For Virtualization,Cloud Computing,Mobile Knowledge share, If you want? Go get it!! http://www.upaper.net/flychoi
2010년 5월 20일 목요일
The iPhone Killer is Here!
One man has achieved what the likes of RIM, Nokia and Palm have failed to do: create a legitimate iPhone killer. We’re sure he would be the first to admit it’s a little low on features and the ergonomics are based on a design that has been around for a quite a while, but there is little doubt it will do what its name suggests!
Weighing in a 1.6kgs and hewn from wood and steel, this is, of course, designer Ronen Kadushin having a little joke. It’s a clever one though, as it forms part of The Open Design, a series of pieces recently unveiled that tie-in with various cultural references. He has even made his designs ‘open source’, in that anyone can download the plans and make an exact replica for themselves!
Have a browse through Ronen’s website and the rest of the Open Design collection here, or watch the video below where he chats about his ideas and the open source concept in relation to art. If you want to skip directly to the iPhone Killer announcement, it’s about 3 and a half minutes in.
http://www.iphonefreak.com/2010/05/the-iphone-killer-is-here.html
One Month Later: The iPad
0
It’s been a little over a month since I’ve introduced the iPad to my digital workflow. In a post last year, I wrote, “I’m not saying I don’t think there is a market for a device that’s larger than an iPhone but smaller than a MacBook …” and lo and behold, that is how Apple billed it.
I did have an iPad-sized hole in my life. For me, a MacBook is weighty overkill. I have two jobs: the corporate-level one that pays the bills and my writing gig where I blog, freelance, and work on personal projects. The day job comes with its own Windows laptop that I lug around. I try to maintain a separation between the corporate job and personal work, so there’s very little in the way of personal data on the work machine. My commute is almost four hours round-trip. Most of it’s on a train, but if I wanted to write, I’d need the MacBook with me.
For personal work, my needs are modest. I need to write, research ideas, and read a book or watch a video. Simply put, I just need a tool to let me put words down. I don’t care about how they look when I’m composing on the iPad; just want to get them out of my head and onto what passes for paper for these days.
Productivity
A month in, I find Pages whelming. I felt Pages was about one patch from elevating itself from “merely OK” to “good,” and the 1.1 patch did that with support for landscape toolbars. I find myself to be fairly proficient with the virtual keyboard. While I am clearly faster and more accurate with an external keyboard, the iPad doesn’t seem to handle swapping between virtual and physical keyboards well, so I tend to stay with the iPad’s.
What I wasn’t expecting is, even at home, I prefer to write on the iPad. I think it comes down to a fantastic screen and, oddly, the single-tasking nature of the device. Pages gives me enough of a distraction-free environment that I can focus on writing.
For an in-depth look at Pages for Mac, view Pages 101 (subscription required).
I’m going to be giving a talk in a month or so, and as much as I try and tell myself I can do it on the iPad, the fact is, I can’t. While I tend to use my own fonts for my talks, I can design an effective presentation for the iPad using stock fonts, but I don’t want to be chained to the podium with no remote control.
The presentation issue pales to getting files to and from the iPad. Original rumors hinted of some sort of a shared-pool for files, but that never came true. Instead, each app still has files isolated to its own sandbox. You can use iTunes to transfer files into the sandboxes, but it’s a pain. Since there’s no true syncing, I can’t really work on a file on a desktop and get it back to the iPad without feeling like I’m playing a shell game. My ideal solution would be to have a Documents version of Photos. Apps could read and write to that sandbox to their heart’s content and there would be OS-level integration of MobileMe iDisk. These issues, while frustrating, don’t make me regret my decision to buy the iPad at all. I’m getting more done with the device, so that’s a win
Recreation
Like most writers, I read. A lot. I probably read about 30-40 books a year, not counting assigned reading for class and the like. I also am somewhat of a magazine junky. The iPad is indispensable for consuming this type of media.
