Monday, May 14. 2012Facebook's New App Center Promises Quality Over QuantityVia ReadWrite ----- Last September, during the f8 Developers’ Conference, Facebook CTO Bret Taylor said that the company had no plans for a “central app repository” – an app store. Today, Facebook is changing its tune. The social giant has announced App Center, a section of Facebook dedicated to discovering and deploying high-quality apps on the company’s platform. The App Center will push apps to iPhone, Android and the mobile Web, giving Facebook its first true store for mobile app discovery. The departure from Facebook’s previous company line comes as the social platform ramps up its mobile offerings to make money from its hundreds of millions of mobile users. This is not your father's app store, though. Let's start with the requirements. Facebook has announced a strict set of style and quality guidelines to get apps placed in App Center. Apps that are considered high-quality, as decided by Facebook’s Insights analytics platform, will get prominent placement. Quality is determined by user ratings and app engagement. Apps that receive poor ratings or do not meet Facebook’s quality guidelines won't be listed. Whether or not an app is a potential Facebook App Center candidate hinges on several factors. It must • have a canvas page (a page that sets the app's permissions on Facebook’s platform) • be built for iOS, Android or the mobile Web • use a Facebook Login or be a website that uses a Facebook Login. Facebook is in a tricky spot with App Center. It will house not only apps that are specifically run through its platform but also iOS and Android apps. Thus it needs to achieve a balance between competition and cooperation with some of the most powerful forces in the tech universe. If an app in App Center requires a download, the download link on the app’s detail page will bring the user to the appropriate app repository, either Apple's App Store or Android’s Google Play. One of the more interesting parts of App Center is that Facebook will allow paid apps. This is a huge move for Facebook as it provides a boost to its Credits payment service. One of the benefits of having a store is that whoever controls the store also controls transactions arising from the items in it, whether payments per download or in-app purchases. This will go a long way towards Facebook’s goal of monetizing its mobile presence without relying on advertising. Facebook App Center Icon Guidelines Developers interested in publishing apps to Facebook’s App Center should take a look at both the guidelines and the tutorial that outlines how to upload the appropriate icons, how to request permissions, how to use Single Sign On (SSO, a requirement for App Center) and the app detail page. This is a good move for Facebook. It will give the company several
avenues to start making money off of mobile but also strengthen its
position as one of the backbones of the Web. For instance, App Center is
both separate from iOS and Android but also a part of it. Through App
Center, Facebook can direct traffic to its apps, monitor who and how
users are downloading applications and keep itself at the center of the
user experience. Researchers develop disposable paper-based touch padsVia Phys Org -----
A paper-based touch pad on an alarmed cardboard box detects the change in capacitance associated with the touch of a finger to one of its buttons. The keypad requires the appropriate sequence of touches to disarm the system. Image credit: Mazzeo, et al. The touch pads are made of metallized paper, which is paper coated in aluminum and transparent polymer. The paper can function as a capacitor, and a laser can be used to cut several individual capacitors in the paper, each corresponding to a key on the touch pad. When a person touches a key, the key’s capacitance is increased. Once the keys are linked to external circuitry and a power source, the system can detect when a key is touched by detecting the increased capacitance. According to lead researcher Aaron Mazzeo of Harvard University, the next steps will be finding a power source and electronics that are cheap, flexible, and disposable. Among the applications, inexpensive touch pads could be used for security purposes. The researchers have already developed a box with an alarm and keypad that requires a code to allow authorized access. Disposable touch pads could also be useful in sterile or contaminated medical environments. Friday, May 11. 2012The Cloud Storage Showdown – Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive & MoreVia makeuseof ----- The cloud storage scene has heated up recently, with a long-awaited entry by Google and a revamped SkyDrive from Microsoft. Dropbox has gone unchallenged by the major players for a long time, but that’s changed – both Google and Microsoft are now challenging Dropbox on its own turf, and all three services have their own compelling features. One thing’s for sure – Dropbox is no longer the one-size-fits-all solution. These three aren’t the only cloud storage services – the cloud storage arena is full of services with different features and priorities, including privacy-protecting encryption and the ability to synchronize any folder on your system. DropboxDropbox introduced cloud storage to the masses, with its simple approach to cloud storage and synchronization – a single magic folder that follows you everywhere. Dropbox deserves credit for being a pioneer in this space and the new Google Drive and SkyDrive both build on the foundation that Dropbox laid. Dropbox doesn’t have strong integration with any ecosystems – which can be a good thing, as it is an ecosystem-agnostic approach that isn’t tied to Google, Microsoft, Apple, or any other company’s platform.
