Tesla Model X – It’s AWESOME
Posted by tevans in Winrar Free Download on February 17th, 2012
Electric cars are shaping up to be big business, with substantial offerings from all the major auto manufacturers. That makes sense – as gas prices climb and awareness of the damage caused by global warming rises, consumers are becoming eager for vehicles that provide the same level of convenience without the associated costs (both financial and environmental). But there is only one company that is offering a purely electric lineup – and that lineup is expanding in all the right directions.
I’m speaking, of course, about Tesla, maker of the extremely well-regarded electric Roadster. Tesla is managed by Elon Musk, billionaire investor and inventor with an eye on big dreams, and it’s clear that he’s managing Tesla with the same panache. Tesla’s big offering this year is the Model S, a sedan designed for a much larger user base than the elite Roadster, and the car has enough pre-orders in place to generate some healthy revenue for the company.
But the real excitement is around the recently announced successor model, the Model X. This is truly a vehicle for the masses, designed for the typical American lifestyle with plenty of range, plenty of space, and plenty of sex appeal. It’s modeled after traditional SUVs or minivans, at least in the sense that it is designed with similar capacities in mind. But the design breaks plenty of new ground, and not just the electric motor. The Tesla drive train is an incredible advance over standard models, and the absence of all the pieces affiliated with internal combustion engines gave Tesla plenty of room to put in, well, room – as Musk amply demonstrated by standing up inside the car during early showings. Sleek gull-wing back doors add a charming and unique touch to the vehicle, but just as importantly, they give you plenty of room to open the loading doors, even in confined spaces.
The unveiling was a big hit with consumers, who swamped the Tesla Motors website to take a look at pictures and blog posts about the car – not to mention reservations for the vehicle, which rang up $40 million worth of reservations in the first few days.
You might even say the reaction has been… electric.
Internet = Saved!
Posted by tevans in Winrar Free Download on February 11th, 2012
The internet has come a long way from the original World Wide Web of basic HTML, Geocities and 2400 bps modems. Today’s internet features vastly higher data transfer rates, full 3D graphics, and interactive features the likes of which early internet pioneers could only dream.
It was those interactive features that recently came under assault by that most miserable of internet enemies, a patent troll. In this case, the man’s name is Michael Doyle, and his company – Eola Technologies – has laid claim to the patents behind virtually every interactive technology you’ll find on websites, from mouse-overs to streaming video. You know, everything that makes up the modern web.
If found to be valid, the claim would mean essentially every major business involved in the internet would owe licensing fees to Eola, on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars. Needless to say, that would be fiscal catastrophe for smaller firms and startups, and would even impact the bottom line of big corporations like Google and Yahoo (two key defendants in the case).
So critical was the case that the defendants pulled in an all-star cast of witnesses to testify on their behalf against Eola’s claim, including Tim Berner’s Lee, who is widely acknowledged to be the inventor of the World Wide Web. That’s pretty impressive for a court case hosted in the little town of Tyler, Texas.
You can think this guy for the internet. Again.
Fortunately, Tyler’s jurors are a wise bunch. The case was decided today and it was an unequivocal rout for Eola and Michael Doyle. Oh, they’re certain to appeal – they have millions of dollars riding on the decision and they must think they have a case – but this is a critical blow in their quest, and although a ruling in Doyle’s favour would not have killed the internet, it would have crippled startups looking to use interactive features on their sites and put a major barrier in the way of innovation on the web. By contrast, Berners-Lee gave away the rights to his innovations – and as a result, we have the internet.
Path Gets It Right
Posted by tevans in Winrar Free Download on February 9th, 2012
Path is a rapidly growing blogging service and ecosystem designed around the ideals of simplicity and ease of use. The company has an eye on families and users who may be less sophisticated than traditional bloggers. Everything is designed to be as easy and as automated as possible, so the service makes as much sense to Grandma as it does to you.
Unfortunately, that quest for automation and ease of use got taken a little too far. Path was recently busted for automatically uploading the stored contact information in your iPhone to its own servers. Understandably, people were right pissed about this, particularly when it came to light that the equivalent Path Android app utilized that feature only as an opt-in.