Amazon’s Kindle app and Apple’s iBooks are both fine readers. Amazon’s selection is better, but I like the flexibility in iBooks’s presentation; the ability to change the order of my library is huge. However, when I’m researching, Amazon’s note tool wins out. One small thing iBooks does is tell me how many pages are left in a chapter. That’s great for reading in bed and deciding if I want to commit to the next chapter.
I find the Zinio app fine for reading magazines. Recent updates have significantly improved page load times. As with the Amazon app, my chief complaint is not being able to arrange the library the way I want it. Deleting magazines seems undoable, also. I’d love an archive feature like the Kindle’s. I have a few subscriptions that thoughtfully provide DRM-free PDFs and GoodReader is my choice for reading them.
3G vs Wi-Fi
This was one of the hardest decisions I made regarding the iPad. In the end, I chose the Wi-Fi because it was out sooner. A close family member was having some major surgery and hospital stay before the 3G came out. I’d had some luck using the iPhone during a previous hospital visitation, but knew the iPad would be better. I also knew I’d be weak and keep the $30 data plan going and didn’t want the expense. While there have been times I wished the iPad had always-on Internet, I don’t regret my decision.
Final Thoughts
A month later, like my iPhone, the iPad is a device I rarely leave the house without. Its excellent battery life means I don’t need to worry about charging out. A heavy night of writing, surfing and game playing barely takes 30 percent of the battery. I like that I can get a creative idea and be writing it in less than 30 seconds. I do see an anti-glare film in my immediate future. It’s almost unusable outside, and a frequent place I use it has a fluorescent light directly overhead.
How about you? One month later, what are your thoughts?
http://theappleblog.com/2010/05/19/one-month-later-the-ipad/
New iPod Touch With Camera Latest of Apple Leaks
Today, an iPod touch is the leaked product in question. And the key feature of said iPod touch is the 2.0 megapixel camera featured prominently in the middle of the back of the unit, like a glaring cyclops eye. It’s never been a secret that the iPod touch was likely going to get a camera. The question was only when and in what form.
If the demo unit (which was brought to us by the same Vietnamese site that leaked the most recent iPhone 4 prototype) is any indication, then we’ll be seeing a new iPod touch that looks very similar to existing models, with the simple addition of a relatively underpowered mobile camera. 2 megapixels? What is this, the Nintendo DSi? I expected a lot more from Apple.
Of course, it’s always still possible that the model found is actually an older prototype (maybe from when the iPod touch should’ve received its camera upgrade), but the device’s capacity is 64GB, so it can’t be that old, and I’m willing to bet Apple isn’t above kneecapping a camera-capable touch. Look at its track record.
It’s become fairly evident that the iPhone 3G was probably knowingly underpowered for iPhone OS 4.0, and sold at length during a period in which Apple must’ve known it wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the software it was developing. Compare that to Mac sales. Imagine, for instance, Apple was still selling new PowerPC machines last year while developing Snow Leopard.
Personally, I hope Apple skips an actual production release of this iPod touch. A single, rear-facing 2 megapixel camera (which likely won’t shoot great quality video, if at all) has no added selling power in my opinion. It certainly wouldn’t be enough incentive for me to upgrade from my 1st-gen iPod touch. For a camera to be useful on Apple’s marquee media player, I’d need at least a 5 megapixel still camera that also shoots 720p video.
I’m not sure what’s more disappointing at this point: that Apple had an iPod touch with camera ready to go and shelved it, or that it’s just developed the thing and included a laughably low-powered lens in the new hardware. The 4th-gen iPhone better make up for this mess, that’s all I’m saying.
http://theappleblog.com/2010/05/19/new-ipod-touch-with-camera-latest-of-apple-leaks/
The original Prince of Persia coming to iPhone
Every so often, some new iPhone app comes along that makes me go, “Dang, I really wish I had one o’ dem iPhone thingers.” Well, as you are probably expecting, right now is one of those moments.
