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Kaspar the friendly robot helps autistic kids (AP) : Technet |
- Kaspar the friendly robot helps autistic kids (AP)
- Schools to get $9M to support wireless off campus (AP)
- Check in lately? Foursquare revamps its app (AP)
- Microsoft job postings hint at (eventual) next-generation Xbox (Ben Patterson)
- Now playing on Facebook: “The Dark Knight” (Ben Patterson)
- Need Free Legal Advice? There's a Startup for That (Mashable)
- Cisco WebEx Meetings links you to the office via your Android (Appolicious)
- Defense Contractor Charged With Stealing Secrets on Laptop (PC World)
- Motorola: Why Android fragmentation is good (InfoWorld)
- Is Facebook Sounding the Netflix Death Knell? (NewsFactor)
- Cartridge World Printer Ink: A Good Bargain? (PC World)
- China blogger angered over losing Facebook account (AP)
- iOS 4.3 due later this week with mobile hotspot (Appolicious)
- Study: 70 percent of iPhone and Android open source apps violate licenses (InfoWorld)
- Spotify (Investor's Business Daily)
- Apple releases Java Updates for Leopard, Snow Leopard (Macworld)
- VMware Buys WaveMaker, Aims to Ease App Development (PC World)
| Kaspar the friendly robot helps autistic kids (AP) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 12:32 PM PST STEVENAGE, England – Eden Sawczenko used to recoil when other little girls held her hand and turned stiff when they hugged her. This year, the 4-year-old autistic girl began playing with a robot that teaches about emotions and physical contact — and now she hugs everyone. "She's a lot more affectionate with her friends now and will even initiate the embrace," said Claire Sawczenko, Eden's mother. The girl attends a pre-school for autistic children in Stevenage, north of London, where researchers bring in a human-looking, child-sized robot once a week for a supervised session. The children, whose autism ranges from mild to severe, play with the robot for up to 10 minutes alongside a scientist who controls the robot with a remote control. The robot, named Kaspar, is programmed to do things like smile, frown, laugh, blink and wave his arms. He has shaggy black hair, a baseball cap, a few wires protruding from his neck, and striped red socks. He was built by scientists at the University of Hertfordshire at a cost of about 1,300 pounds (US$2,118). There are several versions of Kaspar, including one advanced enough to play Nintendo Wii. The robot's still in the experimental stage, and researchers hope he could be mass-produced one day for a few hundred dollars. "Children with autism don't react well to people because they don't understand facial expressions," said Ben Robins, a senior research fellow in computer science at the University of Hertfordshire who specializes in working with autistic children. "Robots are much safer for them because there's less for them to interpret and they are very predictable." There are similar projects in Canada, Japan and the U.S., but the British one is the most advanced according to other European robot researchers not connected with the project. Scientists at the University of Hertfordshire first began using a version of Kaspar in 2005. The newest model is covered in silicone patches that feel like skin to help children become more comfortable with touching people. So far, almost 300 kids in Britain with autism, a disorder that affects development of social interaction and communication, have played with a Kaspar robot as part of scientific research. The robot has only a handful of tricks, like saying "Hello, my name is Kaspar. Let's play together," laughing when his sides or feet are touched, raising his arms up and down, or hiding his face with his hands and crying out "Ouch. This hurts," when he's slapped too hard. But that is enough to keep autistic children enthralled. Ronnie Arloff, 4, was so eager to see Kaspar he banged on the door and shouted his name. Arloff opened his arms wide just like the robot. He also recognized facial expressions, saying "happy" when Kaspar was smiling and "sad" when he frowned. Nan Cannon-Jones, an autism consultant at the school, said the robot helps children understand emotions and language. "After Kaspar says 'haha' when he's tickled, the children learn that's what laughing is," she said. Two of the 12 to 17 kids who attend the pre-school have refused to play with Kaspar outright. The school also uses speech and music therapy. "You can't teach children to speak or play using a robot, but it helps reinforce what we're teaching them already, like how to share and be nice to people," Cannon-Jones said. Experts not linked to the project said it was a promising idea. "Autistic children like things that are made up of different parts, like a robot, so they may process what the robot does more easily than a real person," said Dr. Abigael San, a childhood clinical psychologist in London and spokeswoman for the British Psychological Society. She thought it was possible that skills children learned with the robot at the pre-school could be transferred to their homes or the playground. But San warned that experts and parents shouldn't rely on robots too much. "We don't want children with autism to get too used to playing with robots," she said. "Ultimately, they need to be able to relate to other people." Kerstin Dautenhahn, the senior researcher at the University of Hertfordshire behind the Kaspar project, said she and colleagues don't have enough data to know if playing with Kaspar has sped up social skills in autistic children. They have published case studies describing improvements in up to a