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Intel May Introduce Wireless Charging Tech in Ultrabooks and Phones

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August 15, 2012
  • Intel may integrate its own wireless charging technology into Intel-based ultrabooks and smartphones by the second half of next year, according to sources.
  • “In addition to Intel, there are already several smartphone players and telecom carriers aggressively developing wireless charging technology,” reports DigiTimes. “Japan-based NTT Docomo and Sharp both previously launched smartphones with wireless charging functions that meet the Wireless Power Consortium’s (WPS) Qi standard, but high prices are still creating barriers that distance consumers, the sources noted.”
  • Samsung was expected to unveil a resonance wireless smartphone charger this summer, but the project was delayed due to performance issues. The company may release a magnetic induction wireless charger first.
  • “Intel’s wireless charging solution uses an ultrabook as the power source paired with related software and a transmitter to wirelessly charge a smartphone,” notes the post. “According to Intel’s data, the solution will feature lower power consumption and does not require the phone to be put in a very specific position.”
  • Intel has reportedly designed power charging software that includes functions such as equipment examination, charging control, and position tests.
  • “Sources from notebook players also pointed out that Intel’s Haswell platform is unlikely to fully adopt the wireless charging technology and the idea is expected be seen in just a few models in the second half of 2013,” concludes the post.

Open Compute Project: Facebook Plans for the Hardware Industry

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August 15, 2012
  • Facebook has introduced the Open Compute Project, an open-source endeavor aimed to “do for commercial hardware what Linux did for commercial software — change the way it is designed, built, sold and supported,” reports Business Insider.
  • Rather than purchasing hardware from Dell or HP, Facebook now custom designs hardware for its needs. Facebook then posts the designs on GitHub for anyone to use or modify.
  • Facebook director of hardware design and supply chain Frank Frankovsky heads the Open Compute Project.
  • Frankovsky explains how after the team “built its first data center in Prinevill, Oregon, which opened in April, 2011, they saw that it was 38 percent less expensive to operate, gave them a ’24 percent capex savings advantage’ compared to buying gear from typical vendors and that their data centers consumed a lot less electricity, too.”
  • Frankovsky believes the hardware his team builds helps eliminate waste, as HP and Dell servers typically have “this beautiful plastic bevel on the front that allows them to put logo on the front. That plastic not only impedes the air flow, which causes the fans to work harder to cool the servers, but when you are deploying servers by the 10’s of thousands, that’s a lot of wasted material that is someday going to be decommissioned and put into the waste stream.”
  • Frankovsky also explains that his servers are easier to repair. He reports that some technicians can repair his servers eight times more quickly than they can a typical server.

Rise in Social Gaming: Facebook Boasts More Than 235 Million Gamers

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August 15, 2012
  • A year ago, Facebook boasted 205 million gamers on its social network. Today, that number has risen to more than 235 million globally, CNET reports.
  • “Facebook also noted that its total gamer userbase has grown 8.4 percent since the beginning of 2012 and that last month alone, it drove its users to Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play marketplace over 170 million times,” the article continues.
  • Its App Center has also seen good traffic, hitting 150 million people in just the last month. The company said the App Center drives 2.4 times more installs than the network’s earlier app/game dashboard.
  • An increase in gaming means good revenue for Facebook, which takes 30 percent of the profit from transactions using its virtual currency, Credits.
  • “Facebook relies heavily on Zynga, creator of popular titles such as ‘FarmVille’ and ‘CityVille,’ to drive its Credits transactions. But after a few disappointing quarters, Zynga has decided to reorganize its operation and focus more on mobile gaming. That move could eventually spell real trouble for Facebook,” CNET suggests.

