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Achieving the impossibilities through technology

[Hope] New technology to charge your phone with your hot coffee or cold beer.

Fukushima Diary believes in small things (Small is the new big). I would like to introduce the new way of generating power independent from mass production.
On kickstarter, the attempt to develop a new heat engine technology was posted. Here I would like to share the hope.
Needless to say, Fukushima Diary doesn’t receive any kickback from them.

The Epiphany onE Puck connects to your iPhone, Android, or similar device. Setting up onE Puck is as easy as connecting the onE Puck to your phone and applying heat or cold. That’s it.

Compatibility
·All iPhones
·All iPods
·All Android phones
-Any device that uses a USB charger drawing 1000 mA or less

Where do we stand?
We’ve been working in research and development on heat cycles and engine technology for more than 12 years now. Most of the research going on in this industry is related to much larger engines. The onE Puck, in this tiny form, is a new idea for Epiphany, but the concepts behind it are nothing new. So far, we have developed the first working onE Puck prototype. The onE Puck is at the real, working prototype stage right now, which is as close as we can get it to the production version without raising the funds we need.
With your support, we can bring the Epiphany onE Puck to the worldwide marketplace. As we embark on mass production, your contribution will help to fund:
Final design modifications including engine optimizations
Production tooling
Raw material orders
Marketing
Decent pay for our poor, disheveled engineers

If you were about to donate to Fukushima Diary, please consider supporting them as well → http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/epiphanylabs/epiphany-one-puck

How the New Bay Bridge Shakes Off a Quake
The new eastward span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is supposed to last at least 150 years, even in this earthquake-riddled region.

Earthquake-prone California is a far from ideal place to string metal over water and hope it stays put. But engineers of the new eastern span of the San Francisco–­Oakland Bay Bridge say the structure should last at least 150 years. This fall, when the new portion opens, the Bay Bridge will stretch 2047 feet, becoming the world’s longest self-anchored suspension bridge.

Unlike a conventional suspension bridge, in which cables anchor on shore, the Bay Bridge can’t rely on the surrounding muddy ground—which amplifies seismic movement—for support. So the bridge is anchored to itself, with a single cable looping around the roadway and held high by a steel tower.

The steel tower bears the burden of supporting the bridge. To stay strong during foundation-shaking earthquakes, the tower contains four steel legs joined by plates called shear links. The plates stiffen when the wind gusts, keeping the 77.6-million-ton bridge stable. In an earthquake, however, the shear links absorb the earth’s movement and even break if the quake is strong enough, preventing damage to the rest of the bridge.

Yahoo 'to buy Tumblr for $1.1bn'

The deal is expected to be announced on Monday
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Yahoo's board has approved a deal to buy New York-based blogging service Tumblr for $1.1bn (£725m), US media reports say.

The acquisition is expected to be announced as early as Monday.

The deal was a "foregone conclusion" and was unanimously voted for by the board, tech blog AllThingsD reported, citing sources close to the matter.

If confirmed, it will be CEO Marissa Mayer's largest deal since taking the helm of Yahoo in July 2012.

Neither Yahoo nor Tumblr responded immediately to requests for comment.

Under the terms of the acquisition, Tumblr would continue to operate as an independent business, the Wall Street Journal said, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation.

The company is currently run by David Karp, a 26-year-old New Yorker who founded Tumblr in 2007, and he is expected to remain in his role.

Analysts say that by acquiring Tumblr, Yahoo will gain a larger social media presence and enhance its ability to attract younger audiences in its battle with internet rivals Google and Facebook.

