveness of the company's digital games and Disney Online businesses in a marketplace characterized by swiftly evolving consumer behavior and technologies. The structure is designed so that the two businesses can share consumer insights and technological resources and jointly take advantage of growth opportunities.
"Our rapidly growing Disney digital businesses will benefit greatly from the deep experience and distinct leadership skills shown by John and Jimmy," Iger said. "John has shown incredible agility and skill in helping companies achieve success in the ever-shifting digital games business, while Jimmy has vast knowledge of the online world and has been hugely successful at creating and building audiences around branded online content."
"Both have outstanding track records in anticipating trends and delivering to consumers creative, innovative and successful experiences and products," Iger added. "As Co-Presidents, I'm confident they will make Disney's digital content and businesses even more robust and successful."
Pleasants, who will be based in the Bay Area, will oversee Disney's overall games strategy and its global network of game development studios, including recently acquired mobile publisher Tapulous. The games group will include such popular online virtual worlds as Club Penguin and World of Cars as well as console and mobile titles.
Prior to joining Playdom as CEO in June 2009, he was President of Global Publishing and Chief Operating Officer of Electronic Arts Inc., where he led the company's online and mobile business units and its strategic expansion into online and social games. He previously served as President and CEO of Revolution Health and CEO of Ticketmaster, which included Match.com, CitySearch.com and Evite.com.
"I am extremely excited to be working with the DIMG team, and our colleagues across Disney, to advance the mission of enlivening people everywhere through the world's best interactive entertainment," Pleasants said. "Bob's vision and commitment to excellence in new media positions our organization to achieve great things."
In leading Disney Online, Pitaro will be responsible for enhancing the consumer experience on the company's numerous Disney-branded web and social media sites, including Disney.com, the number one global site for kids and families, and Family.com. Pitaro will also oversee Disney's social media marketing agency, DigiSynd.
Pitaro joins Disney from Yahoo! Inc. where he was Vice President and Head of Media. In that role, he significantly expanded Yahoo!'s original video, branded entertainment and editorial content and pioneered using data to enhance the consumer web experience. Pitaro led the successful expansion of Yahoo! Sports prior to being named to lead all of Yahoo!'s media properties, including its news, finance, entertainment and lifestyle sites. Previously, Pitaro ran Business Affairs for online music site Launch Media and practiced law at several New York firms.
"I'm honored to be joining the Disney family and energized to start working with the DIMG team. I've admired Disney for as long as I can remember and am looking forward to bringing my experience to the company and partnering with John to advance our online businesses," Pitaro said.
As Co-Presidents, they will be replacing former President Steve Wadsworth, who over many years established a firm foundation for DIMG's growth. Pleasants and Pitaro will report to Iger and will co-manage DIMG enterprise functions, including business affairs, finance and human resources. They will assume their new roles on October 18, 2010.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Mercedes-Benz puts new electric car into production
Continuing its electric car research, Mercedes-Benz has begun series production of 500 E-Cell electric cars. We got a look at the car during the 2010 Paris Motor Show.
The new E-Cell uses the Mercedes-Benz A-class platform, with an electric powertrain provided by Tesla. With two lithium ion battery packs sandwiched under the floor of the car, the interior space is unaffected by the electric drive.
Under New European Drive Cycle testing, the E-Cell gets a range rating of 125 miles (200 kilometers), making it suitable for urban areas. Its electric motor produces 95 horsepower and 214 pound-feet of torque.
Units from the initial production run will be leased to customers in Germany, France, and the Netherlands.
The new E-Cell uses the Mercedes-Benz A-class platform, with an electric powertrain provided by Tesla. With two lithium ion battery packs sandwiched under the floor of the car, the interior space is unaffected by the electric drive.
Under New European Drive Cycle testing, the E-Cell gets a range rating of 125 miles (200 kilometers), making it suitable for urban areas. Its electric motor produces 95 horsepower and 214 pound-feet of torque.
Units from the initial production run will be leased to customers in Germany, France, and the Netherlands.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Google Street View captures dead bodies--real ones
Whenever Google sends its Street View cameras to a new country, there is always more revealed than was anticipated.
And so is the case with the launch of Google Street View in Brazil.
Just a day after the service launched, up popped a couple of corpses. One, on the Avenida Presidente Vargas in Rio, the other in Belo Horizonte.
The images, which first reportedly surfaced on Gizmodo Brazil are disturbing because of their apparent normality. They are not in deserted areas, but in places where people and cars can be seen, places where city life just goes on.
Google moved swiftly to remove the images, here for the Rio body and here for Belo Horizonte, leaving just a blank screen.
While the Brazilian Street View launch Thursday also gave members of Tumblr the opportunity to offer their own discoveries, a little more amusing, such as passers-by reacting to the Street View cameras, one can imagine that the revelation of corpses captured imaginations rather more.
The tech section of Brazilian site, G1, which has a close-up of one of the images if you're in the mood for that, also reported that Google has asked anyone who finds disturbing images to contact the company immediately by clicking on the "report a problem" link.
