Easing the pain of applications delivery
Application virtualisation separates the application not just from the underlying hardware but also from the operating system. That means, for example, that you can run applications side by side in separate virtualised spaces without fear of clashes between them or with the operating system.
Application virtualisation is primarily seen as a desktop technology. A key advantage is that you can deliver applications in a variety of ways because they are independent of the client architecture. Read more...
Rare Triple Sky Treat: Lunar, Solar Eclipses in June and July
Over the next month, the world will experience three eclipses: two partial solar eclipses a month apart and one total lunar eclipse exactly in between, and it all starts with a so-called "midnight" eclipse of the sun.
A solar eclipse at midnight? How is such a thing possible?
It can happen near midsummer in the high Arctic, the land of the midnight sun. And it will happen this week on June 1 and 2, visible in the northernmost reaches of North America, Europe, and Asia.
These two solar eclipse sky maps available here detail what observers could see during some of the upcoming eclipses of the sun and moon in June. Read more...
The Revenge of Steve Jobs
Not long after the IBM PC began to takeoff in 1982, Steve Jobs and team started working on the Mac in earnest. He was convinced that the PC—with its mainframe and minicomputer-like, text-driven interface—would never catch on with mainstream users, and he set his team on creating a new computer that had a graphical user interface. Although he did not disclose that a new computer was coming from Apple at that time, I remember him telling some of us about how the PC was too geeky and boxy to be considered anything but a business computer. Even then, he was fixated on ease of use and design. Read more...
70% of Science Award Finalists Are Children of Immigrants
Immigration is a boon to American science and math, a new report asserts, noting that 70 percent of the finalists in a recent prestigious science competition are the children of immigrants.
The report by the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonprofit research group in Arlington, Va., states that many immigrant parents emphasize hard science and math education for their children, viewing those fields as paths to success. Read more...
Frog dissections go virtual at California school
A Southern California high school is taking the scalpel to frog dissections in biology class as it becomes the first U.S. school to take up animal welfare supporters' offer of free anatomy software.
Rancho Verde High School assistant principal Kevin Stipp tells the Riverside Press-Enterprise that it agreed to the deal with the Animal Welfare Institute and Save the Frogs to save money. Read more...
Google says Chrome to power only notebooks only for now
Google Inc will keep the focus of its Chrome operating system on notebooks, and has no immediate plan to make it available on tablets or to merge with its popular Android software for smartphones, said a senior executive.
Google has been making aggressive inroads into the PC operating system arena dominated by Microsoft Corp, whose Windows operating system can be found on 90 percent of the world's PCs.
Google had seen Chrome user numbers double over the past year to about 160 million, Sundar Pichai, Google's senior vice president for Chrome, told a news conference on Tuesday during the Computex PC show in Taipei. Read more...
Sony PlayStation Network to be fully restored by weekend
Sony plans to restore all its PlayStation Network services by this weekend in all regions except Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong, the company said Tuesday.
Sony will also resume its Music Unlimited service on its Qriocity audio and video streaming service for the PlayStation3 (PS3) and PlayStation Portable (PSP) gaming platforms, Vaio laptops and other PCs.
Details for Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea, as well as for the remaining services on Qriocity, will be announced as they become available. Read more...
Intel launches new class of ‘Ultrabook’ laptops
Intel announced plans for a new class of thin and light laptops at the Computex trade show on Tuesday, its latest move to improve its competitiveness in the mobile computing market.
The new class of "Ultrabook" PCs will have "thin, light, beautiful" designs and be priced for the mainstream market, as opposed to high-end buyers. Intel expects the new systems to account for 40 percent of consumer laptop sales by the end of next year, it said.
It will take time for the systems to evolve, however. An initial crop of Ultrabook PCs will go on sale from PC makers in time for the holiday shopping season at the end of this year. Based on Intel's existing Core processors, they will be less than 20mm (0.8 inches) thick and priced under US$1,000, Intel said. Read more...
