Google testing new navigation design borrowed from Chrome

 

Google is testing a new version of its home page that eliminates the controversial navigation bar that has sat atop its services for two years, the company said.
The version now being tested requires users to click a grid icon borrowed from Chrome OS for links to Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, and other products. The design, which was first spotted by blog Google Operating System, appears to be in an early stage of testing -- screenshots show the grid icon includes a redundant link to Google search, even when accessed from the search page.
"We're always experimenting with the look and feel of our home page," a Google rep told CNET.
If it tests well, the grid would replace the prominent black bar that has served as the company's site navigation tool since 2011. The nav bar has always polarized design-minded users: Some like the unified look it brings to Google products, while others think the interface could be improved. Among those who think that: Google itself, which has eliminated the navigation bar in the past only to bring it back later.
In November 2011, Google moved its list of services into a drop-down menu that descended from the Google logo. But some users criticized the move for making those services harder to find, and the experiment was dropped six weeks later.
A similar criticism might be levied at the new design, which buries the services under an icon in exchange for a cleaner overall look. And with the company putting greater emphasis on Chrome OS this year than ever before, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised to see elements from the operating system migrating into more and more Google services.
The test hasn't shown up for us yet. For more pictures, check out Google Operating System.

 

 

Read More

Samsung hires judge who ruled against Apple as legal expert 

 

A judge who favored Samsung in a recent court case is now working for the company. But apparently that's perfectly OK in the U.K.

U.K. Judge Robin Jacob served on the bench last year in a case that forced Apple to publish an apology notice asserting that Samsung did not infringe on the design of the iPad for its own tablet.
Though Jacob had retired a year earlier, U.K. law allows for ex-judges to still sit on the bench.
The case itself was notable for going several rounds.
First, Samsung objected to the notice that Apple published, prompting the court to order the iPhone maker to replace it with a new apology. Apple was then accused of using code to hide part of the notice on its Web site and had to remove the code in question.
Jacob criticized Apple for its initial non-apologetic apology in spite of the court's order, saying: "I'm at a loss that a company such as Apple would do this," calling it a "plain breach of that order."
Apple also claimed that other countries had found Samsung guilty of copying the iPad design whereas the U.K. court exonerated Samsung. But Jacob backed Samsung by calling that assertion false.
Now Samsung is in the midst of a new case with Ericsson in which Jacob is playing a different kind of role, according to Foss Patents. The U.S. International Trade Commission is investigating a patent infringement claim filed by Ericsson against Samsung last November.
And, according to a letter to the court from Samsung obtained by Foss Patents, Jacob has been hired by Samsung as one of the nine legal experts for the case. Jacob's new job comes less than four months after he presided over the case between Samsung and Apple.

As Foss Patents' Florian Mueller points out, U.K. law apparently doesn't prevent an ex-judge who ruled in one case involving a company to be hired by that same company as an expert for a different case.
But it does open up questions of impropriety even if the actions of Samsung and Jacob are perfectly legal.
"What would people say if Judge Lucy Koh, a few months after denying Apple a permanent injunction against Samsung, returned to private practice and was hired as an 'expert' by Samsung in a German litigation with Ericsson?" Mueller asked. "I guess there are written or at least unwritten rules in the United States that would prevent this from happening in the first place. In the U.K. it appears to be above board and accepted."

 

Read More

Apple wants to make super-secure magnetic mount for iPad

 

 

Apple wants to make a magnetic stand for iPads that will hold the tablet securely in place, while also allowing for quick removal when needed, according to a patent application published today.
Spotted by Patently Apple, the application includes images of various tablet mounting situations, including inside cars, on tripods, treadmills, and on a music sheet stand. Apple even thinks the technology could be used to connect two iPads with a magnetic hinge.
Apple writes in the application:

Tablet devices are used in an increasingly wide range of applications. In many of these applications a way for conveniently mounting the device is required. A number of manufacturers have tried to produce such a device; however since most tablets have no built-in mounting mechanism, mounting devices tend to be somewhat cumbersome and generally do not allow for easy removal. Therefore, what is desired is a way for securely attaching a tablet device to a stand where it can be removed and replaced with ease.

Apple also makes note that there will be a shield in place on the magnetic mounting to protect other nearby devices that are sensitive to strong magnetic fields. This probably would apply to credit cards swiped in a card reader attached to an iPad.

Read More

What is the best high-end Windows 8 tablet?

 

At least several times each week, we get a reader inquiry via e-mail or Twitter asking which of the current crop of Windows 8 tablets is the best. The answer isn't so simple when you consider that tablets running full Windows 8 (as opposed to Windows RT: don't get us started) are split into two hardware classes: those with slower Atom processors, including the HP Envy x2, and those at the high end, such as the Microsoft Surface Pro.

What makes a high-end Windows 8 tablet? Generally, an Intel Core i5 or i7 processor, giving it the performance of a full-fledged ultrabook-style laptop. The drawbacks tend to be a shorter battery life and a higher price tag. Many come with either a laptop-like docking station, or are compatible with a keyboard-cover accessory.