Should you feel affection for statistics, Brazil's intentional homicide rate, while decreasing slightly over the last 10 years, is still put at around five times that of the U.S. (Which is itself around five times greater than, say, Italy.) One can only wonder whether the Street View camera car driver even noticed the bodies or whether it seemed to him or her like a normal scene.
These Brazilian images offer something of a difficult contrast with the recent case of 10-year-old Azeera Beebeejaun, who was captured by Street View cameras merely pretending to be dead
And so is the case with the launch of Google Street View in Brazil.
Just a day after the service launched, up popped a couple of corpses. One, on the Avenida Presidente Vargas in Rio, the other in Belo Horizonte.
The images, which first reportedly surfaced on Gizmodo Brazil are disturbing because of their apparent normality. They are not in deserted areas, but in places where people and cars can be seen, places where city life just goes on.
Google moved swiftly to remove the images, here for the Rio body and here for Belo Horizonte, leaving just a blank screen.
While the Brazilian Street View launch Thursday also gave members of Tumblr the opportunity to offer their own discoveries, a little more amusing, such as passers-by reacting to the Street View cameras, one can imagine that the revelation of corpses captured imaginations rather more.
The tech section of Brazilian site, G1, which has a close-up of one of the images if you're in the mood for that, also reported that Google has asked anyone who finds disturbing images to contact the company immediately by clicking on the "report a problem" link.
Should you feel affection for statistics, Brazil's intentional homicide rate, while decreasing slightly over the last 10 years, is still put at around five times that of the U.S. (Which is itself around five times greater than, say, Italy.) One can only wonder whether the Street View camera car driver even noticed the bodies or whether it seemed to him or her like a normal scene.
These Brazilian images offer something of a difficult contrast with the recent case of 10-year-old Azeera Beebeejaun, who was captured by Street View cameras merely pretending to be dead
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Google offers JPEG alternative for faster Web
It turns out there was more to Google's WebM technology than just a plan to revolutionize Web-based video. The company also wants to revolutionize still images on the Web with a new format called WebP.
Google plans to announce the new WebP graphics format today along with its research that indicates its use could cut image file sizes by 40 percent compared to today's dominant JPEG file format. That translates to faster file transfers and lower network burden if Google can convince people to adopt WebP.
An image encoded with WebP.
This image has been encoded with WebP. Because browsers can't show WebP natively today, this WebP image actually is displayed here as a PNG graphic that captures the WebP version without changes. In its WebP incarnation, the image is 36,154 bytes.
(Credit: Google)
An image encoded with JPEG. Its file size is 46768 bytes.
The same image encoded with JPEG. Its file size is 46,768 bytes.
(Credit: Google)
WebP, like JPEG, lets its users trade off image quality for file size. And like JPEG, it's a "lossy" format, meaning it doesn't perfectly reproduce an original image but tries to keep as true to the original as possible when viewed by the human eye.
Unlike JPEG, though, it's not built into every camera, Web browser, image-editing program, pharmacy photo-printing kiosk, and mainstream operating system in existence. That's not stopping Google, though, whose goals with WebP are ambitious even if not as ambitious as replacing JPEG.
"When we took a bunch of images, recompressed them from their current lossy formats into WebP, we saw on average about 40 percent decrease in size, which is staggering," said Richard Rabbat, lead product manager on Google's "make the Web faster" effort. Shrinking images by that much is particularly important considering that, by Google's estimate, "65 percent of bytes on the Web are from images," he said.
JPEG is a powerful incumbent. Microsoft has been trying for years to promote an alternative, now standardized as the royalty-free JPEG XR format, which offers greater dynamic range, a wider range of colors, and more efficient compression. But JPEG XR so far hasn't made much progress beyond standardization and native support in Internet Explorer and Windows. An earlier effort, JPEG 2000, also hasn't much dented JPEG's popularity.
Google, like Microsoft, knows it's in for a long effort to promote its graphics format.
"The challenges are tremendous," Rabbat said. "We foresee it's going to be a very long conversation."
It's begun that conversation with some that share Google's faster-Web motivations: browser makers. "We're talking to other browser vendors about supporting WebP," he said. "Initially, we want to spread this widely on the Web."
WebP is derived from WebM, Google's open-source, royalty-free technology for encoding and decoding video. The higher compression efficiency measurement came from a sample of 1 million images that Google plucked from the Web. Of them, about 90 percent were JPEG, and Google's tests showed WebP offering the same quality with 40 percent smaller file sizes. The remaining 10 percent were formats such as PNG and GIF, which are used more for illustration images such as logos rather than the photo-oriented JPEG.
Google plans to release WebP software to let people judge image quality for themselves. At first that will include a utility to convert graphics into WebP images, but more important perhaps in the long run is support built into Google's Chrome browser.
"We expect in a few weeks we will have native support for WebP in Chrome," Rabbat said.
That browser move is where Google's efforts to speed up the Web are interesting. Because Google has some very popular Web pages along with a widely used if not dominant browser, the company can make something practical and real out of technology that in another company's hands would be merely academic unless it signed up partners.
