Technutt Issue Vol 0311

2

Contents 1 2011 1.1

5 February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5

Surprising-home-energy-hogs: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance (2011-02-06 07:52)

5

Nasdaq hackers target corporate-board service (2011-02-06 08:43) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

9 Ways to Make Your Facebook Pages Red Hot | Smedio | The New Media and Social Web Guide for Business and Marketers (2011-02-12 07:53) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

8

Mirror Yourself » Blog Archive » 3 Elements for Successful Facebook Fan Page (2011-02-12 08:01) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9

New domain names could be a mixed blessing (2011-02-12 09:37) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11

AOL buying Huffington Post for $315 million (2011-02-12 09:55) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

12

In a first, smartphones outsell PCs (2011-02-12 10:02) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

13

Smartphone apps take retro approach to pics (2011-02-12 10:08) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

14

Electric Cars: A Definitive Guide to Electric Vehicles | Hybrid Cars (2011-02-12 10:22)

. .

16

U.S. power grid called target for terrorists (2011-02-12 10:42) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

31

Data capacity spikes in expanding digital world (2011-02-12 10:50) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

31

With improving technology and decreasing stigma, online dating appears nowhere near saturation (2011-02-13 08:28) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

32

How to print on the go with Google Cloud Print (2011-02-15 22:36) . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35

Pentagon unveils mini ’hummingbird’ drone (2011-02-19 13:37) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

36

Digital divide pinpointed in survey of online access (2011-02-19 13:58) . . . . . . . . . . . .

37

Facebook adds ’civil union’ as romantic-status option (2011-02-19 14:01) . . . . . . . . . . .

37

Why do Google and Facebook both want to buy Twitter? - Telegraph (2011-02-19 14:05) .

38

Five iPhone physics puzzlers to topple Angry Birds from its perch (2011-02-19 15:05) . . .

39

Top 5 Laptops Around $600.00 (2011-02-20 08:53) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

42

Freescale IPO to help pay down debt (2011-02-20 14:53) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

43

’Unfriend’ your real estate clients on Facebook | Inman News (2011-02-21 08:02) . . . . . .

44

UberTwitter & Twidroyd Are Back Online (2011-02-21 09:13) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

46

Search + Social: A Growing Relationship - Search Engine Watch (SEW) (2011-02-22 23:54)

46 3

4

3 Tools for Optimizing Page Speed [Best of SEW 2010 #9] - Search Engine Watch (SEW) (2011-02-23 06:30) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

49

Now even Rolls-Royce is going electric - Drive On: A conversation about the cars and trucks we drive - USATODAY.com (2011-02-23 07:57) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

51

Tickets, coupons among uses for tap-to-pay phones (2011-02-23 08:15) . . . . . . . . . . . .

52

Stay safe with NYC Condom Finder iPhone app (2011-02-23 08:33) . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53

Pandora + Rdio = Soundtrckr (2011-02-26 06:07) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53

PayPal opens 2nd Valley site (2011-02-26 10:32) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55

Apple shareholders nix CEO talk (2011-02-26 10:42) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

56

Networking site links golf, business (2011-02-26 11:31) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

58

Cox offering subscribers caller ID for TVs (2011-02-27 12:58) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

59

Motorola Xoom review – Engadget (2011-02-27 21:23) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

60

Chapter 1

2011 1.1

February

Surprising-home-energy-hogs:

Personal Finance News from Yahoo!

Finance

(2011-02-06 07:52)

It’s the small appliances that can waste the most electricity.

Digital picture frames are small, so it’s hard to think of them as energy hogs. But if each U.S. household had one of these frames running around the clock, it would take five power plants to run them all, says the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), an electricity-focused research and development nonprofit.

Large home appliances like refrigerators and dryers are typical examples of energy-hungry devices, but energy hogs don’t necessarily need to be large in size. Small devices are also collectively sucking a lot of energy from the power grid, and as these devices become commonplace their energy consumption rises exponentially. ”It’s the subtlety of the effect of large numbers of very small consuming devices,” says Tom Reddoch, the executive director of energy utilization at EPRI. Other small energy hogs include mobile phone chargers and laptop power adapters that are always plugged in to electric outlets. These chargers continue to draw energy even when the devices they charge have been disconnected. And ”always-on” appliances like printers or speakers are called ”energy vampires” because they also suck up power even when they’re turned off or in an idle state.

Worse yet, the number of always-on devices is on the rise. Reddoch estimates that the typical U.S. home 30 years ago had about three always-on devices; today that number has climbed to more than 30.

Slaying energy vampires, however, is worthwhile in the long run. While a refrigerator typically accounts for about 8 % of the typical household’s total annual energy consumption, Reddoch says, vampire devices account for about 4 %.

5

What’s the best way to rein in energy hogs and vampires? The simplest answer is to turn off and unplug devices when they’re not in use. If unplugging isn’t practical or convenient, use a smart power strip to help stop the flow of electricity to an idle current. For instance, some smart strips allow you to set up a lead device like a computer so that when it is turned off, other supporting devices, like printers and speakers, are also turned off.

We don’t often bother to change a device’s default settings, but we can save energy here too. For example, you can manually lower the default brightness and intensity settings on a TV. Knowing how much energy we waste keeping devices on all the time should also motivate us to change our habits. Kyle Tanger, chief executive of green consultancy ClearCarbon, recommends using an electricity monitor like the Kill A Watt, a product that measures the energy efficiency of household appliances, to give you a better sense of their usage cost.

We can also buy energy-efficient products, and this year happens to be a great time to do that. Consumers are eligible for a rebate from the government when they buy an Energy Star appliance. Check out the U.S. Department of Energy website for more information the rebate program. ”There isn’t a secret to what’s hogging the energy,” says Tanger. ”If people pay attention to the little lights or fans in equipment, there is a lot in energy-efficiency gain that isn’t just low-hanging fruit – it’s on the ground.”

Surprising Home-Energy Hogs forbeshogs1.jpg ©iStock Plasma TVs Plasma TVs are hot items – literally. While they are popular, they also consume a lot energy, giving off lots of heat in the process. A typical 27-inch CRT TV uses about 110 to 120 watts and a 42-inch LCD TV uses around 200 watts. Plasmas easily gobble the most: a 42-inch plasma TV uses up to 325 watts.

forbeshogs2.jpg ©iStock Digital Picture Frames Once a high-end item, digital frames are quickly becoming more affordable, with prices as low as $20 to $30.

If every home in the U.S. had one of these frames displaying around the clock, though, it would take five power plants alone to power them all, the Electric Power Research Institute estimates.

forbeshogs3.jpg

Videogame Consoles The high-level graphics processing that creates the visually stunning games on these devices also requires a lot of energy. And a lack of energy-efficiency standards for consoles, like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, doesn’t help. The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that consoles in the U.S. collectively consume around 16 billion kilowatt-hours per year, roughly the same energy usage as the city of San Diego.

6

forbeshogs4.jpg ©iStock Set-Top Boxes Set-top boxes like cable and converter boxes seem like relatively innocent appliances: They typically only draw about 30 watts of energy. But because these boxes are always on, one box over the course of a year can use up to 265 kilowatt-hours, equivalent to the annual energy consumption of a 28-inch CRT television. forbeshogs5.jpg ©iStock Battery Chargers Individually chargers for mobile devices like cellphones and PDAs are small energy consumers, only using 7 to 10 watts. But if they are left plugged in to electric outlets even when the charged device is not connected, they continue to draw power. Today most U.S. homes use more than one charger. Add them all up across the country, and they could consume the energy output of several power plants.

Click here to see the full list of Surprising Home-Energy Hogs

by Oliver J. Chiang Yahoo Finance February 5, 2011 Surprising-home-energy-hogs: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance

Nasdaq hackers target corporate-board service (2011-02-06 08:43) NEW YORK - Hackers broke into a Nasdaq service that handles confidential communications for about 300 corporations, the company said Saturday - the latest vulnerability exposed in the computer systems Wall Street depends on.

The intrusions did not affect Nasdaq’s stock-trading systems, and no customer data were compromised, Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. said. Nasdaq is the largest electronic-securities-trading market in the U.S., with more than 2,800 listed companies.

A federal official said that the hackers broke into the service repeatedly over more than a year. Investigators are trying to identify the hackers, the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the inquiry by the FBI and Secret Service is continuing.

The targeted service, Directors Desk, helps companies share data with directors between scheduled board meetings. It also allows online discussions and Web conferencing within a board. Since board directors have access to information at the highest level of a company, penetrating the service could be of great value for insider trading.

Nasdaq OMX spokesman Frank DeMaria said the Justice Department had requested that the company keep silent about the intrusion until at least Feb. 14. However, the Wall Street Journal reported the investigation on its website late Friday, prompting Nasdaq to issue a statement and notify its customers.

DeMaria said Nasdaq OMX detected ”suspicious files” during a regular security scan on U.S. servers unrelated to its trading systems and determined that Directors Desk was potentially affected. It pulled in forensic firms and federal law enforcement for an investigation. They found no evidence that customer information was accessed by hackers.

Rich Mogull, an analyst and CEO with the security-research firm Securosis, said Web-accessible services like 7

Directors Desk are a prime target for hackers, and have sometimes been a back door for systems that aren’t directly connected to the Web. The presence of files on the Directors Desk system and the claim that no customer information was compromised could indicate that hackers were able to get in but not complete their attack, he said.

Computer-security experts have long warned that many companies aren’t doing enough to protect sensitive data, and recent events have underlined the point. The secret-spilling organization WikiLeaks has published confidential documents from banks in Switzerland and Iceland and claims to have incriminating files from a major U.S. bank, possibly Bank of America.

In 1999, hackers infiltrated the websites of Nasdaq and the American Stock Exchange leaving taunting messages, but Nasdaq officials said then that there was no evidence the break-ins affected financial data.

by Peter Svensson Associated Press Feb. 6, 2011 12:00 AM Nasdaq hackers target corporate-board service worldprotection (2011-02-18 21:20:07) The World Protection Group ensures the safety of VIPs. We are specialized in Executive Protection, Corporate Security, Personal Protection, VIP Protection etc Corporate Security

9 Ways to Make Your Facebook Pages Red Hot | Smedio | The New Media and Social Web Guide for Business and Marketers (2011-02-12 07:53)

Business owners understand the need for a Facebook Fanpage. Creating a page is relatively easy. Engagement with your fans can be quite challenging. Ever thought: What does my Facebook fanpage need to attract more fans and keep them coming back for more? Here are 9 Tips to help you make it a sparkling place.

1. Create a mini hub If fans visit your Facebook page, why not keep them there for as long as you can? To do so, add Facebook applications to your fanpage. If you own a shop or restaurant, think about adding locator functionality.

Fans will be able to search for your nearest location without leaving your page. You might even add a tab with todays special or a tab with your menu of the week. Visit Facebook apps to learn more about Facebook applications.

2. Use creative welcome tabs Welcome tabs are great landing pages. With a creative design you are able to make the best impression possible. If this is the first contact with your company, better make it an ever lasting one. Welcome videos are extremely inviting to new fans. You could even ask your page visitors what they would like to see on your page. Visit Facebook Welcometab to create your own welcome tab.

3. Offer special content to fans Fans deserve a reward. Give them access to exclusive content if they click on the like button. Lead your fans to an exclusive video or interview on the welcome tab. Offer them special coupons to receive a discount on your product of the month. The technological possibilities are endless. It comes down to your imagination.

4. Make it personal Why not reserve one of the tabs to present the contributors to your fan page. Ask each of the community managers to your page to write a small bio, add a picture and present it with an Our Team tab on your page. This tab will make your business fan page more personal and increase the likeability of your company.

8

5. Educate and entertain Use your fan page to provide educational tips to your fans and ask interesting and fun questions. If your business sells clothes, why not talk about the latest trends. Ask your fans to share pictures of how they dress and give them some advice. Share tips what they could wear this Spring.

6. Set up a storefront One of the great applications on Facebook is storefrontsocial. If you want to sell your products online, this is definitely an app for you. It s easy to set up a storefront and present all your products with great looking pictures. Fans will be able to buy directly on your page. And even better with tweet and share buttons next to the products they are able to share their favorite products with followers and friends.

7. Share your passion Facebook page is a great place to position your company. Transform the fan page into a real experience.

Tell a story about your company. Use video and photos to spread the passion for your brand. Add the right music to it and you ll be able to enter the power of the heart. Add share buttons to it and watch your Facebook page content spread like wildfire.

8. Dare to take risks It takes courage to start a business. It asks even more to present yourself in a unique and compelling way.

Although there are lots of functionalities on Facebook to support your positioning, being noticed comes down to creativity and guts. Remember that your Facebook page supports how you want others to see your company or brand. The only way to learn if you succeed or not is asking for feedback. So, take some risks and ask your fans for a response.

9. Add a blog If you have a company blog, you could use NetworkedBlogs to add it to your Facebook page. NetworkedBlogs is the biggest news reader on Facebook, publishing more than 500,000 blogs around the world. It offers a syndication application to share your blog on the fan page, your personal page and your twitter accounts.

by Juan Felix Smedio January 19, 2011 9 Ways to Make Your Facebook Pages Red Hot | Smedio | The New Media and Social Web Guide for Business and Marketers

Mirror Yourself Âť Blog Archive Âť 3 Elements for Successful Facebook Fan Page (2011-02-12 08:01)

The biggest challenge for Facebook Fan pages is to attract and retain fans. In this post I will talk about 3 Core Elements to increase the appeal of your FB fan Page. Each tip goes with an example. #1 Create a mini hub I once listened to Mari Smith explaining the power of a mini hub. She said: the less clicks you require your customers to make, the more likely you ll get them to where you want them to go . This goes not only for Facebook Fan Pages, but for all online touchpoints you ll have with your customers.

Chick-Fil-A has successfully created a mini hub on Facebook. At the moment I wrote this, they had almost 3,6 million fans!!!

Chick-Fil-A is a big food chain that started out as a family business in 1946. They combine intelligence and great design on their Facebook Page.

9

I love the way they keep the family business character of the company alife. They have managed to create a mini-hub where customers are welcomed into their restaurants. The Facebook Fanpage is a central place with access to all local Chick-Fil-A restaurants. This way they add local experiences to the hub. As a customer you are invited to the opening of new Chick-Fil-A restaurants in your town. Although this is a big food chain, they have managed to keep the experience of a small family business.

The locator tab:

The Menu tab:

#2 Ask questions on your welcome tab I remember a great advice from Chris Brogan, when Michael Stelzner asked him about engagement in social media. Chris commented: Grow Bigger Ears . It is that simple. Start asking questions and receive tips from your customers. This is a win-win strategy. Your fans feel noticed by you and you receive valuable feed back from them.

1800 Flowers is a flower shop with a great fanpage. What I like especially is there welcome question on the welcome tab. 1800 Flowers asks their visitors what they would like to see more on the page. Talking about listening to your customers!

1800-Flowers.com Welcome Tab:

10

#3 Make your Page Friendly and Fun We all know that a Facebook Fan Page is more than just a page. It s a place for your fans to engage with you. But how do you get engaged with your fans. One way is to add fun experience to your landing tab.

This has proven to be extremely inviting to new fans.

Firehouse subs have done a great job with their page. It has a well designed welcome tab with an embedded video. It looks good and is fun.

Firehouse Subs Cherry LimeAid tab:

Always keep in mind: your facebook fan page is primarily a platform to engage with your fans. To do this successfully, create a mini hub to keep them there, engage by asking them funny and interesting questions and create a funny and friendly environment. To help you with some ideas for your page: think about the things that make you feel at home, surprise you, make you feel noticed and make you laugh. Try some of these. Dare to take some risks and create great facebook fan page designs. Use video and well designed welcome tabs. Follow these rules and build a successful social strategy. Next week, I ll show you 3 new examples of successful FB pages. In the mean time: start your Social Strategy for your Sustainable Success.

by Juan Felix Mirror Yourself December 3, 2010 Mirror Yourself » Blog Archive » 3 Elements for Successful Facebook Fan Page

New domain names could be a mixed blessing (2011-02-12 09:37) The pillar of the basic Web address - the trusty.com domain - is about to face vast new competition that will dramatically transform the Web as we know it. New websites, with more subject-specific, sometimes controversial suffixes, will soon populate the online galaxy: such as .eco, .love, .god, .sport, .gay or .kurd.

This enormous expansion to the Internet’s domain-name system will either make the Web more intuitive or create more cluttered, maddening experiences. But with an infinite number of naming possibilities, an industry of Web wildcatters is racing to grab these potentially lucrative territories with addresses that are bound to provoke.