Those less-expensive Atom tablets are more plentiful, but the higher-end performance tablets are better at being your full-time work machine. There aren't a ton of options out there, but here are the top candidates we've reviewed to date. 

 

 Acer Iconia W700

 The closest competitors to the Surface Pro are other tablets and hybrids with Intel Core i5 processors -- essentially full-featured ultrabooks squeezed down to tablet form. Acer's Iconia W700 fits the bill, and includes a space-age-looking dock, but the nonadjustable stand limits viewing angles, and you'll need an external mouse or touch pad for efficient Windows navigation.Read the full review of the Acer Iconia W700. 

 

 Microsoft Surface Pro

There's a lot to like here -- if not to love. While the Surface Pro isn't the first Windows 8 tablet, it may well be the best one to date, at least in terms of design. The magic here is in the details: the ingenious detachable keyboard cover and the included pressure-sensitive stylus both go a long way toward setting the Surface Pro apart from the other laptops, tablets, and hybrids we've seen so far. Read the full review of the Microsoft Surface Pro.

 

 Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T 

 The top-heavy ATIV Smart PC Pro is a clever little device, but it feels too low-rent for its high-end aspirations. Samsung makes better-designed ultrabooks and better tablets. The Smart PC Pro feels best as a laptop...in which case, why not simply buy a laptop? Read the full review of the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T. 

Scott: If I were buying a high-end Windows 8 tablet, I'd go with the Microsoft Surface Pro. Its compact form and excellent little Type Cover give it a low profile. More laptop-like hybrids like the Samsung Smart PC Pro may feel better in a lap, but I don't do much lap-typing anyway...or, I'd simply use the onscreen tablet keyboard.

Dan: I have to agree. While most of the Windows 8 tablets we've seen so far are the less-expensive Atom-powered ones, of the handful of Core i5//i7 models we've reviewed, the Microsoft Surface Pro definitely stands out. It's still probably too expensive, but so are the other two choices (although the Acer W700 at least includes the dock and keyboard for its $999 base price). Still, the Surface wins based on its tighter, cleaner design, and that excellent Type Cover.
We both picked the Surface Pro as the best Core i-series Windows 8 tablet. If you agree or think we're crazy, let us know in the comments section below. In our next roundup, we'll debate which Atom-powered Windows 8 tablet is the best, and there are a lot more choices, so expect a heated exchange.

Read More

Ubuntu Touch beats Firefox OS to win best of MWC from CNET 

 

BARCELONA, Spain--We've seen lots of interesting hardware at Mobile World Congress, and yesterday when the team met to talk about what product should get our best of show award, there were plenty of gadgets in the mix. Asus' Padfone Infinity was in the running, along with its FonePad, the Nokia Lumia 720, and Sony's Xperia Z tablet.
But the nine-strong judging team from our San Francisco, New York, and London offices quickly discounted those products. We were much more interested in the product category that has arguably generated more buzz at MWC and is potentially much more disruptive: new mobile operating systems.
The two we zeroed in on, Mozilla's Firefox OS and Canonical's Ubuntu Touch, were hotly debated. Lots was said about the impressive number of carriers and manufacturers Firefox OS has lined up behind it. But once put to a vote, Ubuntu Touch was the clear winner, with Firefox OS the runner-up.
The team thought that Ubuntu Touch, the tablet version of which we got our hands-on for the first time at MWC, feels more like the complete package at this point. We liked its slick, elegant interface that makes use of every side of the screen and puts your content and contacts front and center, minimizing the time spent hopping back to a home screen. 

 

Read More

Engineers troubleshoot Curiosity computer glitch

Space radiation may be to blame for corrupted memory used by the Curiosity Mars rover's flight computer, resulting in software glitches that interrupted the flow of science data Wednesday and prompting ground controllers to switch over to a back-up computer Thursday, NASA officials said.
Engineers are reviewing telemetry and diagnostic tests using ground systems to figure out what went wrong and how to restore the original computer system to normal operation.
"We were in a state where the software was partially working and partially not, and we wanted to switch from that state to a pristine version of the software running on a pristine set of hardware," Curiosity Project Manager Richard Cook told CBS News late Thursday. "The easiest way to do that is to essentially swap sides...and start up with the redundant (computer)."


