Yahoo strengthens Facebook ties
Continuing its forays into the social-networking realm, and its announced partnership with Facebook, Yahoo is introducing features that will further integrate its services with Facebook.
Yahoo and Facebook are tightening their embrace, with new functions such as viewing and sharing updates across both sites.
(Credit: Business Wire)Users of both Yahoo and Facebook will soon be able to view their stream of Facebook updates from friends--their Facebook "news feed"--on Yahoo Mail and Yahoo.com. The changes also mean users of Yahoo sites will be able to more easily see the actions they take on those sites reflected on Facebook as well--for instance, posting pictures on Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site Flickr and seeing those shots appear on Facebook.
"More and more, people rely on social sites to share and discover information that matters to them, making Yahoo uniquely positioned to provide people with all of the mainstream methods of content discovery--social, search, communications, and editorial," said Cody Simms, senior director of social platforms and the developer network at Yahoo. "Starting with Facebook, we are bringing all of these elements together to give people one simple, trusted place to share information and connect"
In addition, Yahoo is tweaking its Yahoo Profiles service. Profiles is a social-networking-like service designed to let users post information about themselves and connect with other users. The new incarnation will be named Yahoo Pulse and will incorporate tabs for different social networks, enabling people to, for example, click from Pulse to Facebook and back again for the latest updates from friends. Yahoo Pulse also will feature easier-to-use privacy settings, the company said.
The new features should be made available "In coming days," according to The Wall Street Journal, which reported the changes ahead of Yahoo's announcement.
Yahoo has made social media a focus. In December, the company announced the integration of Facebook Connect across several key Yahoo Web sites including Mail, News, Sports, and Finance. The idea is to drive even more readers to Yahoo's network of sites--the second largest in the U.S.--by making it easier for them to share things they like with their Facebook friends, some of whom may not have seen the Yahoo item otherwise.
In March, Yahoo unveiled features that let Yahoo Mail customers use the service to log in to their Facebook accounts, update their Facebook status, and click directly to the Facebook profiles of friends who've linked their Facebook and Yahoo Mail accounts and who've sent an email message.
Google Wi-Fi intercept triggers Aussie police probe
Australia has called in the police to determine whether Google violated privacy laws by capturing data from private Wi-Fi networks though its Street View service.
At a forum on Internet security on Sunday, Australian Attorney General Robert McClelland told reporters that the matter was handed over to the police following a string of complaints from the public. Specifically, the Australian Federal Police are looking into possible violations of the country'sTelecommunications Interception Act, which "prevents people from accessing electronic communications other than for authorized purposes," according to McClelland.
Google asaid Sunday that it will cooperate with the Australian police probe, according to Reuters. But the company may face a fight ahead, at least with some members of the government. Stephen Conroy, Australia's minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy, has gone so far as to accuse Google of purposely capturing the Wi-Fi data and has rather dramatically called this possibly "the largest privacy breach in history across Western democracies."
The uproar begin around the middle of May after Google admitted that it had inadvertantly been collecting certain private data from Wi-Fi networks as part of its Street View mapping service. The mistake had apparently gone unnoticed for the past several years and has triggered concerns and aroused suspicion in several countries, including the United States, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Australia.
Since the revelation, the search giant has been hit by federal investigations and class-action lawsuits in the U.S. and Europe. On its end, Google has promised to cooperate with the investigations by handing over the data it collected and conducting its own review to determine how this problem could have occurred and gone undetected for so long.
Forget needles. 'Please' delivers drugs via lasers
I've always envied people who can get injections without flinching, as somehow, seeing a needle enter the skin gives me the jitters. This is probably the reason intravenous drug abuse has never appealed to me (next to the addiction and death issues, of course).
But thanks to Pantec Biosolutions and its Please (Painless Laser Epidermal System) device, getting a jab may no longer require the doctor to chase after a 33-year-old man shrieking down the hospital halls.