Who gets to run .abortion websites - people who support abortion rights or those who don’t? Which individual or mosque can run the .islam or .mohammed sites? Can the Ku Klux Klan own .nazi on freespeech grounds, or will a Jewish organization run the domain and permit only educational websites, say, www.remember.nazi or www.antidefamation .nazi? And who’s going to get .amazon - the Internet retailer or Brazil?

The decisions will come down to a little-known non-profit based in Marina del Rey, Calif., whose international board of directors approved the expansion in 2008 but has been stuck debating how best to run the program before launching it. Now, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is on the cusp of completing those talks in March or April and will soon solicit applications from companies and 11

governments that want to propose and operate the new addresses.

Next week, hundreds of investors, consultants and entrepreneurs are expected to converge in San Francisco for the first ”.nxt” conference, a three-day affair featuring seminars on ICANN’s complicated application guidelines. The conference’s website, is not without a sense of humor: ”Join the Internet land rush!” a headline screams, above a photograph of Tom Cruise riding a horse in ”Far and Away,” the 1992 film about giveaways out West in the late 19th century.

These online territories are hardly free. The price tag to apply is $185,000, a cost that ensures only wellfinanced organizations operate the domains and cuts out many smaller grass-roots organizations, developing countries or dreamers, according to critics. (Rejectees get some of the application fee returned.) That’s on top of the $25,000 annual fee that domain operators have to pay ICANN. Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, a grass-roots firm in Los Angeles, said the new domains are designed purely to make money for ICANN and the companies that control the domains.

The new Web addresses, he added, will only mean more aggravation for trademark holders and confusion for the average Internet user.

Peter Dengate Thrush, chair of the ICANN board of directors, said the high application fee is based on the non-profit’s bet that it’s going to get sued, and to protect against organizations that are ill-equipped to manage an entire domain of hundreds, if not thousands, of websites.

by Ian Shapira Washington Post Feb. 7, 2011 12:00 AM New domain names could be a mixed blessing

AOL buying Huffington Post for $315 million (2011-02-12 09:55)

Online company AOL Inc. is buying online news hub Huffington Post in a $315 million deal that represents a bold bet on the future of online news.

The acquisition announced early Monday puts a high-profile exclamation mark on a series of acquisitions and strategic moves engineered by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong in an effort to reshape a fallen Internet icon.

AOL was once the king of dial-up online access known for its ubiquitous CD-ROMs and ”You’ve got mail” greeting in its inboxes.

Perhaps just as important as picking up a news site and ranks as one of the top 10 current events and global news sites, AOL will be adding Huffington Post co-founder and media star Arianna Huffington to its management team as part of the deal.

After the acquisition closes later this year, Huffington will be put in charge of AOL’s growing array of content, which includes popular technology sites Endgadget and TechCrunch, local news sites Patch.com and online mapping service Mapquest.

The price that AOL is paying is ”really just the hiring fee to get Arianna,” said technology analyst Rob Enderle. ”This is one of those out-of-left-field moves that actually makes a lot of sense. This could put AOL back on the map.”

Armstrong, a former Google Inc. executive, has been trying to turn AOL into a go-to place for a wide variety of news since he was hired to turn around the company in April 2009 while it was still a part of Time Warner Inc. The makeover is designed to give Web surfers a reason to visit AOL’s websites more frequently to help boost online ad sales.

At the same time, Armstrong has laid off hundreds of employees in an effort to boost AOL’s financial performance and stock price. It has been a slog so far. AOL lost $782.5 million last year, largely because of accounting charges, and the company’s stock is now worth slightly less than after it was spun out of Time Warner 14 months ago.

The deal ”will create a next-generation American media company with global reach that combines content, 12

community, and social experiences for consumers,” Armstrong said in a statement announcing the deal.

Founded in 2005, Huffington Post is owned by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and a group of other investors. The site attracts 25 million monthly visitors. AOL will pay $300 million of the purchase price in cash.

Putting Arianna Huffington into a position of power could eventually threaten Armstrong’s job security if AOL still struggles, Enderle said. ”This is a gutsy move (Armstrong’s) part because Arianna could end up running AOL,” Enderle said.

In a blog post about the deal, Arianna Huffington praised Armstrong’s vision for AOL and said they were on the same page as they discussed their ambitions for online news. ”We were practically finishing each other’s sentences,” Huffington wrote about their discussions. She wrote that the deal was signed at the Super Bowl in Dallas, which she and Armstrong attended.

If it wins expected regulatory approval without any hitches, the deal will likely close in late March or early April.

Armstrong has been an aggressive deal maker since his arrival, but this marks by far the biggest acquisition of his tenure. Various published reports quoting unidentified people have also said he has talked to private equity firms about the possibility of trying to buy Yahoo Inc., another struggling Internet pioneer that remains a household name. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, though, has shown little interest in working with AOL. AOL had just a 5.3 percent share of the U.S. display advertising revenue in 2010, down from 6.8 percent in 2009, according to eMarketer. Facebook, meanwhile, accounted for 13.6 percent of display revenue last year, up from 7.3 percent in 2009.

Huffington Post grew quickly from startup to online colossus and ranks as one of the top 10 current events and global news sites. Over time, it launched city-specific pages and developed a roster of sections such as food and books. The work of its 70-person paid staff is augmented by content from news outlets and 6,000 bloggers who write for free.

by Associated Press Feb. 7, 2011 06:56 AM AOL buying Huffington Post for $315 million

In a first, smartphones outsell PCs (2011-02-12 10:02)

NEW YORK - For the first time ever, smartphones such as Apple Inc.’s iPhone are outselling personal computers, according to a report by research group IDC that was released Monday.

Worldwide, consumer-electronics makers shipped 100.9 million smartphones in the last three months of 2010, 13

an 87 percent jump from a year earlier. PC shipments were weaker than expected, edging up just 3 percent, to 92.1 million.

The two trends aren’t necessarily related, said IDC analyst Ramon Llamas. Smartphones and PCs serve different purposes, and consumers generally need both. PCs remain important for writing papers, editing photos and creating other kinds of content.

PC sales, however, have been hurt by competition from tablet computers, namely Apple’s iPad. Meanwhile, smartphones are getting a boost from falling prices. It’s not uncommon to find brand-new models on sale for $100, a price Llamas said consumers are willing to pay. Some retailers, such as Amazon.com Inc., offer smartphones at steep discounts, sometimes for as little as a penny.

Smartphone sales are also getting a push from growing interest in Google Inc.’s Android software, which powers dozens of phones made by HTC Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. and others.

People also tend to replace their phones much more often than they do their computers. Consumers might wait three to five years to replace computers, some of which are protected under warranties that last several years. Meanwhile, cellphone subscribers often have the option of upgrading to a newer phone well before their two-year service contracts are up.

Such incentives are becoming less common, however. Last month, Verizon Wireless said that it would phase out its early upgrade program, while Sprint Nextel Corp. said last week that it was making it more expensive for customers to upgrade ahead of schedule.

by Dana Wollman Associated Press Feb. 9, 2011 12:00 AM In a first, smartphones outsell PCs

Smartphone apps take retro approach to pics (2011-02-12 10:08)

A stack of 35-year-old photographs sits on Andrew Heaton’s desk.

Yellowed and square, the pictures from 1974 – the kind on that textured, thick paper – are waiting to be scanned into a computer for his mother. ”The quality is atrocious on all of these,” says Heaton, 42, of Clarkston.

But there’s charm in those imperfections. A reminder of the years that have passed. A warm memory of a simpler time. ”Quality is, especially for photography, somewhat nostalgic,” Heaton says. ”And I don’t think that if I had a perfect, crisp photo of that shot it would evoke those same kind of memories.”

14

Instant digital nostalgia is easy to find nowadays. Popular smartphone apps like Hipstamatic and Instagram have created a movement of amateur photographers producing digital images that look as if they were plucked from a 1970s photo album.

The apps use the smartphone’s camera and send out square digital photos, some with borders and artistic filters, that are intended to look just like those old pictures.

The result has been a groundswell of faux-nostalgic picture taking, a sort of hipster renaissance, that has filled social networks with quirky and often beautiful photos of everyday activities. ”It becomes more a quick little challenge to see how good you can make something look with a limited set of options,” says Daniel Morrison, 29, of Holland, an Instagram user.

First in retro Hipstamatic led the way on this retro movement, debuting in late 2009. Since then Hipstamatic prints have landed in a London art gallery and even on the front page of the New York Times.

The iPhone app, designed to look like a cheap plastic toy camera, allows users to choose a vintage lens, film and flash. Each combination produces a different artistic effect.

Hipstamatic ( $1.99) also allows users to purchase actual prints right from inside the app that are mailed to their home.

PicPlz is a nice free alternative that also has a version for smartphones running Google’s Android operating system.

The apps are built on a premise of creating beautiful photos of everyday moments and sharing them with friends on social networks.

And, with smartphones always at the ready, picture taking has never been less cumbersome. ”It makes it really handy to be able to see something interesting, take a snapshot of it, post it and get feedback from other people immediately,” says Heaton, the director of experience design at Southfield-based advertising firm Doner, who has used Instagram since its October launch.

Since that debut, Instagram, a free iPhone app, has amassed more than 1.75 million users and now sees more than 290,000 photos posted to the service each day, the company says.

The San Francisco-based Web service last week said it had raised $7 million in funding from Silicon Valleybased capital firm Benchmark Capital.

The backing includes contributions by such big names as Adam D’Angelo, chief technology officer at Facebook, and Jack Dorsey, cofounder and chairman at Twitter. ”Our new capital will also allow us to scale to the opportunity we’ve been handed across a variety of platforms on mobile and the Web,” Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said in a blog post last week.

Point-and-shoot rival Smartphone picture taking has begun to take a serious bite out of another important consumer electronics industry: the point-and-shoot digital camera.

Market research firm iSuppli predicted earlier this year that the point-and-shoot has about three good years left before its sales begin to decline. iSuppli analyst Pamela Tufegdzic attributed this largely to smartphones, which are now equipped with cameras that rival point-and-shoots. ”In particular, multimedia cellphones now equipped with higher-megapixel cameras are cannibalizing low-end DSCs (digital still cameras) that have equivalent resolutions,” Tufegdzic noted in her report.

And because most digital point-and-shoots can’t access the Web, the smartphone is often the easier option to send photos to friends.

Morrison, a software developer, has a digital point-and-shoot, but it never leaves his laptop bag. ”I can’t even remember the last time I used it,” he says. ”I don’t even know why it’s still in the bag. ”I should probably just get rid of it.”

But what about the quality? Will we regret the day when we documented our lives with smartphone apps that lacquered a permanent artistic filter onto each frame?

The people who use these apps say they’re actually taking many more photos than they would have without a smartphone in their hand.

15

”I’m not looking at these as an archive,” Morrison says. ”If I was going to take pictures that I really cared about I would probably use a real camera. ”These are more of like interesting one-offs – like a stream of consciousness.”

For Heaton, who mostly chooses not to use Instagram’s retro filters, it’s a way to build a social network around informal pictures. Shots of food, shots of people he’s met, shots of everyday happenings.

That, he says, allows for a new way to build relationships on the Web. ”I read their tweets,” Heaton says. ”I look at them on Facebook, I look at their photos and I get an understanding of who they are.”

The photo apps: Hipstamatic Cost: $1.99 System: Apple iPhone Key features: This app produces the best retro images. You’ll have to pay a bit for them, though. It comes with a set of lenses, film and flashes, but you can buy more for 99 cents from inside the app. You can also buy prints from inside the app.

Instagram Cost: Free System: Apple iPhone and iPod Touch Key features: The big feature here is that the app is itself a small social network of picture takers. You can follow other Instagram users and see the photos they share in a news feed.

Retro Camera Cost: Free System: Android Key features: This is a good free Android alternative to Hipstamatic, with five vintage cameras to choose from and a number of other digital effects.

PicPlz Cost: Free System: Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and Android Key features: A great free alternative to Hipstamatic that also has an Android version. It has some of the same social networking features as Instagram.

Camera + Cost: $1.99 System: Apple iPhone Key features: This is a great powerhouse camera for the iPhone. Photos can be cropped, rotated and given any number of effects and borders. Photos can then be saved to the phone or uploaded to any social network.

by Mark W. Smith Detroit Free Press Feb. 8, 2011 09:47 AM Smartphone apps take retro approach to pics

Electric Cars: A Definitive Guide to Electric Vehicles | Hybrid Cars (2011-02-12 10:22) An electric car is powered by an electric motor instead of a gasoline engine.

The electric motor gets energy from a controller, which regulates the amount of power based on the driver s use of an accelerator pedal.

The electric car (also known as electric vehicle or EV) uses energy stored in its rechargeable batteries, which are recharged by common household electricity.

16

With the all-electric Leaf, Nissan is taking the lead in pure electric cars in the United States. The Nissan Leaf is a medium-size all-electric hatchback that seats five adults and has a range of 100 miles. The purchase price is around $25,000, after federal government incentives. It started to roll out in select cities in late 2010.

Unlike a hybrid car which is fueled by gasoline and uses a battery and motor to improve efficiency an electric car is powered exclusively by electricity. Historically, EVs have not been widely adopted because of limited driving range before needing to be recharged, long recharging times, and a lack of commitment by automakers to produce and market electric cars that have all the creature comforts of gas-powered cars.

That s changing. As battery technology improves simultaneously increasing energy storage and reducing cost major automakers are expected to begin introducing a new generation of electric cars.

Electric cars produce no tailpipe emissions, reduce our dependency on oil, and are cheaper to operate. Of course, the process of producing the electricity moves the emissions further upstream to the utility company s smokestack but even dirty electricity used in electric cars usually reduces our collective carbon footprint.

17

Another factor is convenience: In one trip to the gas station, you can pump 330 kilowatt-hours of energy into a 10-gallon tank. It would take about 9 days to get the same amount of energy from household electric current. Fortunately, it takes hours and not days to recharge an electric car, because it’s much more efficient.

Speaking of convenience, let’s not forget two important points: charging up at home means never going to a gas station and electric cars require almost none of the maintenance, like oil changes and emissions checks, that internal combustion cars require.

Electric motors develop their highest torque from zero rpms meaning fast (and silent) zero-to-60 acceleration times.

Note: In the illustration, we show the relative features of electric cars and gas-powered cars. However, it doesn’t have to be an ”either-or” situation. Plug-in hybrids offer many of the benefits of electric cars while mitigating most of the drawbacks, such as limited driving range.

1New and Upcoming Electric Cars The electrification of the automobile is inevitable.

Bob Lutz Vice Chairman, General Motors Just as the major car companies were crushing their electric car programs in 2004 and 2005, the perfect storm was brewing on the horizon: Hurricane Katrina, growing acceptance of global warming, runaway Prius sales, 18

oil price spikes, green marketing galore&The major auto companies went right back to the drawing board and emerged with big plans for electric cars.

BMW Megacity

BMW is working on a small electric car that could launch in 2012. The Megacity is a low-slung three-door four-seat hatchback coupe. The car is smaller than the Honda Fit, and will have a projected range of 100 miles. The BMW Megacity, which could be sold either as a BMW or Mini, is not much more than a concept at this stage, but pressure on BMW to meet California’s zero emissions vehicle requirements might bring the car to life albeit in small numbers.

BYD E6

If China s BYD can deliver on its big promises for the E6 all-electric crossover, then it could take the US by storm. (Investment guru Warren Buffet is betting that BYD will come through.) Unlike the small cityoriented electric runabouts on slate from established carmakers, the E6 is a five-passenger wagon capable of carting a typical American family. Moreover, the E6 has a range of 200 to 250 miles and boasts a 0 to 60 mph time of less than 10 seconds. Top speed is 100 mph. The vehicle can be fully charged in about 10 hours by plugging into a standard household outlet. BYD says that it takes only 10 minutes to charge to 50 percent capacity and 15 minutes to the 80 percent level. BYD has been in the battery business only since 1995, and started building cars in 2003. Considering that the company maintains an R &D department with 8,000 engineers, it s not surprising that the initials BYD stand for Build Your Dreams.

Chevy Volt

Technically a plug-in hybrid rather than an electric car, the Chevy Volt’s technology has leapfrogged standard hybrids like the Toyota Prius. This well-equipped, five-door, four-seat hatchback operates as an electric car for its first 35 or so miles after a full charge and then uses gas to extend its range. It burns no gasoline during the first 40 miles after a charge, drawing energy from a lithium ion battery pack. When the battery is depleted, a 1.4-liter engine kicks in to power a generator that sustains the battery charge enough to give the car another 260 miles of range.