Path responded by stating (probably accurately) that the information was used only to improve the friend finding tools within the Path ecosystem and that all data was transmitted using encryption and stored on secure servers (whatever that’s worth these days), but nonetheless immediately launched an opt-in variant for the iPhone. Still, users demanded to know what would become of their already uploaded data.
Path reacted exactly right by meeting these concerns head on. It deleted the data entirely from its servers and apologized strongly and profusely for its actions, without trying to weasel out or pass the blame. This is a tough thing for any company to do, but also a very necessary response to such a breach of trust. Path management also made clear that if you do decide to opt-in, they have made it very easy to opt back out in the future if you change your mind and also indicated that this would once again mean a complete deletion of ALL contact data stored on their servers.
While it’s possible that some privacy hawks may not be satisfied by Path’s response, it’s hard to imagine any way the company could have handled the situation better. Nobody is perfect, and a rapid apology followed immediately by complete corrective action is more than most complaints ever garner. Path deserves respect for its response.
Wolfram Alpha Goes Pro
Posted by tevans in Winrar Free Download on February 8th, 2012
When you think of search, you think of Google, Bing, and Yahoo – probably in that order. But there are many alternative search engines – Dogpile, for example – that offer various ways of standing out from the crowd, whether it be enhanced privacy controls, meta-searches through other browsers, or just Nyancats floating over top of the screen (no, really).
One of the most distinctive alternatives to the big three search engines is Wolfram Alpha – so distinctive that its advocates would bristle at even letting it be called a search engine (they prefer the term knowledge engine). The basics behind Wolfram Alpha – founded and maintained by Steve Wolfram – which distinguish it from traditional search engine are the array of calculations which it can, and will, perform for you based on your input, and the report style output it provides no matter what the search. The reasoning is that most of the time, when people look up something in a search engine, they’re not looking specifically for that thing, they’re looking for information about that thing. Consequently, Wolfram Alpha doesn’t return a string of links based on your inputs, it returns a panel full of relevant information. This works better with some things (firmly established scientific domains like geology or physics) and not so good with other topics (politics, technology), but the ultimate goal is a re-envisioning of how data is stored and presented.
In that vein, Wolfram Alpha is offering a new service called Wolfram Alpha Pro, which offers all the functionality of the basic free variant but with additional options for manipulating the data. For example, the reports that are generated by the user inputs are now exportable, and utilize a file format called CDF (for Computable Document Format). This makes the reports fully utilizable by other data harvesting and manipulating services, something that you would have expected to be long since implemented across the web but which is, in fact, a relatively new development (and very heavily pushed by Steve Wolfram, who considers it an obvious step, which it is).
Wolfram Alpha Pro is very inexpensive at just 4.99 a month – it’s clear that Dr. Wolfram is more eager to make a difference than to make a buck.
Pinterest – Social Curation for the Next Generation
Posted by tevans in Winrar Free Download on February 3rd, 2012
Social media has been the big buzzword in tech circles for the last several years, and for good reason – that big buzzword is also big business. The way social media has evolved over the years since early forays to today’s juggernauts has been a steady progression towards simpler and more easily interacted formats – call it the “Applefication” of social networking. Where initially online social interaction was conducted in online forums and blog comments, it’s now progressed to full social profiles with messaging and comments and “walls” and “boards” and “like” or “+1” buttons and everything else you’re used to. Which sounds more complicated – but each revision has been easier to access, more streamlined, more integrated, and easier to understand than the last. Google+ has bucked this trend a little bit – it’s definitely a social network designed and built by proud nerds – but the trend lines remain the same.
Twitter is the penultimate expression of this – 140 characters or less, and just a couple of buttons of interface to broadcast your thoughts to the world. One of the hallmarks of Twitter is how you can simply repost other people’s content that you enjoy, called “re-tweeting.” That idea has rapidly spread to other sites, and now one site – Pinterest – is surfing that wave by implementing a similar format for the web at large.