Google's doing the same thing with other Web technologies, for example by building into Chrome the SPDY protocol to speed interactions with Web servers, and the Native Client software to run downloadable software at native rather than JavaScript speeds. With Chrome as a vehicle and Google's Web properties as a destination, neither of those need be universally adopted for Google to benefit.
For some more details on WebP, check Google's blog post on it or the open-source WebP project site, which includes an FAQ, the WebP converter command-line tool, and gallery.
Image-quality techies also will want to look at Google's detailed studies comparing WebM to JPEG and JPEG 2000.
The company wants WebP to be used beyond just its own servers. However, it will be tough to persuade Web developers to create variations on their current Web pages that use WebP rather than JPEG images, especially with no browsers supporting it today.
But Google has an answer: check to see if the browser supports WebP, and if it does, generate the necessary WebP images on the fly for delivery to the browser, Rabbat said.
"You don't have to make a decision--do I need to rebuild my corpus [of graphics] into WebP?" he said. "The conversion happens pretty fast. It's just a bit of CPU [processor power] you have to throw at the problem. When you've done the conversion once, you can cache the image so you don't have to do it again."
There is a penalty for the quality. Encoding WebP images takes about eight times longer than JPEG, Rabbat said, and decoding them somewhat less than twice as long. He also observed, though, that "a lot of technologies for lossy compression were invented in the 1970s when processors were slow and memory was expensive."
And hardware eventually could work in WebP's favor.
One convenient feature of WebP is that any hardware that supports WebM video encoding or decoding also supports WebP. That means a mobile phone with hardware support, for example, could take WebP photos.
Google plans to announce the new WebP graphics format today along with its research that indicates its use could cut image file sizes by 40 percent compared to today's dominant JPEG file format. That translates to faster file transfers and lower network burden if Google can convince people to adopt WebP.
An image encoded with WebP.
This image has been encoded with WebP. Because browsers can't show WebP natively today, this WebP image actually is displayed here as a PNG graphic that captures the WebP version without changes. In its WebP incarnation, the image is 36,154 bytes.
(Credit: Google)
An image encoded with JPEG. Its file size is 46768 bytes.
The same image encoded with JPEG. Its file size is 46,768 bytes.
(Credit: Google)
WebP, like JPEG, lets its users trade off image quality for file size. And like JPEG, it's a "lossy" format, meaning it doesn't perfectly reproduce an original image but tries to keep as true to the original as possible when viewed by the human eye.
Unlike JPEG, though, it's not built into every camera, Web browser, image-editing program, pharmacy photo-printing kiosk, and mainstream operating system in existence. That's not stopping Google, though, whose goals with WebP are ambitious even if not as ambitious as replacing JPEG.
"When we took a bunch of images, recompressed them from their current lossy formats into WebP, we saw on average about 40 percent decrease in size, which is staggering," said Richard Rabbat, lead product manager on Google's "make the Web faster" effort. Shrinking images by that much is particularly important considering that, by Google's estimate, "65 percent of bytes on the Web are from images," he said.
JPEG is a powerful incumbent. Microsoft has been trying for years to promote an alternative, now standardized as the royalty-free JPEG XR format, which offers greater dynamic range, a wider range of colors, and more efficient compression. But JPEG XR so far hasn't made much progress beyond standardization and native support in Internet Explorer and Windows. An earlier effort, JPEG 2000, also hasn't much dented JPEG's popularity.
Google, like Microsoft, knows it's in for a long effort to promote its graphics format.
"The challenges are tremendous," Rabbat said. "We foresee it's going to be a very long conversation."
It's begun that conversation with some that share Google's faster-Web motivations: browser makers. "We're talking to other browser vendors about supporting WebP," he said. "Initially, we want to spread this widely on the Web."
WebP is derived from WebM, Google's open-source, royalty-free technology for encoding and decoding video. The higher compression efficiency measurement came from a sample of 1 million images that Google plucked from the Web. Of them, about 90 percent were JPEG, and Google's tests showed WebP offering the same quality with 40 percent smaller file sizes. The remaining 10 percent were formats such as PNG and GIF, which are used more for illustration images such as logos rather than the photo-oriented JPEG.
Google plans to release WebP software to let people judge image quality for themselves. At first that will include a utility to convert graphics into WebP images, but more important perhaps in the long run is support built into Google's Chrome browser.
"We expect in a few weeks we will have native support for WebP in Chrome," Rabbat said.
That browser move is where Google's efforts to speed up the Web are interesting. Because Google has some very popular Web pages along with a widely used if not dominant browser, the company can make something practical and real out of technology that in another company's hands would be merely academic unless it signed up partners.
Google's doing the same thing with other Web technologies, for example by building into Chrome the SPDY protocol to speed interactions with Web servers, and the Native Client software to run downloadable software at native rather than JavaScript speeds. With Chrome as a vehicle and Google's Web properties as a destination, neither of those need be universally adopted for Google to benefit.
