Google launched a new local search app for Android smartphones Thursday. It’s called Field Trip, and it’s a mixture of a hyper-local discovery tool and one of those city guidebooks you buy in tourist shops.
Field Trip grabs your location (via cell tower, Wi-Fi or GPS) and shows you nearby points of interest: restaurants, parks, art shows, cool shops, and historical factoids about the area you’re in.
It’s the latest exemplar of Google’s continuing investment in local search, from the company’s acquisition of Zagat a year ago, to May’s launch of Google Now, its voice-powered local search tool (and Siri competitor) that’s built into the latest Android OS. It also comes at a time when the company is scrambling to recover from Apple’s ceremonious dumping of its mapping partnership in iOS 6.
I tested it on a Galaxy Nexus. It’s Android-only for now, with an iOS version “coming soon,” and it’s not optimized for tablets, so it’s clear Field Trip is meant to be a phone thing. You’re given three choices for how to consume the information: a list, a map and instant notifications. You can also leave it on as you drive around, and it will talk to you, reading the local highlights aloud as you cruise through a city.
After giving it permission to access my location data (more on that later), Field Trip started filling up.
There’s an interesting-looking rock show happening tonight at Hotel Utah saloon, which is one block away. Jack London’s birthplace is a block in the other direction, at 615 Third St. (Woah, really?) HRD, the restaurant across the street, has awesome Mongolian cheesesteaks. Cool stuff to know if I was visiting the neighborhood.
Other information wasn’t so useful. FieldTrip’s lead item was a news story about Reddit users’ plan to buy a tropical island, which was likely given priority because Reddit’s office is 100 feet down the hall from my Wi-Fi router. Also, nestled between the restaurant and the nightclub was an item detailing the history of San Francisco’s original “F” streetcar line, which was discontinued in 1951. Uh, thanks.
So it’s a mix of the tantalizing and the trivial. But overall, I think it’s filled with enough useful stuff for visitors to get their bearings. If you’re pickier than me, you can upvote or downvote each item it serves, which supposedly helps tune the recommendation engine.
The app is populated using data from “dozens” of content partners, according to Google. Songkick (show information), Eater (restaurants), Flavorpill (events of all kinds), and Thrillist (hot cafes and shops) are there to tell you where to go and what to eat. Architizer (public art, interesting buildings), Remodelista (designy boutiques), and Inhabitat (a designy blog) are there for the nerdier stuff. You can turn any of these services on or off, or ask to see more or less of the items from each partner.
Also served to you are Google Offers, which show up as coupons and deals for nearby businesses, and restaurant reviews from Zagat, Google’s crown jewel in this space. These can also be turned on and off. The New York Times has an in-depth look at what Field Trip means for Google’s emerging play in the augmented reality and local search businesses.
More about those location-sharing options: In order for the app to work, of course, you have to agree to share your phone’s whereabouts with Google. There’s no in-app language about how and where this information is stored, or for how long — all valid concerns. I asked Google, and the company confirmed that Field Trip is covered under its standard privacy policy.
To test it, I turned off the most intrusive of Jelly Bean’s location settings, allowing GPS access and the the anonymous cellular and Wi-Fi location reporting, but turning off the permission for Google to use my location “to improve search results and other services.” All of my tests were performed with the last setting switched off, and the app remained useful even without it.
One feature suggestion — a morality slider, a setting you can adjust to alter the sauciness of the recommendations. That way, mom and dad can use it to find all the wonderful landmarks when they visit our beautiful city. But then I can use the same app when I’m out with the boys on a Saturday night, looking for trouble.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Franklin ships may have been found
Maybe, just maybe, the 160-year dream of discovering one of the lost ships of the Franklin Expedition has already been realized, and the Parks Canada-led team that completed a month-long search last week just doesn't know it yet.
That's a slim but real possibility, acknowledges Parks Canada underwater archeologist Ryan Harris, who says a portion of the seabed data gathered during this summer's high-profile probe of Arctic waters near King William Island still has to be examined for possible traces of HMS Erebus or HMS Terror, the two Royal Navy vessels commanded by Sir John Franklin that famously vanished during his search for the Northwest Passage in the late 1840s.
"It's possible, because there actually is some AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) data that I haven't looked at yet, and there is some multi-beam sonar data," said Harris, who led the Canadian government's renewed hunt for the ships.
"There were areas of the ocean that were really shallow north of the Royal Geographical Society Islands, so we have a small path that was done with multi-beam because it would have been a bit tricky to tow a side-scan sonar system in those shallow waters," Harris told Postmedia News.
"And that data has to be postprocessed at a very high resolution to identify targets in the shallow waters.
"It's a small chance," he added, "but there is the outside possibility" of identifying the resting place of one of the ships while processing and analyzing the sea-floor data this fall.
"It has happened to us in the past that in reviewing (data) we have identified wreck sites that we didn't see in real time," said Harris, who also led the successful 2010 search off Banks Island in the Western Arctic for HMS Investigator, one of 19th-century British vessels sent to search for Franklin's lost ships.
While it's not "outside the realm of possibility" that a Franklin ship could be discovered at a Parks Canada computer lab in the coming months, Harris said: "I imagine we'll be at this (seabed scanning) again."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in August that the federal government - in co-operation with the government of Nunavut - was launching a new, three-year effort to discover the ships, which have already been declared national historic sites despite their unknown locations.
Franklin, a Royal Navy explorer who had already led two important overland expeditions in northern Canada, embarked on his ill-fated search for a route through the Northwest Passage in 1845. By 1848, after the 130 sailors aboard Terror and Erebus had experienced extreme hardship and little progress through the ice-choked Eastern Arctic, Franklin was dead and his ships were trapped frozen waters near King William Island.
A desperate attempt by the survivors to march south to a fur-trading post on mainland Canada led to the deaths of all members of the expedition. The ships, probably crushed by the ice, drifted to unknown locations and vanished beneath the waves.
An earlier bid to find the vessels was launched by Harper's government in 2008. Although Parks Canada conducted searches in 2008, 2010 and 2011, no trace of the ships was found.
Harris described the underwater component of this year's search a success because his team will at least be able to rule out a significant swath of the Arctic Ocean that had been considered a potential site for the wrecks of the Erebus or Terror.
But there were some notable discoveries earlier this month along the shore of King William Island during the dryland component of this year's search, headed by Government of Nunavut archeologist Doug Stenton. Combing an area where more than 100 survivors from Franklin's abandoned ships travelled by small boats and on foot in the late 1840s - their ultimately ill-fated attempt to reach the mainland after Terror and Erebus had become hopelessly locked in the ice - Stenton's team discovered bone fragments, nails and screws believed to have been left behind by the Franklin Expedition and, most remarkably, a 19thcentury toothbrush that must have belonged to one of Franklin's doomed sailors.
Harris acknowledged there was "nothing earthshattering" among the artifacts "in terms of what it's going to tell us about the fate of the expedition."
But he said: "I think the value is really in the evocative nature of the artifacts recovered. The toothbrush, which is such a personal item, really reflects this attempt at a dignified retreat from the ships."
Harris also noted that most of the artifacts recovered from the Franklin Expedition during 19th-and 20th-century searches of the region have ended up at the Smithsonian museums in the U.S. or at the National Maritime Museum in Britain.
That's a slim but real possibility, acknowledges Parks Canada underwater archeologist Ryan Harris, who says a portion of the seabed data gathered during this summer's high-profile probe of Arctic waters near King William Island still has to be examined for possible traces of HMS Erebus or HMS Terror, the two Royal Navy vessels commanded by Sir John Franklin that famously vanished during his search for the Northwest Passage in the late 1840s.
"It's possible, because there actually is some AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) data that I haven't looked at yet, and there is some multi-beam sonar data," said Harris, who led the Canadian government's renewed hunt for the ships.
"There were areas of the ocean that were really shallow north of the Royal Geographical Society Islands, so we have a small path that was done with multi-beam because it would have been a bit tricky to tow a side-scan sonar system in those shallow waters," Harris told Postmedia News.
"And that data has to be postprocessed at a very high resolution to identify targets in the shallow waters.
"It's a small chance," he added, "but there is the outside possibility" of identifying the resting place of one of the ships while processing and analyzing the sea-floor data this fall.
"It has happened to us in the past that in reviewing (data) we have identified wreck sites that we didn't see in real time," said Harris, who also led the successful 2010 search off Banks Island in the Western Arctic for HMS Investigator, one of 19th-century British vessels sent to search for Franklin's lost ships.