Dropbox today is a compelling and mature offering supporting a wide variety of platforms. Dropbox offers less free storage than the other services (unless you get involved in their referral scheme) and its prices are significantly higher than those of competing services – for example, an extra 100GB is four times more expensive with Dropbox compared to Google Drive.
Google DriveGoogle Drive is the evolution of Google Docs, which already allowed you to upload any file – Google Drive bumps the storage space up from 1 GB to 5 GB, offers desktop sync clients, and provides a new web interface and APIs for web app developers. Google Drive is a serious entry from Google, not just an afterthought like the upload-any-file option was in Google Docs.
Its integration with third-party web apps – you can install apps and associate them with file types in Google Drive – shows Google’s vision of Google Drive being a web-based hard drive that eventually replaces the need for desktop sync clients entirely.
You can actually purchase up to 16 TB of storage space with Google Drive – for $800/month! SkyDriveMicrosoft released a revamped SkyDrive the day before Google Drive launched, but Google Drive stole its thunder. Nevertheless, SkyDrive is now a compelling product, particularly for people into Microsoft’s ecosystem of Office web apps, Windows Phone, and Windows 8, where it’s built into Metro by default. Like Google with Google Drive, Microsoft’s new SkyDrive product imitates the magic folder pioneered by Dropbox.
Microsoft offers the most free storage space at 7 GB – although this is down from the original 25 GB. Microsoft also offers good prices for additional storage.
Other ServicesSugarSync is a popular alternative to Dropbox. It offers a free 5 GB of storage and it lets you choose the folders you want to synchronize – a feature missing in the above services, although you can use some tricks to synchronize other folders. SugarSync also has clients for mobile platforms that don’t get a lot of love, including Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry (Dropbox also has a Blackberry client).
Amazon also offers their own cloud storage service, known as Amazon Cloud Drive. There’s one big problem, though – there’s no official desktop sync client. Expect Amazon to launch their own desktop sync program if they’re serious about competing in this space. If you really want to use Amazon Cloud Drive, you can use a third-party application to access it from your desktop.
Box is popular, but its 25 MB file size limit is extremely low. It also offers no desktop sync client (except for businesses). While Box may be a good fit for the enterprise, it can’t stand toe-to-toe with the other services here for consumer cloud storage and syncing. If you’re worried about the privacy of your data, you can use an encrypted service, such as SpiderOak or Wuala, instead. Or, if you prefer one of these services, use an app like BoxCryptor to encrypt files and store them on any cloud storage service.
Thursday, May 10. 2012Wolfenstein on the WebVia Christian Babski -----
Remember your first time being sick in front of a screen! Artifical leaves could charge your phoneVia Slash Gear -----
Green plants use photosynthesis to convert water and sunlight into energy used to help the plant grow. Scientists have created the first practical artificial leaf that mimics the natural process and holds promise for sustainable green energy. The key to this practical artificial leaf is that unlike earlier devices it doesn’t use expensive components in its construction.
The new artificial leaf is made from inexpensive materials and uses low-cost engineering and manufacturing processes making it much more practical. The artificial leaf has an component to collect sunlight sandwich between two films that generate oxygen and hydrogen gas. When the artificial leaf is placed into a jar of water and placed in sunlight, it bubbles, releasing hydrogen that can be used by fuel cells to make electricity. Previous designs needed expensive materials like platinum along with expensive manufacturing processes. The new artificial leaf replaces the costly platinum with a less expensive nickel-molybdenum-zinc compound. The opposite side of the leaf has a cobalt film that generates oxygen gas. The hope is that this sort of device can be used to generate electricity for remote places that are off the electrical grid. The tech could also be used to power all sorts of devices including phones and more.
Wednesday, May 09. 2012Mona Lisa’s True Identity?Via Christian Babski ----- Some researchers are about to try to run facial recognition algorythm on Mona Lisa painting in order to try to know who is she... but do we really want to know?
Posted by Christian Babski
in Innovation&Society
at
15:21
Defined tags for this entry: facial recognition, innovation&society
Monday, May 07. 2012Sourcemap: visualizing supply-chains for the goods in our livesVia BoingBoing -----
On the other hand, I'm loving this reconstruction of Western Electric's 1927 telephone manufacturing supply chain by Matthew Hockenberry, who added this information: "This is a reconstruction of the supply chain for the Western Electric produced 'candlestick' style telephones of the late 1920s. Information is largely drawn from archival Western Electric/AT&T materials, as well as those of supplier companies. Some imagery is currently included for cotton and copper sources. This is a rough draft - many details are missing or incomplete."