Samsung demands to see Apple’s next iPhone, iPad
In the latest round of an ongoing patent and trademark battle, Samsung on Friday asked a federal judge to make Apple provide the Korean electronics giant with samples of its next-generation iPhone and iPad.
Samsung asked U.S. District Court Judge Koh to force Apple to give it "a sample of the final, commercial version of the next generation iPhone that Apple will release, whether that product will be known as the 'iPhone 4S,' 'iPhone 5,' or some other name," according to a motion filed in a California federal court Friday.
The Korean company also made a similar demand for "the next generation iPad that Apple will release, whether that product will be known as the 'iPad 3,' 'Third Generation iPad,' or some other name." Read more...
Nvidia shows tablet running quad-core Tegra chip
Nvidia has shown a prototype tablet computer running a four-core version of its Tegra processor and said products based on the new chip will go on sale starting in September.
Speaking to reporters ahead of the Computex trade show in Taipei on Monday, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang also announced that Nvidia will have shipped 10 million of its existing dual-core Tegra 2 processors by the end of June.
Best known for its graphics chips, Nvidia has emerged as a force in the market for ARM-based processors used in smartphones and tablets, where it competes with more established mobile chip vendors such as Qualcomm and Texas Instruments. Read more...
Surviving a 24-hour ‘hackathon’
The team of software programmers and designers who won San Diego's inaugural "24 hour Hackathon". They are being mentored by Opencandy, a San Diego-based tech startup.
This all-nighter was unlike the other ones for the quintet of close buds.
A seemingly endless stream of energy drinks and pizza didn't fuel the group of San Diego software developers and web designers for a paper for Intro to Geology, or a midterm for Roman Civilization.
Team Neopixel, who know each other from design school and work, stayed up 23 hours (with an hour of sleep for some) in a downtown warehouse early this spring to develop a Web app in the region's first "hackathon" competition. Read more...
New algorithms allow robots to procrastinate
RESEARCHERS at MIT have developed an algorithm which allow robots to put off task planning and respond to environments that change over time.
Until now, robotic manufacturers have found it difficult to replicate simple human actions in robots. The new hierarchical, progressive algorithm could greatly reduce the computational cost associated with performing complex actions.
Leslie Kaelbling, the Panasonic Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, and Tomás Lozano-Pérez, the School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Excellence and co-director of MIT’s Centre for Robotics, outlined their approach in a paper titled “Hierarchical Task and Motion Planning in the Now”. Read more...
UK is developing a cyber-weapons programme: report
Armed forces minister Nick Harvey acknowledges that the country is working on a cyber-weapons programme with offensive capabilities
The UK is reportedly developing a cyber-attack programme with a range of offensive capabilities.
According to the Guardian, the cyber-weapons programme is aimed to make a shift from cyber defences to cyber offences so that the government can tackle increasing threats to national security from cyber attacks.
In an acknowledgement of the development, armed forces minister Nick Harvey told the Guardian that "action in cyberspace will form part of the future battlefield." Read more...
Update: PayPal, eBay sue Google over mobile payments secrets
PayPal and parent eBay have filed a suit against Google and two former executives alleging that they have misappropriated their trade secrets in the area of mobile payments and point-of-sale strategies.
The suit filed Thursday before the Superior Court of the State of California in the County of Santa Clara also charges two former employees, Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius, who now work with Google, of breaching their obligations to PayPal and eBay.
Google unveiled on Thursday its Google Wallet, that will let people with special phones pay for goods in retail shops by tapping the phones against a payment terminal. Read more...
Oracle offers JavaFX 2.0 beta
JavaFX 2.0, an upgrade to the Java-based rich client platform that originated at Sun Microsystems, was made available in a beta form this week by the Java team at Oracle.
In its road map for JavaFX 2.0, Oracle cites introduction of Java APIs that open JavaFX capabilities to all Java developers without them having to learn a new scripting language. Previously, JavaFX Script has been proposed as scripting language for using JavaFX capabilities. The download page for the JavaFX 2.0 beta release features an SDK, a runtime, and a plug-in for the NetBeans IDE. Read more...