While it's not "outside the realm of possibility" that a Franklin ship could be discovered at a Parks Canada computer lab in the coming months, Harris said: "I imagine we'll be at this (seabed scanning) again."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in August that the federal government - in co-operation with the government of Nunavut - was launching a new, three-year effort to discover the ships, which have already been declared national historic sites despite their unknown locations.
Franklin, a Royal Navy explorer who had already led two important overland expeditions in northern Canada, embarked on his ill-fated search for a route through the Northwest Passage in 1845. By 1848, after the 130 sailors aboard Terror and Erebus had experienced extreme hardship and little progress through the ice-choked Eastern Arctic, Franklin was dead and his ships were trapped frozen waters near King William Island.
A desperate attempt by the survivors to march south to a fur-trading post on mainland Canada led to the deaths of all members of the expedition. The ships, probably crushed by the ice, drifted to unknown locations and vanished beneath the waves.
An earlier bid to find the vessels was launched by Harper's government in 2008. Although Parks Canada conducted searches in 2008, 2010 and 2011, no trace of the ships was found.
Harris described the underwater component of this year's search a success because his team will at least be able to rule out a significant swath of the Arctic Ocean that had been considered a potential site for the wrecks of the Erebus or Terror.
But there were some notable discoveries earlier this month along the shore of King William Island during the dryland component of this year's search, headed by Government of Nunavut archeologist Doug Stenton. Combing an area where more than 100 survivors from Franklin's abandoned ships travelled by small boats and on foot in the late 1840s - their ultimately ill-fated attempt to reach the mainland after Terror and Erebus had become hopelessly locked in the ice - Stenton's team discovered bone fragments, nails and screws believed to have been left behind by the Franklin Expedition and, most remarkably, a 19thcentury toothbrush that must have belonged to one of Franklin's doomed sailors.
Harris acknowledged there was "nothing earthshattering" among the artifacts "in terms of what it's going to tell us about the fate of the expedition."
But he said: "I think the value is really in the evocative nature of the artifacts recovered. The toothbrush, which is such a personal item, really reflects this attempt at a dignified retreat from the ships."
Harris also noted that most of the artifacts recovered from the Franklin Expedition during 19th-and 20th-century searches of the region have ended up at the Smithsonian museums in the U.S. or at the National Maritime Museum in Britain.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Samsung SSD 840 benchmarked as solid state drive prices plummet
Guess what proportion of the 370m or so PCs shipped this year will include an SSD? According to Samsung's senior team in its SSD division, the figure is between 5% and 10%. Next year, they expect it to hit 20% – and by 2016 to reach 50%.
For anyone who has experienced the speed and silence that SSDs bring, that has to be a good thing. With SSD manufacturing capacity growing rapidly, HDDs – hard disk drives with rotating platters – are starting to be less competitive. Prices for SSDs are now below the magic "$1 per GB" level, at which price sensitivity drops away: you can now buy a 512GB SSD for less than $500 (and about 400 in the UK), which means that you can give an old PC an entirely new lease of speeded-up life by copying the data onto the new drive.
And that is the market that Samsung is going after with the latest generation of its SSD range, the Samsung Pro 840 – following last year's 830 range. When the drive goes on sale in October, it will be targeted at users looking to update their machine rather than going to the expense of buying a new one. "There's not a lot of money around in Europe," one Samsung manager told me, explaining why the company is presently going after the upgrade market – which is of course enormous, given the installed based of hundreds of millions of PCs. The forecast is that the number of SSDs bought for the "aftermarket", as it's called, will roughly treble or quadruple this year and next.
I've had the chance to try out the Samsung 840 drive and to benchmark it. In the graphic below, which was first used for a group SSD test in January, it's been added as the last – and, as it turns out, usually longest – line in each group.
What the benchmarks show is that the 840 beats everything else, in most cases pretty handily, except in the "random 4K write" test. (And that might have been a one-off artefact of the test.) The benchmark, carried out by XBench, doesn't particularly torture the drive, but it's a good enough facsimile of real life.
The key message is that SSDs are now affordable, as has been becoming clear. Samsung, as the world's biggest memory maker, is making aggressive moves here – it's aiming to be the biggest in various markets (it's already second, it says, in the UK) and could drive down the price so that 1TB of SSD storage for your main machine is just an afterthought.
One area though where SSD doesn't quite match up: use in high-end workstations, especially those used in work such as architecture which use colossal temporary files. SSDs perform poorly if they're used for repeated writing (because while it's extremely fast to read from them, writing requires the erasure of the memory location followed by the writing of the new data – unlike magnetic HDDs which simply write without erasing first). It may be a little time, executives admit, before they're quite ready for that sort of punishing environment – although the SSD 840 Pro range are touted as being for "24-hour" use.
And what about the suggestions that SSDs fail catastrophically when they reach the end of their lives? That's not such a problem as it appears to be, says another Samsung executive. "When you see the first few errors occur, you still have all the rest of the data there on the drive – you've only lost a little bit where it went wrong. But when a HDD dies, everything is lost." The latter might not be quite true, but SSDs are improving not only in speed but also in longevity – the idea that they're only good for a short life is now long past. Samsung is offering a five-year warranty on its SSDs – and by the time you reach the end of the warranty, any replacement drive with the same capacity is probably going to cost around one-sixteenth, or 6%, of what you paid originally. So that means that that 512GB drive will cost about 24.
For anyone who has experienced the speed and silence that SSDs bring, that has to be a good thing. With SSD manufacturing capacity growing rapidly, HDDs – hard disk drives with rotating platters – are starting to be less competitive. Prices for SSDs are now below the magic "$1 per GB" level, at which price sensitivity drops away: you can now buy a 512GB SSD for less than $500 (and about 400 in the UK), which means that you can give an old PC an entirely new lease of speeded-up life by copying the data onto the new drive.
And that is the market that Samsung is going after with the latest generation of its SSD range, the Samsung Pro 840 – following last year's 830 range. When the drive goes on sale in October, it will be targeted at users looking to update their machine rather than going to the expense of buying a new one. "There's not a lot of money around in Europe," one Samsung manager told me, explaining why the company is presently going after the upgrade market – which is of course enormous, given the installed based of hundreds of millions of PCs. The forecast is that the number of SSDs bought for the "aftermarket", as it's called, will roughly treble or quadruple this year and next.
I've had the chance to try out the Samsung 840 drive and to benchmark it. In the graphic below, which was first used for a group SSD test in January, it's been added as the last – and, as it turns out, usually longest – line in each group.
What the benchmarks show is that the 840 beats everything else, in most cases pretty handily, except in the "random 4K write" test. (And that might have been a one-off artefact of the test.) The benchmark, carried out by XBench, doesn't particularly torture the drive, but it's a good enough facsimile of real life.
The key message is that SSDs are now affordable, as has been becoming clear. Samsung, as the world's biggest memory maker, is making aggressive moves here – it's aiming to be the biggest in various markets (it's already second, it says, in the UK) and could drive down the price so that 1TB of SSD storage for your main machine is just an afterthought.
One area though where SSD doesn't quite match up: use in high-end workstations, especially those used in work such as architecture which use colossal temporary files. SSDs perform poorly if they're used for repeated writing (because while it's extremely fast to read from them, writing requires the erasure of the memory location followed by the writing of the new data – unlike magnetic HDDs which simply write without erasing first). It may be a little time, executives admit, before they're quite ready for that sort of punishing environment – although the SSD 840 Pro range are touted as being for "24-hour" use.
And what about the suggestions that SSDs fail catastrophically when they reach the end of their lives? That's not such a problem as it appears to be, says another Samsung executive. "When you see the first few errors occur, you still have all the rest of the data there on the drive – you've only lost a little bit where it went wrong. But when a HDD dies, everything is lost." The latter might not be quite true, but SSDs are improving not only in speed but also in longevity – the idea that they're only good for a short life is now long past. Samsung is offering a five-year warranty on its SSDs – and by the time you reach the end of the warranty, any replacement drive with the same capacity is probably going to cost around one-sixteenth, or 6%, of what you paid originally. So that means that that 512GB drive will cost about 24.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Getting lost won’t be easy
Rolling down your car window and asking a complete stranger for directions is one way of reaching your destination. But if you don't want to leave your destiny to random people, map and navigation products may be just what the doctor ordered. They save time, fuel and definitely a lot of headache.
The directions are pretty easy to follow, even for the ‘technologically-challenged’. Voice-based navigation, now available in a choice of languages, will guide you to the right street, or even the exact spot where you want to reach. It will give you turn-by-turn guidance and even find you a new, alternative route if you stray off your path.