Curiosity is equipped with twin flight computers, known as A and B, and either one is capable of carrying out the rover's mission. The B-side computer was used during the cruise from Earth to Mars while the A-side computer has been running the show since before landing last August.
The switch from the A-side computer to the B-side processor took place around 5:30 p.m. EDT (GMT-5) Thursday, putting the nuclear-powered rover into a low-activity state known as "safe mode." Over the next few days, engineers will tie the B-side computer into the rover's myriad systems and systematically restore normal operation.
The computer problem is the first glitch of any significance since Curiosity's landing last August in Gale Crater.
"I think we'll get back to routine operations," Cook said. "It is a good humbling experience, however, in the sense that this thing is a very complicated vehicle. ... It does not take very much for things to not go as well as you want. And we've got to be conscious of that all the time."
The problem came to light Wednesday morning on Mars when flight controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., noticed what appeared to be memory corruption in the computer's solid-state memory system. The flight software was not recording new data or playing back data already recorded. Instead, it was only sending back real-time telemetry.
Later in the day, during a communications session using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, telemetry from Curiosity indicated the corrupted memory was still present. In addition, Cook said, flight controllers saw the computer had not completed several pre-planned activities.
At that point, the computer was expected to put itself to sleep for an hour or so and then to wake up for a communications session with NASA's Odyssey orbiter.
"It was after that second overflight that we got some more information saying, 'hey, the memory is still corrupted and oh by the way, I didn't go to sleep when I was supposed to, I stayed awake,'" Cook said.
The next communications session came late Wednesday night Earth time, between 10:30 p.m. and midnight at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The rover's computer was still awake and engineers decided to switch over to the B-side system.
Cook said the memory in question is "hardened" to resist upsets caused by cosmic rays or high-energy particles from the sun. But it is possible an energetic particle hit in a particularly sensitive area -- the directory that tells the computer where data is stored.
"In general, there are lots of layers of protection, the memory is self correcting and the software is supposed to be tolerant to it," Cook said. "But what we are theorizing happened is that we got what's called a double bit error, where you get an uncorrectable memory error in a particularly sensitive place, which is where the directory for the whole memory was sitting.
"So you essentially lost knowledge of where everything was. Again, software is supposed to be tolerant of that. ... But it looks like there was potentially a problem where software kind of got into a confused state where parts of the software were working fine but other parts of software were kind of waiting on the memory to do something...and the hardware was confused as to where things were."
Cook said the odds of a cosmic ray or solar particle causing a problem like that were remote, but similar events have happened before.
"It's a little bit like a phone book full of addresses and instead of the cosmic ray hitting some random person's phone number, it hits the table of contents," he said. "It's a very low probability event but it certainly can happen."
If that theory is correct, powering the A-side computer back up should clear the problem. But engineers plan to take their time, carrying out a detailed analysis before attempting a reset.
"We can operate on the B side just as well as we can operate on the A side," Cook said. "So for the next week or so, we're going to spend time getting things going again running on the B side.
"We're going to eventually want to turn on the A side. If it is a memory corruption thing, it should clear it up with a power cycle. At that point, the software rebuilds the table of contents and starts from scratch."
Curiosity landed in Gale Crater on August 6. The $2.5 billion mission is devoted to searching for signs of past or present habitability and for evidence of organic compounds like those necessary for life as it is known on Earth.
The mission is intended to last for at least two years and possibly longer, depending on funding and the health of the spacecraft.

Read More

Tim Cook doesn't like Apple's falling share price, either

 

If you're an Apple shareholder and pretty pissed about the company's recent stock drop, you can at least take comfort in knowing you're not alone.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said today during the electronics giant's annual shareholder meeting that he knows people are upset about the stock drop.
"I don't like it either," Cook said. Nor does the board and management, he added. But what investors are likely still wondering is what Apple is going to do about it. Shares have tumbled roughly 35 percent from their peak in September, and it's unclear what could spur another run higher. Many investors have become worried about increased competition from the likes of Samsung and others, and some shareholders, like David Einhorn, have demanded that Apple return more cash to investors.
Cook today said the company is focused on the long term and making the very best products. He noted that Apple is working harder than ever and "has some great stuff coming."
Apple shares recently slid 1 percent, to $444.29, as investors awaited more news from the shareholder meeting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read More

Coming to an e-book or car near you: the Web

 

  BARCELONA, Spain--You're used to the Web on your PC. You're getting used to it on your smartphone. So what's next?

Publishing and automobile industry players have just begun spinning up efforts at the World Wide Web Consortium, said W3C Chief Executive Jeff Jaffe in an interview at Mobile World Congress here. So don't be surprised to see proprietary technology for e-book readers and in-dash computer systems slowly disappear in favor of software based on Web technology.
Books are perhaps an obvious area for Web technology, given that in electronic form they're just formatted documents and the Web began its life as a way to share formatted documents. But the two domains have taken years to reach today's level of convergence.
"The Web equals publishing," Jaffe said. "There's really no difference anymore."
Among the inroads Web technology has made into publishing:

Amazon moved to an e-book format that recycles Web technology, to move beyond simple text so things like children's books and comics are more feasible.

The Epub 3.0 format uses XHTML, a relative of the HTML technology used to describe Web pages; CSS, an increasingly important standard for Web page formatting and effects such as animation; and SVG, a graphics format for imagery such as logos and illustrations.

 Browser maker Opera has sought to advance Web standards for e-readers. One big part of that is flexible layouts that can adapt to many different screen sizes and resolutions. With Opera's shift to WebKit-based browsers, it's not hiring programmers for the e-reader technology, CEO Lars Boilesen told CNET. Leading the project is Opera Chief Technology Officer Håkon Wium Lie, the initial creator of CSS.

