Across the board, all major browser developers are currently working very hard to speed up their software's performance. While a lot of the focus has currently shifted to hardware acceleration, there are still some speed gains to be made by optimizing most browsers' JavaScript engines. Earlier this year, the Mozilla JavaScript team launched the Jägermonkey project in order to speed up the JavaScript performance of Firefox and today, the team launched the first preview version of Firefox 4 with JägerMonkey.

Sponsor

Faster than TraceMonkey - Not as Fast as Chrome

In our own (unscientific) tests with the help of the SunSpider  and V8 benchmarks, the JägerMonkey version of Firefox 4 easily outperformed the most recent beta of Firefox 4 (around 370ms vs. 450ms in SunSpider and 2200 points vs. 1200 points in V8). At the same time, though, Google's Chrome is still significantly faster (260ms for the SunSpider benchmark and 6631 points in V8 for the current developer version). These benchmark results show that the JägerMonkey team clearly managed to speed up the browser's performance, but with regards to pure JavaScript performance Firefox is still far behind Chrome.

That said, though, benchmark performance is not always a good indicator for how fast a browser feels in actual usage and there can be little doubt that the JägerMonkey-enabled build feels faster than the current Firefox 4 betas and the difference with Chrome is barely noticeable.

You can download a copy of Firefox with the JägerMonkey engine here.

According to Mozilla developer David Mandelin, the team spent the last 8 months "studying the classic research, reverse engineering the competition, measuring, experimenting, designing, prototyping, analyzing performance, scrutinizing assembly code, redesigning, coding, and lots and lots of debugging." The result of this project is a completely revamped JavaScript engine for Firefox that makes demos like this far more enjoyable. Mandelin also notes that the final version should be "a little bit faster yet by the time Firefox 4 is release."

Given the combination of hardware acceleration, better JavaScript performance, a revamped interface and many other small changes, Firefox 4 is shaping up to be a very interesting release for Mozilla. The final version of Firefox 4 is currently scheduled for the Fall.

Discuss

For smartphone owners, asking people on the street for directions is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Why bother trying to remember a series of turns and landmarks when your phone can do that and more? Who needs confusing descriptions when you have satellite and Street View imagery? Android users certainly don't.

Google has added "Walking Navigation", a marriage of walking directions, turn-by-turn GPS navigation and satellite imagery, to the newest version of Google Maps for Android.

Sponsor

The latest addition comes as a part of Google Maps for mobile 4.5 for Android. It takes walking directions, which takes advantage of pedestrian pathways, overpasses and other such things, and pairs them with turn-by-turn GPS directions and satellite imagery.

Simply enter the address of where you're trying to go and chose the "Walking" option from the navigation icon and the app will guide you, following along and vibrating when you reach the next turn. The map even rotates as you turn the phone, orienting the map to the direction you're facing. As Google engineers Andrey Ulanov and Kevin Law note in their blog post, you can "use it like a virtual compass with satellite imagery to look ahead or help pick out landmarks along the way."

If the satellite view doesn't offer enough in the way of contextual clues, the new and improved Street View navigation for Google Maps on Android should help. The feature brings street view straight to your phone and adds "smart navigation", wherein you can simply drag the "Pegman" around to move your vantage point. Take a look:

We often joke with friends about how the smartphone is like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but it's features like this that make that notion more and more a reality. It wasn't long ago that GPS navigation in a car seemed like a modern day luxury and now we have access to turn-by-turn directions and imagery in our pockets. The integration with satellite imagery is just a step away from Street View integration and we can't imagine that an augmented reality addition is far off. While we often feel silly holding our phones up to the horizon to look for the nearest pizza joint, having this data on-screen as we navigate about our lives may prove even more handy.

What do you think - what's next for mobile personal navigation? That is, aside from getting similar functionality for the iPhone.

Discuss

Simplot Australia initially used VMware virtualization software and Intel hardare to create a test and development environment.

The wholly owned subsidiary of the J R Simplot Company saw the immediate benefits and has not looked back since.

Today, more than 60% of the IT infrastructure at Simplot Australia's corporate office has been virtualized.

Sponsor

Download White Paper PDF

Simplot Australia Takes Virtualization Beyond Test and Development

Discuss

Today's Wall Street Journal has a few key words from Intel CEO Paul Otellini, with a few comparing his company's Google TV approach to the refreshed (and now Intel-free) Apple TV. The biggest revelation is a mention that Google TV will start shipping this month (more specific than Google's own fall prediction of a few days ago) with no word whether that includes products from Sony, Logitech or both. According to Otellini, Intel's success will mean using "the right chip for the right job," and that includes getting its hands dirty on the software side, where he claims his company is responsible for 50% of the code in Google TV. When asked about Apple's simplified approach to the living room he referenced them as two different approaches that may appeal to different audiences, pointing out Apple TV as something his mother might enjoy while his son could make use of Facebook on the Google TV. Oh, and the $7.68 billion Intel dropped on McAfee last month? He considers it a "valuable asset" and says the best security relies on a combination of hardware and software. The theme of the day is how Intel can compete beyond the PC, but whether it's tethered to the TV or in tablets, the head guy is confident Intel's industry partners won't let Apple run away with either.

