InsideTech

5 Best Business Travel Tips

Christina Macres | InsideTech — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:35:00 -0700

Whether traveling for business is an everyday occurrence, an occasional hindrance, or a lifelong dream, all business travelers can agree that if your job calls for travel, then being an efficient traveler is a must. We’ve got the five tips that’ll make your time en-route more productive and less stressful.

#1 Know Which Airlines Offer Premium Economy

Why? Because if your career has you traveling often, suffering though coach accomodations (or lack thereof) can grow tiresome. A weary traveler makes for a weary worker. If you’re fatigued and sore from an uncomfortable flight, chances are you’re not going to be at your most productive.

Don't think management is going to spring for business class (let alone first class)? The good news is nowadays there’s another option — premium economy.

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Somewhere in between coach and business class lies a leg rest and a seat that reclines a little further, not to mention a fast-track boarding pass and better food and entertainment options. Of course amenities vary based on airlines, so make sure you do your research before purchasing your ticket.

Airlines Now Offering Premium Economy Include:

• Air Canada

• Air France

• Air New Zealand

• Air Transat

• British Airways

• Frontier Airlines

• Japan Airlines

• Mexicana Airlines

• Spirit Airlines

• United Airlines

• Virgin America

• Virgin Atlantic

• Virgin Blue

#2 Get the Best iPhone Apps for Business Travel

Technology is your friend when traveling in and out of time zones, through strange cities, and around new surroundings. Make use of all your iPhone has to offer with these necessary business travel apps.

JetSet Expenses

Say goodbye to the days of lost meals and mileage receipts. JetSet has 15 different expense categories, as well as a hotel and rental car database and photo storage of receipts and it even works with Google Spreadsheet or Excel. Click here for the app.

SpeakEasy Voice Recorder

From voice memos to everyday reminders, having a full feature-recording studio right on your iPhone can come in handy when on the go. Click here for the app.

Trapster

Useful for the business traveler and the everyday commuter, Trapser alerts you of speed traps and red light cameras. And since the app is free, traffic tickets won’t be the only things you’ll be saving money on. Click here for the app.

Lonely Planet

Get the most out of your travel (to any city) with the Lonely Planet app. From restaurants and entertainment to useful commuting information, this app will make travel productive and enjoyable. Click here for the app.

Babelingo

International travel can cause mental havoc and pronunciation nightmares. Save face and brain cells by using this translation app. Just plug in your phrase, then present it to your recipient for fuss-free communication. Click here for the app.

Next Page: Know the Airports With Wireless

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#3 Know the Airports With Wireless

Knowing where you can access fast, dependable Internet becomes very important when work must be completed in-between travels — sometimes between flights! Stay at your most productive and catch your flight by knowing which airports have reliable wireless connections. Check out this link: Wireless Internet Guide to 219 US Airports to get the 411 on airport wireless you can count on.

#4 Keep Up On Mental and Physical Health

A job that keeps you on the road probably keeps you out of the gym. But studies have shown that not taking care of your body properly only promotes a bad work ethic in the long run. Eating healthfully and getting the proper amount of exercise give you more energy for traveling (and who doesn’t need that!) and serves as an escape from travel and work-related stresses. Your best bet? Check out your hotel’s fitness center or take part in a walking or jogging tour of your destination city. Some airports even have walking programs for those waiting for flights. And, if you’re really curious you can take a look at the airline food calorie guide, but beware — those numbers can get scary.

#5 Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

Traveling from country to country might be a great way to fill a passport, but it's a terrible way to save the environment. Use these proven ways to reduce your carbon footprint (for free!) next time you’re away on business.

• Choose green accommodations. Websites like the International Ecotourism Society make finding eco-friendly lodging easy.

• Shop local. When in a new place, really enjoy all that the region has to offer by gobbling up the localy-sourced produce.

• Reuse your sheets and towels. You don’t wash your sheets every night in your own home, why have the hotel waste water washing linens that aren’t dirty?

• Choose a hybrid. When possible, rent a hybrid instead of a gas-guzzler. You’ll make the environment and your wallet a lot happier.

Just remember, traveling for work can be extremely rewarding. Employ these tips to make the most out of your travels and make your cubicle dwellers even more envious!

Smart Meters, Dumb Backlash

Andrew Price/GOOD — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 15:05:00 -0800

Smart meters can save energy and money and prevent blackouts. So why did the residents of Bakersfield, California hate them so much?

As Barack Obama signed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill in February of 2009, he promised it would “place smart meters in homes to make our energy bills lower, make outages less likely, and make it easier to use clean energy.”

Sounds great, right? But in Bakersfield, California, one of the first American cities to get smart meters on a large scale, many residents hated them. Pacific Gas and Electric, California’s largest utility company, was sure its smart meters would be a hit. Instead, it faced an unexpected consumer backlash and a public-relations nightmare.

First, the basics: A smart meter is just a higher-tech version of your current home-electricity meter. What makes it “smart” is that it can measure a house’s energy use in real time (or near real time) and report back to the utility company remotely.

Because they can send information back to the utility company, smart meters make meter-reading trips to customers’ homes unnecessary. That saves utility companies money. But the big benefit of smart meters is “dynamic pricing.” By providing utility companies with near real-time information about how much energy people in a given area are using, smart meters allow them to set the price for electricity according to the current demand.

That means that the price of electricity might be higher in the middle of a hot summer afternoon, when lots of people are using air conditioners, and lower during a temperate spring night, when most appliances are off. With dynamic pricing, consumers know when to conserve, the utility company knows how much electricity to provide at any given time, and outages are much less likely because the variable price keeps supply and demand in balance.

After California’s energy crisis of 2000 and 2001, the promise that dynamic pricing could prevent blackouts was especially attractive. As Governor Gray Davis said at the time, raising prices during periods of peak demand would have “solved this problem in twenty minutes.”

From 2003 to 2005, California ran a pilot study with 2,500 customers, to make sure people actually responded to dynamic prices. The results were dramatic. With dynamic pricing, people dropped their peak demand by 13 percent. So in 2006, PG&E started handing out smart meters in Bakersfield, a fast-growing oil and agricultural city in the hot Central Valley. For two years, the rollout in Bakersfield went smoothly enough. Then, suddenly, late in the summer of 2009, customers started complaining. Their bills had spiked considerably, they said, and many were suspicious that the new smart meters might be at fault. This was surprising: The initial rollout didn’t involve dynamic pricing; it was just laying the groundwork by getting the smart meters into people’s homes.

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In a blog for The Bakersfield Californian, a local columnist named Lois Henry began covering (and cultivating) the growing controversy. In posts with titles like “PG&E Can’t Tell a Straight Story with a Ruler,” she recounted reports of “hundreds” of complaints about bills that had “jumped 100, 200—even 400 percent year to year” and freely speculated about PG&E’s faulty technology and fishy motives.

Around the same time, Dean Florez, a local state senator, demanded that PG&E halt the installation of smart meters. He began holding town-hall meetings—enthusiastically promoted by Henry—to hear complaints. An October meeting drew 200 angry citizens.

PG&E consistently denied that anything was wrong with the meters and blamed the high bills on the hot summer. But public suspicion grew, and as it did, so did the range of concerns. Were the smart meters safe? A smart meter had caused a small fire at a Bakersfield vacuum shop. Did they compromise privacy? It seemed PG&E would be able to see when people were home by looking at their hour-to-hour electricity use. Could smart meters cause cancer?

Confusion reigned. By November, despite scant evidence that the smart meters themselves had caused any problems, PG&E faced a class-action lawsuit from Bakersfield residents.

Finally, the California Public Utilities Commission hired a Houston-based consulting firm, the Structure Group, to conduct an independent report on PG&E’s smart meters. Roughly a year after the controversy had erupted, the Structure Group reported that it “did not identify systemic issues in the measuring and billing of electric usage within PG&E’s SmartMeter system.” The meters were exonerated.

So why, two years after installation began, did this powerful customer backlash materialize, seemingly out of nowhere? As the Structure Group explained, it was a confluence of factors.

While the summer of 2009 wasn’t too much hotter, on average, than the year before, the month of July was. In July of 2009, Bakersfield had 17 days that topped 100 degrees, compared with just 6 days the year before. With so many hot days concentrated in a short time, many customers used much more energy in a single billing period than they had in the past.

But there was also an earlier change in how people were billed that had passed mostly unnoticed. In 2001, PG&E started charging for electricity based on a new “inverted tier rate” system. There were five tiers, and the more energy you used, the more you paid per unit. To use a car analogy, it works like this: If you pump five gallons of gas, you pay $2 per gallon. Pump 10 gallons? The price jumps to $3 per gallon. As Ahmad Faruqui, an energy economist with the Brattle Group, says, “it’s the opposite of Costco pricing.”

