One of the greatest new types of gadget to come into play recently is the digital camera. There are a lot of reasons why digital cameras are so much better than film based cameras, and they all come down to the computer technology that goes into digital cameras. Digital cameras can capture images on special chips that can pick up light and color and convert it into digital data. That digital data is then stored on some kind of computer storage device, which is most often based on flash memory technology these days, though in the past digital cameras have stored pictures on things like floppy disks as well (as preposterous as that may seem to us today). The flash memory can either be built into the camera or be a detachable form memory card or memory stick. Many cameras have combinations of both forms of storage media and pictures from both can be transferred onto a computer for editing, posting on the Internet, or printing out into the form of a more traditional photograph.
One of the greatest new types of gadget to come into play recently is the digital camera. There are a lot of reasons why digital cameras are so much better than film based cameras, and they all come down to the computer technology that goes into digital cameras. Digital cameras can capture images on special chips that can pick up light and color and convert it into digital data. That digital data is then stored on some kind of computer storage device, which is most often based on flash memory technology these days, though in the past digital cameras have stored pictures on things like floppy disks as well (as preposterous as that may seem to us today). The flash memory can either be built into the camera or be a detachable form memory card or memory stick. Many cameras have combinations of both forms of storage media and pictures from both can be transferred onto a computer for editing, posting on the Internet, or printing out into the form of a more traditional photograph.
The ability to transfer digital photos to a computer is what really makes digital cameras so much better than their film based ancestors. That's because there's so much that can be done with a photo once it's on a computer. For example, you can edit the photo to take out any of the dreaded "red eye" effect that still invariably shows up in some photos despite the best efforts of camera makers to avoid it to begin with. There are also plenty of other special effects that can be added to pictures though even relatively common software programs. For example, a picture can be made to look much older by adding a sepia filter to it and making it a little fuzzy so that it appears slightly out of focus. Besides changing the overall appearance of a digital photo, photo editing programs can also change what's in the photos. For example, it's possible to "clone" trees in a picture and paste them over utility poles. It's also possible to paste the heads of some people onto the bodies of other people or to put people into photographs in order to make it look like someone was in a place where they've never actually been. This can be especially useful for family reunion photos where not everyone could make it to the reunion.
Once a photo has been loaded onto a computer and any editing has been completed, there are a number of things that can be done with it. For example, it's possible to post the photo on the Internet, either on your own web site or on a photo sharing site. It's also possible to email it to specific people, or you can print it out so that you can assembled an actual physical photo album. The thing that the digital camera does best though is allow its owner to take numerous photos and eliminate the ones that aren't up to his or her standards without the expense of developing all of those photos. In that sense, digital cameras are much more economical than film cameras, and better for the environment when you look at how toxic photo developing is.
Kamis, 09 Oktober 2008
BlackBerry Storm has touch screen you can feel
This photo provided by Research in Motion Ltd., shows the company's new touch-screen phone, the Storm. With the new model being announced Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2008 the Storm, RIM is for the first time giving up the physical keypad in favor of a large screen, just like the one on Apple's iPhone. This photo provided by Research in Motion Ltd., shows the company's new touch-screen phone, the Storm. With the new model being announced Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2008 the Storm, RIM is for the first time giving up the physical keypad in favor of a large screen, just like the one on Apple's iPhone. (AP Photo/Research in Motion Ltd.)
By Peter Svensson
AP Technology Writer / October 8, 2008
NEW YORK—Research in Motion Ltd., maker of the BlackBerry, is taking on Apple Inc. with a touch-screen phone that puts a new twist on the technology.
RIM is known for its e-mail-oriented phones with large keypads. With the new model announced Wednesday, the Storm, RIM is for the first time giving up the physical keypad in favor of a large screen, just like the one on Apple's iPhone.
But RIM has listened to users who find the iPhone's glass screen awkward to type on because its virtual buttons provide no tactile feedback. The Storm's whole screen is backed by springs, and when pressed, it gives under the finger.
The long-rumored Storm will be available from Verizon Wireless in the U.S. and from Vodafone Group PLC overseas before the holidays, the companies said. No price has been disclosed yet.
In an unusual twist, the phone will work both on Verizon Wireless' network and on Vodafone's, even though they use incompatible technologies. Like a few other Verizon Wireless handsets before it, the Storm will be equipped with radios to handle both networks, making international roaming a possibility. The iPhone, carried by AT&T Inc. in the U.S., can already roam internationally.
The addition of a touch-screen phone to the BlackBerry lineup, the mainstay of e-mail-addicted executives and managers, is a testament to the effect of the iPhone. RIM's share of the U.S. smart-phone market has stayed above 50 percent, but the iPhone has clearly helped expand that market.
Over the last year, technology buyers at large corporations have found their employees demanding a touch-screen phone, said Mike Lanman, chief marketing officer of Verizon Wireless.
"Everybody eventually leaves work ... and becomes a person," Lanman said.
The iPhone's facility with Web browsing and movie playing are big reasons for its appeal. The Storm will initially lack an equivalent of Apple's iTunes movie store, though shorter clips will be available through Verizon Wireless' VCast service.
As a Web browser, the Storm more closely emulates the desktop experience than the iPhone does. That's because the screen can distinguish between light touches and firm presses. A light touch can move around a cursor, while a firm press activates a link, much like moving a mouse cursor has a different effect from clicking a mouse button, said Mike Lazaridis, RIM's co-chief executive.
Verizon Wireless is the last of the four national U.S. brands to unveil a flagship touch-screen model. AT&T has the iPhone, Sprint Nextel Corp. sells the Samsung Instinct, and T-Mobile USA just announced the G1, the first phone to run Google Inc.'s software. Verizon Wireless does have other touch-screen phones in its lineup, but none that it has promoted with as much vigor as other carriers have.
By Peter Svensson
AP Technology Writer / October 8, 2008
NEW YORK—Research in Motion Ltd., maker of the BlackBerry, is taking on Apple Inc. with a touch-screen phone that puts a new twist on the technology.
RIM is known for its e-mail-oriented phones with large keypads. With the new model announced Wednesday, the Storm, RIM is for the first time giving up the physical keypad in favor of a large screen, just like the one on Apple's iPhone.
But RIM has listened to users who find the iPhone's glass screen awkward to type on because its virtual buttons provide no tactile feedback. The Storm's whole screen is backed by springs, and when pressed, it gives under the finger.
The long-rumored Storm will be available from Verizon Wireless in the U.S. and from Vodafone Group PLC overseas before the holidays, the companies said. No price has been disclosed yet.
In an unusual twist, the phone will work both on Verizon Wireless' network and on Vodafone's, even though they use incompatible technologies. Like a few other Verizon Wireless handsets before it, the Storm will be equipped with radios to handle both networks, making international roaming a possibility. The iPhone, carried by AT&T Inc. in the U.S., can already roam internationally.
The addition of a touch-screen phone to the BlackBerry lineup, the mainstay of e-mail-addicted executives and managers, is a testament to the effect of the iPhone. RIM's share of the U.S. smart-phone market has stayed above 50 percent, but the iPhone has clearly helped expand that market.
Over the last year, technology buyers at large corporations have found their employees demanding a touch-screen phone, said Mike Lanman, chief marketing officer of Verizon Wireless.
"Everybody eventually leaves work ... and becomes a person," Lanman said.
The iPhone's facility with Web browsing and movie playing are big reasons for its appeal. The Storm will initially lack an equivalent of Apple's iTunes movie store, though shorter clips will be available through Verizon Wireless' VCast service.
As a Web browser, the Storm more closely emulates the desktop experience than the iPhone does. That's because the screen can distinguish between light touches and firm presses. A light touch can move around a cursor, while a firm press activates a link, much like moving a mouse cursor has a different effect from clicking a mouse button, said Mike Lazaridis, RIM's co-chief executive.
Verizon Wireless is the last of the four national U.S. brands to unveil a flagship touch-screen model. AT&T has the iPhone, Sprint Nextel Corp. sells the Samsung Instinct, and T-Mobile USA just announced the G1, the first phone to run Google Inc.'s software. Verizon Wireless does have other touch-screen phones in its lineup, but none that it has promoted with as much vigor as other carriers have.
Three Physicists Share Nobel Prize
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: October 7, 2008
An American and two Japanese physicists on Tuesday won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work exploring the hidden symmetries among elementary particles that are the deepest constituents of nature.
Yoichiro Nambu, 87, of the University of Chicago’s Enrico Fermi Institute, will receive half of the 10 million krona prize (about $1.4 million) awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Makoto Kobayashi, 64, of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan, and Toshihide Maskawa, 68, of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics at Kyoto University, will each receive a quarter of the prize.
Ever since Galileo, physicists have been guided in their quest for the ultimate laws of nature by the search for symmetries, or properties of nature that appear the same under different circumstances. “It’s the lamppost we search under,” said Michael Turner, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago.
One example of an obvious symmetry is a snowflake, which looks the same when you rotate it one-sixth of a turn. Another is Einstein’s theory of relativity, which says the laws of physics are the same no matter what speed. However, in the 1960s, Dr. Nambu, inspired by studies of superconductivity, suggested that some symmetries in the laws of elementary particle physics might be hidden, or “broken” in actual practice. “You have to look for symmetries even when you can’t see them,” Dr. Turner said.
The principle of symmetry breaking is now embedded in all of modern particle physics. The $8 billion Large Hadron Collider, a giant particle accelerator soon to go into operation outside Geneva, was designed largely to find a particle known as the Higgs boson, which is theorized to be responsible for breaking the symmetry between electromagnetism and the so-called weak nuclear force, imparting mass to many particles that in theory are massless.
Imagine a pencil balanced on its point on a table — one of physicists’ favorite examples. To the pencil while it is still on its point, all directions along the table are the same. But the standing pencil is unstable and will eventually fall onto the table pointing in only one direction.
Applying this notion to a puzzle in the subatomic realm, Dr. Nambu explained why a particle known as the pion, which carries the strong nuclear force that holds atomic nuclei together, was much lighter than the protons and neutrons inside it. If it were not so light, the strong force would not extend far enough to stick nuclei heavier than hydrogen together, said Daniel Friedan, a physicist at Rutgers.
