Source: http://www.pheedo.com/
Pop over to iCloud.com today and you'll see a doomed web page. The domain, which redirects to Xcerion's CloudMe software, is sitting on some prime real estate, namely Apple's new iCloud service. In a short release, Apple confirmed the existence and name: Apple� CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company?s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software - Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS� X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple?s advanced mobile operating system which powers iPad�, iPhone� and iPod touch�; and iCloud�, Apple?s upcoming cloud services offering.We've been hearing about the potential cloud services for months now and it seems the stars have finally aligned. The MobileMe service recently received some considerable upgrades to improve performance and stability and there has been oodles of talk about a potential music service in the cloud similar to Rdio or Spotify. That we now know it's called iCloud, officially, is just icing on the cake.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/3NjaQKC7ugY/
A few days ago, Facebook held a tech talk at their headquarters. The topic of the talk was pushing changes ? bug fixes, new features, product improvements, etc. Every day, Facebook engineers push hundreds of these; some big, some little. Most of the 600 million-plus users never notice a thing. And apparently, we're even less likely to notice changes due to a special feature Facebook has. The "Everyone But TechCrunch Can See This" feature. As Facebook engineer Chuck Rossi details around minute 23:00 in the video, Facebook has a tool they call "Gatekeeper" which allows them to be in control of who can see what code live on the service at any given time. As Rossi points out, right now on Facebook.com there is already the code for every major thing Facebook is going to launch in the next six months and beyond! It's the Gatekeeper which stops us from seeing it. 
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/hXWvLoXuUiA/
If there is a sure sign that an athletic department is in trouble and a football program is begging for N.C.A.A. mercy, it is the prepared video statement.
The signature sweater vest of Jim Tressel won't be seen on an Ohio State sideline anymore. He resigned Monday.
So there was Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith on Monday, avoiding questions about Jim Tressel?s resignation while telling a camera all the college athletic clich�s of education, graduation and finding out the truth.
Tressel finally ran out of space Monday when he resigned under pressure. Cornered by a documented trail of deceit and a flurry of negative publicity, Tressel took the step that had come to appear inevitable as the accusations and the pressure mounted.
As Ohio State football, one of the most powerful brands in college sports, prepares for what appears to be an uncertain season, the big question will be whether the N.C.A.A.?s unpredictable enforcement arm assures that more difficult seasons could follow. Tressel?s resignation appeared to be the Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee?s acknowledgment that the university was in an untenable position with its star coach.
In a statement Monday, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said that Tressel?s resignation ?is an indication that serious mistakes have serious consequences.?
One week after the N.C.A.A. maintained harsh penalties in the Southern California football infractions case, Ohio State?s football program will slide into focus as the latest test of whether the N.C.A.A. is serious about punishing and disciplining its most prosperous programs.
Fittingly, the former Trojans athletic director Mike Garrett made the no-accountability video release infamous in college sports. He consistently used it as a way to duck the news media while the N.C.A.A. went through its lengthy investigation of the Trojans program.
The Ohio State and the Southern California cases are drastically different in nature, but they intersect in a place where big-time college athletics appear to be spiraling out of control. Tressel?s resignation is the headline in a year that has had major investigations of the national champions of football (Auburn) and of men?s basketball (Connecticut).
Ohio State?s day in N.C.A.A. court is supposed to come Aug. 12, but it is likely to be later than that. If there has been one consistent thing about N.C.A.A. infractions cases over the years, it?s the glacial pace in which they are investigated and decided. And the continual trickle of new information about Buckeye misdeeds will probably force the N.C.A.A. to delay its timeline.
After Tressel and Ohio State get their day in front of the N.C.A.A., it will become clearer whether the recent calls from the new N.C.A.A. president, Mark Emmert, for stiffer penalties for cheats are a reality or just white noise in the face of another scandal.
What?s known in the Tressel case is that he misled the university and the N.C.A.A. about his knowledge of his players receiving improper gifts, essentially allowing star players who should have been ineligible for at least a portion of last season to take the field. And what?s known about Ohio State is that the university seemingly did everything possible to save its coach, first suspending him for only two games and then slowly nudging him down the plank as the allegations and negative publicity loomed larger.
The Buckeyes? athletic department and university administrators acted only when the laugh track for their penalties became too loud. Who can forget Gee, when asked if he would consider firing Tressel, saying, ?I hope he doesn?t fire me??
Two issues will figure prominently in how culpable the N.C.A.A. finds Ohio State. The first is how the university explains reports that dozens of players received deals on cars from a local dealership. If Ohio State consistently turned a blind eye to something that was an obvious extra benefit for its players, it could result in serious repercussions.
The university, especially Gee and Smith, will also have to explain why it initially decided to suspend Tressel for just two games when his lying and cover-up appeared worthy of his being fired from the start. In an era when lying to the N.C.A.A., as in the cases of Oklahoma State receiver Dez Bryant and the Tennessee men?s basketball coach Bruce Pearl, has become a mortal sin, Buckeyes administrators will have to justify why they thought Tressel should have missed only games against Akron and Toledo. That?s a punishment essentially comparable to having an N.F.L. coach miss preseason games.
