Category: News

Found under: Microsoft, Kin One, Kin Two, Windows, ,

The Microsoft KIN ONE and TWO featurephones have been unveiled recently but its only today that we can truly say we have all the specs and features of these two Windows Phone devices. Centered on social networking the KIN ONE and TWO will be the ideal phones for teenagers and customers interested in devices with lots of social networking capabilities.The specs and features of the KIN ONE and TWO have been made available by Microsoft Germany so lets take a look at them The Micro

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The good news?  Google this morning announced the availability of Google Maps Navigation in the UK.  The bad news?  The update requires Android 1.6 or higher, meaning that Hero users in the country are unable to take advantage of the service.  In light of the news, one would think that the Android 2.1 update would come sooner rather than later (especially with it rumored to hit Taiwan on April 26th) – unfortunately, the opposite appears to be the case.  The folks at Tech Radar are reporting that a conversation they had with a Google rep (which was followed with a similar conversation with HTC) points to a 2.1 update “starting in June.”

To the European Hero users, I hope you see an update soon, because Google Maps Navigation is quite the nifty tool.  Noah and I used it while traveling through parts of Marin County, California (part of a Dogfight, if you recall), and it was incredibly useful.  Let’s hear from the EuroDogs that work with Hero devices – eager to see the update, or A-OK without it?  Discuss!

Via Engadget

MorphLabs made available in the U.S. today its cloud computing solutions, a series dubbed mCloud, which are designed to let managed service providers (MSPs) enter the cloud provider market. The company, which has offices in El Segundo, Calif., Japan and the Philippines, has been testing its solutions pre-release within eight Japanese service providers and already has two U.S. customers lined up. Transforming MSPs into cloud providers is becoming more common as traditional service providers try to fend off cloud-based competition from the likes of Amazon Web Services, Rackspace Cloud, GoGrid and others.

The mCloud series consists of two things: mCloud Controller and mCloud Server. The former is an appliance “used to convert commodity hardware into a cloud” for customers already running virtualized environments, while the latter is a holistic solution (which includes mCloud Controller) in the form of a preconfigured IBM BladeCenter S. The appliance-based approach is novel among cloud solutions, but according to MorphLabs CEO Winston Damarillo, it eases the transition into a cloud environment and, in this case, houses the solution’s hardware-based failover mechanism. In the same way that VMware partners can offer vCloud Express-branded offerings, MorphLabs customers can brand their cloud offerings as mCloud On Demand.

MorphLabs also hopes to capitalize on its compatibility with Amazon Web Services. Not only can end users port applications from a MorphLabs-powered offering to AWS, but smaller MSPs can complement AWS’s impersonal service with offerings such as personalized SLAs, server sizes and other such touches. For large enterprises that implement MorphLabs in-house, AWS compatibility means a smoother path to a hybrid-cloud environment. Letting its MSP customers work with AWS rather than necessarily against it aligns MorphLabs’ own experience as a cloud provider itself. Damarillo says it’s no use trying to compete with AWS when you can leverage its popularity to bolster your own offerings.

The company could face a tough road trying to sell against established vendors like 3Tera — which is now part of CA and which Damarillo says was a regular MorphLabs competitor in Japan — and cloud pundit Reuven Cohen’s company, Enomaly. Likewise, vendors such as Eucalyptus and VMOps have strong internal cloud products that could be part of MSP cloud transition efforts, too. What’s certain, however, is that small MSPs and traditional hosters won’t have to vanish when there are so many tools available to let them ride the cloud computing hype while continuing to sell personalized offerings that the big boys aren’t really equipped to sell.

For more on cloud computing, join the GigaOM Network at its annual Structure conference on June 23 & 24 in San Francisco.

Images courtesy of Morph Labs

The Adam Carolla Podcast is my favorite podcast. So for them to ask me to call in to the show to talk about the iPhone? That was freaking incredible. More »

Obtaining specific ringtones has been a shared endeavor amongst cell phone users for years. From alleged “free online tones” to custom editing software, people have made all sorts of attempts to hear a certain “jingle” when someone calls their phone. However, Android users no longer have to endure any ringtone related struggles.

Ringdroid is a hassle free custom ringtone application that runs right on the user’s device. You can select a song from your music folder and load it directly into the program. Once loaded, Ringdroid allows you to edit and save the ringtone for your own personal use. Ringdroid uses a timeline editing tool similar to those found in professional music production software. Once completed, you can save your file as a regular music file, alarm, notification or normal ringtone. You also have the option to set it as a default ring or to a specific contact.