I just read on Mashable that the original Prince of Persia is coming to the iPhone/iPod Touch as Prince of Persia Retro.
I was but a young-un when the game came out, but it was my first real experience with video games, and certainly the most memorable. Maybe that and Stunts.
My point is that it was awesome. Great graphics (you know, for the time), fluid animation, swords, puzzles, a princess… it was like man-Mario.
And now all you lucky iPhone owners get to take one of the greatest 8-bit adventures ever told around with you in your pocket. And you don’t even have to worry about fiddling with extended memory or floppy disks. You darn kids have got it so easy.
The game should come out some time before June 2010. Sadly, the price is not yet announced.
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/05/19/the-original-prince-of-persia-coming-to-iphone/
iPhone And Android Now Make Up 25 Percent of Smartphone Sales
Google-powered Android phones and iPhones are both gobbling up market share. The combined worldwide market share of both operating systems reached 25 percent in the first quarter, up from 12 percent the year before, according to Gartner. The iPhone still has a bigger share, at 15.4 percent (up 5 points), but Android is catching up fast with 9.6 percent (up 8 points). All other smartphones lost relative share during the quarter, even RIM Blackberries, although they still grew in absolute numbers (see table below)
Android is now the fourth largest smartphone operating system, displacing Windows Mobile, which is now No. 5. The iPhone OS is No. 3, RIM is No. 2, and Symbian is still No. 1 on a worldwide basis. If you look at all mobile phone sales, RIM is No. 4 with 3.4 percent share, and the iPhone is No. 7 with 2.7 percent share.
While Android is rising faster than the iPhone in relative share, it is still trailing in absolute numbers. Gartner estimates consumers bought about 8.4 million iPhones in the first quarter, compared to 5.2 million Android phones. Apple sold 4.9 million more iPhones in the first quarter than the year before, while Android sales were up by 4.6 million units.
Can Android sales catch up to the iPhone?
Table 2
Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 1Q10 (Thousands of Units)
| Company | 1Q10
Units |
1Q10 Market Share (%) | 1Q09
Units |
1Q09 Market Share (%) |
| Symbian | 24,069.8 | 44.3 | 17,825.3 | 48.8 |
| Research In Motion | 10,552.6 | 19.4 | 7,533.6 | 20.6 |
| iPhone OS | 8,359.7 | 15.4 | 3,848.1 | 10.5 |
| Android | 5,214.7 | 9.6 | 575.3 | 1.6 |
| Microsoft Windows Mobile | 3,706.0 | 6.8 | 3,738.7 | 10.2 |
| Linux | 1,993.9 | 3.7 | 2,540.5 | 7.0 |
| Other OSs | 404.8 | 0.7 | 445.9 | 1.2 |
| Total | 54,301.4 | 100.0 | 36,507.4 | 100.0 |
Source: Gartner (May 2010)
HTC Diamond 2 clone dual boots Android and Windows Mobile 6.5
See that? That’s Android 1.6 (or “Andriod”, it seems) and Windows Mobile 6.5, on the same HTC Diamond 2(ish phone). Sure, it’s a knock-off made in China — and sure, it may very well explode into a fiery ball of death mere inches from your face. But if you’re worried about that, than you’re just a.. well, actually, you’re a perfectly reasonable person.
Beyond the hidden fiery-ball-of-death feature, this thing’s actually got some pretty decent specs for a Chinese clone. Tucked behind that 3.2″ display is a 624Mhz processor, 5 megapixel autofocus camera, WiFi, 1650mAh battery, 3.2″ display, 256MB RAM, and a 512MB ROM.
This is where we’d normally link to a product page — but to be honest, I’ve got no idea where the hell to buy one of these online, and it’s sort of hard to link to a Chinese street market.
[Via ClonedInChina]
PayPal launches In-App Payment library for Android
For developers, being able to make a bit of cash from your app after the user has downloaded it is wondrous — especially if the initial app download was free. Nothing like being able to, you know, pay rent, or eat.
