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Roy Hooper has lots to share. Learn how to a href="http://www.royhooper.com/copy.html"Copy n
Paste/a. Read about the a href="http://www.royhooper.com/gemco.html"Gemco Discount Stores/a.
Discover a href="http://www.royhooper.com/girlathletes.html"Ventura County Girl Athletes/a. Make
your own website with a href="http://www.royhooper.com/web.html"Netscape Composer/a. Or just browse
through a href="http://www.royhooper.com/desktopdirections.htm"quot;Show us your desktopquot;/a
photos, like a href="http://www.royhooper.com/anna.htm"this classic from 1998/a. Gotta love the
internets. br /
a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvjs60iUa8Uamp;feature=channel_page"Three US veterans
testify./a (If the interrogator is too Christian for you, skip to the Vietnam vet.) Also, a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNjggLhQo6w"Shministim/a. a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gK0NaNS2Zo"Utah Phillips on pacifism/a. a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtD14SRnZJg"A First World War Christian Conscientious Objector
Remembered/a. br / Previously on MeFi: a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fM8jjqxtSpY"Iraq
veteran Joshua Casteel: from US interrogator at Abu Ghraib to conscientious objector/a.
It doesn't
exactly have a lot to show for itself just yet, but Top Global has just announced a reference
design for what it claims is the world's first dual mode 3G USB modem and WiFi hotspot combo.
Dubbed the 3GSpot, the device is software configurable to support all cellular standards, and the
basic design is able to support multiple bands to ensure compatibility with carriers around the
world, which Top Global says will let OEMs have one design/SKU that simply requires different
firmwares for different markets. The device will apparently even boast on-board GPS "at no extra
cost," not to mention all the usual security measures and, at just 2.5 x 4-inches, it'll be able to
be integrated or simply offered as a standalone device. All that, of course, depends on some OEMs
hopping on board, and Top Global unfortunately doesn't seem to be ready to announcing anything on
that front just yet.
pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2009/01/robotdensity.jpg" width="494"
height="432" / As a break from all this CES news, let's talk about robotsmdash;specifically, which
countries are chock full of them. Unsurprisingly, Japan has the densest robot population, with 295
industrial automatons per every 10,000 workers. /p pPerhaps a little more eyebrow-raising is
Singapore's place on the list, which beat out South Korea by five robots per 10K workers for the
number two spot. What? /p pFirst off, Singapore is tiny and isn't really known for its
manufacturing capabilities...where are these robots and what are they doing? Spying on the people
to make sure they aren't chewing gum or something, I bet./p pSecondly, what gives South Korea? You
make all this fuss about a
href="http://i.gizmodo.com/6487/south-korean-government-working-on-robotic-soldiers"working on
robotic soldiers/a, a
href="http://i.gizmodo.com/128952/s-korea-deploying-robot-teachers-to-teach-and-or-assimilate-kids"deploying
robotic teachers/a, a
href="http://i.gizmodo.com/243142/south-korea-starts-campaign-for-robot-rights"campaigning for
robot rights/a and even frickin' a
href="http://i.gizmodo.com/293999/south-korea-to-build-robot-land-robots-rejoice-in-electronic-bliss"creating
a robot land/a... and you're in a paltry third place? For shame! [a
href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/dec08/7012"Spectrum Ieee/a]/p br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/
br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a
href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=4b3468ce5fdda8d3488e08f8aaec7064p=1"img alt=""
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As a break from all this CES news, let's talk about robotsmdash;specifically, which countries are
chock full of them. Unsurprisingly, Japan has the densest robot population, with 295 industrial...
pMicrosoft's emKudo/em may seem like a throw-away Xbox Live Arcade game focused on user-created
content at first, but underneath its colorful service is a powerful programming language that will
make the tool a hit in academic circles./ppa
href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090108-microsoft-trains-next-gen-coders-with-xnas-kodu.html"Read
More.../a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/5N8w8n3NnqYVHGkrApU7FMHD1FM/a"img
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Gamers have largely gotten a bad rep for being lazy, slothful people who spend their hours
mindlessly pressing buttons. The Wii changed that a bit by getting kids (and and their parents...
and their parents) up off the couch, but what about giving their brains a workout too? For
your family's little mind freak to-be Mattel is introducing the Mind Flex, a brain-powered game that relies on your
mental activity to control the height of a ball suspended in a column of air. Don the headset then
start concentrating to make the purple orb rise; relax and it lowers. There are six total game
types but all entail getting a ball over, under, and through a variety of hoops and the like,
sometimes against a clock so that you can challenge your friends. Sadly you have to actually reach
up and turn the dial to move the ball around the course, but in our heads on trial we found the
thing to be impressively responsive, gently sinking down when we thought about getting some sleep
-- then shooting back up again when we pondered the number of posts left to write tonight. It was
challenging for sure, and definitely turned a lot of heads, but we're a little concerned that
extended sessions could be headache inducing. Its $80 price tag might cause some temple pain too
when the thing releases this fall, but we've certainly spent more money on things that were less
fun -- and mentally stimulating. Video of floaty balls and squinting players below.