New Google Search Draws Concern from Internet Freedom Watchers

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August 15, 2012
  • Google’s decision to put sites with “high numbers of removal notices for infringing copyright” lower in its search results has somewhat appeased Hollywood while also raising “questions about fairness and the ability of suspected violators to challenge the move,” writes PCWorld.
  • While the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America applaud the move, advocates of Internet freedom aren’t so sure about it.
  • “It’s an interesting move by Google, which has long been criticized by Hollywood for its hands-off approach to copyright infringement,” notes the article.
  • Google says it can now get involved because of how often it receives copyright removal notices. “It says it is now receiving and processing more copyright removal notices every day than it did in all of 2009 — more than 4.3 million URLs in the last 30 days alone,” reports PCWorld.
  • But some groups are expressing concern. “In particular, we worry about the false positives problem,” notes the Electronic Frontier Foundation on its website. “For example, we’ve seen the government wrongly target sites that actually have a right to post the allegedly infringing material in question or otherwise legally display content. In short, without details on how Google’s process works, we have no reason to believe they won’t make similar, over-inclusive mistakes, dropping lawful, relevant speech lower in its search results without recourse for the speakers.”

Trends: What Are the Ramifications for IT in a New Cloud-Based World?

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August 15, 2012
  • Buying the latest technological system used to mean buying a competitive edge on rival companies — but no more.
  • “Without question, some start-ups are producing cutting-edge technology and some customers are taking advantage of their wares to one-up rivals,” Businessweek reports. “On the whole, however, corporations now seem to prefer, whenever practical, to rent the same computing services their rivals do, rather than try to build custom systems.”
  • Nick Carr predicted this phenomenon back in May 2003 with the publication of his Harvard Business Review article “IT Doesn’t Matter,” which was met with a strong backlash.
  • “The very companies that bashed Carr back in the day did very little to prepare for the cloud-computing era,” the article states. “Technology giants such as Oracle, SAP, and IBM failed to create attractive Web-service versions of their major software franchises, while HP, Dell, and others opted not to rent out computing power to their customers. Only recently has this started to change in a meaningful way.”
  • The start-ups that have been successful in the cloud, like Box and Salesforce, aren’t looking to sell to these bigger, older companies. At least not yet, the article suggests.
  • “The bad news for the big guys is that the cloud companies have shown a major reluctance to being acquired,” according to the article. “It’ll be interesting to see which cloud high-flyer gives in first — and just how high that acquisition price will be.”

Dramatic Increase in Patent Trolls: Do We Need to Revise Patent Law?

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August 15, 2012
  • Non-practicing entities, or patent trolls, cost American software and hardware companies more than $29 billion in 2011, according to a report from the Boston University School of Law.
  • Non practicing entities are patent-holding firms or individuals who own patents, but do not use the technology to produce goods. Rather, the patent-holders use their intellectual property to profit when companies use their patented technology.
  • Spending on patent litigation has risen nearly 436 percent since 2005, and the increase prompted Electronic Times Internet Co. to report “domestic smartphone industry is in a state of emergency due to global ‘patent trolls’ launching a series of attacks.”
  • “Unlike rival manufacturers such as Apple and Nokia, there is no way to reach cross-license agreements with patent trolls through counter-suits,” continues the report.
  • The Boston University School of Law suggests solving the problem by providing “greater transparency in the patent system” and by making sure patent damage awards “are proportional to the value of the patented technology.”