The assistant Luke Fickell, a former Buckeye, will be the interim coach this season, with the soundtrack of his season revolving around whether Urban Meyer, Jon Gruden, Gary Patterson or Bo Pelini will become the permanent coach in December. Ohio State, even with probation all but inevitable, will always sit alongside Florida and Texas as one of the country?s three marquee jobs.
But a huge factor in who Ohio State will be able to lure will be just how hampered the program is by the N.C.A.A. Ohio State is staring at significant N.C.A.A. sanctions, the severity of which will define its program and N.C.A.A. enforcement in the months to come.
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., made the request in a letter sent Wednesday to Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Google CEO Larry Page, following up on a recent hearing at which company representatives testified about location data privacy.
Concerns about how location data is being used flared up last month when researchers highlighted the presence of a database of location information stored unprotected on the iPhone. The findings prompted Apple to publish a lengthy explanation of how it uses location data to dispel misconceptions.
"Users are confused, partly because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough education about these issues to date," Apple said.
Nonetheless, Franken sees a need for greater clarity in the form of privacy policies. Citing a report indicating that less than 20% of free apps include links to privacy policies, Franken said in his letter to Apple and Google that while there's a need for greater disclosure in all apps, he would at least like to see the two companies require privacy policies for apps that utilize location data.
"I ask that you require all location-aware applications in your app stores to provide privacy policies that clearly specify what kind of location information is gathered from users, how that information is used, and how it is shared with third parties," Franken wrote in his letter.
Andy Rubin, who runs Google's Android business, has characterized location data as "extremely valuable." Such data is only going to become more important as mobile commerce takes off. Google on Thursday launched a mobile commerce platform with Citi, MasterCard, First Data, and Sprint, hoping to encourage payments made through NFC-equipped phones.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for.
Whether the mandatory inclusion of a privacy policy in mobile apps will accomplish anything remains to be seen. A 2007 Federal Trade Commission found that consumers are "click-happy" and frequently accept online agreements without reading them. And in a February 2009 report to Congress on behavioral advertising, the FTC noted, "[P]rivacy policies have become long and difficult to understand, and may not be an effective way to communicate information to consumers."
Dan Davies, founder and president of AbleLink Technologies, which makes mobile apps that allow users with cognitive disabilities to authorize the transmission of location data to caregivers, said in a phone interview that a proposal like Franken's assumed perhaps too much about how location data is used. He said it could prove burdensome to impose such general policy inclusion requirement that treats all apps the same way.
Davies said his company's apps do not have a formal privacy policy but do give the individual user the choice about whether to share location data with caregivers.
"In our apps--Community Sidekick for the iPhone and WayFinder for Windows Mobile devices--permission to be remotely monitored is provided by user settings under the control of the person being tracked," Davies said in an email. "Thus, if the individual determines that he or she would like to have the benefit of knowing a caregiver is essentially watching over them while they are alone in the community, then those features are turned on to allow that to happen."
Enterprise Connect is taking our deep mobility expertise and bringing it to your desktop with a one-day virtual event, The Future Of The Mobile Enterprise, to be held Wednesday, June 8. Ever-increasing mobility is perhaps the most important trend affecting enterprise communications today. Learn how to support and secure smartphones, deal with the effect of tablets on IT planning, and more. Register now.
Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/development/mobility/229700073?cid=RSSfeed_IWK_Internet
(CNN) -- Two people died amid protests in Syria on Monday, as government troops and tanks surrounded one town and apparently shelled another for a second day, according to protest organizers and a witness.
One of the deaths occurred in Rastan and the other in Talbiseh, according to the protest organizers known as the Local Coordination Committees of Syria.
The deaths bring to 12 the total number killed since troops entered towns in Homs province early Sunday to end protests against government rule, according to the committee. Ten people, including two children, died Sunday.
CNN has not been granted access into Syria and is unable to independently verify the accounts.
A witness in Rastan, who did not want to be identified for security reasons, said he heard intense explosions beginning around 4 a.m. that lasted for several hours.
Tanks and soldiers have the city completely surrounded, and there is no electricity or water in the city, the witness said.
Despite the siege, protesters took to the streets for about 30 minutes of defiant protest, the witness said.
The Rastan witness said that residents there could hear shelling and gunfire coming from Talbiseh, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) away. But he said it was unclear what was happening there communications have been shut off.
Security forces shelled that city on Sunday as well, with one round striking a school bus carrying children.
In addition to Rastan and Talbiseh, the towns of Deir Ba'albeh and Teir Ma'alleh were also targeted, according to protest organizers.
Syria's government has undertaken a fierce crackdown against demonstrations that have demanded reforms of President Bashar al-Assad.
Roughly 830 people have been killed in the protests, according tot he Syrian Human Rights Information Link. That number does not include security personnel which the Syrian government claims died in attacks from "armed groups."
The United States has imposed new sanctions on al-Assad and other senior Syrian officials, freezing any assets held in the country over human rights abuses.
CNN's Arwa Damon contributed to this report.
(CNN) -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture is planning to swap in a plate icon for the food pyramid this week, an individual familiar with the new guidelines told CNN Saturday.