The way it works is to give each user a set of “boards” to which that user can “pin” comments, links, stories, whatever catches their fancy. That content is then automatically shared with anyone viewing the boards, making for social networking output without actually having to create the content yourself – indeed, without having to do any more work than clicking a couple of buttons. This is simple enough that some consider it an entirely new phenomenon – rather than social networking, Pinterest heralds the culmination of the birth of social curation. Check it out at Pinterest.com
Wikileaks Takes Part In Real Life Neal Stephenson Novel
Posted by tevans in Winrar Free Download on February 1st, 2012
Wikileaks has been under attack from the US and allied governments for quite some time. Its founder, Julian Assange, is currently being pursued for allegations of sexual assault which arose – quite coincidentally – just as international pressure came to be borne against Wikileaks . Its primary source, Bradley Manning, has been held without trial and in the most extreme conditions as the government attempts to build a case for espionage against the man (missing the irony pointed out by one web comic, in that Bradley Manning exposed non-confidential documents about the world’s largest governments and corporations for free, and is jailed, whereas Mark Zuckerburg sells off your own information to corporations and governments and is rewarded with untold wealth and praise).
It’s no wonder, then, that Wikileaks – which has not slowed in its efforts to expose misdeeds perpetrated by global leaders and corporate executives – is looking for some additional safety measures to prevent its servers being seized and its organization being shut down. With Assange currently facing extradition, it’s clear to the Wikileaks team that even friendly governments are not necessarily going to be sufficient to stop a determined opponent. That’s likely why rumors abound that Wikileaks is nosing around to find an area outside the rule of law entirely – and they may have found it in Sealand.
Sealand is a curious little entity. It calls itself a “micro-nation” and floats just off the coast of the United Kingdom. Founded in the sixties by a British national and still maintaining itself as its own “constitutional monarchy,” the little island isn’t even properly an island – it’s just a dolled up and abandoned oil platform. Nonetheless, it’s far enough out to sea that national laws do not apply, and it is hooked up to a global darknet via a powerful radio transmitter.
Of course, it’s not clear that this will be enough to protect Wikileaks from a determined attack by national governments; but it is yet another move in the ongoing battle over who controls the flow of information.
Hackers set up an offshore data haven to stick it to the man? Where have I heard this before...
Printed Thermometers – Super Cool! (Pun Intended)
Posted by tevans in Winrar Free Download on January 31st, 2012
You might not think about it, but knowing the temperature is big business. Oh sure, thermometers and thermostats are common and widely used. But they’re fragile and difficult to use with precision on an industrial scale. And precision measurement of temperature is important in more industries than you’d think.
In many industries, supplies have to be kept very cold to ensure that nothing spoils
That’s why PST Sensors and Thinfilm Electronics have developed and begun to market an entirely new form of thermometer. The new devices will be extremely thin and flexible, able to be literally printed out on packages or boxes. The potential efficiency gains on this are huge for the food packaging and pharmaceutical industries, indeed any industry where product temperature must be carefully controlled and monitored on an individual basis. Currently the best that can be offered cost-effectively are readings on the storage environment as a whole – imprecise at best, and really only a reading of the temperature in the specific location in which the thermometer is located. Accurate readings on the individual units should result in great gains for safety and accuracy.
Even better, the devices are much cheaper than standard alcohol or mercury based thermometers – tens of times cheaper. That makes mass production and mass utilization almost a given. Though the devices have not yet gone past the prototyping stage, the technology behind them is sound and the fusion of the two companies’ specialties appears smooth. This is exactly the sort of less than glamorous but utterly effective technological improvement that is driving forward progress in efficient supply distribution and bringing “smart” technology, step by step, to even such “dumb” industries as food packing and supply storage. Gains in systemic efficiency that reduce waste are much more effective as methods of increasing sustainability than the large scale sexier projects that people like to talk about, so it’s good to see such a positive development occurring and being implemented.
Google – Busted!
Posted by tevans in Winrar Free Download on January 26th, 2012
Google makes its money through search, ostensibly, but of course the real revenue itself is provided by advertising that’s sold in a manner that correlates it with search results. That’s a powerful system – you’re targeting an advertisement to somebody you already know is looking for exactly the thing you’re advertising – and Google makes a bundle at it. But it being the internet, some ads are, shall we say, less scrupulous than others.
I tried to find a picture of one such site, but apparently Google is being particularly careful about them now. So here's Chuckie.