The fact that the pion is light, he said, explains why there is a variety of atoms in the world. “There is a variety of atoms because there is a variety of nuclei,” Dr. Friedan wrote in an e-mail message.
In 1972, Dr. Kobayashi and Dr. Maskawa, extending work by the Italian physicist Nicola Cabibbo, showed that if there were three generations of the elementary particles called quarks, the constituents of protons and neutrons, the principle of symmetry breaking would explain a puzzling asymmetry known as CP violation.
At the time, only three kinds of quarks were known: the up and down quarks, which make up most ordinary matter, and the strange quark. In 1974, the so-called charmed quarks were discovered. The last pair, the bottom and top quarks, were discovered in 1977 and 1994, completing the three generations of two quarks each predicted by Dr. Kobayashi and Dr. Maskawa.
The CP violation — C and P stand for charge and parity, or “handedness” — was discovered in 1964 by the American physicists James W. Cronin and Val L. Fitch — a discovery that also won a Nobel Prize. Until then, physicists had assumed that exchanging positive for negative and left-handed for right-handed in the equations of elementary particles would result in the same answer.
The fact that nature operates otherwise, physicists hope, is a step toward explaining why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter, one of the questions that the Large Hadron Collider is also designed to explore.
Published: October 7, 2008
An American and two Japanese physicists on Tuesday won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work exploring the hidden symmetries among elementary particles that are the deepest constituents of nature.
Yoichiro Nambu, 87, of the University of Chicago’s Enrico Fermi Institute, will receive half of the 10 million krona prize (about $1.4 million) awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Makoto Kobayashi, 64, of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan, and Toshihide Maskawa, 68, of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics at Kyoto University, will each receive a quarter of the prize.
Ever since Galileo, physicists have been guided in their quest for the ultimate laws of nature by the search for symmetries, or properties of nature that appear the same under different circumstances. “It’s the lamppost we search under,” said Michael Turner, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago.
One example of an obvious symmetry is a snowflake, which looks the same when you rotate it one-sixth of a turn. Another is Einstein’s theory of relativity, which says the laws of physics are the same no matter what speed. However, in the 1960s, Dr. Nambu, inspired by studies of superconductivity, suggested that some symmetries in the laws of elementary particle physics might be hidden, or “broken” in actual practice. “You have to look for symmetries even when you can’t see them,” Dr. Turner said.
The principle of symmetry breaking is now embedded in all of modern particle physics. The $8 billion Large Hadron Collider, a giant particle accelerator soon to go into operation outside Geneva, was designed largely to find a particle known as the Higgs boson, which is theorized to be responsible for breaking the symmetry between electromagnetism and the so-called weak nuclear force, imparting mass to many particles that in theory are massless.
Imagine a pencil balanced on its point on a table — one of physicists’ favorite examples. To the pencil while it is still on its point, all directions along the table are the same. But the standing pencil is unstable and will eventually fall onto the table pointing in only one direction.
Applying this notion to a puzzle in the subatomic realm, Dr. Nambu explained why a particle known as the pion, which carries the strong nuclear force that holds atomic nuclei together, was much lighter than the protons and neutrons inside it. If it were not so light, the strong force would not extend far enough to stick nuclei heavier than hydrogen together, said Daniel Friedan, a physicist at Rutgers.
The fact that the pion is light, he said, explains why there is a variety of atoms in the world. “There is a variety of atoms because there is a variety of nuclei,” Dr. Friedan wrote in an e-mail message.
In 1972, Dr. Kobayashi and Dr. Maskawa, extending work by the Italian physicist Nicola Cabibbo, showed that if there were three generations of the elementary particles called quarks, the constituents of protons and neutrons, the principle of symmetry breaking would explain a puzzling asymmetry known as CP violation.
At the time, only three kinds of quarks were known: the up and down quarks, which make up most ordinary matter, and the strange quark. In 1974, the so-called charmed quarks were discovered. The last pair, the bottom and top quarks, were discovered in 1977 and 1994, completing the three generations of two quarks each predicted by Dr. Kobayashi and Dr. Maskawa.
The CP violation — C and P stand for charge and parity, or “handedness” — was discovered in 1964 by the American physicists James W. Cronin and Val L. Fitch — a discovery that also won a Nobel Prize. Until then, physicists had assumed that exchanging positive for negative and left-handed for right-handed in the equations of elementary particles would result in the same answer.
The fact that nature operates otherwise, physicists hope, is a step toward explaining why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter, one of the questions that the Large Hadron Collider is also designed to explore.
Three Chemists Win Nobel Prize
By KENNETH CHANG
Published: October 8, 2008
One Japanese and two American scientists have won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for taking the ability of some jellyfish to glow and transforming it into a ubiquitous tool of molecular biology for watching the dance of living cells and the proteins within them.
The fluorescent proteins are now routinely used for observing the growth and fate of specific cells like nerve cells damaged during Alzheimer’s disease.
The winners are Osamu Shimomura, 80, an emeritus professor at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., and Boston University Medical School; Martin Chalfie, 61, a professor of biological sciences at Columbia University; and Roger Y. Tsien, 56, a professor of pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego.
Each will receive a third of the 10 million krona prize (about $1.4 million) awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Shimomura said he received a 5 a.m. phone call informing him he was a Nobelist. “The reaction was just surprise,” he said.
Dr. Tsien was not caught completely unaware. Last week, the Thomson Reuters news service listed him among its predictions for this year’s Nobel Prize winners. “I didn’t want to put any credence in it,” Dr. Tsien said, noting that the predictions for the physics and medicine prizes this week were wrong.
Dr. Tsien (pronounced chen) added that his work was “only one little piece” amid the work of many. “It wasn’t necessarily the case they had to give it to me,” he said. “Obviously, it’s pretty nice to hear.”
Dr. Chalfie never received the phone call from Sweden. “I slept through it,” he acknowledged at a news conference at Columbia. He said he had inadvertently turned down the ringer on his telephone a couple of days ago. He woke up at 6:10 in the morning and thought the soft ring was coming from a neighboring apartment.
“I was a little bit annoyed that they weren’t answering their phone,” he said. “I then realized because it was after 6, that they must have announced the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. I decided to find out who the schnook was that won it this year. So I opened up my laptop and found out I was the schnook.”
Biologists have long observed that some sea creatures glow in the dark. In 1962, Dr. Shimomura, then a researcher at Princeton, and Frank Johnson, a Princeton biology professor, isolated a specific glowing protein in the Aequorea victoria, a jellyfish that drifts in the ocean currents off the west coast of North America.
The protein looked greenish under sunlight, yellowish under a light bulb and fluorescent green under ultraviolet light. Dr. Shimomura and Dr. Johnson called it the green protein, but now it is known as green fluorescent protein, or G.F.P. for short.
The green fluorescent protein consists of a chain of 238 amino acids bent into a beer can-like cylindrical shape, and for two and a half decades it remained a little-known biological curiosity.
Dr. Chalfie first heard about the protein at a seminar in 1988, and thought he might be able to use it in his studies of Caenorhabditis elegans, a transparent roundworm.
“It didn’t take much to realize that if I put that fluorescent protein inside this transparent animal, I would be able to see the cells that were making it,” he said. “And that’s what we set out to do.”
He thought that the fluorescent protein could be made to serve as a biological marker by splicing the gene that makes the protein into an organism’s DNA next to a gene switch or another gene.
“That serves as a lantern,” Dr. Chalfie said, and biologists would be able to see when specific genes turn on or off and where different proteins are produced.
He was not able to pursue the idea until Douglas C. Prasher, a scientist then at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, found the G.F.P. gene and shared it with Dr. Chalfie in 1992. Dr. Chalfie said that within a month his group was able to insert the gene into E. coli bacteria.
In 1994, Dr. Chalfie and his collaborators reported that they had inserted the protein into six cells of the C. elegans worm. When placed under ultraviolet light, those cells shined green, revealing their location.
For many biologists, it was a surprise that inserting the G.F.P. gene was all that needed; many had thought that other jellyfish proteins would be needed to help G.F.P. fold into its light-emitting shape.
Dr. Tsien was thinking along similar lines as Dr. Chalfie, also contacting Dr. Prasher. But for the biology experiment he wanted to conduct, he needed two colors of fluorescent proteins. Dr. Tsien started mutating the G.F.P gene and looking at the resulting proteins. Some, he found, glowed blue instead of green.
“That was the first evidence you could change the color,” Dr. Tsien said.
Other scientists have since expanded the palette, enlisting similar proteins from corals to produce fluorescent reds. The multiple colors allow biologists to track different processes simultaneously. In one experiment, the brain of a mouse was transformed into a kaleidoscope of color by tagging different nerve cells with different fluorescent proteins.
The protein has even entered the world of art. In 2000, Eduardo Kac, an artist, displayed a green glowing rabbit named Alba, which he had commissioned a French laboratory to modify genetically with the G.F.P gene.
Scientists have also made green-glowing pigs and zebra fish, which they hope will aid research on stem cells and cancer.
Published: October 8, 2008
One Japanese and two American scientists have won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for taking the ability of some jellyfish to glow and transforming it into a ubiquitous tool of molecular biology for watching the dance of living cells and the proteins within them.
The fluorescent proteins are now routinely used for observing the growth and fate of specific cells like nerve cells damaged during Alzheimer’s disease.
The winners are Osamu Shimomura, 80, an emeritus professor at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., and Boston University Medical School; Martin Chalfie, 61, a professor of biological sciences at Columbia University; and Roger Y. Tsien, 56, a professor of pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego.
Each will receive a third of the 10 million krona prize (about $1.4 million) awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Shimomura said he received a 5 a.m. phone call informing him he was a Nobelist. “The reaction was just surprise,” he said.
Dr. Tsien was not caught completely unaware. Last week, the Thomson Reuters news service listed him among its predictions for this year’s Nobel Prize winners. “I didn’t want to put any credence in it,” Dr. Tsien said, noting that the predictions for the physics and medicine prizes this week were wrong.