But service providers are now moving beyond just directions. Real-time traffic updates also comes as a handy tool. When desperate to save time, like driving to a meeting, it can tell you the shortest route by avoiding jam-packed roads. Drivers in metros like Delhi and Mumbai will recognise this as a heaven-sent gift.
“Traffic has been a customer pain point for long. By offering Smartdrive (app) to its customers, Airtel is bringing a product of high utility value to its customers,” an Airtel spokesperson said. Though Vodafone and Tata Teleservices are also rumoured to be working on similar services, Airtel has been the first among telecom operators to offer navigation services.
Traffic data is usually displayed in a simple colour scheme, red for significant congestion, yellow for minor slow-downs, and green for free-flowing traffic.
Says Darren Baker, Product Manager for Google Maps, “We’re confident that these features (navigation and traffic data) will help Indian users find their way around town with greater ease and convenience than ever before.”
There are other value-added features on offer as well, such as ‘Points of Interest’. Under this, many navigation products identify useful nearby services – such as hospitals, hotels, tourism hotspots or even the best restaurants in the vicinity.
Navigation devices are also ideal for those who frequently travel between cities or towns. So, recognising the diverse nature of India, providers like Garmin offer seven local languages, such as Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Punjabi, and will soon add five more.
Globally, navigation services are much more advanced. In Tokyo, for instance, the map services also offer details on local transportation, bus and train timings and even whether the road is uphill or downhill for cyclists. In The US, Google has introduced Street View where you can see how a particular street looks in real. Google tried to do this in Bangalore too but were stopped by local Police due to security reasons.
The big challenge for offering map and navigation service is data collection which has to be constantly updated as the city streets change and new buildings come up. While Airtel SmartDrive today covers Delhi & NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore, it will be covering Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune by December. Google, which offers navigation across the country, has live traffic information available only for major roads in the prominent cities of Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad.
Meanwhile, Navteq, a mapping firm and a Nokia Group company, has increased its spread exponentially. From 16 cities three years back, today it covers about 4,000 towns and metros in the country. Navteq provides the raw maps for Nokia’s Drive, Garmin devices and the Airtel navigation app.
The directions are pretty easy to follow, even for the ‘technologically-challenged’. Voice-based navigation, now available in a choice of languages, will guide you to the right street, or even the exact spot where you want to reach. It will give you turn-by-turn guidance and even find you a new, alternative route if you stray off your path.
But service providers are now moving beyond just directions. Real-time traffic updates also comes as a handy tool. When desperate to save time, like driving to a meeting, it can tell you the shortest route by avoiding jam-packed roads. Drivers in metros like Delhi and Mumbai will recognise this as a heaven-sent gift.
“Traffic has been a customer pain point for long. By offering Smartdrive (app) to its customers, Airtel is bringing a product of high utility value to its customers,” an Airtel spokesperson said. Though Vodafone and Tata Teleservices are also rumoured to be working on similar services, Airtel has been the first among telecom operators to offer navigation services.
Traffic data is usually displayed in a simple colour scheme, red for significant congestion, yellow for minor slow-downs, and green for free-flowing traffic.
Says Darren Baker, Product Manager for Google Maps, “We’re confident that these features (navigation and traffic data) will help Indian users find their way around town with greater ease and convenience than ever before.”
There are other value-added features on offer as well, such as ‘Points of Interest’. Under this, many navigation products identify useful nearby services – such as hospitals, hotels, tourism hotspots or even the best restaurants in the vicinity.
Navigation devices are also ideal for those who frequently travel between cities or towns. So, recognising the diverse nature of India, providers like Garmin offer seven local languages, such as Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Punjabi, and will soon add five more.
Globally, navigation services are much more advanced. In Tokyo, for instance, the map services also offer details on local transportation, bus and train timings and even whether the road is uphill or downhill for cyclists. In The US, Google has introduced Street View where you can see how a particular street looks in real. Google tried to do this in Bangalore too but were stopped by local Police due to security reasons.
The big challenge for offering map and navigation service is data collection which has to be constantly updated as the city streets change and new buildings come up. While Airtel SmartDrive today covers Delhi & NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore, it will be covering Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune by December. Google, which offers navigation across the country, has live traffic information available only for major roads in the prominent cities of Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad.
Meanwhile, Navteq, a mapping firm and a Nokia Group company, has increased its spread exponentially. From 16 cities three years back, today it covers about 4,000 towns and metros in the country. Navteq provides the raw maps for Nokia’s Drive, Garmin devices and the Airtel navigation app.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Hawaii still covering up for Obama
Mike Zullo, the lead investigator in Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s investigation of Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president, says he has returned from a second trip to Hawaii with additional evidence the state’s Department of Health is maintaining a cover-up of Obama’s 1961 birth records.
When Arpaio dispatched Zullo for the second trip, the assignment was kept confidential for Zullo’s safety and to prevent media links. Only Arpaio and the chief deputy of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office were aware of the assignment.
In Honolulu, Zullo worked closely with local contacts, including Duncan Sunahara, the brother of Virginia Sunahara, an infant child born in Hawaii Aug. 4, 1961, the same day Obama was born, and died the next day.
As WND reported, Virginia Sunahara entered as a figure in the Obama birth controversy because no birth certificate for her had been located, leading to speculation her birth certificate could have been the source of Obama’s.
Duncan Sunahara has tried to obtain a copy of his sister’s original birth certificate but has been denied.
“I was shocked by the lengths the Hawaii Department of Health has gone to deny the family of Virginia Sunahara a copy of the original long-form birth certificate that the family is lawfully entitled to request and obtain,” Zullo told WND. “I had to ask the question why this little girl’s 1961 long-form birth certificate was so disconcerting to the Hawaii Department of Health?”
Zullo obtained from Duncan Sunahara a copy of proceedings in the Hawaii Circuit Court of the First Circuit in which Hawaii Deputy Attorney General Jill Nagamine appeared before Judge Rhonda Nishimura on March 8, 2012, to argue Duncan Sunahara was not entitled under Hawaii statutes to observe or obtain a copy of his sister’s original 1961 long-form birth certificate.
During the proceeding, Nagamine argued that Duncan Sunahara’s request did not derive from a true interest to examine or obtain a copy of his sister’s original birth records, to which he was entitled under Hawaii law. Nagamine insisted his underlying interest was to produce evidence in Obama’s birth controversy, to which he was not entitled under Hawaii law.
Nagamine argued that the original 1961 birth certificate records were delicate and needed protection, and accessing them was burdensome.
But to get the long form you actually do have to go to the vault. And the records that are in the vault have been bound in volumes, not just the one, not just plaintiff’s sister’s records, but other records from around that time of birth, for example, in this case, the president’s birth certificate, which we know this is all about.
So these volumes in the vault are kept in temperature-controlled areas, they are bound in volumes, the clerk would have to go and find the volume that it’s in, pull out the volumes. These are old records, and in plaintiff’s case it’s more than 50 years old. They would have to open the volume. They have a special Xerox machine that copies those old records that they don’t remove the binding. They have been bound.
The plaintiff could not back (sic) in the area of the Department of Health where that special Xerox machine is and he couldn’t go in the vault without this disrupting the security and safety of the other records, the temperature in the room in the vault where the records are kept. So it would be very, very burdensome, not only for the legwork involved going to retrieve the volume, find the volume, find the page, take it to the Xerox machine, copy it.
So, Nagamine concludes, Duncan Sunahara should be satisfied with the short-form certificate of live birth the Department of Health issued for his sister, even though it is a modern computer-generated form, not a certified exact copy of the original.
When Arpaio dispatched Zullo for the second trip, the assignment was kept confidential for Zullo’s safety and to prevent media links. Only Arpaio and the chief deputy of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office were aware of the assignment.
In Honolulu, Zullo worked closely with local contacts, including Duncan Sunahara, the brother of Virginia Sunahara, an infant child born in Hawaii Aug. 4, 1961, the same day Obama was born, and died the next day.
As WND reported, Virginia Sunahara entered as a figure in the Obama birth controversy because no birth certificate for her had been located, leading to speculation her birth certificate could have been the source of Obama’s.
Duncan Sunahara has tried to obtain a copy of his sister’s original birth certificate but has been denied.
“I was shocked by the lengths the Hawaii Department of Health has gone to deny the family of Virginia Sunahara a copy of the original long-form birth certificate that the family is lawfully entitled to request and obtain,” Zullo told WND. “I had to ask the question why this little girl’s 1961 long-form birth certificate was so disconcerting to the Hawaii Department of Health?”
