Friday, April 30, 2010

Iowa: Land of Corn and Wind Turbines

"Iowa ranks 30th among the 50 states in population and 23rd in square miles, but it is number two in wind -- and it wants more.

Iowa now has over 25,000 wind turbines and doubled its proportion of wind-generated electricity from 7% to 14% in 2009, the biggest jump in the U.S. Estimates put the current 2010 percentage of Iowa's electricity coming from wind above 17%.

Because Iowa added 879 megawatts of new capacity last year (enough to power more than 200,000 homes), the state's installed capacity is now second only to Texas. It has 3,670 megawatts of total installed capacity, enough electricity for 880,000 homes -- in a state with only 3 million people. And it has over 14,000 megawatts of wind power awaiting approval.

The state, known for its dairy farms and bucolic rolling cornfields, also became the leading provider of wind energy manufacturing jobs in 2009."

Read the full story by HERMAN K. TRABISH at greentechmedia.com

PG&E Details Smart Meter Problems


"Pacific Gas and Electric admitted that there are problems with some smart meters, although it said almost none of those problems had to do with accuracy.

The California utility was taken to task by state lawmakers on Monday over smart meter complaints. Regulators have received nearly 1,000 complaints that smart meter installations have caused spikes in billing prices, but PG&E said that only eight of the nearly 5.5 million digital meters had to be replaced because of "accuracy issues.

Although only a handful have been inaccurate, about 43,000 smart meters installed since 2007 have had other problems, including installation errors or transmission failures, Helen Burt, PG&E's vice president and chief customer officer, told the senators during the hearing."

Read the full story by KATHERINE TWEED at greentechmedia.com

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Steve Jobs: Here's Why We Don't Allow Flash On The iPhone And iPad




Adobe CEO, Ex-Adobe Engineers Weigh In on Jobs’ Flash Attack

"Carlos Icaza and Walter Luh, former Adobe mobile engineers, said they were raising flags at Adobe in 2007 about the same complaints that Jobs detailed Thursday."

“Walter and I, being the lead architects for Flash Lite, we were seeing the iPhone touch devices coming out, and we kept saying ‘Hey, this is coming along,’” Icaza said in a phone interview. “You have this white elephant that everybody ignored. Half the [Adobe] mobile business unit was carrying iPhones, and yet the management team wasn’t doing anything about it.”

Read more at Wired By Brian X. Chen

Highlights: The Journal’s Exclusive Interview With Adobe CEO
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen sits down with Alan Murray and fires back at Steve Jobs in latest round of flash fight.


digits: Microsoft Weighs in on Flash Fight
Microsoft weighs in on the fight over flash between Apple and Adobe. The software giant says it supports development of the newer HTML5 platform but at the same time hasn't abandoned flash. Simon Constable talks to Julia Angwin and Nick Wingfield.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

CSI Redmond: How Microsoft Tracks Down Pirates

Each new iteration of Microsoft software also marks a new chapter in the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between software counterfeiters and Microsoft's own enforcement team.

Like paper currency, Microsoft employs a variety of techniques to assure customers that the software discs they're buying are valid. And rings of cybercriminals, in turn, make every attempt to defeat those safeguards.

"All of our most popular products are counterfeited," said Zoe Krumm, a senior business intelligence analyst with Microsoft. "Windows 7 was counterfeited within a month or so of us launching, with a very deceptive passoff."

In 2007, Microsoft and the FBI, in conjunction with Chinese local law enforcement, tracked down and raided a piracy organization suspected of producing $2 billion worth of counterfeit software. Microsoft recently revealed one of the techniques used by the company to prove that piracy: "fingerprints" left by CD duplicators. In an interview late last week, Microsoft offered even more details on this technique, plus others, that its team of investigators uses.

Read the full story by Mark Hachman - PC Magazine

Sunday, April 25, 2010

How Important is the iPad?

On two occasions, Steve Jobs has called the iPad the "most important product" he has ever worked on. Keep in mind, this is the guy who, along with Steve Wozniak, essentially invented the personal computer. Jobs was also the driving force behind Apple's desktop publishing vision. He also gave the world the iPod and iPhone, products that have gone on to redefine the way we think about their respective spaces.

Yet Jobs calls the iPad the most important product he has ever worked on. I've been pondering this statement since the Apple CEO first proclaimed it upon the launch of the device in late January. Jobs clearly believes that there is something "magical" about the iPad. To understand his thinking, one has to realize that Jobs doesn't think like a techie. He doesn't concern himself with speeds and feeds. Jobs focuses on the ways in which people use technology. He is also interested in how the finished product looks and feels and how it becomes a part of a person's lifestyle.

How Important is the iPad?