The new image, expected to be unveiled Thursday, is meant to help remind Americans to make healthy food choices.
"We presume that it will be divided into sections that will show you how much of different types of foods you should be eating," said Elizabeth Cohen, CNN senior medical correspondent, about the plate image.
The USDA said in a statement this week that the new food icon would be "part of a comprehensive nutrition communication initiative that provides consumers with easy-to-understand recommendations, a new website with expanded information, and other tools and resources."
It did not say then what the new icon would be.
The Food Guide Pyramid was introduced in 1992 and replaced in 2005 by MyPyramid.
"The pyramid, to put it gently, is not considered a great public health success," said Cohen. "It was confusing and divided into lots of intricate sections."
The original version is the widely recognized pyramid that shows a hierarchy of food groups. Grains, vegetables and fruits were represented at the base of the pyramid, suggesting they should be eaten often. Foods to be consumed in some moderation, like fats, dairy products and meats, were toward the top of the icon.
The 2005 version had vertical, rather than horizontal, blocks representing the various food groups. It also had a figure stepping up the side of the pyramid, reminding consumers of the need to exercise.
CNN's Sabriya Rice contributed to this report.
(CNN) -- Unlike most teens in high school, I didn't come home from my summer job smelling like hamburger grease or department store hangers.
I spent my days stretched out in a chair, slathered in SPF 30, occasionally lifting my polarized sunglasses to double-check the bottom of the pool for drowning children.
Like the saying goes, it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.
Of course, there are downsides to anything that pays minimum wage. That hamburger scent was replaced by the lingering smell of chlorine. My blond hair always had a slight green tint to it. And I found myself involuntarily yelling "No running!" at random kids in the mall on my days off.
I trained hard at 15 to become this "Baywatch" wannabe. The Red Cross certifies lifeguards only after an intensive, 30-plus-hour course on CPR, first aid and rescue skills with both a written and physical final exam.
Thankfully, there are thousands of similarly trained lifeguards around the country keeping watch over your summer water fun. Their first priority is safety. But there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that they'd never tell you.
Think you know all there is to know about sunscreen, chlorine and pool "accidents"? Check out these secrets from lifeguards past and present.
1. We clean the bathrooms ...
"Most of the time, we're the ones doing the daily cleaning, and a professional comes by once a week. Would you leave the cleanliness of your bathroom to high school kids?"
-- Greg, a Texas lifeguard and pool manager for five years
Plantar warts are caused by an HPV infection on the bottom of your feet. The virus thrives in warm, moist environments, according to the Mayo Clinic, so pool decks, locker rooms and shower floors are perfect places for it to hang out. Save yourself a painful visit to the doctor's office by wearing flip-flops any time you're not in the water.
2. ... and run the concession stand
"The cheese sauce on your nachos? It's probably been reheated for at least a week, if not longer."
-- Grant, a Chicago suburbs lifeguard for 10 years
Bring your own snacks to the pool; it's easier to entice kids to take a break and reapply sunscreen while they're chomping down. And remember to drink lots of water -- heat stroke is caused by excessive heat and dehydration.
3. We can't watch everyone
"Even the best lifeguards can miss something while watching a crowded beach with over 200 swimmers. Never assume that the lifeguards will do their job perfectly."
-- Noah, a Jersey Shore ocean lifeguard for more than 10 years
Lifeguards are trained to scan their space repeatedly from front to back, left to right and zigzag. If you see a guard on duty repeatedly looking down to talk to someone or staring off in the distance, notify a manager.
On the flip side, don't be the patron who's distracting us with a 30-minute monologue about your favorite frozen treat flavor.
4. Our pool shouldn't smell like chlorine
"If the pool chemicals are a little off, we're going to look the other way until we really, really need to fix them."
-- Greg, a Texas lifeguard and pool manager for five years
The strong odors are called chloramines, which come from bodily fluids that are breaking down the chlorine in the pool, New Orleans pool consultant Josh Ulfers says. "A properly maintained and sanitized pool should not have much of a chlorine odor."
Too much chlorine, on the other hand, can cause coughing, burning in the eyes and nausea, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Leave the pool area if you experience any of these symptoms.
5. We don't always clear the pool after an "accident" ...
"Even though most cities require pools to be closed when someone's kid goes No. 2 in the pool, the majority of pools I have worked for just add a little more chlorine. In one instance, I was working as a swim instructor and there was a particularly 'serious' incident where I was just instructed to teach my students on the opposite end of the pool. Completely gross, but they didn't want to lose the revenue from having to cancel lessons."
-- Jeremy, a Tucson, Arizona, beach and pool lifeguard for five years
Breaking news bulletin: Fecal matter can carry serious germs. If you see (or have) an accident, tell a lifeguard immediately and make sure to exit the pool. State and local guidelines vary, but the CDC recommends that pools raise their chlorine levels and shut down for at least 30 minutes.
6. ... and if we do, it's not always real
"At one point, a fellow lifeguard and I sank a Snickers bar so we could have an hour break and make everyone clear the pool. It was the best time ever ... we ordered lunch from a local pizza shop."