Zullo obtained from Duncan Sunahara a copy of proceedings in the Hawaii Circuit Court of the First Circuit in which Hawaii Deputy Attorney General Jill Nagamine appeared before Judge Rhonda Nishimura on March 8, 2012, to argue Duncan Sunahara was not entitled under Hawaii statutes to observe or obtain a copy of his sister’s original 1961 long-form birth certificate.
During the proceeding, Nagamine argued that Duncan Sunahara’s request did not derive from a true interest to examine or obtain a copy of his sister’s original birth records, to which he was entitled under Hawaii law. Nagamine insisted his underlying interest was to produce evidence in Obama’s birth controversy, to which he was not entitled under Hawaii law.
Nagamine argued that the original 1961 birth certificate records were delicate and needed protection, and accessing them was burdensome.
But to get the long form you actually do have to go to the vault. And the records that are in the vault have been bound in volumes, not just the one, not just plaintiff’s sister’s records, but other records from around that time of birth, for example, in this case, the president’s birth certificate, which we know this is all about.
So these volumes in the vault are kept in temperature-controlled areas, they are bound in volumes, the clerk would have to go and find the volume that it’s in, pull out the volumes. These are old records, and in plaintiff’s case it’s more than 50 years old. They would have to open the volume. They have a special Xerox machine that copies those old records that they don’t remove the binding. They have been bound.
The plaintiff could not back (sic) in the area of the Department of Health where that special Xerox machine is and he couldn’t go in the vault without this disrupting the security and safety of the other records, the temperature in the room in the vault where the records are kept. So it would be very, very burdensome, not only for the legwork involved going to retrieve the volume, find the volume, find the page, take it to the Xerox machine, copy it.
So, Nagamine concludes, Duncan Sunahara should be satisfied with the short-form certificate of live birth the Department of Health issued for his sister, even though it is a modern computer-generated form, not a certified exact copy of the original.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Four must-have gadgets for serious gamers
There is a universe beyond ours and one that exists within ours. We may never experience close encounters with aliens or come back from the grave, but we can feed on the idea of a parallel world. What we lose in discovery, we make up for in fantasy. These thrills have turned millions into gamers and gamers into addicts. Gaming has come a long way in India, where the concept has turned into a cultural trend thanks to social media, smartphone applications and interactive entertainment. The country's only organised team, Aggressive Teamwork Experience (ATE) Gaming, has qualified for both Indian and global events and made its mark. Founder Ben Varghese started the company in 2005 and has gone on to build a team of 17 hardball gamers. ATE's star strikers talk to BT More about the gaming gizmos that rock their world.
Only a gamer knows what a gamer needs. This was probably why BenQ approached Swedish champions Abdisamad 'Spawn' Mohamed and Emil 'Heaton' Christensen to develop their 3D Monitor XL241T. Considered the world's best at Counter Strike, the duo have developed a 23.6"W LED screen that offers a 1920x1080 resolution. Thanks to a 2 mili second response time and a 120Hz refresh rate, you can track your opponents and plan your moves without the lag of a millisecond. The display hotkey allows you to scale the screen size from 17" to 23" such that your avatar's expectations correspond to your control's movements sharply. For best effects, you can also save the contrast and brightness settings suited to each game genre and colour tint your enemy; maintaining the distinct realism in each frame. Put on Nvidia 3D glasses and you're ready to hit a parallel universe. "Compared to other 3D gaming devices, the graphic quality of this monitor is the highest, and makes for a near perfect experience, especially for games like FIFA 2012 and Counter Strike Global Offensive," says Ritesh Shah of Mumbai, who is a share broker by day, but a gaming assassin by night with a passion particularly for battle games.
What's the key to a good keyboard? It clacks to your clicks and springs to your hits in immediate response. The average gamer isn't looking to boost his skills at QWERTY, but for precision and speed. Once the window keys are disabled and you turn on its game mode, Cooler Master's CM Storm keyboards do justice to its name as they blizzards through the rough-and-tumble of your advanced games. The Trigger, Quick Fire Rapid and Pro feature a response time of 1000Hz/1ms, and work wonders in games like the Starcraft and World of War Craft, which require multiple shots every second. The mechanical hardware is what enables a keyboard to respond to and recover from vigorous pressing, something that's common to adventure gaming. For this reason, these have been fitted with CHERRY MX switches that result in zero-lag. Your eyes being glued to the screen, the LED backlit keys will help tune your sense-perceptions, more so while playing at night. "Games like Counter Strike and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare require furious button pressing and these keyboards sustain and correspond to high-action wonderfully," says Ben Varghese of Mumbai, who aims to establish India on the international gaming front.
There was a time when the mouse was considered compatible with serious gaming. The reason was simple; the placement of the hand isn't half as stable as on a keyboard. But Cooler Master has changed the game. The ergonomic claw-shaped mouse adheres to the cultural trend that most gamers begin young, and offers an exact grip to all palm-sizes. Cloaked in glossy crimson, the weapon's angle snapping option maximises kill rates. There's also an anti-drift system which takes you impeccably through lifts and drops, especially in First Person Shooter and Real Time Strategy games. Thanks to its stepping encoder function, navigating through the narrow nooks and mazes of your gaming universe can be done with precision. Gaming addicts can revel in the five million clicks that its Omron micro switches guarantee. One should supplement this with the Cooler Master Weapon of Choice M4 DM mouse pad that offers a smooth slip horizontally and a frictional grip vertically. "Its claw shaped surface fits me like a glove and I find myself conquering enemies in games like Defense of the Ancients (DotA)," says Karthik. S. Rao of Bangalore, who tries his hand at different genres of gaming.
Only a gamer knows what a gamer needs. This was probably why BenQ approached Swedish champions Abdisamad 'Spawn' Mohamed and Emil 'Heaton' Christensen to develop their 3D Monitor XL241T. Considered the world's best at Counter Strike, the duo have developed a 23.6"W LED screen that offers a 1920x1080 resolution. Thanks to a 2 mili second response time and a 120Hz refresh rate, you can track your opponents and plan your moves without the lag of a millisecond. The display hotkey allows you to scale the screen size from 17" to 23" such that your avatar's expectations correspond to your control's movements sharply. For best effects, you can also save the contrast and brightness settings suited to each game genre and colour tint your enemy; maintaining the distinct realism in each frame. Put on Nvidia 3D glasses and you're ready to hit a parallel universe. "Compared to other 3D gaming devices, the graphic quality of this monitor is the highest, and makes for a near perfect experience, especially for games like FIFA 2012 and Counter Strike Global Offensive," says Ritesh Shah of Mumbai, who is a share broker by day, but a gaming assassin by night with a passion particularly for battle games.
What's the key to a good keyboard? It clacks to your clicks and springs to your hits in immediate response. The average gamer isn't looking to boost his skills at QWERTY, but for precision and speed. Once the window keys are disabled and you turn on its game mode, Cooler Master's CM Storm keyboards do justice to its name as they blizzards through the rough-and-tumble of your advanced games. The Trigger, Quick Fire Rapid and Pro feature a response time of 1000Hz/1ms, and work wonders in games like the Starcraft and World of War Craft, which require multiple shots every second. The mechanical hardware is what enables a keyboard to respond to and recover from vigorous pressing, something that's common to adventure gaming. For this reason, these have been fitted with CHERRY MX switches that result in zero-lag. Your eyes being glued to the screen, the LED backlit keys will help tune your sense-perceptions, more so while playing at night. "Games like Counter Strike and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare require furious button pressing and these keyboards sustain and correspond to high-action wonderfully," says Ben Varghese of Mumbai, who aims to establish India on the international gaming front.
There was a time when the mouse was considered compatible with serious gaming. The reason was simple; the placement of the hand isn't half as stable as on a keyboard. But Cooler Master has changed the game. The ergonomic claw-shaped mouse adheres to the cultural trend that most gamers begin young, and offers an exact grip to all palm-sizes. Cloaked in glossy crimson, the weapon's angle snapping option maximises kill rates. There's also an anti-drift system which takes you impeccably through lifts and drops, especially in First Person Shooter and Real Time Strategy games. Thanks to its stepping encoder function, navigating through the narrow nooks and mazes of your gaming universe can be done with precision. Gaming addicts can revel in the five million clicks that its Omron micro switches guarantee. One should supplement this with the Cooler Master Weapon of Choice M4 DM mouse pad that offers a smooth slip horizontally and a frictional grip vertically. "Its claw shaped surface fits me like a glove and I find myself conquering enemies in games like Defense of the Ancients (DotA)," says Karthik. S. Rao of Bangalore, who tries his hand at different genres of gaming.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
DIY lab equipment, address of 3D printing
A lot of accurate software is freeware or free/open antecedent software (FOSS). That's appropriate: just as the action of science should be accessible to enhance reproducibility, its accoutrement should be as cellophane as possible. Researchers generally allotment their abstracts and algorithms, and broadcast the achievement from their simulations on open-access databases such as Cornell's arXiv. Analysis hardware—including computer hardware—is addition amount entirely. Even small, accepted pieces of class accessories can be costly, and may not be hackable after (at minimum) actionable warranties or agreement of use.
