http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/01/30/sunday.sound/
"I firmly believe it. I think if you listen to the street, they are not asking for democracy, they are not asking for anything except the removal of Mubarak. He's become a symbol for everything that they find objectionable. It doesn't mean it can't be a transition as orderly and I certainly hope it is. But he is a symbol now and you've got to change the symbol." --Edward Walker, former U.S. ambassador to Egypt, "State of the Union"
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NET EDITORS' RATING 3.5 stars | Very good R R The good: The Dell Streak offers an unprecedented combination of processor power, screen size, and design quality. Support for 3G, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth hit all the wireless sweet spots, while photo, camcorder, and calling capabilities blur the boundaries between tablet and phone. The bad: Battery life isn't great, the touch-screen keyboard is awkward, music quality is below average, and the position of the camera tends to cloud photos and video. The bottom line: The Dell Streak is the first Android tablet worth taking seriously, though its size puts it on the fence between tablets and smartphone.
http://online.wsj.com/articlel/SB10001424052748704698004576103911333025164.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews (sorry not full article)
"BEIJING—International Business Machines Corp. agreed to cooperate with Chinese network services provider Range Technology Development Co. on the construction of a cloud computing data center in China, which IBM said will be Asia's largest in terms of floor space."
If you thought Facebook's privacy was a sieve, how about the "open book" that would be a data center in China. Think that serves china customers only? I'm sure that center will serve customers worldwide. Do you know where exactly in the cloud your data is? all your gmail is probably already belong to china.
This paranoid moment brought to you by princess teri.
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Do you have an Android device?
Then check out Boxwave capacitive styluses, and the Magic Doodle app.
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http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=12599341&sid=3029941
This is very disturbing. (warning, graphic story)
"Between 2000 and 2009, Peace Corps figures show there were 221 rapes or attempted rapes, 147 major sexual attacks and 719 other sexual assaults—defined as unwanted or forced kissing, fondling or groping."
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http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/11/google-chrome-browser-h-264-video/
From the comments:
"Psst... hey Google! You might want to amend that whole not being evil thing you all love to kick around so often. Removing support for a standard for no other reason than to spite a competitor when it means potential inconvenience for your customers... that's the sort of thing users label "evil." "
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"GSM and UMTS technology is widely used worldwide. UMTS phones can be easily moved from one UMTS network to another, making them ideal for international use. [CDMA] can't use a SIM card, making it far more difficult to switch handsets.
Calls: In general, Verizon will drop less calls. It's unclear what impact the iPhone will have on its network, but we don't expect it to be as bad as AT&T was in its early years. Verizon's network has proven itself to be more robust.
Speed: In general, AT&T has the faster 3G network, and in some cases it's a great deal faster than Verizon.
Simultaneous voice and data: Only AT&T is capable of talking on the phone and surfing the web at the same time, but Verizon is working on a solution, saying the fix might be implemented by the end of this year."
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/12/investing-in-a-structurally-unbalanced-world/
"Longer term I remain very bullish on China. For the last few thousand years, China has gone through long cycles of increasing power, national unity and expansion, followed by slow decline and then national disintegration. And then the cycle repeats. With the ascent of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s and the disaster of the Cultural Revolution imprinted on all minds, the national disintegration phase ended. China is now in the up-phase of increasing power, national unity and expansion. I have no doubt that a nation of 1.3 billion hard working talented people with a religious craving for material improvement is a great long run place to put your money."
<blockquote>"HP is not looking into mere 3-D movies or TV shows here, they are looking into large-scale live 3-D projections of big events like concerts and sports games. The company is calling this type of re-creation a "3-D immersive event". "The road does not scale," said an HP executive, talking about the issue with live events. The company sees the technology as being able to solve that problem, to re-create the experience of a live event, potentially in multiple locations and at multiple times. HP says it has already been working with the NBA over the past four years, recording its all-star games in large-scale 3-D."</blockquote>
The technology for smart TVs (plain old internet connectivity) has
been around for years - nothing new there, at the hardware level - but
what has been missing is a model for interacting with devices in a fun
and simple way, which is what Steve Jobs has shown us. For example, Panasonic has been showing internet connected TVs for years but its never been really compelling and never gotten off the ground. So Add to that revolution in man-machine interface,
app software development that is several orders of magnitude faster
and cheaper than the Microsoft model, enabling an incredibly rich
array of apps to be essentially crowd-sourced in days or weeks rather
than years. And this paradigm of dead-simple user interfaces is going
to work incredibly well in all kinds of devices - beyond fridges and
printers and tvs and cars to, well, I'm guessing everything.
Given that, it seems inevitable that many different app/OS niches will
need to co-exist. It won't be a matter of wanting to run Angry Birds
on your fridge. (Remember a few years ago, the killer app was
slideshowing photos off an SD card! That was all the CE industry could
think of to do with a big LCD screen! There are still fridges made
today that have that feature!)