Ringdroid is as efficient as you can get for a mobile audio editing application. You can zoom in and out of the time table and even specify start and end times down to one hundredth of a second. There are no options available for loop play while editing, most likely because it could annoy the user after prolonged use. On the negative side, the program closes once you’ve completed creating a file. This can be inconvenient when trying to make multiple ringtones.

Possibly the best aspect of Ringdroid is that its free. Completely uncompromised editing and saving at no cost to you.

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Accurate editing tools
• Alarm and notification options
• Contact and default ringtone options built in
• Free

Cons:

• Closes after a ringtone is completed

Verdict:
Any person who wants a ringtone other than what is on their phone should install Ringdroid. It’s a free, practical application that makes customizing your Android device that much easier.

Note: This review was submitted by Michael Sechler as part of our app review contest.

Related Posts

• Gmote: Turn your phone into a remote for your computer.
• FolderOrganizer: Spring cleaning for that cluttered home screen
• Zedge: Customizing Your Phone With Art and Sound
• StudyDroid flashcards: Absolutely perfect for the student on the go
• PicSay Pro: Everything looks better with googly eyes

Below are links to news stories of interest from newspapers that came up during a search today.  These links were active at the time of this e-mail, but should you want to save a story, printing it or cutting and pasting the entire article and saving it to your computer is recommended.    

SOS Rally Day 2010

April 21, 2010 – Slide Show – IEA, in cooperation with the Responsible Budget Coalition (RBC), SOS Rally Day at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield.

State News

Rally participants get fired up in downtown Springfield  The State Journal-Register – 12:15 p.m.: After several pep speeches at the Save Our State rally outside the state Capitol, ralliers are now marching around the Capitol complex. A leader of the rally says they’re being led in the march by the 125-member Springfield High School marching band. 

Rally coverage here  Chicago Daily Herald – Check back throughout the day for updates on the big rally at the Capitol being put on by teachers unions, senior groups, social service providers and others opposed to budget cuts and supporting a tax increase to balance spending.  Unions officials I spoke with last night said they were sure there’d be well over 10,000 people here just based on the bus reservations, with thousands more likely. Unionized state workers were being encouraged to take their lunch hours to attend the rally.

Protesters in Springfield rally for tax increase  Chicago Sun-Times – ? Several thousand protesters are marching in streets around the Illinois state Capitol after rallying for a tax increase to prevent …

Protests Shut Down Capitol  NBC Chicago – In what could shape up to be the biggest rally in Illinois Statehouse history, upwards of 15,000 teachers and other state employees are marching around the state capitol, blocking the entrance to the house chambers and chanting in front of lawmakers offices to protest statewide spending cuts.  

Superintendents talk finances as teachers rally  The Courier News –  As the heads of the two largest school districts in Illinois met in Elgin to discuss their financial predicaments today, thousands of teachers from across the state rallied and marched in Springfield to “save our schools.”   

Thousands of protesters at Illinois Capitol to press for tax increase  Chicago Tribune (blog) –  SPRINGFIELD — Thousands of protesters bused down by labor unions and social service advocates are rallying at the Capitol today in an attempt to pressure …   

Tax Hike Backers Rally At State Capitol, Thousands Turn Out (VIDEO)  Huffington Post (blog) – ? An estimated 15000 people gathered at the Capitol in Springfield Wednesday calling for a tax increase that could stave off major budget cuts.   

‘Show some guts!’ protesters tell Ill. lawmakers in rallying for tax increase  WQAD –  Up to 15000 people are participating in one of the biggest rallies in the history of the Illinois state Capitol. …   

Aurora teachers trek to Springfield to be heard  Fox Valley Villages Sun – West Aurora High School art teacher Brandi Martin was dressed head to toe in pink Wednesday for her trip to Springfield. Had she not balked at the last minute, she would have had pink hair, too.  The pink, she said, is to symbolize the 20,000 pink slips given teachers across the state because of the budget problems coming from Springfield. More specifically, it symbolizes the 127 pink slips West Aurora gave and, even more specifically, the one pink slip given to a co-worker, turning the high school’s five-person art staff into a four-person one.   