The Internet just wants Mayer to fix Flickr

(CNN) -- Marissa Mayer's appointment as Yahoo's next CEO has inspired a lot of feelings and opinions online. She's the Band-Aid on a bullet wound, a web giant's last hope, a difficult manager who'd run out of ways to move up, a feminist icon, a fresh start.
One group that has dusted off its long dormant passion and put her in the "last hope" category is Flickr users, who are flooding Twitter with their rallying cry: "Dear Marissa Mayer, please make Flickr awesome again."
Marissa Mayer: Google's celebrity exec
They're expressing their opinion via the Internet's best bullhorns: a single-serving site with the URL dearmarissamayer.com and a hashtag. The page is signed "The Internet," and the hashtag has been taking off on Twitter since this morning.
Flickr, the photo-sharing site, was launched in 2004 by Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake and bought by Yahoo in 2005. At its peak, Flickr was a vibrant and social community of photographers, ranging from the casual to professional, who had genuine affection for the site.
Its boards were filled with positive and helpful comments, there were self-organized groups and avid taggers helping index all that visual content. The community even spilled into the real world with real-life meetings and photo walks.
11 interesting facts about Marissa Mayer, Yahoo's new CEO
But eventually it became mired in Yahoo's corporate culture and innovation stagnated (for the full story of the site's fall, check out Mat Honan's detailed history).
Other sites picked up where it left off, including Facebook and Instagram, the stunning 500px and still young Google+. Each has done something better than Flickr, such as making images truly social or improving the design, but none has replicated all the factors that made users love Flickr.
Mayer has a daunting job ahead of her trying to reinvigorate Yahoo's many products. But starting with one of the company's most beloved properties isn't bad advice. It has something most other Yahoo features are missing -- users who are rooting for it to bounce back.
Flickr may never be the most profitable property for Yahoo, but fixing it up it would be a savvy move to counteract the company's current image problem.
A revived Flickr would show the company is listening to users and still has the potential to make products that they want to use. Then they just have to make everything awesome again

Intel’s Income Rises, but Company Warns of Slower Growth

SAN FRANCISCO — The world’s largest semiconductor maker is getting pounded by poor consumer demand.
Times Topic: Intel Corporation
Intel on Tuesday lowered its outlook for the second half of the year based on poor retail demand for personal computers powered by the company’s chips and slower growth in emerging markets.

There were some bright spots in Intel’s earnings report for the second quarter; demand from corporations for PCs and laptops was good, and net income rose slightly, the company said, beating analysts’ expectations.

Paul Otellini, Intel’s chief executive, told analysts in a conference call after the quarterly earnings were announced that revenue would be in the “3 to 5 percent range, versus high single digits” of earlier projections. As a result, Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., plans to slow hiring for the remainder of the year. At the end of June Intel had about 103,000 employees worldwide.

The rise of alternatives like tablet computers and smartphones has also eroded demand for personal computers. Mr. Otellini expressed optimism that sales of ultrabooks, a kind of lightweight laptop computer that Intel has invested in to compete with the new devices, would eventually revive growth.

“We’ll see $699 systems” for ultrabooks in the fall, Mr. Otellini said. “In a softer selling season these devices become even more attractive.” While just a few kinds of ultrabooks have appeared in the last few months, Mr. Otellini said there were “over 140 designs in the pipeline” for later this year.

Over 40 of these designs, he said, will have touch-sensitive screens similar to Apple’s iPad and iPhone, or the Surface tablet recently announced by Microsoft. Intel would also get a boost from the release of the new Windows 8 operating system by Microsoft, he said.

Intel reported that its net income in the quarter ending in June rose to $2.8 billion, or 54 cents a share, from this time last year. Revenue climbed 5 percent, to $13.5 billion. The company appeared to have sacrificed some of its gross profit margin for the higher revenue, however. Gross margins were at 63.4 percent, compared with 64 percent a year earlier.

Wall Street analysts have been lowering their outlook for semiconductor demand. Analysts had expected 52 cents a share and revenue of $13.56 billion, according to a survey of analysts by Thomson Reuters.

“What’s saving them is lowered expectations,” said Douglas Freedman, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “They are performing on their business better than expected, but it is a mixed bag on growth.”

Intel’s performance was significantly better than that of its chief competitor, Advanced Micro Devices. This month AMD warned that its second-quarter revenue would decline about 11 percent from the preceding quarter, instead of the 3 percent growth it had earlier projected. AMD said its results, which will be announced Thursday, had been affected by lower sales of consumer devices and slower economic growth in Europe and China.

Intel is also a major supplier of chips for computer servers, which are increasingly used in cloud-based data systems. Intel said its data center sales grew 15 percent from a year ago, to $2.8 billion. Sales to PC makers rose just 3 percent over the quarter, to $8.7 billion.