-- Alan, a Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, lifeguard for two years
Ever seen "Caddyshack"? We have, and each time a summer camp, day care center or pack of obnoxious teens enters the pool, we dream of pulling the same stunt.
7. We need you to watch your kids
"Keep an eye on your toddlers. Hell, keep both eyes on them. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a 2-year-old walk down the steps at the shallow end and keep walking until he's underwater because he has no idea what's happening. And Mom's busy chatting 5 feet away, not paying attention."
-- Shaun, a Greenwich, Connecticut, lifeguard for six years
8. We swim after we eat
"No Red Cross records exist that anyone ever got a stomach cramp from going into the water too soon after eating."
-- Robert, a Far Rockaway, New York, lifeguard
Granted, the Red Cross doesn't keep track of such incidents. But while cramping can occur, it's rare and hardly life-threatening. Snopes.com dismissed that rumor in 2005, saying that there has never been a drowning attributed to entering the water less than an hour after eating.
9. Thunder is our best friend
"If it's raining or we hear the faintest sound of thunder -- even if it's potentially just a loud truck passing by -- we're closing the pool for 30 minutes. Our job is all about safety, remember?"
-- Greg, a Texas lifeguard and pool manager for five years
We know the storm cloud is miles away and your kids don't mind swimming in the rain. But our guidelines require us to clear everyone away from the water for at least 30 minutes if we hear thunder or see lightning to ensure you don't get electrocuted. Plus, it gives us a chance to grab our umbrellas.
10. We hate floaties
"Arm floaties or swimsuits with life jacket-like belts sewn in are, in fact, dangerous. It's a false sense of security. An arm floatie can pop and strand a weak swimmer far from a wall or shallow water. The life jacket belts can just as easily hold a kid upside down on the surface as right side up. There is no replacement for teaching your kids water safety skills and keeping a close watch."
-- Mary, a San Francisco lifeguard for 10 years
11. The thought of doing CPR scares us
"When I almost had to give CPR, I completely locked up and was unable to actually assist at first."
-- Alan, a Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, lifeguard for two years
Contrary to what you see on TV medical dramas, only 5% to 15% of people who are given standard CPR survive cardiac arrest, according to the Journal of Emergency Medical Services. And lifeguards know this -- our first plan of action will always be to call 911.
12. We know when you drop your kids off
"If you're leaving your children at the pool for more than four hours every day, we're going to be on a first-name basis and know your entire life story -- even if we've never met you."
-- Greg, a Texas lifeguard and pool manager for five years
There was once an 8-year-old child who spent the afternoon at my pool alone. Before she left, I found out that her mother was "sleeping over" at her neighbor's house, her brother had flunked seventh-grade math and her grandma sometimes forgot to wear underwear. That's not a picture I needed in my head.
The majority of pools have rules against leaving children under the age of 16 at the pool unsupervised. Lifeguards are not baby sitters. Period.
13. We have rules for a reason
"We are trained to notice people who are struggling and how to discern playful splashing from panicked swimming, which is why virtually every pool includes 'no splashing' rules. Most injuries at the pool are caused by people running or horsing around, not water emergencies. It's wet and it's slippery. Teach your kids to walk, rather than run, and to look before they leap into the pool; jumping in on top of someone else can cause a severe injury."
-- Mary, a San Francisco lifeguard for 10 years
14. We care about tan lines
"At the country club, some of us would lifeguard with a piece of pizza in hand, twirling the whistle in the other with our swimsuit straps down to ensure the best tan."
-- Caitlin, a Pittsburgh lifeguard
Although highly discouraged by medical experts everywhere, tanning is a necessary peril of sitting in the sun all day. So it makes sense that lifeguards are the unofficial experts. If you're looking to get a little color fast, buy formulas that contain carrot oil, a natural tanning enhancer.
But make sure to also layer on the sunscreen -- the Skin Cancer Foundation recommends an SPF of at least 30, reapplied every two hours, if you'll be in the sun for a while. Pay close attention to oft-missed spots like the back of your neck, tops of your feet and tops of your ears.
15. We're still kids ourselves
"We love our jobs, and playing on the diving board anytime we're not on the guard stand. It's an unwritten rule that the guard with the best diving board tricks deserves the most respect."