While the iPhone has supported the idea of In-App purchase for a bit over a year now, Android has yet to adopt it.
A few third-parties have manually integrated their own payment system into their apps — but everyone reinventing the wheel for their own use is a bad idea. Not only is it a ton of leg work, but it puts the responsibility of handling the customer’s sensitive financial data in the laps of developers.
Enter Paypal.
Today, Paypal is announcing Mobile Payments Library for Android — which is exactly what it sounds like: a library for Android developers to use to integrate Paypal payments into their app. Customers get to make transactions without ever leaving the app, while developers get to accept payments without having to handle credit card info. And of course, Paypal gets their customary cut. Everyone wins.
Is it the best possible solution? Not really; it’s another third-party brought into the mix, requiring customers to have yet another account. With that said, it’s about as good as it gets until Google gets around to bringing proper In-App purchase support to the platform
You can find more information about the new library at Paypal’s freakishly-short-URL’d X.com
MyCityWay: Portals Are Back, This Time For Mobile
Last week in New York, I met up with two of the founders of MyCityWay. It's a portal for location-based mobile applications for city navigation, available on iPhone, iPod, iPad and Android. Around 50 different services are currently available in the MyCityWay app.
Despite the 90's style user interface, in some ways MyCityWay points to the future of mobile apps - because it offers up contextual and useful information to your mobile device, based on your location. The company's latest release was launched last Friday and it's focused on discoverability. I met with two MyCityWay co-founders, Puneet Mehta and Sonpreet Bhatia, to find out more (the third co-founder, Archana Patchirajan, wasn't present).
MyCityWay started out as a New York City iPhone app, but it has plans to be available in 40 cities on iPhone as well as other smart phone platforms. In effect, MyCityWay is a modern-day guidebook for cities. The current apps features 50 "hyper-local apps" and they're presented in a portal-like interface that reminds me of what Yahoo or Excite used to offer on the Web in the 90s. The app targets both city locals and tourists.
I first became aware of MyCityWay when it was pointed out to me by Mobile futurist Adam Greenfield, when I interviewed him earlier this year. Despite it's retroactive portal interface, there is something very compelling about this app. As it states on the product's About page, MyCityWay offers information about upcoming events, city landmarks, free things to do in a city, tickets to shows, restaurant inspection results, shopping, live traffic cameras, dining reviews, and much more. In short, the app is a one-stop shop for city data on your mobile phone. It's the Web in your pocket in the real world.
Version 2 of MyCityWay was released last Friday and it features the ability to purchase event tickets, reserve restaurants using OpenView, and book tours.
Co-founder Puneet Mehta told me that MyCityWay receives spikes of activity on Fridays - from restaurants, bars and clubs. Saturdays are also busy for the same reason. Another spike of activity is experienced during lunchtimes, for example from users looking for street food vendors near their location.
The founders describe MyCityWay as a "discoverability portal." Indeed, one of the things I like about this app is the amount of data it has - and not just the raw data that attracts users to the application in the first place, but data about how people actually use the app.
MyCityWay is moving to give some of this data back to businesses. For example, if it gets a lot of user requests for an Indian restaurant in a given location, it can advise potential businesses that an Indian restaurant might prove popular in that location. MyCityWay can do this because it is collecting usage data every minute of the day, about what people want to do in cities and where.
According to the founders, the first version of MyCityWay was about search and the current second version is about discoverability. The next iteration, version 3, will be focused on providing "an experience." Version 3 will take advantage of the next generation of the iPhone, 4G, which will feature apps running in background. When that functionality is available, MyCityWay will be able to push information to users.
At that point, MyCityWay will have a number of different drivers: the user's location, their profile, and "situational awareness."
A plan for the near future is to offer a platform for content curators. To that end, MyCityWay is building something it calls City Hacks. It will feature 100 hacks a city, along with a leaderboard. MyCityWay hopes that it will be able to sell some of this data, or enable the curators themselves to sell access to it.