Intel CEO reveals Google TV launch is this month, explains McAfee purchase originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Electronista  |  Wall Street Journal  | Email this | Comments

Broadcom announced today the initial release of its new open source wireless drivers for Linux. The drivers, which are built using the kernel's own native SoftMAC framework, are currently in the kernel staging tree and are expected to eventually be merged upstream.

Broadcom networking hardware has typically been problematic on Linux because the community-developed open source drivers had to use a proprietary firmware blob from Broadcom that wasn't available under terms that facilitated redistribution. This has historically precluded out-of-the-box support for popular Broadcom chips that are used in many laptops and netbooks. Broadcom is finally addressing the issue and is working with the upstream kernel community.

"Broadcom would like to announce the initial release of a fully-open Linux driver for its latest generation of 11n chipsets. The driver, while still a work in progress, is released as full source and uses the native mac80211 stack," wrote Broadcom's Henry Ptasinski in a message on the Linux wireless mailing list.

When the new drivers are mature and are merged into the kernel mainline, it will allow Linux distributions to provide first-class support several common Broadcom wireless chips. The driver currently supports BCM4313, BCM43224, and BCM43225, but it can be extended in the future to support additional Broadcom hardware components.

Read the comments on this post

Man, we're starting to think Google should just host an I/O event every month. As the search giant continues to roll out new innovations, today's introduction involves none other than Android. Starting today, folks with Android phones using version 1.6 or greater have a pair of must-downloads to tackle: Walking Navigation (Beta) and Street View smart navigation. The former is bundled into Google Maps for Mobile 4.5, offering pedestrians a more robust routing option when using their own two feet to maneuver from place to place. It's still in beta, obviously, but we're definitely digging the "vibrate to turn" alert and the map's ability to rotate with you as you turn the phone. Street View smart navigation is the same stuff you're used to seeing on a bona fide desktop browser, but tailor made for operation on your smartphone. Finally, the new Google Maps search bar will make it even easier to find places you're in need of finding, and if you need some visual stimulation while your downloads progress, hop on past the break and mash play.

Continue reading Google Walking Navigation beta and Street View now available for Android

Google Walking Navigation beta and Street View now available for Android originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Google Mobile Blog  | Email this | Comments

There's a rumor going around today that Verizon is stripping Google services out of its Android devices going forward in favor of their Bing equivalents (much the same way that AT&T has gone with Yahoo on some phones), but the company says this afternoon that it's simply false: "...that is not true. We have a relationship with Microsoft and Bing is the search engine on our multi-media phones but we have never said it would be exclusive on all of our devices." We think the wording here is pretty important: "on our multi-media phones." We take this to mean that Verizon's looking at using Bing on its high-end featurephones and its midrange smartphones, possibly keeping the end-to-end Google experience exclusive to its cream of the crop -- which would also explain why the recently-launched Fascinate didn't get the coveted Droid brand as a part of its name.

On a related note, we're hearing from a tipster today that an upcoming low-end Android device for Verizon from LG is loaded with Bing services, which strengthens the case -- it looks like Bing is the "cheap" experience for Big Red right now. We've gotta admit, we're wondering how Microsoft feels about that positioning.

Debunk: Bing not replacing Google on all Verizon Android devices originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  The Droid Guy  | Email this | Comments

There are a lot of ideas on how to limit emissions of CO2 in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and ocean acidification. But most of those focus on future infrastructure and equipment; in the meantime, we have a large portfolio of power plants and vehicles that will continue to emit for as long as we use them, and we're unlikely to stop doing so. Just how significant are the carbon emissions that we've committed to? A study that will be released by Science today indicates that we're not in terrible shape yet, as we haven't built the hardware that could cause the most significant shifts in the climate.

The new analysis focuses on what it terms "committed emissions" by taking known values like a car's typical emissions per year of driving, and totaling those for the projected lifespan of the vehicle. The database the authors use for this has separate figures for passenger and industrial vehicles, and provides numbers for things like coal-fired power plants and the like. For land use changes, it relies on values in the IPCC report. It also has figures for fossil fuel use by industrial equipment and the like, but these are simply based on total energy consumption, as this hardware is too varied to project accurately.