Metro-east teachers to join thousands at Springfield budget cut rally
Belleville News Democrat  – The Illinois Education Association said if the state makes the proposed $1.8 billion in cuts, then around 20000 people could be laid off from schools state …   

Teachers protest school funding in Springfield  WGNtv.com – ? The Chicago Public School teachers and students took a bus ride to Springfield for a rally at the state capitol building. Thousands of education employees …   

Web exclusive: Local teachers part of rally in Springfield  Kankakee Daily Journal –  Organizers of the state budget crisis rally in Springfield are expecting 12000 people at the state Capitol building today. …  

QC Labor group heads to rally at Illinois State Capitol  WQAD –  Dozens of people from the Quad Cities are among thousands in Springfield for the largest rally ever at the state’s Capitol. …

Paolo Pellegrini, a former top Paulson & Co employee, testified to the Securities and Exchange Commission that he told collateral agent ACA that his hedge fund would short the security at the center of the Goldman Sachs lawsuit, reports CNBC. This is hugely significant. If true, it significantly weakens the government’s case against the investment bank, because it implies that Goldman could not have misled ACA about Paulson’s involvement. Indeed, one of the hedge fund’s own managers may have told the collateral manager that a short interest was the fund’s goal.

Here’s an excerpt from CNBC’s report:

In one part of Pellegrini’s testimony, a government official asked him: “Did you tell (Schwartz) that you were interested in taking a short position in Abacus?”

“Yes, that was the purpose of the meeting,” Pellegrini responded.

“How did you explain that to her?” the government official said.

“That we wanted to buy protection on traunches of a synthetic RMBS portfolio.” Pellegrini said.

The SEC does not mention this exchange in its complaint against Goldman.

In the exchange above, Laura Schwartz was a manager at ACA. Pellegrini indicates that the entire purpose of this meeting that took place in Jackson Hole, WY was to discuss the short position that Paulson desired. Unless the SEC intends to say that Pellgrini is lying, it’s hard to imagine how this doesn’t virtually dismantle its case.

You may recall that the one clear dispute of fact from the start between Goldman and the SEC centered on what the bank told ACA about Paulson’s intent. Goldman claims that it never led ACA to believe that Paulson would be an equity investor. The SEC says it did. Pellegrini’s reported testimony provides strong support for Goldman’s side of the story.

If the SEC loses the battle in attempting to show that Goldman misled ACA, it’s left only with its claim that the bank misled investors. That, however, is more a question of law. It’s not at all clear that whoever helped choose the collateral pool is material to investors. As explained earlier, so long as an investor has accurate information with which to perform statistical evaluation of a security, it’s hard to see how the details of its portfolio’s origin matter.

Wade Roush wrote:

The Patrick Administration announced today that representatives of the Massachusetts: It’s All Here campaign to support business growth in the state will be available for meetings with college students, entrepreneurs, and small business executives at their new location in the Cambridge Innovation Center at One Broadway, Cambridge. Officials who will be available by appointment for office hours at the CIC include Gregory Bialecki, Secretary of Housing and Economic Development; Eric Nakajima, Senior Innovation Policy Advisor; Anne Struthers, Executive Director of Business Development; and Kofi Jones, coordinator of Massachusetts: It’s All Here. Xconomy broke the news about the opening of the state’s CIC outpost in early February.

It’s earnings week — and the Federal Reserve system is offering up details on its 2009 balance sheet.

The bank notes that though the total value of its assets “did not change significantly,” the composition of those assets changed dramatically. The bank shed $1.3 trillion in central bank liquidity swaps, loans and commercial paper. But it increased its holdings of mortgage-backed securities by $919 billion, “to provide support to mortgage and housing markets and to foster improved conditions in financial markets more generally.” (For reference, U.S. housing assets are worth $16.7 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. Their value peaked at $22.9 trillion in 2006.)

The Fed’s overall earnings increased to $53.4 billion — including a surprising $20.4 billion in earnings on its mortgage-backed securities, many of which the Fed gained through its bailouts of AIG and Bear Sterns. Those assets were took a loss in 2008.

My pal Darlene Cavalier from Science Cheerleader twigged me on to a project she’s helped develop: Science for Citizens, a collection of websites for projects where citizens — that’s you! — can help do science. There are a lot of interesting projects there, from using Hubble to bird watching.

There are a lot of familiar ones there — Stardust@Home, for example — as well as educational projects for kids and older students. It’s a treasure trove of ideas! I’m a big fan of citizen science, in fact. Amateur astronomy has and probably always will be an important aspect of astronomy, since there is a vast amount of excellent science that can be done with smaller, personal observatories. Lots of other fields of science are figuring this out as well, so you should take a look and see if anything there captures your interest. There’s something there for pretty much everyone.

Attention, people of Yale, New Haven, and environs! I will be giving a talk Friday called “Science and the Media: A Match Made in Heaven, or a Cosmic Train Wreck?”

I’ll offer my bipolar musings on the once and future state of science journalism. It’s free and open to the public

It’s sponsored by the Yale Training Program in Biophysics, the Department of Molecular Biology and Biophysics, and the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale.