Coda (Electric Sedan)

Southern California automaker Coda Automotive announced plans to bring a new electric car to the US from China in 2010. The all-electric sedan is based on an existing gas-powered four-door car, known as the 19

Hafei Saibao 3, built in Harbin, China. Re-engineered with a lithium ion battery, the Coda sedan promises a driving range of 100 miles. The MSRP for the Coda sedan will be around $44,000.

Ford Focus Electric

The Ford Focus EV, due out in late 2011, is the first electric car designed for the generic aisle of the dealership. Ford s plans for the Focus EV are not aimed at buzz and sizzle. Instead, the company is focused on addressing the biggest obstacle between EVs and the mainstream: cost. By choosing an existing platform the Focus and using technology developed by auto supplier Magna, Ford will save the expense associated with developing a unique design. The Ford Focus EV is targeted to have a range of 100 miles between charges, courtesy of a 23 kWh battery pack.

Ford Transit Connect Electric

With the introduction of the Ford Transit Connect Electric, unveiled at this week s Chicago Auto Show, Ford may have produced the first green halo truck. When you combine car-like driving dynamics, cargo capacity and accessibility with the the built-in marketing opportunities for small businesses to emblazon the large exterior panels with green slogans such as Zero-Emissions and 100 percent electric, it makes for a compelling package. The vehicle has a 75 mile per hour top speed and can drive up to 80 miles on a charge perfectly fine for the needs of a local delivery cycle.

Mercedes BlueZero

In late 2008, Mercedes-Benz unveiled its BlueZero concept vehicles the core idea is to build electric, plug-in hybrid, and fuel-cell cars on a single platform. Daimler had previously announced that its next generation FCV fuel cell cars will be built on a subcompact (B-class) chassis in 2010. Migrating to the BlueZero would only be a minor adjustment. Daimler s future electric cars could also shift to the BlueZero because the guts of its electric cars already fit in the smaller Smart and A-Class. Sharing platforms and technology architectures could allow Daimler to telescope development and production timelines, and save money on rolling out new electric models. At this stage, it s still a concept.

Mini E

The limited edition Mini E car is based on the Mini Cooper platform. The car’s 380-volt battery is comprised of 5,088 individual cells, and can be recharged using a standard 110-volt electrical outlet. The battery pack has a maximum capacity of 35 kilowatt hours. BMW will offer a specialized high-amp wall-mounted device that will allow a full replenishment of the battery in less than three hours. The Mini E will have a cruising 20

range of 150 miles. Approximately 500 cars are slated for production and lease to select customers in Southern California and the New York area. Pricing, as well as production beyond the first 500 units, is not yet determined.

Mitsubishi iMiEV

Mitsubishi began delivering the all-electric iMiev to Japanese customers in 2009. Production numbers are slowly ramping up from the current target of a few thousand per year. The small EV uses a single 47 kW motor and 16 kWh lithium ion batteries to yield about 75 miles of range and a top speed of 80 miles per hour. The vehicle is a four-seater with a real but cramped back seat.

Nissan LEAF

Nissan is calling its new electric car the Nissan Leaf the ”world’s first affordable, zero-emission car.” And they could be right. Unveiled on Aug. 2, 2009, the Leaf is a medium-size all-electric hatchback that seats five adults and has a range of 100 miles. At just under $33,000, minus tax incentives, the LEAF is certainly accessible to mainstream buyers. The Nissan Leaf s closest comparable future all-electric car is the Ford Focus Electric. The distinguishing characteristic between the two vehicles could be design pitting the established look of the Ford Focus against the purpose-built Nissan Leaf, which went on sale in late 2010. As of Feb. 2011, most of the first set of customers, who placed advance orders, are still waiting on delivery.

Pininfarina Blue Car

Legendary Italian sports car designer Pininfarina will begin production of its small all-electric four-seat five-door Blue Car in 2010. The Blue Car is powered by a 50 kW electric motor getting energy from a lithium polymer battery pack with 150 miles of range. The company began accepting reservations from European customers in spring 2009. The lease will be about $500 per month. The body of the car is designed as an elastic shell resting forcefully on the four wheels, providing more room than the average city car. Techno-goodies include solar panels on the roof, and the ability to use a smart phone to monitor battery state-of-charge, and to start AC or heat from a distance. Pininfarina will start slow, only in Europe, and aim to ramp up production up to 60,000 units per year by 2015.

Renault Fluence

Patrick Pelata, executive vice president, said that the all-electric Renault Fluence will launch in 2011, starting with at least 20,000 units in the first year. (The gas-powered Fluence debuts in 2009.) The company will produce a smaller compact electric car in the following year. No more details at this time, although its sister 21

company Nissan will introduce its yet-to-be-named electric-only model also in 2012. That s probably not a coincidence.

Smart ED

Despite considerable media buzz for Daimler s Smart ForTwo, microcars have not taken American roads by storm. Perhaps consumers may be more forgiving of the lack of size and power if the Smart is offered with an electric drive. The first models will likely go to Europe in about 2010. Availability in the US is uncertain.

The car will provide 70 miles of range and 70 miles per hour on the freeway. Recharge time from 30 to 80 percent capacity is about three and a half hours. The gas version of the Smart ForTwo has earned low marks for handling, especially at higher speeds.

Subaru R1E

The Achilles Heel of electric cars has been the limited range they can travel between charges. The Subaru R1e could help change that. The diminutive two-seater, about 20 inches longer than a Smart ForTwo, has a top speed of 65 miles per hour and a range of 50 miles. More importantly, the time to recharge the 346-volt lithium ion battery pack has been reduced to about 15 minutes. Here s the hitch: To get the faster charging time, you need a special stationary charger. Using the onboard standard charger puts the electricity refueling time back to about eight hours.

Toyota FT-EV

Toyota introduced the FT-EV electric concept at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show, hinting that it might offer an urban all-electric commuter vehicle in the next few years. The FT-EV concept shares its platform with the company s Japanese and European minicar, the Toyota iQ. The iQ is larger than the quintessential minicar, the Smart Fortwo, but not by much. Its wheelbase is a little more than five inches longer, and on the whole, the car is only about a foot longer than the Smart 11.4 inches to be exact. The electric version on display at the Detroit Auto Show, the Toyota FT-EV concept, offers driving range of 50 miles, according to Toyota.

The company is expected to launch 10 new hybrid gas-electric models globally by 2012, but has not made firm commitments to bring a full battery-electric car to market.

Tesla Model S

What makes the Model S so cool? First of all, the visual design is gorgeous. Second, it seats five or seven if you count the two side-facing rear seats for small children. There are killer features, like the 17-inch touch 22

screen that provides all of the vehicle s interface components such as climate control and entertainment, but also offers 3G or wireless connectivity. But most importantly, the Model S is way more affordable than the company s $109,000 Tesla Roadster. The current price target for the Tesla Model S is $57,900 (minus a $7,500 federal tax credit) still not in range for most mainstream buyers but moving in the right direction.

The Model S is planned for release in late 2011.

The following companies have announced intentions to produce electric vehicles, but have not discussed specific vehicle details: Volkswagen and Peugeot CitroĂŤn.

2Limited Run Electric Cars Not content to follow the slow timelines from the major car companies, a number of entrepreneurs have taken the bold step of building mainstream highway-capable all-electric vehicles. The payoff could be big but the logistical hurdles, such as federal highway crash testing, are daunting and very expensive. Those costs will get passed on to customers those that are willing to wait for months or years for innovative companies to roll out models even in small quantities.

The poster child of the independent electric car movement has been Tesla Motors. When the company launched, it promised to reinvent the auto industry in the mold of a Silicon Valley start-up and leave Detroit in its dust. After hitting a number of potholes product delays, boardroom discord, and major operating losses the company emerged looking good. An investment from Daimler, a $465 million government loan, and a potential IPO, add up to cash and momentum for the electric car start-up.

Tesla Roadster

The Tesla Roadster is a screaming-fast, all-electric two-seater sports car built on the frame of the Lotus Elise.

The specs, if they can be delivered, are impressive: 0 60 mph in less than four seconds, 135-mpg equivalent, 200-mile range, and a brilliant tech design that wires together nearly 7,000 mass-commodity rechargeable lithium batteries. The price? Just north of $100,000. While Tesla s path to production hasn t been as smooth as the Roadster s power delivery, the company seems to be past the worst of its growing pains. The 2010 Tesla Roadster continues to earn praise for its acceleration what Scientific America calls �an insane amusement park ride.� The company has delivered nearly 1,000 Roadsters to date (as of November 2009).

Th!nk City

Th!nk formerly owned by Ford had big plans to become a leader in the emerging EV market in the United States. Those plans fell short, as the company moved to the brink of bankruptcy in late 2008. In an extraordinary rescue effort, Ener1 the parent company of battery-maker EnerDel and other investors revived small-scale production of the vehicle in Finland. They now have plans to produce as many as 60,000 units per year in the US, probably in Indiana where EnerDel makes lithium ion batteries. Before falling into a financial crisis, the company was on its sixth generation of the Th!nk City, a $28,000 two-seater car with a maximum speed of 65 miles per hour and a driving range of about 120 miles. Recharge time is about four hours.

23

Volvo C30 Electric

Volvo’s conservative approach is apparent in the Volvo C30 EV, the all-electric four-seat concept sedan unveiled at the 2010 Detroit auto show. At first glance, the stats may seem unimpressive: a range of about 90 miles, acceleration from 0-60 mph in 11 seconds, a top speed of about 80 miles per hour, and a leisurely eight hours to recharge the 24 kilowatt-hour battery pack from 220-volt household outlet. Volvo could push these numbers further or race to bring the car to market faster, but it isn t. Instead, the company is slowing down and chilling out and making sure that customers expectations are met. In 2011, Volvo will build and test a fleet of 50 C30 EVs. Wheego Whip LiFe

The highway-ready Wheego Whip LiFe goes approximately 100 miles on a charge, top speed of 70 mph, and retails for $32,995. The two-seat Smart look-alike although it s a little bigger comes equipped with driver and passenger airbags, anti-lock brakes, air conditioning, and power windows and locks. The vehicle platform is made in China and the 30 kWh lithium battery pack which can be charged using a standard J1772 connection comes from LG Chem in South Korea. The Atlanta-based company promises delivery by the end of 2010.

Within the Limited Run category, a number of companies are converting existing gas-engine models into electric vehicles: The eBox

Your first stop in buying AC Propulsion s eBox is a visit to your local Scion dealer to purchase a 5-speed Scion xB wagon, for about $15,000. Or AC Propulsion will coordinate the purchase of an xB near their San Dimas, Calif. headquarters. Then, their engineers will remove the internal combustion engine and related components, and install AC Propulsion s electric drive and battery system composed of more than 5,000 small cells. The cost of conversion will add another $55,000 to the purchase price. The company expects to build about 20 to 25 eBoxes a year.

Also, limited runs of the following all-electric sports car are extremely limited: the UEV Spyder, Mullen L1x-75, UK’s Lightning and the Venturi Fetish, selling for about $75,000, $125,000, $200,000 and $300,000 respectively.

3Low-Speed and Three-Wheel Electric Cars 24

Aptera 2e The arduous road to delivering a new highway-speed electric vehicle to the market can be bypassed in two primary ways: limiting the electric vehicle to three wheels (so it can be legally classified as a motorcycle) or limiting the vehicles legal top speed to 25 miles per hour (so it can avoid highway crash testing). Those strategies lower the barrier to entry, opening the gates to scores of fledgling companies offering some mighty funky machines. It s a long list, so we ll keep our descriptions to a minimum. We ve also eliminated companies that do not provide a base-level of information about products and prices and products not directly selling in North America.

Aptera 2e

Winner of the funkiest EV design award, the Aptera 2e (formerly Type-1), looks like a cross between a motorcycle and ultralight single-occupant airplane. Built near San Diego, and selling for approximately $27,000, the Aptera 2e is competing in the Automotive X Prize competition. Thousands of potential buyers paid a $500 refundable deposit in anticipation of production scheduled for late 2008, and then delayed a few more times. Only time will tell if the company can deliver to its loyal fans. http://www.aptera.com Bad Boy Buggies

Bubba Kaiser and Joe Palermo of Natchez, Miss. developed the Bad Boy Buggy as a hunting tool. The $10,000 off-road all-electric vehicle takes advantage of an EV s quietness to creep up on prey. (The Los Angeles Times quips that the Bad Boy Buggy is an electric vehicle that even Sarah Palin could love.) The vehicle maxes out at 20 miles per hour with 35 miles per charge but it travels on all terrains. The 1,650pound Buggy uses lead-acid batteries to turn two 13-horsepower motors with 130 foot-pounds of torque, giving it a payload of 1,000 pounds to haul off your kill. The entry level model sells for about $10,000 and a stretch version goes for $11,500. The buggy comes in four color choices green, red, black and camouflage.

25

http://www.badboybuggies.com/ BG C100

Barry Bernstein, a steel wholesaler from Philadelphia, founded BG Automotive Group with the dream of building an affordable electric car in the United States. The chassis and body of the BG C100 are currently imported from the Far East, with the rest of the components coming from US suppliers. Assemble also in America. The current neighborhood electric model, the BG C100, is imported from Asia. The C100 promises a driving range of 60 to 80 miles from a pack of eight lead acid batteries. The four door, fivepassenger hatchback available from $16,000 to $18,000 depending on the option package comes with dual airbags, climate control, CD stereo, power doors/windows, an iPhone docking station on the dash, and 100-percent money guarantee. The first models are expected to ship in May 2009. http://www.bgelectriccars.com/ Dynasty IT

Dynasty Electric Car Company, formerly based in British Columbia, Canada, offers five different variants of its low-speed electric vehicle, including a sedan, mini pick-up, van and two open-air versions. The It, which has a range of about 30 miles and a top speed of about 30 miles per hour, sells for approximately $20,000. In May 2008, the company was purchased by Pakistani automaker Karakoram Motors. http://www.itiselectric.com Flybo or XFD-6000ZK

The electric Chinese Smart Car knock-off, measuring just 102.3 inches long on a 71-inch wheelbase, has a reported top speed of 45 mph and a range of 70 miles. Articles on the web say that this neighborhood electric vehicle comes up short on build quality, and is not recommended for winter use. The rear-wheel-drive Flybo, primarily marketed towards gated communities, has a price tag around $10,000.

GEM

Global Electric Motorcars (GEM), a Chrysler corporation, is the granddaddy of neighborhood electric vehicle companies. GEM offers approximately six models, ranging in price from about $7,000 to $13,000, and primarily sells to resorts, universities and retirement communities. GEM models aren t the most exciting, but they’re here now and they work!

26

http://www.gemcar.com Kurrent

The Kurrent, an electric car originally designed in Italy, was being produced in small quantities by American Electric Vehicle in Ferndale, Michigan. The car continues to be made in Italy, but according to EVFinder.com, US production has stopped. The vehicle uses lead acid batteries to deliver a range of about 40 miles. The price of the Kurrent was competitive with GEM products at approximately $10,000 but offers more amenities, such as windshield wipers, doors, headlights, seatbelts and a trunk. www.getkurrent.com Myers NmG

The Myers NmG is a funky, single-occupant three-wheeled electric vehicle made by Myers Motors in Tallmadge, Ohio. The personal electric vehicle, which features two wheels in the front and one in the back is $36,000. It uses thirteen 12-volt, lead acid batteries that can be charged through a standard 110-volt outlet.

Six to eight hours of charging will carry you approximately 30 miles. www.myersmotors.com Reva / G-Whiz

The Indian Reva Electric Car Company wants to bring environmentally responsible motoring across the globe. The company is set to launch its next electric vehicle in 2009. The new version promises 75 miles per charge a boost of 25 miles from the switch to lithium ion batteries and the addition of roof-mounted solar panels. The company is eyeing a sales target of 4,000 vehicles, about half of which will be exported.

It is also building a new assembly plant in Bangalore, India with a capacity of 30,000 units per year. The current model, REVAi, is marketed in the UK as G-Whiz. There are more than 2,000 Reva electric cars already on the roads in London and Bangalore, with a distribution network being built up across Europe, South America and parts of Asia.

Tango T600

The Tango T600 electric car, from Commuter Cars in Spokane, Wash., is 102 inches long and only 39 inches wide. In other words, it s as tall as most conventional cars, not quite as long, but only half the size from side to side. That means driver in front and passenger in back like a tandem bicycle. The price exceeds 27

$100,000. (Note: Technically, the Tango T600 is a highway-capable four-wheel vehicle; however, the vehicle’s size limits its practicality.) www.commutercars.com VentureOne

The Venture One $20,000 three-wheeled, two-seater tilt-a-whirl motorcycle-car gizmo is expected in 2009.