"There are certain properties of the Web -- the linkiness, business models such as advertising, distribution models -- that some segments of the publishing insustry would like to adopt," Jaffe said. "That's our biggest new initiative at the business level." 

 The Web, though, is more than a static publishing medium now. With each passing year it becomes a more sophisticated vehicle for interactive applications, too. That raises the prospect eventually of more interactive books, too.

That interactivity is part of the reason the automotive industry is getting involved, too. Web technology can be used for writing in-car software for shopping, navigation, and the usual array of work and personal uses of the Web today such as e-mail or social networking.

The automotive industry also has new areas, though. Just as work to adapt the Web to mobile phones, letting Web applications run the interface with hardware such as accelerometers and gyroscopes, the car industry is contemplating specific interactions with vehicular systems and data.

The W3C work also involves ensuring the technology can be used in a way to minimize driver distraction, Jaffe said.

The new directions follow in the footsteps of entertainment-industry players such as Netflix that climbed aboard the Web platform. That project began two years ago and is now bearing fruit.

Building on the earlier HTML5 work that added a mechanism for building video into Web sites without needing plug-ins, programmers and standards bodies have more recently been concentrating on digital rights management (DRM). That lets video be encrypted and adaptive streaming so video can change quality as network conditions change.

The Web work extends from streaming services to hardware such as TVs and set-top boxes. One benefit of moving to Web technology is that it lowers barriers between PCs and other devices, making it easier to build online services that don't care about what specific hardware they're dealing with.

It isn't always easy reconciling the philosophy of the Web with the demands of industry, though. Ian Hickson, and influential HTML standard editor, objected strenuously to DRM-ccontrolled video on the Web, but the standard doesn't actually build DRM into the Web. Instead, it provides a mechanism to hand off encryption to separate software. The new technology is arriving in browsers, including Google's Chrome.

 

Read More

Google Launches Zopfli To Compress Data More Densely And Make Web Pages Load Faster

Google just launched Zopfli, a new open source compression algorithm that can compress web content about three to eight percent more densely (PDF) than the standard zlib library. Because Zopfli is compatible with the decompression algorithms that are already part of all modern web browser. Using Google’s new algorithm and library on a server could lead to faster data transmission speeds and lower web page latencies, which would ultimately make the web a little bit faster.
The new algorithm, which Zurich-based Google engineer Lode Vandevenne created as a 20% project, is an implementation of the Deflate algorithms – the same algorithm that’s also used for the ZIP and gzip file formats and PNG image format. Zopfli’s output is compatible with zlib, but uses a different and more effective algorithm to compress data.
As Vandevenne writes in the announcement today, “the exhaustive method is based on iterating entropy modeling and a shortest path search algorithm to find a low bit cost path through the graph of all possible deflate representations.”
There is, however, a price that needs to be paid for this: it takes significantly longer to compress files with Zopfli (decompression times are virtually the same, though). Indeed, as Vandevenne notes, “due to the amount of CPU time required — 2 to 3 orders of magnitude more than zlib at maximum quality — Zopfli is best suited for applications where data is compressed once and sent over a network many times, for example, static content for the web.”

Read More

Cloudflare Partners With World’s Leading Web Hosts To Implement Its Railgun Protocol, Speeds Up Load Times By Up To 143%

Cloudflare, the content delivery network and website security company that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco in 2010, just announced that the majority of the world’s leading web hosting providers now support itsRailgun web optimization protocol to provide advanced caching services and to improve their web performance. Railgun, Cloudflare’s tests show, can optimize dynamic content to improve load times by an average of 143% and reduce bandwidth usage by close to 50%.

Unless you have been following the development of Cloudflare closely, Railgun is probably not on your radar yet. As Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told me last week, Cloudflare now has a presence in 23 data centers around the world so it can serve the data it caches to users as quickly as possible. It will likely add 50 more locations over the course of 2013. As it gets closer to its users, however, the company noticed that its servers are now often pretty far away from where the data originates, so speeding up the data delivery between the origin server and Cloudflare’s servers became a priority.

HOW RAILGUN WORKS

That’s where Railgun comes in. While regular caching services focus on objects like images, HTML, CCS and JavaScript files, Railgun takes a byte-level approach to caching based on delta compression technology. This basically works a bit like video compression, where the encoding technology focused on the differences between frames. Railgun, too, looks at files at the byte-level and then just transfers the actual bytes that have changed instead of the complete file. Because large parts of the web are not based on static files anymore, this kind of low-level approach means even highly dynamic sites can profit from this technology. Close to 40% of the data on the average site today is not dynamic, according to Cloudflare.

“To further improve the performance of an increasingly dynamic, API-driven Internet we needed to reinvent some of its 23-year-old protocols. Railgun goes beyond what traditional performance boosting technology has provided, making even highly dynamic content load faster than ever before,” Prince said in a canned statement today. As he told me last week, having fewer packets travel between the origin server and Cloudflare’s data centers also reduces the amount of overhead and lost packets.