dozen children but no long-term trials. Researchers say prospects for a comprehensive study depend on funding and teacher-parent participation, since they would have to track the kids for years — but they would like to carry one out. She said it might also be possible to modify Kaspar to help children with other developmental problems, like Down syndrome. Uta Frith, an emeritus professor of cognitive development at University College London, said the robot was valuable in providing children with social interactions, but doubted a machine was necessary. "What's important for autistic kids is that they learn how to play imaginatively," she said. "And for that, you could use cooking pots or a shoe box." But Eden Sawczenko's mom says Kaspar's weekly visits seem to be helping. "Before, Eden would make a smiley face no matter what emotion you asked her to show," she said. "But now she is starting to put the right emotion with the right face. That's really nice to see." ___ Online: |
| Schools to get $9M to support wireless off campus (AP) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 01:36 PM PST |
| Check in lately? Foursquare revamps its app (AP) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 11:35 AM PST NEW YORK – Foursquare, the smart phone service that lets you "check in" to restaurants, bars and wherever else you want to tell friends you're at, is trying to help you discover new places. A new version of its application will include a new button, "explore," which replaces the current "tips" section. Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley said the idea is to find things near you, including the unexpected. So Foursquare might recommend a new burrito joint based on your check-in history, or on what your friends like. A new search function, meanwhile, lets you type in keywords such as "margaritas outside" or "date night" and get suggestions for where to go. The update, available for iPhones and Android phones Wednesday, will also let businesses offer new types of incentives, or "specials." Businesses can already offer deals or discounts to loyal customers or new visitors. For example, a bar can offer its "mayor" — that is, the person who has checked in the most times — happy-hour prices at all times, a free appetizer or a drink special. The update brings three new types of specials, bringing the total to seven. "Swarm specials" will let places offer special deals if a ton of people — say, 50 or 500 — check in all at once. "Flash specials" are quick-hit deals — such a free drink to the first 10 people to show up at a restaurant at a certain time. "Friends specials" are just that, deals you get when you bring a few extra guests to a venue. Foursquare has also revamped its leaderboard, which lets users compete with one another by scoring points for check-ins. The current app has one, but it wasn't easily found and many people simply forgot about it. The new leaderboard is displayed prominently on your Foursquare profile. Besides competing with friends, it lets you compete against your own high score. The goal is to reward you for checking in, even if you have little chance of becoming the "mayor" of your corner coffee shop. So now you'll get points for all kinds of activities, such as trying out new types of restaurants or visiting a place with a group of friends. Two-year-old Foursquare has nearly 7.5 million users worldwide and adds about 35,000 new people each day. This has made it more difficult for users, especially those in densely populated areas, to reach the coveted "mayor" title. ____ Online: http://blog.foursquare.com |
| Microsoft job postings hint at (eventual) next-generation Xbox (Ben Patterson) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 08:37 AM PST So, when's the next-generation Xbox coming? Microsoft says it's already here thanks to the motion-sensing Kinect camera, but a trio of new job postings suggest that Redmond may be gearing up for a true next-gen Xbox console—albeit one that's still years away from release. Eurogamer found the three help-wanted ads, with job titles such as Graphics Hardware Architect, Senior Architect and Performance Engineer, and Senior Hardware Design Verification Engineer, posted on LinkedIn. The job descriptions themselves are well-nigh indecipherable for those of us not in the game development business. Among the responsibilities for the Graphic Hardware Architect, according to Eurogamer: "architecture analysis, key technology selection, architecture specification, communication and collaboration with extended Microsoft teams and partner companies." Huh. The money quote, however, is right here: "Responsible for defining and delivering next-generation console architectures from conception through implementation." Next-generation console? Now we're talking. Eurogamer notes that the new job postings represent the first concrete evidence that Microsoft is working on—or at least thinking about—a successor to the Xbox 360. Of course, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was talking about the "next generation of the Xbox 360" as recently as last October—but he was referring to Kinect, the new motion-sensing camera accessory for the Xbox that landed in stores over the holidays. Meanwhile, the original, noisy, and glitch-prone Xbox console got a makeover last summer with the Xbox 360 "slim," which boasts a smaller, glossy black shell, "whisper-quiet" cooling fans, touch-sensitive controls, and built-in Wi-Fi. So, what features could we expect in a true next-generation Xbox? Usual suspects on the wish list include items like a Blu-ray drive (probably more for