For some more details on WebP, check Google's blog post on it or the open-source WebP project site, which includes an FAQ, the WebP converter command-line tool, and gallery.
Image-quality techies also will want to look at Google's detailed studies comparing WebM to JPEG and JPEG 2000.
The company wants WebP to be used beyond just its own servers. However, it will be tough to persuade Web developers to create variations on their current Web pages that use WebP rather than JPEG images, especially with no browsers supporting it today.
But Google has an answer: check to see if the browser supports WebP, and if it does, generate the necessary WebP images on the fly for delivery to the browser, Rabbat said.
"You don't have to make a decision--do I need to rebuild my corpus [of graphics] into WebP?" he said. "The conversion happens pretty fast. It's just a bit of CPU [processor power] you have to throw at the problem. When you've done the conversion once, you can cache the image so you don't have to do it again."
There is a penalty for the quality. Encoding WebP images takes about eight times longer than JPEG, Rabbat said, and decoding them somewhat less than twice as long. He also observed, though, that "a lot of technologies for lossy compression were invented in the 1970s when processors were slow and memory was expensive."
And hardware eventually could work in WebP's favor.
One convenient feature of WebP is that any hardware that supports WebM video encoding or decoding also supports WebP. That means a mobile phone with hardware support, for example, could take WebP photos.
Could newly discovered planet sustain life?
A team of astronomers said today that they've discovered the first solid example of a planet outside our solar system that could sustain life.
The planet, Gliese (pronounced "GLEE-zuh") 581g, orbits a star about 20 light-years away from Earth, and is just the right distance from that star to enjoy temperatures that are hospitable to water in liquid form--and are thus conducive to life, researchers said.
"Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and one of the leaders of the research team, said in a statement.
ALT TEXT
Credit: Lynette Cook/NASA
An artist's rendering of
the newly discovered
Gliese 581g.
The team, made up of astronomers from UC Santa Cruz and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, has published its findings in the Astrophysical Journal and online.
To discover Gliese 581g, the researchers spent 11 years working with the HIRES spectrometer on the Keck I Telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The spectrometer can pick up wobbles in a star's motion caused by passing planets, and thus reveal the presence of the planets themselves.
This and other techniques have been used in recent years to discover the existence of numerous Earth-size "exoplanets," or planets that are extrasolar--that is, outside our solar system. Gliese 581g is the first such planet, however, that would seem to provide the right conditions for the survival of organisms.
Such existence, though, is by no means certain. If the atmosphere on Gliese 581 "was all carbon dioxide, like Venus, it would be pretty hot," Sara Seager, a planetary astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The New York Times. Seager said she was skeptical: "Everyone is so primed to say here's the next place we're going to find life, but this isn't a good planet for follow-up."
But Vogt is more than optimistic. At a news conference in Washington, the Times reported, he said he thought "the chances of life on this planet are almost 100 percent."
The planet, Gliese (pronounced "GLEE-zuh") 581g, orbits a star about 20 light-years away from Earth, and is just the right distance from that star to enjoy temperatures that are hospitable to water in liquid form--and are thus conducive to life, researchers said.
"Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and one of the leaders of the research team, said in a statement.
ALT TEXT
Credit: Lynette Cook/NASA
An artist's rendering of
the newly discovered
Gliese 581g.
The team, made up of astronomers from UC Santa Cruz and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, has published its findings in the Astrophysical Journal and online.
To discover Gliese 581g, the researchers spent 11 years working with the HIRES spectrometer on the Keck I Telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The spectrometer can pick up wobbles in a star's motion caused by passing planets, and thus reveal the presence of the planets themselves.
This and other techniques have been used in recent years to discover the existence of numerous Earth-size "exoplanets," or planets that are extrasolar--that is, outside our solar system. Gliese 581g is the first such planet, however, that would seem to provide the right conditions for the survival of organisms.
Such existence, though, is by no means certain. If the atmosphere on Gliese 581 "was all carbon dioxide, like Venus, it would be pretty hot," Sara Seager, a planetary astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The New York Times. Seager said she was skeptical: "Everyone is so primed to say here's the next place we're going to find life, but this isn't a good planet for follow-up."
But Vogt is more than optimistic. At a news conference in Washington, the Times reported, he said he thought "the chances of life on this planet are almost 100 percent."
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Tracking the flu by tracking the tweets
Let's face it: the typical tweet in the Twitosphere (if you need help with the vernacular, consult the Twictionary) is about as revelatory as the words going into the cell phone of the girl sitting behind me on the bus last night. The vast majority are meaningless to strangers--and probably even to close friends.
The joy of irony: Twitter's addictive nature may help researchers track health trends.
(Credit: carrotcreative/Flickr)
But the sheer volume of Twitter activity (the site is "over capacity" as I type this) turns otherwise banal tweets into telling trends, when scrutinized in the aggregate, and health trends are no exception.
