Each year, approximately 5,000 fatal work-related injuries and 4 million non-fatal injuries and illnesses occur in the United States. This number represents both unnecessary human suffering and high economic costs. In order to assist in better evaluating workplace safety and create safer work environments, the Institute of Medicine conducted a series of evaluations of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) research programs, assessing the relevance and impact of NIOSH’s work on improving worker safety and health.
Blog
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Evaluating Occupational Health and Safety Research Programs: Framework and Next Steps
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Systems for Research and Evaluation for Translating Genome-Based Discoveries for Health: Workshop Summary
With the advent of genome-wide association studies, numerous associations between specific gene loci and complex diseases have been identified–for breast cancer, coronary artery disease, and asthma, for example. This rapidly advancing field of genomics has stirred great interest in “personalized” health care from both the public and private sectors. The hope is that using genomic information in clinical care will lead to reduced health care costs and improved health outcomes as therapies are tailored to the genetic susceptibilities of patients. A variety of genetically based health care innovations have already reached the marketplace, but information about the clinical use of these treatments and diagnostics is limited. Currently data do not provide information about how a genomic test impacts clinical care and patient health outcomes–other approaches are needed to garner such information.
This volume summarizes a workshop to address central questions related to the development of systems to evaluate clinical use of health care innovations that stem from genome-based research:
What are the practical realities of creating such systems?
What different models could be used?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of each model?
How effectively can such systems address questions about health outcomes? -
The American Library Association declares this Saturday, Nov. 14, to be National Game Day
Man alive, there’s been a lot of gaming news these past few days. Continuing the trend: this Saturday, November 14, is to be hereby referred to as National Gaming Day. Thus decided the American Library Association. The day has been created in order to promote the idea that video games can be used to sharpen one’s reading ability, and to promote critical thinking.
The original Reuters report lists World War II video games as something that may be used to introduce young people to important historical subjects. Obviously, no one is saying that you should learn all about D-Day via Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, but that, if you find the subject matter interesting, maybe you look into it a little more academically?
There’s plenty of games that I can think of that, in a way, promote literacy. Vagrant Story for the PS1 might as well have been a novel, and certainly requires a reading comprehension level that could translate to schoolwork. BioShock, while not filled with text boxes, actually manages to be a shooter with an interesting and well-executed storyline.
Final Fantasy XII is another one, but I never really got into the battle system. Maybe I’ll give it another shot, one year after my previous attempt to play it.
Devin says Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 is another such game to look out for.
So there’s plenty of literary games out there for you to choose from. Not every game is mindless shoot everything that moves with no redeeming qualities behind it.
via Kotaku
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Netflix Is the iPod of Broadband
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings shed a little light on the actual costs of streaming, speaking at the NewTeeVee Live conference today in San Francisco, and put to lie the idea that ISPs are suffering from higher costs to deliver video to end users. When asked about his bandwidth costs and the price of delivering steaming media, he didn’t disclose the costs, but said they were falling thanks to the effect of Moore’s law. He pointed out that Amazon charges about 5 cents a gigabyte for bandwidth — or about a nickel a movie — as proof of the low costs.“What we’ve seen is bandwidth costs falling exponentially in the last five years. What’s funding the whole system is the users paying $40 to $60 a month,” Hastings said. He was referring to the monthly subscription fees charged by broadband service providers.
Hastings also pointed out that Netflix may compete with cable and IPTV video providers on the video side, but that services like his streaming video offering are driving demand for cable’s high-speed Internet products. Calling it a halo effect, and comparing it to Apple’s ability to sell more Macs after folks snapped up iPods, Hastings said the primary reason for anyone to subscribe to 20Mbps service is to watch video, not send emails faster. This prompted Om to ask, “So, is Netflix the iPod of broadband?”
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Flickr Partners With Snapfish To Offer Better Printing Options
Flickr, the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site so many people love, announced an important deal today as it named HP’s Snapfish its preferred photo printing and gift creation partner. Thanks to the arrangement, printing pictures is about to become a lot easier for some folks, and for others, this will even be the first time a certain printing option has been available at all.