Read the comments on this post

The stars are really aligning for this shindig HTC has scheduled in London for next week, aren't they? All signs point to the launch of the Android-powered Desire Z and Desire HD -- international versions of the G2 and EVO, respectively -- and this render pulled off of German site BestBoyZ matches up perfectly with in-the-wild shots we've seen of the HD before. The only sticking point, really, is that there's a Windows Mobile 6.5 Sense UI shot inexplicably plastered on top, which makes about as much sense as... well, re-releasing the HD2 right now. Bottom line, we think the hardware part of this picture is real; software, not so much.

[Thanks, Kamal]

HTC Desire HD rendered, looks pretty legit to us -- oh, except for that WinMo UI originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  BestBoyZ  | Email this | Comments

This post was made possible thanks to a phenomenon I call "twitterdipity."

Twitterdipity is the experience of wading in Twitter's shallow, fast-moving data stream and suddenly - and surprisingly - mining treasure from a tweet. It's casually catching the eye of good fortune in a speed-of-light culture. It's when you score a free ticket to an exclusive event or click a game-changing link at just the right time. My most recent (and exciting) experience of twitterdipity happened when I tweeted that I was reading Paul Levinson's book Digital McLuhan and then the award-winning sci-fi writer, singer/songwriter, communications professor and oft-interviewed media ecologist decided to follow me. Me!

Sponsor

Guest author Michelle Anderson is a storyteller, media ecologist and community builder for hire. She goes by the moniker @mediaChick on Twitter and just about everywhere else, as well. She is the creator and author of The Miracle in July, an ambitious, genre-busting storytelling experiment seeking to redefine what "success" means in today's global theater. Through teaching, consulting, speaking and publishing, Michelle hopes to inspire storytellers world-wide to experiment with social media ecology in their work. She also bakes one hell of a pie.

As a rogue media ecologist, I play scholarly voyeur on the Media Ecology Association's mailing list. Over the years I've passively learned the intricacies of the interdisciplinary study of the ecosystems of media by eavesdropping on riveting academic discussions. The ones that interest me the most are the endless conversations about Marshall McLuhan, the cutting-edge communications and media theorist who coined phrases such as "global village" and "the medium is the message."

It was from studying McLuhan that I realized that the word "medium" was meant to include roads, electricity and assembly lines as well as broadcast television and the telegraph. I realized that it is the form of a medium, rather than its content, that molds and shapes our view of the world, and that the "message" of the medium is the change in the pattern of humanity. But it is McLuhan's famous 1962 declaration in The Gutenberg Galaxy that "the new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of the global village" that got me thinking about the conditions that conjure twitterdipity.

Appropriately enough, from this media ecologist's point of view, it is Twitter's ecosystem that breeds these wonderful moments of twitterdipity. The choice in following (or not following or blocking) a tweeter leads to the customization of Twitter's indiscriminately rich fire hose of data; it makes for a fertile, personalized climate.

Conditions for Twitterdipity

Content published from a world-wide, realtime community of incredibly diverse producers and consumers, who all have access to the same high-volume channels in which to influence others and attract the influential, seeds potential twitterdipity moments. Add to this environment the natural affinity for the brain to treat online and offline social interactions exactly the same - creating the same feelings of empathy and rivalry and social pressure to maintain a community decorum - and you've got yourself conditions ripe for twitterdipity.

Take, for instance, the twitterdipity environment that created this post:

I tweeted that I was reading Paul Levinson's book Digital McLuhan - a key book in my education of how McLuhan's ideas work in the Digital Age. Paul Levinson saw the tweet. He saw my bio. ( I called myself a media ecologist and a "bliss follower.") He decides to follow me. I worked up the nerve to ask Levinson - a man who's been interviewed by damned-near everybody, including Bill O'Reilly in a fun boxing match about the mass broadcasting of beheadings, and whose 1972 pychedelic folk rock album "Twice Upon a Rhyme" still appears on cult collector's lists - to answer 5 questions for a post. Levinson agreed. I smiled like crazy for days.

So, what five questions does a rouge media ecologist ask her academic hero, the award-winning sci-fi writer, singer/songwriter, communications professor and oft-interviewed Paul Levinson? These five questions:

Anderson: McLuhan's 1960 "global village" concept includes a tribal environment prone to discord and disagreements due to the invention of worldwide, real-time interconnectivity of electric technology. Yet, in 1966 he said at an author's luncheon in New York, "The satellites, as a new garbage or climate surround around the planet, are moving information at speeds that the planet can not cope with and have created not a global village but a Global Theater. I no longer use the phrase global village. It's global theater now, and everybody out here, and me too, we're all out to do our thing. Jobs are finished, jobs are over, role-playing comes in." (Hear McLuhan say this at the 3:36 mark.) McLuhan's "global theater" idea involves a global village in which everyone acts as both producer and consumer, actor and spectator. So, why do you think that the temperamental "global village" concept is the one that is commonly referenced as McLuhan's predictive metaphor for the Internet rather than the everyone-as-content "global theater" concept?