It all comes down to the problems that have to be solved.
Kitchen appliances need apps to solve the problems of minimizing
energy cost, and simplifying service calls.
Cars need apps to solve the problems of navigation and handsfree
operation, etc.
Fridges need apps to solve problems of keeping pantries stocked.
Printers need apps to connect directly to devices and enable
ubiquitous printing.
Etc.
I don't think app developers are a fixed resource we OEMs have to
fight over. I think multiple armies of app developers will naturally
rise up to specialize in one or more applications and environments. It
does mean that OEMs will need to hold their app developers, and
customers, closer.
Remember 5 years ago at CES when Microsoft showed the House of the
Future - and it was basically 14" screens on every wall with a big
empty Windows desktop with a Start button in the lower left corner?
Ugh.
Apple has created a completely new vision of how we might interact
with electronic devices, and has proven the business model can work.
So don't forget to sign up for CES 2012, my prediction is it'll be the
year that *everything* gets connected to the internet. In a truly
meaningful way.
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--
Sent from my mobile device
Finally got to play with an Intuos 4. Anyone who has spent any time creating art, even nonprofessionally, will appreciate the Wacom tablets. They eliminate some of the tedium of creating art (switching colors) but preserves all the fine-motor control thru which the artist's talent flows. The new tablet surface that feels like paper, rather than slick plastic, is incredible.
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Every year Golla's booth keeps getting bigger and bigger. They used to be a tiny booth way over on the sidelines. Love their patterns.
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If i had an extra $1225 I'd want one too. Booth staff claimed Microsoft designed one of their new mouses with this. Takes any STL file, and Google Sketch can be converted to STL. $50 a coil for either ABS or PLA.
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The Blackberry Playbook manages to set itself apart. Similar to WebOS, the Blackberry tablet OS has some very unique features that people could really fall in love with. Here's an example. The Playbook does not have any navigation buttons. To reach the home menu, swipe up from the lower bezel into the screen area. To bring down the menus, swipe down from the upper bezel into the screen area. To switch from app to app, swipe from the left or right bezel towards the center. A very intuitive way to get around. The price for this is a slightly larger bezel than the GTab, about a third of an inch taller. Oh yeah, it's thinner and lighter (0.9 lb vs 1lb) than the GTab. (The industrial espionage network is alive and well. These products are all designed in secret, yet are very similar, with later products besting previous products by just a little bit. Tell me that happens by accident.)
As an aside, I think HP is making a huge tactical mistake by not bringing their Palm OS products to the show. They have to convince developers to write apps, and convince customers why they should buy hardware that isnt iOS and isnt Android. This is going to take a concerted messaging campaign. And where better than CES? That's what Blackberry is doing.
Apple can afford to not come to the show. But they are the thought leaders, they make the halo products for mobile, they have a charismatic leader, and their own highly anticipated Apple press events. Is HP all that? Or are they just penny-wise and pound foolish?
If you cant get enough of the ads in print magazines, this may be for you. Zinio offers 80% of the mags currently available in the US. Apparently their big selling point is their subscriptions (yes, subscriptions) dont cost more than the print version. Who would pay *more* than they would for a print mag? Especially when half the content is ads? Zinio delivers the mags exactly as they appear in print. But one of my guilty pleasures is People mag (and its ilk) so i may have to check this out.
They demo'd it on a 7" screen which was perhaps a bit on the small side. It might be one reason to keep me from switching to the...
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Being demo'd at Qualcomm's booth.
Qualcomm's booth was full of the best 3rd party apps available on equipment powered by Qualcomm. Meaning, most of the tablets and phones that shipped this year! However, next year may belong to Nvidia and its dual-core Tegra's.
Demo was light on details, so Viewdle deserves some offline study.
Casio is the king of extreme electronics. This looks like something my brother would use.
It's Black and Decker's vertical paper shredder.
According to the booth rep, the current design is 25 watts, with a 70 watt design coming in Spring. The large Serac speakers run $19,000 for a L, R, and subwoofer. The smaller Orbis speakers cost $8k for 3. Apparently glass has trouble reproducing bass. They sounded pretty good in their glass listening room, even still. And they looked pretty damn cool. I mean, what are you going to spend your money on? 3D TV and 3D glasses?
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Finally the energy monitoring products can track historical data, not just instantaneous (like KillAWatt). This might be the year to buy!
Modlet captures energy usage at 1 sec intervals from up to 100 outlets. Web interface. Captures up to 3 weeks of data while your PC is off. Can also turn outlets off remotely. $50 for Modlet and zigbee receiver; $45 for extra Modlet.