Flickr’s international members are set to get their first opportunity to print photos directly from photostreams due to this partnership. That represents a significant step in making Flickr more user-friendly, and should pay off in terms of time spent on the site. Perhaps, once word spreads a little, in terms of unique visitors, too.
As for what else is going on, a formal statement outlined lots of perks. "Flickr and Snapfish have worked closely to develop a fully integrated and intuitive experience, combining Snapfish’s printing capabilities with Flickr’s online photo organization features, such as Organizr, Sets and Photo Page," according to the release.
Furthermore, "Flickr’s partnership with Snapfish will allow members more flexibility in shipping photos – not only can members print photos from anywhere in the world, they can also ship photos to anywhere in the world." And "members in the U.S. can opt for local pick-up of their prints in-store at any of Snapfish’s retail partners, including Walmart, Walgreens, Staples, Duane Reade, and others."
Flickr users have been pushing for something like this for quite a while – check out a 21-post discussion started in May of 2008 if you want evidence. Count on more than a few people applauding Yahoo and HP for sealing the deal.
Related Articles:
> Flickr Delves Into People-Tagging
> Flickr Receives Four Billionth Photo Upload
> Flickr Added To The iPhone App Store
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Will Murdoch Kill The One Smart Part Of The WSJ’s Paywall?
With Rupert Murdoch’s recent talk about removing his sites from Google, some said that if you understood his comments in context, he was really talking more about copying the WSJ’s “leaky” paywall strategy — which lets users see full articles if they visit via Google. Of course, in that very interview, he appeared to not know how that leaky paywall works, claiming that it took people to a landing page with a couple of paragraphs rather than the full story. That’s not true. It does that if you’re linked from most other sites. But people who come via Google (or, I believe, Digg) get the full story automatically. The idea, from SEO experts, was to actually help Google drive more traffic.
Of course, that was before Murdoch suddenly decided that all this free promotion was “parasiting” his works (despite the fact that many of his own properties do the same thing. However, it looks like News Corp. may actually be considering ending the “leaky” part of its paywall, with the company’s COO, Chase Carey, saying that the idea makes no sense:
“I don’t think it makes sense… We don’t want people going though a backdoor, or other channels…”
And now we learn how little the folks at News Corp. seem to understand the internet and the fundamental way that people want to interact with news these days. It’s not just about sitting and receiving the end product. It’s about being a part of the process — and that includes sharing and spreading the news — for free — to others. Mark Cuban thinks (incorrectly, in my opinion) that Murdoch understands the value of people passing around links, which is why he says he wants to opt-out of Google (because search traffic isn’t as valuable as traffic from Twitter or Facebook). But locking up all that content actually harms that viral-link value. People aren’t going to share or spread a link if they know others can’t use it. For years, for example, we’ve used those “backdoors” (i.e., Google News) which Carey bemoans to read stories in the WSJ that we post here. If they stop allowing that, then I won’t read the WSJ any more, and the community of readers and commenters here will never hear from the WSJ again. It’s difficult to see how that’s a better option.
Amusingly, the first time that we ever wrote about this growing concept that people today want to “spread the news” and “share the news” more than they just want to receive the news was about five years ago — before the WSJ had put up its leaky paywall. The point of that post was to note just how far the WSJ had fallen out of the conversation on news media — since no one could send around a link to discuss things. Putting those “backdoors” into the paywall, at the very least, brought the WSJ somewhat back into the conversation. Blocking it now would make the Journal irrelevant again. It’s difficult to see how that’s a smart strategy at all.
