computing

Phone-Cloud Lets You Ditch Office Landlines

Chris Dannen — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:22:34 -0400

For many office workers, landlines are a redundant nuisance: one more voicemail account to check, one more thing to ring during a clandestine nap. But most office buildings wreak havoc on cell reception. New intra-office phone antennas, working as a cloud to smartly route traffic, might finally solve the problem, rendering landlines at long last unnecessary.

Navy's Future Command Center Looks Just Like the Star Trek Enterprise

Kit Eaton — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:27:24 -0400

A research lab inside the U.S. Navy tasked with dreaming up the future of the armed force has been busy working on a new command center design. It's suitably high tech--and is undeniably influenced by Star Trek.

iMac Rumors: Blu-Ray and Core i7 Chips?

Kit Eaton — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:23:03 -0400

Steve Jobs famously poo-poohed the idea of Apple adopting Blu-ray, describing the technology as a "bag of hurt." But with hot rumors of an imminent iMac redesign, the Blu-ray drive issue is again in the spotlight. Is Apple about to give in?

Intel Uses Facebook and Distributed Computing to Fight Climate Change, Disease

Ariel Schwartz — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:03:52 -0400

Your Avatar & You

Donald Schwartz — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:55:16 -0400

RTI study finds that an avatar's virtual life image may influence user's real-life image http://bit.ly/hq6Vn - DS: well, duh, avatars have always been aspirational....

Sorting, Scoring, and Avatarism: "Users are already familiar with the avatar as persona, and with the concept of various inventory items with unique attributes." http://tinyurl.com/3pzose

Technology

Google Drops a Bomb: Its Own Operating System

Kit Eaton — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:49:00 -0400

Mere hours ago, Google did something that's pretty surprising, and that will impact the netbook, and maybe PC market: It announced its own operating system, Chrome. It's open source.

Five More Killer Apps for Microsoft Surface

Chris Dannen — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:52:03 -0400

In May, we brought you a list of 11 full-featured applications tailor-made for Microsoft's interactive table computing platform, Surface. With so many talented development teams hard at work on Surface, we missed a few--and the new crop is even better. Here are five more must-see apps for Surface.

Now That He's in Control, Can Jon Rubenstein Turn Palm Around Too?

Kit Eaton — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 07:56:17 -0400

Jon Rubenstein just consolidated his management position at Palm--as of yesterday he's now the company's chairman and CEO. While this sounds like some dry business news, it may be revolutionary for Palm. Can Rubenstein turn Palm around, like he did Apple?

Data Visualization Borders on Art

Donald Schwartz — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:51:41 -0400

1 ) 50 Great Examples of Data Visualization - http://bit.ly/WMp6p
2)Emotional Cartography Technologies of Self - http://tinyurl.com/cjkbuy

Technology

Innovative Search Engine

Parag Shah — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:33:51 -0400

Date:
May 15, 2009

Hello,

Technology

Microsoft Moving Surface Off the Table and Into Your Home

Kit Eaton — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:05:02 -0400

Microsoft's Surface shows off the capabilities of multi-touch computing admirably, but it's still limited by the machine's box. It's no surprise then to find plans to take Surface off a flat screen and dot it all over your home.

The BBC video below, shot inside Microsoft's showcase house of the future--The Microsoft Home--which is designed to demonstrate technology that may come to our homes in "five-to-ten years." Though the Microsoft Home isn't exactly a new concept, we still thought the BBC video was pretty cool, so we'll show you anyway:

EU Punishment For US Companies

Somnath Banerjee — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:32:47 -0400

After Microsoft and Intel who else would be the next candidate for being punished?

Will the other US companies be targeted? Will it be Google?

Just wondering.

Technology

11 Killer Apps for Microsoft Surface [Video]

Chris Dannen — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:07:00 -0400

Microsoft's interactive table, dubbed Surface, brings the heady dream of interactive computing closer reality. As developers find ways to make Surface's gorgeous multi-user interface shine, more and more companies are turning to the device to reinvent their customer experience.

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Three Rs to Become Three Rs Plus Google in U.K. Schools

Kit Eaton — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:16:20 -0400

Taking an apple to class for teacher could soon take on a whole new meaning. There's a plan underway to overhaul the curriculum in U.K. primary schools--nothing special there, since there's always some attempt underway to improve teaching quality. But this scheme is amazing because it's going to put computing skills on the same level as reading, writing and arithmetic.
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Women - The Ultimate Entrepreneurs

James Rickman — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:26:51 -0400

More than one-third of entrepreneurs in the United States are women, and the growth in the number of woman-owned firms is more than double the rate of all U.S. firms. Stay-at-home moms are multi-tasking more than ever. In between childcare, cooking and cleaning, they are cranking out inventions that are making them millions. In America, women start 424 new enterprises every day that’s more than twice as many as men. These mothers of invention have nurtured their creative ideas outside the corporate box.

