Hands up who wants 3D finger-controlled fridges? That’s the spirit
The companies betting that we'll want to manipulate everything electronic around us with a wave of a hand are already laying claim to various types of body movement.
The technology to detect gestures is included in laptops and televisions shipping right now, but like the touchscreen phone world, it is riddled with patent applications.
Just as no one except Apple can make a phone with a "slide to unlock" feature, no one except PointGrab can make a TV that mutes when a finger is placed on one's lips. No one except EyeSight can recognise a gesture without taking the background into account, at least until the lawyers get to work. Read more...
An inside look at Google’s news-ranking algorithm
A patent application filed by Google last year provides a detailed look at some of the metrics the company considers when ranking news stories and deciding how prominently to display them on its Google News page.
The application, filed in February 2012 and published last July, seeks to build on a patent Google was issued in 2009 titled "Systems and Methods for Improving the Ranking of News Articles." Computerworld found the document while conducting an unrelated patent search on the United States Patent Office's website. Read more...
Chrome 18 update closes high-risk security holes
Google has released a new update to the stable 18.x branch of its Chrome web browser to close a number of security holes found in the application. The update, labelled 18.0.1025.168, addresses a total of five vulnerabilities, three of which are rated as "high severity" by the company. Read more...
HP updates dependency mapping software
Hewlett-Packard has updated its dependency mapping software to help customers figure out which departments are using which systems and applications, to enable chargeback programs and other management tasks.
Dependency mapping helps data center architects uncover the connections between applications, servers, and storage systems, so that when they consolidate systems, replace legacy gear, or do virtualization projects they don't accidentally break something in the process.
"We've found that most data center managers know with a fair degree of accuracy about 80 percent of what's in their data center. It's the other 20 percent that keeps them up at night," said Jimmy Augustine, a group marketing manager in HP's software division. Read more...
Lost programming skills
Today's coders may know how to whip up a PHP script or a Drupal extension, create a mobile app for both the iPhone and Android, and run DOOM on their car's GPS (which has been done, it turns out). But there's a lot that their predecessors knew that today's programmers don't.
Some of these skills aren't likely to be needed again, any more than most of us need to know how to ride a horse or (sigh) drive a manual-transmission vehicle. But other skills and "lessons learned" may still or again prove relevant, whether developers are banging their heads against legacy systems, coding for new mobile and embedded devices... or other devices and applications we haven't yet thought of. Read more...
Cloud computing 2.0: Top CIO tips for dealing with the next stage
Utility computing has switched quickly from hype to reality, with increasing numbers of organisations moving infrastructures, platforms and even applications to the cloud.
What will be some of the next frontiers for on-demand technology and how can IT leaders prepare for the inevitable shift to cloud computing? Here, IT leaders discuss the future shape of the cloud and present their top tips for dealing with the next generation of on-demand IT.
Tip 1. Niche providers will fill the gaps
easyJet CIO Trevor Didcock is already making use of the cloud. He expects relationships with third parties to develop in the future, particularly with specialist providers that will help CIOs safely make the most of on-demand computing.
"There's a tendency to think that implementing the cloud means you have dealt with a concern and that it's become someone else's problem. But the cloud can increase security risks because you're more dependent on partners. You have to audit your external providers to ensure they're managing your data correctly," he says. Read more...
Digia opens Qt office in the U.S.
Finnish company Digia has opened an office in the U.S. in an effort to boost the commercial usage of a cross-platform application and user interface framework Qt, it said on Tuesday.
In March, Digia announced it was acquiring Nokia's Qt Commercial licensing and services business. Nokia kept control of the software itself.
Qt is designed to let developers write and deploy applications across desktop, mobile, and embedded OSes without rewriting the source code. It is available either as open source or under a commercial license. Companies that want to use the latter for its embedded and desktop systems can now turn to Digia. Read more...
Google adds ‘+1′ rating feature to Android Market
Google is giving Android Market users a new way to evaluate applications even as it struggles to keep malicious ones off the store.
The "+1" feature on the Android Market is intended to be a more personalized complement to the standard star-based app-rating system that users have traditionally employed to give their opinions on applications.
BACKGROUND: More malware apps sneak onto Android Market
The premise is simple: If you like a particular application on the Android Market, you can sign into your Google account and give it a +1 that all of your other Google contacts will be able to see when they click on the app. In other words, you'll be able to see whether or not your friends and acquaintances are fans of a particular game just by clicking to see if any people you know have recommended it. Friends' and contacts' +1 ratings will also appear in search results if they have recommended any products or websites relating to the search keywords, Google says. Read more...
16 must-see downloads you may have missed this week
Sadly we can't feature every new and updated application, but that doesn't mean that some of the apps we haven't covered aren't worth rounding up. There are a number of interesting applications that are worth some investigation and we've rounded up some of them put live during the last week.
doPDF 7.2.363 is a powerful free tool you can use to produce a PDF from just about any Windows application. Instead of sending it to your printer, simply print to the doPDF device. Creating a PDF is the ideal way of distributing a document for download, by email or for commercial printing. Just about any printer will take a PDF as your master. Read more...