The fully electric version, featuring two in-wheel 20 kW electric motors and a 17 kWh lithium ion battery pack, delivers approximately 120 miles on a single charge. Plug-in hybrid versions are also in the works from Venture Vehicles in Los Angeles. www.flytheroad.com ZAP Xebra

The ZAP Xebra sedan will never be described as luxurious, smooth, or extremely well built but unlike much of the competition in the electric car market, it s real, affordable, and available. For about $12,000, you can bring home the Chinese-built all-electric four-seater and begin enjoying the benefits of a zero-emissions vehicle. The Xebra is the least expensive three-wheel road-ready electric vehicle on our list. www.zapworld.com ZENN Car

Made in St-Jérome, north of Montréal, the ZENN is a neighborhood electric vehicle with a range of approximately 35 miles and a full recharge time of 8 to 9 hours from a conventional electrical outlet. A base-level ZENN no air conditioning or radio sells for approximately $13,000 or with AC for about $15,000. The company has future plans to launch a high-speed model called the cityZENN, offering 80 mph top speed and 250-mile range. ZENN headquarters are in Toronto. www.zenncars.com

4Discontinued and Rare Electric Cars The most promising recent period for electric vehicles was the 1990s at least it seemed so at the time. In September 1990, the California Air Resources Board mandated that 2 percent of all new cars sold by major automakers in California would be zero emission vehicles by 1998 growing to 10 percent by 2003. That sent automakers scrambling to produce electric vehicles for the mass market. Obviously, things didn t work out as planned. (See Who Killed the Electric Car for details.) Very few units were ever produced, and nearly all of them were destroyed. The remaining units are extremely hard to find and very expensive.

28

RAV4 EV

From 1997 to 2003, Toyota made approximately 1,500 all-electric versions of its popular RAV4 model. From the outside, the RAV4 EV looks the same as a gasoline version of the vehicle, and has all the versatility of a small utility vehicle. The top speed is approximately 80 miles per hour with a range of about 100 miles, and a full recharge time of five hours. Most of the vehicles were destroyed, but miraculously, Toyota allowed 328 RAV4 EVs to be sold. The suggested retail price, at the time, was $42,000. A rare used RAV4 EV can sell these days for $70,000 or more.

EV1

Time Magazine named it one of the 50 worst cars of all time, but the customers who leased the EV1 had a quasi-religious devotion to the zippy two-seater. General Motors made fewer than 1,000 EV1s by the time the company canceled production, claiming that demand was too limited for a two-seater with a range of about 120 miles, and a recharge time of approximately eight hours. GM crushed nearly every single EV1, so even its biggest devotees cannot find a used EV1 to purchase.

Honda EV Plus

The Honda EV Plus was a two-door model, but could seat four. Driving range was approximately 100 miles.

Only about 300 EV Plus units were made and sold and the purchase price was a hefty $53,000. Most were destroyed, leaving a non-existent market for the vehicle.

Ford Electric Ranger

Ford produced the Electric Ranger from 1998 to 2002. Most of the 1,500 units were leased to fleets, although a handful of vehicles were sold to individuals. Nearly all leases were terminated between 2003 and 2005.

Ford made a few Ford Electric Rangers using nickel metal hydride batteries, which yielded 65 miles in range.

Most used lead acid batteries, with a more limited range. The rare used Ford Electric Ranger has appears on eBay for anywhere between $10,000 and $25,000.

Nissan Altra

29

The Nissan Altra was produced between 1998 and 2002 although only about 200 vehicles were made. By appearances, the Nissan Altra EV looked like a regular mid-sized station wagon. The Altra offered ample cargo room and numerous amenities, such as power mirrors and windows, keyless entry, and four-wheel anti-lock brakes. Top speed for the Nissan Altra was 80 mph, and it could travel about 100 miles between charges.

Chevrolet S-10 Electric

Fewer than 500 Chevy S10 Electric vehicles were produced. Range was 90 miles. Most were leased to fleets (and subsequently destroyed), but approximately 60 were sold and could appear in auctions. (Photo by Mike Weston.)

Chrysler Epic Electric Minivan

Chrysler released the all-electric no-frills Chrysler Epic minivan in 1998. The acronym EPIC stands for Electric Powered Interurban Commuter. Driving range was approximately 80 miles, with recharge times of four to five hours. Performance was modest, with a 0 60 mph time of 16 seconds.

Phoenix Motorcars SUT (Sport Utility Truck)

Phoenix Motorcars, based in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., had big plans to shake up the EV world, but fell short and finally sputtered into Chapter 11 in April 2009. Its fate is undetermined but the prospects are not high. The company had planned to use engine-less vehicles supplied by Ssangyong, Korea s fourth largest automaker, as the basis for its electric vehicle line in the US. (Ssangyong doesn t sell cars in the United States). Analysts questioned Phoenix’s business model for years and its capacity to deliver a $45,000 SUT in any quantities. It now appears that the few models that were produced will become collector’s items.

Solectria Force

In the early 1990s, the Solectria Corporation of Wilmington, Massachusetts (now Azure Dynamics Corporation), managed to convert about 400 Geo Metros into an electric vehicle called the Solectria ”Force.” Top speeds are about 70 mph, and 13 12-volt lead acid cells provide about 40 miles of range. Solectria Force owners (http://portev.org/solectria/ ) rarely let go of these vehicles. by Hibridcars.com Electric Cars: A Definitive Guide to Electric Vehicles | Hybrid Cars

30

U.S. power grid called target for terrorists (2011-02-12 10:42) WASHINGTON - A major cyber attack somewhere in the United States is becoming increasingly possible, top government intelligence officials said Thursday, warning that an assault on America’s power-grid system ”represents the battleground for the future.”

The officials, speaking at a special hearing on Capitol Hill, also said that while al-Qaida has been diminished after nine years of the U.S. war on terror, more foreign groups have risen up, increasing concerns among U.S. authorities that one of them may eventually get their hands on a nuclear device. ”I don’t think there’s any question but that this is a real national-security threat that we have to pay attention to,” CIA Director Leon Panetta said of a cyber attack in this country. ”The Internet, the cyber arena ... this is a vastly growing area of information that can be used and abused in a number of ways.”

With that in mind, he told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, ”When it comes to national security, I think this represents the battleground for the future. I’ve often said that I think the potential for the next Pearl Harbor could very well be a cyber attack.”

Panetta said terrorists are determined to find a way to hack into the power-grid system in the United States, which he said, ”brings down the financial system, brings down our government systems. You could paralyze this country. And I think it’s a real potential, and that’s the thing we have to really pay attention to.”

He noted that extremists in Iran, Russia and China are developing ”a significant capacity” to stage such an attack, and that already ”hundreds of thousands” of attempts are being made to sneak into national-security networks. ”We’ve got to develop not only a defense against that,” he said, ”but we’ve got to put our assets in places where we can provide sufficient warning that these attacks are coming.”

On the threat from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, Michael E. Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said extremists are trying to gain control of nuclear weapons in Pakistan, and in fact ”remain committed to obtaining all types of weapons of mass destruction.”

James Clapper, director of the Office of National Intelligence, was asked to elaborate.

All Clapper would say was, ”Our assessment is that the nuclear weapons in Pakistan are secure. And that’s probably all we should say about that in public.”

The officials said other terrorist chieftains in Yemen and around the Arabian Peninsula also want the weapons, and that their ”intent remains high.”

But they said the intelligence community in the United States remains committed as well.

by Richard A. Serrano Tribune Washington Bureau Feb. 11, 2011 12:00 AM U.S. power grid called target for terrorists

Data capacity spikes in expanding digital world (2011-02-12 10:50) Megabytes are dead.

Gigabytes are passe.

So much digital data now moves around the globe that those who endeavor to measure it employ a new - or new to non-nerds - term.

Meet the exabyte.

How much data is an exabyte? It’s a billion gigabytes - and it signifies just how digital and data-intensive the world has become.

In 2007, the global capacity to store digital information - on computer hard disks, smartphones, CDs and other digital media - totaled 276 exabytes, a new report finds.

How much is that? Imagine a stack of CDs - each holding an album’s worth of digital music - shooting from the top of your desk to 50,000 miles beyond the moon.

But not everyone has equal access to those resources. In fact, the digital gap between rich and poor countries 31

appears to be growing, said Martin Hilbert, of the University of Southern California, who led the effort to tally all of civilization’s information and computing power.

In 2002, people in developed countries had access to eight times the bandwidth - or information-carrying capacity - of people in poorer nations, Hilbert said, citing data he will publish soon. By 2007, that gap had almost doubled. ”If we want to understand the vast social changes under way in the world, we have to understand how much information people are handling,” Hilbert said.

To address that question, Hilbert and co-author Priscila Lopez spent four years poring over 1,110 sources of information spanning from 1986 to 2007, including sales data from computer and cellphone makers and the music and movie industries.

In 1986, a year after digital CDs widely debuted, vinyl records still accounted for 14 percent of all data on Earth, with audiocassettes holding an additional 12 percent.

By 2000, digital media accounted for just 25 percent of all information.

After that, the prevalence of digital media began to skyrocket. In 2002, digital storage capacity outstripped the non-digital variety - mostly paper and videotapes - for the first time. ”That was the turning point,” said Hilbert, who published the report in the journal Science. ”You could say the digital age started in 2002. It continued tremendously from there.”

By 2007, the last year documented in the study, 94 percent of all information storage capacity on Earth was digital. The other 6 percent resided in books, magazines and other non-digital formats, particularly videotape, Hilbert and Lopez found.

But despite the forecasts of futurists, a paperless world has not arrived. Although stupendously outstripped in growth by digital media, the amount of paper produced for books, magazines, newspapers and office use climbed steadily over the two decades of the study.

Humans generate enough data - from TV and radio broadcasts, telephone conversations and, of course, Internet traffic - to fill our 276 exabyte storage capacity every eight weeks, Hilbert said. Of course, most of the digital traffic is never stored long term.

The study also found that Earth had 3.4 billion cellphones in 2007, with telecommunications traffic growing at an average rate of 28 percent per year between 1986 and 2007. In a second report Hilbert plans to publish in a few months, he found that an ever-increasing slice of our daily data resides not on home computers and the smartphones in our pockets, but in giant data warehouses owned by Google, Facebook, Citibank, the federal government and other huge entities. Microsoft’s recent ad campaign touts the benefits of moving all of your personal data to ”the cloud.” In 2006, the nation’s ”server farms” - the home of the cloud - sucked down 1.5 percent of all electricity in the United States, double the amount used in 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency reported.

But Hilbert offers a humbling comparison. Despite our gargantuan digital growth, the DNA in a single human body still stores far more information - and a single human brain computes far more calculations than all the technology on Earth. ”Compared to Mother Nature,” Hilbert said, ”we are humble apprentices.”

by Brian Vastag Washington Post Feb. 12, 2011 12:00 AM Data capacity spikes in expanding digital world

With improving technology and decreasing stigma, online dating appears nowhere near saturation (2011-02-13 08:28) How do we find out about a restaurant? Go online. Research an unfamiliar subject? Hit Google. Seek romance? Increasingly, we’re hitting the Web for that, too. Cupid may be finding the mark: Nearly 1 in 5 recently married couples has met through an online-dating and matchmaking site, according to some estimates.

With improving technology, more familiarity because of social-networking sites and greater acceptance be32

cause the longtime stigma is wearing off, online dating appears nowhere near saturation.

Sites are more and more tailored, to the point where it’s possible to look for matches among cancer survivors and people who like the same car makes.

Mobile apps for smartphones let users review new matches and update profiles and pictures from wherever they might be. And in the future, virtual dating could replace the awkward first meeting.

In many ways, the burst of online dating reflects how people form relationships now, media researcher Jeana Frost said. Approaching people and meeting them online, for example, or contacting a distant acquaintance on Facebook for a date, are both types of online dating. ”What was once considered online dating may just become dating,” she said.

So far, technology is playing the perfect cupid for Connie Newton.

Near Thanksgiving, Newton, 46, of Chandler, posted her profile on bbpeoplemeet.com. She’d never heard of the site. The two B’s stand for big and beautiful.

Newton said she was surprised at the quality of the men she met. She went out on dates a few times, but no one was the perfect match.

In early January, she came across the profile of Bob, 56, who retired early and lives in Washington state. ”The spark just ignited, and he’s driving down and bringing his dog and his banjo and going to stay with me a couple weeks,” Newton said.

Business growth The spark between couples is translating to an electric time for those in the business.

Online-dating sites, which already claim millions of subscribers and registered users, are growing. Match.com reported 1.8 million subscribers during the quarter that ended in December, an increase of 30 percent from the same time in 2009.

E-harmony.com claims more than 33 million registered users in 192 countries.

Tech-savvy singles and even the relatively new market of Baby Boomers are willing to spend $30 a month to find love.

The business of online dating and matchmaking has performed strongly in the past five years, according to market researcher IBSWorld. As a result, online matchmaking has become one of the most profitable online industries. Revenue grew an average of 2.6 percent annually during the period, to $2 billion in 2010, the company said, adding revenue was expected to jump 3.6 percent last year alone.

There are nearly 13,800 companies engaged in online dating and matchmaking, and they hauled in $394 million in profits in 2010, IBSWorld said.

Last year was one of Match .com’s strongest, prompting Mandy Ginsberg, general manager of Match.com North America, to suggest the market is nowhere near saturation. There are more than 100 million single Americans, and only a small portion are using and paying for online-dating sites, Ginsberg said. The Baby Boomer segment, and those even older, is growing fast, too, thanks in part to older singles using socialnetworking sites to keep in contact with children and grandchildren, she said.

Experts and those who oversee the online-dating sites said the stigma that was associated with them is wearing off. ”Years ago, you’d be at weddings and someone would ask, ’How did you meet?’ ” Ginsberg said. ”And someone would say, ’Didn’t you meet online?’ And you’d be so embarrassed. You’re starting to see a massive change.”

Yet the lovelorn looking for that special someone this Valentine’s Day should be cautious, critics say. Problems include unmet expectations, deceptive posters, scammers and poor and unscientific matchmaking methods.

The Better Business Bureau said one of its most frequent complaints comes from people who stop onlinematchmaking services but still get billed.

Cupid goes electronic Dating aides changed significantly from the personal newspaper ads of 1970s and telephone chat lines and video dating of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Today, large online-dating sites feature GPS-based apps that allow people to see who’s close by to instantly meet.

33

”There are possibilities to use the Internet in some new and different ways,” said Robert Epstein, a psychologist and author. ”Most of what’s out there, though, is not like that. ”Most of what’s out there is really just like Match.com, which I still call the ’long bar.’ Instead of your bar being 25-feet-long at your local tavern, you have a bar that’s literally miles long. It’s just putting bodies in front of you and you reacting mainly to photos.”

Epstein calls eHarmony’s model the ”long test” because of the company’s lengthy personality questionnaire. ”They’re using statistics to tell you we can find your soulmate,” he said. ”And there’s no evidence whatsoever that they can do that.”

Newton feels pretty confident about her match. Before Bob (who preferred that his last name not be used) ventured to Arizona for a longer stay, he came down for a weekend.

Newton said, ”We met because we wanted to know if we were infatuated with our imaginations or if there was something really real here.”

Deception and science Epstein, who recently created a free website to measure compatibility, said the majority of dating sites continued to be plagued by the problem of posters not being truthful about their careers, height, weight, marital status and other issues. ”We’re still facing, as far as I can tell, the same 10, 20, 90 problem,” he said. ”In other words, if you ask people whether they deceive, you get between 10 and 20 percent saying, ’Yes, I do.’ And if you ask them how many other people deceive, they’ll say ’90 percent.’ ” He said a huge challenge was that the proprietary matching algorithms on sites don’t measure compatibility.

For its part, eHarmony said its algorithms were proven. Its users are presented with matches who have been found to be compatible across 29 personality dimensions. Before the company launched in 2000, the company said its founding research team spent several years studying marital satisfaction and determined that couples who share values, beliefs, attitudes and personalities are likeliest to remain happy in relationships.

A spokesman said the company continues its research and created eharmonylabs.com to share its findings.

It encourages members to portray themselves accurately, and it has built-in mechanisms to identify who may be using the site for something other than a long-term relationship.

A 2009 study commissioned by the company shows nearly 5 percent of new marriages in the U.S. were the result of a pairing on eHarmony.

Match.com, which was established more than 15 years ago, also uses sophisticated formulas to pair people.

They are fine-tuned as users rate daily matches sent to them. The company also uses communication patterns.