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Details Emerge For Possible Medicare Payroll Tax In Senate Health Bill
Bloomberg: “White House Budget Director Peter Orszag said a proposal to apply Medicare taxes to capital gains earned by wealthy Americans as part of health-overhaul legislation is ‘in play’ in order to scale back a proposed levy on high-end insurance plans.” Orszag made these comments while speaking at the Bloomberg Washington Summit today. He also said this tax idea “is one of several… ‘floating around’ as the Senate prepares to begin debate on the health bill as early as next week.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s aides have been seeking input on the proposal from staffers for key Senators such as Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. According to aides, “Reid’s proposal … would apply Medicare taxes to non-wage income earned from capital gains, dividends, interest, royalties and partnerships for U.S. couples earning more than $250,000. … He’s also considering an alternative that would simply increase the 1.45 percent Medicare tax on salaries of couples who earn more than $250,000.” Either of these approaches would allow “Reid scale back a 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health benefits. Critics say that tax would hurt rank-and-file workers and violate President Barack Obama’s pledge to not raise taxes on couples earning less than $250,000” (Donmoyer, 11/12).
The Wall Street Journal: “Reid is considering increasing the 1.45% employee share of the Medicare tax on wages by 0.4 to 0.5 percentage point, according to a Senate aide. Such an increase could raise about $40 billion, the aide said, as Mr. Reid struggles to craft a health bill that will meet the demands of his 60-member Democratic caucus and not add to the deficit. The additional tax would apply only to wage income above $200,000 for individuals, or $250,000 for married taxpayers filing jointly” – a proposal aimed at “stay[ing] in line with President Barack Obama’s pledge that he wouldn’t increase taxes on the middle class.”
“The Medicare payroll tax increase being weighed by Mr. Reid ‘would be a progressive change, it would be targeting people who are most able to pay,’ said Steve Wamhoff, legislative director for the liberal group Citizens for Tax Justice,” a group who “in December proposed raising the employee share of the Medicare tax to 2.5% of wages but also proposed applying the tax to capital-gains income. The Medicare tax now only is levied on wages” (Vaughan, 11/12).
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People entering their 60s may have more disabilities today than in prior generations
In a development that could have significant ramifications for the nation’s health care system, Baby Boomers may well be entering their 60s suffering far more disabilities than their counterparts did in previous generations, according to a new UCLA study. The findings, researchers say, may be due in part to changing American demographics.In the study, which will be published in the January 2010 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, researchers from the division of geriatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA found that the cohort of individuals between the ages of 60 and 69 exhibited increases in several types of disabilities over time. By contrast, those between the ages of 70 and 79 and those aged 80 and over saw no significant increases — and in some cases exhibited fewer disabilities than their previous cohorts.While the study focused on groups born prior to the post–World War II Baby Boom, the findings hold “significant and sobering implications” for health care because they suggest that people now entering their 60s could have even more disabilities, putting an added burden on an already fragile system and boosting health costs for society as a whole, researchers say.If this is true, it’s something we need to address,” said Teresa Seeman, UCLA professor of medicine and epidemiology and the study’s principal investigator. “If this trend continues unchecked, it will put increasing pressure on our society to take care of these disabled individuals. This would just put more of a burden on the health care system to address the higher levels of these problems.”The researchers used two sets of data — the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) for 1988–94 and 1999–2004 — to examine how disabilities for the three groups of adults aged 60–69, 70–79, and 80 and older had changed over time. They assessed disability trends in four areas: basic activities associated with daily living, such as walking from room to room and getting into and out of bed; instrumental activities, such as performing household chores or preparing meals; mobility, including walking one-quarter mile or climbing 10 steps without stopping for rest; and functional limitations, which include stooping, crouching or kneeling.The study focused primarily on trends for the more recent 60–69 age group — those born between 1930 and 1944, just before the start of the Baby Boom, whose data was included in the 1999–2004 NHANES. In particular, researchers felt this group could offer insights into the health of the Boomers following them, who are now entering their 60s.The researchers found that between the periods 1988–94 and 1999–2004, disability among those in their 60s increased between 40 and 70 percent in each area studied except functional limitations, independent of sociodemographic characteristics, health status and behaviors, and relative weight. The increases were