The point of these inverted tier rates was to encourage conservation among the heaviest electricity users. But during the especially hot July of 2009, many users were bumped into high-use tiers for the first time without knowing it. Not only were they using more electricity because of the heat, they were also paying more for each unit of electricity they used.

The problem was that people didn’t understand how much energy they were using or how they were being charged for it. PG&E didn’t do much to help. According to the Structure Group, when people called with complaints, PG&E’s customer-service agents gave them the runaround.

Faruqui says the controversy in Bakersfield has damaged smart meters’ reputation, even though the technology itself wasn’t to blame. “I have appeared as a witness in Maryland and the District of Columbia and in Illinois and in other states to talk about the costs and benefits of these smart meters, and everybody there asks me, ‘What happened in Bakersfield and what can we do to prevent it?’”

That’s a shame, because smart meters are a critical component of America’s energy future. We need them to transform our current, shaky grid into one that can accommodate renewable energy and electric vehicles. We also need them so that we can charge prices for electricity that reflect its cost.

The controversy in Bakersfield won’t likely stop the rollout of smart meters across the country, but it has made it more difficult. In Maine, a woman has launched a campaign to stop the installation of smart meters after “reading about what was happening in other states.”

Americans are often vigilant in defending themselves against insidious threats to privacy and rapacious corporations, but in Bakersfield it was a case of vigilance gone awry. In the absence of a quick response from PG&E to customer complaints, suspicion of the smart meters snowballed into paranoia.

“Bakersfield has become a metaphor,” Faruqui says. “Some people don’t even know there’s a town called Bakersfield, they just know there was something called the Bakersfield Problem.”

Learn more about smart meters here

illustration by Jared Schorr

Why Nokia and Microsoft Can Challenge Apple and Beat Google

Rob Enderle/IT Business Edge — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 12:32:00 -0800

Nokia and Microsoft announced a strategic alliance that could define the futures of both firms. They had no choice because, right now, Apple is the company for both to beat. It isn’t Google with its Android offering, and you can confirm this by looking at the drama at Verizon and how T-Mobile positions itself against AT&T and Verizon.

Revisiting the Unbeatable iPhone

The iPhone is an iconic product backed by the single strongest marketing-driven company in the consumer electronics market today, if you measure strength by profit, valuation and the ability to drive a market. It has more applications than any other platform and it is the only product in its class that has people lining up to buy or preorder it. Currently, the Verizon product isn’t selling as well as expected, but that isn’t because of a competing offering, it is because people preordered or are waiting for the iPhone 5. The only real limitations the iPhone has is that Apple tends to be a U.S.-centric company, which means that the iPhone does better here. Also, Apple is carrier-bound, which means that it initially only existed on AT&T and now only exists on AT&T and Verizon in the U.S.

There is one other weakness the iPhone shares with the other smartphones and that is the cost of the data plan. If you could uniquely address this, there might be a way to surprise Apple. I’ll get back to this in a bit, but Apple enters this year not limited by Google, but limited by its own decisions.

No one has ever beaten Apple by chasing it. No Mac-like product ever beaten the Mac, no iPod-like product ever beaten the iPod and no iPhone-like product has ever single-handedly beaten the iPhone. It is likely that no iPad-like product will ever beat the iPad. But Windows did beat the Mac OS and Palm clearly eclipsed the Newton. You can flank Apple or you can benefit from an Apple error, but when it is on its game, you can’t catch the company from behind.

Android: Dead Platform Walking

Android is a shell currently under heavy litigation threats by Oracle, Microsoft and Apple. Google apparently can’t, or won’t, defend it. No single Android phone has ever risen up to challenge Apple. In volume, there were – before Apple moved to Verizon – more Android phones sold, but Google officially reports no revenue or profit numbers from its effort. It appears that license revenue flows to Microsoft, which suggests that Microsoft may, at least in certain cases, make more money off of Android than Google does.

However, it's the only alternative that has a sufficient number of applications and buzz in the consumer space. Microsoft never really developed the applications on its older versions of Windows Mobile. Research In Motion has been having trouble being relevant outside of two-way pager business markets and Palm hasn’t been a major player in this market for half a decade. Nokia, the biggest cell phone company in the world, has been lost in a mess of operating systems and conflicting initiatives that were slowly bleeding the company out of existence. Android was, the key word is "was," the only real alternative, but getting sued and losing your profit margin as a result was hardly the outcome its partners wanted.

Windows Phone 7: In Search of Relevance

The big problem for Windows Phone 7 is its relevance with developers. The recent surveys I’ve seen suggest that about a third of developers are focused on the iPhone, about a third on the iPad and Android gets most of what is left. I’ve also been told that while developers are making money on the first two platforms, Android users appear to overwhelmingly prefer free applications and that has made this platform a poor third choice.

Windows Phone 7 looked promising, but it simply didn’t have the sales volume to get developers interested, largely because the vendors that sold it seemed to place it behind Android. This created a cart and horse problem: Without dedicated support from a major phone supplier, Windows Phone 7 couldn’t reach the volumes it needed to challenge Google, let alone Apple, and no major vendor, until now, was going to give it that support until it demonstrated that it could get the volume.

Nokia: Avoiding Life Support

While Nokia fans seem to be revolting at the moment, and I agree with top pundits who are calling them nuts, Nokia needs a Hail Mary pass or its new CEO is going to be turning off the lights in a few short months. Nokia has more shelf space and reach than any vendor on the planet, but in the trending smartphone space, particularly in the U.S., it has been non-existent. But Nokia is strong where Apple is weak: outside of the U.S. and with products that don’t require data plans. It also represents a major brand that customers still trust and cell phone vendors still respect, simply because of its historic position in the market. Nokia was also being sued by Apple and needed a partner that could help it defend against that attack, not one that would throw it under a bus as Google is apparently doing with its partners.

They Still Have to Execute

A few years back, Palm partnered with Microsoft. Palm hedged its bets and didn’t bet fully on the platform and Microsoft failed to execute timely on a platform refresh. Palm went back to a proprietary approach and failed selling itself to HP. Microsoft was left with the poor market position it has today.

Both Microsoft and Nokia are going to have to step up to the challenge more sharply than they have before. Microsoft will have to execute on getting enough applications to be interesting and continue heavy funding on well-executed marketing and placement (it has a tendency to not understand the importance of demand generation at executive levels). Nokia will have to focus on making this work and if either company drifts, the other will have to do whatever it takes, and I do mean whatever it takes, to get the partnership back on course.

Both companies are cursed with a history of missed opportunities. Both could have had iPhone-, iPod- and iPad-like products in market before Apple and now both look longingly at Apple’s backside. If they don’t want to forever be on the backend of Apple, they will need to get off their own butts and execute this time.

Source

Why CIOs Shouldn't Waste Time With Tablet Strategies - Plus 12 Hot Tablets!

Ann All/IT Business Edge — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 15:04:00 -0800

Apple has always been considered a consumer technology company, not an enterprise one. Yet the success of its iPad has just about every enterprise-oriented hardware vendor out there, from Research in Motion to HP to Lenovo, introducing tablets to compete with the iPad.

It isn't clear yet whether tablets will be a real game changer as laptops and PCs before them were, or a trend in need of a compelling use case like netbooks.

The tablet buzz is growing as more reports emerge of companies making good use of iPads. In September I wrote about MicroStrategy's deployment of 1,100 iPads to executives and sales personnel, with a company executive saying the tablets were boosting productivity and cost less than laptops.

SAP, which has 2,500 iPads in use, is modifying its infrastructure to support other mobile devices as well, writes InformationWeek's Bob Evans. SAP CIO Oliver Bussmann recommends using a central device management tool to facilitate security, provisioning and retirement in a multi-device model. Not surprisingly, SAP uses a tool called Afaria, produced by its wholly-owned subsidiary Sybase

Management tools must be able to address the blurring between personal and professional lives that tends to occur with tablets and other mobile devices, Bussmann tells Evans, with the ability to wipe corporate data and content from a personal device when an employee leaves the company while also preserving personal data. IT organizations will need to respond more quickly to users' requests for upgrades, which will mirror the rapid pace of manufacturers introducing new features, Bussmann says.

Bussmann tells Evans SAP started with basic office productivity tools such as e-mail, calendars, VPN access, desktops over Citrix and people directory. SAP employees also use a mobile app from the company's Business Objects business intelligence software for on-the-fly KPI monitoring and data analysis. Bussmann calls it "the No. 1 solution people want across our different user groups." Bussmann mentions the app is especially popular among sales and marketing staff, who benefit from access to the most up-to-date data, a key requirement for mobile BI.