Imagine a apple area lab workers can actualize their own custom accessories in-house, application either their own designs or ones they've downloaded. A glimpse of that apple appears in today's affair of Science, provided by 3D printing, the almost bargain artifact address area ceramics, polymers, and added abstracts are deposited in layers to body up a three-dimensional shape.
With the prices of 3D printers dropping, laboratories at companies and universities accept amorphous application them to body up analysis equipment. Even better, the printers themselves are generally accessible source—meaning their designs are accessible and adjustable by end-users—and controlled by FOSS programs. Students in teaching-focused institutions can be complex in the action as well, accouterment hands-on apprenticeship in architecture principles.
The antecedent outlay for a 3D printer is still significant, but if compared to the amount of purchasing a accomplished lab's account of equipment, it ability be a cost-effective another for baby schools or colleges. The RepRap printer is an open-source activity able of architecture some of its own components. Designs can be up or downloaded from repositories like the Thingiverse.
A bartering centrifuge for analysis labs may amount hundreds or bags of dollars, but today's affair of Science describes a printed alternative. The DremelFuge is artlessly a ability apparatus adapter that holds centrifuge tubes. It costs alone a little added than the Dremel assignment that admiral it, already the 3D printer is paid for.
Of course, this won't break every problem; I can't see bargain 3D printers authoritative accumulation spectrometers in the abreast future. However, with continuing improvements in technology and blurred costs, we could see added lab accessories getting fabricated centralized with open-source hardware—both in the accessories itself and in the accouterment acclimated in its fabrication.
Imagine a apple area lab workers can actualize their own custom accessories in-house, application either their own designs or ones they've downloaded. A glimpse of that apple appears in today's affair of Science, provided by 3D printing, the almost bargain artifact address area ceramics, polymers, and added abstracts are deposited in layers to body up a three-dimensional shape.
With the prices of 3D printers dropping, laboratories at companies and universities accept amorphous application them to body up analysis equipment. Even better, the printers themselves are generally accessible source—meaning their designs are accessible and adjustable by end-users—and controlled by FOSS programs. Students in teaching-focused institutions can be complex in the action as well, accouterment hands-on apprenticeship in architecture principles.
The antecedent outlay for a 3D printer is still significant, but if compared to the amount of purchasing a accomplished lab's account of equipment, it ability be a cost-effective another for baby schools or colleges. The RepRap printer is an open-source activity able of architecture some of its own components. Designs can be up or downloaded from repositories like the Thingiverse.
A bartering centrifuge for analysis labs may amount hundreds or bags of dollars, but today's affair of Science describes a printed alternative. The DremelFuge is artlessly a ability apparatus adapter that holds centrifuge tubes. It costs alone a little added than the Dremel assignment that admiral it, already the 3D printer is paid for.
Of course, this won't break every problem; I can't see bargain 3D printers authoritative accumulation spectrometers in the abreast future. However, with continuing improvements in technology and blurred costs, we could see added lab accessories getting fabricated centralized with open-source hardware—both in the accessories itself and in the accouterment acclimated in its fabrication.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Verizon to Preload Mobile Security on Android Devices
Verizon Wireless has announced a mobile security app that combines McAfee antivirus and web-security protection with Asurian's recovery services, namely remote locate, alarm, lock, and wipe. And depending on how you view bloatware, you will be thrilled or annoyed to hear that the app will soon join Verizon's tray of preloaded apps.
Verizon Mobile Security is already available today via Google Play, and comes with two tiers of protection. The free Basic plan gives you McAfee's antivirus and web protection (via McAfee SiteAdvisor). These features are also part of McAfee's own mobile security suite, which ranked in the top tier of AV-Test's mobile security test.
A Premium subscription, for $1.99/month, adds McAfee App Alert–an app permissions advisor–and recovery features from Asurion. If a user loses his device, he can perform a few mitigating commands by logging into a web-based console to remotely geolocate, blast an alarm, lock, and wipe data from the device. Verizon customers with have Total Equipment Coverage installed, a $6.99/month warranty add-on, can upgrade to Premium for $1 instead. Verizon will also be releasing versions for iOS and Blackberry in the near future.
So how does this differ from McAfee Mobile Security? "We've gone through a great deal of work to make sure this app has more access than any antivirus out there. Deeper scans, and the battery life is optimized for Verizon devices," Renato Delatorre, director of network security at Verizon Wireless, told Security Watch.
We'll be spending some hands-on time with the app in the near future, but on the outset, another major difference is that Verizon Mobile Security requires a data connection for periodic updates, which could potentially drain battery and processing power. On the other hand, it could also benefit from performance updates that are timed with Verizon's own OS patching schedule. Premium subscribers won't have another bill to worry about either, the service will just be added to their monthly phone bills.
The app will also soon come preloaded on all Verizon devices, Delatorre said, forcing an enormous pool of consumers to consider an app that most would rather ignore.
This isn't the first time a carrier has collaborated with a security vendor. Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile all offer its customers special rates for Lookout and McAfee security apps, while T-Mobile preloads Lookout on about a dozen devices. However Verizon Mobile Secuity already supports more than 30 devices running Android 2.1 and up,and I'm keen to see what the partnership of one of America's largest carriers and one of America's largest security vendors will mean for the mobile security industry in the long run.
The backup selection process remains as wonky as it was years ago—it feels more like a Unix directory listing than it does a Mac-style user-friendly approach to selecting files, especially when viewed in Advanced mode. For more-experienced users, that geekiness is an advantage, revealing otherwise-hidden folders that may contain files and nested folders that require backup when you’re not using disk mirroring.
The backup selection has a beautiful threaded interaction, so that as you proceed through selecting and deselecting files, the Storage Bar at the bottom calculates how many files you will place on its service—and whether you’ll need to buy more storage from SpiderOak to do so. Prefab checkboxes with bright colors to their left let you pick major categories in the user folder, while the main browser window provides granular selection of folders and files. You can also search for files across your entire drive, and add external drives to the backup. If you switch to Basic mode, the prefab checkboxes take up the main window, and the search functions disappear. Essentially, in Basic mode, you decide what gets backed up based on SpiderOak’s broad-based categories.
SpiderOak provides a host of backup tweaks for those who like to restrict backups beyond just selecting certain files. Most welcome are options like “Don’t backup files larger than” a specified number of megabytes, and the ability to exclude files by wildcards. You can also specify the frequency for backup, sync, and sharing operations separately—anywhere from Automatic to a set time. If your broadband throughput is limited, this variety of options helps keep your network from becoming clogged. There’s even a prominent Pause All Uploads button on the Status tab.
Verizon Mobile Security is already available today via Google Play, and comes with two tiers of protection. The free Basic plan gives you McAfee's antivirus and web protection (via McAfee SiteAdvisor). These features are also part of McAfee's own mobile security suite, which ranked in the top tier of AV-Test's mobile security test.
A Premium subscription, for $1.99/month, adds McAfee App Alert–an app permissions advisor–and recovery features from Asurion. If a user loses his device, he can perform a few mitigating commands by logging into a web-based console to remotely geolocate, blast an alarm, lock, and wipe data from the device. Verizon customers with have Total Equipment Coverage installed, a $6.99/month warranty add-on, can upgrade to Premium for $1 instead. Verizon will also be releasing versions for iOS and Blackberry in the near future.
So how does this differ from McAfee Mobile Security? "We've gone through a great deal of work to make sure this app has more access than any antivirus out there. Deeper scans, and the battery life is optimized for Verizon devices," Renato Delatorre, director of network security at Verizon Wireless, told Security Watch.
We'll be spending some hands-on time with the app in the near future, but on the outset, another major difference is that Verizon Mobile Security requires a data connection for periodic updates, which could potentially drain battery and processing power. On the other hand, it could also benefit from performance updates that are timed with Verizon's own OS patching schedule. Premium subscribers won't have another bill to worry about either, the service will just be added to their monthly phone bills.
The app will also soon come preloaded on all Verizon devices, Delatorre said, forcing an enormous pool of consumers to consider an app that most would rather ignore.