game storage than for video, given Microsoft's investments in 1080p video streaming through Xbox Live) and native 3D gaming support, for starters. But the biggest new feature would lurk under the hood: a vastly improved graphics processor, capable of cranking out visuals that would make the graphics abilities of the nearly six-year-old Xbox 360 platform look … well, painfully last generation. (For a glimpse at the future of gaming visuals, check out Kotaku's reports on last week's Game Developers Conference game engine demos from Epic and Crytek.) Exciting stuff, but don't hold your breath. Eurogamer notes that based on the newly posted job descriptions, Microsoft appears to be "early on in production" of the next Xbox—indeed, "far earlier than many had expected," with the new console "so early in development that the graphics hardware at the very least hasn't been locked down." Related: — Ben Patterson is a technology blogger for Yahoo! News. |
| Now playing on Facebook: “The Dark Knight” (Ben Patterson) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 07:00 AM PST One of the biggest online video sites in the world (not to mention a fairly big deal in the social-networking arena) is finally renting movies. First up: "The Dark Knight," Christopher Nolan's summer 2008 blockbuster. You can go ahead and rent "The Dark Knight" right now on the official "Batman: The Dark Knight" Facebook page. A 48-hour rental period (twice as long as the usual 24-hour window offered by the likes of iTunes, Amazon, and Vudu) costs 30 Facebook credits, or $3 here in the U.S. You'll have to install the "Dark Knight" viewer application (which requests access to your publicly shared Facebook information) before the feature begins.
Once you pony up the cash, just hit the "play" button to begin the show, which starts streaming directly in the browser. There's a full-screen option and a slider for jumping forward or back during playback, along with a volume controlâ€"otherwise, that's it. This marks the first time that a Hollywood studio has rented a movie directly through Facebook, with Warner Brothers telling The Hollywood Reporter that this initial "Dark Knight" rental is just a test. That much is obvious, given the blocky, jerky video quality on my Facebook page (and over a pretty fast broadband connection, by the way)—and no, three's no HD option, nor any way to stream the movie to an HDTV (short of hooking up your PC or laptop directly to the screen). Warner Brothers will have to do better than this if it expects to actually make hay with video rentals through Facebook. Still, the partnership makes sense, with All Things Digital's Peter Kafka pointing out that with its 600 million members and unmatched arsenal of social networking tools (indeed, Facebook "is *the* social hook," Kafka writes), Facebook seems like an attractive platform the big movie studios. "The only thing odd about this combination is that it's taken this long to come about," adds Kafka—very true. Warner Brothers has been busy testing the digital distribution waters in the past several weeks. Just last month, it make headlines by releasing iOS apps that included complete downloads for both "The Dark Knight" and "Inception," allowing the studio to sell digital versions of the movies in countries where the iTunes video store isn't available. So, assuming the big Hollywood studios manage to (substantially) boost the quality of their video streams through Facebook … could you see yourself turning to the world's largest social network for Net-based movie rentals? Or would you rather stick to existing online video stores like iTunes and Amazon? Related: — Ben Patterson is a technology blogger for Yahoo! News. |
| Need Free Legal Advice? There's a Startup for That (Mashable) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 03:01 PM PST The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: LawPivot Quick Pitch: LawPivot connects startups that need legal advice with lawyers who can answer their questions. Genius Idea: Founding a company requires so much legal legwork that some law schools offer a special degree in entrepreneurship. But most startups are understandably reluctant to cough up $300 to $600 per hour for legal advice, and they generally don't have time (or personal assistants) to track down the appropriate lawyer for a consultation. LawPivot's founders, both lawyers, weren't the first to notice this problem for startups, but they may have been first to see how a complementary problem on the lawyer's side could help solve it. "The legal industry is fundamentally changing right now, where it's about how good of a lawyer you are, but also how big of a book of business that you have," says co-founder Nitin Gupta. "Lawyers were just not taught how to develop business. All the traditional ways of developing business, which are speaking events, conferences, and writing articles, are just very inefficient." Gupta's team has set out to offer the exposure and the public reputation that lawyers need in order to develop their businesses by asking them to answer startups' legal questions free of charge. Here's how it works: Startups submit a question, tag it with relevant topics, and confidentially submit it to LawPivot. LawPivot's algorithm selects the 10 lawyers from its database to answer that specific question based on how it is tagged and the company that submitted it. The startup can then select as many lawyers from that list as it feels comfortable sending its question to. Those lawyers, and nobody else, will see the contents of the question and have an opportunity to respond with advice.