Here are the details:

When: Friday, April 23, 2010 4:00 PM
Where: Bass Center for Molecular and Structural Biology (BASS), Rm. 305
266 Whitney Ave., New Haven, CT 06511

More information here. and here.

Here’s the key nugget to take away from Barack Obama’s interview with CNBC’s John Harwood:

JOHN HARWOOD: If reducing consumption is a good idea, could you see the potential for value-added tax in this country?    

PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know– I know that there’s been a lot of talk around town lately about the value-added tax– that is something that has worked for some countries.  It’s something that would be novel– for the United States.  And before, you know, I started saying, “This makes sense or that makes sense.”  I want to get a better picture of what our options are

And my first priority is to figure out how can we reduce wasteful spending so that– you know, we have a baseline of the core services that we need and the government should provide.  And then we decide how do we pay for that.  As opposed to figuring out how much money can we raise and then– not have to make some tough choices on the spending side.

Translated: We’re going to wait until the deficit reduciton committee makes its suggestions after the November elections, and when the committee makes its suggestion, then we can act.

Join the conversation about this story »

“There is a tide in the affairs of men.

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life?

Is bound in shallows and in miseries”

These words written by William Shakespeare from “Julius Caesar” should be the epitaph on Palm’s tomb when it is bought out or closed down in the coming months. 

Palm has squandered opportunities to sew up the PDA/ smartphone market on no fewer than three occasions since the turn of the century and finally enough should be enough. Palm blew their unrivalled position as the leader of the nascent PDA market, then blew the opportunity to be the first dominant player in the smartphone market and then this time last year we were all waiting for the launch of the Palm Pre with breathless excitement (yes we were). Here at last was a phone to rival and maybe outgun the iPhone being launched on a CDMA network. Everyone anticipated that the Sprint exclusive would be short-lived and that the real fun would start when the handset moved to Verizon.

How wrong we were, and frankly we should have known better. ‘Twas ever thus with Palm. Through a combination of poor styling, poor marketing, poor everything, Palm completely missed their moment yet again and before they knew it Android handsets were being launched daily and the chance had gone. Somehow and for some reason Palm has always been jinxed and the only question being asked now is who will buy them and inherit the wonders of webOS.

So here’s my advice for any of the pretenders. “Don’t do it!” Let this one quietly wither and die as its cash slowly runs down. Nothing good can come from it. I am not the remotest bit superstitious, but for some reason and without fail any product that comes out of this stable seems doomed to pull defeat from the jaws of victory.

In the past few days I have read countless speculative articles from analysts far more qualified than me making the case for literally everyone to buy Palm, or rather the rights to webOS, either to take a stance in the mobile market or as a defensive measure. By consensus the front runners seem to be HTC, who should buy because they make best handsets for other people’s operating systems, and Lenovo, who should buy because they would then be able to make great tablet computers and/or smartphones. Maybe RiM could solve their image problems by an acquisition or even Nokia with its 40%+ global share might find Palm a good way to gain a significant foothold in the US market (if you call 4% and declining a foothold).

At $1bn no one is going to be put off by the price, and the momentum of the deal dictates that somewhere right now, there are corporate development people burning the midnight oil working out how to make Palm look like a no brainer in a 200-page, artfully created Powerpoint presentation. Soon, executives will gather deep into the night to make their momentous decision, and the bankers will earn their spectacular fees. This isn’t sound financial advice, but here’s my advice to them all. Save your money, buy yourself an Incredible, a Galaxy S, and HD2 or an EVO 4G and get a good night’s sleep. There are better deals and better companies to be had in the morning.

Check out BestBuy Mobile for other cellular news, videos, and How Tos.

Low Vitamin D Levels Associated With More Asthma Symptoms and Medication Use. Not a randomized double blind study. Rather, they look at the correlation, and they did some cell biology experiments. Looks like high levels of vitamin D enhances the action of corticosteroids.

Recreational genome sequencing for the whole family. I’m kind of irritated as the “ethical concerns” about this information. Information may not always want to be free, but this is pretty much an inevitability. Since there’s no plausible way you can cordon it off you need to educate people to use the information wisely. Unfortunately most of the populace is not too intelligent, but that just means you need to work hard in making the heuristics simple and obvious.

Genetic Basis for Health Benefits of the ‘Mediterranean Diet’. Turns out it might be a matter of gene expression.

Thinking About Tomorrow. Delaying gratification is really important, and often hard.

Why Texas is doing so much better economically than the rest of the nation. Daniel Gross focuses on the fact that Texas is globalizing and export-oriented. I note that only Utah has a lower median age. I suspect that the young work force in its peak years makes it easy for Texas to have a low public service state and focus on private sector wealth generation.