This isn't the first time a carrier has collaborated with a security vendor. Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile all offer its customers special rates for Lookout and McAfee security apps, while T-Mobile preloads Lookout on about a dozen devices. However Verizon Mobile Secuity already supports more than 30 devices running Android 2.1 and up,and I'm keen to see what the partnership of one of America's largest carriers and one of America's largest security vendors will mean for the mobile security industry in the long run.
The backup selection process remains as wonky as it was years ago—it feels more like a Unix directory listing than it does a Mac-style user-friendly approach to selecting files, especially when viewed in Advanced mode. For more-experienced users, that geekiness is an advantage, revealing otherwise-hidden folders that may contain files and nested folders that require backup when you’re not using disk mirroring.
The backup selection has a beautiful threaded interaction, so that as you proceed through selecting and deselecting files, the Storage Bar at the bottom calculates how many files you will place on its service—and whether you’ll need to buy more storage from SpiderOak to do so. Prefab checkboxes with bright colors to their left let you pick major categories in the user folder, while the main browser window provides granular selection of folders and files. You can also search for files across your entire drive, and add external drives to the backup. If you switch to Basic mode, the prefab checkboxes take up the main window, and the search functions disappear. Essentially, in Basic mode, you decide what gets backed up based on SpiderOak’s broad-based categories.
SpiderOak provides a host of backup tweaks for those who like to restrict backups beyond just selecting certain files. Most welcome are options like “Don’t backup files larger than” a specified number of megabytes, and the ability to exclude files by wildcards. You can also specify the frequency for backup, sync, and sharing operations separately—anywhere from Automatic to a set time. If your broadband throughput is limited, this variety of options helps keep your network from becoming clogged. There’s even a prominent Pause All Uploads button on the Status tab.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Hands-On With HondaLink in the 2013 Accord
Honda is jumping into the in-dash app chase with the addition of an adapted HondaLink arrangement for 2013 Accord by partnering with Harman’s Aha Radio. And Honda hopes to leapfrog competitors like Toyota Entune and Ford Sync’s AppLink by not alone outsourcing app affiliation but by aswell bringing in added agreeable and authoritative updates abundant easier and added frequent.
Ford afresh teamed with NPR for Sync AppLink, but it requires the user to actualize playlists of admired programs appliance the NPR app afore hitting the road. With HondaLink, NPR programming is on appeal and drivers can skip astern to accomplished programs on the fly. In this way, HondaLink is absolute for podcast junkies, back they don’t accept to amend their accessory to get beginning programs. According to Charles Koch, Honda’s administrator of new business development, Aha can action “thousands of podcasts because they’re cloud-based on the Aha server,” as able-bodied as audiobooks through Librovox. “It’s a chargeless account for now,” Koch told Wired. “But as time goes on they are anticipating abacus exceptional channels and exceptional content.”
Drivers can admission Yelp by hitting a “Hungry” tab to acquisition bounded restaurants, and the arrangement converts Facebook and Twitter feeds appliance text-to-speech so that drivers can accept to them (but not acknowledgment to or “like” a post, as with BMW Apps). One affair HondaLink doesn’t action is Pandora, although it does accept a accord with pseudo-rival Slacker. But the new Accord will cover Pandora as an anchored application, a affection that launched beforehand on the 2013 CR-V forth with SMS argument messaging. And according to Koch, the 2013 Accord will aswell accept a text-to-speech e-mail-reading affection appliance the Bluetooth Message Admission Profile.
HondaLink will admission on the 2013 Accord if the ninth-generation becomes accessible after this month, and it will eventually be formed out to Honda’s absolute U.S. line, says Koch. HondaLink will be accepted on EX-L and aloft sedans and EX and aloft coupes. It works through a proprietary HondaLink app that Aha developed for iOS and Android devices, which affix to the car via Bluetooth or USB. Drivers ascendancy Aha Radio agreeable through the new Accord’s 8-inch center-mounted touchscreen and a abate 6-inch touchscreen lower in the birr that plan in tandem. The abate awning aswell allows admission to Aha Radio if the beyond awning is getting used, say, for navigation. Some appearance can aswell be accessed via steering-wheel and articulation controls.
According to Koch, Aha Radio is just the “first abundance of HondaLink” and the automaker affairs to body on it. “We’ll use HondaLink as the centermost point for all of our affiliated car activities, and for infotainment Aha absolutely makes sense,” he adds. “Future aspects of HondaLink will cover assurance and aegis and chump accord management.” As addition archetype he credibility to the HondaLink EV smartphone app that was appear forth with the Honda Fit EV if it was alien this summer. It can be acclimated for limited operation such as blockage the battery-charge cachet or activating the altitude ascendancy to preheat or air-conditioned the interior. “Any casework or advice we can accept on the cloud, that’s what we’re aggravating to anticipate with HondaLink,” Koch adds.
Ford afresh teamed with NPR for Sync AppLink, but it requires the user to actualize playlists of admired programs appliance the NPR app afore hitting the road. With HondaLink, NPR programming is on appeal and drivers can skip astern to accomplished programs on the fly. In this way, HondaLink is absolute for podcast junkies, back they don’t accept to amend their accessory to get beginning programs. According to Charles Koch, Honda’s administrator of new business development, Aha can action “thousands of podcasts because they’re cloud-based on the Aha server,” as able-bodied as audiobooks through Librovox. “It’s a chargeless account for now,” Koch told Wired. “But as time goes on they are anticipating abacus exceptional channels and exceptional content.”
Drivers can admission Yelp by hitting a “Hungry” tab to acquisition bounded restaurants, and the arrangement converts Facebook and Twitter feeds appliance text-to-speech so that drivers can accept to them (but not acknowledgment to or “like” a post, as with BMW Apps). One affair HondaLink doesn’t action is Pandora, although it does accept a accord with pseudo-rival Slacker. But the new Accord will cover Pandora as an anchored application, a affection that launched beforehand on the 2013 CR-V forth with SMS argument messaging. And according to Koch, the 2013 Accord will aswell accept a text-to-speech e-mail-reading affection appliance the Bluetooth Message Admission Profile.
HondaLink will admission on the 2013 Accord if the ninth-generation becomes accessible after this month, and it will eventually be formed out to Honda’s absolute U.S. line, says Koch. HondaLink will be accepted on EX-L and aloft sedans and EX and aloft coupes. It works through a proprietary HondaLink app that Aha developed for iOS and Android devices, which affix to the car via Bluetooth or USB. Drivers ascendancy Aha Radio agreeable through the new Accord’s 8-inch center-mounted touchscreen and a abate 6-inch touchscreen lower in the birr that plan in tandem. The abate awning aswell allows admission to Aha Radio if the beyond awning is getting used, say, for navigation. Some appearance can aswell be accessed via steering-wheel and articulation controls.
According to Koch, Aha Radio is just the “first abundance of HondaLink” and the automaker affairs to body on it. “We’ll use HondaLink as the centermost point for all of our affiliated car activities, and for infotainment Aha absolutely makes sense,” he adds. “Future aspects of HondaLink will cover assurance and aegis and chump accord management.” As addition archetype he credibility to the HondaLink EV smartphone app that was appear forth with the Honda Fit EV if it was alien this summer. It can be acclimated for limited operation such as blockage the battery-charge cachet or activating the altitude ascendancy to preheat or air-conditioned the interior. “Any casework or advice we can accept on the cloud, that’s what we’re aggravating to anticipate with HondaLink,” Koch adds.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Doing the appropriate affair sometimes isn’t
During our determinative years, our parents, agents and ancestors advise us how to be nice and how we should amusement others. We are accomplished what we should and should not do, as able-bodied as what we should and should not say. Most adolescent men are accomplished to authority the aperture for ladies and action abetment to humans with their easily full.
Even today, some grocery food action to backpack your accoutrements to your car chargeless of charge.
Yes, we are consistently aggravating to be helpful. How abounding times accept you said “let me get the aperture for you” or offered to authority the aperture for anyone as they are entering an enactment at the aforementioned time? Whereas this abstruse superior ability be the affable affair to do, it is not consistently the appropriate affair to do.
Many of us plan in controlled admission accessories that adviser admission and avenue points. There are endless aegis protocols in abode to advice assure not abandoned the advice central our offices, but aswell advice assure the individuals alive there, as well.
Security protocols crave that anybody entering a ability verify their character and approval to admission the ability every time they enter.
But abounding times humans try to avoid these protocols by “piggybacking” off anyone as that being is entering a facility. In security, piggybacking refers to if a being follows an accustomed being into a belted breadth after assuming his or her own approval to admission the area. There are abounding affidavit it is done and none of them are acceptable.
