Author: Dr. Bill

I am jazzed about the huge, new, nuclear powered rover that is now exploring Mars! Dewd! How cool is it to have sent a Volkswagon-sized rover to Mars! But, it is also using The Cloud!

NASA uses Amazon’s cloud computing in Mars landing mission

“Although it boasts having ‘Earth’s biggest selection,’ Amazon.com’s reach has stretched to Mars.

Better known for being an e-commerce giant, Amazon has become a major player in cloud computing, with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory using the company’s Amazon Web Services to capture and store images and metadata collected from the Mars Exploration Rover and Mars Science Laboratory missions.

With so much large-scale data processing to be done, JPL is leading the way in the adoption of cloud computing in the federal government, said Khawaja Shams, manager for data services at La Canada Flintridge-based JPL.

“At this point, JPL’s data centers are filled to capacity, so we’re looking for ways to cost effectively expand the computational horsepower that we have at our disposal,” he said. ‘Cloud computing is giving us that opportunity.’

Using AWS’s cloud to operate the mars.jpl.nasa.gov website, Shams noted, enables JPL to get images, videos and developments to the public quickly, without having to build and operate the infrastructure in-house.

According to Amazon, AWS enabled JPL to construct a scalable Web infrastructure in only two to three weeks instead of months.

‘With unrelenting goals to get the data out to the public, NASA/JPL prepared to service hundreds of gigabits/second of traffic for hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers,’ Amazon said.

The mission will continue to use AWS to automate the analysis of images from the planet, giving scientists more time to identify potential hazards or areas of particular scientific interest, Amazon said.”

Soon, you will be able to listen to your Amazon Music via Cloud Player on your Roku! Very Cool! New Amazon Cloud Player features include:

“Amazon MP3 purchases — including music that customers purchased in the past — are automatically saved to Cloud Player, which means that customers have a secure backup copy of the music they buy from Amazon, free of charge.

Amazon scans customers’ iTunes and Windows Media Player libraries and matches the songs on their computers to Amazon’s 20 million song catalog. All matched songs – even music purchased from iTunes or ripped from CDs – are instantly made available in Cloud Player and are upgraded for free to high-quality 256 Kbps audio. Music that customers have already uploaded to Cloud Player also will be upgraded.

Any customer with a Kindle Fire, Android device, iPhone, iPod touch, or any web browser — and soon, a Roku streaming player or Sonos home entertainment system — can play their music anywhere.”

Press Release

The Open Source OUYA console is available for pre-order, and now has a web-site of their own, ouya.tv! Check them out here: Pre-Order of OUYA Console.

It is out, and it is pretty! They have updated the graphics! I like it! Upgrade NOW!

https://www.libreoffice.org/download/

“The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6, the fourth major release of the best free office suite ever, which provides a large number of new features and incremental improvement over the previous versions. Innovations range from invisible features such as improved performance and interoperability to the more visible ones such as user interface tweaks, where theming has improved to more closely match current design best-practice. A full list with screenshots is available here: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/3-6-new-features-and-fixes, because a picture says more than a thousand words.

Wherever you look you see improvements: a new CorelDRAW importer, integration with Alfresco via the CMIS protocol and limited SharePoint integration, color-scales and data-bars in spreadsheet cells, PDF export watermarking, improved auto-format function for tables in text documents,, high quality image scaling, Microsoft SmartArt import for text documents, and improved CSV handling. In addition, there is a lot of contributions from the design team: a cleaner look, especially on Windows PCs, beautiful new presentation master pages, and a new splash screen.

LibreOffice is becoming increasingly popular in corporate environments. During the last months, several large public bodies have announced their migration to the free office suite: the Capital Region of Denmark, the cities of Limerick in Ireland, Grygov in the Czech Republic, Las Palmas in Spain, the City of Largo in Florida, the municipality of Pilea-Hortiatis in Greece, and the Public Library System of Chicago.

Dave Richards of the City of Largo has commented about the new release on his blog: “I have been testing LibreOffice 3.6 and am happy to see the progress. At this time all of our showstoppers are fixed and we probably will upgrade almost immediately when it’s released. Nice work. CMIS is shaping up nicely. I’ll be looking at 3.7 when it appears in the daily builds”.

In France, the MIMO Working Group – the ministries of Agriculture, Culture and Communication, Defence, Education, Energy, Finance Interior and Justice – with a total of 500.000 end users, has certified LibreOffice for deployment on every desktop. At the same time, the OSB Alliance joined the efforts of German and Swiss cities and communities sponsoring development on the LibreOffice codebase.

Corporate users are joining consumers who quickly switched to LibreOffice. Giorgio Buccellati, Professor Emeritus of History and Near Eastern Languages at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles), says: ‘LibreOffice is wonderful software. I am an avid user of the Hybrid PDF feature, which allows to exchange PDF files with all other users while preserving the possibility of editing the same document like a native file.’

LibreOffice 3.6 has been developed by the growing community of hackers gathered around The Document Foundation, thanks to a friendly and welcoming environment, and the compelling Free Software ethos. The community has surpassed the threshold of five hundred developers providing new features and patches since the announcement of the project on September 28, 2010.