Posted by Christian Babski
in Innovation&Society
at
10:51
Defined tags for this entry: innovation&society, manufacturer
Friday, May 04. 2012China plans national, unified CPU architectureVia Extreme Tech -----
According to reports from various industry sources, the Chinese government has begun the process of picking a national computer chip instruction set architecture (ISA). This ISA would have to be used for any projects backed with government money — which, in a communist country such as China, is a fairly long list of public and private enterprises and institutions, including China Mobile, the largest wireless carrier in the world. The primary reason for this move is to lessen China’s reliance on western intellectual property. There are at least five existing ISAs on the table for consideration — MIPS, Alpha, ARM, Power, and the homegrown UPU — but the Chinese leadership has also mooted the idea of defining an entirely new architecture. The first meeting to decide on a nationwide ISA, attended by government officials and representatives from academic groups and companies such as Huawei and ZTE, was held in March. According to MIPS vice president Robert Bismuth, a final decision will be made in “a matter of months.” China has a long history with MIPS and Alpha. Loongson processors, which power millions of Chinese school computers, use MIPS — and the ShenWei processors (pictured right) found in China’s first homegrown supercomputer, the Sunway Bluelight MPP, are based on the Alpha ISA. MIPS Technologies (the company) hasn’t been doing very well recently, and it’s rumored that the Sunnyvale-based company could be up for sale — a purchase I’m sure the Chinese government could afford. According to EE Times, there are some 34 ARM licensees in China, but at $5 million for a single Cortex-A9 core license, it’s unlikely that ARM will be China’s choice. The Power ISA is cheaper, but lacks the software ecosystems that ARM and MIPS enjoy. ShenWei/Alpha is also a possibility, but again it cannot compete with MIPS’ installed base. The other option, of course, is developing a brand new ISA — a daunting task, considering you have to create an entire software (compiler, developer, apps) and hardware (CPU, chipset, motherboard) ecosystem from scratch. But, there are benefits to building your own CPU architecture. China, for example, could design an ISA (or microarchicture) with silicon-level monitoring and censorship — and, of course, a ubiquitous, always-open backdoor that can be used by Chinese intelligence agencies. The Great Firewall of China is fairly easy to circumvent — but what if China built a DNS and IP address blacklist into the hardware itself? Taking a leaf out of South Korea’s hardcore gaming scene, what if the Chinese government decided to implement a hardware-level 10pm curfew for video games? Or some code that automatically turns negative mentions of Hu Jintao (the Chinese president) into positives, and inserts a few honorifics at the same time. Or a latent botnet of hundreds of millions of computers that can be activated upon the commencement of World War III. Or, or, or…
Wednesday, May 02. 2012The state of responsive advertising: the publishers' perspectiveVia Christian Babski -----
The Internet is about (if it is not already a terminated task!) to become a pretty classical media. Country's boundaries were raised up on the net, making unavailable some contents depending on the world region you are browsing from (pretty weird, middle-age based concept of what the Internet must be)... We are now heavily targeted by many advertisements all around contents we are trying to access from the Web, pop-up blockers are now totally useless as advertisements took fairly advantage of HTML evolution. It is more and more difficult to ignore these advertisements, and even by closing them, one already produces/gives an information to Big Brother. There is less and less ways to escape, and by reading the following article, it looks like we are not supposed to escape... by the way. Responsive Advertising article
The opportunity to set up an alternative network (satellite based?) may be the only way to get a new [commercially virgin] web... Let's call it The Veb... underlying the need of a step back from where we are nowadays.
Tuesday, May 01. 2012HomeOS: Enabling smarter homes for everyoneVia Christian Babski -----
It looks like that Microsoft is about to propose the access to an operating system design to control your... home. The prototype seems to be accessible freely for non-commercial use. Here is the abstract and a direct link to the research program's web page: It is no secret that homes are ever-increasing hotbeds of new technology such as set-top boxes, game consoles, wireless routers, home automation devices, tablets, smart phones, and security cameras. This innovation is breeding heterogeneity and complexity that frustrates even technically-savvy users’ attempts to improve day-to-day life by implementing functionality that uses these devices in combination. For instance, it is impossible for most users to view video captured by their security camera on their smartphone when they are not at home. Heterogeneity across devices and across homes also makes it difficult to develop applications that solve these problems in a way that work across a range of homes. To simplify the management of technology and to simplify the development of applications in the home, we are developing an "operating system" for the home. HomeOS provides a centralized, holistic control of devices in the home. It provides to users intuitive controls to manage their devices. It provided to developers high-level abstractions to orchestrate the devices in the home. HomeOS is coupled with a HomeStore through which users can easily add obtain applications that are compatible with devices in their homes and obtain any additional devices that are needed to enable desired applications.
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