Another upcoming feature is personalization - based on whether you're a tourist or local, the app will serve up relevant information about a city. In other words, it will marry location with context.
As of now, MyCityWay is available in 7 cities - London was added at the end of last week. Others are NYC, San Francisco, Las Vegas, LA, Washington DC and Boston. The next release will add 3 more: Chicago, Orlando and Portland. Toronto is also coming soon. The goal is to reach 40 cities within the next 6 months.
Currently the NYC version is available on iPhone, iPod, iPad and Android. A Blackberry version is coming soon. The product also integrates with popular social networks Facebook and Twitter, and emerging ones like Foursquare.
Perhaps in 5 years we will look back on MyCityWay as akin to Excite in the 90s - a portal that was eventually usurped by more focused services like Google. But for now, MyCityWay is showing the way for practical location-based services on mobile devices.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mycityway_portal_for_mobile.php
Google Wave Now Open For All
Google just announced the general launch of Google Wave at its annual developer conference in San Francisco. Until today, Wave was an invite-only service, but starting now, anybody with a Google account will be able to log into Wave and use it without any restrictions. Google will also enable Wave for Google Apps users today. In order to educate these new users, the Google Wave team has also created a number of new videos and case studies that highlight how organizations can use Wave to collaborate more effectively.
Collaboration: The Sweet Spot for Wave
When we talked to the Wave team yesterday, the project's co-founder Lars Rasmussen noted that since the launch of the invite-only beta, group collaboration in businesses, education, news organizations and at conferences has emerged as the sweet spot for Wave. That will be the use-case that the Wave team plans to highlight during the general launch and in the next few weeks.
Why did Google decide to open up Wave now? According to the Wave team, the service is now stable and fast enough for a mainstream audience (crashes were a very common sight in the early days). During the invite-only testing period, the team added numerous new features that its early users requested. These include email notifications of updated waves and access controls for waves, as well as making it easier for users to reply and edit waves and find unread material in a wave. The team also introduced templates that make getting started easier for new users.
Updates for Developers
Besides opening up sign-ups for Wave, the team announced a number of developer features at I/O today. The next version of the Robots API, for example, will not only untie Wave robots from Google's App Engine, but also allow developers to create "active" robots that can generate waves and update them. Google is launching improvements to the Embed API, including the ability to give readers anonymous access to waves.
Maybe the most exciting update is that Google is releasing a new Data API that will allow developers to create lightweight Wave clients. For now, as Rasmussen noted in our interview, developers won't be able to create full-fledged Wave clients yet, but the team has started to define a client and server protocol that will soon make it a possibility.
In order to help developers create their own applications on top of the Wave APIs and bootstrap the Wave developer community, the team is open-sourcing the real-time Wave rich text editor.
The Wave team has also made progress in getting companies like Novell and projects like PyGoWave, Ruby on Sails and QWave to support the wave federation protocol. The latest company to sign on to this project is SAP, which will use Wave in its StreamWork product.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_wave_now_open_for_all.php
Business ByDesign: SAP Delivers a Quality SaaS Service
SAP's Business ByDesign (BYD) will be released at the end of July, marking the company's next steps into the world of subscription services for enterprise customers.
It certainly is a small step into the SaaS world for SAP. And it has been a long time in coming for the company.
But it's a start even though you hear many analysts scoff at the suggestion that SAP is showing any cohesive approach around cloud computing and its product offerings.
It's symbolic of a general sentiment we encountered at SAP Sapphire Now. You sense that the company needs to find its bearings and develop a cohesiveness around its product strategy.
Though we know that BYD has its skeptics, we found the presentation of the user interface to be on par with major SaaS services. It also has the underlying infrastructure to make it a viable service for companies to extend the service in the manner they wish.
SAP's Peter Lorenz showed us the service at Sapphire Now and how it performs on the iPad.
