Alcatel-Lucent announced Tuesday that the new 7950 XRS Internet router is capable of delivering 16 terabits of data per second. “That’s about 2.5 million HD video streams every tick of the second hand,” notes CNN.
This makes the router five times faster and 66 percent more power efficient than the current industry leaders.
The 7950 XRS has been intelligently programmed to treat traffic according to the type of page. The router allocates power based on the content of the page, shifting more bandwidth to video traffic while only increasing bandwidth to regular Web pages when a user clicks a link.
The product marks Alcatel-Lucent’s debut in the core router market, which has traditionally been dominated by Cisco and Juniper.
Core routing represents a $4 billion a year industry, and Alcatel-Lucent stands in good position to pick up a decent market share, even if it is not an industry high on turnover.
“Service providers know us now, and they trust us,” says Basil Alwan, president of IP networks for Alcatel-Lucent. The company hopes that this familiarity may help convince the likes of AT&T, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google to consider switching to the new router.
Following ratification by Nevada’s legislature to regulate self-driving cars, the California State Senate has proposed its own set of standards. The California bill passed 37-0 and now heads to the State Assembly.
California is taking a more cautious approach than Nevada. “Earlier this month, Nevada issued its first testing license to Google, allowing the company to begin trials on state roadways. California’s bill doesn’t go quite as far, outlining general performance and safety requirements that manufacturers must meet before embarking on test drives,” reports The Verge.
The legislation requires mechanisms for disabling the autonomous functions and requires at least one licensed driver be in the vehicle during test trials. Additionally, companies conducting trials must be insured at $5 million minimum.
Senator Alex Padilla authored the bill and envisions California as “the global leader” of autonomous driving. He notes that autonomous driving would not only create new jobs, but would decrease tragic accidents since the “vast majority of these collisions are due to human error.”
“Through the use of computers, sensors and other systems, an autonomous vehicle can analyze the driving environment more quickly and accurately and can operate the vehicle more safely,” adds Padilla.
Google now officially owns Motorola Mobility after starting the $12.5 billion acquisition process in August.
The deal had been stalled since February as the companies waited for China to approve the agreement, which it did over the weekend. Europe and the U.S. had already announced their approval.
China was stalling as it questioned Google’s claims that Motorola would continue to operate independently and that Google would not show the vendor favoritism.
Before approving the deal, China “forced Google to agree to keep Android open and free for a period of five years to ensure it didn’t change its stance and give Motorola preferential treatment,” according to CNET.
The acquisition could help ease Google’s legal issues, since Motorola Mobility holds thousands of patents and patent applications. Google has been involved in numerous legal proceedings over claims that its Android phones violate patents.
“Rumors have been swirling for the last week or so that there could be significant layoffs at Moto following the merger, which would further enforce the perception that Google is more interested in the company’s patents than in entering the hardware business,” notes Engadget in a related post.
A new study from the American Association for Public Opinion Research suggests people answer more honestly when responding via text rather than verbally. The study included 600 respondents who were asked questions both over text messaging and verbally through phone calls.
“We believe people give more precise answers via texting because there’s just not the time pressure in a largely asynchronous mode like text that there is in phone interviews,” explains researcher Fred Conrad.
“Besides allowing respondents more time to gather their thoughts, the electronic nature may also insulate both sides of the communication, allowing them to communicate more freely without regard to the immediate impact and consequences of their output,” reports Mobiledia.
The article notes that political researchers may want to poll using texts rather than phone calls, as mobile users are more likely to text than call, and would likely contribute more accurate data in this medium as well.
One downside to the detached nature of texting is that it increases the chances of bullying, as it provides “enough distance to allow young people to say and do things they wouldn’t consider in face-to-face conversation” explains the article.
Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable have agreed to a deal that will provide 50,000 nationwide hotspots for their customers.
The deal “will let customers from any of those companies connect to the new ‘CableWiFi’ access points,” reports SlashGear, and customers can access the hotspots using “the same credentials they would use for their companies branded hotspots.”
Bright House and Cablevision already have hotspots in New York and Florida, but they will now expand their offerings with CableWiFi.
The hotspots will first appear in New York, Los Angeles, Tampa, Orlando, and Philadelphia — with more to come.
