Category: Tech News

• Cybersecurity Risk High in Industrial Control Systems

  Professionals in energy and other industries say design of control systems makes them vulnerable.

  If you thought that concerns over the security of the physical infrastructure of the U.S. are overblown, consider what people in industry say. It’s not particularly encouraging, although there are signs that awareness of the issue is rising.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Social Network That Really Matters to Startups

  Expanding beyond simply connecting investors and new companies, AngelList aims to create a more global startup community.

  AngelList started as a website for investors looking to connect with fledgling startups and vice versa. Now, three years later, it increasingly looks like an indispensable part of the startup scene—and in recent months it has introduced new features that could give it an even more central role.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• "Glassholes" Only, Please

  Why is Google restricting its Glass rollout to rich tech elites?

  Google has always had a big-tent, pseudo-public-service bent to its branding: “Don’t be evil”, “Organize the world’s information,” and the like. Google doesn’t position its products as Apple-like status symbols. Android is for anyone and everyone; even the ubiquitous slang “google it” couldn’t have caught on if the company’s search technology weren’t omnipresent and omni-accessible. Which makes the rollout of Google’s potentially world-changing Glass product seem strange. First, you have to audition on Twitter (or Google+) for access to the product: Google says it’s seeking “bold, creative individuals”. They could also add “rich” to that list: if Google selects your “application,” you still have to cough up $1500 for your pair of techno-specs. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Your Next Smartphone Could Respond to Your Voice, Even When It’s Asleep

  A new feature in Qualcomm’s chips will let you wake your phone with a voice command so it can do your bidding. Now it just needs to learn to cook.

  Imagine waking up in the morning, stretching, and asking your sleeping smartphone, “Ahoy, Google, what’s the weather like?” to get the local forecast.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Molecule Helps Nanoparticles Sneak Past the Immune System

  Researchers have given nanoparticles the ability to tell immune cells not to eat them, a development that could have broad implications for medicine.

  Taking a cue from nature, researchers have designed nanoparticles that can avoid being destroyed by the immune system by convincing immune cells that the particles are part of the body. The advance represents a fundamentally new way to address a major obstacle facing nanoparticle-based drug delivery.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Google Glass Needs Phatic Interaction, Stat

  When you’ve got a computer strapped to your face, do you really want to be talking to it all the time?

  Google Glass’s new demo video is impressive. The product is looking less like magic–the original teaser video made visual and experiential claims that just weren’t plausible–and more like reality. The most interesting thing about the video is how it finally confirms the most mundane, and important, aspect of Google Glass’s user experience: how do you control the damn thing? Google Glass, apparently, relies on a Siri-like interaction: you invoke it by saying “OK Glass” and then issue further instructions.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Chrome Pixel Has Highest-Resolution Screen on the Market

  Taking a page from Apple and Microsoft, Google debuts a new device.

  Google announces today something called the Chromebook Pixel, a laptop running Chrome OS that, as the company says, “brings together the best in hardware, software and design to inspire the next generation of Chromebooks.” That verb “inspire” should sound familiar. Just as Microsoft made the Surface to give a sort of Platonic ideal off of which its manufacturing partners could offer variations, so is Google hoping to achieve the same with the Pixel.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• An Augmented Reality Chip Might Speed Adoption

  If Metaio’s augmented reality chipset can save power in AR apps, smartphone owners could be more inclined to use them.

  Could your next smartphone come with an augmented reality chip? That’s the hope over at Metaio, a German company that announced its first augmented reality processing unit on Thursday. Metaio, which has previously just made software that developers can use to build AR apps, is working with mobile chip maker ST-Ericsson to include this “AREngine” in new mobile chips.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Quick Tour of Windows 8

  An overview of the user experience design of Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Buyers Circle Around Ailing Fisker Automotive

  Electric vehicle company Fisker Automotive is in talks to be acquired by Chinese auto companies, a sharp contrast to competitor Tesla Motors.

  Electric car company Fisker Automotive appears to have found the deep pockets it needs.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Carbon Nanotube Transistors Orders of Magnitude Better At Spotting Cancer, Say Bioengineers

  Arrays of carbon-nanotube transistors can detect prostate cancer with a much higher sensitivity than conventional techniques

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Exposé of Chinese Data Thieves Reveals Sloppy Tactics

  A report on the Chinese group that breached the computers of U.S. companies reveals that they took few precautions against detection.

  A beige office block in Shanghai’s suburbs belonging to the Chinese army became world famous on Tuesday after Mandiant, a Washington-based computer security company, released a 60-page report alleging that it houses a group routinely stealing information from U.S. companies. While there’s no direct proof that the Chinese army sponsors the campaign, one thing the report makes clear is that the people carrying it out weren’t the slickest of operators.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Software with an Eye for Starbucks (and Nike and Coke …)

  Startup gazeMetrix uses computer vision to glean information from Instagram photos. It may be the future of marketing.

