Thursday, May 31, 2012

Online Audio Converter (MP3, WAV, Ogg, WMA, M4A, AAC) – media.io

Online Audio Converter (MP3, WAV, Ogg, WMA, M4A, AAC) – media.io

Windows 7 for some reason still does not have a tool that can save .mp3. Recording can be done as .wma, but that format may not play on an iPhone, Android or Mac. While there are some free tools that can be installed, it is hard to know if they are safe. Online service is simple and reasonable solution.

Windows 8 Release Preview

Delivering the Windows 8 Release Preview - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Today, Windows 8 Release Preview is available for download in 14 languages. This is our final pre-release, and includes Windows 8, Internet Explorer 10, new Windows 8 apps for connecting to Hotmail, SkyDrive, and Messenger (and many more), and hundreds of new and updated apps in the Windows Store.
... next milestone is traditionally called RTM, Release to Manufacturing (production version)
Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft President of Windows, is not a man of few words, and he clearly knows what he is talking about, and is delivering on time...

Download

Time to take Windows 8 seriously...

Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8

Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8

Windows 8 supports "notification service" for "Metro" apps
(since all "Metro" apps are distributed trough "Windows Store". Sending such notification can be done by creator of the App. "Natural fit" for integration is Windows Azure, and there are some samples how to implement such (relatively complex) solution.

The system is similar to notification for Windows Phone 7, but not the same (as usual).

OAuth 2.0

OAuth 2.0 — OAuth

Windows Azure supports using OAuth 2.0 authentication
making possible to use existing accounts from Google, Yahoo, Live etc.
The protocol is useful, but not simple, so it is helpful that Microsoft provides tools for it.

Windows Azure Pricing Calculator

Windows Azure Pricing Calculator | Cloud Offers | Cloud Pricing

SQL Azure Resources by Peter Laudati

Windows Azure Blogs

US DPE Azure Connection - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

US AZURE EVANGELISTS

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Samsung Chromebox device


Chromebox device

"Intel® Core™ processor
4 GB RAM
Built-in dual-band WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n
Gigabit ethernet
6 USB 2.0 ports
2x DisplayPort++ Output (compatible with HDMI, DVI, VGA)
DVI single link output
Bluetooth 3.0™ compatible
Kensington™ key lock compatible

$329

Updated Chromebook devices

Monday, May 28, 2012

InfoQ: Amazon.com’s Journey to the Cloud

InfoQ: Amazon.com’s Journey to the Cloud

Amazon "retail" web sites have completely moved to its own Amazon Web Services (AWS).
In this informative talk there are very useful lessons how to effectively utilize "cloud".

No Skype, Angry Birds on Nokia Lumia 610 Windows Phone 7

Nokia Lumia 610 restricted from more Windows Phone apps - SlashGear


"Microsoft opened up Windows Phone to devices with lower specifications, prompting phones like the Lumia 610 with an 800Mhz processor and only 256MB of RAM to play with... Last week Nokia and Microsoft pulled Skype for the Lumia 610, but other apps including Angry Birds, PES 2012, and Tango refuse to install."

SpaceX Dragon, Case for Mars, 100 years Startship

Today I happened to listen three great podcasts about space exploration.
Very inspirational and educational.
One of takeaways is huge importance of "big goals",
and one unexpected and even more important:
importance of (time/money) constraints for such goals.

The guests of podcasts explained

  • success of first private rocket by SpaceX that reached International Space Station, for a fraction of cost usually required for similar tasks.
  • What does it take and how it feels like to be an astronaut
  • "The case for Mars", why it is important and how to "put a man on the Mars"
  • An attempt to send man to another star, by a scientist and former astronaut.

Dot Net Rocks podcast: Carl and Richard are Back in Space!

"Explorations" podcast by Dr Michio Kaku:
Guest 1: Astronaut Tom Jones, Topic: Astronauts in space
Guest 2: Dr. Robert Zubrin, Topic: On to Mars

OnPoint radio podcast: The 100 Year Starship
Dr. Mae Jemison was the first black woman in space. Now, she’s leading a wildly ambitious project: to achieve interstellar travel in the next 100 years.