PARTNERS

Among Cloudflare’s Railgun partners are (in alphabetic order 040hosting, A2 Hosting, Arvixe, Bluehost, ByetHost, CoreCommerce, DreamHost, ELServer, FastDomain, GreenGeeks, HostPapa, HostMonster, Just Host, InterServer, MapleTime, (mt) Media Temple, MDDHosting, NameCheap, PacificHost, PRO ISP, SiteGround, Sliqua Enterprise Hosting, Softcloud Hosting, SparkRed, VentraIP, VEXXHOST, WebHostingBuzz, WebHostingPad, x10Hosting and Zuver.

For these hosts’ customers, enabling Railgun is simply a matter of pushing one button. The system will take care of configuring the DNS settings for Cloudflare. Some hosts may charge for the service, but most are making it available for free. Cloudflare itself doesn’t charge the hosts anything for using the service and it does, of course, also provide its usual security features and other optimization tools to their customers.

Cloudflare is also making packages for Rackspace and Amazon Web Services customers available that make installing Railgun as easy as possible for them.

As Prince noted when I talked to him last week, most web hosts are essentially still regional players (think Media Temple in the U.S. or 1&1 in Europe), as businesses tend to choose hosts that have data centers in physical proximity to the majority of their customers. Cloudflare’s Railgun now allows virtually every web host to have something akin to a global presence because the actual physical location of their data centers now matters less than where Cloudflare’s servers are located.

One of Cloudflare’s partners in testing Railgun over the last few months was Imgur, the massively popular photo hosting site. As Imgur founder and CEO Alan Schaaf told me, “speed is an important feature at Imgur, and the entire site is designed to run as fast as possible. We’re really excited to use Railgun to take it even further. Not only has it helped speed up the delivery of our HTML content so far, it’s saving us 50% on our HTML bandwidth.”

Another early user, Luxury Link, also told us that it saw a 40% improvement in load times of its site from the East Coast and a 2x improvement from London.

WRITTEN IN GO

Interestingly, Prince told me, his team wrote the majority of Railgun in Go, Google’s nascent programming language. In the process of working on the technology, the team noticed that some of the built-in Go encryption functions were still slow, so it improved these and gave them back to the Go community. Go, Prince told me, is very good for building highly efficient code and the company is planning to continue to use it for other projects (and is actively hiring Go programmers, too).

Looking ahead, Prince told me that the company is thinking about putting its servers even closer to users by working with ISPs, similar to what Netflix and large CDN’s like Akamai are doing.

Read More

Survey: Most Developers Now Prefer HTML5 For Cross-Platform Development

According to a new survey commissioned by Telerik’s Kendo UI, the majority of developers now prefer to work with HTML5 instead of native apps for their cross-platform development. Half of the 5,000 developers surveyed in the company’s 2013 Global Developer Surveyalso said that they developed apps using HTML5 in 2012 and 90% of them plan to do so in 2013. Only 15% of developers said they would prefer to use a native-only approach.

The idea behind the survey, Kendo UI’s VP of the company’s HTML5 web and mobile division Todd Anglin told me last week, was to understand how developers are working with HTML5 and what kinds of apps they are developing.

The company, however, also looked at the larger HTML5 ecosystem and found, for example, that most developers said they were interested in developing for Windows 8 (66%) – something Microsoft will likely be happy to hear – and ChromeOS (47%), but weren’t all that interested in Blackberry 10 (13%) and Tizen (8%). It’s worth noting that this preference doesn’t always result in actual products getting shipped. Many of these developers are probably working for larger corporations that don’t give them the flexibility to develop in the languages they would like to.

Kendo UI surveyed about 5,000 developers from around the world for this survey over the course of January 2013. Most of the developers worked for small and medium businesses (51%) , 29% worked for startups and 20% for enterprises. Given that these developers were likely already interested in HTML5 before they took the survey, chances are the results are somewhat biased toward HTML5.

Interestingly, the developers surveyed by Kendo UI also said that Blackberry and iOS are the most difficult platforms to develop for. Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 ranked as the easiest with Android falling in the middle. As Anglin noted, the reason for this could be the fact that developers can use HTML5 to write apps for the Windows platforms, but also that Microsoft provides a very robust set of tools for its developer ecosystem.

As for the kinds of HTML5 apps developers are working on, the survey found a clear emphasis on productivity apps (54%) and utilities (38%). Entertainment, lifestyle, travel apps and games ranked at the bottom of the list.

Given these results, it’s no surprise that most developers also told the researchers that they thought the most important modern web technologies right now include forms and validation, databases and flexible layouts (grids, flexbox, etc.)

Read More

Microsoft Launches IE10 For Windows 7, Starts Auto-Upgrading IE9 Users And Launches New Ad Campagin

This sure took a while, but Microsoft just announced that Internet Explorer 10 is now finally available for all Windows 7 users worldwide. Previously, the release version of IE10 was only available on Windows 8, though the company did launch a preview version for Windows 7 users last November. Starting today, Microsoft will make the release version of IE10 available for download to all Windows 7 users. It will also start auto-updating its over 700 million IE9 users and those currently using the preview release.