Online legal advice has an obvious potential for disaster, but LawPivot has done its best to keep the operation legitimate. Guptas cofounder, Jay Mandal, is the former lead mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Apple. Together the team personally vets every lawyer that applies to answer questions on the site (so far they've approved more than 200 of them). A seed investment from Google Ventures also makes a strong statement in favor of the site's credibility. LawPivot is not intended to challenge law firms. Fair questions are more in line with, "What are the usual terms that one gives to a newly hired executive?" than, "Can you draft this contract?" Rather, it is intended to help law firms establish relationships and reputation. Recipients of advice can write testimonials for the lawyers who offered it, and lawyers move up a public ranking system as they provide valuable advice. Meanwhile, startups and other verticals LawPivot plans to target in the future get an easy starting point for legal questions. The service is free, but eventually LawPivot will charge both lawyers and startups to use it. If the company can pull this business model off, it will have devised a way to not only intercept fees lawyers sometimes collect for consultations, but also to collect fees from those lawyers themselves. If that doesn't scream brilliant, we don't know what it does. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, photogl
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today. |
| Cisco WebEx Meetings links you to the office via your Android (Appolicious) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 06:57 PM PST |
| Defense Contractor Charged With Stealing Secrets on Laptop (PC World) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 05:30 PM PST A former engineer with U.S. military contractor L-3 Communications is facing as much as 20 years in prison on charges that he illegally exported military data to China. Sixing "Steve" Liu was stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers on Nov. 29, 2010, after flying back from a speaking engagement at a highly technical nanotechnology conference hosted by local universities and Chinese government officials. Apparently, border agents' suspicions were aroused when the agents found a conference lanyard in his luggage during a secondary inspection at New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport. Liu had said he'd been in China to visit family. "Customs officers found a folder containing multiple pages of technical language, pictures of military weapons systems, and documents written in Chinese," wrote U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Lisa Lenches-Marrero, in an affidavit listing the charges against Liu. Border guards also found a laptop. After obtaining a search warrant, federal investigators then discovered hundreds of company documents on Liu's computer, including several that contained technical data on guidance and control systems governed by U.S. arms export control laws. According to his LinkedIn profile, Liu's area of expertise at L-3 Communications was building very small-scale measurement systems using what's called MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical system) technology. MEMS chips are hot right now: They're what Apple's iPad uses to know how it's being moved around by game-players. Liu was using them to build complex aerospace navigation systems, according to his résumé. L-3 Communications is the sixth-largest defense contractor in the U.S., according to its website. Liu had downloaded the data found on his computer without his company's knowledge, was presenting at the conference without permission, and had told a co-worker that he was vacationing in Chicago, court records state. The U.S. Department of Justice described Liu's presentation at the 4th Annual Workshop on Innovation and Commercialization of Micro & Nanotechnology as a "presentation sponsored by the Chinese government." But according to William Parker, founder of biotechnology company Creative MicroSystems Corp., who spoke at the conference in 2009, the event is a legitimate international forum for international researchers, designed to advance understanding of specific aspects of nanotechnology. In an interview Tuesday, Parker said he was not familiar with Liu's work but was surprised to hear that he went ahead without company approval. "Usually, you have to get clearance to do a talk like this," he said. Although much of the material on the conference's website was unavailable Tuesday, a cached Web page indicates that the November 2010 event was sponsored by a number of universities and government and scientific agencies, including China's Ministry of Science and Technology. Liu had spoken at the conference more than once. He was a co-chairman of the event in 2009 and gave a talk entitled "Micro-Navigator for Spacecraft with MEMS Technology" at that year's event. He had been working for L-3 Communications for about seven months at the time of the 2009 workshop. L-3 Communications said it had "supported this investigation from the beginning and will continue to cooperate fully with federal authorities," but declined to comment further on the matter. Liu stopped working for the company the day after he was pulled aside at Liberty airport, according to court records. He couldn't immediately be reached for comment. He was charged on Friday in United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, but the complaint was not unsealed until Tuesday, the date Liu was set to appear in federal court in Chicago. Robert McMillan covers computer security and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Robert on Twitter at @bobmcmillan. Robert's e-mail address is robert_mcmillan@idg.com |