Levinson: I think 99% of the ascension of global village over global theater has to do with the homespun, populace appeal of village in contrast to the haute, upper-crust vibes of theater. Most people don't go to the theater anymore - or, if they do, it's to see their kids in a high school play. In either case, theater is far more specialized than village. Also, the village is a antonym to global, which gives the metaphor tension, in contrast to global theater, which sounds like something out of Shakespeare. The 1% is that global village had already caught on by 1966.

Anderson: (That was a long question. Here's a short one!) What do you predict will be the long-term effect of the social web (which is becoming an "equalizer" of sorts) on the offline world in terms of access to information and influence?

Levinson: The long-term effect will be that governments, corporations, universities, elite media will find it increasingly difficult to dole information out on their own terms. Information will be out there for everyone, all the time, anywhere they and the information may happen to be. Further, as I detail in my New New Media (2009), all receivers and consumers of information will become producers - anyone can set up a Facebook page, upload a video to YouTube, Tweet 20 hours a day. This means that the difference between professionals and amateurs - between those whose profession it is to produce versus those who produce for love - is becoming less and less. Anyone can write and edit on Wikipedia, and a survey in Nature Magazine a few years ago found no difference in error levels in the Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia. We come from a world in which gatekeepers decided what the rest of us could see and hear in our media. With the advent of new new media, the gatekeepers are leaving their positions, and the playing field of significant public communication is open to everyone. This is a great step forward for freedom and democracy.

Anderson: Since the very first modem whine, the Internet has been the perfect environment for groups to propagate. With its infinite space and real-time communication, today the Internet sustains countless communities, ranging from metropolitan and bustling to rural and quiet, and more are forming every day. What are your thoughts on the role of the relatively new career of Online Community Manager, a position created to build and manage groups of digital personalities that are joined together under a common interest or goal?

Levinson: My opinion is the Internet is not about empowerment of new leaders, it is about the empowerment of everyone. The idea of an Internet professional community leader is an oxymoron. Leaders arise without training, and survive or not based on their performance, not their credentials, in the new online world.

Anderson: In 1972, McLuhan participated in a debate on the subject "Do books matter?" by giving a speech which he called "The Future of the Book" (Understanding Me, 2003). "The book is not moving towards an omega point," he said, "but is actually in the process of rehearsing and re-enacting all the roles it has ever played, for new graphics and new printing processes invite the simultaneous use of a great diversity of effects." Do you think McLuhan was talking about a new technology (Kindle, Vook, iPad), or a new process in which we define what a book is (a new technology-neutral format)?

Levinson: I think McLuhan was talking about the Internet, without giving it that name, back in 1972. His view of this new "book" is something I explore in Digital McLuhan, where I point out that the Internet is the media of media. Kindle, iPad, etc. have this same quality.

Anderson: Thanks to innovative digital strategies from Wieden + Kennedy, one of the top brand agencies in the world, the brand Old Spice recently enjoyed a 107% increase in sales. The campaign's raging success also created a new benchmark for large agencies who wish to convince their traditional media-minded clients that using inexpensive (even free!) social media tools in their ad campaigns can be very lucrative. What do you see as the fall-out from this adoption of the social web by "big money" agencies for individual producers and consumers of online content, as well as the smaller Internet marketing firms who specialize in digital strategy?

Levinson: The age of Madison Avenue style advertising - what we see aborning on "Mad Men" - is coming to an end. Rather than advertise on traditional media such as television and billboards, campaigns of the future will be closer to what my namesake (but no relative) Jay Conrad Levinson calls "guerrilla marketing." The advertising campaigns of the future will be increasingly waged in the jungles and dirt roads and nooks and crannies of the Internet - all of which may be more direct routes to our minds than looking at a television.

"The Empowerment of Everyone"

With instant access to everything all the time, our global village has little patience with high-gloss, slick campaigns where consumables are layered with glitz to hide mediocrity within. In a village, everyone knows everyone else's business - their strengths, weaknesses, triumphs and failures - which creates the "equalized" playing field that Levinson described as "a great step forward for freedom and democracy." A global village, one that pairs the oxymoronish intimacy of village life with a worldwide web of connectivity, can then lead to a once-impossible moment of twitterdipity, where an up-and-coming media ecologist in Portland, Oregon can pick the brain of a world-renowned and award-winning author, professor, and media environment expert from the East Coast. As Levinson noted, "the Internet is not about empowerment of new leaders, it is about the empowerment of everyone." Thanks to the global village, that everyone includes you and me.