Technology

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Microsoft's Surface 2.0-aka SecondLight-Due in Two Years

Kit Eaton — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:07:34 -0400

Microsoft's Surface has always been a slightly baffling product: It's a real multi-touch large-screen PC with almost sci-fi levels of cleverness, but costs a whopping $10,000, so it's out of most people's reach. But clearly Microsoft loves the device, or at least its core concept, since a new Surface 2.0 will be out within two to three years.
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Intel's Phone-Media Hub Mash-Up is a Curiously Dated Idea

Kit Eaton — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 05:58:08 -0500

Intel doesn't think that the home phone is dead--despite some pretty compelling evidence that more and more people are using cellphones as their main telecommunications systems. And it wants to combine a home phone with another idea that hasn't quite caught on yet--the home media hub.

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New Chip Technology Could Help Computers Think on Their Own

Kit Eaton — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 05:54:50 -0500

While there's a lot of work to push nanotechnology as the future of computer chips, good old-fashioned semiconductors still have a lot of life in them yet: and they've recently been given a boost with a radical new type of circuit element that incorporates both semiconductor and nanotechnology.

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Next Generation Interaction: Are Virtual Worlds Waiting in the Wings?

Donald Schwartz — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:26:14 -0500

About:

This is the revised transcript of the Fast Company.com Call-In titled, Next Generation Interaction: Are Virtual Worlds Waiting in the Wings? that took place on November 2008. Portions of the dialogue have been re-written with the consent and in collaboration of the speaker. The idea behind the edit was to improve accuracy and readability.

I have divided up the conversation into three sections and added links to enable you to explore citations within the copy.
Technology

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Intel Plans to Beat Downturn by Innovating

Kit Eaton — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 06:37:46 -0500

Just a few weeks ago, Intel announced it would lay off thousands of employees due to the recession, but the company has just revealed another more positive tactic that it will use to beat the financial downturn: Innovation.

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In Internet Democracy Not All Good Causes Are Apparently Equal

Donald Schwartz — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:29:05 -0500

Technology

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Does the DVR Apple Television Rumor Make Sense?

Kit Eaton — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 06:59:37 -0500

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has gone all out in forecasting that Apple will enter the digital video recording net-connected television market by 2011. It's a bold assertion, with research behind the claims, and it seems to make sense--or does it?

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Brazil Greens-up Educational PC Project by Virtualizing

Kit Eaton — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 05:20:16 -0500

Brazil's government is about to create the world's largest desktop virtualization project, in schools across the entire country. And it's not just a move to advance educational computing for the country's kids while saving cash--it's a fabulously simple way to reduce the carbon footprint that the educational project would otherwise possess.

The project uses a customized system from Userful that creates 10 independent workstations from one central computer. In total some 324,000 desktops will be created in the 5,560 municipalities that make up Brazil--that's 32,000 PCs in total.

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New Conducting Ink Heralds Printable Semiconductor Revolution

Kit Eaton — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 08:33:38 -0500

Flexible circuitry is a big upcoming trend in electronics, but there remain a few challenges to overcome before it can really take off. Now Polyera, a US company that makes specialist chemicals for flexible electronic devices, may have done that by inventing a new type of ink that could make true print-out flexible semiconductor integrated circuitry possible.

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Apple Officially Quashes iPhone Nano and Mac Netbook Rumors

Kit Eaton — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 05:59:48 -0500

Apple has officially quashed any idea that it's planning an iPhone nano or netbook-like MacBook computer.

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computing

Phone-Cloud Lets You Ditch Office Landlines

Navy's Future Command Center Looks Just Like the Star Trek Enterprise

iMac Rumors: Blu-Ray and Core i7 Chips?

Intel Uses Facebook and Distributed Computing to Fight Climate Change, Disease

Your Avatar & You

Google Drops a Bomb: Its Own Operating System

Five More Killer Apps for Microsoft Surface

Now That He's in Control, Can Jon Rubenstein Turn Palm Around Too?

Data Visualization Borders on Art

Innovative Search Engine

Microsoft Moving Surface Off the Table and Into Your Home

EU Punishment For US Companies

11 Killer Apps for Microsoft Surface [Video]

Three Rs to Become Three Rs Plus Google in U.K. Schools

Women - The Ultimate Entrepreneurs

Microsoft's Surface 2.0-aka SecondLight-Due in Two Years

Intel's Phone-Media Hub Mash-Up is a Curiously Dated Idea

New Chip Technology Could Help Computers Think on Their Own

Next Generation Interaction: Are Virtual Worlds Waiting in the Wings?

About:

Intel Plans to Beat Downturn by Innovating

In Internet Democracy Not All Good Causes Are Apparently Equal

Does the DVR Apple Television Rumor Make Sense?

Brazil Greens-up Educational PC Project by Virtualizing

New Conducting Ink Heralds Printable Semiconductor Revolution

Apple Officially Quashes iPhone Nano and Mac Netbook Rumors