-- Greg, a Texas lifeguard and pool manager for five years
Currently I am not in Cancun. The reason I am not in Cancun is out of my control (an over three hour Virgin delay on the tarmac at JFK caused me to miss my connecting USAirways flight at SFO). I spent a good part of those three plus plane-trapped hours bitching on Twitter, asking both the @VirginAmerica and @USAirways Twitter accounts for guidance, because calling their respective 800 numbers either put me on hold or wouldn't go through.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Du2PNutmhdM/
Facebook has no iPad app. It's ridiculous. Their iPhone app is the most downloaded app in the history of apps. And third-party iPad apps (many of which aim to trick users) constantly dominate the top 10 lists for both free and paid apps. And yet, Facebook doesn't seem to care at all about the device. Because they're all about HTML5, right? Well, someone might want to tell the Seattle office that. On the jobs page for the relatively new Seattle Facebook office, one of the openings is for "Software Engineer, Desktop Software". Desktop software. Desktop. Before the damn iPad. Hey Facebook, 1986 called, they want their strategic vision back.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/_gRbdjDOhVw/
This week's Gillmor Gang comes at the end of travel ? to New York for TechCrunch Disrupt and Las Vegas for the Forrester Analyst Forum. Disrupt continues to gather a head of steam, with the social effects of an emerging app ecosystem now being built out across the media and the enterprise. Although it seems still to be at the early stages with Twitter heading off a second front from Bill Gross, outbidding UberWhatever to buy Tweetdeck serves mostly to define the shape of the acquisition market as a hedge against IPOdom. Although the noise has died down about the Microsoft/Skype deal, enterprise analysts are tripping over themselves to handicap Steve Ballmer's job tenure. George Colony produced a Wave chart with Apple all alone upend to the right, Salesforce.com owning the next space, and as one senior analyst put it, only imaginary companies on the horizon to compete with us. I say us because apparently there are still a few who don't know I work for Marc Benioff. And Microsoft was well down and to the left in the view Colony calls the AppInternet. What we talk about today on the Gang may have something to with all this.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Qumpvex9hO4/
Munchonme is a daily deals site for food. But wait, before you click away to a slideshow about hot coders, Munchonme has got some features that might just reroute you from relying on the big G and coming back to its sweet sweet embrace. First of all Munchonme focuses on giving discounts on specific dishes, instead of onanything in the entire restaurant. Any business who's been a victim of the Groupon effect knows why this is important, namely because restaurants can prepare for the onslaught in advance, overloading on the inventory they expect will sell out.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/hYih1QcK4TE/
Wolfram Alpha is an online service that computes the answers to queries (e.g., age pyramid for the Philippines or glycogen degradation pathway rather than searching for those terms showing up on webpages.
When asked what his favorite query is, the particle physicist and MacArthur ?genius? award recipient says he?s enamored that Wolfram Alpha can tell you about the plane you just saw flying over your town ? in his case ?flights visible from Concord, Massachusetts.?
But Wolfram?s no plane-spotter.
?My life consists of watching all the new domains being put into Wolfram Alpha,? Wolfram said. ?Whatever thing we just finished is the thing I?m most excited about.?
And you might understand Wolfram?s excitement about being able to know the tail number of a plane overhead when you get that answering that question isn?t easy.
For one, there are a lot of planes in the sky. And two, even if you know which planes are in the sky, radar data is delayed, so Wolfram Alpha has to project a plane?s course. And it?s got to take into account that people can?t actually see planes that are very high in the sky.
While that might sound like Wolfram has a short attention span, he?s also taking the long view, as Wolfram Alpha has just passed its second birthday.
?This is my third big life project,? Wolfram said. ?Two is early in the life spectrum.?
Wolfram Alpha?s team is now 200 strong, a mix of programmers, linguistic curators and subject-matter experts.
And their to-do list? It?s decades long.
?If you were to look at our whole to-do list, which is a scary thing to do, to finish it would take 20 years,? Wolfram said. ?That doesn?t scare me too much, since I?ve been working on Mathematica for 25 years.?
Wolfram Alpha may have a search box, but it?s doubtful that it?s the default search box for anyone, except perhaps Rainman.
But traffic to Wolfram Alpha is in the millions of visits per day, according to Wolfram, and the company is ?slightly profitable.? That?s in no small part because high school and college students have figured out at least part of what Wolfram Alpha is useful for ? whether they are working on trigonometry equations, music theory or economic models.
?That?s not the worst place to have a core base of users, given they grow up,? Wolfram says.
Wolfram says he takes encouragement from looking at the streams of queries that people put into the search box. Those show that people are trying to use Wolfram Alpha for complicated things like comparing the economies of two countries. And there aren?t many tourists who just show up to see a funny Easter egg in the software, or to enter junk queries.
But Wolfram is frustrated a bit that users don?t know the full power of Wolfram Alpha.
?The mental model for when to go to Wolfram Alpha is not fully fleshed out yet,? Wolfram says.
One of the company?s solution for that is to create a wide range of very focused apps, such as its app for computer network administrators, and those for classes, including astronomy, calculus and algebra.
Wolfram Alpha has also partnered with general purpose search engines such as Bing and DuckDuckGo. The key there, according to Wolfram, is figuring out which of the queries into a general search engine would benefit from a calculated answer, not just a list of links. One of the challenges is that searchers are used to getting search results in single digit milliseconds ? while Wolfram Alpha takes considerably longer ? say 500 milliseconds ? because it?s calculating answers.
One way to solve that is to cache some popular precomputed answers, and ? for others ? to indicate to searchers that they can get more details on Wolfram Alpha.
?We compute it and do the computation in the background, so by the time they show up, it looks like it was there but it wasn?t,? Wolfram said.
The long-term challenge for Wolfram Alpha is getting more and more datasets into the system. While the process has gotten smoother, each dataset comes with its own unique complexities ? meaning that there?s no cookie-cutter approach that will speed new datasets into the engine.
?Our main conclusion is that there is an irreducible amount of work that requires humans and algorithms,? Wolfram said.