Using a laser system, the device creates micropores on the skin through which a stick-on patch delivers drugs into the body. This works in much the same way vaccines were performed in the early years, when the skin where medication was "injected" was scratched using a sharp tool.
For Please, the laser is delivered in short pulses and does not cause thermal damage. Moreover, since the pores do not reach the dermis layer where nerves and blood vessels reside, no pain or bleeding is involved.
Please Professional is a desktop unit that can create more micropores in less time so patients can be "injected" faster.
(Credit: Pantec Biosolutions)The product comes in two models: Please Home and Please Professional. The former is meant for home users like diabetic patients, with the doctor or medical staff presetting the poration parameters for the required dose. The Professional model is a desktop unit that can create more microporations in a shorter time so more patients can be "injected" faster. Moreover, this device is also capable of hard tissue (i.e. finger and toe nails) ablation for specific medical treatments.
The product has just been certified for the European market. Check out the video below on how the Please pleases those who hates needles.
Related story:
A migraine treatment for needle-phobes
A migraine treatment for needle-phobes
(Source: Crave Asia)
Apple patent bid combines solar with touch screen
Although Apple has yet to release a solar-powered gadget, its engineers clearly see the potential for solar power in multitouch devices, such as the iPhone and iPad.
A recently surfaced patent application, spotted by Patently Apple, shows that Apple employees filed a patent for a technology to embed solar cells under the touch screens of handheld devices.
Creating a single "stack" that combines the sensors for a multitouch screen and solar cell frees up more surface area, according to the patent description. The patent, which was filed in September 2008, also calls for the use of "light channels" to direct light to a solar cell underneath a touch screen, potentially using a parabolic reflector.
A diagram from a 2008 patent application submitted by Apple employees for integrating a solar cell beneath a multitouch screen.
(Credit: Patently Apple)One of the notable aspects of the patent application is that it can be applied to a range of gadgets and could lead to the use of a double-sided solar panel that absorbed light from both the top and a glass-covered backing.
In August of 2008, Apple engineers submitted another patent application relating to the electronics circuitry needed to use a solar cell embedded into a small device. That followed a more general patent application from 2006 called "Solar Cells on Portable Devices."
Standalone chargers for small electronics, including Apple gear, have been around for years. But embedding a solar cell into a device, with a power management system, is a far more challenging engineering job and it's still not clear that can be done without adding significantly to a gadget's cost.
In theory, a solar-powered device could use cells that harvest indoor light, rather than only direct sunlight.
New York mulls Great Lakes wind farm
The New York Power Authority on Friday kicked off a multiyear review process for an offshore wind farm in Lake Erie or Lake Ontario.
The state has received five applications to build a wind farm, in a planning process that began in April 2009. The earliest that a functioning offshore facility could be operating is by 2015, according to the New York Power Authority.
A pilot offshore farm in Europe
(Credit: GE)The outlined review process underscores the difficulty of siting energy facilities in the U.S. Even with growing support for renewable energy, large projects face a tangle of environmental and regulatory reviews as well as the possibilities of financial shortfalls and public opposition.
Having received proposals for the wind farms this month, state power authorities and specialist consultants will spend the next six or seven months picking a developer.
The project developer will then spend about two years undergoing environmental and regulatory reviews and seeking community input, a process that is estimated to go until about 2013. In that same period, the project developer will need to try to secure a power purchase agreement with a utility to buy the power generated by the turbines.
Project construction, estimated to start in 2013, would take two to three years with operations beginning in 2015 or 2016, according to the New York Power Authority.
If successful, this timeline would be significantly faster than that of the Cape Wind project off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, a planned project dating back to 2001 and, despite federal approval, still facing legal and regulatory challenges.
In addition to challenges based on environmental laws, Cape Wind needs to get the approval of state regulators for its power purchase agreements. In Rhode Island, a pilot offshore wind farm, which would have been in deeper waters than Cape Wind, was blocked by regulators because of the high cost of electricity.
There is another Great Lakes offshore wind farm project also going through the reviews process. Last month, General Electric and an Ohio-based developer said they hope to have a project built in Lake Erie by 2012.