The goal, Ginsberg said, is to get more people talking so they go on more dates, have more relationships and marriages. ”We can’t promise you you’re going to find the love of your life,” she said. ”What we can promise you is based on sophisticated algorithms and the fact they get more and more intelligent, that we are going to do everything we can to improve more relevant matches so you strike up conversations.”

Perseverance and profiles Frost said her research showed that online dating expanded the pool of available options. But it can lead to frustration and discontent, she said. In general, people are overly optimistic about how much they will like someone when they get to know them, she said. Because of that inflated optimism, many online dates result in disappointment. ”Online dating might be even more prone to disappointment than face-to-face meetings as people make judgments based on highly edited information in an online personal ad,” she said. ”For online dating to ’work,’ a person must be prepared that there will be bad dates as well as good dates and persevere.”

And perusing sites with gads of pictures and profiles does not necessarily equate to success. ”There is a lot of evidence that having a lot of options actually causes decision-making to be more difficult,” Frost said. ”When choosing between many options compared to few, people tend to be less committed to the option they do choose and experience higher levels of regret afterward.”

Newton offers two pieces of advice, including using a service that requires a subscription.

34

”You’re going to weed out a lot of losers that way, and a lot of people just looking to hook up for a night,” she said. ”Secondly, write a killer, killer profile that’s not ’I like to walk on the beach,’ because everybody likes to walk on the beach.”

Love at first sight Dr. Suraj Muley, a neurologist at Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, said it appeared harder to fall in love online than in person. He points to research that suggests the first time you look at a person, it takes one-sixteenth of a second to really fall in love, he said. ”Traditionally over generations, that’s how people have fallen in love,” Muley said. ”The brain batteries that are triggered by seeing someone are different than if you have a lot of information about that person and you select that person based on interests and educational backgrounds and so on. I think it’s a different mechanism for falling in love, in a sense, than the true, traditional mechanism.”

Avatars next?

Epstein said true virtual dating was on the way. People will go on dates to museums, amusement parks and restaurants while sitting at their computers or while on mobile devices. Females’ safety concerns would be eliminated, and men wouldn’t have to spend much money, except at first for a possible fee for the services, he said. ”We’re talking about potentially being able to have a lot of fun with someone you don’t know very well and getting to know them in a safe, virtual environment,” Epstein said.

He said that he believed many people would be spending a lot of time in virtual environments that would be much richer than those offered now by sites such as Second Life, a free 3-D virtual world where users can socialize, connect and create using free voice and text chat.

Users will pick their bodies and appearance, he said. ”You could pick a body that’s based on your actual body, or you could make one up,” Epstein said. ”There are still possibilities for deceit, but you really will be interacting with somebody. It’s better than a phone call. It’s even better than a video date because you’re going to be able to interact with them over time in a setting.”

by John Yantis The Arizona Republic Feb. 13, 2011 12:00 AM With improving technology and decreasing stigma, online dating appears nowhere near saturation

How to print on the go with Google Cloud Print (2011-02-15 22:36) CNET’s Antuan Goodwin shows you how to print your documents from anywhere with a smartphone, the Chrome browser, and Google’s Cloud Print service in this How To video.

[EMBED] Today’s smartphones allow a user to pack a ton of processing power and productivity software into a pocket.

A printer, on the other hand, is usually not so portable. Fortunately, you don’t have to drag your printer on the road with you because now you can send your documents to it with Google’s Chrome browser and Cloud Print service. In this CNET How To video, we show you how to use this software and your Android, iPhone, or Blackberry smartphone to print on the go.

By Antuan Goodwill CNet February 15, 2011 http://m.cnet.com/Article.rbml? &nid=20032138 &cid=null &bcid= &bid=-1

35

Pentagon unveils mini ’hummingbird’ drone (2011-02-19 13:37)

The Nano Hummingbird ... the Pentagon’s mini flying spy. Photo: AP/AeroVironment LOS ANGELES - A pocket-size drone dubbed the Nano Hummingbird for the way it flaps its tiny robotic wings has been developed for the Pentagon by a Monrovia, Calif., company as a mini-spy plane capable of maneuvering on the battlefield and in urban areas.

The battery-powered drone was built by AeroVironment Inc. for the Pentagon’s research arm as part of a series of experiments in nanotechnology.

The little flying machine is built to look like a bird for potential use in spy missions.

The Hummingbird is the result of a five-year effort, announced Thursday by the company and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Equipped with a camera, the drone can fly at speeds of up to 11 miles per hour, AeroVironment said. It can hover and fly sideways, backward and forward, as well as go clockwise and counterclockwise, by remote control for about eight minutes.

The quick flight meets the goals set forth by the government to build a flying ”hummingbird-like” aircraft.

It also demonstrates the promise of fielding mini spy planes.

Industry insiders see the technology eventually being capable of flying through open windows or sitting on power lines, capturing audio and video while enemies would be none the wiser.

The next step is likely to be further refinement of the technology, officials said, before decisions are made about whether the drones would be mass-produced and deployed. ”The miniaturization of drones is where it really gets interesting,” said defense expert Peter Singer, author of ”Wired for War,” a book about robotic warfare. ”You can use these things anywhere, put them anyplace, and the target will never even know they’re being watched.”

With a wingspan of 6.5 inches, the mini-drone weighs less than an AA battery. The Hummingbird’s guts are made up of motors, communications systems and a video camera. It is slightly larger than the average hummingbird.

The success of the program ”paves the way for a new generation of aircraft with the agility and appearance of small birds,” Todd Hylton, Hummingbird program manager for the Pentagon’s research arm, said in a statement.

In all, the Pentagon has awarded about $4 million to AeroVironment since 2006 to develop the technology and the drone itself.

[EMBED] 36

by W.J. Hennigan Los Angeles Times Feb. 18, 2011 12:00 AM

Pentagon unveils mini ’hummingbird’ drone

Digital divide pinpointed in survey of online access (2011-02-19 13:58) WASHINGTON - A first-of-its-kind federal survey of online access found that Americans in lower-income and rural areas often have slower Internet connections than users in wealthier communities.

The data, released Thursday by the Commerce Department, also found that 5 to 10 percent of the nation does not have access to connections that are fast enough to download Web pages, photos and videos.

Compiled in an online map that is searchable by consumers - assuming they have a fast enough broadband connection - the survey seems to confirm that there is a digital divide, something experts had suspected but lacked the data to prove.

Extending access to high-speed Internet one of President Barack Obama’s priorities. He has outlined an $18 billion plan to blanket 98 percent of the nation with high-speed mobile broadband connections over five years.

But some experts were disappointed with the study, which was based on advertised maximum speeds submitted by companies such as Verizon, Comcast and AT &T. The Commerce Department didn’t test the speed data, and many experts complained that the survey lacks pricing information, which would enable better comparisons of service across regions.

Still, industry watchers praised the map - which will cost $200 million over five years, funded by the federal economic stimulus program - for shedding light on business practices that have long been murky. Companies closely hold information about where they operate, but the map discloses which kinds of services are available - cable, fiber, DSL and wireless - down to the census block level. Researchers said the map will be an important tool for understanding which populations have access to high-speed Internet. The telecom and cable industries say that they are working to provide high speeds across the country but that the effort takes time. Speed matters, experts say, because consumers with better Internet connections can be more productive and get more out of the Web. The Commerce Department’s telecom policy arm, the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, said 32 percent of U.S. households don’t use the Internet at home, a slight decrease from last year.

Forty percent of rural homes don’t connect to the Web, compared with 30 percent of urban homes, the agency said. Those who aren’t using the Internet say they don’t think it is a necessity and that prices are too high, and about 9 percent of people in rural areas say they don’t have access to high-speed connections, the NTIA said. Often, the poorer areas of the country aren’t offered the fastest download speeds, according to the data.

by Cecilia Kang Washington Post Feb. 19, 2011 12:00 AM Digital divide pinpointed in survey of online access

Facebook adds ’civil union’ as romantic-status option (2011-02-19 14:01) NEW YORK - Jay Lassiter is no longer ”in a relationship.”

Let’s clarify that: Lassiter, a media adviser for political campaigns who lives in Cherry Hill, N.J., is still with his partner of nearly eight years, Greg Lehmkuho. But since Thursday, when Facebook expanded its 37

romantic-status options, Lassiter’s profile there echoes his relationship’s legal status: ”Domestic partnership.”

It may not be a life-altering change. After all, you can call yourself anything you want in a social network.

And Facebook is merely that.

But, Lassiter says, ”I’m no different from all those other Facebook users whose identity is tied up with their Facebook pages, for better or for worse.”

Facebook’s addition of civil unions and domestic partnerships to the list of relationships its users can pick from came after talks with gay-rights organizations, including the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

The social network has ”sent a clear message in support of gay and lesbian couples to users across the globe,” GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios said. ”By acknowledging the relationships of countless loving and committed same-sex couples in the U.S. and abroad, Facebook has set a new standard of inclusion for social media.”

He added that the new status options, available to Facebook users in the U.S., Canada, Britain, France and Australia, will serve as an important reminder that legal marriage is not an option for gay couples in most states.

Only Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Washington, D.C., allow same-sex marriages.

Hawaii will soon become the seventh state to permit civil unions or similar legal recognition for gay couples.

Two years ago, Erik Rueter, 34, proposed to his partner, Robb, despite the fact that in Pennsylvania they cannot marry. They’ve been engaged ever since, and that’s been his Facebook status - until Thursday, when he changed it to domestic partnership.

But Rueter is conflicted about the change. ”Part of me wants to go back to ’engaged’ - because I still am,” he says.

And then another part of Rueter tells him just how powerful and influential Facebook is, with more than 500 million users across the globe. ”Just having the option to say, ’This is what my relationship is’ is a really good thing,” he says.

by Jocelyn Noveck Associated Press Feb. 19, 2011 12:00 AM Facebook adds ’civil union’ as romantic-status option

Why do Google and Facebook both want to buy Twitter? - Telegraph (2011-02-19 14:05)

The re-emergence of rumours that both Google and Facebook are in fresh talks to buy Twitter, two years on from the first wave of acquisition speculation, is not surprising writes Emma Barnett.

Unlike so many hyped start ups, Twitter has continued to grow, in terms of reach, usability and social impact.

And six years on from founding, all three of its founders, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, are still involved with the site s development in some way, which has meant that the service has stayed focused on its core purpose, and until last year, had even resisted commercialising.

Google wants total access to Twitter s data so it can make real-time information an integrated part of its offering and not just an add-on. Since 2009 the search giant has been indexing Twitter users’ tweets to add a real-time element to its search experience. Eighteen months on from that non-exclusive deal, Google has yet to create its own version of real-time search.

And similarly, Facebook, which was rumoured to have been interested in buying Twitter two years ago, would benefit massively from full access to Twitter s rich data hose, in its bid to become the social web, within the web.

38

Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. When Facebook introduced its Twitter-style status update box in 2009, it forced some behavioural change of its users. But it failed to displace Twitter, despite having some 300 million or so more users than the microblogging service. People still turn to Twitter, not Facebook, to update others they barely know, with real time information.

Evan Williams, Twitter s co-founder and former chief executive, has always been clear about the difference between Twitter and Facebook: Twitter is an information network and Facebook is a social network.

And indeed, the way that people use both, has continued to be different, in spite of Facebook engineers best efforts.

If Facebook wants to be the home of all social interactions on the web, it needs to own Twitter s platform, or at least enjoy a deep partnership.

If Google wants to be able to stay ahead of the search game and keep true to its mantra of organising the world s information, it needs to own the fastest disseminator of information out there.

But why would Twitter sell up, especially now, while its value, influence and popularity is growing at an alarming pace?

Twitter executives, at the time of writing, were unavailable for comment.

Analysts believe that two types of web are being created at the moment the information web, led by Google, and the social web, led by Facebook. Twitter, in order to really accelerate its influence, beyond the famous, disenfranchised and tech-savvy, needs to totally permeate and dominate both of those worlds to truly break into the mainstream.

There is the also the financial benefit to think of. According to The Wall Street Journal s report, the early stage talks with Google and Facebook have valued the loss making Twitter at $10 billion. Despite the current chief executive s protestations (Dick Costolo) and Williams and Stone srepeated confirmations, that Twitter is not for sale, that type of potential return, would be difficult for any company s investors or founders to ignore.

by Emma Barnett The Telegraph February 10, 2011 Why do Google and Facebook both want to buy Twitter? - Telegraph

Five iPhone physics puzzlers to topple Angry Birds from its perch (2011-02-19 15:05) Everyone with an iPhone or an Android phone has heard of Angry Birds by now. According to the sales charts, more than a few have actually played it. Part of the game s appeal is its simple controls and physicsminded puzzle scheme that has players firing various kinds of birds at structures to squash pigs hiding within them. But Angry Birds isn t the only game that does physics well, nor is it the only iPhone title that uses slingshots, living projectiles and smashed enemies to score you points. Below we ve compiled five iPhone titles that will push your physics knowledge and puzzle-solving skills to the test, both with and without flying characters.

Topple (Free) 39

It doesn t get more simple or physicsheavy than trying to beat gravity, but that s your goal in Topple, a free game in which you attempt to build the tallest tower you can using blocks of various sizes and shapes. The blocks fall from the top of the screen and require you to position them carefully using touch controls. Topple s towers get out of hand in a hurry, so the game also works-in tilt controls to help you maintain balance while you drag and drop blocks to keep building. You can also rotate blocks for a better fit, and the faces drawn onto the pieces aren t just part of the humorous art style – they ll also provide you clues about whether what you re attempting is working or not. Best of all, this one s a freebie. If you can’t get enough, check out Topple 2 Plus+ (Free).

Finger Physics: Thumb Wars ( $0.99)

Thumb Wars is actually broken into two physics puzzle games – one, in which you manipulate objects and platforms in order to try to get a ball from one side of the screen to another, and another that requires you to create stacks of objects to reach different points on the screen. Both halves of the app are pretty robust and deep, with many puzzles in each that require a lot of precision and care to complete. The pile levels require you to carefully beat gravity for a set amount of time with objects of differing size and shape, while the ball-moving levels will often ask you to place objects around the stage while breaking others. You ll see quite a bit of different challenge in the 90-plus stages you get to play through.

Crayon Physics Deluxe ( $4.99) 40

To move a ball from one side of a level to the other in Crayon Physics, you don t have to just use objects – you have to create some by drawing them with your fingers. Sketch platforms to allow the ball to reach different areas, use blocks to act as counterweights for pulleys and seesaws, and even create axles to make other objects rotate. It s a physics puzzler if ever there was one, requiring not just that you understand the physics behind the puzzle you re looking at, but that you invent the means to solve it and do a halfway decent job with your drawings. Couple the challenging levels with the fun crayon art style, and Crayon Physics becomes a hard game to put down.

Fragger ( $0.99)

Using an arcing targeting system similar to what s found in Angry Birds, each of Fragger s puzzle stages asks you to throw grenades to take out terrorists inside structures. You ll have to determine the angle and power of each grenade throw to reach all the terrorists, and the fewer grenades you use to do so, the higher your score will be at the end of each stage. Some terrorists will need to be blown up within a building; others you can just peg with a grenade to knock them off their platforms into chasms below. But each stage is a puzzle 41

in which the enemies don t move, just like in Angry Birds. Fragger supports Game Center for leaderboards and achievements, and it also receives some fairly frequent free updates with additional stages.

Fun With Death ( $0.99)

In some ways, Fun With Death is a better game than Angry Birds. It requires more strategic thinking than its counterpart, because instead of just knocking down a building and squashing the enemies inside, Fun With Death requires you to avoid squashing some of the people inside the structure, while still getting rid of others. As Death, your goal is to clear out the Underworld-bound red souls while protecting the blue souls heading for Heaven, across 60 levels. You do that by flinging demons toward piles of different materials with the souls on them, as well as by placing different objects around the levels in order to help flying demons avoid some souls while targeting others. Fun With Death is a great outgrowth of the Angry Birds formula, adding complexity while maintaining the same fun that the game s more popular counterpart is capable of producing.

by Phil Hornshaw Appolicious Yahoo Games February 15, 2011 Five iPhone physics puzzlers to topple Angry Birds from its perch

Top 5 Laptops Around $600.00 (2011-02-20 08:53)

Farnoosh Torabi rounds up five hot laptops for shoestring budgets.

42

[EMBED] Top 5 Laptops Around $600.00

Freescale IPO to help pay down debt (2011-02-20 14:53) Austin-based Freescale Semiconductor Inc., which employs about 3,000 in the Phoenix area, wants to be a public company again.

The manufacturer recently filed a statement with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise up to $1.15 billion through an initial public offering.