BYD is elegant on the iPad. It's a corporate directive to instill beauty into sophisticated, real-time SAP products. BYD uses Silverlight fro its front end display. It is decoupled from the back end system. It means that BYD can have one model rendered to different platforms. It's pretty cool. BYD connects to Google's OpenSocial. It uses API's that makes BYD a framework that customers can build upon. In that sense, the BYD platform provide the capability to collaborate and perform transactional functions. Data for a customer can be mixed and edited between parties and then generated into a proposal. That kind of combined capability could be powerful for small and medium sized businesses. Most smaller companies would prefer not to have an IT department. With BYD they can do the work to keep the company running without the concern about maintaining the technology on its own hardware. That's a compelling opportunity for the small and medium sized business. A service like BYD gives these smaller companies real-time capabilities, mobility and the option of paying on a subscription basis, starting at $149 per month, per user. That's the promise of BYD. Now the only question is how fast the service will be adopted and how this model is realized across the wide breadth of SAP technologies. [Disclosure: SAP paid for a plane ticket and hotel room for Alex Williams to attend the the SAP Sapphire Now conference in Orlando.] http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/05/business-bydesign-looks-good-f.phpAPI's and OpenSocial
Chrome Coming to webOS?
We're getting the first glimpses of today Google's Google I/O developer conference and already some exciting news is leaking from within the walls of the conference center. According to Fortune's Seth Weintraub, we should expect to see Chrome for Palm webOS in the very near future.
Weintraub gave everyone a quick glimpse of the showroom floor this morning on YouTube and at the end of the video, he notes that Palm appears to be there at the Google Chrome booth.
Chrome is currently only available for the PC, Mac and Linux and if we're expecting it to come out for webOS and finally hit the mobile scene, then we can only imagine we'd be seeing a version released for Android, the operating system for Google's own Nexus One as well. The iPhone and iPad version, however, we don't think we'll hold our breath waiting for.
In the world of desktop browsers, Chrome has been steadily gaining on competitors Internet Explorer and Firefox in recent months. As it has gained more and more features and increased stability, it's become a viable alternative to the old stand-bys. An introduction to the mobile realm could be an interesting development for the browser that's seen as a lightweight and speedy alternative to it's bulkier counterparts.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/chrome_coming_to_webos.php
Whoa...Chrome Makes an App Store for the Web
http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/05/chrome-app-store.php
At the Google I/O developer conference today the company is unveiling a number of remarkable new technologies, but one of the most notable is a paradigm shift more than it is tech. Chrome, Google's Web browser, is now adding an application store to help with discovery and sales of Web applications.
That's amazing. Apple's App Store, the seductive jungle of little bundles of functionality that changed the mobile market, has also changed the open Web. As Google said at the event, it can be hard to find good Web applications. Now the Chrome App Store will make that easier, including posting user reviews of apps. It will also allow developers to sell full-screen, browser-based Web apps. It's one thing to experiment with charging for Web content like newspapers are - but charging for casual consumer-level tech functionality on the Web? That's crazy.
It's so crazy that it just might work. Watch for the App Store inside the "new tab" column in the Chrome browser soon. This is a development that will take some time to wrap our heads around. If the last generation of the Web was largely about content like text, full-text a la Google may have been more appropriate for that time than it is for a future of Web applications and functionality. The App Store model may truly be the best way to experience that future. Amazing.
There's a lot to think about here. As HP/Palm's Dion Almaer just tweeted, "Chrome Web Store is interesting. What we need is the Open Web Store though. Also, would love to see details on how you put apps in."
Google says that the App Store will appear in the developers' channel of Chrome soon, and all apps will be built on standard technologies to ensure they can run in any browser.
Below, a blurry screenshot of a user's purchased apps from the live streaming I/O video.
Storm of Innovation: Google Partners with VMware for Apps, Clouds, and Widgets
Today at Google's annual conference, I/O, the company announced a partnership with VMware. This news immediately turned our minds to the possibilities for enterprise app developers.