Kindle Lover Oprah Fawns Over the iPad
The question comes to mind following some comments by Winfrey–a prominent past booster of Amazon’s Kindle–during a short segment of her influential TV show last week that featured tech analyst Omar Wasow and the Apple iPad.

Winfrey gushed about the “amazing” new device, which she said she got the day of its launch. One reason is that “books move,” she said, as she demoed how the iBooks app (featuring the Oprah Book Club) keeps e-books on a virtual shelf and how some books can feature interactive elements. “It’s going to change the way kids learn,” she said.

She also said that she loved the iPad because it is back-lit, which makes the screen good for sharing digital photos and playing games like Scrabble. “Gosh, those Apple folks,” she said.

Read the WSJ article By Geoffrey A. Fowler

Saturday, April 17, 2010

The truth about Mac malware. It's a joke - War on Error - Blogs - Technology Blog and Community from IT Experts - Techworld.com

The truth about Mac malware. It's a joke - War on Error - Blogs - Technology Blog and Community from IT Experts - Techworld.com

There are less then 200 Mac malware (that’s viruses, worms, Trojans, etc) programs. Having researched these a bit further as many were unfamiliar, I discovered that they are all years old, some going back as far as a decade or more. Study the list closely and you see that many of them are variants, that is slightly different versions of the same piece of code.

As impressively long as the list looks, this is in fact a fair chunk of ALL the malware that has afflicted the Mac in the last decade. Is this the best the Mac malware writers can do? One of the examples is a reheated virus from - no kidding - 1989."

"Apple antivirus company Intego has discovered a backdoor malware attack targeting Mac users OSX.HellRTS.D. As with so many of the small number of Mac-specific malware attacks that come up from time to time, this one is a variant of an attack from 2004, the company said, which will sound quaint to Windows users hit by thousands of variants on most days."

Posted using ShareThis

Friday, April 16, 2010

Windows 7 Won't Raise Your Game

After installing Microsoft's latest operating system, one business owner finds his staff covering less ground

New equipment and software often don't do a lot to raise their users' games. Windows 7 is one of those kinds of upgrades. Nearly six months after its release, the business owners I know aren't getting much value from it. That includes me.

Sure, there's a snazzy new user interface. I can customize the task bar by "pinning" items to it, and see thumbnail previews of the windows I have open. I can make my computer more personal. No thanks. This is a business machine, not my car's bumper.

It's not all negative. My company's new Windows 7 PCs perform a bit faster than older ones that ran Windows XP, and they're better at recognizing new hardware that's plugged into them. Security continues to be strong, as Microsoft downloads updates to Windows 7 machines nearly each week.

Windows 7 resembles Microsoft's operating systems of the past. Some of my applications still freeze, and I still reboot and start over, hoping it won't happen again. Networking still takes an information technology professional to set up.

Making matters worse, Microsoft has changed the user interface, which makes us hunt for once-familiar commands. In response, my employees have wasted time reconfiguring the Windows 7 interface so we can readily find useful shortcuts.

Read the full story at BusinessWeek by Gene Marks

Thursday, April 15, 2010

iPad in the international news

Apple is to delay the international release of its touchscreen tablet computer, the iPad, by one month.

It will now launch the device around the world, including the UK, at the end of May, and will begin accepting pre-orders on 10 May.

In a statement the company blamed demand for the device in the US, which it said had been "surprisingly strong". When the iPad launched in the US, 300,000 units were sold on its first day.

Continue reading the story at BBC News


Isreal bans the iPad in clash on wireless frequency standards

Israel has banned all imports of Apple's hottest new product, the iPad, citing concerns that its wireless frequencies are incompatible with national standards.

Customs officials said Thursday they already have confiscated about 10 iPads since Israel announced the new regulations this week.

Continue reading the full story at The Globe and Mail


Norway's Prime Minister is currently "managing the country" from New York via his new Apple iPad. That's quite a productivity commercial for the iPad.

The volcanic eruption in Iceland has lead to cancelled flights to and from Northern Europe today. According to Norwegian newspapers VG and Dagbladet, Norway's Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, is one of many who are affected. "Due to the delays, I'll be working from New York", Stoltenberg said in a comment.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Michael Specter: The danger of science denial

Vaccine-autism claims, "Frankenfood" bans, the herbal cure craze: All point to the public's growing fear (and, often, outright denial) of science and reason, says Michael Specter. He warns the trend spells disaster for human progress.