SpaceX

Dr. Robert Zubrin: The Case for Mars


Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist, best-selling author, and popularizer of science. He’s the co-founder of string field theory (a branch of string theory), and continues Einstein’s search to unite the four fundamental forces of nature into one unified theory.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Microsoft Metro Style (Design Language)

Metro (design language) @Wikipedia Metro Design Language of Windows Phone 7 | Microsoft Design .toolbox:
"Metro Design Language"

This also applies for Windows 8

CREATING HTML-BASED METRO STYLE APPS USING BLEND BETA
(Visual Studio 11)

Metro web UI with jQuery

Metro style theme for jQuery Mobile
by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. A subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation

GitHub for Windows

GitHub for Windows
"Introducing GitHub for Windows Develop on Windows, share on GitHub."

podcast DEVELOPING GITHUB FOR WINDOWS WITH PHIL HAACK AND TIM CLEM @ Hanselminutes

Déjà vu: HP's webOS team going to Google

Some years ago, in the middle of .COM boom,
HP has purchased a prosperous software developer company "Bluestone"
(at the time based in my neighborhood in NJ),
for about $500 million, just to "open source" it a year later,
and then "write off" complete investment soon after.

The code development team of about 30 people (out of total 400)
has quietly moved to Oracle a few miles down the road (Rt. 38),
from Mt.Laurel to Moorestown...
So Oracle got a core developers team "for free".

With Palm WebOS the history is repeating.
HP is again one "paying the bill", with $1.2 Billion lost on Palm,
and software WebOS is (again) open-sourced,
and core development team has moved "for free",
this time to Google.

In fact this is good in general, just not a good business for HP...

Exclusive: HP's core webOS Enyo team is going to Google | The Verge:

The WebOS app platfrom is in fact a HTML5/JavaScript library/framework, using WebKit browser.
As such it can run in any modern web browser,
and could very well be used inside of Chrome and Android.

With a little bit of tooling, preferably based on PhoneGap (now Apache Cordova) or similar,
it can make development of portable apps easy for everybody, not just pro developers...
Why would Google do it?
Advertising. Free apps could still advertise, and that is how Google makes money.

I would suggest Google to provide official port of Android for HP TouchPad,
that would also include support for WebOS apps. Just merge them, both are based on Linux anyway.

Friday, May 25, 2012

How do we heal medicine? @ TED.com

Atul Gawande: How do we heal medicine? | Video on TED.com:


... An aviation checklist, like this one for a single-engine plane, isn't a recipe for how to fly a plane, it's a reminder of the key things that get forgotten or missed if they're not checked.
...
We implemented this checklist in eight hospitals around the world, deliberately in places from rural Tanzania to the University of Washington in Seattle. We found that after they adopted it the complication rates fell 35 percent. It fell in every hospital it went into. The death rates fell 47 percent
...
We're all specialists now, even the primary care physicians. Everyone just has a piece of the care. But holding onto that structure we built around the daring, independence, self-sufficiency of each of those people has become a disaster. We have trained, hired and rewarded people to be cowboys. But it's pit crews that we need, pit crews for patients.
...
Making systems work is the great task of my generation of physicians and scientists. But I would go further and say that making systems work — whether in healthcare, education, climate change, making a pathway out of poverty — is the great task of our generation as a whole.”

Building Windows 8 for the ARM processor architecture

A great and very detailed post about internals of Windows 8 by Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows Division of Microsoft: Building Windows for the ARM processor architecture - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs


"Windows on ARM, or WOA. WOA is a new member of the Windows family, much like Windows Server, Windows Embedded, or Windows Phone.

... Printer class driver. For Windows 8, we rearchitected the print infrastructure to add class driver support. The majority of printers selling today are supported using the class driver, which means you’ll be able to “plug and print” on WOA without additional drivers. While the new architecture was needed for many reasons, we had printing from WOA PCs in mind from the beginning."

Not only that new WinRT platfrom is "object oriented" (compared to Win32),
it transparently supports a few types of ARM CPUs in addition to variations of x86.

New Metro-style apps build by Visual Studio 11 will run on both x86 and ARM CPUs.
The "magic" happens before deploying trough Windows Store.
Apparently there will also be some limited "desktop mode" on ARM based devices,
with support for Office tools.

Download with self-paced training material used for Microsoft Windows 8 "Camps" Windows 8 Camp in a Box, Consumer Preview Edition

Suggestion by excellent Microsoft Evangelist Dave Isbitski on the camp: this is a great opportunity; forget everything you know, and learn this new great platform. By the way, out of 3 developers options

  • C++/XAML
  • .NET (C#)/XAML
  • HTML5/WinJS (JavaScript)
his proffered choice is WinJS, for flexibility of the language and wealth of libraries.