SAP used in-memory technology to move its entire CRM database, with three terabytes of data and more than 12 million records, into its Hana appliance. Using an iPad outfitted with Business Objects software as a front end, SAP sales personnel can "analyze 650,000 opportunities in real time," Bussmann says. The combination of mobile devices and in-memory processing "lets salespeople get the answers and insights they need without having to wait 10 or 20 or 30 seconds."

Bussmann isn't the only CIO talking up tablets' potential. In a CIO.com interview, Google CIO Ben Fried encourages CIOs to waste no time in formulating tablet strategies. He says:

Some people already feel that they're behind on the game on this. But if you look at the variety of Android tablets coming out, it's clear that it will be a diverse landscape and you have a chance to get in ahead of this. CIOs are going to have to think about software delivery. Are we going to buy software for these tablets? Do we have to think about training for our development organizations to learn how to build for these things? Do we have to think about optimizing Web browser experiences to work for this stuff? CIOs need to have a strategy and opinions about tablets because it will be the next personal computing platform that we're expected to provide at the enterprise, and very quickly. It will be this year.

Check out 12 Hot Tablets Available Now or Soon!

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It's no surprise the iPad is finding support in the enterprise. It’s Apple and it’s cool. At a higher level, though, it’s worth comparing the fast adoption of the new tablet with the slower and tentative acceptance of the iPhone when it was introduced three years ago. The difference says as much about the coalescing of consumer and business wireless as the quality of the devices themselves.

Clearly, however, the market is expanding at a brisk pace with many new competitive tablets being introduced to the public. Check out the following 12 of the newest tablet devices, in no special order.

Galaxy Tab

The Galaxy Tab, unveiled at the IFA conference in Berlin, is a 7-inch Android tablet from Samsung. The Galaxy Tab runs Android 2.2, contains an ARM processor, features an AMOLED display, has a screen resolution 1024x600, comes pre-installed with Flash Player, Google Maps and JavaScript 1.5 and is equipped with Bluetooth and Swype.

Blackberry Playbook

Quanta Computer has been tasked with manufacturing Research in Motion’s PlayBook. The tablet, which will reportedly cost $499, will have Wi-Fi connections, Bluetooth technology and have rear- and front-facing cameras. The PlayBook will not have any cellular connectivity and will serve as a companion device to RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones. It’s rumored that the PlayBook will diverge from the BlackBerry OS 6 in favor of a QNX-developed OS.

Cisco Cius

Cisco Cius is a mobile collaboration business tablet that delivers virtual desktop integration anywhere along with full access to Cisco’s collaboration and communication applications. The Android-powered tablet will have a 7-inch screen, run on an Intel Atom processor and feature rear- and front-facing cameras for videoconferencing. It will support Wi-Fi and 3G, offer 32 gigabytes of Flash and cost less than $1,000.

Dell Streak

First available in Europe, the Dell Streak is a smartphone/tablet hybrid being offered through AT&T in the U.S. Equipped with a 5-inch WVGA touchscreen and Android 1.6, the Dell Streak has enough wiggle room between the smartphone and tablet categories to either succeed or fail.

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HP Slate

The HP Slate 500 tablet is targeted toward enterprise users who don’t usually work at a traditional desk, yet need to stay productive in a secure Windows environment. The HP Slate 500 has a 9-inch monitor and is equipped to run Windows 7 Professional 32 on a 1.86 GHz Intel Atom processor. The unit includes an internal 64 GB solid state flash drive and can include an external USB 2.0 CD/DVD R/RW.

Toshiba Librettos

Toshiba has released two limited-edition dual-screen tablets in the Libretto W100 and Libretto W105, but all eyes are on the company’s Android tablet. Toshiba unveiled the Folio 100 tablet at IFA 2010 in Berlin. The device features a 10.1 -inch display, runs Android 2.2 and Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor runs underneath its hood. The Folio 100 also includes 16GB of memory, supports Bluetooth 2.1, is equipped with a HDMI output, two USB ports, a SD memory card slot and has 802.11 b/g/n wireless and 3G mobile data connectivity.

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PalmPad

HP’s acquisition of Palm saw it ditch its Android tablet plans in favor of Palm’s WebOS. The PalmPad, which will launch in early 2011, has its sights squarely focused on Apple’s iPad and the consumer market.

LG Optimus

LG's Optimus tablet is a good competitor. The device runs Android. LG is confident it will best the iPad with a device that will be more productive. The company plans to release a Windows 7 UX10 tablet in the future as well.

Acer Tablet

Acer unveiled a 7-inch touchscreen tablet at a presentation in China last May. Unlike many tablets, the device features a QWERTY keyboard that makes it reminiscent of Amazon’s Kindle. The Acer tablet ran an unknown version of Android during the demonstration.

Windows 7 Tablet

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says the company is preparing a Windows 7 tablet to take on Apple’s iPad. Although Microsoft’s tablet position has been criticized by some, including IT Business Edge’s Rob Enderle, the company is working with Intel and other computer makers to optimize the tablet computers.

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OpenPeak

In a similar vein to the Dell Streak, OpenPeak is developing a multimedia touchscreen device that can also make phone calls. The OpenTablet 7 is a Flash-based tablet will differentiate itself through the use of OpenPeak’s energy-management software. Backed by the likes of Intel Capital and GE, OpenPeak recently secured $52 million in new investment.

Motorola Xoom

Available soon, Net Neutrality cohorts Google and Verizon helped Motorola develop this tablet. It has a dual-core processor, and Google's Honeycomb software. In addition, it will have back and rear-facing cameras and a 10.1 inch display.

This article can also be found on ITBusinessEdge.com

Why Google Android May Fail and Chrome OS Will Fail

Rob Enderle/IT Business Edge — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 12:06:00 -0800

Android exists on a lot of products and appears to be successful, but the prognosis for the Chrome OS is dropping like a rock. This week, I thought I would go around and discuss Android with some of the folks who build and monitor the products and I got some interesting responses, which I will share here.

There is an interesting lesson playing out in the operating system space that may also showcase the future of the Chrome OS: The OEMs using Android are far from happy and Google’s relationship with them appears to actually be getting worse. The problem appears to be with the model that Google is using, coupled with a hiring practice that appears to favor inexperienced young employees with high GPAs. The hiring problem likely affects a lot of their efforts, but the model will likely impact their platform efforts more strongly.

Let’s talk about both.

Google’s Failing Revenue Model

Google’s model is to give things away for free and then charge for them after the fact. It sounds brilliant particularly if you reach a position of dominance in search like they have because it creates an economic barrier to entry – you have to buy market share and you won’t get to a decent revenue stream until you have significant numbers since ads are driving the revenue. However, that economic benefit is offset by what appears to be a significant problem: When you separate revenue from a product, customer satisfaction really suffers.

For Android this has translated to Google creating products and then modifying them largely in a vacuum because the OEMs aren’t contributing to revenue and therefore don’t get any real vote. The attitude appears to be that if you are getting something for free then you should be happy with what you get.

This pulls the actual solution provider out of the decision process and that is why the Android products generally feel unfinished when compared to their iPhone, RIM (Research In Motion) and even Windows Phone counterparts, and things don’t seem to be improving very quickly.

This isn’t a problem that can’t be fixed. They could, for instance, create a quality metric driven by the OEMs and measure their people on it, but currently they haven’t figured out how to replace money as the primary way that companies measure how well they are actually doing.

Staffing: Exacerbating the Problem

In talking to the OEMs, one of their biggest complaints was that the people they interface with are rude, unprofessional, inexperienced, clueless and generally unable to successfully resolve issues in a timely manner. The level of frustration with some of the OEMs is incredibly high. When confronted with this problem, Google's common response has been that they simply can’t find qualified people, which is kind of amazing given the level of unemployment that exists in the world.

This suggests that Google’s hiring policy is at fault; the company is known to favor recent graduates who will start at low salaries but have high GPAs, instead of more experienced employees. This exacerbates the quality problems significantly because it means these problems aren’t being properly communicated, escalated or resolved. In fact, in talking to the OEMs, you get a sense that much of the team that Google has working on operating systems are actually learning on the job. It kind of makes it even more amazing that they got a product out that works as well as it does.

Wrapping Up: Android is in Trouble, Chrome OS Will Fail

Some of the problems that Google is having aren’t unusual. Microsoft had similar staffing issues when they were ramping up to handle enterprise sales in the 90s, and IE6 problems were related to having a free product without a good alternative to revenue for measuring quality. This means that these issues can be corrected, but if one of the primary problems is one of communication, then Google may not yet fully grasp how bad they are. This is good news for challenging products like Windows Phone 7 and bad news for Chrome OS, which will likely have the same issues but be running against Windows 7 and not the mess of aftermarket OSs that Android came out against.