Specter has been a writer for the New Yorker for more than a decade; before that, he was a science writer and then the Moscow bureau chief for the New York Times. He writes about science and politics for the New Yorker, with a fascinating sideline in biographical profiles.
"Denialism is a virus and viruses are contagious."
Michael Specter

Friday, April 9, 2010

GE's New 40-Watt LED Bulb Will Last 25,000 Hours Read more: http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2010/04/08/ges-new-40-watt-led-bulb-will-last-25000-hours#ix

General Electric has unveiled its new 40-watt LED bulb that will last 25 times longer than incandescent bulbs. When used for three hours a day (the average used by Energy Star for comparing bulb performance), the GE 40-watt LED would last close to 23 years. At four hours per day, the average GE uses, it would last 17 years.

Read the rest of the story by GreenerDesign Staff

BioLite the little stove that can!



Never Carry Fuel Again with the BioLite Stove you can step off the grid and leave the petrol at home. Whether you’re spending a month in Alaska or a night in the backyard the BioLite stove will quickly and cleanly cook meals using nothing but the underbrush you collect on your journey.
BioLite is an affordable, ultra low emission, wood burning cook stove. BioLite, in collaboration with the Aprovecho Research Center, has developed the world’s first side feeding stove to deliver 95% smoke reductions.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Today's Apple's iPhone OS 4 event!

This is the brief version of todays Apple iPhone OS 4 event:
• As of today Apple has sold over 450,000 iPads!
• As of today Apple 600,000 iBooks have been downloaded.
• As of today Apple 3.5 iPad apps have been downloaded.
• Over 4 Billion apps have been downloaded from the Apple app store.
• There are 185,000 apps in the Apple app store.
• There are 3,500 apps in for the iPad in the app store.
• 50 Million iPhones have been sold.
• The iPhone OS version 4 will be released to the public summer 2010.
• Developers may download the iPhone OS 4 preview today.
• The iPhone OS version 4 will feature 1500 new API's.
• The iPhone OS version 4 will offer 100 new user features. Such as Create playlists, 5x digital zoom, tap to focus on video, gift apps, geotagging, places in the photo app, change the home screen, wallpaper, bluetooth keyboards support and spell checker."
• The iPhone OS version 4 will offer Multitasking done in a way that will not suck your battery dry.
• The iPhone OS version 4 will offer: Background audio, Voice over IP (Skype), Background location, Push notifications, Local notifications, Task completion, Fast app switching, Folders, Home screen wallpaper, Unified email inbox, Organized by thread email, Open email attachments, Multiple Exchange accounts, Fast email inbox switching, iBooks for iPhone, better data protection, SSL VPN support, Exchange Server 2010 support, Game Center, iAd Mobile Advertising.
• Apple said that the following sites are using the most current web standards (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript): CNN, Reuters, New York Times, Viemo, Time, ESPN, Major League Baseball, Netflix, NPR, National Hockey League, The White House, Virgin America, Sports Illustrated, Flickr, People Magazine, TED, Nike, CBS, Spin, National Geographic and will support your iPad or iPhone.
• iPhone OS version 4 for the iPad will be released in the fall.

Read more and see photos from engadgets coverage of Apples event today.

Macintosh = Hacker-Proof?

Charlie Miller has a habit of upending Apple's security claims.

Charlie A. Miller loves his Macbook Pro laptop. And his four other Apple ( AAPL - news - people ) PCs, the iPhone he uses daily and two older iPhones he keeps for tinkering. But his relationship with the company that created those gadgets is somewhat more complicated.

In March, for instance, the 36-year-old security researcher publicized his discovery of 20 security vulnerabilities in Apple's software. Each would allow a cybercriminal to take over the computer of a user who's tricked into opening a certain PDF attachment or who simply visits an infected Web page using Apple's Safari browser.

That haul of bugs is a record even for Miller, who over the last four years has become perhaps the world's most prominent Mac hacker. It may also be definitive proof that Apple devices aren't safe "right out of the box," as the company has claimed for years. "When I first began saying that Macs were less secure than Windows, everyone thought I was an idiot," says Miller. "So I had to prove it again and again and again."

In 2007 Miller became the first to hack the iPhone, using a flaw in its Safari browser to remotely gain control of the not-so-smart phone. Six months later he hacked a Macbook Air in two minutes at a competition in Vancouver. Last summer he revealed a method that allowed him to virally hijack the iPhone using text messages spread via a user's contact list.

Miller says his latest research doesn't aim to show off his elite hacking skills,most of which he learned over five years as a global network exploitation analyst for the National Security Agency. Instead, he wants to show just how easy it is to find chinks in the armor of commonly used software. Miller used a technique known as "dumb fuzzing" to find flaws. He ran the procedure more persistently than most hackers, leaving his fuzzing program to throw junk information at each target for three weeks before mining the data for exploitable flaws.

As for Apple, Miller says the company has learned to accept, if not appreciate, his work. He usually gives Apple weeks of notice before publicly describing its bugs. "They're always very polite," he says. "But I suspect they wish I didn't exist."