Those currently using the pre-release version will be the first to see the auto-update prompts and the rest of Microsoft’s Windows 7 users will see the notification over the next few weeks and months as Microsoft rolls the new version out to all of its customers. Microsoft plans to watch for any issues with the upgrade and adjust the speed at which it rolls out IE10 accordingly.

As Ryan Gavin, Microsoft’s General Manager of Internet Explorer, told me last week, he does not see any reasons why an Internet Explorer user would choose not to upgrade to IE10 (thanks to the Windows 8 release, it is probably the best-tested version of IE, he argued).

According to Microsoft, IE10 is at least 20% faster than IE9 when it comes toreal-world performance. IE10, Gavin also noted, will ship with “Do Not Track” turned on by default and offer users more privacy and security features than IE9.

Overall, the Windows 7 version doesn’t differ much from the Windows 8 release. It features the same design, as well as the same JavaScript and layout engines and introduces features like hardware accelerated SVG and HTML4 constructs and to Windows 7.

For developers, IE 10 also offers a “60% increase in supported modern web standards.” Some of the new standards supported in IE10 include CSS3 Transitions and Animations, better support for responsive page layouts (CSS3 grid, positioned floats, etc.), HTML5 Forms, Web Sockets, HTML5 drag and drop and pointer events for touch-enabled web apps.

NEW IE AD CAMPAIGN PUTS FOCUS ON TOUCH

One feature Microsoft is stressing in this release in the fact that IE10 is touch-enabled. To highlight this – despite the fact that there really aren’t that many Windows 7 devices with touch-enabled screens on the market – Microsoft is launching a new ad campaign that focuses solely on touch. In addition, Microsoft is launching ExploreTouch.ie today, an HTML5-based site based on the ad and the Blake Lewis track featured in the campaign. The site was developed by Fantasy Interactive with support from Clarity Consulting and the IE team. As usual, Microsoft also offers a behind the scene look at the new site that offers code samples and a more in-depth look at how ExploreTouch.ie came to be.

Here is what the new ads will look like:

Read More

Watch Zuck, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey, & Others In Short Film To Inspire Kids To Learn How To Code

Code.org, the new non-profit aimed at encouraging computer science education launched last month by entrepreneur and investor brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi, has assembled an all-star group of the world’s most well-known and successful folks with programming skills to talk about how learning to code has changed their lives — and isn’t quite as hard as people might think.

As you can see in the five minute clip embedded above, the short film (nine minutes in its full length version) which was directed by Lesley Chilcott, known as the producer of Waiting for Supermanand An Inconvenient Truth, is a who’s who featuring Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey,Drew Houston, Tony Hsieh, Miami Heat player Chris Bosh (he studied programming in college), and many more. It’s a very human look at what can certainly seem to many as a dry or intimidating subject, and it’s really a pleasure to watch.

The watchability is key, Hadi Partovi told me in a phone call this past week, because the purpose of the film is to appeal to the mainstream and particularly young people. It’s an important grassroots start on a very big problem. Partovi said that Code.org sees the first step here as simply raising awareness.

Click to enlarge

“Enrollment rates in programming classes are low, but what is worse is that schools aren’t even teaching it, even though this is the fastest growing segment of jobs in the country,” Partovi said, adding that nine out of ten U.S. schools don’t offer computer programming classes at all — and those that do often treat it as an elective that doesn’t count toward graduation, the same as, say woodworking.

Indeed, he pointed to figures (which are represented in the accompanying graphic andmore on the Code.org site) that show the massive gap between the number of available programming jobs and the people graduating from American schools with the skills to actually do them — a hiring problem of which most people in the tech industry are painfully aware.

And filling in that gap of 1 million jobs could add as much as $500 billion to the U.S. economy — afiscal cliff-sized number. Partovi put it like this: “It’s a big issue for our country. We’re trying to use immigration reform to help solve the problem, and that’s important, but the long-term fix really is that we should teach more people these skills.”

So what can you do to get involved? The first step is simple, Partovi says: Show the film to as many people as possible. Forward it to your friends and coworkers who are parents, forward it to your younger family members.

Then, there are several things you can do. If you’re a teacher, go to Code.org and sign the petitionto get computer programming classes on the curriculum in your school. If you are an engineer, volunteer your time to help teach kids those skills. If you’re a parent, get your kid started withsimple lessons on Code.org’s website or search for local schools nearby that teach programming.

It’s a big problem, but it looks like Code.org has made an impressive and thoughtful start in really starting to tackle it.

LINK-http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nKIu9yen5nc

Read More

Spotify Inks Its First In-Car Deal, Will Stream Music To Ford Via SYNC AppLink 

Smartphones have long been an important distribution platform for music streaming service Spotify, and today it is taking that to the next level of mobility: today it is announcing a deal with Ford to provide in-car streaming music services, via Ford’s new SYNC AppLink service in Europe and North America. The deal will initially cover one car model, the EcoSport.