“This is the largest and most inclusive Wi-Fi sharing effort among cable operators to date,” explains the press release. “In early 2010, Cablevision, Comcast and Time Warner Cable entered into an agreement allowing their customers in New York City, Long Island, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Connecticut to access Wi-Fi hotspots offered by each operator in these areas.”
Hulu continues to expand its library with this week’s announcement of 10 new summer shows. Three will be original content, seven will be site exclusives, and all will begin airing in June.
The three original shows will include a travel series called “Up To Speed,” a movie review show called “Spoilers,” and “We Got Next,” a comedy.
The exclusive programs will include comedies “Rev,” “Little Mosque” and “The Yard;” dramas “Pramface” and “The Promise;” in addition to a magic show and sci-fi show.
Hulu hopes the introduction of additional original content will help transform its service into its own fledgling network.
The announcement comes shortly after the company surpassed the plateau of two million Hulu Plus premium subscribers.
Leap Motion has developed a motion control system that it claims is significantly more accurate than Microsoft’s Kinect.
According to the Leap Motion blog, The Leap is described as a “revolutionary piece of hardware no larger than your iPod that’s two hundred times more accurate than any product currently on the market. We believe that with The Leap, tomorrow we will no longer be tethered to hardware.”
“The Leap consists of a small USB device with industry-standard sensors and cameras that, in tandem with the company’s software, can track multiple objects and recognize gestures,” reports The Verge.
The system provides Web browsing, 3D modeling, and gaming with pinch-to-zoom and precision drawing capabilities.
The company is hoping to lure developers to their software by giving away free sensors to what the company defines as qualified developers.
The $69.99 system will be released early next year and will run on both Windows and Mac OS X. Pre-orders are available via the company blog.
ETCentric staffer Phil Lelyveld recommends this CNET article about The Leap (including videos) that “describes how they are working on an App Store to encourage developers, and are echoing Apple’s design/usability philosophy.”
Microsoft’s experimental social network site So.cl is now available to anyone. Previously, only “students studying information and design at the University of Washington, Syracuse University, and New York University” could access the network, reports VentureBeat.
“So.cl (pronounced ‘social’) is an experimental research project, developed by Microsoft’s FUSE Labs, focused on exploring the possibilities of social search for the purpose of learning,” according to the FAQ page.
Users can sign up using either their Facebook account or Windows Live ID. When using the Facebook option, users can choose to deny automatic posts and comments to their Facebook pages.
The social networking site “closely resembles Google+’s layout, but it also takes ideas from Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest,” explains the post. “You can follow other So.cl users or follow interests like food, art, or movies.”
The “Everyone” feed provides a simple way for users to see what most So.cl users are searching.
“So.cl can be used by the general public, but it is our goal to focus on learning communities,” indicates the FAQ page.
Amazon is looking to place advertisements on the welcome screen of its popular Kindle Fire. The advertising would cost $600,000 and would also buy space in Amazon’s “special offers” section.
For $1 million, advertisers could purchase a welcome screen ad, more inventory in the special offers section, and Amazon would include the company in its “public relations push,” according to Ad Age.
A new Kindle Fire with a larger screen is rumored to release soon, and it is not clear if the welcome screen advertisements are intended to appear only on this new version, or if the advertisements would also be shown on existing Kindle Fire models.
Amazon’s high asking price is based on the Kindle Fire’s 19 percent daily growth in ad impressions, but it has yet to be seen whether advertisers will be willing to invest.
“It’s kind of an expensive buy to not get a guaranteed audience and measurement,” one executive told Ad Age. “It doesn’t comply with a lot of our necessary planning rigor.”
Google announced its new Knowledge Graph last week that marks “a significant change to how search results are delivered that the company believes will make their search engine think more like a human,” reports CNN.
Knowledge Graph categorizes searches by theme. If a general search yields a wide variety of results, the Knowledge Graph will group related searches into themed boxes.
Users can then click on one of the boxes to streamline the search results to reflect the desired theme. Google’s director of product management Jack Menzel explains that Knowledge Graph “hones your search results right in on the task that you’re after.”
“Menzel says the initial version of Knowledge Graph has information on 500 million people, places and things and uses 3.5 billion defining attributes and connections to create categories for them,” explains the post.