Unlike many tech companies, Intel continues to invest heavily in research and development. Intel previously said it would spend $18.3 billion in R&D this year, up from a little over $16 billion in 2011, but Stacy J. Smith, Intel’s chief financial officer, said that because of the lowered outlook, the company was cutting this year’s R&D to $18.2 billion.

Facebook is buying its main supplier of controversial facial recognition technology in a deal worth up to $60m (£38m).

The social networking company hopes the purchase of Face.com will bolster one of its most popular features - the sharing and handling of photos - but use of the firm's technology has spurred concerns about user privacy.
Facebook is to pay cash and stock for the Israeli start-up, with two sources close to to the deal claiming the price is set at $55-$60m.
Previous reports have suggested the deal would be done at between $80m to $100m.
Neither Facebook nor Face.com have disclosed terms of the deal, which is expected to be finalised in the coming weeks.
Facebook, which will acquire the technology and the employees of the 11-person company, said in a statement that the deal allows the company to bring a "long-time technology vendor in house".
Face.com, which has raised nearly $5m from investors, including Russian web search site Yandex, launched its first product in 2009.

Mark Zuckerberg's company has followed up the $1bn purchase of Instagram

The company makes standalone applications that consumers can use to help them identify photos of themselves and of their friends on Facebook, as well as providing the technology that Facebook has integrated into its service.
Facebook uses the technology to scan a user's newly-uploaded photos, compares faces in the snapshots with previous pictures and then tries to match faces and suggest name tags.
When a match is found, Facebook alerts the person uploading the photos and invites them to "tag", or identify, the person in the photo.
Responding to opposition from US and European privacy campaigners, Facebook last year made it easier for users to opt out of its controversial facial-recognition technology for photographs posted on the website, in an effort to address concerns that it had violated user privacy.
But Graham Cluley from internet security firm Sophos says there are still concerns over privacy.
He told Sky News Online: "Many people feel distinctly uncomfortable about a site like Facebook learning what they look like, and using that information without their permission.
"The acquisition of Face.com puts even more power in Facebook's hands to determine what you look like, and find your face in uploaded photographs.
"Most Facebook users still don't know how to set their privacy options safely, finding the whole system confusing.
"It's even harder though to keep control when Facebook changes the settings without your knowledge.
"The onus should not be on Facebook users having to 'opt-out' of facial recognition, but instead on users having to 'opt-in'.
Many people feel distinctly uncomfortable about a site like Facebook learning what they look like, and using that information without their permission.
Internet security expert Graham Cluley
"If it doesn't do that, Facebook is once again eroding the online privacy of its users by stealth."
The deal is the latest in a string of acquisitions by Facebook in recent months, including the $1bn deal for mobile photo-sharing service Instagram.
US antitrust regulators are undertaking an extended review of the Instagram deal, which Facebook expects to close by the end of the year.
Shares of Facebook are continuing to trade below May's stock market flotation price of $38.

Foxconn reportedly begins pilot production of Apple TV set
Chinese news sources report that the iPhone and iPad maker is preparing the production of an Apple-branded a television set.

Foxconn, the China-based manufacturing partner of Apple, is in the "trial production stage" of producing the Cupertino company's long-awaited television set, according to China Business News.
No further details were released. It goes without saying: take this with a pinch of salt.
What makes this interesting is that it comes only a fortnight after Foxconn chief executive Terry Gou said the company was "making preparations" for the forthcoming television, which was followed by a stern denial a few days later claiming that any reports were "inaccurate".
What may sound like a backtrack is at very least a case of "he said, she said."
Local publication China Daily, who reported the original claims, said the product would be dubbed 'iTV', which has already had the Telegraph suggesting the U.K. broadcaster with the same name could sue over the trademark, despite ITV's chief executive refuting such claims. The report said the television set would include feature an aluminium body, with voice-activated assistant Siri and FaceTime video calling.
One J.P. Morgan analyst said the Cupertino-based technology giant would not release a television set until 2014. Mark Moskowitz said Apple would need a "major pull factor". He also said his firm's research "does not indicated any looming TV-related product launch".
However, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster was confident to claim the television set would be announced this year.
Munster said Apple could unveil the slightly-differently-named 'iHub' television set as soon as December, with the product going on sale in early 2013. He estimates Apple could take more than 10 percent of the market within 1-3 years after the launch.
December is an odd time to launch a product, particularly if the launch was set for the following month in January or February.
Looking at the other major product launches, the early months of the year, usually around March-April is generally when we get our hands on the latest iPad tablet set for a summer launch. During the middle-months of the year, typically around June-July, we are presented with the next iPhone, which is due in time for the Christmas holiday season.
A launch in January 2013 would the Christmas holiday sales patch -- crucial for end-of-year sales -- but also chips into 'depressing' January where most people can barely pinch the pennies together. For a television set to cost in the region of $1,500-$2,000, according to Munster, it will likely prove to be an impossible time for a product launch.
We contacted Apple for comment, and we will update this story when we have more information.