| Motorola: Why Android fragmentation is good (InfoWorld) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 05:15 PM PST San Francisco – Motorola Mobility, which has made the Google Android platform the centerpiece of its mobile technology strategy, has heard developer and customer concerns about Android fragmentation and systems not all behaving the same. But the company sees variation as beneficial rather than a hindrance, a Motorola Mobility official said on Tuesday. Variation is seen as a value of Android products, said Christy Wyatt, corporate vice president at Motorola Mobility, at the AnDevCon Android developer conference in San Mateo, Calif. Some customers, for example, love the features Motorola puts in the Droid smartphone family. But she acknowledged developer concerns. "Managing differentiation against fragmentation is kind of a delicate balance," Wyatt said. [ InfoWorld columnist Galen Gruman asks, can Motorola's Atrix 4G smartphone become your next PC? | Learn how to manage iPhones, Androids, BlackBerrys, and other smartphones in InfoWorld's 20-page Mobile Management Deep Dive PDF special report. ] An example of differentiation developers face in Motorola Mobility's systems involves the Xoom tablet and Atrix 4G. Released within a week of each other early this year, the systems use different interfaces for common features such as setting up email. Testing and certification programs do a good job of keeping APIs and implementations consistent, Wyatt said. Except for Google Experience Devices, such as the Xoom, Motorola's devices launched beginning late last year have the same baseline of features, but there are some UI changes and customization from telecommunications operators, Wyatt said. She encouraged developers to test applications across devices, although she added Android is "smarter" about rendering on different screens. A developer at AnDevCon acknowledged differentiation in Android systems. "Different device manufacturers are modifying the Android operating system to their liking," making such changes as modifying the UI, said Marek Szany, developer with Eset, in Slovakia. Android itself features version 2.4, for mobile devices, and 3.0, or Honeycomb, for tablets, he said. "We have to deal [with fragmentation]. We have no choice," he said. Eset develops security applications for Android systems, Szany said. Motorola Mobility also does not see commoditization of Android systems as a problem, Wyatt said. There is variation between Motorola Mobility Android systems and those of other vendors, she said. Wyatt stressed Motorola Mobility's commitment to Android, with the company basing its entire smartphone platform on Android. "You don't enter into an ecosystem like Android unless you are confident of your ability to compete," she said. But Android still needs work as far as the ability to monetize applications. Developers have said Android needs improvements in functions like discovery and single-touch transactions, she said. Also at the conference, Black Duck Software announced availability of Android Fast Start, a bundled software and service offering intended to help developers simplify the operational challenges of managing Android projects. With Fast Start, Black Duck manages governance and compliance for Android development. Android is an open source project composed of more than 165 components, 80,000 files, and 2GB of code under 19 licenses, Black Duck said. This article, "Motorola: Why Android fragmentation is good," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in business technology news and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter. |
| Is Facebook Sounding the Netflix Death Knell? (NewsFactor) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 08:41 PM PST Few saw this one coming. Facebook just inked a deal with Warner Bros. that could lead to a showdown with Netflix. In fact, Netflix stock dipped four percent on the news that the social networking giant is entering its space. But Facebook has seemingly been laying the ground work for years, most recently with its Facebook credits. In the Warner Bros. deal, Facebook will offer its users a chance to stream "The Dark Night" from its platform for 30 Facebook credits -- that's equal to $3 -- for a 48-hour period. Warner Bros. promised more titles for rent in the months ahead. "Facebook has become a daily destination for hundreds of millions of people," said Thomas Gewecke, president of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. "Making our films available through Facebook is a natural extension of our digital-distribution efforts. It gives consumers a simple, convenient way to access and enjoy our films through the world's largest social network." The Netflix Threat The Facebook deal comes at the heels of Amazon's announcement that it would offer about 5,000 movies and TV shows to its Amazon Prime members at no additional charge. The move could woo some Netflix subscribers to the bookseller's court. For its part, Netflix has more than 16 million members in the United States and Canada and is making inroads into the living room with its place on video consoles, set-top boxes and remote controls. But it may not be enough in the long-term to ward off the social networking behemoth. "Facebook's foray into pay-per-view does not impact our Netflix estimates," said Ingrid Chung, an analyst at Goldman Sachs. "However, Facebook represents a new potential entrant that few in the investment community were concerned with prior to this announcement, so we believe it does indeed represent an incremental negative for Netflix shares." Just an Experiment? If Facebook inks similar deals with