Read the full story at Forbes.com by Andy Greenberg

Updated:
Apple Patches Pwn2Own Bug

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Apple acknowledges some iPad users have Wi-Fi problems

"Under certain conditions, iPad may not automatically rejoin a known Wi-Fi network after restart or waking from sleep," said Apple in a statement. "This can occur with some third-party Wi-Fi routers that are dual-band capable when using the same network name for each network, or using different security settings for each network." Apple has published a Knowledge Base article suggesting some other solutions to the wireless problem.





Think Electric is back!

Think Electric is back in a big way after GM invested in the company. Fittingly announced around the New York Auto Show, the company has revealed that it will begin selling its Think City -- one of the planet's first highway-capable electric vehicles, it'll have you know! -- in New York and "other select cities" later on in 2010.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

c Robot Pumps Sunlight Indoors for Powerful Daylighting

"What if you could light your entire building using no electricity, or artificial lights – but just the natural light from the sun? Conventional sky-lights do this well in certain types of single-story spaces, but are not very adaptable, powerful, and often have problems with excessive solar heat gain and heat loss. Enter the Sundolier, a powerful sunlight transport system that’s like putting a solar robot on your roof to pump sunlight indoors! The manufacturer claims a single Sundolier unit can provide enough light to illuminate a 1000-2500 sq. ft. area without any other sources."

Read the full story by Andrew Michler

Your Boss may be watching you

CNN's T.J. Holmes talks with tech guru Mario Armstrong about being tracked in the workplace.

Monday, April 5, 2010

California businesses hope going "green" will put them in the black.

CNN's Casey Wian reports on how some California businesses hope going "green" will put them in the black. Check out Green Wave Energy Corp.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Russia is losing time zones

CNN's Matthew Chance reports on Russia cutting back and getting rid of two of its time zones.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Your Health Insurer's Next Move: Tell You To Take A Hike To A Mexican Hospital



That might not be such a bad thing because you might be surprised what's out here. Some hospitals are of a far higher standard than hospitals in the U.S. For example, Bumrungrad Hospital is run by a team of American ex-Tenet Healthcare (THC) executives and is arguably one of the most efficient private hospitals in the world.

Walt Mossberg Gushes Over The iPad!





Apple iPad on Modern Family

Last Wednesday Apple proved once again that it knows marketing. Most people would not ever sit through a 30-minute ad for the iPad. However if you ABC's 'Modern Family' this last week that's exactly what you did...



iPad will it blend?
Том Диксон – основатель компании по производству блендеров Blendtec, который прославился благодаря своим видео из рубрики «Will it blend», с самым интересным разделом «Don't try this at home» - «Не пробудет это дома», где показано что в блендере можно размельчить не только продукты. Естественно Том Диксон не смог пропуститьрелиз iPad и возможность засунуть его в свой блендер.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Windmills a great source of energy

While Solar Energy is great in the day time it can't produce power in the dark. However there are other green energy options such as rooftop mounted wind turbines that might be worth a look especially if you live in an area that is breezy or windy.




Helix Wind


WindTerra


UrbanGreenEnergy


Windspire

Yes they also have an Apple iPhone app called Windspire Me that you can download for free!

Rooftop Wind Power, LLC


Building Turbines



Interview with Russian Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov



eBay makes selling your junk easy with new mobile iPhone Apps

You have have the eBay mobile app. However now there are new apps are available in more than 190 countries and eight languages. And, with the new mobile apps adding more easy ways to sell on eBay.com and eBayClassifieds.com, buyers have more options than ever to access incredible value and selection online and find the best deals in their neighborhood, across the country and around the world.

The new eBay Selling app, which is free to download, eBay sellers can:

• Point, shoot and click to list an item from their iPhones in 60 seconds or less
• Research sales trends and price ranges on eBay and list similar items for sale
• Easily and clearly view the status of items for sale
• Share listings with Facebook and Twitter social networks
• Quickly link to other eBay and PayPal iPhone apps



The new eBay Classifieds application for the iPhone, also free to download, creates an unmatched shopping experience for classifieds sellers and buyers. The eBay Classifieds mobile app provides:

• Free ad postings in less than a minute with up to eight photos, either from the iPhone’s photo library or its camera
• Fast and simple search by keyword, location, price range and other attributes
• Single-page ad view with reply, watch, and share features – all while on the go.



To make your tool chest complete you may want to also download PayPal Mobile for iPhone, paying for classifieds transactions is easier and safer than ever. A buyer can quickly email money or “bump” iPhones with a seller to transfer funds between PayPal accounts.

Read more details at BusinessWire