Cloud storage provider GlobeX Data has announced that its personal online data store, DigitalSafe, is now available in Arabic.

The application has been translated at the code level into Arabic, and offers all the same features as the English language version.

The DigitalSafe application is aimed at individuals, and provides a secure, online and mobile store for personal data. The free service acts as a secure repository for data such as PINs, passwords, medical records and credit card records, with templates available for users to enter their own data. Information can then be accessed through a secure web portal.

GlobeX Data has signed a number of partnerships in the region to promote the service, according to Alain Ghiai, CEO, and it is developing new partnerships with different verticals.

Why Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin is a schmuck

By David Gewirtz | May 14, 2012, 10:12pm PDT

Summary: In order to avoid paying taxes on his multi-billion dollar IPO windfall, Eduardo Saverin, co-founder of Facebook, is renouncing his United States citizenship.

Writing this article without profanity has been almost physically impossible. But we’re a family site, here at ZDNet, so I’ll just let you insert whatever invectives come to mind.

In this case, I’m talking about Eduardo Saverin, co-founder of Facebook, who — in order to avoid paying taxes on his multi-billion dollar IPO windfall — is renouncing his United States citizenship.

There’s a truth about life that’s often difficult to accept. Justice doesn’t always happen. Some people, usually because of their great wealth, get away with doing reprehensible things. It’s not fair, and it’s not right, but it’s what happens.

Case in point, the incredibly ungrateful S.O.B. by the name of Eduardo Saverin. Saverin is child of a wealthy Brazilian businessman. His father was well-enough off in Brazil that young Saverin, at age 13, was on a list of people targeted by Brazilian kidnap gangs, Pando Daily reports.

Seeking safety, Saverin’s father moved the family to the United States. America was willing to take the young boy in, give him a safe home, a home away from kidnap gangs, a home with baseball and apple pie.

Eventually, Saverin wound up at Harvard. His time there wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the United States, for Harvard has long been the beneficiary of not only U.S. dollars, but the best minds America has to offer. One such mind was that of Mark Zuckerberg, an American.

To make a long story short, Saverin teamed up with Zuckerberg and the Facebook venture was on its way. Facebook, of course, rolled out to U.S. colleges, nearly all of which were living to one degree or another, off U.S. tax dollars.

Twists and turns later, Saverin used the U.S. court system to sue for, and win, a disputed share of Facebook ownership.

And now, Saverin stands to make billions off an IPO on an American stock market.

If he stayed in America, he’d have to pay taxes on those billions. Sure, that’s a lot of money, but it’s not like he wouldn’t still be left with a few billion after paying his due. So, it’s not like he would be destitute and living in the streets. He might only be able to afford a hundred mansions instead of a hundred and fifty.

But no. Saverin’s been planning this. He actually renounced his citizenship last fall, so his “exit taxes” would be lower, based on the then value of Facebook’s pre-public stock, according to Bloomberg.

So, now to the question of justice. Just what has Saverin done wrong? He hasn’t violated any laws (that we know of).

What he’s done is played a system and gained tremendously for it. A case could be made that that’s fair. One of the first things they teach you in B-school is to pay the least amount of taxes you can within the bounds of the law, and even the IRS accepts this as a reasonable strategy.