What we see is that like the parent companies, the partnership has a bit of genius embedded in the way it offers more tools and choice to developers for scaling, experience, and speed to market.
Integration
One of the things offered in this partnership is the ability to use Google Apps Cloud as a target for the cloud.
In many ways, mobile is the killer app for apps in the cloud. It is where the most notible change is happening - for the better - in opening up services to more form factors.
Spring is a lead Java development pattern that is used by a large number of enterprise Java developers. With this partnership, Google is bringing its widget library to SpringSource and developers.
One of the innovations in the Spring community is SpringRoo, a tool that helps quickly ramp up a data-driven environment. Shown here is VMware and Google's view of the power of using Spring along with Google's presentation widgets to get apps started in hours, delivered in days, and deployed in weeks.
What is new in Google Apps for Business: Buy, Buy, Build
The company is offering the opportunity for application developers to plug into the Google Apps Engine. This adds an ability to include local applications in the shared services in the Google Cloud, and for administers to provision both enterprise applications as well as Google and Google Marketplace to users.
New features for the Google Apps for Business include features for managing applications.
Here, Google shares the landscape of the App Engine and the core premise of having scaling infrastructure on demand.
Google shared its pricing model for the preview. The cap on application provisioning costs is a particularly innovative approach to getting attention in the enterprise.
The Google App Engine for Business roadmap is here.
What do you think: Is Google helping make your work better?
Disclosure: VMWare is a sponsor of the ReadWriteCloud channel.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/05/google-and-vmware-partner.php
Google Provides Free Location Awareness to Any Application With New Latitude API
Amidst the flurry of activity streaming from today's Google I/O event, the mobile team at Google has announced the launch of a free Application Programming Interface (API) for its Latitude location service. The API will allow developers to build location-aware apps that can take advantage of Latitude's "always on" location information, opening the door for unique implementations beyond the location-based check-in battle.
The possibilities for this API should be exciting to mobile developers. As Google points out, the API could be used to develop apps that control your house's thermostat when you leave or return home, alert you when bad traffic is ahead of you during your commute or even warn you when your credit card is used far from your actual location.
After the privacy concerns raised over the hasty rollout of Buzz, Google is being very careful to integrate privacy controls into the Latitude API. Users will have to grant access for the applications they chose to use and will be able to control whether the apps can see their best available location or a city level location.
With its Latitude API, Google is in a way providing a free and open alternative to SimpleGeo, which provides a similar back-end location infrastructure but charges applications with over 1 million users. The ability for app developers to easily leverage Google's network of Latitude users for free could lead to the creation of some truly unique location-aware applications.
The Internet's Running Out of Room
Today's Internet was built largely on the IPv4 or Internet Protocol version four, first introduced in 1980. Now, three decades on and with mobile Internet tracing a shining arc across the virtual firmament, the Internet is running out of available IP addresses. So maintain the 130 delegates to the IPv6 Summit in Ireland, meeting today at Dublin Castle.
"Despite having nearly four and a half billion addresses, predications estimate that IPv4 will reach maximum capacity by September 2011," according to Irish IPv6 Task Force chair, Mícheál Ó Foghlú.
They assert three critical factors driving current demand for Internet addresses.
- Users in developed nations employ multiple devices to access the Internet including mobile phones, laptops, desktops and servers, all of which require individual addresses; the trend is towards even more Internet-enabled devices such as TVs, game consoles and media players
- Growing numbers of new users from developing nations such as China, India, and Brazil, amplified by the emphasis on mobile Internet access in many countries without good telecommunications infrastructure
- The Internet of Things is increasing the pressure to provide connectivity, including smart grids for electricity, water and other utility services
The group promotes a newer technology, IPv6, which they say would facilitate over four billion addresses for every person on the planet. This is because unlike the current protocol, which uses 32-bit addresses, IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses.
One of the primary concerns when it comes to dwindling availability of IP addresses under the current protocol is the effect on the economy.