The Envir only enables up to 9 outlets, and also sells a dedicated base station to display historical information. Integrates with Google Power Meter, i dont know if Modlet does.
Our neighborhood is enabled for for Google PowerMeter - we'll have to check it out and perhaps get some Modlets.
A focus on using electronics for energy consumption monitoring, rate monitoring, and simpler service/support, rather than displaying pictures from SD cards (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Call the service center, hold your smartphone up to the washer, press a button, and the washer emits fax-machine-like tones to transmit diagnostic info to the service center. Actually that suggests to me that these are not actually internet connected. The Kenmore won't be available in stores until 2012 (!!) but a version of it is at Sears now.
Displays recipes from the internet
3 timers
Water resistant
Kitchen conversions
7" LCD 800X480
Capacitive touch
Keyingredient.com
Mydemy.com
Next year they will add ability to add ingredients to shopping list. Also the ability to scan food item barcodes to add them to shopping list.
Nice product but could also be done with existing apps on phones and tablets. For example, I like the shopping list feature on Upvise, can add items from any device.
Press a microswitch and the card changes to the other number and reprograms the magnetic strip.
Another version of the card displays 5 digits of the credit card only if the password entered on the microstrip is correct.
The boot rep said their studies showed that people would tolerate credit card protection only if it slowed down the process by less than 2 seconds.
They said their cards could not stop sophisticated hacking but "80% of fraud is simple fraud" (pen and paper).
I wouldn't be interested in the commitment rquired of a reading club but it would be very interesting to read other folks annotations.
1. Panasonic Viera. Panasonic does have an internet-enabled OS for its TVs, with the standard apps, fitness, and content options. Skype is available thru their BluRay player.
2. Samsung SmartTV. Already boasting 150 3rd party apps, this environment is part of the TV (not a separate box). They have apps (games, netflix, youtube), search (google search ripoff), and skype for videochat.
3. Logitech Revue - already shipping at $300, this is the winner in my mind. It's a separate box, so future upgrades and evolutions won't force me to throw away my TV. Google TV, media player, apps like Netflix and Pandora. View your Logitech webcam that you have trained on your front porch thru the web browser (in the picture below, the feed of the tall travel mug in the box, in the lower right corner, is taken in complete darkness).
The addition of Search to media playback is very intriguing. But here's a hole in media search. My own pictures and videos are not tagged or titled in any useful way. Because what would really be cool is to search for all pictures of Samantha and Mom. Or all pictures at the beach. Or videos taken at school. I have no way whatsoever to search the terabytes of personal digital files that I have. Other than that, I totally get Google TV now:
Eye-Fi's Direct Mode hands-on: from camera to tablet in seconds (video).
ENGADGET | JANUARY 06, 2011
http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/06/eye-fis-direct-mode-hands-on-from-camera-to-tablet-in-seconds/
"Apple patent application suggests yet more possible gestures for iPods.
ENGADGET | JANUARY 05, 2011
http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/06/apple-patent-application-suggests-yet-more-possible-gestures-for/Apple's already put some basic gesture controls to use on its sixth generation iPod "
http://m.gizmodo.com/5093323/the-tech-specs-of-hd-netflix-streaming
RE: BANDWIDTH NEEDED FOR HD VIDEO STREAMING: NETFLIX CODEC (FROM MICROSOFT) USES BETWEEN 2.5 AND 3.5MBPS.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/05/motorola-atrix-4g-hits-atandts-website-complete-with-specs/ok its blowing me away that smartphone screens are now being described as fractions of hdtv resolutions."...a 4-inch QHD display (or 960 x 540), and a 1930 mAh battery that promises nine hours of talk time..."
1930mah battery?? drool. wait, of course being 4g this probably means less airtime than my 3g phone on a 1200 mah battery. and who cares about talk time as a battery spec? lets talk drain time for icanhascheeseburger, youtube and angry birds.
this is my new fav phone. at least for the next 5 minutes.
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" Advantages of LTE over HSPA+
Flexible Spectrum usage possible with LTE: LTE will be the same whether the bandwidth available is 5MHz or 20MHz. Ofcourse the data rate will increase when the BW is increased. With HSPA+ only 5MHz bandwidhts possible. Similalrly with HSPA+ only FDD mode of operation is possible whereas with LTE FDD or TDD mode is possible.