We’ve been getting quite a few tips about this, and German media outlets are picking up
the story like crazy, so here goes: if you were ever in the market for a German blog, now would
be a good time to put your money where your mouse is. Robert Basic, famous in German-speaking
countries for his blog Basic Thinking,
has put the site up for sale on
eBay reportedly because he wants to start from scratch again.
Basic Thinking is a technology blog which has actually been dubbed the ‘German
TechCrunch’ by some; we’d be honored but we’re not sure since we haven’t
been following it and our German is a little rusty. Basic is really straightforward about the
incoming revenue of the blog on the auction listing: it made him about €37,000
gross from display and text link advertisements in 2008. He hasn’t been actively selling
advertising on the site so he’s confident that it could bring in way more revenue,
especially considering his status as the German ICT blog and that his Google PageRank
could be brought back from 4 to the former 6 by simply removing the text link ads.
The visitor numbers for Basic Thinking aren’t enormous, but considering the niche and the
limited (German-speaking only) scope, they’re decent enough: last month the site reportedly
received 85,000 unique visitors and served 254,000 page views. The total number for 2008 was just
under 2.5 million unique visitors and 3.6 million page impressions. The embedded graph shows the
site’s growth since it took off in 2005 (it was actually started back in 2003 but had been
on hiatus for a while).
So, what are you waiting for?
Bidding closes in about six days, the current offer on the table is just over
€20,000 (Basic was hoping for something between 10k and 100k so we’re
curious to see where this will end).
The pain the recession is currently
causing for the semiconductor industry has been well documented, but it may also escalate
tensions between chip equipment vendors and their customers. An ongoing debate over
the need to invest in the next cycle of manufacturing plants has pitted equipment vendors such as
Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron, KLA Tencor and others against their customers —
primarily Intel, Samsung and the large foundries such as TSMC.
Every decade or so, chip makers have transitioned to building their wares on larger wafers, as a
way of producing more chips for less money. However, thanks to the recession and the costs
associated with the hoped-for transition, not everyone’s convinced this switch needs to
happen. Even if it does, it certainly won’t happen as fast as Intel, one of the most
aggressive proponents of this transition, hopes.
Imagine the process of building chips as making a many-layered cake. Currently, advanced
fabrication plants, or fabs, build 300 mm cakes, but Intel and others are hoping to make bigger
cakes — 450 mm. To do this, they need bigger ovens and bigger silicon wafers. Intel
estimates such a shift will allow it to produce more than twice the number of chips processed on
today’s wafers. The expected savings would be about 30 percent.
But at the same time, the chipmakers are producing smaller and smaller chips with more
transistors on them, essentially cutting smaller and smaller slices from the cake. When you see news releases touting
the shift from making 65-nanometer chips to 45-nanometer chips, semiconductor makers are
trumpeting those smaller slices. (Unlike with pieces of cake, smaller is better when it comes to
making chips). The next step down is 32 nanometers, and chipmakers and equipment makers are
spending billions of dollars prepping for that shift
and subsequent moves to 22 nanometers.
This emphasis on building equipment to make smaller pieces of cake (”moving down the
process node”) and the pain caused by the financial crisis have left chip equipment vendors
unwilling — and possibly unable — to think about making bigger ovens. The equipment
suppliers estimate that redesigning the ovens and other cake-making tools will cost them more
than $20 billion in R&D — money they can’t afford to spend.
Jim Ellis, VP of Global Standards and Technology at SEMI, says focusing on 450 mm is going to have to wait. To focus on both moving down
the process node (cutting smaller pieces) and making chips on larger wafers (bigger cakes) would
be like fighting a war on two fronts when supply lines are already stretched. Other equipment
makers contacted for this story agreed but did not want to go on record for fear of angering
their customers, notably Intel, which is still pushing a plan to have a pilot 450-mm production
line in place by 2012.
When asked if that timeline still holds given the economic climate, an Intel spokeswoman wrote in
an email, “I cannot comment on our suppliers’ timelines, but the statement and
release below is all we are disclosing at this time, which does still say goal of a
pilot line in 2012.” The International
SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative, a consortium of chipmakers, backs Intel’s plans and
Scott Kramer, VP of manufacturing technology says he thinks the suppliers are overestimating the
costs associated with those plans.
Be that as it may, suppliers have concluded that the switch to 450 mm isn’t worth it,
especially right now. A report issued by SEMI explains their perspective
pretty clearly by pointing out that the investments made by equipment makers in 300 mm
equipment haven’t been recouped yet, and that the savings to chipmakers come at a cost to
the equipment makers. With a transition to larger wafers, Intel wins because its per-chip
production costs go down. However, the equipment providers have to invest in the R&D to build
these larger, more expensive new machines — machines that only the largest chip companies
may use.