A brave new world of WinRT...

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Is Facebook Worth It? - Technology Review

Is Facebook Worth It? - Technology Review

I think that besides value for advertisers, Facebook should be measured in social value for time spent on site. While the site is useful in connecting people, the same people are spending way too much time on trivial and useless activities.

So "social sites" also have a huge social un-value. Similar to TV.

When people search on Google (or similar) site, they are generally trying to solve some problem, and find information. They are spending time, and getting some value back. The faster they find what they are looking for, the more value for everybody, including Google.

When watching dancing cats on Facebook, they are just spending time. Fill good temporarily, like when drinking "sugary drinks". Then, they get addicted, and get overweight.

Facebook has collected some great engineers, but they should be engaged in solving socially useful challenges. Then, the value of stock may come back up. And that may take some time...

FB @ google finance

SIGGRAPH 2012 : Technical Papers Preview Trailer - YouTube

SIGGRAPH 2012 : Technical Papers Preview Trailer - YouTube: ""

Monday, May 21, 2012

Microsoft So.cl

So.cl



Microsoft launches its own social network

Windows 8 app developer blog

Windows 8 app developer blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs:
"Insights on building Metro style apps for Windows 8, by the Windows 8 engineering team"

Develop great Metro style apps for Windows 8
Discover the common traits of great Metro style apps.

Visual Studio 11 Beta downloads

Compare Visual Studio 11 Beta editions

Web Services for Devices (WSD) by Microsoft

Implementing Web Services on Devices for Printing and Scanning: (@MSDN)

Windows 7 (and 8) have embedded support for "imaging" (print, scan, photo) devices
that support WSD web services specs. This is "old style" SOAP, what is unfortunate,
since the specs are complicated and protocol not very efficient.
In 2006 when WSD was last updated, SOAP was still somewhat popular.

On the other side, devices that support WSD protocols are discovered
and can be used by Windows 7/8 without additional drivers...

Friday, May 18, 2012

iPhone meets its match?

iPhone meets its match

Samsung Galaxy S III goes on sale in 11 days, but preorders reportedly already top 9 million. By comparison, the much-lauded iPhone 4S sold 4 million units, including preorders, during its first three days of availability. At this pace, Galaxy S III is poised to be the biggest smartphone launch to date.

Facebook IPO

Facebook IPO: A look at early investors who sold shares in the social network - The Washington Post:

"The IPO sold at $38 per share, generating $6.8 billion for Facebook
and $9.2 billion, collectively, for existing stockholders."

  • FB Facebook Inc 38.23 104.81B
  • GOOG Google Inc 600.40 195.75B
  • LNKD Linkedin Corp. 99.02 10.23B
  • AOL AOL, Inc. 26.01 2.43B

    Facebook Is Going To Be Even More Annoying Now That It’s Public Facebook made a mere $1.21 per user last quarter. Sure. It has a ton of users, but that's a low number, not the kind of thing it's making up on volume. By comparison, Google earned $7.14. Both Google and Facebook are in the business of selling you to advertisers. And Facebook is going to need to get way better at it.

  • Thursday, May 17, 2012

    NASA: Android Phone as a Satellite

    podcast: Will Marshall | Android in Space: @ IT Conversations

    NASA is experimenting with using a standard smartphone (Google Nexus) as a core of a satellite.
    The result: a satellite for less than $10K, with fastest CPU of any satellite so far.
    The cost of "standard" custom satellites is in $ hundreds of millions.

    The satellite is also open source.

    Wednesday, May 16, 2012

    Google "Knowledge Graph"

    Google Revamps Search, Creates Knowledge Graph - Search Engines - News & Reviews - eWeek.com

    Google on May 16 began rolling out the latest generation of its dominant search engine, introducing what officials are calling the Knowledge Graph.

    The Knowledge Graph is designed to offer users an improved search experience by not only doing a better job of finding exactly what they are searching for, but also by then presenting the users with more information related to their searches. If a user searches for Leonardo da Vinci, they not only will get information about him, but information about his paintings and other works, and information about other Renaissance figures...

    Google is leveraging a database of more than 500 million objects, and more than 3.5 billion facts not only about those objects, but also the relationship between them. Google engineers have gone back and looked at what users have searched for and what they have been asking about for each item.