Power of Software: Evaluating Need for Better Development and Testing

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August 15, 2012
  • The Atlantic writes about the software that “does the heavy lifting for the global economy,” which aren’t your favorite phone apps, but instead the “huge, creaky applications that run Walmart’s supply chain or United’s reservation system or a Toyota production line.”
  • But even more serious to consider are the software programs that run high-level financial systems, like Knight Capital, “which handled 11 percent of all U. S. stock trading this year” and “lost $440 million when its systems accidentally bought too much stock that it had to unload at a loss.”
  • “The underlying problem here is that most software is not very good,” explains the article. “Writing good software is hard. There are thousands of opportunities to make mistakes. More importantly, it’s difficult if not impossible to anticipate all the situations that a software program will be faced with.”
  • In order to address these concerns, companies need to hire qualified, dedicated developers and apply rigid, regularly scheduled software stress testing. However, these recommendations come at a cost and some financial institutions might be more willing to risk staying with current systems rather than investing more in these areas.
  • “The immediate problem is that as computer programs become more important to the financial system and hence the economy, there is insufficient incentive for trading firms to make sure their software works properly,” suggests The Atlantic.
  • Catastrophic software failure is viewed as low-probability, stress-testing software is expensive, and creating regulation ensuring good software is problematic.
  • “The only real solution is to acknowledge that computer programs are going to fail and try to minimize the damage they can cause in advance,” notes the article. “That could include a small trading tax to discourage high-frequency trading, or higher capital requirements to increase the odds that too-big-to-fail banks won’t blow themselves up.”
  • “Because what if this had happened at JP Morgan instead of at Knight Capital?”

Google Search: Copyright Violators to Make Way for Legitimate Sources

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August 14, 2012
  • Google has announced that sites receiving numerous valid copyright removal notices will start appearing lower in Google search results so that legitimate sources will appear at the top.
  • The new policy shows Google’s commitment to promoting high-quality media sources and upholding the rights of creators.
  • Examples of sites likely to be pushed down the search totem pole are filestube.com, extratorrent.com, torrenthound.com, bitsnoop.com and isohunt.com.
  • “The ranking change,” Google blogged, “should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily — whether it’s a song previewed on NPR’s music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify.”
  • The MPAA issued an approving, yet cautious, statement: “We are optimistic that Google’s actions will help steer consumers to the myriad legitimate ways for them to access movies and TV shows online, and away from the rogue cyberlockers, peer-to-peer sites, and other outlaw enterprises that steal the hard work of creators across the globe. We will be watching this development closely — the devil is always in the details — and look forward to Google taking further steps to ensure that its services favor legitimate businesses and creators, not thieves.”
  • “Google has signaled a new willingness to value the rights of creators,” the RIAA added in a press release. “That is good news indeed. And the online marketplace for the hundreds of licensed digital services embraced by the music business is better today than it was yesterday.”

DisplaySearch Evaluates the Multi-Billion Dollar Touchscreen Market

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August 14, 2012
  • With the rapid adoption of touchscreen mobile phones and tablets, an increasing number of suppliers have entered the touchscreen market, which is expected to double to $31.9 billion in 2018, according to DisplaySearch.
  • The market has grown significantly in the last few years: $4.3 billion in 2009 to $11 billion in 2011 to $16 billion in 2012. Unfortunately, this year saw a 27 percent oversupply for the touchscreen module industry. The smaller demand equates to drops in prices for suppliers.
  • “As you can probably guess, it’s hard to make money in the display business with so many suppliers. The overall display industry still loses tens of billions of dollars a quarter, particularly due to the saturation of flat-screen TVs,” VentureBeat reports.
  • DisplaySearch calculates that more than 200 suppliers have entered the touchscreen market. In addition to major players such as Corning (Gorilla Glass) and cover lens finishing supplier Fuji Crystal, companies including Atmel, Synaptics, Cypress, EETI, and Elan manufacture touchscreen controller chips.
  • According to DisplaySearch’s Jennifer Colegrove, new technologies will expand the touchscreen demand. “Those include putting the sensor for touch on the cover, or a third piece of glass that protects the actual screens that sandwich lighting materials in a liquid crystal display. Other methods include in-cell and on-cell technologies that, like sensor-on-cover, reduce the cost, thickness, and weight of touchscreens,” notes the post.