This is Spotify’s first in-car deal, but it’s not Ford’s: the company also works with Pandora in the U.S., a key competitive battleground between the two companies and others for consumers willing to pay and interested in listening to streaming music services compared to older media like CDs and radio, and downloads from iTunes.

It looks like Ford may be taking a more regional approach to their in-car services: it is also announcing Europe-only partnerships with Kaliki Audio Newsstand, the Glympse social location sharing app, and Aha audio entertainment channels for its European service. It’s aiming for the service to go into to 3.5 million cars by Europe. 

In the rush to make Mobile World Congress more and more relevant — even as some companies scale back their presence, or choose other venues for their big product launches — the GSMA has been bringing in increasing numbers of other players into the fold beyond its traditional base of handset makers and carriers. That has included car companies like Ford and General Motors, as well as apps/content companies like Spotify.

Although services like AppLink are still in their infancy, signing up brands like Spotify are important for raising consumer interest. Spotify in December 2012 announced 5 million paying subscribers, with 1 million of them in the U.S., and 20 million users overall including non-paying users.

Read More

Bloomberg, Top Tech Investors Plan Virtual March For Immigration

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a handful of Silicon Valley’s top technology investors are planning a nation-wide social media campaign to pressure congress to pass immigration reform. The so-called “virtual march” will attempt to galvanize thousands of netizens to email, tweet, and facebook their leaders to come up with a solution that solves the industry’s looming skills shortage.

“Usually in Washington when you try to push an issue, people knock on senators and congressmens doors, they hire paid lobbyists,” says Jonathan Feinblatt, policy advisor to Bloomberg, “but what we’re doing is actually using the tools of the technology trade–email, and facebook, and social networking–too actually raise the voice of the innovators in this country.”

To be sure, both Republicans and Democrats are bound together in a rare bi-partisan lovefest over the need for more high-skilled immigrants. They differ in how low-skilled and undocumented workers should be let into the country, and have been unable to separate low-skilled and high-skilled reform into different bills.

There’s no guarantee that congress will find a compromise. As recently as last week, Senator John McCain got heckled at an angry town hall for attempting to persuade Arizona residents to accept a more lenient policy towards undocumented workers. Feinblatt argues that an overwhelming social media protest the consequences for failing to pass a bill will be greater than passing a relatively unpopular bill.

Sometime in the spring, Bloomberg will join investors, such as SV Angel’s Ron Conway, Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, and 500 Startups’ Dave McClure, in galvanizing their own communities for a massive online march. Readers can learn more about the campaign athttp://www.marchforinnovation.com/

Read More

Google’s plan to eat Amazon’s lunch and dominate retailing

Marc Andresseen, the kingmaker of Silicon Valley,  is fond of pointing out that “software is eating the world.” Google’s recent purchase of Channel Intelligence, a data management platform for retailer inventory, underscores its unstated, Borg-like goal of slowly gobbling up every industry it encounters.

This particular move, though, is a not-so-subtle signal to the marketplace that Google intends to become the dominant player in global ecommerce – which in the U.S. alone is already a $186 billion goldmine. Yes, for Google this is not just about going deeper into the ads business. The ever-expanding behemoth’s intention is to take a bite out of retailers margins too, starting first with those generated by ecommerce websites.

The first stop for shoppers

The Channel Intelligence purchase adds to the buzz that Google created back in October when it shifted its Google Shopping property to a fully paid ad marketplace, which by many accounts generated some $1 billion in the fourth quarter. And a Conductor study says that Google already influences over a quarter of all e-commerce transactions through its little search engine. These recent moves indicate that it seeks not only to go toe-to-toe with Amazon, but also to sneak up on other retail giants that sell both online and in stores.

Channel Intelligence (now part of Google) has a robust set of leading retail advertisers, which provides Google access to detailed retailer pricing and inventory data. Even more importantly, Google will get more valuable data on how those retailers convert browsers into customers. The ability to use its vast data resources to better understand retailer margins ultimately gives Google more pricing power for itsads.

Being able to offer retailers an easier way to deliver product inventory into its search engine will make Google a more formidable player in online shopping. Judging from the growing volume of retail-driven search on both Google and Amazon, it is clear that users are choosing to go to one of those spots to get the most up-to-date pricing and product availability. This is a two-way battle to be the consumer’s first stop. The winner of this battle will become the gatekeeper of the consumer through which all retailers will have to go to sell products.

Evolution to a digital store shelf

With the advent of today’s on-demand culture, Google is betting that it no longer matters who actually sells the product. Consumers are squarely in control and Google will increasingly help them find that product they are looking for, and do so at the right location for the right price. This was traditionally the role of ecommerce players like Amazon and massive offline retailers like Wal-Mart and Target.

However, with the growth of Google Shopping and the integration of those results into its core search engine, Google is quickly becoming the “digital store shelf” that it had always promised. For example, Google web search results today for retail queries tend to have at least 10 to 15 product images in addition to the traditional blue links. As Google starts to aggregate retailers’ local inventory – a probable next step on its roadmap with Channel Intelligence – it will be able to compete more aggressively in the mobile commerce space as well, directing consumers to physical stores in exchange for more ad dollars.