This suggests that Android may slide next year and Chrome OS will not approach expectations. The major lesson here, which encompasses the staffing issue, is that there has to be a strong intrinsic measure of quality that connects the users and the folks paying for the offering to the product. When the user is the end source of the revenue, that can be cash, but when you decouple revenue from the user you have to replace what you’ve lost. Google didn’t do that and the end result is not meeting OEM expectations and Google may not yet realize how bad things are. And this means that Google management’s projection that 60 percent of enterprises will switch to the Chrome OS suggests that Google has another problem: complete disconnection from reality.

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The Top Tech Controversies of 2010

Rob Enderle/IT Business Edge — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:53:00 -0800

This was a drama-filled year and I imagine a lot of people will look back on it and be very glad that it is over. Let’s revisit some of the big ones. And with each trip down memory lane, I’m going to suggest a title for a new reality TV or game show

AppleGates: A Geeky Sitcom

Over the last couple of decades, if you were to say "Apple" and "Gates" you would be talking about some conflict, loan or meeting between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. I guess Apple was going through withdrawal this year with Bill Gates off doing massive charity work because it had both "Antennagate" and "ScreenGate" associated with the new iPhone 4. Given that the iPhone was consistently the top-rated phone in its segment, the problems were hardly the Watergate variety. The problems simply showcased that Apple PR can’t do containment and that even small problems can get out of control. Granted, the story on Apple having what appeared to be its own private police force – which didn’t have to follow California law and could break into bloggers' homes – added that extra spice and had us wondering whether Steve Jobs' elevator still went to the top floor. It almost seemed like Apple’s PR department was trying to create an Apple-based reality TV show. How about "101 Ways to Piss Off Steve Jobs"?

Google: Rip-off – A Crazy Game Show Where Rich Kids End Up with Your Stuff

Now, you would think that a firm that basically made its money selling access to its customers' personal information would be more low-profile about its practices. Google’s CEO all but bragged that only his own information and that of the top Google executives were off limits and that your information was his to do with as he pleased. Google Street View cars were chased out of European neighborhoods with pitchforks and scuba gear (you can’t make this stuff up) and the Street View data was used to scan homes for information about Wi-Fi access points. It seemed like Google was jealous of all of the government attention Microsoft got last decade and felt left out. This is like someone watching their neighbor go through a nasty divorce or IRS audit, and thinking, "Gee, that looks like fun. I want in." I still find it fascinating that Google’s business model appears to be largely based on selling stuff that actually belongs to us. Think about it.

HP/Oracle: The Mistresses of Silicon Valley

This was the gift that kept on giving. First, you take a very conservative company like HP, then you take a location like Silicon Valley where the CEOs get mistresses as perks, add a dash of pretty reality TV star, and finally add a pinch of a semi–nuts billionaire and stir like crazy. What you get are letters to the New York Times suggesting that CEOs should have jobs for life, a famous reality show starlet, a fired high-profile CEO who is hired by the crazy billionaire, and a war between two vendors that mostly don’t even sell the same core products.

It looked to me like Oracle saw all the fun Sun had going on after Microsoft and figured its executives needed something else dramatic to occupy their time. And given that the very conservative IT buyers that both firms serve just love scandal (that’s sarcasm, if anyone missed it), why not scare the crap out of them? This could actually be a reality show, and I’m pitching “The Mistresses of Silicon Valley." Although, maybe I should rethink this and pitch “Punked: Oracle Edition." I may be late as others apparently are already pitching that concept. Ashton Kutcher had better watch out for Larry.

WikiLeaks: Let’s Play "Shoot the Messenger!"

It is nice to see the Republicans and Democrats agreeing on something, but one would hope that something had to do with, oh I don’t know, economic reform, health care or keeping my butt alive. But, no, they seem to agree that WikiLeaks is a terrorist organization and that its founder should be brought to justice. Many of us disagree, and suddenly I’m a fan of Ron Paul. Julian Assange’s crime was telling the world what the U.S. government had been actually doing for a couple of years. Granted, after reading some of the material and the government attacks, I seriously wonder if many of these elected and appointed officials have even a remote connection to reality. In any case, the more work that went into taking WikiLeaks out, the more visible the documents became and the more people that spoke out against the government. Certainly, it made the transparency claim of the current administration seem less than honest and Sarah Palin jumped into the fray, arguing that she’d be better at doing cover-ups. I’m thinking it might have been better to argue that she’d be more honest, but that is just me. But then again, Sarah Palin is a reality TV show star.

Wrapping Up: Screwed – A Christmas Carol

The past year was full of drama and it did seem like the major companies were either trying to create or live in reality TV shows of their own making. Even the U.S. government got on the bandwagon where its bad behavior seemed to mirror programs like "Jersey Shore" or "Glee." Maybe 2011’s best reality TV/game show should be called “Screwed," much like the movie by the same name.

I’m actually hoping that next year will have a little less funny material, how about you?

Source

In the Future, You Will Use Your Phone to Save Energy

Ariel Schwartz/Good — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 12:03:00 -0800

Apps designed to integrate with your electricity meter and help you save are just starting to hit the market. What's available, and what's on the horizon?

Smartphones are energy hogs. Just think about how much longer the battery in your cell phone from five years ago lasted as compared to your Android or iPhone's battery now. But while smartphones quickly suck up battery power, they can make up for it in other ways—namely, by helping you save energy in other parts of your life. Welcome to the world of the energy app.

At the moment, energy-saving apps are mostly geared towards high-end home energy management systems. The Control4 Mobile Navigator, for example, works with Control4's home control systems, which can automate everything from lighting and shades to thermostats and sprinkler systems. Forgot to turn your lights off? You can do it from the office. Control4's app simply extends the functionality of the brand's touch screens, keypads, and remote controls by allowing home control from anywhere. Similar apps are available for Wiser Home Control and eQ-3 branded energy management systems.

Do you have a rooftop solar array? SunPower’s Solar Electric Home Energy Management System lets you keep track of energy generated by SunPower-branded solar systems in real time. The app also offers information on the lifetime energy production of the panels, daily production, daily usage, and net energy use.

If you're lucky enough to have a smart meter installed in your home or apartment, the app options expand even more. Tendril Vantage Mobile allows select utility customers to monitor home energy use in real time, monitor dynamic price changes, and control smart meter-connected thermostats and appliances remotely. Utilities are getting in on the act, too—Irish utility company Bord Gáis Energy plans to release an iPhone app that offers detailed information about energy consumption and costs. Utility companies in other countries won't be far behind.

Don't have a home energy management system, a solar system, or a smart energy meter? There are other energy-saving app options. Consider downloading the MeterRead iPhone app ($2.99), which allows you to read your old-fashioned energy meter using your phone. The app calculates energy usage to the millisecond, predicts 30-day usage based on history, and stores data for hundreds of meter readings. It can even tell you how much energy a single appliance is using—just read the meter with the device plugged in and then check it again when the appliance is unplugged. It's a clunky way to track appliance usage, to be sure, but it's nearly free.

And this is just the beginning. App makers have barely scratched the surface of what handsets can do. That's not surprising—a recent Pike Research study revealed that only 13 percent of consumers can imagine controlling household appliances via smartphone in the future.

But that could quickly change. Pike also predicts that 28.1 million people will use home energy management systems worldwide by 2015. At the same time, the number of people with smart meter installations will also shoot up. And since smartphones probably aren't going anywhere, it's a safe bet to say that the future of home energy management lies at least partially in our cell phones.
Read more

Report: Taliban Kills Afghan Elder Based on WikiLeaks Docs

Jason Mick — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:04:00 -0700

It's been a nightmarish last few months for U.S. Military officials. First they discovered that a young soldier serving in Iraq had acted as a spy passing documents to the site Wikileaks. Then they endured Wikileaks release of 90,000 U.S. Military documents -- many of them classified -- detailing their operations in Afghanistan.

The Taliban, a radical Islamic militia in Afghanistan, announced its gratitude to Wikileaks for the release and vowed to hunt down those revealed in the documents to be collaborating with the U.S. It appears that they have now made good on that threat.

Khalifa Abdullah, a tribal elder, was removed from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province’s embattled Arghandab district, by gunmen. He was then executed.

At the same time, 70 other tribal elders received death threats warning them that the Taliban had obtained reason to believe they were collaborating with the U.S. One such threat is signed by Abdul Rauf Khadim, a senior Taliban official who was imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. When the Cuban prison was partially shut down by President Obama Khadim was transferred to Afghan custody in Kabul, where he subsequently escaped.

The note reads:

We have made a decision for your death. You have five days to leave Afghan soil. If you don’t, you don’t have the right to complain.

NewsWeek first reported on the murder. They report that the Taliban believes the documents showed it U.S. sources, including the murder victim, Abdullah -- whether or not they truly do.