Dr. Tsien (pronounced chen) added that his work was “only one little piece” amid the work of many. “It wasn’t necessarily the case they had to give it to me,” he said. “Obviously, it’s pretty nice to hear.”
Dr. Chalfie never received the phone call from Sweden. “I slept through it,” he acknowledged at a news conference at Columbia. He said he had inadvertently turned down the ringer on his telephone a couple of days ago. He woke up at 6:10 in the morning and thought the soft ring was coming from a neighboring apartment.
“I was a little bit annoyed that they weren’t answering their phone,” he said. “I then realized because it was after 6, that they must have announced the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. I decided to find out who the schnook was that won it this year. So I opened up my laptop and found out I was the schnook.”
Biologists have long observed that some sea creatures glow in the dark. In 1962, Dr. Shimomura, then a researcher at Princeton, and Frank Johnson, a Princeton biology professor, isolated a specific glowing protein in the Aequorea victoria, a jellyfish that drifts in the ocean currents off the west coast of North America.
The protein looked greenish under sunlight, yellowish under a light bulb and fluorescent green under ultraviolet light. Dr. Shimomura and Dr. Johnson called it the green protein, but now it is known as green fluorescent protein, or G.F.P. for short.
The green fluorescent protein consists of a chain of 238 amino acids bent into a beer can-like cylindrical shape, and for two and a half decades it remained a little-known biological curiosity.
Dr. Chalfie first heard about the protein at a seminar in 1988, and thought he might be able to use it in his studies of Caenorhabditis elegans, a transparent roundworm.
“It didn’t take much to realize that if I put that fluorescent protein inside this transparent animal, I would be able to see the cells that were making it,” he said. “And that’s what we set out to do.”
He thought that the fluorescent protein could be made to serve as a biological marker by splicing the gene that makes the protein into an organism’s DNA next to a gene switch or another gene.
“That serves as a lantern,” Dr. Chalfie said, and biologists would be able to see when specific genes turn on or off and where different proteins are produced.
He was not able to pursue the idea until Douglas C. Prasher, a scientist then at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, found the G.F.P. gene and shared it with Dr. Chalfie in 1992. Dr. Chalfie said that within a month his group was able to insert the gene into E. coli bacteria.
In 1994, Dr. Chalfie and his collaborators reported that they had inserted the protein into six cells of the C. elegans worm. When placed under ultraviolet light, those cells shined green, revealing their location.
For many biologists, it was a surprise that inserting the G.F.P. gene was all that needed; many had thought that other jellyfish proteins would be needed to help G.F.P. fold into its light-emitting shape.
Dr. Tsien was thinking along similar lines as Dr. Chalfie, also contacting Dr. Prasher. But for the biology experiment he wanted to conduct, he needed two colors of fluorescent proteins. Dr. Tsien started mutating the G.F.P gene and looking at the resulting proteins. Some, he found, glowed blue instead of green.
“That was the first evidence you could change the color,” Dr. Tsien said.
Other scientists have since expanded the palette, enlisting similar proteins from corals to produce fluorescent reds. The multiple colors allow biologists to track different processes simultaneously. In one experiment, the brain of a mouse was transformed into a kaleidoscope of color by tagging different nerve cells with different fluorescent proteins.
The protein has even entered the world of art. In 2000, Eduardo Kac, an artist, displayed a green glowing rabbit named Alba, which he had commissioned a French laboratory to modify genetically with the G.F.P gene.
Scientists have also made green-glowing pigs and zebra fish, which they hope will aid research on stem cells and cancer.
Jumat, 20 Juni 2008
Has Microsoft Sent Yahoo into a Death Spiral?
In trying to buy Yahoo, Microsoft had a clear goal: To be No. 2 to Google in search and advertising. If things keep going the way they are heading, it may well achieve that goal without spending the $50 billion Yahoo would have cost.
Today’s news is that three more of Yahoo’s best executives are leaving the company: Qi Lu, Brad Garlinghouse and Vish Makhijani. That follows the departure of two executive vice presidents, Jeff Weiner and Usama Fayyad.
All this leaves particular disarray in the half of Yahoo that builds services for users. Mr. Weiner headed that area. Two of its key groups are search, run by Mr. Makhijani, and e-mail and other communications products, run by Mr. Garlinghouse.
The other half of Yahoo serves advertisers and publishers. Its leader, Hilary Schneider, is expected to take some of Mr. Weiner’s responsibility. In other words: even more disruptive change.
This kind of instability, which no doubt will cause even more organizational turmoil, will further slow down Yahoo just when it desperately needs to show that it can still build products that people love to use.
Yahoo’s decision to have Google sell some of its search advertising while continuing to try to build its own ad systems will bring in short-term cash but it sows doubt about its long-term commitment inside and outside the company.
Potential customers are asking questions about Yahoo’s future. I recently met with a large publisher who was in the process of evaluating whether to renew a contract with Google’s DoubleClick unit to handle its ad serving. The company was looking at bids from Yahoo and Microsoft, but the executive told me that the company is wary of Yahoo because it is not sure Yahoo will be around for the duration of the contract.
If you had a hot startup, would you want to sell to Yahoo now? If you were a talented engineer would you want to work there? I suspect in either case, you would want to know more about what you were getting yourself into.
None of this needs to be fatal for Yahoo. At some point Chief Executive Jerry Yang, or more likely a new leader, can stabilize the management team and the strategy and get going. But the longer the company keeps stumbling and shedding good people, the more of an opportunity is created for its rivals, most notably Microsoft.
To be clear, Microsoft didn’t create Yahoo’s malaise. But whatever fragile stability that Yahoo may have had has been entirely shattered by the double whammy of Microsoft’s initial offer and then its decision to pull away just when Yahoo had decided to capitulate.
There is no guarantee all this will accrue to Microsoft’s benefit. Users and advertisers are as likely to move to Google as to Windows Live, MSN and Microsoft’s aQuantive advertising unit.
But whatever Microsoft’s prospects were at the beginning of this year, they are better now, precisely because Yahoo’s are much, much worse.
The e-Book Test: Do Electronic Versions Deter Piracy?
Well! My goodness!
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how some of the computer books I’ve written wound up getting widely pirated online after I sent electronic PDF versions to readers who claimed to be blind.
That online column set off quite a firestorm. Readers, bloggers and pundits across the spectrum chimed in. Most of them painted me as a tenth-century village idiot.
But upon closer inspection, what looks like universal condemnation turns out to be a cacophony of conflicting lines of reasoning.
Some of you say, “You should GIVE AWAY your books as e-books. The free copies will give more people a sample of your work, and they’ll go buy the print edition, thereby boosting sales.”
Some of you say, “No, you should SELL your books as e-books. Right now, the only reason people are pirating your books is that they have no legitimate way to buy electronic versions.”
Some of you say, “Yes, releasing your books in electronic form will kill your income, but you’ll make it up in other ways, like speaking fees.” (I’m not so sure. See this well-argued post: http://tinyurl.com/3gxn46)
And some of you even say, “Yes, releasing your books in electronic form will kill your royalty income. But so what? You never deserved royalties to begin with. Authors should get paid a flat fee, and that’s it.”
Many of you pointed out experiments by Cory Doctorow and Baen.com. They have each experimented with giving away free electronic copies of their books — and both claim to have seen spikes in their print-edition sales as a result.
That’s no proof that I’d see the same effect, though, for two reasons.
First, there’s the “small band/big band” argument: unknown bands, like little-known authors and publishers, love free electronic online distribution, because it exposes them to new potential fans.
But established, brand-name bands see file swapping as eating into their CD sales. Similarly, established book brands might legitimately worry that free PDF downloads will eat into book sales.
There’s a big difference in the type of book, too. The Doctorow and Baen.com experiments involve science-fiction novels — and there’s no particular reason you’d want to read those on a computer screen. So a free PDF copy might well convince you to buy the print edition.
A how-to computer book, though, is another story. You might actually prefer an electronic version, so you can keep it on the screen side by side with the software you’re learning about. So there’s no incentive for you to buy the dead-tree version.
What finally brought me around, though, was an e-mail from Kevin Kelly, a founding editor of Wired:
“David, my guess is that rather than seeing an immediate, or even delayed dip in your books sales, that the pirated PDF either made no difference to your sales, or it actually elevated them. Just as ‘free’ radio drives CD and album sales.
“What is the evidence for your heartbreak? What actually happened to your sales after the PDF went wild?
“If you can’t retrieve the actual data, then I challenge you to complete the experiment. Take one of your books you have historical sales data for, release a viral PDF version and then measure what happens. Then either celebrate or curse the results — but at least it will be based on evidence.
“My guess is that if you take the challenge to release one of your books in free PDF form, that even by using your column or blog as a platform to announce it, that (a) it won’t spread or duplicate as far as you might first imagine, and (b) it will elevate or at least not depress your sales.
“I am even willing to bet on it.”
Well, this challenge is too thought-provoking (and too civilly presented) to ignore. So here goes:
Many publishers have been more comfortable offering electronic versions of books than I am. For example, my own publisher, O’Reilly, is about to offer a bunch of its bestsellers for sale on the Amazon Kindle.
Early next month, the company will also start selling electronic versions of certain books with no copy protection. For a single price (cheaper than the printed-book price), the package will include the book in three formats: PDF, Mobipub (compatible with the Amazon Kindle), and Epub (soon to be compatible with the Sony Reader).
Anyway, I’ve agreed to try an experiment involving one of my books (”Windows Vista: The Missing Manual”): to offer it as part of that buy-the-electronic-versions program.
O’Reilly is also offering five other books in these formats, including Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Third Edition and Open Sources 2.0. The company plans to announce other titles in July.
I’m encouraging O’Reilly to adopt some antipiracy steps, like adding a footer at the bottom of each page that says, “This edition specially prepared for bgates@microsoft.com” (or whatever your e-mail address is). That might deter people from posting their copies online for all to download.
This is not, of course, quite what Kevin Kelly is proposing; I’m not offering the book for free. But at least I’m defusing the argument that says, “The only reason people are pirating your books is that you’re not offering e-versions for legitimate sale.”
