Month: June 2014

We may yet get ubiquitous WiFi! OK, it may NOT be free, but we can only hope! That would be great for us Internet Radio lovers!

Google to deploy 180 low-orbit satellites that provide Internet access

Ars Technica – “Google intends to ‘spend more than $1 billion on a fleet of satellites to extend Internet access to unwired regions of the globe,’ the Wall Street Journal reported last night, citing anonymous sources. Google ‘will start with 180 small, high-capacity satellites orbiting the earth at lower altitudes than traditional satellites, and then could expand.’

Google has been boosting its expertise in this area by hiring people from satellite companies. ‘Google’s satellite venture is led by Greg Wyler, founder of satellite-communications startup O3b Networks Ltd., who recently joined Google with O3b’s former chief technology officer,’ the Journal reported. ‘Google has also been hiring engineers from satellite company Space Systems/Loral LLC to work on the project.’

Google is an investor in O3b, which is putting satellites into orbit 5,000 miles above the Earth, and says it will be able to provide gigabit per second data rates. O3b claims to ‘deliver latencies faster than long haul fiber with a round trip latency of less than 150 milliseconds.’

By comparison, the satellites used by Internet provider HughesNet are 22,000 miles from the ground.

O3b’s satellites weigh about 1,500 pounds each, but Google intends to build ones that weigh less than 250 pounds, according to the Journal report. Google’s initial fleet of 180 satellites ‘could be launched for as little as about $600 million,’ but the project could end up costing up to $3 billion.

Separately, Google recently purchased drone maker Titan Aerospace, which it will reportedly integrate into ‘Project Loon,’ Google’s attempt to provide Internet access to hard-to-reach areas from balloons.

While Google declined comment on its satellite plans, the Journal quoted satellite consultant Tim Farrar, who said he ‘expects Project Loon’s balloons eventually to be replaced by Titan’s drones. Drones and satellites complement each other, he said, with drones offering better high-capacity service in smaller areas, and satellites offering broader coverage in areas with less demand.’

When contacted by Ars, Google said: ‘We don’t have anything to add beyond the following statement, attributable to a Google spokesperson: ‘Internet connectivity significantly improves people’s lives. Yet two-thirds of the world have no access at all. It’s why we’re so focused on new technologies—from Project Loon to Titan Aerospace—that have the potential to bring hundreds of millions more people online in the coming years.””

Apple has announced the latest version of OSX!

Apple Announces OS X Yosemite

SAN FRANCISCO – June 2, 2014 – “Apple® today announced OS X® Yosemite, a powerful new version of OS X redesigned and refined with a fresh, modern look, powerful new apps and amazing new continuity features that make working across your Mac® and iOS devices more fluid than ever. The new Today view in Notification Center gives you a quick look at everything you need to know, all in one place; iCloud Drive™ is located within the Finder and can store files of any type; and Safari® has a new streamlined design that puts the most important controls at your fingertips. Mail makes editing and sending attachments easier than ever; Handoff lets you start an activity on one device and pass it to the other; and Instant Hotspot makes using your iPhone’s hotspot as easy as connecting to a Wi-Fi network. Yosemite even gives you the ability to make iPhone® calls on your Mac.

‘Yosemite is the future of OS X with its incredible new design and amazing new apps, all engineered to work beautifully with iOS,’ said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. ‘We engineer our platforms, services and devices together, so we are able to create a seamless experience for our users across all our products that is unparalleled in the industry. It’s something only Apple can deliver.’

With Yosemite, OS X has been redesigned and refined with a fresh modern look where controls are clearer, smarter and easier to understand, and streamlined toolbars put the focus on your content without compromising functionality. Translucent elements reveal additional content in your app window, provide a hint at what’s hidden behind and take on the look of your desktop. App icons have a clean, consistent design and an updated system font improves readability.

The new Today view in Notification Center gives you a quick look at everything you need to know with widgets for Calendar, Weather, Stocks, Reminders, World Clock and social networks. You can even download additional widgets from the Mac App Store? to customize your Today view. Spotlight® now appears front and center on your desktop and adds new categories of results, so you can view rich suggestions from Wikipedia, Maps, Bing, App Store, iTunes Store®, iBooks Store™, top websites, news and movie showtimes.

Built right into the Finder, iCloud Drive stores files of any type in iCloud®. iCloud Drive works like any other folder on your Mac, so you can drag documents into it, organize them with folders and Tags and search for them using Spotlight. With iCloud Drive, you can access all your files in iCloud from your Mac, iPhone, iPad® or even a Windows PC.

Safari has a new streamlined design that puts the most important controls at your fingertips. A new Favorites view gives you quick access to your favorite websites, and a powerful new Tabs view displays thumbnails of all your open web pages in one window. Safari also gives you more control over your privacy, with separate Private Browsing windows and built-in support for DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn’t track users. When you search for popular or common terms, new Spotlight Suggestions appear along with the suggestions from your search provider. Safari supports the latest web standards, including WebGL and SPDY, and with support for HTML5 Premium Video Extensions, you can watch Netflix HD videos for up to two hours longer.¹ Powered by the Nitro JavaScript engine, Safari is over six times faster than Firefox and over five times faster than Chrome when executing JavaScript found in typical websites.²

Mail makes editing and sending attachments easier than ever. With Markup you can quickly fill out and sign forms and even annotate images and PDFs from within Mail. Mail Drop allows you to easily send large videos, images or files up to 5GB from the Mail app to any email address. Messages has a new look and delivers even more options for communicating with friends and family. Now you can add titles to ongoing message threads so they are easy to find, add new contacts to ongoing conversations, or leave those conversations you no longer want to follow. With Soundbites you can create, send and listen to audio clips right in Messages.

Continuity features in Yosemite make your Mac and iOS device perfect companions. When your iPhone or iPad is near your Mac, Handoff lets you start an activity on one device and pass it to the other. Instant Hotspot makes using your iPhone’s hotspot as easy as connecting to a Wi-Fi network.³ Now the SMS and MMS messages that previously only appeared on your iPhone appear in Messages on all your devices. You can even send SMS or MMS messages directly from your Mac and make or receive iPhone calls using your Mac as a speakerphone.?

Yosemite delivers platform technologies that make it easier for developers to create amazing new Mac apps. SpriteKit makes it easier to incorporate realistic motion, physics and lighting in games, and integrates with SceneKit to bring 3D casual gaming within reach of any developer. Storyboards for Yosemite and Xcode® 6 take advantage of the new View Controller APIs in AppKit to make it easier to build apps that navigate between multiple views of data. New APIs allow developers to integrate Handoff into their own apps and create Today view widgets for distribution through the Mac App Store. Share Menu extensions add new destinations to the Share Menu, and new APIs let developers create custom Share Sheets.

The developer preview of Yosemite is available to Mac Developer Program members starting today. To help make OS X even better, Apple is introducing the OS X Beta Program, which gives customers early access to Yosemite and invites them to try out the release and submit their feedback. Mac users can participate in the OS X Beta Program for Yosemite this summer and download the final version for free from the Mac App Store this fall. Customers interested in signing up can visit www.apple.com/osx/preview for more details.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.”