"A microblogging service such as Twitter is a promising new data source for Internet-based surveillance because of the volume of messages, [and] their frequency and public availability," according to Aron Culotta, assistant professor of computer science at Southeastern Louisiana University, who, in recent months analyzed 500 million tweets to track the flu.
Culotta and two assistant students collected these messages using Twitter's application programming interface. Only a handful of keywords were required to both track rates of influenza-related messages, and predict future rates and outbreaks.
"This approach is much cheaper and faster than having thousands of hospitals and health care providers fill out forms each week," Culotta says. "Once the program is running, it's actually neither time-consuming nor expensive--it's entirely automated because we're running software that samples each day's messages, analyzes them, and produces an estimate of the current proportion of people with the flu."
It's also, much like Google Flu Trends, less accurate. But not by much. The team found a 95 percent correlation with the national health statistics collected by the Center for Disease Control.
Culotta says analyzing tweets has an advantage over Google because of their sheer volume and frequency. (Twitter has reported having more than 190 million users posting a cumulative 65 million messages a day, with about 300,000 new users getting added daily.)
Culotta's next goal is to track messages that include location-specific data so he can segment reporting information by regions and post trending data in real time.
The team announced its findings after presenting them at the 2010 Workshop on Social Media Analytics at the Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining in Washington, D.C., in July. Its updated paper, "Detecting Influenza Epidemics by Analyzing Twitter Messages
The joy of irony: Twitter's addictive nature may help researchers track health trends.
(Credit: carrotcreative/Flickr)
But the sheer volume of Twitter activity (the site is "over capacity" as I type this) turns otherwise banal tweets into telling trends, when scrutinized in the aggregate, and health trends are no exception.
"A microblogging service such as Twitter is a promising new data source for Internet-based surveillance because of the volume of messages, [and] their frequency and public availability," according to Aron Culotta, assistant professor of computer science at Southeastern Louisiana University, who, in recent months analyzed 500 million tweets to track the flu.
Culotta and two assistant students collected these messages using Twitter's application programming interface. Only a handful of keywords were required to both track rates of influenza-related messages, and predict future rates and outbreaks.
"This approach is much cheaper and faster than having thousands of hospitals and health care providers fill out forms each week," Culotta says. "Once the program is running, it's actually neither time-consuming nor expensive--it's entirely automated because we're running software that samples each day's messages, analyzes them, and produces an estimate of the current proportion of people with the flu."
It's also, much like Google Flu Trends, less accurate. But not by much. The team found a 95 percent correlation with the national health statistics collected by the Center for Disease Control.
Culotta says analyzing tweets has an advantage over Google because of their sheer volume and frequency. (Twitter has reported having more than 190 million users posting a cumulative 65 million messages a day, with about 300,000 new users getting added daily.)
Culotta's next goal is to track messages that include location-specific data so he can segment reporting information by regions and post trending data in real time.
The team announced its findings after presenting them at the 2010 Workshop on Social Media Analytics at the Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining in Washington, D.C., in July. Its updated paper, "Detecting Influenza Epidemics by Analyzing Twitter Messages
'Star Wars' coming to 3D in 2012
"Star Wars" is entering the third dimension, LucasFilm announced today.
According to the studio, "Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace" will be released in 3D to theaters in 2012. As with the original releases, Twentieth Century Fox is backing the movies.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, which cited unnamed sources, LucasFilm will release one of the original six "Star Wars" films in 3D each subsequent year. The films will be released in chronological order by episode.
In the meantime, Star Wars fans will be able to get their hands on Blu-ray versions of the films next year. The "Star Wars" Blu-ray box set is scheduled for release in fall 2011. It will feature revamped visuals and audio and several special features, including deleted scenes.
According to the studio, "Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace" will be released in 3D to theaters in 2012. As with the original releases, Twentieth Century Fox is backing the movies.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, which cited unnamed sources, LucasFilm will release one of the original six "Star Wars" films in 3D each subsequent year. The films will be released in chronological order by episode.
In the meantime, Star Wars fans will be able to get their hands on Blu-ray versions of the films next year. The "Star Wars" Blu-ray box set is scheduled for release in fall 2011. It will feature revamped visuals and audio and several special features, including deleted scenes.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Sci-fi wars? Pilots say UFOs knocked out nukes
There are those who fear that aliens are bellicose beings, ready to swallow us whole and spit us out towards the moon.
Stephen Hawking appears to be in this pessimistic camp.
However, testimony offered by seven former U.S. Air Force pilots Monday makes me feel giddy with anticipation at contact with beings from afar. For it seems they might be the sort who put the fist into pacifist.
The pilots declared that they had either seen UFOs personally descend on nuclear establishments, or had received related reports from their colleagues.
According to CNN, Robert Hastings, a UFO researcher, declared: "I believe--these gentlemen believe--that this planet is being visited by beings from another world, who for whatever reason have taken an interest in the nuclear arms race which began at the end of World War II."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUv56n7kyYk&feature=related
These pilots described red glowing objects and things that sent beams down from thousands of feet above.