Top photo by Rosaura Ochoa

Discuss

Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has just made public his own Kangaroo TV operations, but the end product is something far different than just in-stadium televisions. The FanVision handheld (shown above) has been reportedly shopped to every single NFL team, but only a dozen of 'em decided to take Mr. Ross up on his offer (along with the University of Michigan, curiously enough). Essentially, this here handheld works only while within the stadium, enabling fans to view instant replays from multiple angles, out of town games, real-time stats from around the league, NFL Red Zone, live fantasy football updates, on-demand video from your home team, a cheerleader cam (yeah, seriously), highlight reel of the game and the actual network telecast of the event that you're at. 'Course, this type of fan customization isn't exactly new -- the Mariners have been offering something similar to Nintendo DS owners for awhile now -- but given the high absurd price of front row seats, we'll take any extra angles we can get. FanVision will be available within the stadiums of the signed-on teams (listed after the break) for $199 without any activation or recurring fees, though the MSRP is tagged at $259. Sure beats paying for PSLs, huh?

Continue reading FanVision handheld makes NFL nosebleeds far more bearable

FanVision handheld makes NFL nosebleeds far more bearable originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  FanVision  | Email this | Comments

It has now been a year since we announced Ars Premier 2.0. In that year, we've welcomed thousands of new subscribers, added a new $5 per month plan, had a number of live chats with industry luminaries, rolled out a dedicated mobile site, upgraded our commenting system several times, migrated and relaunched our forums, redesigned and added cool new features to the front page, and lots more. Subscribers also get an advertising-free experience when browsing the site. Signing up is easy.

One of the most well-received programs is the giveaways—in which all Premier subscribers are automatically entered. This month we have a monster giveaway thanks to our friends at DNA11, CanvasPop, Griffin Technology, and ThinkGeek. We're splitting this month's festivities into two parts. We have a set of prizes for the first half of the month, and around September 15 we'll be announcing a second set.

The Prizes

First up, we're going to be giving away 10 Griffin Technology Loops. This is a really neat weighted iPad stand. It won't block the connector port, and has rubber pads on the bottom to keep it from slipping around. Each one of these would run you $29.99 in a store.

Secondly, we have two $50 gift certificates from ThinkGeek. If you haven't checked out ThinkGeek lately, you might be surprised to see the huge range of stuff you can buy there. They've got everything from multi-tools and geeky t-shirts to stuffed animals and Star Wars sleeping bags.

Finally, we have a free piece of custom art from CanvasPop. This is a really cool product that lets you upload any photograph you've taken—whether it's something you've got up on Facebook, a file on your computer, or something you've taken on your iPhone—and turn it into a large-scale canvas print. This one is a $100 value.

How to enter

Premier subscribers (and those who subscribe before the end of this giveaway) don't have to do anything. Being automatically entered into all our contests and giveaways is just one of the many benefits of being a Premier subscriber. For everyone else, simply leave a comment on this post (or sign up for a subscription). Please be aware that only citizens of The United States and Canada (excepting Québec) who are 18 years old or older are eligible to win the prizes.

This giveaway begins on September 1, 2010 at 12:00am CT and ends on September 14, 2010 at 11:59pm CT, so you must be entered by the end date to be eligible. If you have any questions about the rules, please see the full set here.

One more thing, Premier subs get coupons!

In addition to the cool prizes our partners have supplied, they've also made available a number of significant coupons for Ars Premier Subscribers. Anyone who is a subscriber or becomes a subscriber will have access to these and can begin using them immediately. You can find them by clicking here, and you can always find the link again in the "Premier Subscriber" drop-down menu on any page. Here are the coupons:

• DNA11: Get $50 off at DNA11. Transform your DNA or Fingerprint into a custom portrait on canvas.
• CanvasPop: Get $25 off at CanvasPop. Turn your photos into beautiful large-scale canvas art. Also works with iPhone and Facebook images.
• Griffin Technology: 20 percent off at the Griffin Technology Store. Griffin is your leader in essentials for iPhone, iPad, and iPod.
• ThinkGeek: $5 off $25 or $10 off $40 worth of merchandise at ThinkGeek. ThinkGeek: Stuff for smart masses.

Remember, we'll be doing a second giveaway on Sept 15, so keep your eyes peeled! If you haven't subscribed yet, what are you waiting for? Subscribe now and all of the great features listed above, an advertising-free experience, and automatic entry into all of our contests.