Summer Olympics 2012: Twitter Records More Than 150 Million Tweets

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August 14, 2012
  • It was common for the recently concluded 2012 Summer Olympic Games to be called “the first-ever social media Olympics,” and it lived up to that title, drawing more than 150 million tweets during its 16 days of competition, according to a Twitter blog post.
  • Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and Tom Daley were the most popular athletes to tweet about. “Bolt’s gold medal-winning run in the 200 meters final drew a tweets per minute record of more than 80,000 for any competition,” according to Twitter.
  • But the Spice Girls’ appearance at the closing ceremonies faired even better, reaching more than 116,000 tweets per minute.
  • “Twitter also said that beyond Bolt, Phelps and Daley, seven other athletes drew more than 1 million tweets each during the Olympics. U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte, followed by gymnastics star Gabby Douglas rounded out the top five athletes in this regard,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
  • The others were Andy Murray, Kobe Bryant, Yohan Blake, Lee Chong Wei and LeBron James.

Warner Music: Jump in Digital Sales Outweighs Loss in Physical Sales

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August 14, 2012
  • Despite early concerns, it turns out music streaming services may actually be a great source of revenue for labels, if Warner Music Group is any indication. The company brought in about $54 million from streaming services in the second quarter, reports AllThingsD.
  • Streaming services such as Spotify, Rhapsody, Pandora and others made up 25 percent of Warner’s digital revenue in Q2, amounting to around 8 percent of the label’s total revenue for that period.
  • For these purposes, Warner defines its “streaming” revenue as money earned from subscription services (Spotify, Rhapsody) and Web radio (Pandora, Sirius, Clear Channel). Warner does not include cloud/locker services (Apple, Amazon), but does include YouTube.
  • “What’s more encouraging for Warner — and, presumably, the rest of the big labels — is that streaming revenue is growing quickly, but doesn’t seem to be cutting into traditional digital sales from outlets like iTunes,” the article states.
  • Another positive sign for the music industry: According to Warner, the jump in digital sales was larger than the loss in physical sales. “That’s the goal the industry has been aiming for since the late 1990s,” notes AllThingsD.

What is Old is New Again: Beck Returns to 19th Century Music Publishing

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August 14, 2012
  • Eclectic musician Beck is trying something new for his latest collection of 18 original songs and two instrumentals, by going back into the recording industry’s history prior to the phonograph.
  • “Beck’s new album — entitled ‘Beck Hansen’s Song Reader’ – won’t be on vinyl, CD, or iTunes,” reports Digital Trends. “Instead, it’s available only as a beautifully illustrated book of sheet music, published by the retro-fetishists of McSweeney’s.”
  • “The songs here are as unfailingly exciting as you’d expect from their author, but if you want to hear ‘Do We? We Do,’ or ‘Don’t Act Like Your Heart Isn’t Hard,’ bringing them to life depends on you,” explains the artist.
  • Many music fans may find the approach unsatisfying, but Will Burns, writing for Forbes, describes the idea as “brilliant.”
  • “As Burns points out, making an ‘album’ that only exists in printed-paper form is an effective end-run around the piracy industry, since there’s no easily reproduced digital bits to download,” notes the post. “And in an era when touring is how musicians make most of their profit, it’s sure to drive up interest in Beck’s next tour, where fans will (presumably) be able to hear the author’s own delivery in his unmistakable voice.”
  • For nearly a century, the music industry was the same as the sheet music industry (Tin Pan Alley never recorded a note). Treating performance and song as synonymous would come later.
  • “It’s a great adjustment to the modern era of participatory culture. McSweeney’s will be hosting renditions of the songs by select amateur and professional musicians on its website, and fans are already promising to put together bar bands and YouTube projects to record their own versions of the songs,” explains the post. “Beck is cleverly placing his music in the world of webcam performances and viral videos, making the listener part of the experience in a very direct way.”