In one incident, at the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1967, they claimed that some of the nuclear missiles were temporarily disabled by these beaming beings, according to CNN.
Yet, their conclusion is that whatever it is that exists beyond us wants us to stop our international bickering and get back to simple domestic spats about global warming.
I paraphrase, naturally.
But please listen to the warmly peacenik feelings offered by Hastings at the news conference: "Regarding the missile shutdown incidents, my opinion...is that whoever are aboard these craft are sending a signal to both Washington and Moscow, among others, that we are playing with fire--that the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons potentially threatens the human race and the integrity of the planetary environment."
The question is, why would extra-terrestrial beings care about how we are choosing to destroy ourselves?
Stephen Hawking appears to be in this pessimistic camp.
However, testimony offered by seven former U.S. Air Force pilots Monday makes me feel giddy with anticipation at contact with beings from afar. For it seems they might be the sort who put the fist into pacifist.
The pilots declared that they had either seen UFOs personally descend on nuclear establishments, or had received related reports from their colleagues.
According to CNN, Robert Hastings, a UFO researcher, declared: "I believe--these gentlemen believe--that this planet is being visited by beings from another world, who for whatever reason have taken an interest in the nuclear arms race which began at the end of World War II."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUv56n7kyYk&feature=related
These pilots described red glowing objects and things that sent beams down from thousands of feet above.
In one incident, at the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1967, they claimed that some of the nuclear missiles were temporarily disabled by these beaming beings, according to CNN.
Yet, their conclusion is that whatever it is that exists beyond us wants us to stop our international bickering and get back to simple domestic spats about global warming.
I paraphrase, naturally.
But please listen to the warmly peacenik feelings offered by Hastings at the news conference: "Regarding the missile shutdown incidents, my opinion...is that whoever are aboard these craft are sending a signal to both Washington and Moscow, among others, that we are playing with fire--that the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons potentially threatens the human race and the integrity of the planetary environment."
The question is, why would extra-terrestrial beings care about how we are choosing to destroy ourselves?
Hybrid solar system for heat and electricity funded
PVT Solar is entering the solar-panel market with a twist: its system generates electricity as well as heat.
The San Francisco area-based start-up today said that it has raised a series B round of $13.7 million from Sigma Partners and named a former SunPower executive, Vikas Desai, as CEO. The money will be used to expand the company's operations, including sales and distribution.
Price competition in the global business for solar photovoltaic modules is brutal, with prices for panels falling steadily. PVT Solar is seeking to differentiate itself with multipurpose modules that produce electricity and harvest the heat generated by panels.
The company says that its combination system, called Echo, generates twice as much usable energy as a PV panel and offers a quicker payback. It does not disclose the price except to say it's more expensive than PV-only panels.
Under each row of panels on a roof is a vent which pulls in air from under standard PV panels. The hot air is transferred to a heat exchanger which filters the air and heats water pumped in from a storage tank. That pre-heated water is fed into an existing hot water heater to lower the amount of energy needed to run.
In addition, the system can distribute hot air to heaters in the home. At night, the cool air from outside can be pumped in as well. The system has electronic controls to manage the flow of heat and monitor the energy production, according to PVT Solar.
The idea of hybrid hot water-PV systems has been around for years and there are a number of other companies now making them, including Sundrum Solar and 7Solar Technologies.
Wicking away the heat generated by solar PV panels can actually bump up the output of silicon panels which don't perform as well in high heat. But even though these systems are more efficient, they cost more upfront and involve more complicated installation which would typically involve more than one contractor.
PVT Solar was originally funded by Khosla Ventures, which participated in this round along with Energy & Environment Investment from Japan.
The San Francisco area-based start-up today said that it has raised a series B round of $13.7 million from Sigma Partners and named a former SunPower executive, Vikas Desai, as CEO. The money will be used to expand the company's operations, including sales and distribution.
Price competition in the global business for solar photovoltaic modules is brutal, with prices for panels falling steadily. PVT Solar is seeking to differentiate itself with multipurpose modules that produce electricity and harvest the heat generated by panels.
The company says that its combination system, called Echo, generates twice as much usable energy as a PV panel and offers a quicker payback. It does not disclose the price except to say it's more expensive than PV-only panels.
Under each row of panels on a roof is a vent which pulls in air from under standard PV panels. The hot air is transferred to a heat exchanger which filters the air and heats water pumped in from a storage tank. That pre-heated water is fed into an existing hot water heater to lower the amount of energy needed to run.
In addition, the system can distribute hot air to heaters in the home. At night, the cool air from outside can be pumped in as well. The system has electronic controls to manage the flow of heat and monitor the energy production, according to PVT Solar.
The idea of hybrid hot water-PV systems has been around for years and there are a number of other companies now making them, including Sundrum Solar and 7Solar Technologies.
Wicking away the heat generated by solar PV panels can actually bump up the output of silicon panels which don't perform as well in high heat. But even though these systems are more efficient, they cost more upfront and involve more complicated installation which would typically involve more than one contractor.