Wikileaks founder and convicted Australian computer criminal Julian Assange claimed in a TIME interview that the leak was justified in the name of transparency. He assured that no one would be harmed by the leak, stating:

We feel confident. The material is seven months old; we reviewed it extensively. We held back 15,000 documents that we felt needed further review because the type of classifications they had. We've been publishing for four years a range of material that has caused the changing of constitutions and the removal of governments, but there's never been a case that we are aware of that has resulted in the personal injury of anyone.

In related news, U.S. Congressman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) has called on the U.S. Military to pursue the death penalty in the Manning case. He says Manning's actions constitute treason in a time of war and thus should be punishable by death. His statements came in an interview, which is preserved here in an audio recording.

We spoke with key government witness Adrian Lamo, who turned Manning in, about Rogers' remarks. He tells us he doubts the U.S. government would pursue the death penalty given that they didn't in the case of Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent-turned-Russian spy. Lamo states, "The damage done by Bradley Manning doesn't begin to approximate the damage Robert Hanssen did."

Hanssen received a life sentence, which he is currently serving.

If the government were to pursue such a sentence, though, Lamo says he would refuse to testify.

He states,"I elected to turn Manning in, in the hopes of saving lives. I'm not going to participate in a process that's going to take a life. There should be no other blood spilled by Wikileaks."

He concludes, "Under any other circumstances I will testify in the case. [But] my concern for human life comes first."

Web-enabled Devices Quickly Gobbling Up Current Supply of IP Addresses

Tracie McDaniel — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:53:00 -0700

When the internet protocol IPv4 was developed, mobile phones were
not in heavy use and personal computers were not yet commonplace. Now
computers, phones, automobiles and even appliances are connected to
the web -- and the number of IP addresses that are readily available
is dwindling fast.

IP addresses are unique
numbers assigned to all devices that connect to the internet.
The IPv4 provides for an estimated four billion IP addresses.

There
are currently less than five percent left -- about 230 million IP
addresses -- and according to the Sydney
Morning Herald,
experts predict the world will run out within the year.   A
video posted
on the SMH site features Geoff
Huston, Chief Scientist of the Asia Pacific Network Information
Center (APNIC) talking about the
shrinking supply.

A countdown depletion site
has even been set up to track the fading number of IP addresses, but
industry professionals indicate that a crisis can be averted with
IPv6.

"Over the years unless we embark on IPv6 then
the internet will get slowly more and more strangled and applications
will work in stranger ways," Huston said.

IPv6 would
require an upgrade or reconfiguration to certain devices -- and some
users might even have to buy new hardware.

Multiple customers
may be forced to share IP addresses in the interim -- which may cause
IP dependent applications like Gmail, Google Maps and iTunes to stop
working. Black market IP addresses may also begin popping up,
Huston warns.

Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb
indicates that an explosion
of data that is about to take place on the Web -- and is
expected to contribute to the rapidly depleting supply of IP
addresses -- is due largely to sensor
data, smart
grids, RFID and
other similarly related systems.

Front page illustration sourced from users tomsun and Lou Tamposi/Flickr (CC)

Why Can't Wikileaks and the U.S. Federal Gov't Get Their Acts Together?

Jason Mick — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:49:00 -0700

Our coverage of Wikileaks' landmark release of 90k U.S. military documents, many of them classifed, drew strong reactions -- some supportive, some very critical. Some could not understand -- how could I criticize Wikileaks, when I had worked so hard to reveal the government's lack of transparency with its ACTA piracy treaty and other issues? Here's why.

Today we live in an era of cell phones, digital cameras, and internet (and the wonderful smart phone, a device which combines all three). While expectations of personal privacy remain strong, the explosion of information access has created an atmosphere in which no business or organization can expect to cover up its actions.

That's precisely what both Wikileaks and the U.S. federal government are trying to do, and both need to wake up to reality.

On the one hand you have the U.S. government, who's played the unsavory role of the deceiver.

For all his talk of transparency, President Barack Obama hasn't pushed hard enough for it. If the U.S. government had published the reports of civilian casualties, problematic allies, and more, Wikileaks would have been out of luck. It would have had nothing to publish.

The information was going to get out there. President George W. Bush, President Obama, and their military officials should have realized that. That much is common sense. But somehow common sense seemed to be lacking.

The U.S. government can take this as a wakeup call. If the U.S. is truly to be a "free" nation, it needs to publish full information of its government's activities in all their gory details (no pun intended) to the public. Otherwise, someone else will. And that will be pretty embarrassing.

Granted, there is a clear limit to this. The U.S. must be careful in what it chooses to release, so as not to release documents that endanger lives of the U.S. or its allies -- such as names of supporters, informants, local contacts, troop numbers, or other dangerous details. The key here is common sense. Releasing the names of your supporters in a hostile atmosphere is obviously a bad idea. Releasing reports on civilian casualties (perhaps with the soldiers' names redacted) is merely taking responsibility for your own actions -- a good idea. Spending money on transparency is common sense. Whether you're a Democrat, Republican, or something else, you should be able to get behind the government spending taxpayer money on informing citizens of what exactly it's doing at home and abroad.

If there's one thing worse than a deceiver, it's a hypocritical deceiver. And that's an apt way to describe Wikileaks.

Site founder and ex-computer criminal Julian Assange has created a news organization the has engaged in a crusade against the U.S., with over 90 percent of its posts being leaked U.S. documents. For a standard wiki, such bias could be excused as the will of the masses. However, for a donor-financed private news organization like Wikileaks, that level of bias is unacceptable and utterly destroys the site's credibility.

People asked -- do I believe Wikleaks should go out of the way to get leaks from China, Russia, the EU and other GDP powers other than the U.S.? I say absolutely, yes! A legitimate news organization must show a lack of bias, particularly one playing such a sensitive role as Wikileaks.

But aside from the question of bias, there's the even more glaring issue that a site that prides itself on exposing others' secrets tries to operate in complete secrecy. That's more than a little hypocritic, no?

Wikileaks won't release its donors' identities. It won't release its detailed spending records. It won't say whether the "Wikileaks" Twitter and Facebook are official or imposters. It won't allow public feedback on leaks. It won't publish explicit details on how its command decisions are made.

Wikileaks needs to adopt a policy of internal transparency immediately. And it needs to work to remove the bias in its publications.

To summarize, Wikileaks and the U.S. federal government, in the wake of Bradley Manning's arrest have played the role of bickering siblings, flinging mud at each other. And they don't seem to realize they're both embarassing themselves. And like most siblings, they're much more alike than they realize.

The U.S. federal government deserves criticism -- not for its Afghanistan operations (which are of debatable merit), but for its lack of transparency. And Wikileaks deserves criticism for this as well. Both parties need to wake up and realize that when they condemn each other, they're really looking in the mirror at themselves.

It's the twenty-first century. You're not fooling anyone. The public is connected and informed. Try to conduct yourselves in a manner that respects yourself and others.

Obama Test Drives Volt, Affirms Commitment to U.S. Car Makers

Jason Mick — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:45:00 -0700

Two years ago, General Motors and Chrysler stood on the verge of
collapse. No bank in the country was capable of undersigning
such a huge bankruptcy. The only possible resolution appeared
to be complete
liquidation to repay the companies' lenders, which would
have decimated the American auto parts industry and left Ford Motor
Company as the only major surviving America auto company.

Instead
U.S. President Barack Obama, along with foreign leaders in Canada and
the EU put together a comprehensive
bailout, that while paling in comparison to the bank bailout of
2008 in size, was sufficient to carry the U.S. auto companies through
bankruptcy. Today GM is once more turning
a profit and Chrysler is also showing signs of
recovery.

President Obama appeared in the metro-Detroit area
of Michigan today, touring various GM and Chrysler facilities and
speaking to his vision of a revitalized auto industry.
Addressing a largely enthusiastic crowd Obama began, "Hello,
Detroit. It’s good to be back."

Obama had some good
news to announce -- with the turnaround, Chrysler’s Sterling
Heights plant, previously scheduled for closure, would not only stay
open, but also add a shift. Obama hailed this news, commenting,
"When a plant thrives, that doesn’t just affect the new
workers, it affects the entire community."

Addressing the
crowd, Obama fired them up stating, "A lot of people were
skeptical. There were many who said we should just let the market
take its course. Let GM go bankrupt. Let Chrysler go out of
business. But I had confidence in you. I will bet on the
American worker every day of the week."

At about 1:15
p.m. Obama visited GM's Hamtramck plant and jumped behind the wheel
of an upcoming
2011 Chevy Volt. He only made it about 40 feet before
secret service agents stopped him.

The President joked,
"Some of you saw me drive the Volt about 12 inches; they don't
let me drive much these days."