    Google reportedly was able to leverage the technology it inherited in 2010 when it bought Metaweb, which had developed a knowledge base, dubbed Freebase, in developing Knowledge Graph.
    Metaweb Founder(s): Danny Hillis, Robert Cook

    As expected and predicted many years ago, Google is in fact implementing "Semantic Web" vision of W3C, and this is being done in a practical, engineering way.

    Knowledge Graph @ Google Blog

    Tuesday, May 15, 2012

    Performance Optimized Data Formats - InfoQ

    InfoQ: Dealing with Performance Challenges - Optimized Data Formats:

    "Sastry Malladi (eBay) discusses the performance implications of using various data formats and versioning across eBay, showing the results of certain benchmarks concluding that JSON is the best format. " Recommended: Jackson JSON and Protostuff (variation on Google's Protocol Buffers)

    City Lights From International Space Station - YouTube

    City Lights From International Space Station (2002-2008) - YouTube: ""

    'via Blog this'

    Fly over planet Earth - YouTube

    What does it feel like to fly over planet Earth? Higher quality. Slowed down. - YouTube: ""

    'via Blog this'

    YouTube at 2x speed + 3D (and 1.5x, 0.5x, 0.25x)

    YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.


    YouTube has a choice (link above) to switch to HTML5 (WebM) video player instead of flash.
    That player has speed up and down option in settings, and even (converted) 3D! It is not perfect, some (rare) videos do not play without flash...

    Earth view from 22,000 miles (35,700 kilometers)

    Russian satellite takes striking image of Earth - Technology & science - Space - msnbc.com: " taken by a Russian weather satellite, called Elektro-L No. 1, which flies in a geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (35,700 kilometers) above the Earth's equator."

    Monday, May 14, 2012

    Windows Mobile >> Phone

    The measure of Windows Phone's failure is...:

    "Windows Mobile US smartphone market share, based on install base not unit shipments, is considerably higher than its successor -- 4.1 percent versus 1.7 percent for newer Windows Phone.
    ...
    Commenter aretzios blames Windows Phone for Microsoft's misfortunes: "Microsoft signed its death warrant in the mobile space since the day it decided to abandon WinMo 6.5 to move to a totally incompatible system...From 25 percent of the market, Microsoft's share declined to 1.5 percent as WinMo users moved en mass to Android. Sometimes, when one breaks backward compatibility, there are consequences".

    During the Bill Gates era, and even during Steve Ballmer's early tenure as CEO, Microsoft made backward compatibility a top-design priority. But the company started backing away from that tenet with Office 2007. Where there are dramatic UI changes, like Windows Phone, Windows 8 and Windows RT, backward compatibility isn't assured at all."

    Sunday, May 13, 2012

    Big Data University

    Big Data University:


    Big Data University is an online educational site run by new and experienced HadoopBig Data and DB2 users who want to learn, contribute with course materials, or look for job opportunities.
    The site includes free and fee-based courses delivered by experienced professionals and teachers.
    Big Data University is hosted on the Cloud, and is run by a group of enthusiasts from around the world. They useMoodle 2 course management system enabled to run on DB2.

    The Social Conquest of Earth @ The Long Now

    Edward O. Wilson: The Social Conquest of Earth - The Long Now:

    "The real creation story
    “History makes no sense without prehistory,“ Wilson declared,
    “and prehistory makes no sense without biology.”
    ...
    “The term ‘eusocial,’“ Wilson said, “means a society based in part on a division of labor,
    in which individuals act altruistically, that covers two or more generations,
    and that cares for young cooperatively.”
    ...
    We love joining groups, and we became geniuses at reading the intentions of each other, a skill we fine-tune incessantly with our enjoyment of gossip. In another distinctively human trait, like ants, we became highly adept at collaborative warfare.
    ...
    “multi-level selection,” where individual selection and group selection proceed together (with kin selection a continuing bit player). In our eusocial species, that mix of traits makes us “permanently unstable, permanently conflicted” between selfish impulses and cooperative impulses. We negotiate these conflicts endlessly within ourselves and with each other. Wilson sees inherent adaptive value in that constant negotiation. Our vibrant cultural life may be driven in part by it.

    @Wikipedia

    Home Page (Biodiversity)

    Life on Earth, iPad Textbook presented on Apple Keynote

    Facebook IPO Week

    Facebook IPO Week: The Basics | News & Opinion | PCMag.com


    Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin has renounced his U.S. citizenship, a move that finance watchers consider a creative tactic for avoiding the estimated $1 billion or so in taxes that Saverin could otherwise owe come Facebook IPO time. Saverin owns an estimated four percent of Facebook, which could be worth around $4 billion once the company goes public.