Read the comments on this post

According to the Microsoft Security Response Center, Microsoft will issue nine Security Bulletins addressing 13 vulnerabilities on Tuesday, September 14. It will also host a webcast to address customer questions the following day.

Four of the vulnerabilities are rated "Critical" and the other five are marked "Important." All of the Critical vulnerabilities earned their rating through a remote code execution impact, meaning a hacker could potentially gain control of an infected machine. At least four of the nine patches will require a restart.

Read the comments on this post

Well, this one's come a bit out of left field (or Russia, actually), but it looks like Acer may be set to release yet another Android device. Apparently dubbed the Liquid Metal, this one is said to pack Android 2.2 beneath Acer's own skin, along with a 3.6-inch 800 x 480 capacitive touchscreen, an 800MHz Qualcomm MSM7230-1 processor, Bluetooth 3.0, and a camera of unspecified megapixels with a flash -- all wrapped in what appears to be an aluminum casing. No word on pricing or availability just yet, but it looks like the phone exists in both black and silver versions at the moment -- head on past the break for another shot.

Continue reading Acer Liquid Metal wraps Android 2.2 in aluminum

Acer Liquid Metal wraps Android 2.2 in aluminum originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink A bit of technology  |  habrahabr.ru  | Email this | Comments

Social check-in app GetGlue has been making significant strides in the mobile space lately with the release of an Android app following success on the iPhone earlier this summer. Today, the popular app which allows users to check-in, rate and like things like movies, TV shows and music, has come to everyone's favorite "lean back" entertainment device, the iPad. With some added functionality (and more sticker deals to boot), GetGlue hopes its iPad app will become your couch surfing app of choice for "second screen" media interaction.

Sponsor

Lean Back, Check In

Those familiar with GetGlue on the Web or on their phones will find the iPad app very familiar. As one would expect, the app lets you check-in to the service's 8 standard categories - music, movies, TV shows, books, games, wine, topics and celebrities. The added screen size of the iPad lets you more efficiently like, rate and comment on items without leaving each screen by utilizing pop-ups and overlays.

The startup hopes these overlays will encourage social interaction on the app as people enjoy things like movies and TV shows. The overlays, which will be familiar to users of the Twitter for iPad app, allow users to chat and discuss the media they are consuming with their friends and contacts in real-time - a practice that has many broadcast channels and movie studios excited.

Stickers from Glee, Dexter, TWiT and More

So excited, in fact, that many have refreshed their campaigns for special GetGlue stickers, which users can collect by watching and checking into shows and events. FOX has agreed to promote its wildly popular show Glee, long-running hit Bones, as well as a pair of new shows - Raising Hope and Lone Star - with special GetGlue Stickers.

HBO is running a unique campaign that rewards users for checking into each new episode of its anticipated series Boardwalk Empire. If users watch each episode on its debut night in succession, they will "level up" and earn a special sticker at the end of the season. Other shows and movies announcing campaigns include Showtime's Dexter, PBS' NOVA and Charlie Rose, Universal Pictures' upcoming releases Catfish and Devil, and Leo Laporte's TWiT podcast network.

According to GetGlue's Fraser Kelton, media networks have been impressed by the results their sticker campaigns have garnered, attracting them back again for expanded programs.

"Within 5 minutess of True Blood airing 2 weeks ago, 5,000 fans concurrently checked-in with an estimated reach of about 1 million people on Twitter," says Kelton. "The benefit of having trusted recommendations coming out from friends and reaching that number of people is a huge win for them."

Kelton adds that shows and movies that run sticker promotions on GetGlue see far better engagement from the platform compared to those that don't. While this is to be expected, it is evidence that the social check-in platform is a viable market for advertising campaigns from big brands, stations, and studios.

Discuss

Could this be the best-looking Windows Phone 7 device yet? That's open to some personal interpretation, of course, but Sammy's alleged i8700 is looking like quite the beast -- and it should assuage any lingering fears that the Omnia HD-based prototypes floating around would be influencing final ID for the company's numerous WP7 launches later this year. If we had to venture a guess, we'd say this is probably that unnamed model we saw not long ago, identified by its sharp, squared-off edges and the button layout below the display. The about screen reveals 8GB of internal storage and the backside shows a camera of unknown resolution paired to an LED flash, so if you're not tied to the idea of a physical QWERTY keyboard, this might be the Windows Phone 7 handset you've been looking for. Question is, what carriers?