PC shipments rise nearly 23 percent
Hot demand in Asian markets helped first-quarter PC shipments around the world jump 22.7 percent over the same period last year, the highest annual surge recorded by iSuppli since it began tracking the market in 2003.
The industry shipped 81.5 million PCs during the quarter, compared with 66.5 million in the prior year's quarter.Releasing the numbers on Friday, iSuppli pegged the surge in growth on strong sales as well as weak conditions at the outset of 2009.
"Early 2009 represented one of the weakest periods in the history of the PC market, as consumer and corporate demand plunged due to the economic downturn," Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for compute platforms at iSuppli, said in a statement. "With economic conditions improving, PC sales rebounded in early 2010."
But higher demand across Asia also fueled growth, particularly for Asian PC vendors Asus, Samsung, Lenovo, and Acer. Among the top 10 OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) throughout the world, Asus enjoyed the biggest surge in growth with its shipments rising 136.2 percent. Samsung saw an 83.9 percent rise in its PC shipments, while Lenovo grabbed a 58.5 percent increase.
Acer's growth rate of 47.1 percent won it a 13.3 percent slice of the market and inched it a few steps closer to top player Hewlett-Packard in market share. Acer continued to be the beneficiary of strong demand for notebooks, which accounted for almost 80 percent of its PC shipments, according to iSuppli. Computer shipments for stalwarts HP and Dell also rose but their growth trailed that of the overall market.
(Credit: iSuppli)"The rise of Asian OEMs at the expense of longtime U.S. leaders like Hewlett-Packard and Dell represents a historic shift in the PC market," Wilkins said. "The rise of the Chinese consumer economy along with Asia's increasing dominance in electronics manufacturing is spurring a fundamental shift in regional balance of power in the PC market."
Though its market share is still small, Apple's computer shipments increased by 32.4 percent from a year ago, a factor that iSuppli believes is a side effect of the huge popularity of the iPhone and iPad. HP saw 22.2 percent growth over last year, while Dell had a rise of 21.8 percent.
While notebook shipments led the PC surge with gains of 26.5 percent for the quarter, the desktop continued to battle to stay alive. Desktop shipments rose only 1 percent in the first quarter, but that did mark their first quarterly gain since the second quarter of 2008.
Looking ahead, iSuppli expects PC shipments to increase by 17 percent this year, with higher demand for notebooks but flat growth for desktops.
Lance Whitney wears a few different technology hats--journalist, Web developer, and software trainer. He's a contributing editor for Microsoft TechNet Magazine and writes for other computer publications and Web sites. You can follow Lance on Twitter at @lancewhit. Lance is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and he is not an employee of CNET.Beta of Windows 7 update due in July
Microsoft said Monday it expects to have a public beta by July for the first service pack update to Windows 7.The announcement came at the start of Microsoft's TechEd conference, being held this week in New Orleans.