    AI Siri: Lumia 900 better than iPhone

    Need to be careful with AI assistants, quality of data is not always guaranteed...

    Siri Says Nokia Lumia 900, Not Apple iPhone, Is The Best Smartphone Ever | PCWorld


    Siri uses Wolfram Alpha, which answers questions based on sets of data maintained by the company’s researchers. When it comes to smartphones, somebody at the company must be asleep at the wheel. Lumia 900‘s high rating is based on just five reviews of the device, all of which give the phone five stars.

    Wolfram’s list of smartphone reviews boggles the mind in what it calls “the best smartphones,” though: HP’s TouchPad tablet comes in third (it’s not even a phone!)

    Saturday, May 12, 2012

    HTML5 Windows Phone Apps with Apache Cordova

    HTML5 - Develop HTML5 Windows Phone Apps with Apache Cordova (used to be PhoneGap)

    Same HTML5 app running on WP7 and iPhone

    download PhoneGap

    Download sample app

    Fix issue with path to cscript
    VisualStudio 2010: PreBuildEvent: C:\windows\system32\cscript.exe ...

    3x Mobile OS, June 2012, San Francisco, Moscone Center

    Mobile OS Madness Ahead In June - Mobility - Smartphones - Informationweek
    • Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) is set for June 11-15
      at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
      Expected iOS 6.
    • Microsoft's event, the Windows Phone Developer Summit,
      is scheduled for June 20 and 21.
      A location has yet to be announced, though it will likely be at Moscone.
      Expected Windows Phone 8
    • Last, Google I/O June 27-29.
      is taking place at Moscone
      Expected Android 5.0

    Wednesday, May 09, 2012

    Microsoft Virtual Academy

    Microsoft Virtual Academy - Frequently Asked Questions:

    "Anybody interested in growing professionally and to follow along in a training environment completely free of charge can take part in the MVA. The only thing the interested user needs to do to participate is to register on the platform with a Windows Live ID to get access to the training resources. There is no minimum level of technical expertise required."

    Tuesday, May 08, 2012

    Bio-blender Earth @ The Long Now

    The web of history... very interesting...

    Charles C. Mann: Living in the Homogenocene: The First 500 Years - The Long Now: "

    Tumultuous effects resulted and continue to result from the massive mixing of the world’s biota when European ships reconnected the American continent to the rest of the world. Mann traced several of the cascading consequences of "the biggest ecological convulsion since the death of the dinosaurs."

    The first momentous change came from microbial exchange---20 lethal diseases came from Europe to the Americas while only one (syphilis) went the other way. North America, which had been largely cleared by natives with fire and agriculture, reforested when two-thirds to 95% of the native inhabitants died from European diseases---"the greatest demographic catastrophe in human history." That huge reforesting drew down atmospheric carbon dioxide and Europe’s "Little Ice Age" (1550-1800) apparently resulted.

    www.charlesmann.org

    Monday, May 07, 2012

    Dr. Sebastian Thrun @ Singularity University

    Which Way Next? with Guest Dr. Sebastian Thrun - Episode 001 - YouTube

    singularityu.org

    Which Way Next? is a Singularity University webcast series of monthly round-table discussions on exponential technologies with leaders in industry, science and technology. This is a recording of our live premiere episode with Dr. Sebastian Thrun, PhD, Research Professor & Executive Director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford University and Google Fellow on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2011. On this episode, he joined SU Chairman & Co-Founder Dr. Peter Diamandis, MD in a discussion on Artificial Intelligence and the Google Autonomous Car. Earlier this year, Fast Company honored Dr. Thrun with the title of "fifth most creative person in the world."

    Among other things, Dr. Peter Diamandis is president of X-prize foundation.

    The audience was CEOs, Hedge fund managers etc...

    Sunday, May 06, 2012

    XobotOS: Android Build on C# Instead of Java

    InfoQ: XobotOS: Android Build on C# Instead of Java


    Miguel de Icaza, Mono’s founder, recently announced the creation of the XobotOS research project. XobotOS is the Android operating system with all Java code removed and C# code put in its place. Miguel offers two compelling reasons behind this research project:

    Over and over we came back to the basics: Dalvik is a young virtual machine, it is not as performant or tuned as Mono and suffers from many of Java’s performance limitations without the benefit of the high-end optimizations from Oracle’s HotSpot. One crazy idea that the team had at that dinner was to translate Android’s source code to C#. Android would benefit from C# performance features like structures, P/Invoke, real generics and our more mature runtime.

    node.js online IDE: Cloud9

    Cloud9 IDE | Online IDE – Your code anywhere, anytime


    For node.js, running on node.js, IDE in web browser.