The Chevy Volt is the
first step in Obama's vision of a reinvented U.S. auto industry,
driven by hybrids, electric vehicles, and fuel cell vehicles.
President Obama has called for over 20,000 electric
vehicle stations, 1
million EVs on the road, and bargain EV prices of $10,000 per
vehicle to be in place by 2015.

Video of Obama's speech is
available here.

Missing Human Evolutionary Ancestor Discovered in Africa

Jason Mick — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 11:46:00 -0700

When you talk to a biochemist or biologist at a university level these
days about the "evolutionary debate" they're likely to
laugh; after all if you are knowledgeable modern scientist, you know
that the vast body of molecular, genetic, fossil, anatomical, and
field biology evidence all points to the same thing -- that organisms
evolved via natural selection and genetic drift over the last 3
billion years.

More evidence may not
convince skeptics,
but for those interested in science an incredible
discovery was made this year. Paleontologists digging
in South Africa have unearthed a pair of partial hominid
skeletons that represent a new species on the human evolutionary
tree.

Scientists have named the
creatures Australopithecus
sediba.
The species lived in Africa less than 2 million years ago. In
contrast with "Lucy", the 3 million year
old Australopithecus
afarensis fossil
found in Ethiopia in 1974, the new skeletons are taller and are less
ape-like in facial structure.

Researchers estimate that the
pair lived between 1.78 and 1.95 million years ago. They walked
upright, like later hominids and had long forearms and short
fingers. They also had very long legs, which the
paleontologists believe were conducive for running across the African
wilderness, which would be a key to escaping predators and finding
food.

Dr. Lee Berger from the University of the Witwatersrand
in Johannesburg and Dr. Paul Dirks from Australia's James Cook
University led the team that found the pair in a collapsed cave in
South Africa's Malapa cave complex.

They speculate
that our unfortunate ancestors died quite young. One skeleton,
a male, appeared to be only 10 and 13 at his time of death, while a
second, a female, appeared to be in her late 20s or early 30s.
It is thought that the pair was searching for water, and likely fell
into the cave on accident, receiving fatal injuries.

The pair
did have some ape-like features, according to Dr. Berger. He
says their brains were "remarkably small" based on the
skulls discovered and states, "they could still climb trees
[and] they were very competent walking ... on the ground."

The
fossils have smaller teeth and advanced pelvises, though, hallmarks
of human evolution. Still Dr. Berger prefers that people don't
call them a "missing link", which he feels is an outdated
term. He remarks, "I don't like the use of that term.
[It's a] Victorian-era [term that] implies some (specific) chain of
evolution."

He does say the fossils will offer an
incredible contribution to understanding how humans evolved into our
current form. The truly exciting part, he revealed, is that
there are several other partial hominid skeletons that were
discovered, but have not yet been unearthed. In addition to the
hominids, a saber-toothed cat, a brown hyena, and a wild dog were
also found among the remains.

Dr. Berger and Dr. Dirks
co-authored two journal papers on the discovery in the prestigious
AAAS journal Science.
The papers can be found here and here,
respectively.

Some skeptics in the U.S. and abroad continue to
denounce paleontology. For most, it's due to religious reasons,
as they find the idea of evolution "sinful" due to its
contradiction of literal interpretations of text found in The
Torah, The Bible, and The Koran, and other religious works.

The name itself represents a perhaps humorous double meaning in terms of
scientific theory and religious beliefs. In the local language
Sotho "sediba" means "spring."
However, many note its close similarity to the word "sebida", which means "sin" in Sumerian. In Sumerian
"sebida" refers, more specifically, "a religious sin that entails the anger of the
gods and a stain upon the soul." To some, that's exactly
what the new skeletons represent, and perhaps researchers thus used
the name to both describe what they feel the skeletons represent (the
"spring" from which man sprung) and to poke a bit of fun at
these in the public who are abandoning the scientific process.

Jobs Addresses iPhone "Antennagate"

Jason Mick — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:38:00 -0700

Today at Apple's 1 p.m. EST, 10 a.m. PST press conference, Apple finally formally addressed the iPhone 4's faulty antenna, which its engineers reportedly warned it about last year, but it ignored. Despite reports claiming that it might initiate a recall, Apple took a hard line, with most of its presentation boiling down to one word - denial. But to Apple's credit it is giving users a free bumper case and letting them return their phones for free within 30 days if they're still unhappy.

Apple CEO Steven P. Jobs who infamously told users "You're holding it wrong" took the stage and began by stating, "We're not perfect. Phones aren't perfect either... But we want to make all of our users happy. We love making our users happy. We're going to talk about how we're going to do that today... but before we get into that I want to talk about the problems and the data we've got so that we can make sure we make all our users happy."

Jobs then turned to a bit of bragging - a record 3 million iPhone 4s sold in only 3 weeks. He described it as the best smart phone in history, saying reviews back him up on that.

He then commented, "We started getting some reports of people having issues with the antenna system..People were touching this spot here. Seeing a large drop in bars... sicne dubbed Antennagate. We heard about this just 22 days ago from today. It's not like Apple's had its head in the sand for 3 months on this... Apple is an engineering driven company."

He then turned to tests which Apple engineers conducted. He claims those tests show similar drops in signal, based on hand grip with a Blackberry, the HTC Droid Eris, and the Samsung Omnia 2. Jobs' conclusion? "This is life in the smartphone world. Phones aren't perfect."

Of course Jobs failed to show a wide variety of smart phones - such as the HTC EVO 4G, Droid Incredible, etc.

Apple's Antenna Testing Facility

He again reaffirms his stance that users need to be sure to have the correct grip and that the problem is mostly imagined stating, "We went to a lot of trouble to put this beautiful line in the stainless steel to say here's where you touch it everybody... and we had incorrect bars, so when it did drop the drop looked far more catastrophic."

Apple says that its testing to come to this conclusion was extensive. It spent $100M USD on its signal testing facility, complete with anechoic chambers. It has hired 18 PhD scientist and engineers (though earlier reports indicate it perhaps wasn't listening to them).

In his presentation, Jobs cites AppleCare numbers which he claims indicate that only 0.55 percent of customers had enough of an issue to contact Apple. Further, he says that return rates on the iPhone 4 are a miniscule 1.7 percent down from 6 percent (granted maybe some customers were waiting for Apple's response).

Jobs did admit that the iPhone 4 drops more calls that the iPhone 3GS, but claims that it only drops 1 more call per 100 calls than the 3GS hardware - in other words less than a 1 percent difference. He claims his inbox has been overflowing with emails telling him how wonderfully the iPhone 4 is working and how great it is. In fact he claims he received 5,000 such emails.

He concludes by summarizing about the cosmetic "fix" to the number of bars drawn. And then finally, he tosses customers a bone. Apple will be giving out a free cases (Apple's own $30 USD newly designed case which reportedly fixes much of the signal problems or similar third party designs). Until Sept. 30 Apple will give one of the cases to every iPhone 4 purchaser for free. Customers who already bought a case will be refunded. And international customers will be eligible for the offer as well.

The proximity sensor issue was also briefly mentioned, and chief Jobs says a software fix is incoming. He also reminded that the white iPhone 4 will arrive at the end of July and that the iPhone 4 will launch in 17 countries on July 30th, as well.

The conference wraps up with Jobs commenting, "We love our users. We try very hard to surprise and delight them.. we work our asses off and we have a blast doing it. What motivates us is to have them love our products. We also connect them with great apps and content. We love our users so much we've built 300 apple retail stores for them. When we fall short we try harder."

"And when we succeed they reward us by staying our users... so that's what drives us. And when we have problems like this and people are criticizing us, we take it really personally. Maybe we shouldn't, but we do. We all read these stories and we take it seriously. We think we've gotten to the heart of the problem, and the heart is that smartphones have weak spots. And so for those small number of customers that are having problems, we're going to give them cases, and for those that are still unhappy we're going to give them a full refund. there is no antennagate. And that's what I had to present to you today."

A class action lawsuit on the problems is pending.

All Mr. Jobs' quotes were taken from this live feed from the company's press conference.

Kin Phone Failure Weighing Heavily on Microsoft

Jason Mick — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:39:00 -0700

Remember when the Zune
phone was a hot news topic? Those days are long gone.
Even as Windows Mobile 6.5 plunges
in marketshare and Microsoft hurries to finish
its replacement in time for the holidays, it's trying to
come to grips with the loss of its first mobile phone hardware
project - Kin.

A summary
article of the Kin debacle over at Mini-Microsoft,
a blog site that follows Microsoft closely, had some stinging
commentary, purportedly from Microsoft employees or those close to
the company.