  Among the 40 million images that people post to Instagram each day are a slew of sunsets, puppies, and—according to Deobrat Singh—Starbucks coffee cups. He would know: he counts them.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Tesla's Explosive Revenue Suggests a Bright Future

  The maker of the Model S is cranking out cars and may be on track to turn a profit.

  Last year Tesla Motors struggled to meet manufacturing targets for its only production car, the Model S, and it recently got hit with a negative review in the New York Times after a journalist ran out of power during a test drive (see “Tesla Blames New Delays on Production Difficulties” and “Musk-New York Times Debate Highlights Electric Cars’ Shortcomings”).

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Tracking Brain Connections in Utero

  Researchers use fMRI to detect strengthening brain circuits.

  Researchers have mapped how neuronal connections develop in the healthy human fetus. Their results were published online on Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• We Still Don’t Know What Google Glass Will Be Like to Use

  New video and images from Google still don’t reveal what its wearable display will show the user.

  Google’s new website showing off Glass—eyeglass frames that insert a display into your peripheral vision—goes some way to explain what the company is planning for the gadget, such as directions and voice control. But the company still hasn’t given us a good sense of what the device will really be like to wear, and is even slightly misleading about it.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Future Shopping Mall of Tech Companies

  Google is likely joining Apple and Microsoft in opening its own retail stores—a trend that points toward a more fragmented user experience.

  Google storefronts could be coming to a mall near you, if recent reports from the Wall Street Journal and the blog 9to5 Google are true. Microsoft, too, has set up several dozen outlets in the last year. Apple, which pioneered the strategy of making it hip to hawk ones own wares, now has some 400 locations. It wouldn’t be surprising if we Amazon open real brick-and-mortar hardware stores, too. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Automakers Shed the Pounds to Meet Fuel Efficiency Standards

  Decades of increasing vehicle weight may be coming to an end as cars get more lightweight materials.

  Automakers are putting some of their best-selling vehicles on a diet in a race to meet strict new fuel-efficiency regulations that will kick in by the middle of the next decade.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Decisions and the Influence of Others

  Researchers work out a way to measure how much a decision is influenced by the opinions of others.

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Story of a Study of the Mind

  As a grad student, Rebecca Saxe, PhD ’03, identified the parts of the brain that help us recognize others’ feelings. As a new professor, she took that research a step further in a groundbreaking follow-up study.

  Rebecca Saxe wants to know how our brains learn to be social.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The 50 Disruptive Companies of 2013

  Our fourth annual list of companies around the world whose innovations will reshape markets.

   

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Innovation Efficiency Index

  For the past five years, the Global Innovation Index has ranked countries’ ability to stimulate invention. Published by the French business school INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization, it compares 141 nations on more than 80 metrics, which are adjusted for population or GDP. Unsurprisingly, the top-performing countries are wealthy. But the report also analyzes which countries are best at making scientific advances or creating intellectual property despite disadvantages like unsophisticated markets and infrastructure. This “innovation efficiency” index makes a different group of countries stand out, as shown in the maps below and to the right.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Power It Yourself

  A natural battery in the inner ear could drive implantable electronic devices

  Deep in the inner ear of mammals is a natural battery—a chamber filled with ions that produces an electrical potential to drive neural signals. MIT researchers, together with colleagues at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI) and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), have demonstrated that this battery could power implantable electronic devices without impairing hearing.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Automation Sets Us Free

  A 1929 essay by Arthur D. Little argued that workers and consumers would benefit from more mass production, not less.

  Excerpted from “Research and Labor: A Chemist Looks at Modern Life,” in the December 1929 issue of The Technology Review, by Arthur D. Little, founder of the management consulting firm that bears his name.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Steve Ballmer On the Strategy Behind His Strangest Product

  Microsoft’s CEO explains what Windows 8 means to his company.

  Windows 8 is radically different from any previous version of the Windows operating system. Designed to run on smartphones, tablet computers, laptops, servers, and even supercomputers, Windows 8 presents its users with virtually the same interface on any device. The response to this approach has been mixed: some critics have praised the operating system’s gorgeous graphic design and daring indifference to Microsoft’s past; others are baffled (see our own review on page 76). Jason Pontin, MIT Technology Review’s editor in chief, spoke to Microsoft’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, about what Windows 8 means for his company.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• On Innovation and Disruption

  When did disruption become the overwhelming fact of business? It wasn’t always so. But the most admired businesses of the last 30 years have been technology companies or industrial companies that invested heavily in research and development, whose competitive advantage was their capacity to commercialize disruptive innovations or resist the innovations of other entities.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Mapping the Storms of the Sea

  How an MIT professor’s bold experiment gave rise to modern oceanography

  On October 16, 1969, MIT professor Henry Melson ­Stommel wrote to a worldwide group of his peers, the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research, to propose an experiment of unprecedented scope: an international initiative to measure the general circulation of the Atlantic Ocean. The plan involved a 100,000-square-mile patch of rough water, six research vessels, and on-call air support. The Mid-Ocean Dynamics Experiment (MODE) was hatched.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Braess' Paradox Infects Social Networks Too, Say Computer Scientists

  Traffic planners have long known that closing roads can improve traffic flow. Now network theorists say that removing products from social networks can improve the choice for everyone.

