Netizen

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Fighting Over Rectangles

Image representing Apple as depicted in CrunchBase

That is nicely put. Apple is fighting over rectangles. It is being unreasonable. If Samsung is a copycat why is it beating Apple in both the smartphone and the table space by now?

Samsung Product Chief: ‘It’s Unreasonable That We’re Fighting Over Rectangles’

the most important patent dispute of the decade ..... the ongoing patent wars that have spawned dozens of lawsuits across the globe, involving not only Samsung and Apple, but also HTC, Motorola and Microsoft ..... Samsung owns more than 100,000 patents worldwide ..... Kevin Packingham ... Samsung's Chief Product Officer .. There are times when I’m absolutely appalled that we sell what I consider to be the most innovative, most secret parts of the sauce of our products to some other manufacturer — HTC, LG, Apple, anybody. ..... these very broad design patents like a rectangle. ..... “How is this possible that we’re actually having an industry-level debate and trying to stifle competition?” Consumers want rectangles and we’re fighting over whether you can deliver a product in the shape of a rectangle. ...... the patent system is broken. .... there’s just one company that’s firing the first shot consistently

Fight it out in the market, not in the courts of the world. The real news here is that the patent system is broken. The industry itself has to take the lead. Policymakers will follow.

A 12 Inch Tablet?

English: Samsung Logo Suomi: Samsungin logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

That feels unreasonably big. Unless they have managed to make it substantially lighter. A plus would be being able to use a keyboard without losing most of the screen. But weight is a major factor.

Samsung readying 11.8-inch tablet with 'retina' display, say court documents

This might be the big screen wall TV version of a tablet, great for video viewing. It might even be designed to hang on the wall.

Coby Kyros 9.7" Android OS 4.0 Capactivie Touchscreen Tablet MID9742-8 Asus TF300T-B1-BL Tablet PC ASUS Transformer Prime TF201-B1-CG Eee Pad 10.1-Inch 32GB Tablet Acer A200 Iconia Tablet, 16 GB, Titanium Gray XE.H8QPN.001 ASUS Eee Pad Transformer 16GB 10.1" Tablet - Tablets Toshiba Exicte 10 Tablet, 16 GB AT305T16 Acer A200 Iconia Tablet, 8 GB, Titanium Gray XE.H8PPN.005 Sony Tablet S, 16GB, 9.4" - Electronics Lenovo IdeaPad A1 Tablet 22282EU ASUS Transformer TF300T Tablet - Tablets Coby Kyros 9.7" Android OS 4.0 Capactivie Touchscreen Tablet MID9742-8

Monday, July 30, 2012

Alone In Nepal

Alone in : Nepal from Andrey Ivanov on Vimeo.

Pragmatic Solar

English: Solar panel installation at an information center adjacent to Ögii Lake (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cheaper than fossil fuels is that magical line.

Ultra-Efficient Solar

Semprius's solar panels use glass lenses to concentrate incoming light .... using materials other than silicon, the most common semiconductor in solar panels today. ....... a highly efficient material called gallium arsenide ..... maximizes their power production by putting them under glass lenses that concentrate sunlight about 1,100 times. ..... Semprius's small cells produce so little heat that they don't require cooling, which further brings down the cost. ..... make enough solar panels annually to deliver six megawatts of electricity. The company hopes to expand that to 30 megawatts by the end of 2013 .... conventional silicon panels, whose prices fell by more than half in 2011 alone.

Head In The Cloud: Google Drive

Image via CrunchBase

If Disqus can do it, maybe Dropbox can do it. (Adding Disqus To My Blog Was The Easiest Thing) But cloud storage is quite a central experience and so is going to get a lot of attention from the Big G. Blog commenting is a sideshow by comparison.

Dropbox: 2 GB. Google Drive: 5 GB. Microsoft SkyDrive: 25 GB. Microsoft is the clear winner!

Google's Drive Adds to a Complicated Cloud

After roughly six years of rumors, Google has finally launched its own cloud storage and syncing service, called Google Drive. The service offers five gigabytes of online file storage for free and includes software that automatically synchronizes files between Windows and Apple computers, Android phones, and Google's cloud. ..... Users can pay $2.49 a month for an extra 25 gigabytes of storage, or pay more for larger blocks up to a maximum of 16 terabytes. ..... The five gigabytes of storage that Google now offers is more than the two gigabytes that's standard with a free Dropbox account, although Dropbox runs several promotions that make it relatively easy for a user to get five gigabytes or more for free. Dropbox offers 50 gigabytes of storage for $9.99 per month; a Google Drive user can get 100 gigabytes for half that price..... Microsoft yesterday upgraded the capacity of its cloud storage service, SkyDrive, which integrates closely with its Windows Phone software and the upcoming Windows 8. Users of that service receive 25 gigabytes of storage for free, and can pay for more....... Google Drive .. It is meant to be a place where you can work with data and documents, not just store them. More than 30 types of document can be viewed from the Google Drive site, including many video and image formats, and office documents can be edited there, too. Computer vision algorithms make it possible to search text in any images uploaded to Google Drive ...... build "the Internet's file system." ..... intense competition between Google, Microsoft, Apple, and smaller companies such as Dropbox.

Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

Just like the Loch Ness Monster, you may have heard the rumors about Google Drive. It turns out, one of the two actually does exist...... Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items. .... regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader. .... Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology..... Drive is also an open platform, so we’re working with many third-party developers so you can do things like send faxes, edit videos and create website mockups directly from Drive.

Just like there is room for more than one email service, there is room for more than one cloud storage system. I am not thinking 2 GB versus 5 GB versus 25 GB. I am thinking 2 plus 5 plus 25.

Edit videos in Drive? Wow.

Personal Data For Personal Sale

New York Stock Exchange (Photo credit: inkwellmusings)

A Stock Exchange for Your Personal Data

Companies already make billions because they know our online habits. What if we could take a cut? ..... Today, people have no choice but to give away their personal information—sometimes in exchange for free networking on Twitter or searching on Google, but other times to third-party data-aggregation firms without realizing it at all...... something akin to a New York Stock Exchange for personal data. A trusted market operator could take a small cut of each transaction and help arrive at a realistic price for a sale. ..... fresh ideas and business models that promise users control over their privacy are gaining momentum. Startups like Personal and Singly are working on these challenges already. The World Economic Forum recently called an individual's data an emerging "asset class." .... Giving people control on a trustworthy market could encourage more and new kinds of data to be shared