Freescale is seeking the proceeds to pay down $7.6 billion in debt as of the end of 2010. The company has $1.2 billion of senior unsecured notes due in 2014. It also has a loan of about $600 million coming due in 2012.

Freescale was spun out of Motorola Inc. in 2004. After the move, it was a public company until 2006 when it was bought for $17.6 billion in a private-equity-led leveraged buyout that included TPG Capital, Blackstone Group and Carlyle Group. The deal left the company with a heavy debt load.

The proposed IPO has done nothing to improve the company’s credit ratings. Fitch Ratings said last week it believes the deal would not affect ratings. ”While a successful IPO would provide up to $1.15 billion of gross proceeds and enable the company to further chip away at significant debt maturities, Fitch continues to believe Freescale will be challenged to generate free cash flow sufficient to organically meet remaining intermediate-term debt maturities,” the company said in a statement.

Any boost in ratings will hinge on Freescale achieving meaningful revenue growth and cash flow over the next few years to reduce debt levels, Fitch said.

The ratings agency currently gives Freescale an issuer default rating of ”CCC,” which falls into the category of ”substantial credit risk” as defined by Fitch’s website. The rating opines an entity’s relative vulnerability to default on financial obligations, according to Fitch.

Brian Matas, vice president of market research at Scottsdale-based IC Insights, said the IPO may benefit Freescale.

43

”Anytime you can get some money to maybe help bolster your business or some of the direction you want to go, it’s probably a good thing,” he said, adding the key will be a successful plan to put its microprocessors into different markets.

Freescale is the largest U.S.-based producer of automotive electronics. ”The automotive market is actually doing pretty well this year,” Matas said. ”It might be one of the stronger points in the semiconductor industry in terms of end-use applications.”

Freescale said it enlisted Citi, Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank Securities and J.P. Morgan to place its stock.

An improving global economy and increased demand for automobiles, networking equipment and consumer electronics helped produce substantially improved fourth-quarter results for Freescale. The company reported in January that operating income was a positive $17 million, compared with a negative $261 million in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Still, restructuring charges of $145 million carved away the profit and left the company with a $102 million net loss for the quarter. That was an improvement, though, over the $114 million loss posted in the same quarter a year earlier. Revenue grew to $1.18 billion from $951 million.

by John Yantis The Arizona Republic Feb. 20, 2011 12:00 AM Freescale IPO to help pay down debt

’Unfriend’ your real estate clients on Facebook | Inman News (2011-02-21 08:02)

For the last several years, everyone has been pounding the drum, ”You have to be on Facebook.” While ”friending” your clients on Facebook seems like a good idea, given some recent changes in Facebook policy it may be time to ”unfriend” them instead.

There’s no doubt that Facebook can be a powerful tool for building client connection. It can also be a great tool for creating groups and building an online presence in your local market area. Nevertheless, there are some serious problems you may not know about that can jeopardize how you’re handling your personal and your clients’ confidentiality.

First, if you post an ad for one of your listings on your profile page, you have violated the Facebook terms of use and can have your account cancelled. You are only allowed to post information about your listings on fan pages, business pages and Facebook Marketplace.

Second, if you’re playing any of the Facebook games provided by third parties, often these games are datamining schemes. The designers harvest the information about you and your friends and sell them to third parties. Failure to block these applications means that even if you’re not involved in playing these games, if any of your friends are, your information may be harvested due to their activities.

44

There are two even more serious issues. On Jan. 26, 2011, Barbara Ortutay wrote an article describing yet another change in Facebook policies. ”Facebook users who check in to a store or click the ’like’ button for a brand may soon find those actions are retransmitted on their friends’ pages as a ’Sponsored Story’ paid for by advertisers. Currently there is no way for users to decline this feature.”

In other words, if have clients in your Facebook database of friends and you click ”like” for a particular brand, Facebook may display that choice as a ”sponsored story” on your client’s page without your permission. To your client, it will look as if you put a paid commercial for a company on their page. Since there is no way to opt out of this feature, this means that you need to stop ”liking” various brands on Facebook.

For example, you might have a friend who is an agent at another brokerage. You post a ”like” about something your friend did. If your friend takes out a Facebook ad, it’s conceivable that your ”like” would now become a ”sponsored story” that endorses your friend as an agent – not such a great move for your business.

In addition to these issues, on Jan. 17 PC Magazine reported on another potential problem. Facebook is now allowing app developers to request access to users’ contact information, including their address and mobile phone number.

Although Facebook assures users that they must explicitly grant app developers permission to access their contact information, at least one security expert is concerned that they will be tricked into doing so. ”It won’t take long for scammers to take advantage of this new facility, to use for their own criminal ends,” warns Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Internet security provider Sophos Ltd. It’s one thing to have your office phone number on Facebook. We all want potential clients to be able to reach us easily. On the other hand, it’s something else entirely to have our mobile numbers distributed to third parties. Here’s why.

Have you received any spam text messages on your mobile phone? How do you think they got the number?

There’s a good chance your data was sold to one of these third-party advertisers either through Facebook, Google, or a host of other companies that collect and distribute this data.

To reduce your exposure, PC Magazine recommended the following course of action: ”Users should delete their phone numbers and addresses from their profile information.”

While this may seem extreme, it probably is an excellent idea. The challenge here is that we are in an entirely new realm and there aren’t a lot of guidelines to help Realtors navigate through these issues.

For example, what are your obligations in terms of protecting your clients’ private information? Do you need a disclosure that says that if a client becomes your Facebook friend that Facebook may distribute their contact information including their cell phone number to third-party advertisers? Could you be sued for violating client confidentiality?

The bottom line here is that if you are doing a transaction with a Facebook friend, the smart move may be to unfriend your clients immediately. For friends who do become your clients, the moment you enter into an agency relationship, you may need to remove that relationship from Facebook as well.

If your clients ask about your decision, explain to them that you are concerned about protecting their privacy and that you will be communicating with them either through a transaction tracking platform, e-mail, phone or text messaging.

While Facebook can be great for staying in touch, having fun and even building your business, it may not be your friend when it comes to your clients who are also your Facebook friends.

by Bernice Ross Inman News February 21, 2011 ’Unfriend’ your real estate clients on Facebook | Inman News 45

UberTwitter & Twidroyd Are Back Online (2011-02-21 09:13)

After being briefly banned for policy violations, UberMedia apps UberSocial (formerly UberTwitter) and Twidroyd, the popular Android Twitter client, are back online.

The ban began just two days ago. At the time, a Twitter rep told us the applications were suspended from using Twitter s API for multiple violations and explained, These violations include, but aren t limited to, a privacy issue with private direct messages longer than 140 characters, trademark infringement, and changing the content of users tweets in order to make money.

After retooling the apps over the weekend to come into line with Twitter s policies, UberMedia CEO Bill Grosstweeted, Happy to say that UberSocial and Twidroyd are back online.

The change from UberTwitter to UberSocial was one of the adjustments the company made to get the products back online expeditiously; the previous name had long been in violation of Twitter s trademark on its own company name.

UberMedia is widely rumored to have acquired popular Twitter client TweetDeck; however, neither party could confirm the acquisition to us, and some sources say the sale isn t yet complete. Whether TweetDeck is in violation of trademark is unknown; but Twitter doesn t yet seem anxious to go after the many third-party products with tweet in their name.

by Jolie O’Dell Mashable February 21, 2011 UberTwitter & Twidroyd Are Back Online

Search + Social: A Growing Relationship - Search Engine Watch (SEW) (2011-02-22 23:54) With the explosive growth of major social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, marketers have gained a whole new range of channels from which to broadcast their messaging, engage with customers, and drive sales opportunities.

Businesses are quickly realizing that optimizing and leveraging these social channels are only going to grow as an integral part of their marketing efforts, in addition to their existing search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.

Businesses can’t afford to ignore social, namely because this is where consumers are spending most of their time. Recent research from Nielsen shows that more online users are spending their time on social media networks and blogs than on any other online channel – 25 percent of collective time spent online.

46

Search engines are recognizing this shift in user behavior, too, and reacting accordingly. Over the past year, there has been an increasing shift in the development of social features from both Google and Bing.

Recently, both Google and Bing confirmed they use social signals from Facebook and Twitter as relevancy indicators. We’re seeing a connection between search and social in terms of marketing budget spend, as well.

Second only to website optimization, marketers in a recent MarketingSherpa survey listed search and social as the top marketing tactics they plan to increase their budget for in 2011.

Consumers are interacting on an increasingly social level, and the online conversations they’re having are directly impacting search results. In 2011, businesses must make sure they’re at the intersection of search and social.

Are Search and Social Connected?

Google and Bing have confirmed that ”social” is now a part of their ranking algorithm, but you can see it for yourself just by running a query search on either engine.

Bing proved ahead of the social game when they announced their incorporation of Facebook’s ”Like” data into search results last year.

Google also waded into the social waters, adding real-time results into SERPs in the form of relevant, recent tweets. Just last week, Google announced updates to their search results, which now incorporate three new layers of social integration including Twitter, Quora and Flickr. Not only are consumers seeing tweets, shares, ”Likes,” blogs, and other relevant posts from people within their inner social circles, but these results are also to be displayed higher in search queries.

Now more than ever, search is deeply aligned with social.

Nevertheless, there’s a lot of skepticism around Facebook as a marketing channel, especially for B2B companies. We recently ran an analysis to try to determine whether there’s a correlation between social signals and search engine rank.

Our research showed a strong correlation between search engine rank and Facebook Likes. Our research showed, for example, that pages with more Likes rank higher than pages with fewer number of Likes. In short, Facebook matters. The content you post to your company Facebook page and the Likes and comments you encourage from your fans has an impact on your rank.

47

Is It Only About Social?

One of the latest metrics we’ve seen from search engines that contributes to their ranking algorithms is page load speed. We’re seeing clear correlation between ranking on page one, and having a faster page. So, yes, ranking isn’t just about social.

It’s about more than just social; the search landscape and SERPs are frequently changing due to other factors. The best way for marketers to recognize these new factors and stay abreast of these changes is by measuring marketing efforts in real time and optimizing to align with theses new metrics.

As you execute your SEO campaign, keep your eye on existing metrics, as well as new ones and make sure you track what’s important.

What Do I Need to Track in Real Time?

When choosing your tactics and strategy, focus on the metrics that matter and keep measuring in real time how they affect your business. Here are three tips on key indicators you should track, measure, and analyze: Tip 1: SEO Indicators • Keyword Ranks: Keep an eye on how you’re doing on your specific keywords on Google, Bing, internationally, locally, etc.

• Page Scores: What do you need to do to get your pages noticed by search engines?

• Link Opportunities: Make sure you’re going after the right link opportunities and getting links to align with your keywords and page content.

Tip 2: Social Indicators • Track Likes, shares, and comments on Facebook, as well as retweets and followers on Twitter.

• Make sure these are coming from users with authority and social influence.

Tip 3: Business Indicators • Monitor page views, visitors, conversion and revenue.

• Tie back SEO and social indicators to business metrics and results. This will give you a full understanding of how effective your campaign is.

48

Search Is Paying Attention to Social, You Should Too These are the preliminary best practices, as we know Google and Bing will be continually running new experiments. While search engines may vary their approaches to social integration, it’s clear that search engines, consumers and marketers are investing more resources in social.

Stay ahead of the curve – and your competitors – and make sure your social media marketing efforts are in line with the social signals Google and Bing are looking at, and that you’re tracking in real time.

by Erez Barak SearchEngineWatch.com February 22, 2011 http://searchenginewatch.com/3641925

3 Tools for Optimizing Page Speed [Best of SEW 2010 #9] - Search Engine Watch (SEW) (2011-02-23 06:30)

For the past couple of months, Google has been telling the world thatpage speed is an increasingly important aspect of Web sites. TheGoogle Speed site which has the laudable goal of making Web browsing as fast as turning the pages of a magazine has been featured in several posts on their Webmaster blog, and features links to various free tools that they, and others, have made available for the masses. More Popular SEO Columns from 2010 • How to Optimize Your Videos for SEO • Google Instant, SEO, and the Future of Search • 8 Things Website Owners Can Learn From Gordon Ramsay So, as someone responsible for a site, if you suspect that you may have page load issues, what’s your first stop? Where should you go to get an overall idea of your site performance, short of opening every page of your site while holding a stopwatch?

The first place that many of us will start is in our Google Webmaster Tools account. Log in, click on Labs, then Site Performance. There, you’ll see site performance data based on feedback from their crawlers.

click to enlarge On the page you’ll also see a sample of 10 pages with the load times for each. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go any deeper than that. But at least you’ll be able to see at least a couple of bad performing pages to further investigate using other tools.

YSlow and Google’s Page Speed tool (which both require the Firebug add-on for Firefox to be installed prior to their installation) both appear to show the same information when compared, so my reason for picking YSlow over Page Speed is simply aesthetic. YSlow provides a grade for each page you review and provides grades for each element examined, whereas Page Speed returns a green check, yellow triangle, or red warning symbol along with a score out of 100. You may prefer Page Speed, but because there isn’t much difference, we’ll walk through YSlow.

49

When using YSlow, simply click on the text next to the grade for each element, which details the issues detected for that particular topic on that page, whether it’s the placement of JavaScript, the zipping of content, or the number of HTTP requests on a page.

But that’s not all. You can check out statistics on the page components (e.g., .js files, .css files, Flash files, etc.) to see which files directly impact load times.

The AOL Page Test tool is a more visual representation of the page load, as it provides a waterfall graphic showing the load times for every element on the page. For each element you can see the DNS lookup time, connection time, time to first byte, and the actual content download time, which can alert you to issues with individual elements (i.e., a JavaScript file on another domain that takes a long while to load should most likely be placed directly on your domain). The green vertical line represents when the page rendering began, while the blue vertical line represents the completion of the page rendering process (although some elements on the page may not fully render for a few seconds beyond that, as you’ll see on the chart when you check it out for your site).

In the configuration settings for this tool, you can set it to run each page twice, so it can show you the effect that caching content on your site from a prior visit has on your load times.

50

With page load optimization tools, it’s ideal to have multiple options available (and even better, to have multiplefree options available). But you can generate an actionable list of performance enhancements for your site by using these tools. If you have some favorites that I haven’t mentioned, feel free to let us know in the comments.

by Simon Heseltine SearchEngingeWatch.com December 21, 2011 3 Tools for Optimizing Page Speed [Best of SEW 2010 #9] - Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Now even Rolls-Royce is going electric - Drive On: A conversation about the cars and trucks we drive - USATODAY.com (2011-02-23 07:57)

The Rolls-Royce Phantom is going electric. You’d think that a big, heavy Rolls-Royce would be the last car to be a candidate for electric power. Well, given how many announcements we’ve made in the last year for electric vehicles, maybe it is. Rolls will show the 102EX, a one-off, fully electric powered Phantom, at the Geneva Motor Show on March 1.

51

”We have engineered the world’s first battery electric vehicle for the ultra-luxury segment,” said CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös, speaking from the company’s headquarters in Goodwood. Unlike other cars, Rolls-Royces are so heavy already that adding hundreds of extra pounds for batteries probably won’t matter much to performance. But the car conceivably won’t be able to travel far on electric power alone. Rolls plans to send the concept 102EX around the world to gauge customer interest. Rolls will even let customers get behind the wheel. Rolls, for now, is specific: There are no plans to develop a production version.

by Chris Woodyard USA Today February 20, 2011 Now even Rolls-Royce is going electric - Drive On: A conversation about the cars and trucks we drive USATODAY.com

Tickets, coupons among uses for tap-to-pay phones (2011-02-23 08:15) BARCELONA, Spain - Cellphones are usually used to communicate with people far away. This year, they’ll get the ability to do the opposite: communicate with things that are close enough to touch.

It may not sound immediately useful, but phones will get some surprising capabilities with the addition of chips for so-called Near Field Communications, a wireless technology with a range intentionally limited to just a few inches.

The phones will be able to talk to payment terminals designed for ”smart cards,” replacing credit and debit cards. They could be used as mass transit passes. You could tap two phones together to exchange contact information.

Or you could tap a ”smart tag” on a poster, product or sticker to get your phone to do something, such as retrieving information from the Internet or placing a call to the product’s customer support line. Yankee Group analyst Nick Holland likens these tags to the links that take us from Web page to Web page, only now they’re in the real world.

Adding NFC is like adding a whole new capability on the level of GPS navigation or a camera, Holland said.

The industry has been talking about including NFC in phones for years, mainly to turn them into ”electronic wallets.” Beyond a few trials, nothing much has happened, except in Japan and Hong Kong, where these systems have caught on for mass-transit ticketing.

