Category: Computers, Science & Technology

You didn’t really want to deal with hew-mons anyway, did you?

Google+ Adds Ignore Option

“Is that one Google+ friend chatting a bit too much about Steve Jobs’ departure from Apple or posting too many vacation photos? Not to worry; the search giant this week added the ability to ignore people.

‘We want to make sure you can represent your real-life relationships on Google+—whether you want to connect with someone or not,’ Google’s Olga Wichrowska said in a Thursday post. ‘So starting today, we’re rolling out a new option to Ignore people, in addition to the existing (and stronger) option to Block them.’

By ignoring someone, ‘you’ll see less of what a person is sharing,’ Wichrowska wrote. This is less severe than blocking them, which limits how they can communicate with you rather than just hides their annoying updates. In both cases, the offending party is not notified.

Specifically, ignore stops putting that person’s updates in your incoming stream, stops notifying you about their activities, and removes them from your Circles page.

If that sounds good, there are several ways to ignore a person: click ‘ignore’ next to a person’s name in the Google+ Notifications bar or stream; via the incoming stream; or from the Circles page—highlight their name and click ‘ignore.’

You can undo any ignores via “More Actions” on the Circles page.”

Have you ever watched the blue bar crawl during a download and seen it say, “10 minutes, no, 20 minutes, no, an hour 20 minutes?” Yeah, it is a joke! But, Windows 8 may “fix” this, by removing it! Yep! Now, it will just tell you download speed, and size… makes sense!

Microsoft unveils file-move changes in Windows 8

“Microsoft has been throwing out crumbs on forthcoming features for Windows 8, but dodged serving up the main course.

Windows 8 will clean up the system for downloading files to your PC and changing file names, Microsoft has said on its newly launched Building Windows 8 blog.

The successor to Windows 7 will combine file download dialogue boxes into a single box, you’ll be able to stop and pause downloads, and rather than trying to estimate how long a download has left to run, the new operating system will instead feature a graph that shows the data transfer speed, transfer rate trend, and how much data is left to transfer.

Discussing the file changes in a video on the Windows 8 blog here – a video that doesn’t work in Firefox – Microsoft acknowledged Windows’ downloads estimates are something of a joke.

When it comes to re-naming files, Windows users get a dialogue box with thumbnails of files where there is a naming clash – and a check box next to each thumbnail which you can tick to show which files you want to keep.

In keeping with recently established Windows engineering team tradition, Microsoft has justified the changes by quoting telemetry data gathered on Windows PC users’ habits.

According to that data, copying, moving, renaming, and deleting files are ‘far and away the most heavily used features within Windows Explorer’ and account for half of all commands.”

I sure hope so!

New Star Trek TV Series Being Planned, Takes Place After Voyager

“Star Trek hasn’t been on television since 2005. After Enterprise it just seemed like the whole thing needed a rest. But with JJ Abrams taking his sweet time about getting another movie off the ground, maybe a fresh TV show is the right way to go.

There’ve been rumblings that a new Trek TV series might be in the works for awhile now. For instance, at one point a new Trek animated series was being worked on. Now here’s a new addition to the list of Star Trek TV series possibilities: A live-action project, code-named ‘S.E.T.I.,’ being developed by David Foster.

He spoke about his plans to TrekWeb. Apparently this is a project he’s been working on since 2006 and while Foster’s tight-lipped about the nature of the project he does have this to say:

The series concept is fully developed, subject to change of course, with a solid 5-7 year series plan, pilot script and a conceptualized finale that intends to define Star Trek for generations, extensive character bios, costume and ship/set designs, and more. This is a drastic departure from the typical 8-10 page treatment of the previously pitched Star Trek series ideas that have not included even a pilot script.

In the wake of JJ Abrams’ 2009 movie a lot has changed in the Star Trek universe. That film was specifically designed to change the timeline established by all other Star Trek’s which came before. However, it sounds like this new idea will ignore the latest movie and stick with established canon. Foster explains:

The vision that we have created is true to the ‘pre-2009 screen canon’ (TV and movies). We were also careful with the Star Trek: Enterprise canon as well. Through the years, I have had the chance to get to know many of the original series cast, crew, and even some of the studio execs. I have developed an extremely deep passion for the original vision of Gene Roddenberry. And while Star Trek has moved on with other series that were not exactly in line with Gene’s original vision, the roots are there to tap into.