considerably higher among non-white and overweight subgroups.By contrast, the researchers found no significant changes among the group aged 70 to 79, while the 80-plus group actually saw a drop in functional limitations.One reason for this uptick, researchers say, is that disabilities may be linked with the changing racial and ethnic makeup of the group that recently reached or will soon be reaching its 60s, with the most rapid growth projected to be among African Americans and Hispanics — groups with significantly higher rates of obesity and lower socioeconomic status, both of which are associated with higher risk for functional limitations and disabilities.The researchers note that their controls for differences in sociodemographics, health status (such as chronic conditions and biological risk factors) and health behavior do not completely explain the increase in disability trends among the 60- to 69-year olds. Still, the trends within that group “are disturbing,” Seeman said.“Increases in disability in that group are concerning because it’s a big group,” she said. “These may be people who have longer histories of being overweight, and we may be seeing the consequences of that. We’re not sure why these disabilities are going up. But if this trend continues, it could have a major impact on us, due to the resources that will have to be devoted to those people.”Study co-authors included Arun Karlamangla and Sharon Merkin, of UCLA’s geriatrics division, and Eileen Crimmins, of the Andrus Gerontology Center at the University of Southern California.The National Institute on Aging funded this study.The UCLA Division of Geriatrics within the department of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA offers comprehensive outpatient and inpatient services at several convenient locations and works closely with other UCLA programs to improve and maintain the quality of life of seniors. UCLA geriatricians are specialists in managing the overall health of people age 65 and older and treating medical disorders that frequently affect the elderly, including falls and immobility, urinary incontinence, memory loss and dementia, arthritis, high blood pressure, heart disease, osteoporosis, and diabetes. UCLA geriatricians can knowledgably consider and address a broad spectrum of health-related factors — including medical, psychological and social — when treating patients.For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom or follow us on Twitter. -
Facts Are Stubborn Things
Last week the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted 11-1 to pass the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade energy tax. Some of the Committee’s members wanted to delay that vote until the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) conducts a complete economic analysis of the bill’s expected costs to American consumers and the nation’s economy, but Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer refused to wait, arguing that EPA has already done a “full-blown analysis” of the legislation.
Not true, as you can see here.
This week Senator John Kerry, the lead author of the legislation, told the Senate Finance Committee that “the reason” we need to pass his cap-and-trade energy tax is that “over the last eight years, emissions in the United States of America in greenhouse gases went up four times faster than in the 1990s.” Also not true. In fact, he’s off by a factor of 32.
As the video shows, greenhouse gas emissions increased far slower in the 2000s than the 1990s. According to data from the Energy Information Administration,[1] U.S. carbon dioxide emissions increased by 15.14% between 1990 and 1999, but from 2001 to 2008 carbon dioxide emissions only increased by 1.88%. If Senator Kerry were correct, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would have increased by 60.5% over the last 8 years, but they only increased by 1.88%. Senator Kerry overestimated U.S. emissions by a factor of 32.
These are the authors of the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade energy tax legislation. If our leaders can’t stick to the basic facts to support their argument for a national energy tax, and the lead author of the bill is this far off the mark on “the reason” Congress needs to pass it, Americans might reasonably question the validity of their estimates on how much the bill will cost them and our nation’s already-struggling economy.
Even more troubling, Senator Lindsey Graham is now working with Senator Kerry on a “compromise” in which Senators’ would accept the cap-and-trade plan in exchange for “opening new areas for offshore drilling.” This would have been a bad compromise last year, but given the fact that the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) is now open—and has been since Congress allowed its ban on offshore drilling to expire on October 1, 2008—it appears to be an even worse compromise this year.
If the compromise is anything like the “Gang of 10” plan offered last year in the months before the Congressional ban on drilling in 85 percent of the OCS was set to expire, the only thing we’d be compromising is the progress we’ve already made. That’s because the Gang of 10 plan would have created a permanent ban on drilling in 78 percent of our offshore areas—areas that are now open.
But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what the compromise may be. The long-term costs cap-and-trade legislation would inflict on our economy and our way of life would be so devastating, that no compromise – offshore drilling or anything else – would justify its passage.