Although the update is relatively minor, the release of the first service pack of an operating system has historically been a symbolic indication to businesses that the software is ready for mass consumption. In recent years, though, Microsoft has issued many of the updates that are part of a service pack ahead of that release and the company has encouraged businesses not to wait for the first service pack to deploy a particular piece of software. That's especially true with the Windows 7 update, which consists almost entirely of already released bug fixes."While the new features for Windows Server 2008 R2 benefit Windows 7 by providing a richer [virtual desktop] experience, SP1 will not contain any new features that are specific to Windows 7 itself," Microsoft's Gavriella Schuster said in a blog post. "For Windows 7, SP1 will simply be the combination of updates already available through Windows Update and additional hotfixes based on feedback by our customers and partners. In other words, customers can feel confident about deploying Windows 7 now."Microsoft also plans to release a service pack for its latest server operating system, Windows Server 2008 R2, in July. Microsoft did not give a date of when to expect the final version of the service packs.On the Bing front, Microsoft said that developers will be able to build new applications built on top of Bing Maps and that those applications will be able hostable on Bing.com.Microsoft also announced updates to its cloud-based Windows Azure operating system, adding support for the latest versions of Visual Studio and the .Net Framework, and to the SQL Azure cloud database, adding spatial data support and access to up to 50GB of capacity.The software maker also showed more features of the next version of its communications server. Communications Server "14," as the product is code-named, will allow for sharing of office documents and applications, as well as single-click meeting access from Outlook, SharePoint, and phones. Finally. Microsoft said it is ready with a test version of the first service pack for Exchange 2010.Update, 8:45 a.m. PT: The day 1 keynote from TechEd has wrapped up. Among the demos was Gurdeep Singh Pall showing high-definition videoconferencing using Communications Server 14. The new software will support 720p video. Today's computers typically have VGA cameras built-in, but add-on HD Webcams can be had for as little as $50."We do expect, in the not too distant future, to see HD cameras being built into laptops," Server and Tools unit president Bob Muglia said.The demo of sharing an office document, in this case a PowerPoint, lagged considerably, so Pall quickly switched to demoing a virtual whiteboard feature instead."The whiteboard is just a click away from me," Singh Pall said, covering nicely.Muglia talked about all the investments Microsoft is making in various cloud services, but stressed that the PC and server businesses are doing quite well, noting the strength of the PC market and the fact that most businesses are planning moves to Windows 7."The PC is alive and well," Muglia said.Microsoft also showed a video with filmmaker James Cameron talking about the Gaia asset management system that Microsoft helped develop for Cameron's 3D blockbuster, "Avatar." In his talk at last week's D: All Things Digital conference, Cameron mentioned the work that Microsoft did .I'll be chatting with Muglia later today, so if you have questions, send them my way (ina dot fried at cnet dot com).
Foxconn raising factory salaries again
Facing increased media coverage and more scrutiny from its customers after a wave of suicides at its Shenzhen, China, plant, Foxconn said Monday that it will raise the monthly salary of its factory workers once again.
The company said it plans to increase pay to 2,000 yuan ($293) from 1,200 ($176) yuan, an increase of about 67 percent. This follows last week's 30 percent pay raise by the Taiwan-based company.
The new salary does come with a few conditions, according to Foxconn. Workers will have to pass a three-month performance evaluation before they can receive the raise. New employees will join the assembly line with a monthly wage of 1,200 yuan and must pass a three-month probationary period to receive the increase to 2,000 yuan a month.
Foxconn added that it will announce raises for line leaders and supervisors before August 1 and those for factory workers in other parts of China on July 1. With the new wages, the company said that many of its 800,000 workers in China could earn as much as $300 a month, about double their recent salaries, according to The New York Times.
The company said the wage increase is designed to ensure that Foxconn workers have a stable and comfortable income. Though overtime was always voluntary, Foxconn added that the raise will reduce the need for overtime for some employees and make it more a personal choice.
"This wage increase has been instituted to safeguard the dignity of workers, accelerate economic transformation, support Foxconn's long-term objective of continued evolution from a manufacturing leader to a technology leader, and to rally and sustain the best of our workforce," Foxconn founder and Chairman Terry Gou said in a statement. "We recognize our responsibility as a global leader in electronics manufacturing, and take this responsibility very seriously."
Foxconn manufacturers PCs and electronic devices for Apple, Dell, HP, and other vendors. At least 10 workers at its 250,000-employee factory in Shenzhen have killed themselves by jumping from high floors this year, while several others have attempted suicide.
With concerns raised about working conditions, Apple, Dell, and HP have opened their own investigations, whileSony and Nokia have also begun looking into the situation.
Last week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs asserted that the suicide rate among the factory workers is less than the overall U.S. rate. But he said it's still troubling, needs to be understood, and must be monitored.
Foxconn, which has resisted attempts to scrutinize working conditions at its plants, has downplayed the suicides as work-related. But employees quoted in various stories, including one by BBC News, have spoken of their lives on the factory floor as stressful and lonely.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)