States one apparent former employee:

All
I can say as a former Windows Mobile employee who is now working for
a competitor in the phone space is that this is good news for the
rest of us...Personally I quit because of the frustrating management
and autocratic decision style of Terry Myerson and Andrew Lees. The
only exec in the team myself and other folks respected was Tom
Gibbons who is now sidelined. Lees and Myerson don't know consumer
products or phones. Gibbons at least knows consumer product
development. We often talk about how Andrew Lees still has a job but
Microsoft's loss is a gain for the rest of us.

Andrew
Lees is a Microsoft Senior VP in the Mobile Communications
(Kin, Windows Mobile) department. Terry
Myerson is listed as a Microsoft Corporate VP of Windows
Phone Engineering.

Other commenters, apparently close to
Microsoft leveled similar charges. One states:

And
now Kin is killed *after* it has shipped in June 2010. You can bet
Andy was involved in the development of Kin, the partnership
agreements with the OEM, Verizon and most importantly the "ship
it" approvals all along the way. And Microsoft discovers its a
bad idea after it blows up in the broad market. Absolutely no thanks
to any pro-active decision making on Andy's part... Based on his past
performance, 99% chance this is also going to be a total catastrophe.
It further doesn't help that much of the Windows Phone 7 leadership
team was kicked out of Windows when they screwed up Vista.

Another
person who identifies themselves as a former Danger employee (see
below for the Kin-Danger connection) remarks:

[Microsoft
is a] dysfunctional organization where decisions were made by
politics rather than logic.

It
would be very easy to blow off such criticisms as sour grapes of
ex-employees or even people posing as employees with no real
knowledge of the company. However, the fact is there does
appear to be something badly wrong at Microsoft's phone division, and
that lends the complaints a bit more plausibility.

The strange
journey of Kin began with the purchase
of Danger, makers of the Sidekick, in Feb. 2008.
Microsoft reportedly paid
$500M USD for the company that in its best year made $54M USD in
revenue, but overall had lost $188M USD. Despite those
questionable metrics, at the time the move was viewed as perhaps wise
- it gave Microsoft a hardware team with which to directly attack
Apple's iPhone.

Two years later the child of that union,
Kin, stumbled
out onto the scene on the Verizon network. The Kin
One was priced at $49.99 and the Ken Two sold for $99.99. Both
phones were marketed with a curious campaign of a jilted lover
apparently stalking his ex-girlfriend. Take it
from Apple or Palm -
good - or bad - commercials can make or break a campaign (granted
the blame here only partially rests on Microsoft for approving the
commercial, and certainly equally is the fault of the ad firm).
But perhaps more damaging than the bizarre ads was the fact that the
phones were utterly unremarkable, serving only as a mediocre
Facebook-enabled smartphone.

Within 45 days Microsoft decided
it had seen enough, unceremoniously
pulling the plug on the project at the end of June.
While the phones will continue to be sold on Verizon for the few that
are interested, the message from Microsoft was clear - it was
putting Kin down faster than you can say Old
Yeller.

So
whether the complaints are true or not, Microsoft must make some
serious changes to its phone business - and make them now,
if it hopes to survive fast competitors like Google, Apple, and HP
(rebranded Palm).

Business PC Age Highest in a Decade, 74 Percent Running Windows XP

Jason Mick — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:35:00 -0700

Even as Windows 7 adoption in the business world heats up, Microsoft's
Tammi Reller, Windows team CVP, has dropped some startling numbers
that some say show just how
poorly Windows Vista did.

At Microsoft's Worldwide Partner
Conference, Reller stated that Microsoft's internal data indicates
that 74
percent of business worldwide still run on Windows XP - an
operating system that was released almost a decade ago. Reller
spun this as good news for Microsoft, because he says it gives his
company the opportunity to convert these business to Windows 7.

Many
in the past have dismissed the decisions of companies like Intel
to skip
Vista (coincidentally Intel recently adopted
Windows 7). They aptly point out that many businesses only
upgrade every other major OS release. While this is likely
true, the numbers indicated that Windows Vista clearly appeared to be
the OS that everyone decided to skip, in the business world.

One
factor that may be playing a role as well, is the economic challenges
of recent years. On average, Microsoft says that business PCs
are 4.4 years old - the highest average age in over a
decade.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
recently announced that
he believes that Windows 7 can sell 350 million licenses this year.
Reller indicates that many of those licenses may come from businesses
looking to at last upgrade, replacing their aging hardware and
operating systems.

Ballmer also said his company is "hardcore"
into making Windows-driven
competitors to the iPad.

George Lucas Angry About Real Life "Lightsaber," Threatens to Sue

Jason Mick — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:33:00 -0700

Early last month we covered Hong Kong-based Wicked Laser's new Spyder III Pro Arctic laser, a 1-watt beast capable of setting people's skin on fire and causing blindness. In that article we compared the laser to a "lightsaber", as a humorous pop culture reference. After all, the design looked much like the iconic Star Wars weapon.

George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, noticed that similarity, too, and now has threatened Wicked Lasers to change their design or prepare to be sued. Lucas's firm Lucasfilm Ltd. sent a cease-and-desist letter to the company threatening legal action if the conditions are not accepted. Lucasfilm states, "It is apparent from the design of the Pro Arctic Laser that it was intended to resemble the hilts of our lightsaber swords, which are protected by copyright..."

The letter says that much like the fictional lightsabers, the Wicked Lasers can prove a dangerous weapon. It writes that they are "a highly dangerous product with the potential to cause blindness, burns and other damage to people and/or property."

Steve Liu, CEO of Wicked Lasers, says his 7-year-old firm has many lasers that look like the Spyder III and that the design was not meant to copy Star Wars. He states, "Most people feel it's kind of ridiculous... We would never use any comparison like that to 'Star Wars' or a lightsaber or anything like that."

Much like Luke Skywalker facing down Jabba the Hutt, Liu boldly proclaims that Lucas is making a big error with his legal threats. He states, "Lucasfilm shouldn't be saying something like that. They're a big company that needs to protect their trademarks. Maybe they're having to look like they're protecting their trademark in case they need to [protect it again] later."

While we think this suit is relatively silly (most laser pointers look somewhat lightsaber-like), it is hard to deny that the look of the Pro Arctic is remarkably similar to a Star Wars universe lightsaber.

In response to the demand and safety concerns, Wicked Lasers has made some modifications to the devices before it ships them to customers. It has added the following:

1) Adjustable Power Mode : Low power and high power modes are now selectable. Laser's default power mode is low power mode.

2) Adjustable Wave Mode : Pulse mode and constant wave modes are now selectable. Laser's default wave mode is pulse mode.

3) Secure Lock/Unlock Mode : The laser can now be locked and unlocked electronically to prevent unauthorized usage. Laser's default secure mode is locked mode.

4) Training Lens : A replaceable training lens will be installed on each laser that reduces the power output by 80% to prevent accidents for new users. Once training is completed, user may replace the training lens with the included standard lens for maximum power.

Perhaps those modifications will help keep overzealous users from burning themselves or others.

As to the Lucas mess, the letter gave Wicked Lasers five days to promise changes, and it seems the company is unwilling to comply. Thus it seems likely that Lucasfilm will sue it. Liu, though, says he hopes that it won't come to that. We're guessing George Lucas is searching for a good Sarlacc pit to throw them in now, as we write this.

Dark Matter in the Sun May be Sustaining Life on Earth

Jason Mick — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:20:00 -0700

Is life on Earth possible thanks to a bizarre solar effect of dark
matter?

A mystery that has puzzled scientists for some
time now is the solar composition problem. The
sun appears to have a much easier time transporting energy
to the surface than standard models would predict based on
traditional theories of its composition. While the exact reason
why this happens has been unclear, what has been clear is that it
likely has profound implications on the radiation received by Earth
and hence life on our planet.

Now physicists at the University
of Oxford have come up with a wild new theory to explain what's going
on and to better characterize our solar system's star.
Astroparticle physicist Subir
Sarkar of the University of Oxford and his colleague Mads
Frandsen claim in a new study that the sun acts as a vacuum
cleaner, sucking up dark matter. This dark matter could be to
blame for the energy transfer effects.

Dark matter is thought
to consist of WIMPs -
weakly interacting massive particles. These particles are
predicted to be 100 times more massive than a proton. However,
they're hard to observe as they only interact through the weak
nuclear force and gravity. Also, current theory states that
when WIMPs come in contact with each other, they annihilate each
other, spitting out particles like neutrinos.

Professor Sarkar
believes in a slightly different theory. He points out that if
there were equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the original
universe, they would have annihilated each other. Rather,
something seems to be favoring matter. He believes that
similarly that whatever is favoring the survival of matter could be
favoring the survival of WIMPs.

He also believes that dark
matter is much lighter than previously theorized - a mere 5 times
the mass of a proton. He states, "If it were five times
heavier, it would get five times the abundance. That’s what dark
matter is. That’s the simplest explanation for dark matter in
my view."