[Thanks, Pradeep]

Samsung i8700 for Windows Phone 7 leaks, puts developer prototype to shame originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Gizmodo  | Email this | Comments

Introduction The promises Table of Contents I. Internet privacy
II. Cyber war and cybersecurity
III. Copyright enforcement and security
IV. Net neutrality
    A. Ancillary questions
    B. 535 wildcards
V. Stimulus & the FCC's national broadband plan
    A. Stimulus
    B. National planning
    C. AllVid
    D. Left Out
VI. Mobile wireless broadband oversight
    A. Early termination fees
    B. Bill shock
VII. Anti-trust issues
VIII. Conclusion

When the Obama administration came to Washington, DC in January of 2009, it promised a new era of accountability, transparency, and change. The marquee issues were health care and financial reform, but federal policies regarding broadband and the Internet clocked in at a very close third.

"I'm a big believer in net neutrality," Obama told a reporter shortly after taking office, noting that both he and his pick for the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, shared the view that "we've got to keep the Internet open, that we don't want to create a bunch of gateways that prevent somebody who doesn't have a lot of money but has a good idea from being able to start their next YouTube."

As the President spoke these words, champions of Internet- and broadband-related reform rushed to the nation's capital, eager to advocate their ideas after eight frustrating years of looking in from the outside. Prominent telecom analysts augured rapid change at the FCC. The new president "looks at technology as holistic and as a catalyst for job creation, economic development, closing economic divides, clearly a multiplier impact on the economy," predicted attorney Andrew Lipman. "Especially with broadband. And everybody knows he's an enthusiast for the Internet. Why not with 370,000 Internet contributions?"

Besides net neutrality, the new causes include privacy rights for social network users, device openness for mobile phones, pro-fair-use changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, easier line sharing access to the big cable and telco networks, spectrum reform, consumer protections for mobile phone users, and, perhaps most importantly, a national strategy for getting high speed Internet into the homes of most Americans.

The results

Eighteen months later, it is clear that all these reforms are still at play, but their full or even partial enactment is by no means guaranteed. While we believe that a variety of Internet-related changes are in the offing, substantial political- or interest-based roadblocks stand in the way of most of the major reform causes.

Partisanship is certainly a major factor here, especially as it plays out in the media, with one cable TV host famously comparing net neutrality to Satan worship. And the incumbent Internet Service Providers are sparing no expense to make their voices heard—Verizon, for example, spent over $4.4 million on lobbying Congress in the second quarter of this year.

But in other instances, while key sectors of the DC policy community agree that adjustments are needed in various areas, the rapid evolution of the Internet makes it difficult to achieve consensus on laws or regulations at any given legislative or rulemaking opportunity.

To put it more plainly, the Internet may be the fastest moving target in policy history. While many political movements in the United States have effectively harnessed cyberspace for their immediate purposes, the 'Net itself uniquely eludes the goals of reformers and incumbents alike. This challenge is particularly obvious in the areas of consumer privacy and cyber security.

Nonetheless, some things have already changed. One of the most important developments we have noticed is that the constant threat of regulation from the federal government has often been met by voluntary reforms from industry. This has been particularly noticeable in the mobile and social networking sectors. We expect that dynamic to continue.

This quarterly survey reviews efforts to regulate the Internet and broadband at the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Copyright Office, the Library of Congress, the Department of Justice, the Department of Commerce, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security, and on Capitol Hill.

I. Internet privacy

Rivaling the rancor of the net neutrality debate is concern about privacy and data security on social networks like Facebook. The premiere site, which now serves half a billion members, is a source of constant anxiety for the public. While consumers can't get enough of Facebook, and delight in sharing their most intimate secrets on the service, they also worry about how that data is being used. In late May, researchers disclosed that Facebook, MySpace, Digg, and other sites were sharing users' personal data with advertisers without their knowledge or consent.

Even before that disclosure, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and 14 other consumer groups complained to the Federal Trade Commission that Facebook was engaging in unfair trade practices.

"Facebook continues to manipulate the privacy settings of users and its own privacy policy so that it can take personal information provided by users for a limited purpose and make it widely available for commercial purposes," read their letter. "The company has done this repeatedly and users are becoming increasingly angry and frustrated."

The colorful statements of prominent figures on Capitol Hill mirror these concerns. The social networking environment has become a "machine," declared Senate Commerce Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) at a recent hearing.

"The machine records your every move that day," Rockefeller ominously warned. "Then, based on what you look at, where you shop, what you buy, it builds a personality profile on you. It predicts what you may want in the future and starts sending you coupons. Further, it tells businesses what a good potential client you may be and shares your personality profile with them."

Government regulation in this area could come from two places: Congress or the FTC. Activity at the latter venue has been characterized by repeated warnings to the industry to self-regulate, or the government will step in.

This 20-page report is available only in PDF form via Ars Technica's subscriber-only PDF library. To read the rest of it, subscribe today!