Now, all kinds of factors affect a book’s sales over time: the seasons, the economy, the popularity of the topic, the age of the book and so on. Even my mentioning this experiment here may skew the results. As I wrote originally, there’s no way to conduct a perfect sales-comparison without creating a parallel universe. So I’m not sure how conclusive the results will be.
Even so, I’ll report back to you in a few months. This experiment could turn out to be a terrible financial mistake, a brilliant windfall or a dud with no discernible effect one way or another.
But one thing’s for sure: it’ll be an interesting ride.
White Patches Found in Mars Trench Are Ice, Scientists Say
After a decade of shouting, “Follow the water!” in its exploration of Mars, NASA can finally say that one of its spacecraft has reached out, touched water ice and scooped it up.
Now, scientists will be able to tackle the main question they hope to answer: Did the ice ever melt and turn Mars into a habitable place?
In a photograph released Thursday evening of a trench that the Phoenix Mars lander has dug into the Martian soil, some white patches that were seen earlier in the week have shrunk, and eight small chunks have disappeared. Until now, scientists were not sure if the white material was ice or some kind of salt.
When exposed to air, water ice can change into water vapor, a process known as sublimation. Salt, on the other hand, is not capable of such a vanishing act.
“It must be ice,” said Dr. Peter H. Smith of the University of Arizona, the mission’s principal investigator. “The whole science team thinks this. I think we feel this is definite proof that these are little chunks of icy material.”
Water ice on the surface of Mars is not a new discovery. Scientists have known that the permanent ice cap at Mars’s north pole is made of ice. In 2002, measurements by the orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft found evidence for vastly larger quantities of ice not far beneath the surface.
In light of the Odyssey findings, the Phoenix mission was designed to land in the northern arctic plains and dig trenches in the soil into the ice layer, believed to be a few inches under the surface. Still, to actually see the ice was “tremendously exciting,” Dr. Smith said. “One of the biggest fears I’ve had on the mission is that we’d dig and dig and never find anything.”
Liquid water transforms minerals, so impurities in the ice could tell much about the climate history. While Mars is too cold for liquid water, in the past, if its axis occasionally tipped over, the polar regions might have warmed above freezing during the summer.
Liquid water is an essential ingredient for life, and this area may have been, at least intermittently, a habitable environment in Mars’s geologically recent past, in the past 10 million years or so.
One of the experiments on the Phoenix consists of tiny ovens to heat samples of the soil and analyze the vapors released. Data from the first run of the experiment, conducted over the past week, is to be downloaded from the spacecraft on Friday.
The Phoenix dug the trench on Sunday, dislodging the eight chunks, and it took another photograph of the trench on Thursday.
Meanwhile, digging in a different trench on Thursday, the scoop at the end of the Phoenix’s robotic arm hit a hard surface — possibly a hard icy layer — that did not yield after three efforts. The hard layer is at the same depth as the white material in the first trench.
The robotic arm has a scraper and, if necessary, a small drill to break off pieces of the hard material for analysis in one of the ovens, which would determine the chemical composition.
The eventful findings on Thursday follow a day when no science work was performed, because of a glitch with the Phoenix’s computer software.
On Tuesday, the spacecraft’s computer memory filled up with thousands of copies of housekeeping data, which prevented science data like photographs from being saved overnight, and the photographs were lost. Engineers spent Wednesday diagnosing the problem.
Jumat, 13 Juni 2008
How Much Radiation Does Your Phone Emit?
Cellphones emit varying levels of radiation, depending on make and model. (Lisa Poole/Associated Press)The technology news site CNET has compiled two interesting lists showing which cellphones give off the most and the least radiation.
In publishing the information, CNET editors note the data aren’t meant to imply that cellphone radiation poses a risk, nor is it meant to say that the phones are safe. As I recently reported in my Well column last week, the data on cellphone safety is mixed, although a few recent international studies have suggested a link with three types of brain tumors. The Food and Drug Administration also says there’s not enough information to determine conclusively whether cellphones are safe or unsafe.
The charts focus on the specific absorption rate, or SAR, of a cellphone, which is a way of measuring the quantity of radio frequency energy that is absorbed by the body, according to CNET.
For a phone to pass F.C.C. certification, that phone’s maximum SAR level must be less than 1.6 W/kg (watts per kilogram). In Europe, the level is capped at 2 W/kg, while Canada allows a maximum of 1.6 W/kg. The SAR level listed in our charts represents the highest SAR level with the phone next to the ear as tested by the F.C.C. Keep in mind that it is possible for the SAR level to vary between different transmission bands and that different testing bodies can obtain different results. Also, it’s possible for results to vary between different editions of the same phone (such as a handset that’s offered by multiple carriers).
Four Motorola phones top the list, with the V195s putting out the maximum 1.6 W/kg. The popular BlackBerry Curve 8330 rounds out the No. 5 spot. To see the full top 10 list, click here.
The list of lowest-radiation cellphones includes the LG KG800 and the Motorola Razr V3x, which put out 0.135 W/kg and 0.14 W/kg, respectively. To see all the lowest radiation phones, click here.
If you don’t see your phone on the list, the site includes lists of cellphones by brand name. My iPhone was listed under “other” brands, but I was interested to learn that its SAR number is 0.974.
New iPhone may thwart hackers
NEW YORK - The new iPhone and the way it will be sold could shut down a small industry that arose to make the first version of the iconic phone available around the world.
The original iPhone, launched last June, was initially available only in the United States and only for use on AT&T's network. Soon, however, hackers found a way to "unlock" the phone to make it usable on other networks, including abroad.
Apple showcased a new iPhone Monday for use on 3G, or third-generation, data networks. It will stem the flow of unlocked phones in two ways.
First, the phone will be sold in more countries. Apple added five countries beyond the United States for the first phone, but the second one will go on sale in 22 countries on July 11. Apple has said it will add more countries rapidly and reach 70 by year-end.
Second, Apple is abandoning the unusual arrangement under which the iPhone was being sold. Customers could buy the phones from a carrier or from Apple without activating them on a service plan, and that meant customers could go home and unlock the phones - and never sign up with AT&T.
The new phone will be subsidized by carriers, which accounts for its lower price: $199 for the 8-gigabyte model, down from $399. This brings the phone's marketing in line with standard industry practices.
The carriers plan to make back what they spend on the subsidy through service fees, which means they very likely will require two-year service contracts from everyone who buys the phone. AT&T said buyers will have to activate service before leaving the store with an iPhone.
"It's looking pretty bleak for unlockers," said John McLaughlin, founder of Uniquephones.com, a New York company that sells unlock codes for cellphones. After being warned away by AT&T's lawyers, it doesn't help to unlock iPhones. Unlocking software is available free online, though.
Freeit4less, a company in Syracuse, Utah, has posted prices on its website for unlocked 3G phones at $100 above store prices, but chief executive Kyle Jourdan said the company is not accepting any pre-orders, given uncertainty surrounding the activation requirement.
"We're just crossing our fingers and hoping for the best," Jourdan wrote in an e-mail. He speculated that Apple or AT&T may sell unsubsidized phones, which would leave an opening for his company.
Federal law allows consumers to unlock their own phones. But selling someone the means to unlock a phone may be illegal. At least one US carrier has won civil cases, not involving iPhones, against unlocking businesses.
One major incentive for unlocking remains, especially for Europeans. Those who travel to other countries with unlocked phones can use local prepaid service plans, rather than paying exorbitant international roaming fees to their home carriers.
Upstaging plasma TVs?
By Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff / June 12, 2008
The new XEL-1 television from Sony Corp. is too small and too expensive. So why am I thrilled with it? Because the XEL-1, with its 11-inch screen and $2,500 price tag, provides an enticing glimpse into the future of television. It's the harbinger of a new technology that makes today's flat panel sets look like your grandparents' 27-inch Magnavox.
The XEL-1 was introduced last October in Japan, and came to the United States in January. It's the first consumer TV based on an enticing technology called OLED - organic light-emitting diodes. Sony and other major TV makers believe OLED is destined to become the dominant flat-panel TV type, rendering today's plasma and liquid crystal display sets obsolete.
Plasma TVs are lined with thousands of gas-filled chambers that radiate ultraviolet light when zapped with electricity. Colored filters mounted over these chambers create color images on screen. LCDs use arrays of crystals that snap open and shut like venetian blinds. A backlight mounted behind the array shines through the open crystals, lighting up a set of colored filters in front to produce a picture.
But OLED uses organic chemicals that glow when exposed to an electrical current. The concept was developed at Eastman Kodak Co. in the 1980s. OLEDs have been used mostly in cellphone displays. They use a lot less power than LCDs, because they don't need a backlight; the chemicals themselves light up when the power is on. In addition, OLED chemicals can be painted onto thin, flexible materials, like sheets of plastic. Sony last year made a prototype flexible OLED video screen that's 2.5 inches wide, and a third of a millimeter thick. It hopes someday to scale up the technology to the size of a living room wall. Sony and other TV makers are also working to streamline OLED's complex manufacturing process, eventually driving down the price to Wal-Mart levels.
For now, OLED is suited only for consumers with thick wallets and excellent eyesight. The screen is too small for comfortable viewing unless you're seated just a couple of feet away. But sit close, and you'll relish the set's brilliant colors and sharp contrast. LCDs are famously ill-suited for displaying black images; illumination from the backlight tends to leak around the closed pixels. But with OLED, black pixels really are black, and stand out starkly from the surrounding colors. In all, the XEL-1 delivers as good a video image as I've seen on a TV screen.
It's not a true high-definition set, however - because of the screen's size, it has only about one-fourth the resolution of today's top HDTVs. I didn't care. The XEL-1 brought out the best in both standard and high-definition digital channels.
Besides, small can be beautiful. Turn the set edge-on, and except for its electronic control box and mounting bezel, the XEL-1 almost disappears - it's less than an eighth of an inch thick. Add in the frame that supports it, and you're looking at a video screen about a quarter-inch deep. High-end plasma and LCD sets are a couple of inches deep these days.