It was pretty obvious to us when we first saw the iPad that it would definitely be big in the medical field. As it turns out, it looks like hospitals are catching on—case in point, California’s Kaweah Delta. The hospital has ordered 100 iPads for use around their campus. Nick Volosin, the hospital’s director of technical services, sees the iPad as replacing laptops for things like email, checking X-rays, EKG results, and more.

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Found under: Google, Maps, Navigation, Android, ,

Googles turn by turn Maps Navigation system is finally coming to other markets than the USA. Android 2.1 and 1.6 smartphones owners in the UK will finally be able to use Google Navigation and hopefully other worldwide markets will follow soon.In case you happen to reside in the UK you can now download the updated Google Maps Navigation Beta application on your Android device and start enjoying the navigation features. Youll have to look for version 4.1.1 since thats the one that bri

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Communities of activists and advocates are keeping busy this week in the run-up to tomorrow’s commemoration of the 40th annual Earth Day. Last night I had the pleasure of hearing from EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and a panel of climate and energy experts hosted by Planet Forward, an innovative project of The George Washington University.

Administrator Jackson outlined her agency’s plan to work with Congress toward comprehensive policies to reshape our energy future and speed the transition from polluting fossil fuels to clean energy sources. She engaged the audience in a frank conversation about the need to pay more attention to environmental issues, not just to preserve ecosystems and resources but to protect human health, build public policies around sound science, and guarantee equitable access to basic resources.

One of Administrator Jackson’s main initiatives at EPA is to expand the conversation around environmental issues to include new concerns and new voices. I couldn’t agree more with this goal; climate and energy is an issue of social justice, of public health, and of economic and national security concerns as much as ecological ones. Jackson’s own background as a native of New Orleans, an engineer and a mother speaks to what inspires so many in the environmental movement; not the spotted owl or old-growth forests (though they are important!) but the need to stop skyrocketing childhood asthma rates, clean polluted waterways, and create millions of jobs in green industries.

The Planet Forward event also featured panelists from the Hill, a major Mid-Atlantic utility, Mother Jones magazine, and the Natural Resources Defense Council speaking to the prospects for the Senate climate bill expected to be released next week. They are all looking for a bi-partisan bill that spurs clean energy innovation and protects consumers while setting strong targets for reducing emissions and honoring our obligations under international climate deals. It’s a lot to ask for, but it’s exactly the kind of policy we need to honor our obligations to be good stewards of our earth and protect all its inhabitants. The speakers at last night’s event show once again that comprehensive climate legislation is a goal shared by the business, scientific, and environmental communities among many others.

Planet Forward aims to engage all people – from professional environmental advocates to tree-planting children – in the conversation around climate and energy challenges. Using new media like twitter and Facebook, encouraging the public to submit videos of everyday actions to reduce energy use, and hosting online discussion forums are all part of the effort. As we get ready for to fight for comprehensive climate legislation in the Senate, we’ll need all the resources we can mobilize, including such innovative online communities. Tomorrow we mark the 40th annual Earth Day, and we hope you will join in the efforts to move our planet forward.

John Hawks has a post up, Multiregional evolution lives!, in response to Rex Dalton’s reporting on Neandertal-human admixture. He notes:

These ongoing studies are concluding that present-day genetic variation is inconsistent with a simple model where a random-mating ancestral population gives rise to today’s global population by means of a staged out-of-Africa dispersal. They next look at a model with some substantial (possibly complete) isolation between ancient human populations followed by a subsequent out-of-Africa dispersal. They show that this model fits the data significantly better.
So far, so good.

For a moment, I’m going to adopt a critical perspective. Previous results haven’t yet been able to answer an important possible question: Can they distinguish the effects of intermixture outside Africa from an ancient population structure inside Africa? Increasingly it looks like population structure inside Africa may have been very important to the evolution of Late Pleistocene Africans. How can we distinguish these kinds of structure from each other?

The short answer is that maybe we can’t, yet. Human population history was not simple. If we take a simple model and add more parameters, it will fit the data better. The question is whether there may be some even better model with the same number of parameters. Population structure within Africa, selection on some loci but not others, asymmetrical migration — all these and more might be possible.

The Out of Africa + total replacement model had a clean elegance, but it might not be viable in the near future. That being said it seems to me that the old Multiregional model implied, though proponents were often careful to reject this characterization, more regional parity than was the case. I do not expect the predominant African ancestry of modern humans to be rejected for example. There are other frameworks out there, such as Alan Templeton’s Out of Africa again and again (Richard Dawkins favors this in The Ancestor’s Tale).