But at the world’s largest cellphone trade show, held last week in Barcelona, Spain, it was clear that the log-jam has loosened, in part because NFC chips are now cheaper. Millions of NFC-equipped phones will be in consumer hands in the U.S. and Europe before the end of the year.

Jim Balsillie, the co-CEO of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd., said at the show that ”many if not most” BlackBerrys will have NFC chips this year. Google Inc.’s Nexus S already has one, and the company’s latest Android software for that and other phones has NFC support. Nokia Corp., the world’s largest maker of phones, has committed to putting NFC chips in all its next-generation smartphones.

Based on job postings at Apple Inc., there’s speculation the new iPhone model due this summer will have an NFC chip. Apple wouldn’t comment.

NFC turns the limitation of short-range communications into an advantage. When an NFC terminal senses an NFC-equipped phone, it knows that’s because the user is holding it right up close and wants to interact in some way - for instance, paying for a can of Coke.

That means a lot of the complexity that comes with establishing wireless - such as logging on to a Wi-Fi hotspot or ”pairing” Bluetooth devices with each other - can be dispensed with. Tap and something happens.

But your phone will probably still ask you if you really want that can of Coke.

The simplicity of NFC also lets it cut through the complications of existing mobile payment systems, which let you send money through an app or text message.

by Peter Svensson Associated Press Feb. 22, 2011 12:00 AM Tickets, coupons among uses for tap-to-pay phones 52

Stay safe with NYC Condom Finder iPhone app (2011-02-23 08:33)

A new twist to Safe Sex! NYC Condom Finder by NYC Health is a free app for the iPhone that will help you locate free condoms throughout the New York metropolitan area. Now it’s easier than ever to find a free condom to protect yourself from sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, and unwanted pregnancy. The NYC Health Department wants you to be safe if you live or visit New York City. And it’s doing its part by distributing free condoms throughout the area.

With more than 3,000 condom-distribution locations, the iPhone makes it easy to find one when you need it the most. ”This is the latest tool to ensure New Yorkers have access to free condoms wherever they are in the city,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, New York City health commissioner. This is part of an initiative that started in 2007. It helps to reach a core part of the young population. The NYC Condom Facebook page also has information about how to download the application.

The app allows users to determine their location through either the built-in GPS in their iPhones or by manually entering an address. You can simply select the borough you want, and a map will pop up with pushpin locations throughout that area. Or if you want to look at all the locations by name, you can list them that way. It’s a clean app, very neatly organized, and easy to use. No frills or extras, but it does give you a complete list of dos and don’ts for condom usage. Additional information about the NYC Condom Program is available.

The only downside of the app is that once you select a location, all that is given is the address and hours of operation. It would be nice if there was a link to that location’s website, especially if additional services are offered.

by Nick Nebelsky Yahoo Health February 22, 2011 Stay safe with NYC Condom Finder iPhone app

Pandora + Rdio = Soundtrckr (2011-02-26 06:07)

53

Want to make your music-listening experience more social, without paying a cent? Well, then, Soundtrckr is right up your proverbial alley.

Soundtrckr, which launched a few months ago and had its official send-off recently, is a service for the desktop, iPhone [iTunes link], iPod touch, Windows Phone 7, Google Chrome and Nokia that marries music discovery with social and geolocation.

Once installing the free app on one s phone, a user has access to 10 million songs from indie and major labels (that s comparable with MOG s offering), as well as the ability to interact with friends.

Music subscription service Rdio s major selling point has been its social aspect, allowing users to follow friends and their listening habits. Soundtrckr kicks that feature up a notch allowing you to chat with friends in-app, share music on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, as well as check out stations created by folks in your vicinity.

Still, unlike Rdio, one is not privy to on-demand listening nor offline caching, which makes the service closer to Pandora or the current iteration of Slacker Radio (although Slacker does have offline listening) when it comes to music itself.

According to founder and CEO Daniele Calabrese, the service will soon be available in eight languages, as well as on Android, BlackBerry PlayBook and the HP TouchPad.

The iPhone app is a little on the crashy side (although the desktop version is super slick), but it s still a pretty fun way to discover/listen to music. Check out the gallery below for a closer look at the user interface which is rather clean and simple to navigate.

View 54

As One Page Âť Image 2 of 4 Home Screen

by Brenna Ehrlich Mashable February 23, 2011 Pandora + Rdio = Soundtrckr

PayPal opens 2nd Valley site (2011-02-26 10:32) PayPal, an online-payment service that facilitates nearly 18 percent of all global online commerce, celebrated the grand opening Wednesday of its Price Road customer-service and operations center.

PayPal, which is hiring hundreds for its Chandler operations, occupies the first two floors of Chandler Echelon just south of the Santan Freeway. It plans to grow into the top two floors and ultimately house 2,000 55

employees by the end of the year. It has 500 now.

The company is hiring people for operations, customer service, training, technology and management. Potential workers can apply at ebaycareers.com.

The building, which houses customer service, operations and technology, serves PayPal customers in North America and Australia. ”Arizona can be a magnet for business expansion,” said Gov. Jan Brewer, who cut the ribbon Wednesday with PayPal President Scott Thompson.

Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny described the presence of PayPal as critical boost to the local and regional economy. ”PayPal is recognized for its exceptional work environment and commitment to employees and the community,” the mayor said. ”We couldn’t ask for a better partnership.”

PayPal since 2006 has had operations in Scottsdale, where 200 employees support the business in product development, infrastructure design, engineering and engineering support. It also has operations in Austin; near Omaha, Neb., and Baltimore; Dublin, Ireland; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Chennai, India; Singapore; and Tel Aviv, Israel.

For his part, Thompson praised Arizonans. ”I’ve worked with people around the globe, and the state of Arizona and the city of Chandler have been absolutely top-notch from the beginning with us,” he said.

PayPal chose Chandler for several reasons, including the quality of the building, the commute for employees, proximity to its other offices in Scottsdale, favorable weather and a time zone to support customer operations, spokeswoman Sara Parker said.

PayPal revenue in 2010 was $3.4 billion, up 23 percent from the previous year, she said. The company has 94 million active registered accounts.

The 188,000-square-foot building received a silver LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for interior construction.

It will have a 5,000-square-foot gym with exterior access so employees can use it even when they’re not working. Although the building has some cubicles, many of the employees will sit at workstations on serpentineshaped counters, which give the illusion of more space.

The building contains what the company calls ”fueling stations,” with soda machines and Seattle’s Best Coffee, and meeting and training rooms, with videoconferencing capability.

PayPal has accounts in 190 markets and 24 currencies around the world.

by Luci Scott The Arizona Republic Feb. 24, 2011 12:00 AM PayPal opens 2nd Valley site

Apple shareholders nix CEO talk (2011-02-26 10:42) CUPERTINO, Calif. - Apple shareholders rejected a proposal Wednesday that called for the company to disclose a succession plan for its chief executive.

The rejection came a month after Apple CEO Steve Jobs went on an indefinite medical leave for unspecified problems - an absence that could be related to his previous bout with pancreatic cancer or his 2009 liver transplant. Jobs did not attend the meeting, which was led by Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook and general counsel Bruce Sewell.

Apple Inc. announced the preliminary vote on the non-binding proposal at its annual shareholders meeting at the company’s Cupertino headquarters. The company did not provide the voting breakdown.

The Central Laborers’ Pension Fund, which owns 11,484 shares of Apple stock, called for a succession plan to ensure ”a smooth transition” in case Jobs leaves as CEO. The proposal didn’t ask Apple to name whom it planned to appoint, but it wanted the company to come up with a three-year plan for changing leadership and an emergency plan. The plan would be reviewed annually 56

by Apple, and a report on it would be shared with stockholders.

Like many shareholder proposals, even if this one passed, it would only have served as a formal request that Apple share its succession plan, not a requirement.

Apple, which advised shareholders to vote against the proposal, said it already conducts such planning internally, but warned that its disclosure would reveal confidential information and hurt the company’s ability to recruit and retain executives.

Jennifer O’Dell, spokeswoman for the Laborers’ International Union of North America, spoke in favor of the proposal, saying Apple has a responsibility to its shareholders to have a clear CEO succession plan in place, whether a transition is ”planned in advance or a sudden decision.”

After the proposal was defeated, O’Dell said it was likely something that would be presented again in future years.

But shareholders may feel the same then as they do now. Chris Kuhlman, a shareholder from Los Angeles, voted against the proposal. He said Jobs had laid the foundation for Apple, and he trusted that the company would make the right decision about a successor when the time comes. ”Apple will be just fine,” he said.

The meeting was also an opportunity for shareholders to ask questions about Apple and its ailing CEO. But while the audience peppered management with questions about the health of its supply chain and competition between the iPhone and smart phones using Google Inc.’s Android operating software, there was little talk of Jobs.

Shareholder Kirk DeBernardi said shareholders had respect for the CEO and didn’t come to the meeting to ”badger management with questions” about his health.

Also on Wednesday, Apple e-mailed invitations to a media event in San Francisco. The company was expected to unveil the second generation of its wildly successful media tablet.

by Rachel Metz Associated Press Feb. 24, 2011 12:00 AM Apple shareholders nix CEO talk

57

Networking site links golf, business (2011-02-26 11:31)

Trent Moller knows the value of networking. With 13 years of sales experience, he also knows how tough cold-calling can be. ”It’s no fun on both ends,” the Peoria resident said.

He believes he has a solution.

This month, Moller launched Green Fairways Networking. It’s like match.com for potential business allies, who could tee off on the golf course.

Anyone with a product or an idea to sell can sign up on the company website (greenfairwaysnetworking.com), posting information about themselves and what they’re selling. Other business professionals who want more information about the product or idea can also sign up as potential customers.

If the potential customer or VIP is interested in hearing more, the salesperson or host takes the VIP out for a round of golf to talk about the concept and develop a business relationship.

The Republic chatted with Moller about the concept and why he believes it’s better than cold-calling to snag a deal.

Question: How did you come up with the idea?

Answer: I was supposed to make cold calls one day and not being excited about the prospect of calling mindlessly for four hours, I kind of just thought to myself, ”I’d rather pay for a round of golf and take a potential customer golfing. That would be a better use of my time.”

Q: Tell me more about the concept.

A: The hosts and the VIPs can sign up and search for potential customers or sellers. As a seller, I can search the criteria of the person I want to meet, be it someone in the financial industry or hospitality or anything.

I could search for a person by their position in the company or by their location. So, I can tailor my search to fit my needs. The VIPs will only be identified by a user name, so they don’t have to reveal themselves unless they want to physically meet a person for a round of golf. But if they do, then the sellers at least know they have a potential customer who’s all ears.

As a VIP, by signing up for this, I know the salesperson is more legitimate if they’re willing to take me golfing. As a salesperson, I know I have a better chance of selling something if I have that much time with them.

58

Q: Doesn’t golf-course networking already happen?

A: Golf and business is a pretty good marriage, but no one’s doing it like this. The kind of networking you see on the golf course typically is where people take those who are already their customers out for a round of golf or do meetings with them. But as far as meeting on the golf course for the first time, that doesn’t really happen. This is a more strategic way to meet someone. This is also different from attending networking events because in those you have to sift through a lot of people before hitting the right ones. Through this website, you can network strategically.

Q: What’s the miracle of the golf course?

A: Golf is a great sport and a golf course is a great environment to get to know someone. You’re together with them for four hours, doing something you enjoy. It’s a lot different from being at a Suns game or a concert because there you’re more focused on that event.

In golf, you’re with someone in a cart, you’re enjoying your day outside. And you can get to know someone’s character even by the way they play the game.

by Sonu Munshi The Arizona Republic Feb. 26, 2011 12:00 AM Networking site links golf, business

Cox offering subscribers caller ID for TVs (2011-02-27 12:58)

In its latest initiative to blend technology across multiple mediums, Atlanta-based Cox Communications has announced it will soon unveil television caller ID. True to its name, metro Phoenix customers who bundle Cox’s phone and cable services will be alerted on their TV screens when they have an incoming call.

The caller’s name and phone number will appear in the upper left-hand corner of the TV, large enough for a viewer to read, but small enough that it won’t obstruct the view of the program they’re watching. ”The customer’s entertainment experience is really starting to blend together,” said Josh Nelson, vice president of information and network technology.

Although Cox did not provide a specific rollout date, it said customers who subscribe to its phone and cable services should expect the upgrade to occur in the next few weeks.

The change will be automatic and will require no additional installations, Nelson said. TV caller ID is free for Cox subscribers, he added.

Cox also recently rolled out so-called ”zone channels.” The channels - 897, 898 and 899 - correspond with a content theme, such as news, sports and kids programs.

When a customer chooses one of the channels, for example, news (897), they are directed to a tiled screen with several windows. Each of those tiles displays live content as it is being displayed by the different stations.

If a customer scrolls over one of the tiles, the volume automatically switches on.

Cox’s TV caller ID and zone channels are the latest in several upgrades the company has made to its television services. In late 2010, the company launched a redesigned channel guide.

Nelson said consumers should expect to see additional rollouts of new services in 2011.

by Megan Neighbor The Arizona Republic Feb. 27, 2011 12:00 AM Cox offering subscribers caller ID for TVs

59

Motorola Xoom review – Engadget (2011-02-27 21:23)

As we put rubber to road on our Motorola Xoom review, it’s important to note that it was only a matter of time before the Android army delivered a proper iPad competitor. Moto’s partnership with Google (and use of the 3.0 version of its mobile operating system, Honeycomb), has made that assumed inevitability a very serious reality. There can be little question that the Xoom is certainly a contender for the hearts and minds of potential tablet buyers in the market. Besides boasting that fancy new software (a completely redesigned experience masterminded by the man behind webOS, Matias Duarte), the Xoom is equipped with formidable hardware. The 1GHz, NVIDIA Tegra 2-based slate boasts a sizable 1GB of DDR2 RAM, 32GB of internal storage, a 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800 capacitive display, 3G connectivity (Verizon on our review unit), along with front and rear facing cameras, HD video capability, and loads of wireless options. Not only is the Xoom clearly competitive (and frankly, more stacked) than most of its competition, Motorola has attempted to futureproof the device by offering a free hardware upgrade down the road which will give the tablet access to Big Red’s 4G LTE network. Of course, all this power comes with a cost... literally. With a list price off contract of $799, the Xoom is quite a pricey piece of technology to own. Still, with all that’s packed inside – and more importantly with what Google has done on the software side – the Xoom could represent the next stage of tablet evolution. Is it time to take the plunge? Read on for our definitive answer in the full Engadget review!

Motorola Xoom review gallery 60

Hardware

The Xoom is a handsomely built tablet, though at a glance, you’ll think you’ve seen this before. Maybe it’s that little can be done within the constraints of the tablet form factor (or Motorola isn’t really trying), but the general shape and build of the Xoom comes off looking just a teensy bit like the iPad’s longer, more dangerous cousin. The back and sides of the device are a similar, machined metal (though Verizon’s version is painted a matte black, which is a real fingerprint magnet), the corners are similarly curved, and the front is, of course, all screen. That’s not to say the Xoom isn’t good looking – it is – but there isn’t much original going on with the general industrial design that’s at play here. And that’s okay by us.

At 9.8 inches wide by 6.6 inches tall (with a thickness of a half inch), the device isn’t massive (albeit a little unwieldy when held in portrait), and its 1.5 pound weight gives it heft without killing your arms – though it still strains your muscles a bit if you’re holding the tablet up for an extended period of time.

The Xoom is clearly meant to be used in landscape mode more than portrait (though it can be rotated any way you prefer). If you’re holding the tablet in that orientation, you’ll find the front facing camera sitting dead-center between the Motorola and Verizon logos along the top of the glass display. On the left side of the device, there are two volume buttons; along the top is a slot for a future LTE SIM and microSD card (more on that in a moment); on the bottom you’ll find a Micro USB and mini HDMI jack, along with dock sensors. Around the back of the device, Motorola has weirdly chosen to place the power / sleep button next to the camera lens and flash – and those components are flanked by stereo speakers. We had a lot of issues with both the volume buttons and power button on the device; we found the volume keys difficult to find and use as they’re extremely shallow and placed right next to a notch in the casing of the device. The power button was even worse; we didn’t mind the placement so much, but like the volume buttons the single, small circle is extremely shallow – and worse, it got stuck a number of times when we were using it! Instead of 61

waking the device up or putting it to sleep, we were prompted to shut down the Xoom. Hopefully this is just a random issue with our unit, but it didn’t give us warm and fuzzy feelings about the build quality.