The show would pick up in a time period after the one covered in Star Trek: Voyager. We’re talking Next Generation era technology here. Don’t expect to see a lot of cast from other previous Trek incarnations though. They’re going younger. Here’s how they explain what it will be about:

The series is highly energized with a much younger cast, and uses cutting-edge future technologies with newly envisioned special effects and designs. It includes Klingons, Ferengi, Andorians, Vulcans, Trill, and many more. The Klingons are getting very restless since the Praxis incident forced them to come to the peace tables, and are tired of having to rely on the Federation for support. The Ferengi have discovered a vast new resource that has propelled them towards instant riches and power beyond anything they have previously experienced.”

 

Wow. We knew this day would come. But, wow.

“To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve”

That about says it… so, what is in the cards for Apple now?

As well as this one!

WordPress Now Powers 22 Percent Of New Active Websites In The U.S.

“Blogging software WordPress is announcing a number of impressive growth stats today. WordPress is now powering 14.7% of the top million websites in the world, up from 8.5%. And 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US are running WordPress. These stats apply to both WordPress.com and WordPress.org sites.

You can also check out Founder Matt Mullenweg’s ‘State of the Word’ adress at WordCamp San Francisco last week. In July, WordPress.com blogs passed the 50 million mark. At the time, WordPress revealed that each month, 287 million people account for 2.5 billion pageviews on WordPress.com blogs.

In his speech, Mullenweg says that WordPress now has 15,000 plugins and has seen 200 million plugin downloads. WordPress 3.2 had 500,000 downloads in the first two days, representing the fastest upgrade speed in the blogging platform’s history.”

IBM’s Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project is designing chips that are more like a human brain. The goal, make computers more adaptive and “human-like.”

IBM Brings Brain Power to Experimental Chips

“IBM has created prototype chips that could mimic brain-like functionality, which the company said is an ‘unprecedented’ step forward in creating intelligent computers that collect, process, and understand data quickly.

The prototype chips will give mind-like abilities for computers to make decisions by collating and analyzing immense amounts of data, similar to humans gathering and understanding a series of events, said Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research. The experimental chips, modeled around neural systems, mimic the brain’s structure and operation through silicon circuitry and advanced algorithms.

IBM hopes reverse-engineering the brain into a chip could forge computers that are highly parallel, event-driven and passive on power consumption, Modha said. The machines will be a sharp departure from modern computers, which have scaling limitations and require set programming by humans to generate results.

‘In today’s computers, there are some key fundamental limitations that are projected to come to an end,’ Modha said. ‘The ever-increasing clock rates are unsustainable. In contrast, the brain is an ultimate computer.’

Like the brain, IBM’s prototype chips can dynamically rewire to sense, understand and act on information fed via sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, or through other sources such as weather and water-supply monitors. The chips will help discover patterns based on probabilities and associations, all while rivaling the brain’s compact size and low power usage, Modha said.

‘We now have the seeds of a new architecture that can allow us to mine the boundary between the physical and the digital world in an ever more efficient way,’ Modha said.

The chips could help manage water supplies through real-time data analysis and pattern recognition, Modha said. Computers could generate tsunami warnings through a network of sensors monitoring temperature, pressure, wave height and ocean tide. The chips’ cognitive features could help grocers identify bad produce and give smartphones features to better interact with the environment.

IBM and its research partners have already generated some results from the project, such as walking through a maze, playing a game of Pong, or recognizing patterns in data. The researchers are gunning for better results that include image recognition in videos.

IBM has made two prototype chips using the 45-nanometer manufacturing process. Based on traditional circuitry, the chips are organized in a way to recreate the phenomena between spiking neurons and synapses in brains with the help of integrated memory, computation and communication features. The chips use the same basic elements of transistors in microprocessors today, but are wired differently, Modha said.”

Now THIS is BIG NEWS! Hewlett Packard is killing off three of it’s divisions! This may say a LOT about the future! And, by the way, HP WebOS is dead (saw that coming!)

HP Kills Its Tablet, Smartphone, Personal Computer Divisions

“The world’s largest maker of PCs is getting out of the PC business — and ditching its struggling TouchPad tablet device — to focus on the high end server and software markets, the company announce Thursday.
The change is remarkable for the company, which was the top seller in the second quarter of 2011 with nearly 20 percent of the worldwide computer market, according to market research firm IDC. HP’s consumer computer business is also widely credited with introducing the first personal computer way back in 1968.
Dell is the second-biggest maker, with 12.9 percent of the worldwide market. In the U.S., Apple held third place in the second quarter with 10.7 percent of the market (an astonishing 14.7 percent growth over last year).