PVT Solar was originally funded by Khosla Ventures, which participated in this round along with Energy & Environment Investment from Japan.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Is the future PC a smart phone says experts
Will small, powerful, connected-to-everything devices running on non-Intel silicon become the personal computer? The CEO of graphics-chip supplier Nvidia thinks so.
Nvidia CEO Huang speaking at an Nvidia conference this week.
Nvidia CEO Huang speaking at an Nvidia conference this week.
(Credit: Nvidia)
The sentiment, voiced at the company's annual conference this week by chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang, has been expressed before. And like any strong strategy statement from a Silicon Valley CEO, it's self-serving. Nvidia is staking a good chunk of its future--as much as half of its business--on chips based on the ARM design.
But that doesn't mean Huang has got it all wrong, either. Indeed, ARM-based devices such as Apple's iPhone and iPad, Motorola's Droid, RIM's Blackberry, and countless future smartphones and tablets from Motorola, RIM, Apple, and others will use the ARM chip design. "ARM is the fastest-growing CPU (processor) in the world today. It's the instruction set architecture of choice of mobile computing," Huang said. "It is very clear now that mobile computing will be a completely disruptive force to all of computing."
Huang continued. "This (smartphone) is the first computer that is equipped with all kinds of sensors, cameras, microphones, GPSs, and accelerometers. This is the first computer that's context aware. Situation aware. Who knows, someday it may be self-aware," he said.
Huang raises interesting questions about the future. Will a future PC be a powerful, multi-CPU handheld device that wirelessly connects to large displays and a host of other devices--so the PC is carried around in your pocket or small satchel and then connects on the fly to larger devices and/or peripherals?
But the ARM-based vision also presumes that the largest chipmaker in the world, Intel, is standing still. Which it isn't. When asked at last week's Intel Developer Forum conference if Intel was de-emphasizing smartphones, Chief Executive Paul Otellini responded quickly. "Absolutely not. It's still a major focus of our investment. We're moving toward the launch window of a couple of major phones in 2011. And you've got to lock down before that and go through the interoperability testing with networks. And that's where we are. So, there's nothing really to say until those devices launch on the networks next year."
Nvidia's Tegra chip is aimed at small yet powerful devices.
Nvidia's Tegra chip is targeted at small yet powerful devices.
(Credit: Nvidia)
And Intel recently announced that it was acquiring Infineon's wireless unit, which currently supplies key 3G silicon for the iPhone and other smartphones. The company is also putting considerable resources into the MeeGo operating system, which is well suited for small devices. Broadly speaking, Intel's smartphone strategy is to match the next generation of Atom chips with Infineon baseband silicon and 4G technology to eventually offer a full smartphone chip solution. (And Intel isn't doing a bad job with its current Atom design either, which powers over 70 million tiny Netbooks, with many 3G-capable models sold through Verizon and AT&T.)
That said, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple, Nvidia, and other ARM players will build the brains for many of these devices. But Intel and Advanced Micro Devices will too. And, to be sure, Nvidia's future in this market, considering all of the entrenched ARM competition, is probably less certain than Intel's.
Nvidia CEO Huang speaking at an Nvidia conference this week.
Nvidia CEO Huang speaking at an Nvidia conference this week.
(Credit: Nvidia)
The sentiment, voiced at the company's annual conference this week by chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang, has been expressed before. And like any strong strategy statement from a Silicon Valley CEO, it's self-serving. Nvidia is staking a good chunk of its future--as much as half of its business--on chips based on the ARM design.
But that doesn't mean Huang has got it all wrong, either. Indeed, ARM-based devices such as Apple's iPhone and iPad, Motorola's Droid, RIM's Blackberry, and countless future smartphones and tablets from Motorola, RIM, Apple, and others will use the ARM chip design. "ARM is the fastest-growing CPU (processor) in the world today. It's the instruction set architecture of choice of mobile computing," Huang said. "It is very clear now that mobile computing will be a completely disruptive force to all of computing."
Huang continued. "This (smartphone) is the first computer that is equipped with all kinds of sensors, cameras, microphones, GPSs, and accelerometers. This is the first computer that's context aware. Situation aware. Who knows, someday it may be self-aware," he said.
Huang raises interesting questions about the future. Will a future PC be a powerful, multi-CPU handheld device that wirelessly connects to large displays and a host of other devices--so the PC is carried around in your pocket or small satchel and then connects on the fly to larger devices and/or peripherals?
But the ARM-based vision also presumes that the largest chipmaker in the world, Intel, is standing still. Which it isn't. When asked at last week's Intel Developer Forum conference if Intel was de-emphasizing smartphones, Chief Executive Paul Otellini responded quickly. "Absolutely not. It's still a major focus of our investment. We're moving toward the launch window of a couple of major phones in 2011. And you've got to lock down before that and go through the interoperability testing with networks. And that's where we are. So, there's nothing really to say until those devices launch on the networks next year."
Nvidia's Tegra chip is aimed at small yet powerful devices.
Nvidia's Tegra chip is targeted at small yet powerful devices.