[1] The total includes the row titled “Total Energy” and “Electric Power Generation.” -
Mario and Luigi wanted for beating up a cabbie
Let me start by clarifying that this is in no way a Nintendo marketing attempt for the New Super Mario Bros. Wii coming out on November 15th (WTF if …
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Google Wave Gets a Feature for “Following”
Google has added a "follow" feature to Google Wave. The feature is designed to let users stay up to date on public waves of interest. In other words, if there are waves out there that are available to everybody, and you want to follow it, simply click the follow button for that particular wave.
When a user adds you to a Wave, or if you contribute to one, you will automatically be "following" that wave. You can remove waves from your inbox by hitting the "archive" button, but they will come back when they are updated. Users can switch between unfollowing and following waves as often as they like.
"Public waves that are in your inbox simply because you opened them at some point in the past will start to leave your inbox as they get updated," says Google Wave engineering tech lead Casey Whitelaw. "You can also manually remove them with the ‘archive’ feature, and they will no longer return. We hope this will help with clearing a backlog of unwanted waves."
The "unfollow" feature takes the place of the "mute" feature, which has been part of Google Wave. If you don’t want a Wave anymore, just unfollow it. If you need to find a particular wave in the future, you can still search for it, even if you aren’t following it.
"Following is the first step towards a set of new tools for managing waves in your inbox," says Whitelaw. "In the future, there will be more control over what kinds of changes will cause a wave to appear in your inbox, and we will soon introduce better support for groups of wave users. We’re also thinking of expanding the following concept to let you follow people, groups, and searches."
If you have not yet had an opportunity to use Google Wave, there is a good chance that none of this makes much sense to you. However, you can get an idea of how Wave basically works by reading this.
Related Articles:
> Google Wave Simplified: How it Basically Works
> Will Google Wave Shape the Future of Online Communication?
> Is Google Wave Getting An App Store?
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With iTunes’ Variable Pricing, Fewer Hit Song Sales Still Mean More Money For Apple
When it comes to selling a song online, 30 cents means a lot. Sales of hit songs in Apple’s iTunes store have dipped 6 percent since April, in part due to a new variable song pricing structure that has driven up the price of most hits to $1.29, data from a new study by Billboard’s Glenn Peoples shows. But popular tracks by Lady GaGa, Miley Cyrus and their ilk are keeping their market share in comparison with the remainder of the music market, and Apple’s revenue from sales of the more expensive hit songs appears to be rising faster than consumers are turning away. For Apple and other retailers testing variable pricing in the digital music marketplace, the early returns suggest that their six-month-long experiment is succeeding — and generating more revenue for labels and rights holders as well.Hit songs account for more of the overall music marketplace today than they did five years ago, with the top 200 songs now making up more than one-sixth of digital track sales, Peoples writes in his extensive piece concerning sales patterns of hit records vs. works by less popular “long tail” artists. But the advent of variable pricing, which has boosted the price of most hit songs from 99 cents to $1.29 in Apple’s store, seems to have affected sales of hit songs over the past few months. “Higher prices have depressed sales of hits — in terms of units, not revenue,” he says. (Think of a teenager using up a $25 gift card, and receiving 19 hit songs instead of 25.) Ultimately, he writes, “many music fans aren’t shunning hits because they don’t like them but because the price rose by 30 cents.”
A little quick math implies that Apple is reaping larger rewards by increasing the price of hit songs by about 30 percent. By my count, only 2 of the current top 50 songs, and 26 of the top 200, in the iTunes Store are still priced at 99 cents, with the remainder at $1.29. If the average price of a top-200 hit is therefore about $1.25, and track sales among the top 200 have fallen by 6 percent, sales revenue from hit songs would still be up by at least 18 percent compared with an all 99-cent store.
Apple also reduced the price of another subset of its songs in its store to 69 cents in April, and has seen a bump in overall transactions per user since that time, so its experiment may be working on both ends. (The majority are still priced at 99 cents.) Other retailers such as Amazon.com, RealNetworks’ Rhapsody and Lala.com have begun using variable pricing in their MP3 stores as well, and Lala CEO Geoff Ralston mentioned to me recently that the company would consider variable pricing for its “web songs,” permanent streaming songs that now cost 10 cents apiece. The data suggests that even if some frustrated consumers are tuning out on higher-priced songs, Apple is still gaining more than it loses from the new pricing structure.
