Bing vs. Google
So, most of you have heard about Microsoft’s Bing by now. If not, you won’t regret checking it out. Anyway, Google may have a good competition on their hands. Bing is definitely going up in traffic, but Google might still be okay… for now, that is. Read more
According to “an inside source”, Apple is in talks to buying Twitter for $700 million. They plan on doing it soon too–soon as in early June. Apple’s goal is to own Twitter by June 8, and will unveil it at their annual Worldwide Developers Conference.
What does Twitter, an adorable but unprofitable startup, have to do with a hardware company like Apple? The iPhone is the obvious driver of the deal: The many iPhone apps like Tweetie that people use to post Twitter messages are hot sellers for Apple. But Apple gets the benefit of Twitter-addicted iPhone users whether or not it owns Twitter. And it seems like an odd cultural fit, since Apple’s hardly known for its Web prowess. Read more
As somewhat of a Wordpress fanatic, the news of Wordpress’ new social network BuddyPress has got me pretty excited.
The idea of BuddyPress is to take a standard vanilla installation of WordPress MU and turn it into something that represents more of a community building tool, or niche social network. Read more
One of the best-known meteor showers of the year will shoot intense streaks of light across the night sky beginning after 9 p.m. Monday. And those who can stay up for its peak performance are in for quite a show. Read more
Scientists and engineers from the Los Alamos government weapons lab and IBM Corp. have built the world’s fastest computer. It is capable of sustaining 1,000 trillion calculations per second, twice faster than IBM’s super supercomputer, the IBM Blue Gene system.
Microsoft Windows 7 may be due to come out a far year and a half from now, but the brouhaha that manifests the curiosity and excitement among concerned sectors – or just about anyone – is all around, this early.
While we were waiting for Apple to announce the 3G iPhone, we found out that they are looking to add “Solar cells on portable devices” as their patent is called. The application, dated 24th April 2008, shows that Apple is planning to fit in solar cells on iPhones, iPods and MacBooks.
Here we go again! Microsoft announced that they will try to reach an agreement with Yahoo! Inc., but they admit that nothing could result from these discussions. Thos guys from Microsoft said that now they will try a different approach which involves “a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo!”. Microsoft “only” wants to improve their “online services and advertising business”. For the moment, no deadline for the offer and the saga continues.
Google Maps were upgraded and updated, therefore now they feature links to Wikipedia articles and geotagged photos from Panoramio. It’s a very good idea from Google to integrate these options because everybody wants to see some images of the area where they might want to go and Google Maps are very “accurate” but until now they were not complete.
The deal between HBO and Apple is finally official and from now on you can download HBO’s content from iTunes. This agreement was expected for a while, but better later than never therefore you can start downloading, The Wire, Rome, The Sopranos, Sex and the City, and Deadwood.
Rome, Sopranos and Deadwood is available for $2.99, and the Wire, Sex and the City can be downloaded for $1.99. Also, I should mention the Flight of the Conchords that is available for $1.99. We can’t wait to see the next additions and hopefully, we won’t be disappointed.
Konarka Specialists developed a new material able to convert light to energy called Power Plastic®, which might successfully be used in fabricating of highly efficient solar energy cells. They used Diamatix Inkjet Technology to actually print organic solar cells offering the possibility to use solar cells at a larger scale, including low power indoor sensors or applications. Although Power Plastic is able to convert only 5% of light into electricity comparing to 16-20% for silicon, this new generation of photovoltaic cells can use even small sources of light and are not affected by low angle of light. Howard Berke said that this new generation of photovoltaic cells might be found “wherever plastic occurs”.
“As the leading developer of polymer photovoltaic technology providing renewable power for commercial, industrial, government and consumer applications, Konarka is delighted to be recognized by AlwaysOn as leading the way in renewable energy,” commented Rick Hess, president and CEO at Konarka.
Microsoft and Intel are the biggest companies from the software and, respectively, from the hardware market, but that didn`t stop them to come together with a $20 million grant for two universities. With these funds, Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers from UC -Berkeley and The University of Illinois at Champaign, Urbana will have to research and develop a way to make “parallelism so easy to use that parallel programming becomes synonymous with programming”, according to the head of the UIUC lab, Mark Snir.
He was referring to the fact that in recent years, companies stopped developing faster-processing chips, and concentrated their efforts on making multiple chips work together on the same silicon chip instead. This way, more computer functions can be processed in parallel, and not one at a time. The problem with these new systems is that programmers today are still writing programs that solve problems in a serial fashion.
The most advanced microprocessors have up to eight cores on a chip, but the industry is moving toward chips with 100 or more. Again, researchers state that the issue is not regarding the hardware component, but that a software to keep 10 or more processors busy simply does not exist.
If the research efforts of these universities will be successful, the processing power resulted will lead to developing new sorts of portable PCs and would be decisive in improving areas like image processing, speech recognition, health care systems and music. For example, the digital musical instruments could be as versatile and complex as pianos or violins.
Recent reports say that Dell is preparing to replace the D830 and the D630 with a new series of Latitude E laptops. The new models are E6500 with a 15.4 inch display and the E6400, a 14.1 incher. The leaked laptops are scheduled for release in June and it’s also said that these lappies will be the first to make use of Montevina / Centrino 2 machines. The 6500 is supposed to feature integrated GPS, Bluetooth 2.1, mobile broadband, UWP, LED back-lighting, 84WHr batteries and some multiple options for the disk drives.
The major trouble with the solar energy market is that most people across the Globe don`t want or can`t afford to pay that high initial fee, despite the obvious future benefits of changing the ‘fuel’.
Researchers from the United States and Austria are very close to solve this matter, as they announced significant progress toward the next generation of Plastic Solar Cells. These are fabricated from bulk hetero-junction materials comprising semi-conducting polymers and fullerenes, and have already recorded some promising performances.
Still, researchers are trying to figure out a way to control the nano-scale morphology and are looking for ways to optimize the solar cell performance for practical use.
With these new discoveries they hope that solar energy will make it`s way into our homes much faster, as previous efforts of convincing people to switch to this ecological fuel were not sustained by the Governments.
DARPA does it again. Now, their researchers are trying to build a mechanical nanocomputer and some reports say that they are very, very close. This mechanical nanocomputer will be heat-resistant and energy-efficient and it seems like they will be useful for cars, toys and for guns among others.
The secret of mechanical computers consist of the fact they don’t have solid-state transistors or conventional silicon chips, so they can operate at its best even at high temperatures. Also they don’t need so much power to perform and so they don’t require extra energy for cooling.
The guys from DARPA are working very hard to make their nanodevices compatible with new computers and also they say that this nanotechnology will be cost effective. Can’t wait to see their results and how they will improve the mechanical computers.