(Credit: Nvidia)
And Intel recently announced that it was acquiring Infineon's wireless unit, which currently supplies key 3G silicon for the iPhone and other smartphones. The company is also putting considerable resources into the MeeGo operating system, which is well suited for small devices. Broadly speaking, Intel's smartphone strategy is to match the next generation of Atom chips with Infineon baseband silicon and 4G technology to eventually offer a full smartphone chip solution. (And Intel isn't doing a bad job with its current Atom design either, which powers over 70 million tiny Netbooks, with many 3G-capable models sold through Verizon and AT&T.)
That said, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple, Nvidia, and other ARM players will build the brains for many of these devices. But Intel and Advanced Micro Devices will too. And, to be sure, Nvidia's future in this market, considering all of the entrenched ARM competition, is probably less certain than Intel's.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Hairwashing Robot released
Lie back and let those mechatronic fingers give your scalp some love.
Bad hair day? Now you can blame your robot. Panasonic has developed a hair-washing bot that lets you lie down while your locks are gently shampooed.
Designed for Japan's growing elderly and bedridden population, the device consists of a reclining chair and a computerized washbasin.
The machine incorporates robot hand technology, with 16 mechatronic magic fingers that rinse and wash hair. It also remembers each user's individual data, such as head shape and massage preferences.
According to a Panasonic release, a moving arm in the machine first scans your head in 3D to determine its shape and the optimal amount of force to use while shampooing (one hopes this is foolproof technology).
Next, the robot's 16 fingers gently massage your scalp while a three-motor arm moves back and forth and force sensors ensure a delicate touch.
Bedbot (Credit: Panasonic)
Panasonic is also demonstrating a simplified version of its wheelchair bed, which facilitates mobility for bedridden people. The Electric Care Bed is more practical, consisting merely of a bed that partly converts into a wheelchair, and lacking the robotic canopy of the model announced last year.
The number of parts and motors has been reduced, and the chair does not have joystick control like its precursor, though it does have power-assist functions to reduce the burden on caregivers.
The shampoo bot and wheelchair bed are being shown off at the International Home Care and Rehabilitation Exhibition from September 29 to October 1 in Tokyo. Panasonic hasn't announced prices or release dates yet. These devices would join others that automate nursing care, such as Sanyo's Hirb human washing machine, and robot nurses like Riba.
It isn't fair that older folks are getting more robot toys than the rest of us.
Bad hair day? Now you can blame your robot. Panasonic has developed a hair-washing bot that lets you lie down while your locks are gently shampooed.
Designed for Japan's growing elderly and bedridden population, the device consists of a reclining chair and a computerized washbasin.
The machine incorporates robot hand technology, with 16 mechatronic magic fingers that rinse and wash hair. It also remembers each user's individual data, such as head shape and massage preferences.
According to a Panasonic release, a moving arm in the machine first scans your head in 3D to determine its shape and the optimal amount of force to use while shampooing (one hopes this is foolproof technology).
Next, the robot's 16 fingers gently massage your scalp while a three-motor arm moves back and forth and force sensors ensure a delicate touch.
Bedbot (Credit: Panasonic)
Panasonic is also demonstrating a simplified version of its wheelchair bed, which facilitates mobility for bedridden people. The Electric Care Bed is more practical, consisting merely of a bed that partly converts into a wheelchair, and lacking the robotic canopy of the model announced last year.
The number of parts and motors has been reduced, and the chair does not have joystick control like its precursor, though it does have power-assist functions to reduce the burden on caregivers.
The shampoo bot and wheelchair bed are being shown off at the International Home Care and Rehabilitation Exhibition from September 29 to October 1 in Tokyo. Panasonic hasn't announced prices or release dates yet. These devices would join others that automate nursing care, such as Sanyo's Hirb human washing machine, and robot nurses like Riba.
It isn't fair that older folks are getting more robot toys than the rest of us.
Googles weird new add
I think I have spotted a trend. Google is trying to be funny.
Please, put down that meat cleaver and hear me out. Only the other day, CEO Eric Schmidt appeared on "The Colbert Report." He explained that he is making jokes, although he conceded he needs a little more practice.
So who could not think that this new extraordinary, strange, annoying, demented, surreal work of art that Google has just emitted on behalf of its Mobile service is not another attempt at humor?
You must decide if it is a successful attempt. However, I find myself admiring the bravery inherent in getting an actor the repeat the word "pizza" so many times that your acid reflux will surely become an acid tsunami.
Please, put down that meat cleaver and hear me out. Only the other day, CEO Eric Schmidt appeared on "The Colbert Report." He explained that he is making jokes, although he conceded he needs a little more practice.
So who could not think that this new extraordinary, strange, annoying, demented, surreal work of art that Google has just emitted on behalf of its Mobile service is not another attempt at humor?
You must decide if it is a successful attempt. However, I find myself admiring the bravery inherent in getting an actor the repeat the word "pizza" so many times that your acid reflux will surely become an acid tsunami.
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