Not just ecommerce but all commerce

Make no mistake about it, Google is making a play for all retail with its recent moves and every retailer should be worried about the implications. (Rumors are swirling this week that the company has plans for its own branded retail outlets.) However, while Google is dominant in search, it is not the global ecommerce leader yet. It does not own significant pieces of the customer relationship (e.g. shipping, customer support, and retention marketing) and retailers can remain competitive by investing in areas that will stave off commoditization. Because as we all know, once you are a commodity, you will be traded like pork bellies and sold to the highest bidder. And that’s no place for a great retail brand to be.

The promise of e-commerce is having informed consumers finding the products they need from the brands that they love. Here are a few things marketers should employ to fend off Google’s advances:

• Focus on your brand’s value proposition and how it will be perceived in a Google search and other ad channels. Highlight what makes you unique so that you don’t become just another slot in a price list.
• Stay away from Google’s tools that track revenues/profits. Otherwise you’re simply handing over your business’s most valuable data.
• Develop mobile sites and apps that are a first stop for shoppers on the go, offering a better alternative to a Google search for prices.
• Devote resources to customer experience and personalization as a way of differentiating and bettering a basic search that’s more challenging for consumers.
• 
  

Read More

Nokia Expands Its Windows Phones To More Price Points With $180 Entry Level Lumia 520 And $330 Mid-Range Lumia 720

Nokia has just announced two new Lumia smartphones at its Mobile World Congress press conference – broadening its Windows Phone 8 portfolio to five devices and filling in some of the pricing gaps in the mid and lower end of the range. The two 3G newcomers to the Lumia line are the Lumia 720, which slots into the portfolio just above the Lumia 620, and a new entry level handset, the Lumia 520, which pushes the price of Nokia’s Window Phone 8 devices to a new low of €139 ($180) before taxes, down from its previous low of $249.

CEO Stephen Elop described the new more populous Lumia line up as “the most innovative portfolio of products ever” — reappropriating the tagline the company uses for its Lumia 920 flagship to underline how some of the features found on its flagships are trickling down to more affordable devices, including its ”super sensitive” touchscreen technology which allows users to interact with the screen using a fingernail or when wearing gloves, and its digital lenses image filters and its Cinemagraph animated GIF creator.

“What we’re doing with this Mobile World Congress in many respects is taking some of the great innovation you’ve seen in flagship products like the Lumia 920 and we’re broadening that down through the portfolio,” said Elop. ”We’re now at a point where you’re seeing an organisation which has undergone a great deal of restructuring and changes but now you’re seeing the full power and might of Nokia being applied to the broadest range of portfolio for the Lumia products.”

NOKIA LUMIA 520

Nokia’s previous entry level Lumia, the 620, was announced last December but still hasn’t launched in the U.S. — however Nokia confirmed today that its new entry level Windows Phone will be coming to North America, with T-Mobile US set to range the Lumia 520 (pictured below) in Q2.

The Lumia 520 has a 4 inch LCD display with a resolution of 800 x 480. Under the hood the handset is powered by a 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon chip, along with 512MB of RAM. Internal storage is 8GB but there’s a Micro SD card slot to expand memory up to 64GB (not counting the 7GB of free cloud storage that comes with Microsoft’s SkyDrive service). The device also includes a 5 megapixel rear camera, plus the swappable shells featured on the Lumia 820 and 620 — in the same range of distinctive and bright Lumia colours.

NOKIA LUMIA 720

The new mid-range Lumia 720 (pictured below), priced at around €249 ($330), is initially targeting the Asia Pacific market — with China Mobile confirmed to range it in Q2. It’s unclear whether it will come to the U.S. later — Nokia said it has nothing to announce at this point. China Mobile will also range the 520.

The dual-core 1GHz Lumia 720 has a 4.3 inch Clear Black display, for improved viewing outdoors, with the same screen resolution as the Lumia 520. Memory and storage are also the same. Nokia described the handest as the “trendiest Lumia in product family” — talking up its sleek, rounded looks, including curved edges to the screen and a 9mm waist, which makes it the thinnest Lumia in the range. This handset is being targeted specifically at “younger, trendier, hyper social users”.
Aside from the device’s look and feel, the camera is the big focus with the 720 — thanks to its target audience’s love of social networking and photo sharing. Although the 720 is not PureView branded, it has a 6.7 megapixel rear lens, with Carl Zeiss optics (and branding) and an f1.9 aperture to allow in lots of light to boost low light photography performance. The front-facing lens has not been forgotten either — it’s a 1.3 megapixel HD wide angle lens, which allows for up to three people to squeeze into a shot so someone can take a self portrait with two friends.
Nokia has also added a new Lumia digital lens — called ‘Glam Me Up’ — which lets 720 users snap an enhanced self portrait using the front facing lens, which then auto processes their photo to make it look more polished, giving them whiter teeth and smoother skin. The company said this feature had played very well with its target market of appearance-conscious consumers.

Read More