Verizon CFO Fran Shammo has clarified statements made about Verizon’s termination of unlimited data plans. Verizon still plans to move all customers to tiered data packages, but some customers who use unlimited data packages can keep their current plans.
For example, customers who recently upgraded from 3G to 4G and kept their unlimited data package can keep using the unlimited plan until their next phone upgrade.
Additionally, customers can also keep unlimited data plans if they buy a new smartphone at its full retail price.
“When we introduce our new shared data plans, Unlimited Data will no longer be available to customers when purchasing handsets at discounted pricing,” explains Verizon.
Customers do not often buy smartphones for full price, instead choosing to get a discounted price in exchange for agreeing to a new two-year contract with Verizon.
Senate and congressional lawmakers have proposed a joint bill that would require law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant before collecting geolocation data.
Wired reports that the bill “is an attempt to set a nationwide standard on not only GPS tracking, but on the collection of cellphone location data and any other geolocational data that could be introduced by future technologies.”
The bill aims to protect personal privacy following a Supreme Court decision earlier this year that classified placing a GPS tracking device in someone’s vehicle as a Fourth Amendment violation. However, the ruling “fell short of asserting that such tracking amounted to the kind of search that should always require a warrant and probable cause,” reports Wired.
Proponents of the bill want restrictions on geolocation tracking to mirror the legislation for home searches. Supporters especially want law enforcement to secure probable cause before beginning searches.
“Requiring agents to obtain such warrants is backward logic, since they often use geolocation data they’ve collected on an individual in order to then obtain a probable cause warrant for further collection of evidence, according to John Ramsey, national vice president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, who spoke to the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security,” explains the article.
A number of companies are marketing waterproofing technologies designed to protect consumer electronic devices, “an endeavor that may revolutionize the mobile market,” suggests Mobiledia.
P2i, HzO, and Liquipel are companies competing to bring their water-repellent technologies to portable devices such as phones and laptops.
P2i waterproofs by spraying devices with chemicals, placing them in a vacuum chamber, and then pulsing electronic currents through the chamber. This bonds the waterproofing chemical “to every atom on the phone’s surface.”
HzO coats a phone’s internal components and claims to protect submerged phones for longer than the P2i process. “Our coating is thicker, building layers on top of each other and providing a protection that can endure underwater for extended periods of time,” claims HzO president Paul Clayson.
California-based start-up Liquipel (which ETCentric reported on during CES), waterproofs phones at a cost of $60 per device. “Liquipel is reportedly negotiating a contract with Fujitsu to coat its upcoming tablets and phones, as the company aims to expand its mail-in business,” reports Mobiledia.
As of now, external cases dominate the market, but off-the-shelf waterproofing techniques could have numerous applications and could make other products obsolete.
Web-based productivity suite Zoho launched a new drag-and-drop website builder to help customers build professional sites without using HTML or CSS.
The new Zoho Sites allows users to create websites which are optimized for mobile devices.
Zoho Sites also includes support for app integration, including “Google Analytics, Google AdWords, Google Maps, YouTube, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Picasa” according to TechCrunch. These integrations can also be dragged and dropped.
The service is available in both free and paid versions. The free service includes “two websites with two forms each, one blog, unlimited pages” — while the paid Professional Edition is available for $39 a year and includes “six websites, each with 10 forms, a blog, and unlimited pages.”
SceneTap is an Android and iOS social app that uses cameras inside of bars to detect age, gender, and number of people inside the bar at a given time.
Patrons can use the data to determine if bars have a good crowd, while owners can receive data regarding the demographic composition of their bar.
On May 18, SceneTap will add San Francisco to the list of six cities it already serves.
According to CEO Cole Harper, SceneTap is “about 85 percent accurate in determining gender, 90 percent accurate on determining age within six years, and 80 percent accurate within three years. It can also count people entering and leaving with between 85 and 98 percent accuracy.”
Some people question the legality of SceneTap’s recording, but its practices are cleared by the FTC. SceneTap does not store data and bar owners do not have access to the feed, just demographics.
Alcatel-Lucent announced Tuesday that the new 7950 XRS Internet router is capable of delivering 16 terabits of data per second. “That’s about 2.5 million HD video streams every tick of the second hand,” notes CNN.