The company is also branching out into datasets that one wouldn?t expect from a high-powered calculator, such as info on sports and pop culture, areas that Wolfram Alpha clearly shied away from at first.
?I thought, ?Gosh, what can you compute about people??? Wolfram said. ?Well, it turns out there?s a lot you can compute, such as what people were born in this city and who was alive at the same time as other people. In every area there is a lot more to compute than you think.?
He?s now thinking about how you can ingest people?s networks of friends (the so-called social graph), how images can be imported and calculated, and what happens when Wolfram Alpha allows people to upload their own data sets.
What?s also becoming apparent is that there are a lot more places that Wolfram Alpha is turning out to be useful than just the website. Makers of software such as spreadsheets and specialized financial applications are turning to the company?s API ,so that they can include computational functions in portions of their software. That means more-diverse revenue for the company, which surprised Wolfram, because when the company launched, he suspected there were only two or three ways for it to make money.
Now he says it?s looking like there are 15 channels or even more.
?People just need what we are doing. It seems like it is a foundational component in so many places,? Wolfram said. ?The big debate internally is which of these channels will be the most lucrative, but I think it is still not at all clear.?
And if you think the word channel makes Wolfram sound like an executive, you?d be right.
?I had thought when I started Wolfram Alpha that that stuff isn?t so interesting, and I was going to hire people to figure that out,? Wolfram said. ?That didn?t work out so well.?
?So I decided I should learn it, and it?s actually kind of interesting,? Wolfram said. ?Now is a fascinating time of platform turbulence, which we haven?t seen since probably about 20 years ago in the rise of PC workstations.?
Wolfram Alpha is also self-funded, as was Mathematica.
And in typical Wolfram style, that makes him both more conservative and more radical than others.
?For 23 years, Mathematica has been a simple private company,? Wolfram said. ?For better or worse, that allows one to do much crazier projects than you can through the traditional VC route.?
But doing crazy things doesn?t extend to adding 300 new employees to try to build even faster, even if there?s not enough revenue to pay their salaries.
?I?ve been lucky enough to run a company that?s been profitable for 23 years, so I developed the habit of doing things that way,? Wolfram said.
That?s a way of doing business, that if you think about it, computes much better than getting tens of millions in funding for an iPhone app.
Source: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/05/wolfram-alpha-two/
Most options for wood used in decks, outdoor furniture and siding are rarely entirely earth friendly, since they are often treated with heavy metals or toxic chemicals, or logged from unsustainable forests. One company is innovating in the space by altering the chemistry of the wood itself to make it weather and decay resistant. 
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/OigR7DWG6_0/
WASHINGTON ? Gen. Martin E. Dempsey?s peers call him a ?pentathlete,? the kind of post-Sept. 11 commander who not only knows the art of combat but is also adept at marshaling the power of diplomacy, money, allied cooperation and information.
Gen. Martin E. Dempsey is a West Point graduate who also has a master's degree in English.
He will need all those skills if, as expected, President Obama nominates him to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a move that could come as early as Monday.
As the military?s highest-ranking officer and a crucial member of the president?s revamped national security team, General Dempsey would face a complex and consequential set of challenges against the backdrop of both rapid change abroad and intensive political pressures at home: how fast to withdraw from Afghanistan, how to reshape the military and how to cope with an era of fiscal austerity.
If confirmed by the Senate, General Dempsey, currently the Army chief, would become the president?s senior military adviser working alongside Leon E. Panetta, the Central Intelligence Agency director, who is in line to become defense secretary when Robert M. Gates retires in late June, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, who will take over from Mr. Panetta at the C.I.A.
Officials said the high esteem Mr. Gates holds for General Dempsey ? a view shared by the departing chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen ? was a significant factor in shaping Mr. Obama?s decision. The president initially favored Gen. James E. Cartwright, the current vice chairman, before questions of personnel management and command style pushed him out of the running.
General Dempsey carries no visible political baggage and has no vocal critics across the armed forces. The only sour notes sounded at word of his nomination came from those who regret his departure from the post of Army chief. The exhausted ground force, they said, needs someone like General Dempsey who not only can employ the Army in combat, but also knows how to rebuild it.
Of the senior commanders to emerge from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, General Dempsey is known as among the least self-aggrandizing. That, too, was said to have been an attractive trait to a White House that is seeking to avoid public drama and that has felt cornered at times by strong egos within the war cabinet during policy battles, in particular over Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A West Point graduate of 1974, General Dempsey, 59, earned a master?s degree from Duke University ? in English, a subject he later taught West Point cadets.
And he can sing. Several thousand video scouts have found, seen and heard General Dempsey channel his inner Frank Sinatra in an acceptable rendition of ?New York, New York,? delivered in Army dress uniform.
As a one-star brigadier general, he was sent to Baghdad in 2003 to stabilize the Iraqi capital region in command of an Army division ? historically a task reserved for a two-star major general.
As a festering resistance exploded into full-fledged rebellion, he fashioned a complicated counteroffensive that mixed deadly attacks, political agility, media management and the infusion of cash into ravaged neighborhoods to suppress the Shiite revolt. And he did it so successfully that Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired general, labeled him the best combat division commander of the past decade. (Congress subsequently approved a second star.)