Internals / display / sound quality / battery life

As we said in the intro, the guts of the Xoom are more than competitive – and performance on the device was really quite brisk. We did experience some slowdown when transferring files from our computer or jumping quickly between lots of apps, but we were blown away by the robustness and speed of applications like the browser and some of the included games. The general responsiveness of the UI and touch reaction was inline with the best the iPad exhibits. Besides that Tegra 2 CPU, 1GB of RAM, and 32GB of internal storage, the device is equipped with WiFi 802.11b/g/n (2.4GHz and 5GHz), Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, Verizon’s EV-DO Rev. A, along with GPS, a light sensor, and an accelerometer. As we said in the intro, the device can be upgraded to use Verizon’s LTE network. That upgrade will come in the form of a hardware swap which either Verizon or Motorola will have to do, meaning your tablet will go into the shop at some point (at least, that’s what Motorola reps told us). Strangely, there’s a microSD slot present on the device, but it’s non-functioning at this point. When we pressed Motorola, the company made it sound like it was waiting on a software update from Google to enable the slot. Very strange stuff. What that means for right now is that you can buy a 32GB tablet... and that’s it.

The display on the Xoom is slightly larger than the iPad’s 9.7-inch screen, and higher resolution (1280 x 800 to Apple’s 1024 x 768). The aspect ratio is substantially different as well, meaning that the Xoom feels a lot longer (or taller) than the iPad. In general, we felt portrait use was slightly uncomfortable given the size, but not in any way a dealbreaker. Though the screen does look nice, pixel density seemed to suffer – a situation that was particularly evident when using the Google Books application. Still, the Xoom’s display is more than capable at making game and video content look clear and crisp. One note, however – Motorola’s auto-brightness controls seem a little extreme to us here, forcing us to manually adjust the brightness most of the time. Hopefully a software update will come along which softens the severity with which it dims the screen; it was simply too dark for our tastes.

On the sound side of things, the Xoom could produce reasonably clear audio at a mid-level volume, but 62

cranking the tablet up created some pretty nasty distortion on basic sounds, like the email notifications. We had to reduce the volume a number of times when we felt that the levels were actually doing damage to the speakers; we’re all for loud, but it seems like Motorola (typically very solid in the audio department) might have bitten off more than it could chew here.

Battery life on the Xoom was excellent. Beyond excellent, actually – some of the best performance we’ve seen on a slate. Running a video on loop with the screen set at 65 percent brightness, we were able to get playback for nearly eight and a half hours (8:20 to be exact). Motorola claims up to ten, so we weren’t far off the mark at all. We had a few background tasks going on, and both WiFi and 3G radios were active. We could easily see maximizing this if you’re in airplane mode with a slightly lower brightness setting.

Battery Life Motorola Xoom 8:20 Dell Streak 7 3:26 Archos 101 7:20 Samsung Galaxy Tab 6:09 Apple iPad 9:33

Cameras

There’s no question that it’s nice to have a 5 megapixel camera and LED flash on the back of the Xoom, but we found little utility in actually having a decent shooter on a device of this size. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where you’re using the Xoom as your main camera. Besides looking ridiculous, it’s not all that convenient to handle something this large when you’re trying to snap away. Another issue is the sheer glare of the screen – shooting in daylight proved to be a challenge, and sometimes we couldn’t even see the display well enough to snap a photo.

That said, the rear camera produced relatively good looking photos – about the quality we’ve been seeing 63

with the company’s Atrix 4G – though the interface in Honeycomb is about a million times better looking and more pleasant to use. Again, it is somewhat difficult to hold something of this size and take really steady shots, so we found the use of the Xoom as a camera almost completely impractical in most situations.

Video turned out well, and it’s nice to be able to shoot 720p with a display of this size, though we did experience a few instances where the recording video stuttered or stopped completely – and those defects were present during playback. The included Movie Studio software allows you to fairly easily edit your creations – though it’s by no means perfect – but it was good of Google to include the package with this device (more on that in the software section).

As far as the front-facing camera goes, you should expect pretty standard stuff. We doubt you’ll be using this for fashion shoots, but for hairstyling and video chats, it does the trick. Just the fact that it’s there is pretty cool, really.

Software

While the hardware of the Xoom is notable, it’s not the real story. The real story is all about Android, and the next stage of its evolution – namely Honeycomb. Version 3.0 of the mobile operating system represents a significant change for just about every aspect of the user interface, and some notable alterations under the surface as well. As we’ve extensively covered, UI wunderkind Matias Duarte left Palm to work for Google less than half a year ago, and seems to have immediately dived into the work that he does best – reinventing user interfaces and user interaction for mobile devices.

The Honeycomb look and feel certainly has the work of a single mind written all over it – while we know this is very much a team effort (something we discussed with Matias in our interview at CES), it’s also clear that someone is steering the ship with far more resolve than ever before witnessed in this OS. From a purely visual standpoint, Android 3.0 comes together in a far more cohesive manner than any previous iteration of the software, and the changes aren’t just cosmetic. Much of the obscurity in the OS and arcane functions of this software have been jettisoned or drastically changed, making for an experience that is far more obvious to a novice user... though we wouldn’t exactly describe it as simple.

From a visual standpoint, we could most easily explain that Android 3.0 looks very much like the world of 64

Tron. Think soft focus neon and cold, hard digital angles. A homescreen which phases between panels with a blue, ghosting glow that represents your last and next page. When you place items on the homescreens, you see a distant patchwork of grid marks, and a vector outline of where your icon or widget will eventually land. Even in the app list, you see electric blue representations of your icons before the icons themselves.

The effect is angular, but the feel is still very human – like a cross between the ”chromeless” environment of Windows Phone 7, and the photorealism of webOS or iOS. It absolutely works. From the overall look and feel down to the method in which you get widgets onto your pages or change the wallpaper, everything is new here.

Unlike Apple and it’s single-minded iOS, however, Android is still filled with variables and choices which make general navigation a learning process, and even though Honeycomb has made huge inroads to making that process simpler, it’s not 100 percent there. The general vibe of Android is still present here – you have a series of homescreens which are scrollable, and can be loaded up with a variety of application shortcuts, folders, shortcuts, and widgets. Unlike most mobile OSs, Honeycomb places the status bar along the bottom of the device, and then fills the left side of that bar with the constant pieces of navigation you’ll use to get around the OS.

Yes, gone are the hardware buttons of yesteryear – 3.0 replaces the familiar home and back buttons with virtual incarnations, then adds a couple of extra pieces for good measure. Along with those two main buttons, Honeycomb introduces a multitasking icon which pops open a list of recently used apps along with a snapshot of their saved state. The back button is also a little more dynamic in 3.0, shifting between a straightforward back key, and a keyboard-hider when necessary. If your app utilizes the menu key on Android phones, you get an icon for that as well. The home button will take you back to your main views, but it can’t get you to your apps. Instead, Honeycomb introduces a new (and somewhat confusing) button – an ”apps” icon which lives in the upper right hand corner of your device. You might think that comes in handy, but you can only access your app pages from the homescreen of the tablet, meaning that you have to use a two step process to get to your app list. We’re not totally clear on why this isn’t another button that lives along the bottom of the device with the rest of the navigation, and frankly it proved confusing when we were trying to get around the Xoom quickly.

On the right side of that status bar are your battery and time indicators, along with a pop-up area for 65

notifications. The whole structure of the status bar feels weirdly like Windows. When you get a new email or Twitter mention, you’re alerted in that righthand corner with an almost Growl-like box, which fades away quickly. When you tap on that space, you’re given a time and battery window where you’re also able to manage notifications (though strangely there’s no option to clear all notifications). A settings button present there will also allow you to change your brightness and wireless settings, orientation lock, or jump to the full settings of the device. In all, it’s a tremendously convenient piece of this new OS, but not a new OS trick by any means. The desktop feels alive and well in Honeycomb.

[EMBED]

In applications like the browser – which is now far more like a desktop version of Chrome (with proper tabs and all) – you also get the sense that Google is taking a lot of cues from familiar places. Besides just offering bigger views and more real estate, there are drop down menus (located in the upper-right hand corner) and far more of the navigational items exposed. In fact, in all of the new native applications, there is no menu button present. All of the key elements of navigation are front and center, usually along the top of the app’s display, which should make for an easier time when it comes to getting things done, but can create confusing situations. For instance, in Gmail, your items in the upper right of the app change based on the context; that’s good for managing messages in one view, but creates some head-scratching moments in others.

Worse, the back button (which you use frequently) is in the exact opposite corner, meaning that your gaze is constantly shifting between two places on the tablet – two places that are furthest apart. The experience encourages a lot of eye-darting, which makes quickly managing tasks somewhat of a chore. We wish that Google had somehow combined the app navigation and tablet navigation into a more closely related space, so that instead of jumping from corner to corner, you were able to focusing on one place for operation of the app, and another for its content. We found ourselves having this same experience all over the Xoom.

On the plus side (and it is a big plus), the Xoom feels much more like a real netbook or laptop replacement.

Being able to multitask in the manner Google has devised, having properly running background tasks, and real, unobtrusive notifications feels really, really good in the tablet form factor. Additionally, the fact that Google has included active widgets that plug right into things like Gmail makes monitoring and dealing with work (or play) much more fluid than on the iPad. One other big note: a lot of the new software feels like it isn’t quite out of beta (surprise surprise). We had our fair share of force closes and bizarre freezes, particularly in the Market app and Movie Studio. Most applications were fine, but there definitely some moments where we felt like the whole device was teetering on the brink of a total crash.

That said, there are some significant changes to stock applications and new additions to the family that we thought were worth a slightly deeper look, so here’s a breakdown of what you can expect – both old and new – when you open the Xoom box.

Browser 66

We loved the browsing experience on the Xoom. The included app is (as we said) far more like a desktop version of Chrome, and if you’re already using the software on your laptop or desktop, you’ll feel right at home. Pages displayed quickly and cleanly on the tablet, though we have to admit that we’re more than a little miffed that Flash support isn’t present out of the box with the Xoom. Strange considering this is one of the real advantages Android devices have over Apple’s offerings.

Despite our enjoyment, there were some maddening issues, like the fact that the browser still identifies as an Android phone, meaning most sites with a mobile view end up on your big, beautiful browser tab. Given how close this version is to the real Chrome, we’re surprised Google wasn’t a little more proactive about this.

Gmail 67

Gmail has been completely redesigned for Honeycomb, and it’s a big upgrade. We’d love to say that it’s all rainbows and butterflies, but there are some nagging problems that come along with the changes, and we’re hoping Google will clean it up a bit moving forward. The application seems to generally suffer from UI overload; there have always been a lot of hidden features in Gmail for Android, and now that those hidden elements are brought to the surface, it creates a feeling that you’re never in a single place. As with other parts of the OS, we found ourselves jumping to and fro trying to locate UI elements and get work done.

Adding confusion to this new layout is the fact that menus now change contextually based on what you’ve selected, which means that not only are you dealing with scattered navigational items, but those items can change on the fly while you’re working.

Maybe we’re just too addicted to Gmail as it is now, but this incarnation feels splintered to us.

Music 68

It’s about time... isn’t it? The music app in Honeycomb has been completely, mercifully rethought, and it is stunning. As you can see in the above photo, gone is the amateurish and drab Android player. It’s now been replaced with a dimensional, 3D interface that isn’t just good looking, it’s actually useful. There are 2D views when you jump into albums and playlists, but the flipbook navigation is actually not bad for finding your music. Unfortunately, the Xoom seemed to have trouble recognizing all of our album art, and there were some issues with album art doubling up (our Engadget podcast logo seemed to get glued to another album). Minor issues aside, we’re impressed with the work Google has done here.

YouTube 69

Like the Music app, YouTube has gotten a revamp here. Keeping in line with the 3D feel of the Honeycomb interface, you’re presented with a wall of videos which you can pan through – kind of like your own wall of TVs (if TV had nothing but clips of people dancing and / or injuring themselves). If you’ve always wanted to feel like Ozymandias from the final pages of Watchmen, here’s your chance.

Playing videos was pretty much a standard YouTube experience... which unfortunately these days seems to mean watching for stuff to buffer. A lot.

Google Talk

We love the version of Google Talk present in Honeycomb. Not only does it provide clear, seamless integration with accounts you already use, but the way it utilizes both voice and video conversations is terrific.

The app itself is fairly straightforward, but it did take a little bit of head scratching before we figured out 70

exactly how to move between voice, chat, and video. Our callers on the other end of the line said video quality was a bit on the low res side (see the photo above – Xoom up top, MacBook Pro camera in the corner) even on WiFi. We’re not sure why that would be the case, but hopefully it can be cleared up with some software tweaking.

Overall, however, the new Google Talk works in perfect harmony with the Xoom.

Movie Studio

We had high hopes for Movie Studio – a competitor to Apple’s iOS version of iMovie. While the software is quite powerful, our experience with it was less than thrilling. Besides being generally sluggish, clip editing is kind of an obtuse affair. We were able to get some work done with it, but it doesn’t seem to be nearly as straightforward as it should. More than once while using the app, we found ourselves waiting around for clips to redraw or playback video that seemed to stall out. We’re not saying there aren’t uses for the software, but it feels like it needs a revision or two before it’s ready for prime time. And that’s too bad... since the Xoom is in market right now.

Other apps 71

There were a handful of applications that we had a chance to play around with which show off the Xoom (and Honeycomb’s) capabilities. Google Body (an interactive, 3D body simulator), Pulse (a news reader, which you should know from its iOS incarnation), and games like Cordy all show that the Xoom and its OS are more than powerful enough to pull off iPad like experiences. Unfortunately, there just aren’t many of those experiences available to users right now, and it doesn’t seem like Google has gotten a big headstart on getting tablet titles into the Android Market.

There is a ton of promise on the software side for tablets running Honeycomb given the new access to 3D tools and system tweaking that Android allows, but right now it’s a small island in a sea of phone titles – and the majority of those titles do not look right on a 10.1-inch screen at this resolution.

Pricing and data 72

Oh, the Xoom pricing. It sure hasn’t been much of a secret (we had over five pricing leak posts!), but it certainty has been the focal point of the new tablet’s entrance into the market. So, what will this thing cost you? Motorola has set the price of the 32GB, 3G version at $800. Now, that is unsubsidized, however, Verizon is requiring customers pay for one month of service – $20 for 1GB of data – to basically unlock the device. It doesn’t seem very fair, but such is life.

Update: Verizon’s been in touch to say that customers who purchase the off-contract Xoom will no longer need to be on a month to month plan. That said, we still see ”Month to Month” as a compulsory option at the time of updating this post.

The other option at the moment is to buy the same Xoom on-contract from Verizon for $600. That does shave off $200, but you’re not exactly saving money, considering you’re locking yourself into paying $20 a month for the next two years, which comes out to $1,080. Also, don’t forget the Xoom is upgradable to LTE. However, the carrier is still keeping quiet on pricing for the 4G service.

Is that a lot of money for a tablet? Sure it is, and if you opt for the $800 unsubsidized version it comes out to $71 more than Apple’s comparable iPad – the 32GB / 3G iPad rings up at $729. Unfortunately, at this point we don’t have any real details on when the WiFi only version will be hitting, but Motorola’s CEO has said that it will be also priced at $600. Again, that’s in line with the $599 32GB / WiFi iPad.

Wrap-up 73

Despite the drawbacks that we’ve outlined in this review, there is actually a lot about the Xoom to like.

Besides boasting what we consider to be the most complete and clearly functioning version of Android, the hardware which is packed inside Motorola’s tablet is really quite good. The tablet is fast and sleek, and while not exactly being really futureproof, the fact that you’ve got a path to a 4G upgrade is tremendous (and frankly, something no one else in the industry is offering).

The problem with the Xoom isn’t really about the core of the experience or the core of the hardware – it’s about the details. Too much in both the design (like those wonky buttons) or the software (like the feeling that this is all very much in beta) makes you wonder if this wasn’t rushed out to market in order to beat the next wave from Apple. Regardless, there isn’t much here for consumers right now. The Android Market is almost devoid of tablet applications, the OS feels buggy and unfinished, and the hardware has pain points that we find troubling. And that’s to say nothing of the pricing and carrier commitments being asked of first-time buyers.

Is the Xoom a real competitor to the iPad? Absolutely. In fact, it outclasses the iPad in many ways. Still, the end user experience isn’t nearly where it needs to be, and until Google paints its tablet strategy and software picture more clearly, we’d suggest a wait-and-see approach. Honeycomb and the Xoom are spectacular – unfortunately they’re a spectacular work in progress.

by Joshua Topolsky Engadget February 23, 2011 Motorola Xoom review – Engadget

74

BlogBook v0.4, EX 2Îľ & GNU/Linux. http://www.blogbooker.com LAT

Edited: March 15, 2011