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Staying in Touch During the Asia Trip
Earlier today, the President left for Asia, stopping over in Alaska before heading to Tokyo, Japan.
During this trip, we’re going to try something new. To offer an inside perspective to everyone back here in the U.S., Ben Rhodes, the Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, will provide frequent updates on the trip.
Watch his first video, and be sure to check back for new faces and stories:
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Vitamin D turns your webcam into a virtual doorman
When I bought a webcam for my front door – mine is the Linksys WVC54GCA – I was faced with a predicament. The built-in motion detection software bombarded my email inbox with images of an empty frame. It was set off by the motion of a leaf or a reflection, rendering one of the most important aspects – notification of trespass – ineffective.
At an impasse, I decided to build a cyberbiomimetic AI using a cockroach brain and a vat of amino acids. The resulting system, while effective at spotting intruders, eventually threatened to become self-aware and so I had to shut it down. Finally, I tried Vitamin D. Problem, as they say, solved.
Vitamin D is a three-step piece of software. You point it at a webcam on your network (it’s compatible with a few models right now) and tell it what to do when it sees evil people encroaching on your turf. Be they the UPS guy or brain-eating zombies, the system will record a clip of their activity and can even notify you via email and an audible chime when it senses movement. In short, it allows you to create a very powerful security system in a few minutes.
You can add multiple cameras and the system grabs only the most important parts of the day, ensuring you don’t miss a single entry or exit. Because it’s compatible a number of webcams, including webcams over a network.
I was able to connect my webcam and start recording in less than a minute. It’s a great feeling to know that the webcam has suddenly become more than a way to watch your front step. Sadly, you need a PC or Mac running the Vitamin D software to record 24/7 video but if you set this up on an always attended-to system it makes for an interesting and valuable upgrade.
It’s free right now and you can download the beta here. A subscription version will be sold in early 2010.
Note: My webcam is sideways because that’s how I mounted it in my window. Long story.
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iPhone Increases Marketshare Again
For Q3 2009, Apple’s iPhone accounted for 17.1 percent of worldwide smartphone marketshare, a new high for the company. That’s the good news from Gartner, and there’s more where that came from.
While overall mobile phone sales were flat for the quarter, smartphone sales were up 12.8 percent, some 41 million units. Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner, notes that smartphones “represent the fastest-growing segment of the mobile-devices market and we remain confident about the potential for smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2009 and in 2010.” How convenient for Apple.
3.4, 12.9, and 17.1 percent…that’s Apple’s market share for each third quarter from 2007 through 2009, the growth rate easily besting even RIM’s doubling of its own market share over the same period of time. For the current quarter, Apple also outpaced RIM, the two companies growing by 49.2 and 46.9 percent, respectively. While that surge could be attributed to the launch of the iPhone 3GS, it should be noted that the iPhone 3GS was supply constrained during the quarter. Further, Gartner believes the fourth quarter “should be even stronger as Apple starts selling in China, through one additional carrier in the UK, and in an additional 16 countries.”
While Nokia did manage growth, it picked up only 4.4 percent in units sold, putting the company at 39.3 percent market share, down from 42.3 percent for the same period last year. The big losers for the quarter appears to have been manufacturers saddled with Windows Mobile 6.
According to Gartner, Windows Mobile 6.5 came “too late to have an impact on the third quarter, so sales of Windows-based smartphones saw another decline.” Apparently, HTC must be gaining strength based upon Android. Google’s mobile OS “picked up momentum but with only a handful of Android devices available, its share remained modest at 3.5 per cent” of the mobile operating systems.
No doubt phones like Verizon’s Droid will help to increase Android’s share of the market, but arguably not at Apple’s expense. The problem with Android is that each carrier is free to create its own mind-numbing implementation, resulting in a lack of consistency for the users of different phones. A case in point is the Droid, which currently lacks multi-touch, even though Android 2.0 supports it. For the most consistent and elegant mobile experience, the only choice remains the iPhone.