Obviously, for Google, it must be tough to sort out the good from the bad, but you at least assume the company is doing what it can, especially since it puts out dozens of press releases stating exactly that. And it does appear to be doing what it can to fight digital file-sharing of the illegal variety. But there is more than one way to skin an illegal website.
They receive relatively little notice in the press, but sites advertising prescription drugs for sale on the internet have blossomed. The key thing to note is that they are offering prescription drugs, but NOT asking for prescriptions. Often they are based in Mexico – when you think of Mexican drug lords, you probably think of cocaine and marijuana, but there is a massive market for more accepted (and more widely used) prescription drugs from those who have been abandoned by the US health care market (a disturbingly large segment of the population). These sites rise and fall quickly, like the bigger download sites, because they are (quite obviously) illegal. That means they need to get the word out when they find a new home, and they do that through advertising – and Google encourages them.
Such is the result of a sting operation conducted by the Federal government which netted a half a billion dollar settlement from Google to avoid disclosing the results of the sting, which clearly indicated that Google sales reps (with the knowledge and consent f upper management) were not only allowing such fraudulent sites to pass through the filters, but teaching the agents posing as drug dealers how to avoid Google blocks on such behavior. That’s a major indictment of the company and yet another in a string of recent scandals afflicting Google since Larry Page took over as CEO.
Twitter Bots – A Useful Part of a Social Network
Posted by tevans in Winrar Free Download on January 25th, 2012
If you’re a regular Twitter user, it’s likely that you’ve encountered a Twitter bot or two. A lot of the time they’ll simply re-tweet your posts based on certain criteria (matching keywords, time of post, random chance – whatever the developer chooses, really). Many of them are set to re-tweet posts about a certain city, or sport, or political ideology – things that come up regularly. The bot will usually re-tweet with the original poster’s user name to flag their attention; following the bot will then allow that user to find other posts from, users who share an interest in whatever he or she just posted. In this manner, bots can stimulate the development of like minded people into larger and more connected social networks.
It is this networking effect that was recently studied (though not specifically intentionally) by researchers involved with the “Web Ecology Project,” a group which studies social networks and the way their users interact. The initial goal was to determine how @responses were generated, but in the quest to garner those responses, automated bots were used – and the researchers decided to follow up that lead with another experiment. They investigated how the addition of these bots to the social mix influenced human behaviour.
Naturally, whenever people see their own name pop up, they tend to investigate. The bots in the experiment were set to retweet certain posts and include people’s names, especially in pairs or more. This led to people discovering others who had been retweeted by the bots, and following those people. In fact, the researchers found major increases in follow rates and conversation rates through the addition of the bots. Seems common sense, but having legitimate verification of the effect and quantifiable data will be a boon to marketers and others who would take advantage of social networks.
Captchas – Defeated
Posted by tevans in Winrar Free Download on January 24th, 2012
You’ve surely seen those annoying “Captchas” before. Any time you try to sign up for a new service, you’ll run into them – squiggly, oddly shaped letters set against difficult to interpret backgrounds. The claim is that computers can’t interpret the letters and, thus only a human can unlock a Captcha (and let me tell you, half the time even a human can’t do it – I hate those things). As such, Captchas are used to defend against activities like spamming and phishing – things that are best done through large scale automation to net the numbers needed to make them profitable.
Captchas are ubiquitous
As it turns out, however, automation doesn’t necessarily mean computers.
Antigate is a company that specializes in breaking Captchas the only way that they can be broken – using human specialists. The company employs teams of dedicated humans to respond to requests for Captcha solutions in real time – essentially a virtual sweatshop, though I’m sure they wouldn’t phrase it exactly that way. They’ll even teach you how to write a program that will enable you to automatically send the requests to them, essentially automating the process even though part of the mechanism is most assuredly fully biological.
The company is just one of several offering such services, and competition must be fierce, because the price point offered is ludicrous. For a dollar – that’s one, single dollar – you’re looking at up to a thousand Captchas solved. It is difficult to believe that these automation factories are paying their workers any kind of decent wages if they are able to offer prices like that, and given that the services are offered in both English and Russian, it’s not that hard to imagine where the “factories” are physically located.
That said, it’s clear that there’s a market for such services, and so long as there is demand, there will be supply. Where there’s email, there’s spam, and so where there are Captchas… there will be Antigate.