In the last few months, the equipment industry has cut a few thousand jobs, and iSuppli expects sales of chip
equipment to fall to a six-year low in 2009. According to iSuppli, equipment sales were $54
billion in 2007 and are estimated to be about $35 billion in 2009. Against this backdrop it
appears that equipment vendors are ready to fight their customers for survival. But so far, those
customers keep insisting they are right.
AMD announced today the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 Series, a new family of discrete video cards
for notebooks. The next generation of mobile graphics processors promises to bring high-definition
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“The need is obvious for a cross-device mobile javascript library supporting iphone, palm,
and android. blackberry browser still blows” — Joe Hewitt
Joe of course created the popular iUI framework that mimics the native iPhone look and feel and
gives you nice simple iPhone features via JavaScript.
Palm is on his list, because it is back in the game with their CES announcement of the Palm Pre, an offering that has an SDK that
makes me happy. No Objective-C, no Java, just a Web stack!
Palm WebOS, Palm’s next generation operating system, integrates the power of a window-based
operating system with the simplicity of a browser. The user experience is designed around
multitasking, and makes it easy to run background applications, switch between applications in a
single step, and handle interruptions and events without losing context. Using WebOS,
you’ll be able to develop fast (and beautiful) applications.
The Palm Mojo Application Framework
Palm WebOS applications are easy to write using Mojo, a new application framework based on the
HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript standards that web developers already know and love. WebOS
applications are installed and run directly on the device at native speed and have access to a
wide range of device services.
Mojo will enable you to:
Build applications with gesture-based navigation, transitions, and scrolling
Use the WebOS notification system to alert users without interrupting them
Leverage the local storage capabilities of HTML5 so that data is available even when users
are offline
Use a JSON-based message bus to tap into a wide range of device services, including contacts,
calendars, and location
And good news for Palm OS developers! There are a number of ways to migrate data from a an
existing PDB file to your new WebOS app. Stay tuned for more information for developers with Palm
OS applications who want to build WebOS applications.
The Palm Mojo SDK
Besides the Palm Mojo Application Framework, the SDK will include sample code, documentation, and
development tools. An Eclipse-based IDE is included, and you will also be able to use your choice
of tools to build WebOS applications. The Mojo SDK is currently in private prerelease, and will
be available later this year as a free download from the Palm Developer Network.
The Palm App Catalog
Palm will provide an on-device application catalog to deliver your apps directly to users.
We are still some time out from the release, but very cool to see!
Blender was named as one of the Top 10 Animation/VFX Tools by Animation Magazine! Check out the
article here. Thanks to Nick Flynn for the article suggestion!
As far as video on the iPhone goes, YouTube is really the only viable option. There are a few
up-and-coming apps like Joost, Livestation,
CBS
EyeMobile, Sling, Poptiq and
Qik,
but it’s fairly undeveloped terrain.
A more
built-up space is TV and movie listings, and one such app from a young Palo Alto,
Calif.-based startup brings the two together. i.TV is trying to
provide an iPhone-specific
dashboard for all sorts of entertainment information and content, and it has already made
integrations that allow users to add movies they look up directly to their Netflix queues, for
example.
We chatted with i.TV’s VP of marketing Justin
Whittaker on the floor at Macworld this week, where Apple had given the startup a developer
booth. He told us that the angel-funded startup, which has 15 employees with development in Utah,
has already struck up advertising deals with movie studios, and is in meetings now to integrate
further with consumer electronics companies and content makers. He declined to give specific user
numbers, but said the company has millions of users, many of them active. i.TV is currently the
55th-most popular free app in the iTunes store. That’s pretty impressive, given that the
company was only founded last April and doesn’t even have a web version of its product.
i.TV may be small, but it’s possible it could use this momentum to become a one-stop shop
for video content on the iPhone frontier.
Focused (after an initial phone call) on the Infidel Guy/Bart Ehrman program.
I confess, I am so focused on this I could hardly let Ehrman say three words before stopping and
commenting. But a good warm up for the debate! We will continue next week with the same topic.
Here's the program (free/high quality).
Last month meebo, the web-based
chat startup that supports nearly every IM protocol, announced that
it had added support for both MySpace and Facebook Chat. Meebo’s post on the new features
was a little strange - while they explicitly thanked “the folks at MySpace who encouraged
and helped us to test and ga
)
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)
We’ve been getting quite a few tips about this, and German media outlets are picking up
the story like crazy, so here goes: if you were ever in the market for a German blog, now would
be a good time to put your money where your mouse is. Robert Basic, famous in German-speaking
countries for his blog 