other movie and television show distributors, analysts said the challenge will be formidable. But Netflix is sure to fight back, despite rumors of its death already circulating the Internet. Could Facebook do to Netflix what Netflix did to Blockbuster? That remains to be seen. "We saw how quickly Netflix put Blockbuster out of business and how they have been able to hold their own against some of the up-and-coming undercutting movie rental services like Redbox," said Brad Shimmin, principal analyst at Current Analysis. "That's a testament to how little value in ownership there is these days." Despite the fact that Facebook is only launching with a single movie, the dramatic response demonstrates the value investors put on Facebook's reach. About seven percent of the world's population is on Facebook. "If Facebook had more relationships beyond Warner Bros., they would certainly be a threat to Netflix and Amazon," Shimmin said. "I would put those three together as the ones to watch in this space. But because it's a limited partnership with Warner Bros., I would position this as more of an experiment and a stepping stone into something larger." |
| Cartridge World Printer Ink: A Good Bargain? (PC World) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 05:30 PM PST Some people call me cheap, even stingy. I'd rather be known as thrifty. That's why I won't buy the original (OEM) printer cartridges for my HP Photosmart e-All-In-One inkjet MFP. As a serial refiller, my quest is to find good third-party options--including remanufacturers, refill services, and do-it-yourself refill kits--and tell you whether the savings are worth the trouble. I've tried a variety of alternatives. A do-it-yourself refill kit from InkTec offered the best cost per page and print quality, but it also caused the most mess. Office Depot's remanufactured cartridges provided meager savings and middling output quality. The best option I've found so far is Costco's onsite refilling service, which saved me more than half the cost over the OEM ink, with little effort and acceptable print results. Can Cartridge World Beat HP's Own Ink? This time I tried remanufactured cartridges from Cartridge World. The company sells toner and ink cartridges for assorted printers, including numerous HP, Canon, Dell, and Lexmark models. You've probably seen one of Cartridge World's 1700 retail stores, 650 of which are in the United States and Canada. You can also buy direct from the company's Website. Because I used just one set of Cartridge World cartridges, and with only one printer, my experience is anecdotal and does not test the durability or archivability of third-party inks, nor how the printer will fare after repeated use with them. Nevertheless, my hands-on trials will give you a taste of what to expect if you try a third-party alternative with your own printer. With both the HP and Cartridge World inks, I printed out a set of pages--ranging in content from plain text to a full-size color photo--over and over again until the ink started to run out (blank streaks appeared on the page). I counted the number of pages that printed before streaks appeared, to get a sample page yield. (In all my tests, such page yields will likely differ from those that HP or the third-party company quotes, just as your own mileage will vary depending on what you print.) I also compared the print quality of the pages using Cartridge World ink versus those printed with the HP cartridges. Cartridge World Pricing Varies From Store to Web Products: * Cartridge World remanufactured HP 60 black cartridge: $12.99 at a store, $15.32 online* Cartridge World remanufactured HP 60 tricolor cartridge: $15.99 at a store, $18.55 onlineVendor URL: CartridgeWorld.com Worth trying? YesHassle factor: LowPrint quality compared with OEM ink: Satisfactory, but not as good as OEMYield (mixed set of samples): 156 pagesCost per page: 19 cents (OEM: 27 cents) I drove to my nearest Cartridge World store to buy two remanufactured HP 60 ink cartridges for my Photosmart e-All-in-One printer. I paid $12.99 for the black ink cartridge (model number CWH-60K) and $15.99 for the tricolor unit (CWH-60Tri). The sales clerk tried to upsell me to the high-capacity cartridges, which, she said, "cost twice as much but print three times as many pages" as the standard tanks. I declined. Total cost excluding sales tax: $28.98. When I got home, I compared Cartridge World's brick-and-mortar prices with those on its Website. Weird: The online prices were significantly higher than what I paid. The black cartridge was $15.32, and the tricolor was $18.55. Add $1.99 for shipping, and that comes to $35.86. Why the discrepancy? According to Sharon Kinkade, director of marketing for Cartridge World North America, store franchisees can set their own pricing. So you may pay more or less at a Cartridge World in your area than I did at mine in Los Angeles, and your store's price may be lower--or higher--than the price you'll find on the Web. If you ever needed a compelling reason to shop around, here it is. As with remanufactured cartridges from other vendors, the Cartridge World tanks are visually indistinguishable from the OEM ones, aside from the company's stickers on the top and side. Installation was simple: I popped out the empty HP cartridge and inserted the Cartridge World tank. Printing was uneventful, save for HP's error messages, which appeared soon after I started printing. Alarmist Exhibit A: 'Counterfeit or Used Cartridge Detected'. Cartridge World Output Quality Falls Short As with most third-party inks I've tested, Cartridge World's output quality was good enough for everyday printing, but not on a par with the quality I saw from OEM ink. HP's ink, for