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Ford’s using wheat straw in a 2010 Flex component
Here’s a little known fact: Henry Ford used natural material like hemp and stray to reinforce plastic components in his cars. Now, Ford is at it again with a small quarter trim bin found in the third row of the Ford Flex made out of wheat straw bio-filled polypropylene. Wheat straw!
Sure, it’s just one small part in one vehicle, but according to the numbers, the impact on the environment sounds at least significant.
This modest step, says Ford, will cut the need for some 20,000 pounds of petroleum and prevent 30,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions each year.
This so-called wheat straw is the byproduct of wheat harvesting and isn’t exactly useful. Chances are that if this trial works out on this one part, Ford, and the rest of the industry, will look into ways to further incorporate green materials into their vehicles. I, for one, look forward to the day that my steering wheel is made from corn and I can spreed a little butter and salt on it to enjoy a nice snack while driving down I-75.
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UK Gov’t Official: Innocent People Won’t Get Kicked Off The Internet; Trust Us
With all of the concern over the proposed bill in the UK to kick file sharers off the internet based on accusations (not convictions), some have been raising concerns about innocent users kicked off the internet. Culture Minister Sion Simon has hit back at those claims insisting that the innocent won’t be kicked offline. Really. Trust us. Or something like that. The main reason he claims that it won’t impact the innocent is because multiple letters will be sent and there will be an “appeals” process. Of course, that ignores the fact that this could still be quite a disruption in someone’s life. If they’re falsely accused, they risk losing their internet access and have to fight an appeal? That could be costly in terms of both time and money. And, of course, we’ve already seen, with other similar threats, that the warning letters sometimes get sent to the wrong address or wrong person and get ignored entirely.
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GameStop to sell DLC in-store starting next year
GameStop may not be threatened yet by digital distribution, but they’re certainly taking steps to profit from it as soon as they can. The retail giant…
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T-Mobile plans to unleash blazing 21Mbps HSPA+ in mid-2010
T-Mobile might have been last in launching a 3G network in the U.S., but that hasn’t stopped it from moving right along. We had already known that T-Mobile was planning on lighting up its 7.2Mbps speeds in some cities by the end of 2009, but it looks like HSPA+ is kicking in just months later. Slated for mid-2010, a number of U.S. markets will have data speeds of up to 21Mbps on T-Mobile’s network. There are also a decent amount of handsets that will be able to take advantage of the 7.2Mbps kick, like the G1, CLIQ and the myTouch 3G, but we’re really looking for what T-Mobile has in store for the masses once HSPA+ hits. In addition to the speed upgrades, the company is also continuing to spread its 3G footprint across the country. Now where are those Nokia N900s with AWS 3G support? -
Google Announces SPDY Application-Layer Protocol
Except, perhaps, for multitasking techies and the last few people using dialup connections, load times aren’t a huge deal from a user perspective; the average page appears before most folks think to click on anything else. Still, Google looks set to make a lot of friends with the introduction of a research project dubbed SPDY ("speedy").
A post on Google’s Research Blog gave a little background by stating, "SPDY is at its core an application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web. It is designed specifically for minimizing latency through features such as multiplexed streams, request prioritization and HTTP header compression."
As for how that translates into a measurable effect, the post later tied in the "speedy" name and relayed a key point by adding, "[W]hen we download the top 25 websites over simulated home network connections, we see a significant improvement in performance – pages loaded up to 55% faster."
A savings of 55 percent is huge, of course – something that every user would notice. And site owners might be able to take advantage of the SPDY boost by packing more interesting stuff onto every page.
So, per the SPDY team’s request, look its documentation, inspect its code, and provide feedback if you can. SPDY’s not ready to make a mainstream debut, but bringing it to that point is almost certainly in everybody’s best interest.
Related Articles:
> Google Makes Improvements To Movie Showtime Searches
> Google Chrome For Mac May Hit Beta In December
> Google Announces Details Of New Product Listing Ads