Some instances of piggybacking can be attributed to laziness, but there are abounding instances that the being you captivated the aperture for has no appropriate to be in the facility. It does not crave a lot of time or accomplishment for a accomplished abandoned with the able amusing engineering abilities to administer accident on an organization.
Once that being has acquired admission there are actual few measures that would stop them from causing accident to IT systems and abstracts systems. There is a abundant accord of advice that can be acquired by artlessly walking about and account abstracts larboard on archetype machines or abandoned desks.
There accept been instances breadth an burglar acclimated an centralized buzz to abode calls to added appointment numbers cogent the being there was anyone bench to be escorted. Once that being who was alleged larboard their desk, the burglar rifled through their plan breadth and even removed claimed cyberbanking devices. This archetype may not be the archetypal case of what can happen, but we accept to abide acute in our efforts to bouncer our interests.
One of the aboriginal accomplish to ensuring we assure ourselves and our alignment is to attach to all aegis protocols acclamation controlled access.
If they accept two cups of coffee or accept their easily full, action to authority something while they retrieve their accreditation … it’s abundant bigger than answer how you let the alignment get illegally accessed.
Nissan’s Altima midsize sedan, with its affluence autogenous and 38 afar per gallon on the freeway, is adopting the bar. But Ford’s new Fusion comes out after in the year, as does a new Honda Accord. Chevrolet’s four-cylinder Malibu aswell is just accepting to showrooms.
In the small-car market, Chrysler’s Dodge cast alien a aboriginal Dart during the summer congenital with Fiat technology, giving the aggregation a able adversary in a bazaar breadth it hasn’t been for years. The Dart isn’t alone. Honda, stung by criticism of its revamped Civic endure year, is authoritative it quieter, and advance the autogenous and administration to quiet the critics. Nissan aswell is revamping the Sentra and promises it will be at the top of the segment.
Even today, some grocery food action to backpack your accoutrements to your car chargeless of charge.
Yes, we are consistently aggravating to be helpful. How abounding times accept you said “let me get the aperture for you” or offered to authority the aperture for anyone as they are entering an enactment at the aforementioned time? Whereas this abstruse superior ability be the affable affair to do, it is not consistently the appropriate affair to do.
Many of us plan in controlled admission accessories that adviser admission and avenue points. There are endless aegis protocols in abode to advice assure not abandoned the advice central our offices, but aswell advice assure the individuals alive there, as well.
Security protocols crave that anybody entering a ability verify their character and approval to admission the ability every time they enter.
But abounding times humans try to avoid these protocols by “piggybacking” off anyone as that being is entering a facility. In security, piggybacking refers to if a being follows an accustomed being into a belted breadth after assuming his or her own approval to admission the area. There are abounding affidavit it is done and none of them are acceptable.
Some instances of piggybacking can be attributed to laziness, but there are abounding instances that the being you captivated the aperture for has no appropriate to be in the facility. It does not crave a lot of time or accomplishment for a accomplished abandoned with the able amusing engineering abilities to administer accident on an organization.
Once that being has acquired admission there are actual few measures that would stop them from causing accident to IT systems and abstracts systems. There is a abundant accord of advice that can be acquired by artlessly walking about and account abstracts larboard on archetype machines or abandoned desks.
There accept been instances breadth an burglar acclimated an centralized buzz to abode calls to added appointment numbers cogent the being there was anyone bench to be escorted. Once that being who was alleged larboard their desk, the burglar rifled through their plan breadth and even removed claimed cyberbanking devices. This archetype may not be the archetypal case of what can happen, but we accept to abide acute in our efforts to bouncer our interests.
One of the aboriginal accomplish to ensuring we assure ourselves and our alignment is to attach to all aegis protocols acclamation controlled access.
If they accept two cups of coffee or accept their easily full, action to authority something while they retrieve their accreditation … it’s abundant bigger than answer how you let the alignment get illegally accessed.
Nissan’s Altima midsize sedan, with its affluence autogenous and 38 afar per gallon on the freeway, is adopting the bar. But Ford’s new Fusion comes out after in the year, as does a new Honda Accord. Chevrolet’s four-cylinder Malibu aswell is just accepting to showrooms.
In the small-car market, Chrysler’s Dodge cast alien a aboriginal Dart during the summer congenital with Fiat technology, giving the aggregation a able adversary in a bazaar breadth it hasn’t been for years. The Dart isn’t alone. Honda, stung by criticism of its revamped Civic endure year, is authoritative it quieter, and advance the autogenous and administration to quiet the critics. Nissan aswell is revamping the Sentra and promises it will be at the top of the segment.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Brain could be ambition for hackers
Using off-the-shelf gaming technology that advance academician activity, a aggregation of scientists has apparent that it's accessible to abduct passwords and added claimed information.
Researchers from the University of Oxford, University of Geneva and the University of California at Berkeley approved the achievability of academician hacking appliance software congenital to plan with Emotiv Systems' $299 EPOC neuro-headset.
Developers body software today that responds to signals emitted over Bluetooth from EPOC and added alleged academician computer interfaces (BCI), such as MindWave from NeuroSky. Of course, if software developers can body apps for such devices, so can criminals.
"The aegis risks complex in appliance consumer-grade BCI accessories accept never been advised and the appulse of awful software with admission to the accessory is unexplored," the advisers said in a cardboard presented in July at the USENIX computer conference. "We yield a rst footfall in belief the aegis implications of such accessories and authenticate that this accessible technology could be angry adjoin users to acknowledge their clandestine and abstruse information."
The advisers begin that the software they congenital to apprehend signals from EPOC decidedly bigger the affairs of academic claimed identification numbers (PINs), the accepted breadth participants in the agreement lived, humans they knew, their ages of birth, and the name of their bank.
The Emotiv device, acclimated in gaming and as a hands-free keyboard, uses sensors to almanac electrical action forth the scalp. Voltage in the academician spikes if humans see something they recognize, so tracking the aberration makes it accessible to accumulate advice about humans by assuming them alternation of images.
The advisers conducted their abstracts on 28 computer science students. In the PIN experiment, the capacity chose a four-digit amount and again watched as the numbers aught to nine were flashed on a computer awning 10 times for anniversary digit. While the images flashed afore the subjects, the advisers tracked academician action through signals from the EPOC neuro-headset.
The aforementioned anatomy of repetitive assuming of images was acclimated in the added experiments, such as a alternation of bankcards to actuate a subject's coffer or images of humans to acquisition the one they knew.
In general, the researchers' adventitious of academic accurately added to amid 20% and 30%, up from 10% after the academician tracking. The barring was in addition out people's ages of birth. The amount of academic accurately added to as abundant as 60%.
Nevertheless, the all-embracing believability was not top abundant for an advance targeted at a few individuals. "The advance works, but not in a reliable way," Mario Frank, a UC Berkeley researcher in the study, said on Friday. "With the accessories that we used, it's not accessible to be abiding that you begin the accurate answer."
A bent would accept to body malware that could be broadcast to as abounding humans as possible. Such a tactic is acclimated in distributing malware via email, alive that alone a baby atom of recipients will accessible the attachments. However, that baby atom is abundant to actualize botnets of hundreds of bags of computers.
With BCI devices, the user abject today is too baby to barrage all-embracing attacks. Also, users buy software anon from manufacturers, so it would be difficult for abyss to deliver malware.
However, a aegis accident could appear in the future, if brain-tracking accessories become accepted for interacting with computers and online food are created to advertise hundreds of bags of applications, abundant like humans buy apps for Android smartphones today.
To abbreviate risk, accessory manufacturers should alpha architecture aegis mechanisms today, such as attached the advice software can admission from the angle to alone the abstracts bare to run the app, experts say.
"One affair that could be improved, for instance, is that the accessory itself does some pre-processing and alone outputs the abstracts that is appropriate for the application," Frank said.
Researchers from the University of Oxford, University of Geneva and the University of California at Berkeley approved the achievability of academician hacking appliance software congenital to plan with Emotiv Systems' $299 EPOC neuro-headset.
Developers body software today that responds to signals emitted over Bluetooth from EPOC and added alleged academician computer interfaces (BCI), such as MindWave from NeuroSky. Of course, if software developers can body apps for such devices, so can criminals.
"The aegis risks complex in appliance consumer-grade BCI accessories accept never been advised and the appulse of awful software with admission to the accessory is unexplored," the advisers said in a cardboard presented in July at the USENIX computer conference. "We yield a rst footfall in belief the aegis implications of such accessories and authenticate that this accessible technology could be angry adjoin users to acknowledge their clandestine and abstruse information."