General Dempsey returned to Baghdad to oversee the training of Iraq security forces, building on previous experience he had gained advising Saudi Arabia?s armed forces, before being given a third star and the No. 2 job at Central Command. He had responsibilities not only for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also for keeping an eye on Iran and managing a complex set of regional alliances.
When Central Command?s four-star boss, Adm. William J. Fallon, was forced into retirement for some boldin a magazine profile, General Dempsey again was called to step up to a higher post without a formal promotion to the job.
For more than a year, he served as acting commander of American forces across the Middle East, impressing senior Pentagon leaders to the point that he was named Army chief earlier this year and now, in an unexpectedly rapid promotion, is expected to be nominated as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
?During his 36 years of active service, General Dempsey is one who has never been satisfied with the status quo ? a quality I have always looked for when selecting our military?s senior leaders,? Mr. Gates said last month when the general became Army chief. ?He?s always impressed me with his keen mind, strategic vision, quiet confidence and the energy he brings to every assignment: a real soldier-scholar.?
On General Dempsey?s Pentagon desk is a carved wooden box, one of three made for him and his two deputy commanders of the First Armored Division after their Iraq deployment in 2003 and 2004. Inside, General Dempsey keeps laminated cards, each bearing a photograph and biographical information on one of the 122 soldiers killed in action during the 15-month mission.
Every morning, General Dempsey opens the box and selects a half-dozen cards that he carries in his pocket that day. On the box is etched ?Make It Matter,? a reminder that his four-star responsibilities must serve the memory of those troops.
General Dempsey is married to his high school sweetheart, Deanie, and they have three children, Christopher, Megan and Caitlin. All three children have served in the Army.
The three most recent books he read illustrate his interests, concerns and priorities.
One was ?Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty,? by Karl E. Weick and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe. Another was ?The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations,? by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom. And the third was ?Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power,? by Robert D. Kaplan.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/us/29military.html?_r=3&partner=rss&emc=rss
Our obsession with our smartphones has grown into a full-blown addiction, according to a new survey in the iPass Global Mobile Workforce Report. According to iPass, one of every three mobile workers get up regularly throughout the night to check email on their phone, and nearly half of those surveyed admitted that they couldn?t sleep without a smartphone within reach. 
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/w_NGQv7fAeo/
Old-school videogame artwork gets turned into vector graphics using a new algorithm.
Photo: Hudson Soft/Nintendo. Click to enlarge.
Two computer science researchers have come up with an algorithm that can take a low-resolution piece of pixel art and upscale it accurately to vector graphics.
Microsoft?s Johannes Kopf and Dani Lischinski from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem built the algorithm by blending a number of approaches, including pixel analysis and spline curves. These are already used in the vectorization of bitmaps, but as the new algorithm focuses solely on 8-bit pixel art, it can take the art form?s particular quirks into account and produce results with far fewer graphical artifacts than more generalized approaches.In the research paper (.pdf) ? offline at the time of writing but handily mirrored at Imgur ? the pair say:
Because of the hardware constraints at the time, artists were forced to work with only a small indexed palette of colors, and meticulously arrange every pixel by hand, rather than mechanically downscaling higher-resolution artwork. For this reason, classical pixel art is usually marked by an economy of means, minimalism and inherent modesty, which some say is lost in modern computer graphics.
As a result, says the paper, every pixel can be a feature on its own, or carry important meaning. Other vectorization algorithms tend to lose detail when they?re given pixel art as an input. The researchers claim their approach is ?well-suited to pixel art graphics with features at the scale of a single pixel.?
You can see some of the results in Wired UK?s gallery. The algorithm doesn?t always work perfectly, admit Kopf and Lischinski, especially when it comes to the anti-aliased Doom face, and there?s also the question of whether certain aspects of pixel art ? like Space Invaders ? should have nice rounded edges.
It remains a research project for now, but how awesome would it be to see SNES games upscaled to HD resolution on the forthcoming Wii 2? We hope someone at Nintendo is paying attention.
Source: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/05/pixel-art-vector/
(CNN) -- The commander of the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels stepped down Friday in the wake of a subpar performance at a Virginia air show this week.
"I performed a maneuver that had an unacceptably low minimum altitude. This maneuver, combined with other instances of not meeting the airborne standard that makes the Blue Angels the exceptional organization that it is, led to my decision to step down," Cmdr. Dave Koss said in a statement, referring to the Lynchburg, Virginia, Regional Airshow.
He will be replaced by Capt. Greg McWherter, who was the flight demonstration team's previous commander.
Air shows have been in the spotlight recently because of concerns over safety.
Blue Angels commander steps downA pilot performing stunts in an east Florida air show in March died in a fiery crash when the Russian military plane he was flying in broke formation and fell to the ground.
Also in March, engine trouble at an air show in Texas caused a plane to plummet, leaving a white trail behind as it dove toward a wooded area. The two stunt pilots onboard survived.
The Blue Angels have canceled performances at the Rockford, Illinois, Airfest June 4-5 and the Evansville, Indiana, Freedom Festival Air Show June 11-12 because of the shakeup in leadership.