According to Ohloh, LibreOffice is the third largest developer community focusing on free software applications, after Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, and the largest to be independent from a single corporate sponsor. This result has been achieved in less than two years, and is now a benchmark for free software projects.

The Document Foundation invites power users, able to help iron out any final wrinkles, to read the release notes carefully, install LibreOffice 3.6.0, and report any problems. More conservative users should stick with LibreOffice 3.5. Corporate users are strongly advised to deploy LibreOffice with the backing of professional support, from a company able to assist with migration, end user training, support and maintenance.”

You know that I have been fascinated by the OUYA Open Source game console project. Well, the final contribution has been cast at Kickstarter, and to say it was wildly successful is an understatement!

OUYA’s Kickstarter funding is complete: over $8.59 million raised, starts shipping in March

“It’s a wrap! Suffice it to say, it’s a been a relatively short, yet astoundingly fruitful — and initially record-breaking — funding run for OUYA, the hackable, Android-based gaming console. With just 29 days to work with since being announced, the Yves Behar-designed system has raked in over $8.59 million thanks to just under 63,300 backers on Kickstarter as of its official 1AM ET funding deadline today.

Those who opted for developer editions will be able to start tinkering with their own units around December, while the majority of backers should receive the console as early as March 2013. Missed the Kickstarter bandwagon? Don’t fret, because OUYA plans to take pre-orders from the general public over the web soon, expecting those units to arrive at doorsteps near April.

The numbers are only part of the picture, of course. If you’ll recall, OUYA swiftly acquired a slew of partnerships from companies like OnLive, Square Enix, XBMC, Vevo, and Robotoki — and as if that wasn’t enough, just yesterday Namco Bandai and Plex officially joined the content-providing party as well. What’s more, we now know that each console will support up to four of those touchpad-equipped controllers for local multiplayer action. Even with all that, this story is far from over, as Joystiq points out that Julie Uhrman and company ‘promise’ to have more updates before its official launch. Naturally, it still remains to be seen how OUYA’s (literally) tiny, Tegra 3-powered footprint will fare against the big three in gaming, but we’re cautiously optimistic.

So, while the final, mass-produced product is still months away, in the meantime you’ll find a recap of all the highlights from OUYA in the nifty saga module below. You can also hit up our friends at Joystiq here for extra insight from the company about its successes so far.”

From a Press Release I got today:

“Roku Inc. today (actually July 26, 2012) announced it has received $45 million in a new strategic investment. News Corporation, British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), prior Roku venture investors Menlo Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners as well as an unnamed strategic investor joined the round. The new relationships include both financial backing and business agreements that demonstrate the industry’s confidence in Roku as the leading distribution platform to bring streaming entertainment to mainstream consumers.

Roku will use the new capital to build further brand awareness through advertising, develop new international markets, and increase engineering and production to support sales growth of both hardware and digital media services on the platform including advertising, games, transactional and pay-per­-view video as well as content packages.”

Sure, it costs almost twice as much, but look what you get for your $60.00!

Hackberry A10 developer board: $60 PC board with Allwinner A10 CPU

“A Hackberry A10 Developer Board with 512MB of RAM is available for $60. A 1GB model should be available soon for $65.

Both models include:

• 1.2 GHz Allwinner A10 ARM Cortex-A8 CPU
• Mali 400 graphics
• 4GB built-in storage (1.5GB available in the Android user partition)
• 802.11n WiFi
• 10/100 Ethernet
• 2 USB 2.0 ports
• SDHC card slot
• HDMI
• 3.5mm mic jack
• composite video output
• 4-pin serial header

Miniand is selling a new developer board called the Hackberry A10. It features an Allwinner A10 processor for about $60. It’s basically a little computer with a CPU, memory, and storage built in. It also has a range of input and output options.

What it doesn’t have is a case. You’ll want to buy or build your own if you plan to use the Hackberry A10 Developer Board as a desktop computer or set-top-box for your TV. You could also theoretically use this sort of box to power a robot, web server, or a range of other devices.

It’s a lot like a $35 Raspberry Pi, except the HackBerry A10 costs $60 and up, has more memory, built-in-storage, a faster processor, and WiFi.

The Allwinner A10 processor is a single core ARM Cortex-A8 chip with Mali 400 graphics. It’s not as fast as an NVIDIA Tegra 3 or Samsung Exynos 4412 chip, but it’s a lot cheaper, and it can still handle HD video and a range of basic tasks.

That’s one of the reasons it’s proven popular with budget Android tablet makers such as Coby. But the chip is also showing up in a growing number of mini PC devices that are designed to be used with a TV, mouse, keyboard, or remote control.

We’ve seen a range of these devices, including the MK802, Mini X, and Mele A1000. While most ship with Google Android, they’re also capable of running Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux-based operating systems.

Like those devices, the Hackberry A10 will ship with Android 4.0, but Miniand plans to offer Linux images for the device. These are the same folks who brought us some of the first Linux images for the MK802, so they have a pretty good track record with this sort of thing.”