"Without IPv6," says the group, "new start-up businesses wishing to offer services on the Internet will find it very difficult or prohibitively expensive to secure globally routable addresses for new services, such as eCommerce websites. Addresses may even become a black market commodity, which could be a massive hurdle for businesses and would significantly slow Internet growth."
Some governmental and commercial outfits, in Europe and especially Asia, have begun to run the new protocol. It is far from being universally embraced, however. To do so requires running the two systems in tandem for a while on a large scale. That, in turn, introduces the complicating issue of cost in a time when neither public nor private groups find themselves with a lot of liquidity. From changing firewalls to cable modems, this is not a light undertaking.
What do you think? Is this an urgent issue or an eventual one? Or is it over-hyped altogether? If it is a necessary change, what is the best way to switch over?
Dublin Castle photo by GLIC
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_internets_running_out_of_room.php
NCWIT, Compugirls: Building a Diverse Tech Future
The NCWIT Summit on Women and IT is being held in Portland, Oregon this week and is providing an opportunity for its members to share resources and strategize on how to inspire girls to choose computing careers and support women to stay in those careers. NCWIT (National Center for Women in Information Technology) is a coalition of over 200 corporations, academic institutions, non profits, and governmental agencies working to address some of these challenges. NCWIT supports efforts within the workforce, in universities, and in K-12 education in order to increase women's participation in IT - in the classroom, in startups, and in corporations.
The Facts: Women in the Tech Industry
The technology industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the U.S. The U.S. Labor Department estimates that technology job opportunities are predicted to grow by about 22% over the next decade, a faster rate than all other jobs in the professional sector.
Recent studies have shown that despite the increase in the number of computing jobs, interest in computer science majors has steadily declined over the past few years. According to NCWIT, this decline is even more significant among women. In 2008, for example, women earned 57% of all bachelor's degrees, yet they only earned 18% of computer and IT bachelor's degrees - down from 37% in 1985. And in 2008, women held 57% of all professional occupations in the U.S. workforce but only 25% of all professional IT-related jobs - down from 36% in 1991.
Not only does the industry fail to attract new talent, it also loses talent already interested and involved in technology. For example, 56% of technical women leave at the mid-point of their careers, more than double the attrition rate of men. Some of these women start their own tech companies, but many leave the industry altogether.
The Future: Compugirls and Social Justice Technology
Although there are certainly steps that the tech industry can take to attract and retain women, it's important to promote computer careers to young girls long before they are set to choose college majors or careers.
According to Kimberly Scott, associate professor at Arizona State University, by the eighth grade girls have fewer positive perceptions of computers than boys. Scott is the executive director of Compugirls, a social justice technology program for girls age 13 to 18 in under-resourced areas of Phoenix and in tribal communities.
Scott notes that low-income African-American, Hispanic, and Native American students have less access to technology at home and in their schools than Caucasian families, and that women of color enter computing majors and careers at an even lower rate than white women.
Compugirls is designed to encourage girls to be creators, not just consumers of technology. Compugirls is a year-round, two-year program that uses multimedia to enhance girls' computational thinking and technology skills. Compugirls is designed not simply to advance technology, but to harness technology in service of the girls' communities. Compugirls operates at two sites: one on the ASU campus and one on the Gila River Indian Community.
Girls in the program learn tech skills, including some programming with Scratch and work in the Teen Second Life grid. According to Scott's research, those involved in the program have a higher sense of self confidence - not just in technology, but in academia and in body image.
Compugirls makes technology culturally relevant, giving the girls who participate the tools to become advocates for themselves and for their communities.
The program emphasizes mentorship and peer-to-peer collaboration. These support systems are crucial not just for encouraging girls to become interested in technology, but as NCWIT and a recent Kauffman Foundation study have shown, an important part a larger effort on how to support the women to enter the tech industry - as college majors, as tech professionals, and as entrepreneurs.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/05/ncwit-compugirls-building-a-di.php
피드 구독하기:
글 (Atom)