But the XEL-1 is relatively fragile. OLED screens tend to fade much faster than other kinds. A high-end LCD or plasma set should provide 50,000 to 60,000 hours of normal use, or up to 20 years. Sony says the XEL-1 is good for just 30,000 hours, or more than a decade. The video technology research firm DisplaySearch said last month that its own tests indicate a much shorter life span of around five years. Sony has disputed the claim.
We'll let them fight it out. Anybody who can throw down $2,500 for the XEL-1 won't mind investing in a new OLED set a few years from now. With any luck, the sets will be bigger, more durable, and cheaper by then, and ready for the rest of us.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
Data Center Environment Basics
The complexity of a data center environment seems to grow with every new batch of appliances and “cutting-edge” technology, but there are some basics that seem to be a constant, no matter how configurations change. Here are the five things to keep in mind when making the most of your environment.
You’re Only As Good As Your Power Allows Think of it as a high school math problem: If data center x has y amount of power, how many machines can it run if each machine requires z amount of electricity? For data center managers, though, this question can be a daily challenge, particularly if higher management is requesting more storage, more bandwidth, and faster processing speed. The answer to those types of mandates is usually bringing in additional equipment or buying efficient machines such as blade servers.
But electricity is not limitless, and even more importantly, each data center has to have a backup plan if power is knocked out because of a storm or other outage event. Many have generators that can kick in and prevent data loss, but if a center is relying on a huge amount of power coming in, it may not have enough generators to compensate. Look at your setup, experts note, and consider strategies such as offsite data storage and placing mission-critical equipment in its own area that a generator can power up quickly.
HVAC Requires Education, Not Just Awareness In conjunction with power issues, cooling is another major area of data center environmental maintenance that’s crucial for efficiency and uptime, says Giovanni Coglitore, chief technology officer at Rackable Systems (www.rackable.com). He believes a wave of innovation is imminent because data centers are demanding more and more cooling.
In the meantime, get cozy with an HVAC system by taking a course or doing some reading on how these systems work. Also, talk with whomever maintains the center’s system, which is usually building maintenance. Knowing how often filters are changed, whether there’s a plan for increasing efficiency in the warmer months, or whether construction in other parts of the building will affect cooling levels are all pieces of data that are far better to learn in advance.
Become A Monitoring Maniac Thanks to a very competitive landscape in data center environmental controls, a number of monitoring tools are available, and many are often part of other applications. Look for tools that issue alerts to multiple people in multiple formats--often, alerts can be sent to email and cell phones simultaneously--and check the log reports that are created to make sure that there are no spikes that went unnoticed.
Management Is A Group Effort Making sure that tasks such as monitoring and cooling tweaks are being managed can be daunting. At most SMEs, the IT staff is too busy putting out fires to develop these types of proactive strategies and checklists, but experts note that they’re vital for making sure environments are running properly.
One boon may be depending on more automated processes that deliver results of environmental tests right to an inbox. Also, doing “fire drills” for recovery processes, such as what would happen if the power went out, is vital, notes Jim Reinert, senior director of data recovery service Ontrack Data Recovery (www.ontrackdatarecovery.com). He says, “The time to find out when something isn’t working is when everyone needs it to be back up.”
Data center managers can make these tasks more meaningful if each staff member is responsible for certain roles. For example, one person might be in charge of HVAC issues, while another takes on recycling.
Every IT Department Has To Think About Growth Even if you’ve just landed in the data center, it’s never too early to think about increasing efficiency through power, cooling, monitoring, and better management tactics because these not only decrease the chances of downtime but also put the center in a better position for growth.
And growth is inevitable, notes Ken Brill, executive director of the Uptime Institute. In a recent study, the organization found that nearly every data center manager interviewed expected to expand capabilities and equipment within the next 30 months. With that level of growth will also come a bigger bite of the budget, he adds.
“Facility costs used to be 1 or 2% of operating costs,” says Brill. “Right now, they’re about 5%, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see it go much higher in the next few years, maybe even as high as 30%.”
In other words, plan for the worst of budget crunches, and the center won’t be surprised down the road, when environmental costs might soar. “Everyone needs to create more long-range thinking,” Brill says. “Develop new muscles in terms of planning.”
by Elizabeth Millard
Implementing Power Distribution
Lower Electricity Costs & Increase Data Center Efficiency
Managing the power requirements of a data center is one of the most critical tasks for any IT department, and its importance will only increase. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, data centers’ power consumption doubled from 2002 to 2006 and is expected to double again from 2006 to 2011. The EPA also reported data centers and servers in the U.S. consumed 61 billion kilowatt-hours of power in 2006. This represents 1.5% of all electricity use in the U.S., with costs totaling $4.5 billion. On a more immediate level, energy prices are not likely to go down anytime soon, while more watts of electricity will be required to accommodate ever burgeoning network traffic, storage, and other demands on data center equipment.
“Electricity costs are skyrocketing, which is a big deal for data centers. If your home electricity bills go up from $45 a month to $60 a month, then it is no big deal since you just spend a few extra bucks,” Joe Skorjanec, technology manager for Eaton (714/540-4229; www.eaton.com), says. “But when you have several hundred thousand dollars in electricity bills, then the magnitude is so much larger. Gaining 6% in efficiency may seem like a small percentage, but it is not when you consider the total costs saved that come with investing in more efficient equipment.”
Given that power will increasingly represent one of the costliest components of a data center, it is in your interest to take a more proactive approach when it comes to how a data center consumes electricity by implementing a solid power distribution plan.
Expert Reliance
Power measures, quad feeds, and other terms that are part of an electrician’s lexicon are usually not on the tip of the tongue of the average IT admin. So, when it comes to laying the groundwork for a data center’s electric infrastructure, not to mention implementing a power distribution system, a qualified electrical engineer with a bachelor’s of science degree in tow is usually the best person for the job.
“Most data centers will use a third party with a staff of electrical engineers to plan the infrastructure,” Skorjanec says. “Those that plan and do the building of the electric infrastructure are usually degreed engineers.”
But even with an electrical engineer’s help and input, admins still need to have a solid understanding of how power distribution works and how to use it to lower costs and boost efficiency. It is also necessary to work closely with the third party that manages the construction of the infrastructure before beginning to monitor and maintain the power distribution system once it is implemented.
“It really takes a combined effort because you have the IT manager who has the knowledge of the equipment and what he wants the system to do,” Skorjanec says. “I have seen some cases where they lay the electrical infrastructure, and when [the admins] go to plug the equipment in, there is a disconnect because they can’t even plug in the equipment correctly.”
Much of the work with an engineer will also take place at the very beginning stages of the project, during what Michael Petrino, vice president of PTS Data Center Solutions (www.ptsdcs.com), describes as the planning, predesign, and engineering phases.
“Put simply, a lot of work and steps are completed before the final power equipment order is cast in stone,” Petrino says.
Smarter Power Consumption
Calculating the true amount of power the data center requires and how the power is delivered represent the main variables to take into consideration. As an example, careful planning can limit the amount of power distribution-related equipment that needs to be implemented.
“If [you] plan properly, then only two in-feeds (A and B) need to be run to the cabinet to power all of the devices,” Calvin Nicholson, director of product marketing for Server Technology (775/284-2000; www.servertech.com). “This saves on poles at the breaker, the cost of running more whips or additional whips, less cables to block the airflow, etc.”
Overall, there is a direct correlation between the power and cooling needs of a data center environment, Petrino says. “Many of the criteria need to be considered in conjunction with each other in a coordinated plan to have predictable, measurable results,” Petrino says. “Handling power and cooling decisions separately will deliver less-than-optimal results.”
The Technology Factor
The adoption of new technologies for power management in the data center has often lagged the overall explosion of IT applications in the workplace. Monitoring power distribution is an example of an important, yet often underutilized technology that can help improve the efficiency of your data center’s electricity consumption.
“We are providing new technologies that allow the user to monitor their power consumption from the outlet, to the device, to the application, to the rack, and even over multiple racks. You cannot improve on something you cannot measure, and many of the ‘green’ efficiency calculations require the user to know the load right at the device,” Nicholson says. “We feel that this is the direction the industry is taking and is not just a trend. The carbon footprint of the [data center] market is larger than the airline industry, and since a [data center] can use as much power and water as a small town, this is not going unnoticed.”
Monitoring products at the very least should have a local meter that offers ampere, voltage, and kilowatt information through a graphical interface, Nicholson says. Monitoring environmental information, such as temperature and humidity levels, requires a power distribution unit that also offers email alerts, SNMP, and other features.
Future Proofing
Assessing your power distribution requirements in the near- and long-term, unfortunately, is about as easy as it is to predict future business cycles. It is all the more difficult to anticipate the future because power demands are growing so rapidly, Nicholson says.
“The utility might not even be able to deliver the amount of power required as the [data center’s] demand changes,” Nicholson says. “Also, just because you can power it does not mean you have the ability to cool it, so this must be taken into account.”
Still, admins should attempt to look ahead and prepare for upcoming power distribution needs, regardless of the challenges in doing so. "It is always good to plan for future expansion. Most of the server suppliers offer power calculators on their Web sites so you can get a good idea of the amount of power required now and provide additional or excess power,” Nicholson says. “But overall, this is a very hard thing to predict.”
by Bruce Gain
Managing the power requirements of a data center is one of the most critical tasks for any IT department, and its importance will only increase. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, data centers’ power consumption doubled from 2002 to 2006 and is expected to double again from 2006 to 2011. The EPA also reported data centers and servers in the U.S. consumed 61 billion kilowatt-hours of power in 2006. This represents 1.5% of all electricity use in the U.S., with costs totaling $4.5 billion. On a more immediate level, energy prices are not likely to go down anytime soon, while more watts of electricity will be required to accommodate ever burgeoning network traffic, storage, and other demands on data center equipment.
“Electricity costs are skyrocketing, which is a big deal for data centers. If your home electricity bills go up from $45 a month to $60 a month, then it is no big deal since you just spend a few extra bucks,” Joe Skorjanec, technology manager for Eaton (714/540-4229; www.eaton.com), says. “But when you have several hundred thousand dollars in electricity bills, then the magnitude is so much larger. Gaining 6% in efficiency may seem like a small percentage, but it is not when you consider the total costs saved that come with investing in more efficient equipment.”