If he's right, he's created a headache for the
particle physics community; lighter particles are harder to detect.
Fortunately, he's also offered them a solution. He suggests
that the sun is sucking up dark matter and that by observing it, dark
matter can be formally detected. He states, "The sun has
been whizzing around the galaxy for 5 billion years, sweeping up all
the dark matter as it goes."

Indirect observation of the
dark matter could come in the form of the unusual energy transfer to
the solar surface. While normal particles like photons would
strongly interact with matter in the sun and have a much slower rate
of energy transfer, dark matter mostly just interacts with itself
(barring weak interactions), thus could transfer energy much faster
to the surface.

According to Professor Sarkar, the numbers add
up perfectly. He states, "When we do the calculation, to
our amazement, it turns out this is true. They can transport
enough heat to solve the solar composition problem."

The
next step in verification will be to check the sun's neutrino
output. Two new detectors -Borexino and
one in Canada called SNO+ -
will soon be fired up and Sarkar is requesting that they check to see
if the solar emission rate is equivalent to what his theory
predicted.

If he's right that could mean that life as we know
it on Earth may be thanks in part to the solar effects of dark
matter.

The study was published in
the July 2 edition of the journal Physical
Review Letters.

The
work, while unproven, has already gained some high profile praise
from academics in the field. American physicist Dan
Hooper of Fermilab
in Illinois comments, "[The study is] not too much of a
stretch, in my opinion. I look at their numbers, and they’re
very plausible to me. There’s an increasingly compelling body
of evidence accumulating [of less massive dark matter]. The
jury is still out, but if this is really what’s going on, we should
be able to know it with some confidence in the next year or so."

Man Claims to Own 84% of Facebook

Shane McGlaun — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:17:00 -0700

Facebook is no stranger to controversy. Typically, the controversy surrounds
new changes to the social network's privacy standards. As the largest
social network online, Facebook boasts many millions of users across
the world.

The last legal proceeding having to do with the
social network was identified when Germany
sued Facebook for violating the privacy of its users. The
accusation in the suit was that Facebook illegally accessed and saved
personal data of those without a profile on the site.

A new
suit has now been filed against Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg by a
New York man claiming
to own 84% of the social networking giant. A judge presiding over
the case has ordered Facebook assets frozen as the trial
proceeds.

The man suing Facebook is Paul Ceglia. Ceglia claims
to have a signed contract with Zuckerberg from 2003 to develop and
design a website that later became thefacebook.com, which eventually
turned into the giant Facebook we know today. The contract terms show
that Ceglia was to get a $1,000 fee and a 50% stake in the final
product.

Reuters reports
that the contract also stated Ceglia would, "acquire an
additional 1 percent interest in the business, per day, until the
website was completed." At the completion of the project Ceglia
claims that his stake in Facebook was 84%. Facebook claims that the
suit if frivolous.

The social network is seeking to have the
asset freeze struck down. Facebook's Gary Schmidt states that the
asset freeze will not prevent the social networking firm from
operating. Reuters
reports
that Zuckerberg was supposedly working on other projects in 2003 at
the time Ceglia contends he had the signed contract for work
resulting in Facebook. The domain name TheFacebook.com was registered
in 2004.

Humanity Might Not Survive the Next Century According to Australian Scientist

Levi Beckerson — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 12:05:00 -0700

Mankind is headed for a mass extinction, along with many other species
clinging to Earth, and there's probably nothing to be done about
according to one scientist. Frank Fenner, a much-lauded and awarded
scientist hailing from Canberra, Australia, doesn't see much hope for
humans in the future. Between rampant pollution, ecological
destruction, overpopulation and over-consumption, the planet is
already past its tipping point - it's not a question of if, but when
this mass extinction will occur.

Where one might see this view
as the ramblings of a crackpot, Fenner is certainly no such thing.
His contributions to science over the last 60+ years are just as
staggering as his proclamation. An Australian Academy of Science as
well as Royal Society fellow, Fenner holds credits in everything from
eradicating smallpox and helping Australia with victories in New
Guinea by dealing with malaria among their troops to wild rabbit
population control with the myxomatosis virus. He has contributed to
nearly 300 papers and book chapters as well as written or co-written
22 of his own books. In 1973 he established the Centre for Resource
and Environmental Studies. Still active in science and education,
until recently he was still showing up for work every day at the John
Curtin School of Medical Research at ANU (which he directed from 1967
to 1973) and will be opening a symposium at the Australian Academy of
Science titled Healthy Climate, Planet and People next week to help
connect environmental science and environmental policy.

Fenner
likens the current global situation to the devastation
of Easter Island. The Rapanui, the Polynesian settlers of Easter
Island, found a pristine mote of land and in the next millennium or
so proceeded to completely devastate its ecosystem by cutting down
nearly every tree on the island. Entire species disappeared and
shortly after, so did most of the Rapanui. They had driven the island
into an unsustainable ecological disaster.

"We'll undergo
the same fate as the people on Easter Island," Fenner told The
Australian in
a recent interview. "Climate change is just at the very
beginning. But we're seeing remarkable changes in the weather
already.

"The Aborigines showed that without science and
the production of carbon dioxide and global warming, they could
survive for 40,000 or 50,000 years. But the world can't. The human
species is likely to go the same way as many of the species that
we've seen disappear.

"Homo sapiens will become extinct,
perhaps within 100 years. A lot of other animals will, too. It's an
irreversible situation. I think it's too late. I try not to express
that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting
it off," he explains.

Fenner is not alone in his belief.
Many other scientists feel that humanity has driven the world over
the edge with no hope of rectifying the situation before we meet our
bitter end, taking many other species along for the one-way trip. But
others, including some of Fenner's colleagues, believe it isn't too
late. However, the time in which to address the issues is rapidly
coming to an end.

Stephen Boyden, retired ANU professor and
friend and colleague of Fenner's claims "Frank may be
right, but some of us still harbour the hope that there will come
about an awareness of the situation and, as a result, the
revolutionary changes necessary to achieve ecological
sustainability.

"That's where Frank and I differ. We're
both aware of the seriousness of the situation, but I don't accept
that it's necessarily too late. While there's a glimmer of hope, it's
worth working to solve the problem. We have the scientific knowledge
to do it but we don't have the political will."

Researchers Create Mathematical Formula for Bicycle Riding

Michael Barkoviak — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 11:59:00 -0700

The U.S. Senate is debating an unprecedented measure that would give the U.S. President and a branch of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) power to kill part or all of the internet hosted by private companies in the U.S., all in the name of protecting the motherland. The bill, proposed by Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) who at times has been referred to as a Republican, Independent, or Democrat (much of his career was spent as a moderate Democrat) has few if any limitations.

The new bill is named Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, or PCNAA. The bill is similar to a different bill drafted by Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) that proposed giving the government power to "order the disconnection" of private networks or websites.

Both bills have received a measure of support among both parties in the House and Senate. And both have experienced a great deal of opposition from activists.

Under the new bill, a new government office called the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) would be created under the umbrella of the DHS, and would be tasked with the responsibility to "preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people" -- a loosely worded definition which is thought would grant it the power to shut down virtually any network in the country.

Under the measure it orders that networks "shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed," including shutdown. Failure to cooperate would result in steep fines.

The NCCC would force private companies to participate in what it calls information sharing". In exchange for their cooperation networking firms are handed a juicy nugget -- immunity from civil lawsuits. The U.S. government would pick up the tab for any provable monetary damage that was created based on NCCC enforcement actions.

Virtually all private internet service providers would be mandated to cooperate with the bill. Those who did not show evidence that they had a clear system in place to give the government control access would meet punishment. The NCCC could "issue an order" against such rebellious providers -- though the exact nature of the order is unknown.

Ultimately the bill creates a power structure with the U.S. President at the top. The U.S. President could dictate enforcement actions to the DHS and by proxy NCCC, which would then be carried out. Those enforcements could include everything from minor takedowns to pulling the plug on virtually the entire internet.

About the only limiting language in the bill is that it forbids the government from forcing ISPs to hand over traffic records without appropriate warrants.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-MA) praised the bill and is quoted by ZDNet as remarking, "We cannot afford to wait for a cyber 9/11 before our government realises the importance of protecting our cyber resources."

Technology and civil rights groups, though, are less thrilled. TechAmerica, probably the largest US technology lobby group was quite unhappy, stating that the bill could create "unintended consequences that would result from the legislation's regulatory approach" and a dangerous "potential for absolute power". The Center for Democracy and Technology agrees, commenting that giving the President the "authority to shut down or limit internet traffic on private systems" was unacceptable.

Nonetheless, the measure enjoys substantial backing both from Senate Democrats and Republicans and may soon be on its way to the House after some debate.

The full densely worded bill can be found here [PDF].