The advisers begin that the software they congenital to apprehend signals from EPOC decidedly bigger the affairs of academic claimed identification numbers (PINs), the accepted breadth participants in the agreement lived, humans they knew, their ages of birth, and the name of their bank.
The Emotiv device, acclimated in gaming and as a hands-free keyboard, uses sensors to almanac electrical action forth the scalp. Voltage in the academician spikes if humans see something they recognize, so tracking the aberration makes it accessible to accumulate advice about humans by assuming them alternation of images.
The advisers conducted their abstracts on 28 computer science students. In the PIN experiment, the capacity chose a four-digit amount and again watched as the numbers aught to nine were flashed on a computer awning 10 times for anniversary digit. While the images flashed afore the subjects, the advisers tracked academician action through signals from the EPOC neuro-headset.
The aforementioned anatomy of repetitive assuming of images was acclimated in the added experiments, such as a alternation of bankcards to actuate a subject's coffer or images of humans to acquisition the one they knew.
In general, the researchers' adventitious of academic accurately added to amid 20% and 30%, up from 10% after the academician tracking. The barring was in addition out people's ages of birth. The amount of academic accurately added to as abundant as 60%.
Nevertheless, the all-embracing believability was not top abundant for an advance targeted at a few individuals. "The advance works, but not in a reliable way," Mario Frank, a UC Berkeley researcher in the study, said on Friday. "With the accessories that we used, it's not accessible to be abiding that you begin the accurate answer."
A bent would accept to body malware that could be broadcast to as abounding humans as possible. Such a tactic is acclimated in distributing malware via email, alive that alone a baby atom of recipients will accessible the attachments. However, that baby atom is abundant to actualize botnets of hundreds of bags of computers.
With BCI devices, the user abject today is too baby to barrage all-embracing attacks. Also, users buy software anon from manufacturers, so it would be difficult for abyss to deliver malware.
However, a aegis accident could appear in the future, if brain-tracking accessories become accepted for interacting with computers and online food are created to advertise hundreds of bags of applications, abundant like humans buy apps for Android smartphones today.
To abbreviate risk, accessory manufacturers should alpha architecture aegis mechanisms today, such as attached the advice software can admission from the angle to alone the abstracts bare to run the app, experts say.
"One affair that could be improved, for instance, is that the accessory itself does some pre-processing and alone outputs the abstracts that is appropriate for the application," Frank said.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Developers and publishers need each
The recent Casual Connect casual-gaming conference posed an interesting question: What is Publshing 2.0, and how do you make it happen? I heard this provocative during Applifier CEO Jussi Laakkonen’s panel on digital publishing.
As the former publisher of Saturday Night Magazine, a traditional print magazine, and currently head of publishing, licensing & distribution at SGN (Social Gaming Network), I have experienced the shift in the publisher-to-content-developer relationship across the board. As such, I can tell you that what we’re seeing in the mobile/social games business today is something that we’ve seen before in other content mediums.
Historically, the publishing model for games, and most industries for that matter, was quite simple: One party makes the content, and another party markets and distributes the content. It’s the common theory taught in business school, the principle of specialization: that groups are better off specializing and “trading” based on one’s comparative advantage.
We have seen shifts in this publisher/content developer relationship in the music, film, book, and magazine industries as digital distribution models opened channels for content holders to reach their respective markets directly. The video game business is no different.
The key difference in today’s environment is that the publisher no longer entirely controls digital distribution channels and, even worse, distribution is readily available to content holders. Just look at the music business: Napster and MP3s took distribution out of the hands of the record labels and made music readily available to consumers. Not long after, websites and services such as MySpace, iTunes, and Amazon enabled musicians to speak and market themselves directly to customers, essentially eliminating the traditional record labels and giving rise to popular indie artists.
The same took place in the magazine business, where the publisher historically controlled or owned the distribution channel. Content producers, aka writers, were at the mercy of the publishers who controlled the media and medium. But now, with that crazy thing called the World Wide Web, writers can distribute their content directly to consumers, instantly and for free. The speed at which information is processed makes the morning newspaper old news before the presses even fire up.
Now we’re seeing this affect the games industry. In the past, the major game publishers controlled the consoles or were large enough to fund the manufacturing and distribution of game cartridges, and thus the content maker/publisher relationship made for one happy family. But now Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon, among other daily entrants such as the Desura, the digital download service for independent games, have flipped this model upside-down. Any yahoo can develop and distribute their own game, reaching millions of potential customers practically instantly and for free (minus the app store royalties, but there is no real upfront cost). Just as the music and magazine industry experienced, distribution has been ripped from the game publishers’ hands, and content developers now have a direct line to customers. Essentially, the barrier to entry has been removed.
Just because it’s now “easier” for developers to release their own titles, both the mobile and social gaming space is incredibly crowded and competitive. Yahoos launch games every day, hundreds daily on Apple’s app store alone. Yet nearly two-thirds of apps on the app store are so-called “Zombie Apps” that generate no downloads, a good number of which are smaller developers who poured their heart and soul into developing the content. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some diamonds in the rough, but we’ll never find them because of the lack of monetary and/or marketing support.
You can roll the dice and do everything on your own: develop, distribute, market, and promote your own game. Or you can stick with the principle of specialization and focus on what you do best while relying on others to handle the rest. As a game developer, your time is better spent developing games than optimizing marketing plans, leveraging CPIs, and analyzing LTVs. Publishers continue to play a major role in the ecosystem, providing support, best practices, brand value, funding, access to the store operators (for promotional opportunities, tech support, and new feature sets), an existing user base, marketing dollars, and marketing expertise. As this business matures, the publisher’s role will only become more valuable. So how do we all get along?
As the former publisher of Saturday Night Magazine, a traditional print magazine, and currently head of publishing, licensing & distribution at SGN (Social Gaming Network), I have experienced the shift in the publisher-to-content-developer relationship across the board. As such, I can tell you that what we’re seeing in the mobile/social games business today is something that we’ve seen before in other content mediums.
Historically, the publishing model for games, and most industries for that matter, was quite simple: One party makes the content, and another party markets and distributes the content. It’s the common theory taught in business school, the principle of specialization: that groups are better off specializing and “trading” based on one’s comparative advantage.
We have seen shifts in this publisher/content developer relationship in the music, film, book, and magazine industries as digital distribution models opened channels for content holders to reach their respective markets directly. The video game business is no different.
The key difference in today’s environment is that the publisher no longer entirely controls digital distribution channels and, even worse, distribution is readily available to content holders. Just look at the music business: Napster and MP3s took distribution out of the hands of the record labels and made music readily available to consumers. Not long after, websites and services such as MySpace, iTunes, and Amazon enabled musicians to speak and market themselves directly to customers, essentially eliminating the traditional record labels and giving rise to popular indie artists.
The same took place in the magazine business, where the publisher historically controlled or owned the distribution channel. Content producers, aka writers, were at the mercy of the publishers who controlled the media and medium. But now, with that crazy thing called the World Wide Web, writers can distribute their content directly to consumers, instantly and for free. The speed at which information is processed makes the morning newspaper old news before the presses even fire up.
Now we’re seeing this affect the games industry. In the past, the major game publishers controlled the consoles or were large enough to fund the manufacturing and distribution of game cartridges, and thus the content maker/publisher relationship made for one happy family. But now Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon, among other daily entrants such as the Desura, the digital download service for independent games, have flipped this model upside-down. Any yahoo can develop and distribute their own game, reaching millions of potential customers practically instantly and for free (minus the app store royalties, but there is no real upfront cost). Just as the music and magazine industry experienced, distribution has been ripped from the game publishers’ hands, and content developers now have a direct line to customers. Essentially, the barrier to entry has been removed.
Just because it’s now “easier” for developers to release their own titles, both the mobile and social gaming space is incredibly crowded and competitive. Yahoos launch games every day, hundreds daily on Apple’s app store alone. Yet nearly two-thirds of apps on the app store are so-called “Zombie Apps” that generate no downloads, a good number of which are smaller developers who poured their heart and soul into developing the content. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some diamonds in the rough, but we’ll never find them because of the lack of monetary and/or marketing support.
You can roll the dice and do everything on your own: develop, distribute, market, and promote your own game. Or you can stick with the principle of specialization and focus on what you do best while relying on others to handle the rest. As a game developer, your time is better spent developing games than optimizing marketing plans, leveraging CPIs, and analyzing LTVs. Publishers continue to play a major role in the ecosystem, providing support, best practices, brand value, funding, access to the store operators (for promotional opportunities, tech support, and new feature sets), an existing user base, marketing dollars, and marketing expertise. As this business matures, the publisher’s role will only become more valuable. So how do we all get along?
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