BarryDriller.com: Fox Sues Aereo-Like Start-Up for Streaming Broadcast TV

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August 14, 2012
  • Fox has filed suit against start-up BarryDriller.com for using a system of antennas to retransmit its Los Angeles affiliate KTTV without permission.
  • The Aereo-like service was created by Alki David, whose efforts to stream broadcast signals through FilmOn.com was shut down by a federal court in 2010.
  • “Last month, a New York federal judge, Alison Nathan, declined to immediately put a halt to Aereo, which streams signals to subscribers via thousands of dime-sized antennas,” reports Variety. “By declining to issue a preliminary injunction, Nathan delivered a blow to the networks, which say that such services undercut their business models. They are in the midst of pursuing an appeal.”
  • In the wake of the Aereo decision, David launched BarryDriller.com — the name of which serves as a play on Aereo’s most famous investor, Barry Diller.
  • It is an “homage to a great guy and at the same time it’s drilling him a bit,” David told the Wall Street Journal.
  • At $5.95 per month, the new service is offered at a lower price point than Aereo, and David says he’ll pay retransmission fees to the networks.
  • “David said that BarryDriller is in four major markets — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis — and plans to launch in San Francisco and Dallas in the next two weeks,” notes Variety. “He also said that FilmOn is launching its first broadcast channel in the country, KILM-TV Channel 64, in Los Angeles starting on September 1.”

Ambient Companion: Mobile App Combines Discovery with Location-Sharing

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August 14, 2012
  • Seattle start-up A.R.O. has developed a new mobile companion that tracks your location 24/7 and reveals places you might like. The app focuses on three components: location-tracking, recommendations and gamification.
  • “You can think of Saga as Siri’s little sister, perhaps. Instead of asking it questions or giving the app simple tasks (what’s the weather, add meeting calendar, e.g.), Saga is there, quietly tracking your behavior, your location and learning about your preferences, in order to make smarter recommendations about what you should do next,” explains TechCrunch.
  • The post describes Saga as a combination of ambient location-sharing (similar to Highlight, Sonar, Banjo, INTRO) and local discovery and recommendation app Foursquare.
  • “However, unlike Foursquare, which still relies on the manual check-in to record your location, Saga will automatically locate you — and you don’t have to open the app for this to happen,” notes the post. “But if you do open the app while at a venue, Saga will tell you things like how long you’ve been there, how many times you’ve visited and it will even guess at what you’re doing, which you can correct when wrong.”
  • Saga can also provide users with a history of activity over time (day, week, month) including locations, distances traveled, most commonly visited places and more.
  • Recommendations go beyond Foursqaure’s offerings, explains TechCrunch: “For example, Saga could learn your commute and warn you about traffic. It could remind you that it’s been three weeks since you took your dog to the dog park. It could recommend a whole day’s activity based on a theme.”
Is this too much information being collected?

Game Center: Has iOS Become Next Generation Top Gaming Platform?

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August 14, 2012
  • According to consulting firm Asymco, a comparison of Apple’s Game Center numbers to console sales indicates that iOS has become the most popular gaming platform.
  • “Their report ‘Measuring iOS as a gaming platform,’ suggests that while Microsoft and Sony may have had the big-name games, and Nintendo delighted millions, more people play games on iOS devices than any console,” reports Digital Trends.
  • Asymco counted the number of registered Game Center accounts and determined there are 130 million iOS gamers. The report then compared this tally to the most popular game consoles: 67 million gamers purchased Xbox 360s; 65 million bought the PlayStation 3; and Nintendo has sold 96 million Wii units.
  • “The triumph of the iPhone suggests that bird-in-the-hand convenience is the secret of market penetration,” suggests the post.
  • And what has been the industry’s response? “Sony’s PlayStation Minis was a clear attempt to get in on some of that cheap, small, downloadable game action,” notes Digital Trends. “Nintendo was so rattled by having real competition in the mobile gaming space that it blatantly copied competing products with the Wii U’s announced ‘app store.’ Even Amazon has adopted Apple’s neologism for its Android marketplace.”
  • The posts further notes that although iOS may be on the rise in the world of mobile gaming, Game Center’s numbers have not yet reached lifetime sales figures of the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Game Boy.

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