instance, produced grayscale photos with crisper and more realistic textures. And although Cartridge World's color images were attractive, HP's were noticeably sharper and more vibrant. In my water-drop tests, Cartridge World's inks smeared no more or less than HP's. Overall, I'd rate Cartridge World's inks, along with Office Depot's, in the middle of the pack: a little better than Costco's, but not as good as HP's or InkTec's. My analysis is subjective, of course, and Cartridge World's inks may suit your printing needs just fine. Cartridge World Cost Savings Are Minimal I printed 156 pages with Cartridge World's remanufactured black and tricolor cartridges before streaks appeared in images and text. That comes out to 19 cents per page, assuming you get the price I paid at my local store. If you purchase at the higher online prices, the cost estimate rises to 23 cents per page. By comparison, you'll pay 27 cents per page if you buy the HP 60 black and tricolor cartridges separately. Cartridge World ink saved me a few bucks over HP's own inks. InkTec's do-it-yourself refill remains the cheapest I've tried by far. For less-adventurous penny pinchers, Costco's refill service is a great deal at 11 cents per page--assuming that you find its mediocre output quality acceptable for your needs. |
| China blogger angered over losing Facebook account (AP) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 05:35 PM PST BEIJING – Chinese blogger and activist Michael Anti wants to know why he is less worthy of a Facebook account than company founder Mark Zuckerberg's dog. Anti, a popular online commentator whose legal name is Zhao Jing, said in an interview Tuesday that his Facebook account was suddenly canceled in January. Company officials told him by e-mail that Facebook has a strict policy against pseudonyms and that he must use the name issued on his government ID. Anti argues that his professional identity as Michael Anti has been established for more than a decade, with published articles and essays. Anti, a former journalist who has won fellowships at both Cambridge University and Harvard University, said he set up his Facebook account in 2007. By locking him out of his account, Facebook has cut him off from a network of more than 1,000 academic and professional contacts who know him as Anti, he said. "I'm really, really angry. I can't function using my Chinese name. Today, I found out that Zuckerberg's dog has a Facebook account. My journalistic work and academic work is more real than a dog," he said. Zuckerberg recently set up a Facebook page for "Beast," complete with photos and a profile. Unlike Anti's, however, the page for the puppy doesn't violate Facebook's policies because it's not meant to be a personal profile page. Rather, it's a type of page reserved for businesses and public figures that fans can "like" and receive updates from on their own Facebook pages. Facebook said it does not comment on individual accounts, but added that it believes a "real name culture" leads to more accountability and a safer and more trusted environment for people who use Facebook. "This viewpoint has been developed by our own research and in consultation with a number of safety and child protection experts," Debbie Frost, Facebook's director of international communications and Public policy, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. Facebook said in an e-mail to Anti that the company has "tried to keep the rule simple and fair by saying personal profiles must always be set up in the real legal name of the individual concerned." Dissidents in a variety of countries have argued that Facebook's policy can endanger human rights activists and others if their identities become known. Anti said there is a long tradition in China for writers and journalists to take pen names, partly as protection from retaliation from authorities. If Facebook requires the use of real names, that could potentially put Chinese citizens in danger, he said. "For my fellow Chinese, this policy could easily help Chinese police identify them," he said. It's not the first time Anti has had problems with an Internet site. In 2005, his blog on a Microsoft website was shut down by the company following pressure from Chinese officials. Microsoft's action led to a public outcry. ___ Associated Press technology writer Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this report. ___ Online: |
| iOS 4.3 due later this week with mobile hotspot (Appolicious) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 12:49 PM PST |
| Study: 70 percent of iPhone and Android open source apps violate licenses (InfoWorld) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 03:59 PM PST San Francisco –  OpenLogic, a provider of various open source products and services, examined the code of 635 of top mobile applications in the Apple App Store and Android Market Place. In all, OpenLogic identified 52 applications that use the Apache license and 16 that use the GPL/LGPL license, yet only 29 percent of those apps were in compliance with their respective licenses. Notably, the apps OpenLogic examined weren't just created by independent developers or small companies. Rather, the sampling included banking, sports, and game applications from recognized brands and media organizations as well. By OpenLogic's assessment, the noncompliant apps failed to meet four key obligations: The GPL/LGPL licenses require developers to make source code available and to provide a copy of the license; the Apache license requires the developer to provide a copy of the license and to provide notices and attributions. Broken down by app marketplace, Android compliance was 27 percent, and iPhone/iOS compliance was 