Given that power will increasingly represent one of the costliest components of a data center, it is in your interest to take a more proactive approach when it comes to how a data center consumes electricity by implementing a solid power distribution plan.
Expert Reliance Power measures, quad feeds, and other terms that are part of an electrician’s lexicon are usually not on the tip of the tongue of the average IT admin. So, when it comes to laying the groundwork for a data center’s electric infrastructure, not to mention implementing a power distribution system, a qualified electrical engineer with a bachelor’s of science degree in tow is usually the best person for the job.
“Most data centers will use a third party with a staff of electrical engineers to plan the infrastructure,” Skorjanec says. “Those that plan and do the building of the electric infrastructure are usually degreed engineers.”
But even with an electrical engineer’s help and input, admins still need to have a solid understanding of how power distribution works and how to use it to lower costs and boost efficiency. It is also necessary to work closely with the third party that manages the construction of the infrastructure before beginning to monitor and maintain the power distribution system once it is implemented.
“It really takes a combined effort because you have the IT manager who has the knowledge of the equipment and what he wants the system to do,” Skorjanec says. “I have seen some cases where they lay the electrical infrastructure, and when [the admins] go to plug the equipment in, there is a disconnect because they can’t even plug in the equipment correctly.”
Much of the work with an engineer will also take place at the very beginning stages of the project, during what Michael Petrino, vice president of PTS Data Center Solutions (www.ptsdcs.com), describes as the planning, predesign, and engineering phases.
“Put simply, a lot of work and steps are completed before the final power equipment order is cast in stone,” Petrino says.
Smarter Power Consumption Calculating the true amount of power the data center requires and how the power is delivered represent the main variables to take into consideration. As an example, careful planning can limit the amount of power distribution-related equipment that needs to be implemented.
“If [you] plan properly, then only two in-feeds (A and B) need to be run to the cabinet to power all of the devices,” Calvin Nicholson, director of product marketing for Server Technology (775/284-2000; www.servertech.com). “This saves on poles at the breaker, the cost of running more whips or additional whips, less cables to block the airflow, etc.”
Overall, there is a direct correlation between the power and cooling needs of a data center environment, Petrino says. “Many of the criteria need to be considered in conjunction with each other in a coordinated plan to have predictable, measurable results,” Petrino says. “Handling power and cooling decisions separately will deliver less-than-optimal results.”
The Technology Factor The adoption of new technologies for power management in the data center has often lagged the overall explosion of IT applications in the workplace. Monitoring power distribution is an example of an important, yet often underutilized technology that can help improve the efficiency of your data center’s electricity consumption.
“We are providing new technologies that allow the user to monitor their power consumption from the outlet, to the device, to the application, to the rack, and even over multiple racks. You cannot improve on something you cannot measure, and many of the ‘green’ efficiency calculations require the user to know the load right at the device,” Nicholson says. “We feel that this is the direction the industry is taking and is not just a trend. The carbon footprint of the [data center] market is larger than the airline industry, and since a [data center] can use as much power and water as a small town, this is not going unnoticed.”
Monitoring products at the very least should have a local meter that offers ampere, voltage, and kilowatt information through a graphical interface, Nicholson says. Monitoring environmental information, such as temperature and humidity levels, requires a power distribution unit that also offers email alerts, SNMP, and other features.
Future Proofing Assessing your power distribution requirements in the near- and long-term, unfortunately, is about as easy as it is to predict future business cycles. It is all the more difficult to anticipate the future because power demands are growing so rapidly, Nicholson says.
“The utility might not even be able to deliver the amount of power required as the [data center’s] demand changes,” Nicholson says. “Also, just because you can power it does not mean you have the ability to cool it, so this must be taken into account.”
Still, admins should attempt to look ahead and prepare for upcoming power distribution needs, regardless of the challenges in doing so. "It is always good to plan for future expansion. Most of the server suppliers offer power calculators on their Web sites so you can get a good idea of the amount of power required now and provide additional or excess power,” Nicholson says. “But overall, this is a very hard thing to predict.”
by Bruce Gain
Sabtu, 07 Juni 2008
In Turnabout, Antitrust Unit Looks at Intel
WASHINGTON — A global legal battle between the two largest makers of computer processors took an abrupt turn this week when the Federal Trade Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation of the Intel Corporation.
For years, Advanced Micro Devices, a smaller rival of Intel, has been scouring the world in search of regulators in Europe, Asia and the United States who would agree to prosecute Intel for what A.M.D. maintains are anticompetitive pricing practices.
The worldwide campaign — over a market that generates more than $225 billion in global sales each year — has cost both companies tens of millions of dollars in legal and public relations expenses. A.M.D. has met with considerable success in Europe, Japan and Korea.
In the United States, however, the quest had not gained much ground among state authorities or federal regulators appointed by President Bush, who have taken a less aggressive antitrust approach than their foreign counterparts.
But on Friday the federal approach toward the case began to change — and those changes could accelerate depending on the antitrust stance of the next administration and its regulatory appointees.
The investigation, into accusations that Intel’s pricing is intended to maintain a near monopoly on the microprocessor market, was authorized by William E. Kovacic, the new chairman of the trade commission, and has the support of the agency’s other commissioners, officials said.
It reversed a decision by his predecessor, Deborah P. Majoras, who had been blocking the formal inquiry for many months, frustrating other senior commission officials and some lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Ms. Majoras, a former senior official in the antitrust division at the Justice Department, where she was an architect of the Bush administration’s antitrust settlement with Microsoft in 2001, left the commission two months ago, and the seat remains vacant.
Since it will almost certainly be many months before the commission decides whether to make a case against Intel, as European and Asian regulators have already done, the investigation could mark an important early test for the next administration on antitrust policy.
Among the states, only the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, has publicly signaled his intention to review the matter. Other states have declined to take action. When the attorney general of California, Jerry Brown, rejected A.M.D.’s complaint this year, he said in The San Francisco Chronicle that he was “not barking at every truck that comes down the street.”
A.M.D. has accused Intel of systematically giving its customers — the world’s leading personal computer makers — large discounts, at times below Intel’s own manufacturing costs, in exchange for commitments not to do business with competitors. Intel has responded that its discounts were legitimate incentives, not offered below cost, and benefiting customers who can buy computers at lower prices.
Intel has also maintained that A.M.D. tried to make up in the courts for its failures in the marketplace.
While Intel has denied the allegations, A.M.D. executives are hoping the case will present an easy opportunity for the next administration to take a noticeably more aggressive approach to competition issues. Technically independent of the White House, the trade commission is led by appointees of the president.
D. Bruce Sewell, Intel’s senior vice president and general counsel, said that because American and foreign antitrust law are fundamentally different, the company is confident of vindication, regardless of the leadership of the Federal Trade Commission next year, when the new president can fill the vacant seat and name its own chairman.
Still, Intel has been planning to increase the size of its Washington operations, a move that could be helpful both for the antitrust case and a variety of other issues before Congress and the regulators that are important to the company.
The official signs of the heightened scrutiny by the commission came in recent days when Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, and several of the world’s largest personal computer makers that buy semiconductors from the two companies began to receive subpoenas from the agency.
Commission officials have also been working closely with their foreign counterparts, and have had access to the same evidence that is being used abroad to make the cases against Intel.
Mr. Sewell said that Intel had been working closely with the trade commission on a less formal review that had been under way since 2006. He said the company would continue to cooperate with authorities.
A.M.D. executives said they were pleased with the commission’s decision.
Senin, 02 Juni 2008
The Human Hands Behind the Google Money Machine
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — If Google were the United States government, the data that streams onto Nicholas Fox’s laptop every day would be classified as top secret.
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Peter DaSilva for The New York Times
Hal R. Varian, chief economist at Google, says the company is in good shape to weather the current economic slowdown.
Peter DaSilva for The New York Times
From left, Diane Tang, Nicholas Fox and Hal Varian help monitor and improve the performance of Google’s advertising operations.
Mr. Fox is among a small group of Google employees who keep a watchful eye on the vital signs of one of the most successful and profitable businesses on the Internet. The number of searches and clicks, the rate at which users click on ads, the revenue this generates — everything is tracked hour by hour, compared with the data from a week earlier and charted.
“You can see very, very quickly if anything is amiss,” said Mr. Fox, director of business product management at Google.
Mr. Fox and his “ads quality” team can also quickly see whether something is working particularly well. His group’s mission, to constantly fine-tune Google’s ad delivery system, has one overriding objective: show users only the ads they are most likely to be interested in and click on.
Google runs a complex auction-based system that determines which ads will appear where, and in what order. Every time the team alters the formulas that select and rank ads, Mr. Fox can run a test and quickly see the effect of the changes on users, advertisers and Google’s revenue — which, in this year’s first quarter, came in at the rate of more than $2 million an hour.
The job has given Mr. Fox, a soft-spoken 29-year-old with an obvious affinity for nuance and numbers, a detailed understanding of the complex dynamics at work inside Google’s ad-driven economic engine.
Mr. Fox, who graduated from Harvard with a degree in economics and spent two years at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company before joining Google in 2003, also helped organize its Revenue Force. This select group of engineers, sales and finance people, product managers and statisticians from across the company is charged with keeping top executives apprised of the forces that make Google tick.
Google reveals little of these forces to the outside world. Even on Wall Street, many experts describe Google as a giant black box that they struggle to comprehend.
In recent months, for instance, analysts and investors grew increasingly worried about reports of a decline in clicks on Google ads in the United States, which they interpreted as a sign that Google’s business could be suffering from the economic slowdown. But inside Google, Mr. Fox and others were growing confident that the company would do just fine.
“I wouldn’t quite go so far as to say we are recession-proof,” said Hal R. Varian, Google’s chief economist. “But we are recession-resistant.”