But going so far as to renounce the incredible gift of citizenship we gave to this man, and by doing so, saved him from kidnap gangs in his native country — that’s below reprehensible.

Justice would be to take away his stock benefits if he renounces his citizenship. Justice would be to block him from raking in all that cash if he’s not willing to pay his fair share.

But justice doesn’t work that way.

Instead, Saverin is running away to Singapore, a very small country with a very low crime rate. One of the reasons that Singapore has such a low crime rate is that it has a particularly brutal penal system, which not only incarcerates criminals, it subjects them to caning, a particularly brutal and painful punishment.

By not paying his fair share of taxes in the United States, he’s essentially stealing from all of the rest of us taxpayers who supported his education and his business venture. If it weren’t legal, it’d be a crime.

I have this simple message for Eduardo Saverin: you better walk the straight and narrow very carefully and follow every single law to the letter. Because if you don’t, and there’s any justice in this world, you will be subject to Singapore’s justice system.

And, because you’ve renounced your American citizenship, no amount of crying will bring Uncle Sam running to your rescue this time, you money-grubbing schmuck.

The tablet revolution is coming: Working anywhere without compromise

By James Kendrick | May 17, 2012, 4:00am PDT

Summary: The BYOD movement is just getting started, fueled by the capable tablet. It is now possible to get a full day’s work from almost anywhere, without compromise.

The workforce is becoming more mobile than ever before, and the capable tablet is a growing reason why. It is why the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement is in the news so much, as many want to bring the tablet to work. The tablet frees folks up to work almost anywhere, in large part because mobile OSes have evolved to provide powerful mobile experiences.

Right now I am working as I do every day, performing all the tasks I need to do, dealing with work issues as they come up, and writing this column. It is business as usual, except I am at the car dealership having my auto repaired.

Windows 8: Does Metro actually work?

By Mary Jo Foley | May 17, 2012, 6:00am PDT

Summary: Using Microsoft’s Metro technology in Windows 8 is like going to a flashy restaurant where your plate is delivered with a tiny morsel of food in the middle, but the rest of the plate is unused, says one tester.

Windows 8: Does Metro actually work?

By Mary Jo Foley | May 17, 2012, 6:00am PDT

Summary: Using Microsoft’s Metro technology in Windows 8 is like going to a flashy restaurant where your plate is delivered with a tiny morsel of food in the middle, but the rest of the plate is unused, says one tester.

I’m taking a couple weeks off before the busiest part of Microsoft’s 2012 kicks into full gear. But never fear: The Microsoft watching will go on while I’m gone. I’ve asked a few illustrious members of the worldwide Microsoft community to share their insights via guest posts on a variety of topics — from Windows Phone, to Hyper-V. Today’s entry is all about the Metro-ness of Windows 8 is authored by Matthew Baxter-Reynolds.

Introduced by Microsoft as a key element of Microsoft Windows Phone strategy, Metro is now being positioned as the aesthetic standard just shy of an absolute requirement for Windows Phone and tablet-optimized apps for Windows 8 and Windows RT.

What no one’s asking, though, is this: “does Metro actually work?”

In my opinion: No.

I find Metro baffling. Granted, it looks beautiful — and I accept that you put a Metroified device in front of most people they coo and burble excitedly. Plus it has the significant advantage that even the most design-challenged geek can make something look pretty decent just by mucking around with fonts and solid blocks of colors. But it’s broken in two fundamental ways: information density and discoverability.

Information density I would wager the harder one to argue with. To that end I present two screenshots. The first one is Fliptoast, the nascent but fingers-crossed-it-will-become-awesome Metro-style Twitter client.

I’ve had some conversations with Shivani Khanna, Fliptoast’s founder, about the design imperatives used in the application and what they’re looking to do is follow Microsoft’s design guidelines for Metro-style apps, and these guidelines include directives that developers must follow Metro’s design aesthetic.

So I can get just three-and-a-half tweets on the screen in Fliptoast. I don’t want to be critical at all of Fliptoast here =- this lack of information density is simply what Microsoft it telling them to do. A big aspect of Metro is having lots of white space, ergo everything gets spaced out.