32 percent. Overall compliance of Android applications using the GPL/LGPL was 0 percent. Additionally, the company found several apps had extensive EULAs in which the developers claimed to own all copyrights and code when, in fact, some of the code was open source. Whether developers are flouting open source licenses out of ignorance or out of sheer disregard for the law isn't entirely clear. The potential ramifications are, however -- developers may have their noncompliant apps flagged and removed from stores. Worse, they may find themselves the target of legal action. OpenLogic's findings also shed light on at least one of the reasons companies like Apple and Microsoft forbid open source apps in their respective app stores: The effort necessary to that ensure that all the software they sell is compliant with necessary licenses likely isn't worth the risks or the headaches. Rather than grousing at Apple and Microsoft for making business decisions that result in excluding open source apps, perhaps open source advocates should focus more on educating -- and targeting -- developers who continue to ignore the spirit and letter of open source licensing. This story, "Study: 70 percent of iPhone and Android open source apps violate licenses," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter. |
| Spotify (Investor's Business Daily) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 03:40 PM PST |
| Apple releases Java Updates for Leopard, Snow Leopard (Macworld) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 03:53 PM PST Apple rolled out new software updates Tuesday, though probably not the one some users were looking for. Instead of the iOS 4.3 update that some corners of the Internet insisted was in the works for Tuesday, the company released Java updates for Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6. According to Apple's release notes, the Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 4 brings improved compatibility, security, and reliability by updating Java SE 6 to 1.6.0_24. The update requires Mac OS X 10.6.4 or later. On the security front, Apple's notes say that the update addresses multiple vulnerabilities in Java 1.6.0_22. The most serious vulnerability could have let an untrusted Java applet execute arbitrary code outside the Java sandbox. Visiting a Web page containing a maliciously crafted untrusted Java applet could have led to that arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the current user. Likewise, Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 9 promises compatibility, security, and reliability improvements. Available for Mac OS x 10.5.8 or later, the software patch updates J2SE 5.0 to 1.5.0_28 and Java SE 6 to 1.6.0_24 for 64-bit capable Intel-based Macs. J2SE 1.4.2 remains disabled in this update, Apple says. The security notes for the Leopard Java update mention the same vulnerabilities addressed in the Snow Leopard fix. |
| VMware Buys WaveMaker, Aims to Ease App Development (PC World) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 03:30 PM PST VMware said on Tuesday it had acquired WaveMaker, the creator of open-source software that lets non-developers build Java Web applications. WaveMaker is built on the Spring programming model created by SpringSource, which VMware acquired a year-and-a-half ago. "WaveMaker takes the Spring programming model and everything underneath it and abstracts it into a tool, so you don't have to know what's going on behind it," said Mark Brewer, vice president of operations for VMware's Spring business unit. It's a graphical tool that lets users drag and drop to create a Web app. Users of the software can deploy their apps directly to an internal cloud or to a variety of other platforms, including Amazon, Rackspace, OpSource and Eucalyptus. The software runs on Windows, Mac OS, Red Hat, Ubuntu and other operating systems and supports databases including MySQL and Microsoft's SQL Server. WaveMaker users typically are people in a business who are not developers but who want to build a Web app, usually one featuring forms. One of the most common uses is to build a page that lets end-users enter a credit card to purchase a product, Brewer said. But there are other uses, too. The department store Macy's is a WaveMaker customer and used it to build an internal application that pulls together a variety of reports on business functions such as financial and human resources data, he said. VMware hopes the acquisition will help it encourage even more users of cloud services. "We said, 'if we're going to catapult ourselves into the cloud and help customers build apps that will run in the cloud, we need to attract that early adopter who is not a programmer, who wants to simply write an application,'" Brewer said. VMware plans to keep offering WaveMaker under an open-source license, Brewer said. It will sell support services such as training and consulting. In addition, VMware envisions adding WaveMaker to its Code2Cloud service so customers can use WaveMaker as a service rather than downloading the software. Code2Cloud is a hosted application lifecycle management service that supports developers as they move through building, testing, bug-tracking and integration testing. VMware expects to add WaveMaker to Code2Cloud in the next couple of months, Brewer said. The companies did not disclose terms of the deal. Employees of WaveMaker, which is based in San Francisco, will join VMware. Nancy Gohring covers mobile phones and cloud computing for The IDG News Service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @idgnancy. Nancy's e-mail address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com |
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