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Pinterest’s Founder: Algorithms Don’t Know What You Want

  CEO Ben Silbermann says Pinterest is built on the idea that crowds of people are best at finding content that consumers care about.

  In 2012 the startup Pinterest became a peer of more established social sites by offering things that they didn’t—an attractive design, a focus on images rather than text, and a mostly female population of users. On Pinterest, people use virtual “pinboards” to curate collections of images related to their hobbies and interests, discovering new items for their virtual hoards on the boards of friends and in the site’s personalized recommendations. Tom Simonite, MIT Technology Review’s senior IT editor, recently spoke with Ben Silbermann, Pinterest’s cofounder and CEO, about the company’s popularity.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Bank Where Doctors Can Stash Your Genome

  A new company offers a “gene vault” for doctors who want to add genomics to patient care.

  Genomic sequencing might be more common in medicine if doctors had a simple way to send for the test and keep track of the data.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• How A Tablet App Could Help Diagnose Concussions

  Fighting concussions. There’s an app for that.

  The Wyss Institute, at Harvard, has developed a tablet application that, among other things, could help diagnose concussions on the sidelines of a football match. Wyss reports on the findings on its site (and in the Journal of Gerontology); CNET and others have taken also taken note.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Brain is Not Computable

  A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen. Instead, humans will assimilate machines.

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Graphene And The EmergingTechnology of Neural Prostheses

  Neural implants are set to be revolutionised by a new type of graphene transistor with a liquid gate, say bio-engineers

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Ambri’s Better Grid Battery

  A tiny startup called Ambri wants to transform our energy system with massive liquid-metal batteries.

  Standing next to the Ping-Pong table in the offices of the battery startup Ambri, chief technology officer David Bradwell needs both hands to pick up what he hopes will be a building block for a new type of electricity grid. Made of thick steel, it’s a container shaped like a large round cake pan, 16 inches in diameter. Inside it are two metal pucks and some salt powder; a round plate has been welded to the top to make a 100-pound battery cell.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Adventures in Infinite File Storage

  Bitcasa’s limitless storage service is a cool idea, but it needs work.

  Imagine never having to worry about running out of space on your laptop, tablet, or smartphone for pictures, videos, or documents; or even having to remember where you saved a file. It’s a wonderful idea and we’re getting closer, but we aren’t there just yet.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Nanocapsules Sober Up Drunken Mice

  Wrapping alcohol-digesting enzymes in a nanoscale polymer allows them to quickly reduce blood alcohol content.

  Researchers have reduced blood alcohol levels in intoxicated mice by injecting them with nanocapsules containing enzymes that are instrumental in alcohol metabolism. The treatment demonstrates a novel drug delivery technology that could have broad medical applications.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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It’s disconcerting when a large provider is brought down. We experienced the issue firsthand when our website and a couple of client sites were affected. In addition our DNS is hosted at Godaddy so, even though our email is in the Office 365 Cloud at Microsoft, some messages bounced back because the mail server address could not be found. (We’re in the process of setting up a redundant DNS service.)

Godaddy is a huge provider of a variety of internet services and their performance and support have been exemplary. They responded quickly and tirelessly until the situation was resolved and you can bet that this particular scenario will not happen again.

The bottom line is this: Things happen, do everything in your power to prevent them from happening but be ready when they do…

This is a really bad idea. The learning curve will dissuade IT Managers from rolling out Windows 8 quickly…

http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-said-to-block-ability-to-boot-straight-to-desktop-in-windows-8-7000002219/

If you use the same password for different sites around the internet, I suggest changing them all. Once a hacker has your password, they may try it everywhere…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/linkedin-eharmony-deal-with-breach-aftermath/2012/06/07/gJQAwqs5KV_story.html

When our two primary political parties actually agree on something – I take note…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57444629-83/u.n-takeover-of-the-internet-must-be-stopped-u.s-warns/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title

As we approach the summer travel season – here are some good saftey precacutions to take when using hotel or other WiFi services…
http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/mobile/240000211?cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All

This should serve as a reminder to be careful on social networks….
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57429822-71/principal-resigns-amid-accusations-of-facebook-spying/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title