Spectrum Effeciency: Better spectrum effeciency, by a factor of 2 atleast over HSPA+
Simpler Architecture: LTE has a much simpler and relatively flat architecture compared to the legacy UMTS network in HSPA+
Higher Data Rates: LTE gives DL data rates of 144Mbps and UL of 57Mbps. [WOW!!!] HSPA+ gives 42Mbps in DL and 11Mbps in UL [THATS AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE IMPROVEMENT OVER 3G RIGHT THERE. AND ABOUT 5X FASTER THAN WIFI AT HOME WITH CABLE MODEM BACKHAUL, WHICH WOULD PROVIDE ABOUT 7-8M DOWNLOAD 2-3M UPLOAD (THATS WHAT I GET WITH COX). FASTER THAN MY WIFI AT HOME AND COSTS ALMOST NOTHING TO DEPLOY? NO WONDER ATT WANTS TO EXPLOIT THAT.]
[QUESTION IS WHAT IS A USER GOING TO DO WITH 144Mb? ONLY NEED 5-10Mb FOR NETFLIX STREAMING VIDEO, EVEN HD. THAT BW MUST BE SHARABLE SOMEHOW]
Ultra Low Latency: 10ms instead of 50ms for HSPA+ [GREAT NEWS FOR STREAMING APPS LIKE VIDEO AND VOIP]
Short TTI: 0.5ms instead of 2ms for HSPA+
Advantages of HSPA+ over LTE
Will be ready much before LTE: HSPA+ technology should be available in Q1 2009 whereas the earliest with LTE would be sometime in 2010.
Much less investment in infrastructure: Since HSPA+ is evolution of HSPA which is already being deployed, it would be easier and less costly to upgrade. With LTE since its based on OFDM a lot of new components will be required. Also in case of LTE the number of components are reduced but since they work in a different way, new components will be required.".
Ask and ye shall receive...! Here's my new phone.
"Samsung Infuse 4G heading to AT&T, brings 4.5-inch goodness
ANDROID CENTRAL | JANUARY 05, 2011
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/bcwbUTjkG5g/samsung-infuse-4g-headed-att "
"A research group says the global market for tablet computers such as the iPad will almost triple by the end of 2014.
Yankee Group said Wednesday it expects tablet sales to rise to $46 billion in 2014 from $16 billion in 2010. The researchers say tablet sales are rising faster than high-definition TV sets, handheld gaming consoles or even MP3 players.
Apple Inc.'s iPad, the main player in today's tablet market, costs $499 to $829 depending on the configuration. According to the forecast, the average tablet price tag will be $237 in 2015."
Highlights of the Mobile Year in Review 2010 Video
Massive increase in apps downloaded
FIVE BILLION apps downloaded —up from 300 million in 2009
Whopping expansion of location-based services
FIVE MILLION Foursquare users —up from 200,000 users in 2009
Surge in mobile social media platforms
347 PERCENT growth in Twitter mobile usage
200 MILLION mobile Facebook Users
100 MILLION YouTube videos played on mobile devices everyday
Ongoing explosion in data traffic
3,000 PERCENT growth in one carrier's data traffic since 2008
3,339: average number of texts sent per month by US teens.
Unprecedented competition and choiceAlso: 2010 is the year mobile phones killed digital cameras, or so they say...
96 PERCENT of mobile users can choose from 3 or more providers
92 PERCENT of mobile users are satisfied with their provider
4 CENTS: average voice rate per minute in the US
77 MILLION: number of smartphones shipped in the fall of 2010.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/pDfeWzYbIFw/
Tablets, 4g, cars, 3d TV.
Snore. Bring on the toilet scrubbing robots!!
Huh. A roomba for the bathroom. Cleans the wet smelly floor? How does the damn thing get clean? I dont want it then wandering my tiled hall spreading germs eveeywhere. It's defiled, like Japanese toilet slippers. Skeptical...
UPDATE: apparently it not only dispenses cleaning liquid but slurps up the grey water up into an onboard resevoir. Hmmm! Maybe it is time for a Roomba!
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/97035/20110103/it-s-raining-tablets-at-ces-las-vegas-what-s-your-bet.htm
How can they possibly differentiate themselves??
Princess Teri says: buy and hold was a lie!!
"Stock Market Matrix: The Investment Triangle
THE BIG PICTURE | JANUARY 02, 2011
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/01/stock-market-matrix-the-investment-triangle/
One of the things I frequently reference is the long term secular periods of bull and bear markets. Holding onto a broad basket ... "
"Chronic clock-consciousness makes you want to book up every second with something productive, which squeezes out living time. There's no time for an impromptu conversation with a significant other or friend, or give some new activity a try, because there can't be any deviation from mechanical momentum. When time panic is at the controls, you can never be fully available to anyone or any moment. Type As are particularly wracked by time urgency, which can make relationships very difficult. They're usually on their way somewhere other than where you are most of the time, since it's the clock, not the content of what they're doing, that's the priority."
This would do it - once i clicked thru to google maps, i can just "star" the place manually. This seems trivially obvious, although detecting whether a bunch of text is an address or not might be the hard part.
still, if they only detected regularly formed addresses, seems that would solve 98% of the problem.