    Podcast node.js @ DotNetRocks

    Saturday, May 05, 2012

    Microsoft: Linux kernel contributor

    Microsoft lands on top 20 Linux kernel contributor list - SlashGear

    Sebastian Thrun @ WIRED Business Conference: The Intelligence Revolution

    FORA.tv - WIRED Business Conference: The Intelligence Revolution:

    WIRED Business Conference: The Intelligence Revolution from WIRED on FORA.tv

    ...Want to make every student A+. Take time needed, work hard, and learn all

    ...Student debt is #1 problem in America now, it surpassed $1T that is more than real estate debt (!?)

    Samsung Galaxy S3 review | Samsung Galaxy S III review - PC Advisor



    Samsung Galaxy S3 review | Samsung Galaxy S III review - PC Advisor


    4.8" HD Super AMOLED (1280x720)

    Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)

    Camera:
    Main: 8mp Auto Focus with flash, zero shutter lag and BSI
    Front: 1.9mp HD recording @30fps with flash, zero shutter lag and BSI

    Video: Full HD (1080p) Recording and Playback

    Wi-Fi- a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi HT40, GPS/GLONASS, NFC, BT4.0(LE)

    16GB / 32GB / 64GB
    External memory:
    microSD Slot (SDXC 64GB exFAT Support)

    Size: 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6mm, 133g

    Battery capacity: 2,100 mAh"

    2.5G (GSM/ GPRS/ EDGE)
    3G (HSPA+ 21Mbps)
    4G (Dependant on market)

    Friday, May 04, 2012

    Singapore Method for Learning Math

    Many american schools are adopting "singapore method" for learning math. That is really good, since Singapore the method seems to be effective, and Singapore students have much better test result than American.

    The Singapore Model Method for Learning Mathematics:

    Must read: Singapore method vs California method

    California method resembles instructions for calculating US taxes: too many unnecessary details hiding the essence, producing huge tables instead of simple formulas and charts, encouraging memorizing instead of understanding.


    Thursday, May 03, 2012

    MIT + Harvard + online + free = edX

    edX - Home:

    "EdX is a joint partnership between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University to offer online learning to millions of people around the world. EdX will offer Harvard and MIT classes online for free. Through this partnership, the institutions aim to extend their collective reach to build a global community of online learners and to improve education for everyone."

    Currently, the only class available is MIT's 6.002x (Circuits and Electronics)

    Japan’s Last Nuclear Reactor to Go Off-line - IEEE Spectrum

    Japan’s Last Nuclear Reactor to Go Off-line - IEEE Spectrum

    Japan has 54 reactors. Aside from the four damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors and several others out of service over safety concerns, the rest lie idle as they undergo government-ordered stress tests—a mandate that followed last year’s massive 11 March earthquake and tsunami.

    Inside IBM’s Huge “Big Data” Buying Spree

    ReadWriteWeb: Inside IBM’s Huge “Big Data” Buying Spree

    "That IBM wants to be perceived as the master of data stores is no surprise. What’s interesting here is that the company is taking an almost Oracle-like approach to the subject, buying up as many as 30 separate big data-related entities in recent months (Vivisimo being #30) and wedging them together in hopes that they form a picture that looks something like a platform."

    The Internet of Things - YouTube

    The Internet of Things - YouTube: " by IBM"

    'via Blog this'

    Internet of Things, ZigBee, Big Data

    The intangible assets of the Internet of Things

    “The emergence of the Internet of Things has created such a flood of data that only state-of-the-art information technology can gather, filter, order and interrogate the resulting, massive data set, generically called Big Data, “

    www.zigbee.org

    ZigBee @ Wikipedia ZigBee is targeted at radio-frequency (RF) applications that require a low data rate, long battery life, and secure networking. ZigBee has a defined rate of 250 kbit/s best suited for periodic or intermittent data or a single signal transmission from a sensor or input device.[1] ZigBee based traffic management system have also been implemented. The name refers to the waggle dance of honey bees after their return to the beehive.

    Smart Meter

    A smart meter is usually an electrical meter that records consumption of electric energy in intervals of an hour or less and communicates that information at least daily back to the utility for monitoring and billing purposes.