Google’s financial results for the first three months of the year surpassed expectations. Still, some analysts point out that Google’s growth is slowing, especially in the United States. The extent to which that slowdown is the fault of the economy or just the size and maturity of Google’s business remains a matter of debate on Wall Street.
Mr. Fox acknowledged that searches and clicks in some areas, like real estate and travel, have grown more slowly recently. But he noted that there is not an exact correlation between clicks and revenue: “Clicks are only part of the story.”
The idea of linking ads with search results was first developed not by Google but by GoTo.com, which later changed its name to Overture Services and then was bought in 2003 by Yahoo. Overture ranked ads based on how much advertisers were willing to bid for a certain keyword. The higher the bid, the better the placement.
As Google’s engineers developed their own search advertising system, they understood early on that giving top billing to the highest bidder would have little benefit for Google if that ad did not attract clicks. That is because advertisers typically pay Google only when a user clicks on their ads.
So Google decided to rank ads based on a combination of bid price and “click-through rate,” the frequency with which users click on a given ad. Mr. Fox’s team took things from there and gradually became better at figuring out what ads would work with users.
Yahoo tried to catch up by building a new search advertising system that works more like Google’s. It helped increase revenue, but by Yahoo’s own account, Google still earns 60 percent to 70 percent more on average than Yahoo on every search. Microsoft has also lagged, in part because it lacks enough advertisers. It acknowledged as much with its recent attempt to buy Yahoo.
Mr. Fox said Google’s ability to constantly fine-tune its operations was intricately linked with its obsession with measuring just about everything that happened on its system.
Point-and-shoot moviemaking
By Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff / May 29, 2008
As the Internet has risen, the average American's taste in video entertainment has fallen. And a good thing, too.
No longer do we insist on the sterile professionalism of the cineplex or the prime-time TV lineup. These days we happily spend hours watching amateur videos at websites like YouTube, most of them pretty poor quality. But more than a few display enough originality and intelligence to make you forget their technical flaws.
Now that we've come to appreciate these cheaply made videos, get ready for a lot more of them. Electronics companies are serving up a horde of bare-bones camcorders - shirt-pocket-sized devices that cost around $150 and run on a couple of flashlight batteries.
Pure Digital Technologies Inc. of San Francisco launched the craze in 2007 with its Flip Video line of cameras. It's on its way to becoming the iPod of personal video, with more than a million Flips sold in one year. The latest high-end model, the $150 Flip Video Ultra, doubles onboard memory to two gigabytes and buffs up the video resolution in a bid to deliver sharper images.
I got hold of a Flip Ultra and a couple of rivals - the $100 RCA Small Wonder EZ201 and the $150 DXG 567V HD. I've given list prices for all three cameras, but they're available for less at retail; for instance, at Amazon.com the RCA is selling for around $90, the DXG for $131, and the Flip Ultra as low as $123. None of these gadgets is designed for serious videography. They're for casual shooters on a tight budget. But I was pleasantly surprised by the DXG camera, a no-name product with video quality that trumps its better-known rivals.
The market-leading Flip cameras are entirely self-contained, with no way to add memory. The Ultra model can store about an hour of video. It's child's play to use. Shove in the batteries, hit the on switch, and press the red button to start shooting. When you're done, a switch on the side causes a USB data port to pop out like a digital switchblade. Plug it into a PC or Macintosh computer, and the camera appears as an external hard drive. You can drag your videos out of the folder or rely on built-in video management software that'll catalog them and help you e-mail clips to your friends.
Anyone who's ever fiddled with more expensive camcorders can understand the Flip's popularity. It's a point-and-click movie camera, as simple as an old Kodak Instamatic. But the Instamatic probably took sharper pictures. Flip videos are good enough, in a home-movie way. But they have a soft, fuzzy look to them; even faces in close-up seem a bit hazy. And the camera's pretty much useless for shooting far-off objects. Forget about the zoom feature - it's digital zoom, the kind where the onboard computer electronically enlarges the tiny picture elements or pixels that make up the image. The result is muddy and indistinct, and the little screens on these cameras don't convey just how bad the zoomed video will look on your computer monitor or TV. Count on getting decent footage while in zoom mode, and you'll suffer an ugly disappointmentShuttle Discovery Heads Toward the Space Station
Scott Audette/Reuters
The space shuttle Discovery lifting off the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center on Saturday.
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: June 1, 2008
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — The shuttle Discovery blasted its way into orbit on Saturday through wispy clouds against blue skies on its way to deliver a bus-size laboratory to the International Space Station.
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The column of smoke, bright white against the brilliant day, cast a shadow to the east as the shuttle ascended, and the sound waves made the air shudder.
A first look at the video from the ascending craft showed about five pieces of insulating foam falling off the shuttle’s external fuel tank, said William Gerstenmaier, the space agency’s associate administrator for space operations, at a news conference an hour after launching. But he said that none of the shedding was a source of worry, because it all occurred after the time during the ascent when falling foam presents a threat to the delicate heat shielding of the shuttle. Even those pieces that struck the shuttle appeared to bounce off harmlessly, Mr. Gerstenmaier said. “We don’t think that’s a big deal for us,” he said. The shuttle will be closely inspected as it approaches the space station and after docking, he said.
In a business in which delays are standard operating procedure, both the weather and the technical gremlins that often bedevil launching attempts caused no problems.
“It’s a gorgeous day to launch,” said Michael Leinbach, the launching director, giving approval for Discovery’s ride.
Cmdr. Mark E. Kelly of the Navy, who is the shuttle commander, replied, “Stand by for the greatest show on Earth.”
The laboratory, the $1 billion Kibo module, is the largest and the second part of three shuttle payloads that will bring the full Kibo assembly up to the station. It will be the largest “room” on the station, and will eventually include an exposed area, like a back porch, where some experiments will be exposed to the harsh vacuum and temperature extremes of space.
The pilot for the mission, the 123rd in the history of the shuttle program, is Cmdr. Kenneth T. Ham, also of the Navy. Commander Kelly is making his third trip to space; only one other member of the crew, Michael E. Fossum, a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, has been to space. He will be on his second mission.
The other crew members are Karen L. Nyberg, Col. Ronald J. Garan Jr. of the Air Force and Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The seventh member of the crew, Gregory E. Chamitoff, will be staying aboard the station to begin a six-month rotation there, and will replace Garrett E. Reisman, who has been aboard the station since March.
Discovery’s crew members will be showing up with a last-minute addition to their cargo: replacement parts for a broken toilet aboard the station. The toilet has separate systems for dealing with solid and liquid waste. The unit that stopped working last week was supposed to direct urine flow and separate the liquid from air for storage. Two replacement units that were on board the station have also failed.
Julie Payette, a Canadian astronaut, said that despite the many toilet jokes that had been made in the news media over the past week, “We actually take this extremely seriously. In our book, the hygiene cabinet — the toilet — is perhaps one of the most important systems on any spacecraft.” It should go without saying, Ms. Payette said, that “we’re humans.”
“We generate waste,” she continued. “We need a way to dispose of it.”
But she expressed confidence the Russians would be able to repair the system, because Russian engineering tends to be robust and repairable. “They have really good engineers,” she said.
The mission includes three spacewalks to help install Kibo, perform station maintenance and to test techniques for cleaning a malfunctioning rotary joint that is a critical part of the station’s power supply.
That joint, 10 feet in diameter, rotates one of the station’s enormous solar arrays so that it faces the Sun during each orbit. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration idled the joint last year, when it was found to have been damaged by metal shavings that fouled its inner workings and were being ground in by the operation of the joint.
Mr. Gerstenmaier said at the news conference that the station would probably be able to operate into next year before the problems limited the use of the growing station and the joint would have to be repaired.
At the news conference, Michael D. Griffin, NASA’s administrator, beamed as he talked about a week in which NASA not only launched a shuttle crew but also landed a robotic craft, Phoenix, on Mars. He joked, “It’s so great that not even having to do a press conference — two press conferences in a week — can ruin it.” But, he added: “It is not easy. We could talk until 6 a.m. tomorrow and I wouldn’t touch all the details that would demonstrate how hard it is. And yet these teams make it look easy.”
Warning of planned site disruption
Tomorrow we will be transitioning the entire site to a completely new rack of equipment at our new hosting provider. This process will begin at 9 AM GMT (31st May 2008) and will mean some disruption, primarily in the form of forums downtime (which may be up two hours). Once the switchover is complete it will take some time for the DNS changes to fully propogate and so you may for a short time be redirect to the new servers by URLs with the word 'new' in them, once all downstream DNS caches pick up the changes these URLs will begin to clear. Any issues with the site after the end of the switchover (about 12 PM GMT) should be reported using the Feedback page. Updated: maintenance complete.
Jumat, 30 Mei 2008
dpreview.com is hiring: web development engineer
Do you code in your sleep? Do you count in binary? (not an essential requirement). Do you also share a passion for photography? Do you want the dubious pleasure of working alongside the rest of the dpreview team on what is arguably the most exciting photography website in the world? We're looking for two web development engineers with a solid grounding in Visual Studio, ASP.NET 2.0, Javascript and SQL Server 2000 / 2005
Intranet Implementation The Advantages Of A Web-Based Solution
The traditional approach to implementing an intranet is to purchase a software package, modify it for your needs, and install it on your system.
Over the past few years, another option has grown in popularity – the implementation of a web-based solution.
As you consider the choice between installed software and a web-based intranet, here are some considerations:
1. The most important requirement of any intranet is that everyone uses it.
To assure broad-based participation, the intranet must be easy to implement, simple to use, cost-effective to maintain, and offer each individual user the power to post, access and use content in a way that serves their specific needs. In short, the intranet must have value to everyone.
Web-based intranets are designed around this concept. The interface and navigation are consistent with their use of the web – an environment in which they feel in control, using familiar tools.
In contrast, the business world is littered with countless elegant and feature-rich soft-ware based intranets that have failed. Why? Because they represented an alien environment into which the user was expected to venture. Few employees had the time or the interest (or courage) to enter, rendering the intranet impotent, with the powerful tools unused.
This is the plight of traditional, out-of-the-box software solutions. Unlike web-based intranets, they force users into a constrained environment requiring in-depth training, built around rules designed for the group, rather than the individual.