Read the comments on this post

Automatic translation tools like Google Translate allow you to get a very rough understanding of a text in a foreign language. For the most part, though, these translations are anything but perfect and can't capture the nuances and idioms that professional translators can. Linguee, a Germany-based startup, is a contextual translation search engine that walks the middle ground between machine translation and online dictionary (with some crowdsourcing mixed in for good measure). The tool offers support for English, Spanish, Portuguese, German and French and is one of the best online translation dictionaries we have seen.

Sponsor

The Web as a Dictionary

Unlike most of the online dictionaries you are probably familiar with, Linguee doesn't just replicate a licensed version of a print dictionary. Linguee also offers regular dictionary definitions, but what sets it apart from its competition is that the Linguee team developed something akin to a translation search engine. The company's webcrawler looks for professionally translated texts on the public Internet that exist in two or more languages. The European Union, for example, publishes most of its documents and patents in numerous languages (as does the Canadian government). Linguee also looks for professionally translated texts on company websites and other public resources such as technical journals. Because of this wide range of source texts, Linguee often knows the translations of words that would otherwise only appear in highly specialized translation dictionaries.

Once indexed, the company's algorithms then a) decide whether the quality of the crawled translation is good enough (does the length of the two texts match, for example) and b) create a translation index for the words and idioms in these texts. As Finke told us, the theory behind the company's tools is well known among academics, but before Linguee came along, nobody had really put these theories to work yet.

As Linguee's co-founder Leonard Finke told us earlier this week, thanks to this approach, the tools excels in handling words that have multiple meanings and in translation idiomatic expressions. While Google Translate, for example, turns "ballpark figure" into "Ballpark Abbildung" in German (a picture in or of a ballpark), Linguee knows the right translation ("Schätzung"). In addition to the translation itself, Linguee also displays examples of the searched for words in context.

Besides the web version of the dictionary, Linguee also offers plugins for Firefox and Internet Explorer, as well as a dashboard widget for OSX.

Crowdsourcing

While Linguee mostly relies on its own algorithms, users can also vote translations up and down and suggest alternative translations. These votes are then taken into account by the machine-learning algorithm.

Users who sign up for the service and offer a lot of good suggestions and contribute their own suggestions get to see an ad-free version of the site. As Finke told us, this is a good way to reward the tool's most active users.

Discuss

The evidence for dark matter has come from big objects, generally starting at galaxy-sized and going up from there to the structure of the Universe itself. But a paper in today's issue of Science indicates that we can look to something smaller (and much closer) if we want to start figuring out what dark matter looks like: our own Sun. Since dark matter interacts primarily through gravity, the Sun should have the largest concentration around, and the paper argues that the additional matter should influence the production of neutrinos in a way that we may be able to detect.

The paper is a Brevia, and its text doesn't even take up a full page, but it packs a lot of information into that short space. Its authors point out that the sun will gravitationally capture dark matter as it moves through the Milky Way and, provided these particles can at least undergo rare and weak collisions with regular matter, they'll eventually accumulate in the Sun's core. Once there, they'll influence the fusion reactions that take place.

According to our current model of the Sun, different reactions take place at different depths, and this should lead to an uneven distribution of the neutrinos these reactions produce. The dark matter will shift these reaction locations, and cause detectable differences in the neutrino flux coming out of the Sun. Right now, we don't have the hardware to detect these differences, but the authors say they should be within reach of future neutrino observatories.

It's worth noting that the dark matter-solar model they use contains a few assumptions beyond weak interactions with regular matter, such as the mass of the particles themselves and their ability to annihilate each other upon collisions. But the authors show how changing these assumptions can produce significantly different results. This means that, even if future experiments don't provide convincing evidence of dark matter, they could at least rule out several potential models of what the dark matter particles themselves look like.

Science, 2010. DOI: 10.1126/science.1196564  (About DOIs).

Read the comments on this post

The debate rages on about the sound, or rather the lack of sound, coming from electric vehicles. Their relative quietude could make roadside-housing rather more tenable in the future, but, if you ask some people, will turn those cars into silent killers. We've seen some crude noisemakers attempt to make those cars a bit less lethal, but that just brings us back to the noise pollution issue again. ECTunes has what sounds like a solution that will better appeal to both camps: directional sound. The prototype Citroen pictured above emits tones only audible to those right in its path, straight ahead when traveling forward and behind it when in reverse, silencing altogether at 30mph when wind and tire noise is enough of a deterrent to those who can't see oncoming traffic -- or who simply choose not to. A solid, reasonable solution to the problem? Absolutely. Will it make those on both sides of those topic agree? Unlikely.

Continue reading ECTunes adds sound to silent EVs, but only where and when you need it (video)

ECTunes adds sound to silent EVs, but only where and when you need it (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Autoblog Green  |  ECTunes  | Email this | Comments