Though profitable, the business is far less lucrative for HP than its business division. Never fear, HP fans: The company isn’t ending PC sales entirely, just spinning off the computer division. It’s surprising nonetheless, especially for computer users with a head for history: HP made waves in 2002 when it acquired the discount PC business of rival Compaq Computer for a cool $25 billion.

The end of the company’s smartphone and tablet divisions was even more surprising. HP paid $1.8 billion for smartphone maker Palm in 2009, mostly for the webOS software that powered the devices. HP went on to introduce the TouchPad, which has struggled to compete with the iPad and to distinguish itself from among the army of Google Android based gadgets.

HP cut the price for its tablet device in July by 20 percent. On Wednesday, AllThingsD reported that Best Buy was sitting on 270,000 unsold TouchPads — and was hoping the company would buy them back.

The computer giant makes even less of a stir in the smartphone business. The top 5 manufacturers sold three quarters of the world’s smartphones, according to IDC — and HP wasn’t one of them.”

Well, it is out. I downloaded it. It doesn’t look different. It is faster. But, still not as fast as Chrome. Yawn.

Firefox 6 ships, but we shouldn’t really pay attention

“The Mozilla organization has shipped Firefox 6, eight weeks after the release of Firefox 5. Just as with Firefox 5, not a lot has visibly changed. The domain name in the address bar is now highlighted, to make phishing more apparent—mimicing a similar feature already found in Internet Explorer—sites with ‘extended verification’ certificates appear slightly differently in the address bar, and Mozilla is claiming that there’s some speed improvement. And that’s about the extent of it. More substantial improvements are in the pipeline for Firefox 7—most notably a JavaScript engine that uses much less memory—but nothing so substantial is evident in version 6.

This smaller release—bug fixes, behind-the-scenes improvements, but little user-visible difference—is likely to be the norm for future Firefox versions. Bigger features will still arrive from time to time, but for the most part, users will just experience a continuous improvement. Firefox updates should be automatic and essentially invisible. Even articles such as this one, which attach some significance to the new release, are probably not what Mozilla wants—press coverage should focus on features, not version numbers. Mozilla—as with Google—wants developers to cease targeting specific browser versions, and instead target standards; the regular releases are one step towards achieving that goal.

Another key part is downplaying version numbers. Again, Chrome is the obvious example here; if you look at the Chrome download page, for example, there’s no indication of which version of Chrome you’re going to get. It’s just ‘the latest.’

However, Mozilla wants to take this a step further. A feature request entered into Mozilla’s bug system (feature requests aren’t bugs in any traditional sense, but Mozilla uses one system for managing everything) calls for the removal of the version number from Firefox’s ‘About’ dialog. Instead, the intent is to make the About box do two things; show the product name and links to legal information, as it already does, and show how long ago Firefox checked that it was up-to-date, with some kind of provision to check right now. There won’t be a version number—just an indicator of whether the browser is up-to-date or not.”

Go, Droid! Android based tablets took 20% of the market from the iPad!

Android steals 20% of tablet market from iPad Last Year

“Android-powered tablets have taken 20% of the global tablet market from Apple’s iPad over the past 12 months according to new data from ABI Research. While Android tablets have collectively managed to make a sizable dent in the iPad’s global market share, ABI says no single tablet vendor has managed to ‘mount a significant challenge’ against the iPad at this point. ‘Many vendors have introduced media tablets, but none are separating themselves from the pack to pose a serious threat to Apple,’ ABI Research mobile devices group director Jeff Orr said in a statement. ‘In fact, most have introduced products at prices higher than similarly-configured iPads. Apple, never a company to be waiting for others, has introduced its second-generation iPad media tablet while keeping product pricing unchanged.’ Orr continued, ‘De-featured, low-cost media tablets are being introduced by more than fifty vendors in 2011. This will certainly help bolster year-over-year growth for the category, but it also creates a negative perception in the minds of the mass consumer audience about the readiness of media tablets to be fully functional within the next several years. Good user experiences and product response are needed to propel this market beyond the ‘early adopter’ stage.’”

I am still waiting on the perfect Andoid based tablet… but I WILL get one!

Yes, Airtime Version 1.9 is out, with some NICE improvements, including one that is very useful, and amazing! Now, when you add files into a directory at the directory level (say, via a Samba file share of the directory) they are added into the Airtime database! Very slick! And, very useful!

Airtime by Sourcefabric Software

If you need this kind of software, it is well worth considering! (Radio Station Automation.)