2. Software intranets have unpredictable costs: in time, attention and money.
Software based solutions require extensive internal support. The ongoing expense in both staff time and money takes the focus of your IT group away from mission-critical tasks.
System integration, Implementation, maintenance, technology upgrades, training and user support are all on-going tasks that represent a significant, recurring investment. The cost can be substantial, far exceeding your initial license cost and monthly fee.
3. Web-based intranets offer a predictable cost and cutting-edge technology.
Most web-based solutions offer a fixed monthly fee that covers all maintenance, technology upgrades, training and user support. The costs are predictable, the technology evolutionary, and it's all done with minimal involvement of your IT staff.
It's for these reasons that companies needing broad-based participation in a changing environment are choosing web-based intranets over traditional software solutions.
About the Author:
Malcolm Brown is vice president of Trichys, providers of advertising agency software and extranet solutions to customers around the world.
Over the past few years, another option has grown in popularity – the implementation of a web-based solution.
As you consider the choice between installed software and a web-based intranet, here are some considerations:
1. The most important requirement of any intranet is that everyone uses it.
To assure broad-based participation, the intranet must be easy to implement, simple to use, cost-effective to maintain, and offer each individual user the power to post, access and use content in a way that serves their specific needs. In short, the intranet must have value to everyone.
Web-based intranets are designed around this concept. The interface and navigation are consistent with their use of the web – an environment in which they feel in control, using familiar tools.
In contrast, the business world is littered with countless elegant and feature-rich soft-ware based intranets that have failed. Why? Because they represented an alien environment into which the user was expected to venture. Few employees had the time or the interest (or courage) to enter, rendering the intranet impotent, with the powerful tools unused.
This is the plight of traditional, out-of-the-box software solutions. Unlike web-based intranets, they force users into a constrained environment requiring in-depth training, built around rules designed for the group, rather than the individual.
2. Software intranets have unpredictable costs: in time, attention and money.
Software based solutions require extensive internal support. The ongoing expense in both staff time and money takes the focus of your IT group away from mission-critical tasks.
System integration, Implementation, maintenance, technology upgrades, training and user support are all on-going tasks that represent a significant, recurring investment. The cost can be substantial, far exceeding your initial license cost and monthly fee.
3. Web-based intranets offer a predictable cost and cutting-edge technology.
Most web-based solutions offer a fixed monthly fee that covers all maintenance, technology upgrades, training and user support. The costs are predictable, the technology evolutionary, and it's all done with minimal involvement of your IT staff.
It's for these reasons that companies needing broad-based participation in a changing environment are choosing web-based intranets over traditional software solutions.
About the Author:
Malcolm Brown is vice president of Trichys, providers of advertising agency software and extranet solutions to customers around the world.
Space Exploration Seen as Never Before.
When We Left Earth is the story of mankind’s greatest adventure, leaving the earth and living in space. For the first time this series has digitally re-mastered the original film and audio recordings from NASA’s vault, including and all the key on-board footage filmed by the astronauts themselves. From John Glenn's Mercury mission to orbit the earth, to Neil Armstrong’s first historic steps on the moon, to the unprecedented spacewalks required to repair the Hubble telescope, these epic stories are shown in stunning clarity and told by the astronauts and engineers who were there.
CLICK HERE to watch the cinema promotional trailer for When We Left Earth.
Kamis, 29 Mei 2008
The Wonderful Future Of Cell Phones
The popularity of the mobile phones is constantly on the rise like a snow ball. There are numerous reasons for that and they are well beyond mere communicating with each other.
The development of the cell phones and technology in the past decade along with social and cultural processes as well as sharp decrease in prices contributed to their phenomenon success.
Cell phones have long become a symbol of status as well as a fashion statement. Some manufacturers have started to produce special designed phones for women. Other models are designed with interchangeable facades to cater for the youngsters. A lot of young people are transferring their instant-messaging habits to their cell phones.
The integration of so many different functionalities and technologies into the cell phones is more impressive and beneficial than the all-in-one office devices that integrated a scanner, a copier, a fax and a printer into a single compact space saving multifunctional machine.
The current generation of G-2.5 technology as well as the very near future G-3 units that are starting to emerge right now will carry in it so many functions which are mind blowing. These new Cell phones are going to be a multimedia center, a mobile office, a navigation device GPS (Global Positioning system), a computer with fast Internet access, a text messenger, a high resolution camera and video, a watch, a calculator, a PDA, an MP3 music player, TV and a Wallet! Yes, we will be able to pay with it for things we today pay with coins like vending soda or coffee machines as well as for parking space, trains and buses tickets etc’. It has become our “Swiss Army Knife”...
In Israel they used the cell phone to send SMS message and approval for one dollar donation payment for needy children. I guess that in the future it will be a legitimate tool for voting in contests and may be even in Elections.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, an executive for a wireless company noted that “in Slovakia, people are using mobile phones to remotely switch on the heat before they return home,” and in Norway, “1.5 million people can confirm their tax returns” using cell phone short text messaging services. Paramedics use camera phones to send ahead to hospitals pictures of the incoming injuries; “in Britain, it is now commonplace for wireless technology to allow companies to remotely access meters or gather diagnostic information.” Construction workers on-site can use cell phones to send pictures to contractors off-site. Combined with the individual use of cell phones—to make appointments, locate a friend, check voicemail messages, or simply to check in at work—cell phones offer peoplean unknown level of convenience. (Source: The New Atlantis – Article by Christine Rosen).
Other interesting applications are providing a locating service of your friends, or in other words if one of your friends is very close to where you are right now an SMS massage can alert you of this fact.
Cell phones and Dating Services
Several companies now offer a way to flirt and meet people anonymously. These services offer cell-to-cell texting and PC-to-cell texting. (Text-messaging phones also can receive messages sent over the Internet from a PC.) Companies including UPOC (Universal Point of Contact) and SMS.ac allow users to fill out a profile as they would at any dating service (some dating sites are dabbling with texting) and then search for an ideal match. Profiles can include photos and can be accessed either with a picture-enabled cell phone or through a PC. Say you want to meet a 20- to 30-year-old man in Kentucky who is interested in hiking. Do a search and three names pop up. You can send one a text message without ever exposing your phone number
Cell phones as safety device
One of the main reasons the cell phones have become so wide spread nowadays is that besides convenience it is perceived as a security and safety aid, Parents provide their children with mobile phones in order to track their whereabouts, to make sure they arrived safely to their destinations, to give them a mobile phone to report in real time when in any sort of trouble. Many women feel much safer in the street knowing they can call for help when in need.
About the Author:
Amit Laufer is a Writer & Internet Marketer. MBA - International Trade & Finance. Bsc. Computers and Information Systems. Hobby: Photography. Married with two Children. Owner Editor of: www.cell-phones-infoweb.com
The development of the cell phones and technology in the past decade along with social and cultural processes as well as sharp decrease in prices contributed to their phenomenon success.
Cell phones have long become a symbol of status as well as a fashion statement. Some manufacturers have started to produce special designed phones for women. Other models are designed with interchangeable facades to cater for the youngsters. A lot of young people are transferring their instant-messaging habits to their cell phones.
The integration of so many different functionalities and technologies into the cell phones is more impressive and beneficial than the all-in-one office devices that integrated a scanner, a copier, a fax and a printer into a single compact space saving multifunctional machine.
The current generation of G-2.5 technology as well as the very near future G-3 units that are starting to emerge right now will carry in it so many functions which are mind blowing. These new Cell phones are going to be a multimedia center, a mobile office, a navigation device GPS (Global Positioning system), a computer with fast Internet access, a text messenger, a high resolution camera and video, a watch, a calculator, a PDA, an MP3 music player, TV and a Wallet! Yes, we will be able to pay with it for things we today pay with coins like vending soda or coffee machines as well as for parking space, trains and buses tickets etc’. It has become our “Swiss Army Knife”...
In Israel they used the cell phone to send SMS message and approval for one dollar donation payment for needy children. I guess that in the future it will be a legitimate tool for voting in contests and may be even in Elections.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, an executive for a wireless company noted that “in Slovakia, people are using mobile phones to remotely switch on the heat before they return home,” and in Norway, “1.5 million people can confirm their tax returns” using cell phone short text messaging services. Paramedics use camera phones to send ahead to hospitals pictures of the incoming injuries; “in Britain, it is now commonplace for wireless technology to allow companies to remotely access meters or gather diagnostic information.” Construction workers on-site can use cell phones to send pictures to contractors off-site. Combined with the individual use of cell phones—to make appointments, locate a friend, check voicemail messages, or simply to check in at work—cell phones offer peoplean unknown level of convenience. (Source: The New Atlantis – Article by Christine Rosen).
Other interesting applications are providing a locating service of your friends, or in other words if one of your friends is very close to where you are right now an SMS massage can alert you of this fact.
Cell phones and Dating Services
Several companies now offer a way to flirt and meet people anonymously. These services offer cell-to-cell texting and PC-to-cell texting. (Text-messaging phones also can receive messages sent over the Internet from a PC.) Companies including UPOC (Universal Point of Contact) and SMS.ac allow users to fill out a profile as they would at any dating service (some dating sites are dabbling with texting) and then search for an ideal match. Profiles can include photos and can be accessed either with a picture-enabled cell phone or through a PC. Say you want to meet a 20- to 30-year-old man in Kentucky who is interested in hiking. Do a search and three names pop up. You can send one a text message without ever exposing your phone number
Cell phones as safety device
One of the main reasons the cell phones have become so wide spread nowadays is that besides convenience it is perceived as a security and safety aid, Parents provide their children with mobile phones in order to track their whereabouts, to make sure they arrived safely to their destinations, to give them a mobile phone to report in real time when in any sort of trouble. Many women feel much safer in the street knowing they can call for help when in need.
About the Author:
Amit Laufer is a Writer & Internet Marketer. MBA - International Trade & Finance. Bsc. Computers and Information Systems. Hobby: Photography. Married with two Children. Owner Editor of: www.cell-phones-infoweb.com
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