If people are told that free will doesn?t exist, their brains might follow suit.
A test of people who read passages discrediting the notion of free will found an immediate decrease in brain activity related to voluntary action. The findings are just one data point in ongoing scientific investigation of a millennia-old philosophical conundrum, but they raise an intriguing possibility.
?Our results indicate that beliefs about free will can change brain processes related to a very basic motor level,? wrote researchers led by psychologist Davide Rigoni of Italy?s University of Padova in a study published in May?s Psychological Science.
Rigoni?s team asked 30 people to read passages from Francis Crick?s 1994 book The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. Half read a passage that didn?t mention free will, while the others read a passage describing it as illusory. All were hooked to electroencephalograph machines that monitored electric activity known as ?readiness potential,? which is linked to the neurological computations that occur in the milliseconds before voluntary movement.
The test subjects were then asked to press a mouse button when a cursor flashed on a computer screen for several seconds. Those who read the passage dismissing free will displayed significantly lower readiness potentials. Their actions seemed to involved less voluntary control than the control group?s.
Tested on when they decided to press the button, the non-free-will group reported doing so a fraction of a second before their counterparts. To lose confidence in free will seemingly introduced a lag between conscious choice and action.
Earlier psychological studies of free will have found that discrediting free will seems to trigger an increase in cheating aggressiveness, encourage people to be less helpful and generally sap motivation.
The latest findings extend the effects of disbelieving to a more basic physical level. Whether there?s a relationship between free will, motor activity and more complex behaviors is yet to be determined, but ?abstract belief systems might have a much more fundamental effect than previously thought,? wrote the researchers.
Electrode readings of activity in brain regions linked to voluntary behavior in a control group (red) and people who read a passage discrediting free will (blue). Dots indicate the moment at which they decided to press a button. Psychological Science
Image: Loozrboy/Flickr.
H/t: BPS Research Digest
See Also:
Citation: ?Inducing Disbelief in Free Will Alters Brain Correlates of Preconscious Motor Preparation: The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not.? By Davide Rigoni, Simone Ku?hn, Giuseppe Sartori and Marcel Brass. Psychological Science, Vol. 22 No. 5, May 2011.
Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/free-will/
Google bills Profiles as a way to "decide what the world sees when it searches for you."
But Matthijs R. Koot, a privacy and anonymity researcher at the University of Amsterdam, also found that because of the nature of Google Profiles--it's meant to be indexed by search engines--he was able to easily save available information into a SQL database. Doing so required about a month's effort "to retrieve the data, convert it to SQL using spidermonkey and some custom Javascript code, and import it into a database," he said in a blog post.
The resulting database contains whatever people have added to their own Google Profile, which potentially includes their real name, aliases, Twitter conversations, work experience and educational background, and links to Picasa photos. In addition, Koot said that about 15 million profiles also have a username, which is the same as a person's Gmail address. Interestingly, Koot said that he was able to assemble the data "without Google throttling, blocking, CAPTCHAing" or encountering any other form of security protection.
The potential threat, or nuisance, posed by Google Profiles has to do with social engineering attacks and marketing firm practices. Namely, savvy attackers would have access to extensive amounts of personal information, which they could use to help make phishing or targeted attacks appear more realistic. Likewise, marketing firms have more information available for targeting potential customers. This threat, challenge, or--depending on your perspective--business opportunity isn't new. What is new, however, is the sheer amount of personal information that's easily available in one go.
According to a recent, global study, Internet users typically have an online expectation of privacy. But as Koot's project demonstrates, the reality can be different. Notably, third-party advertisers and affiliates can collect extensive amounts of personal information.
Koot said as much when explaining his rationale for this project. "My activities are directed at inciting, or poking up, debate about privacy--not to create distrust but to achieve realistic trust--and the meaning of 'informed consent.' Which, when signing up for online services like Google Profile, amounts to checking a box." The value of research such as Koot's project is also to illustrate not just what's possible, but what--from a marketing, advertising, or social engineering perspective--has probably already been done.
Koot's work recalls a similar project conducted in July 2010 by Ron Bowes, a security researcher and developer at Tenable Network Security, only with Facebook. Notably, thanks to Facebook's directory, Bowes was able to build a script that harvested 171 million Facebook usernames, 100 million of which were unique, as well as the URL for each profile. (Gathering more names may also have been possible, with tweaks for non-Romance-language alphabets.) Bowes published the information he'd gathered as a torrent file.
"This is a scary privacy issue," he said in a blog post at the time. "I can find the name of pretty much every person on Facebook. Facebook helpfully informs you that "[a]nyone can opt out of appearing here by changing their search privacy settings"--but that doesn't help much anymore considering I already have them all (and you will too, when you download the torrent)."
In this new Tech Center report, we profile five database breaches--and extract the lessons to be learned from each. Plus: A rundown of six technologies to reduce your risk. Download it here (registration required).
Find hundreds of reports featuring research from your peers, and best practices from top IT pros. Subscriptions $39 per month or $399 per year.
Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/privacy/229700122?cid=RSSfeed_IWK_Internet