Another strange thing about Metro is that because it’s typographic rather then iconographic in nature, developers aren’t instructed to use pictorial representations very sparingly (plus text needs to be included along with icons). Yet we’ve been using icons as a shortcut for text descriptions for many decades. And the only way to make a mostly textual interface not seem overbearing and cluttered is to — you’ve guessed it — add more white space.

Here’s the official Twitter client. I can get eight-and-a-half.

Personally I don’t think this is a trivial point. The only reason why any of us interact with digital devices is to access information. Deliberately designing software so that information is hard to come by is why I use the term “fundamentally broken” when I talk about Metro.

Metro’s problem with information density leads directly into issues around discoverability.

Here’s a screenshot of IE10 running in Metro-style mode. It’s “chromeless” - all you get is the browser. (Not to confuse - “chrome” is the term given to the adornments around the page content, it doesn’t refer to the Google Chrome browser.)

Here’s the same page on the iPad.

When thinking about any user interface, we can notionally group different elements into primary, secondary, and tertiary functionality. Primary elements relate to the content that you’re working with, in this case, the page. Secondary elements are the things you need in easy reach. On a browser this would be the address bar, back button, and tabs. Tertiary elements are this things that you use rarely, like history or settings.

Because Metro is based on this principle that the interface has to be “clean”, secondary control elements are shoved away and hidden with tertiary elements and so in Metro you only get two levels of UI element - “the basic data” and “hidden away in some virtual drawer, a bunch of tools”. Using Metro is like having to put your keyboard an mouse in a drawer every time you’re not directly using the computer. It’s constant “go and get this” and “go and get that”.

To open a tab in Metro-style IE10, I have to swipe in from the top and click the “Add tab” button. It’s only by swiping in can I see which tabs I have open, or change tabs - so there are two discoverability problems there: I can’t easily see the tabs I have open, and I can’t actually change the tab without undertaking faff.

On iPad –well, forget iPad, any browser from IE7 and up works like this — I click on an easily accessible button that gives me a new tab. I also can actually see the tabs that I have open. Back in IE10/Metro land, it’s gesture, push, followed by “oh good, there’s my tabs � now what was I doing?”

Again, I don’t understand this. My children, the eldest of which is just four years-old, can drive user interfaces more complicated than this. Hiding stuff away seems, well, backwards at best. At worst, it’s just plain patronizing.

Perhaps that’s unfair. It’s not intentional patronization. What we’re seeing here is plain ol’ “over-thinking”, an imposition of a good idea onto a domain that already knows how to do something perfectly well already. I’m not sure I - or any of us - need a small collection of graphic designers and marketeers pushing against 30-40 years of experience and telling us that we’re doing it wrong. But at the heart of it, that’s what Metro is - it’s an initiative that’s telling us that we as developers don’t understand how to present information and its attendant tools.

Metro is like going to a flashy restaurant where your plate is delivered with a tiny morsel of food in the middle, but the rest of the plate is unused. A delicious treat, for sure, and I for one like a nice treat in a nice restaurant. Food done in that way is part aesthetic and part nutritious - but guess what I need to eat every day and actually the aesthetic angle to it is very much the less important secondary part of that deal. I need food to live, regardless of whether it looks like and tastes like dog food, or whether it’s a Michelin-starred-chef’s best work.

Were Microsoft looking for Metro’s aesthetic to be a private thing for them to use, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid over this. But by making it a key element of how ISVs are building apps for both Windows Phone and Windows 8/Windows RT tablets this stuff comes close to my heart. Individuals brave enough to drift over from iOS and Android to the Microsoft camp need to stay. If Metro makes software look great but be hard to use, the experience for those souls will be like a dalliance with an individual who looks beautiful but without the keen mind needed to make a lifelong partnership.

We can only hope that ISVs learn to evolve Metro appropriately. The clean presentation and reductionist approach to graphic design is great. It’s the story about information density and discovery that needs much improved. Do that and the end result will be a force to be reckoned with.

Matthew Baxter-Reynolds is an independent software development consultant, speaker, author, and trainer. He also is an occasional contributor to Guardian Technology and is owner of WinRT People. His book “Programming Windows 8 Apps with C #” will be published by O’Reilly in November 2012.