Pc Clean often updates its blog of IT related news that has caught our attention. The blogs are not my thoughts, but of thoughts of people who study the finer sectors of the IT Circle
Thursday, November 25, 2010
1800 FT Above the ground Scariest Job
Friday, November 5, 2010
Would you like to hear what the referees are saying??
Rugby suporters will have the option of gaining some insight into the decision-making process of referees during the guinness Autumn Series through a new Ref Talk application available for iPhone and online at at www.bethedifference.ie.
Always a source of contention, users will be able to hear instructions to players direct from the field of the Irish rugby team's upcoming four-test series. A facility often used within the grounds by supporters, the addition of a live stream beyond the confines of the stadium is a first for Ireland.
Ref Talk is now available as an app on the iTunes App Store for €1.59 and also available to stream at www.bethedifference.ie at a price of €2.50 for the games against New Zealand and Argentina.
Jonnie Cahill, marketing director, O2 said: "Our Be The Difference campaign always works to get rugby supporters closer to the action. With Ref Talk now available to those not at the match both online and via an iTunes app, supporters can hear what's going on and be closer to the team even when they are at home".
Padraig Power, commercial and marketing manager for the IRFU, said: "These initiatives help us collectively to bring our rugby supporters closer to the action which we hope will significantly add to and enhance their match experience".
published by techcentral
Uploaded by Niall Mulrine, Navenny, Ballybofey, Co. Donegal, Ireland
Mob: 086-2377033
Nokia N8 will be king of smartphones?
Apple's iPhone may be the dominant force in consumer smartphones right now, but it's arguable that it's only now that it has finally come up to spec with its competitors. When you look at the technical capabilities of the iPhone 4 - the 5MP front and rear cameras, video calling, multi-tasking - the argument has been made that Apple has not so much broken new ground but merely caught up with its eternal competitor, the Nokia N95. Granted Apple's CEO Steve Jobs knows industrial design, marketing and user experience, but the functionality of the latest 'Jesus phone' just about brings it to parity with a handset released in 2007.
Next month Nokia is expected to release a new range of smartphones divided up to target the business and consumer spaces. Backed up by a slick marketing campaign, the N8 looks set to be pushed font and centre as a potential iPhone killer, and it has the specs to prove it. A 3.5" touch screen, 12MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics, face detection and Xenon flash are top of the list, along with high definition video capture, HDMI and mini-USB connectivity. That a 3.5mm headphone jack, FM radio, video calling, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth come as standard show how far the market has come in the three years since the N95 first appeared.
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The N8 represents a great prospect for Nokia - it's vastly superior to the chunky N96 and sleeker than the just plain ugly N97 that came before it. More importantly Nokia's new CEO Stephen Elop's big chance to make an impression in a space rapidly slipping from the company's fingers. Industry observers have a right to be sceptical.
New money
A former Adobe and Microsoft man, Elop has a proven track record of product rollouts - Windows Office 2010 being his last major achievement. He inherits a company in the bizarre position of having consistently higher revenues consistently declining products. Nokia products are selling better than ever, but no money is being made off them. This points to strong sales of low value, low spec devices. To put it in stark perspective, in the first quarter of 2002 revenue from mobile phones alone accounted for $5.44 billion and $1.2 billion in profit. In the second quarter of 2010 revenues had risen to $6.8 billion, but profits dipped to $643m.
The rot took hold in 2008 - the year that iPhone enjoyed numerous international releases and the first round of handsets running Google's Android mobile operating system came on the market. A second consideration is the impact of Apple's App Store and the Android Marketplace. In comparison Nokia's Ovi store is hamstrung by limited selection and low traffic. An average day for Ovi pulls in 1.5 million downloads, a drop in the ocean compared to Apple's 30.5 million.
In this context Elop's position is at best unenviable, but the hardest part of the N8 to sell won't be the technology but the more ephemeral idea of the user experience. Whatever about the superior hardware, the use of a widget-based interface running a new version of the Symbian operating system looks positively antiquated beside the iPhone or HTC Desire.
Will the N8 re-establish Nokia in the consumer smartphone space? If it was about hardware alone the answer would be a firm yes. Looking at the limitations of the Ovi store and the user experience, one gets the impression this is a handset happy just to keep up when it should be blowing the competition away. 2007 was indeed a long time ago.
published by techcentral
Uploaded by Niall Mulrine, Navenny, Ballybofey, Co. Donegal, Ireland
Mob: 086-2377033
Will MySpace survice
You might remember MySpace, for a while it looked like being the world's most popular social network. Of course things didn't quite work out that way. Arguably more of the more extravagant acquisitions of the Web 2.0 age, founder Tom Anderson's pet project was bought up by Rupert Maxwell's News Corp in 2005 for $580 million and never looked forward. As Facebook gained traction by spreading virally through university campuses, MySpace's uptake began to slow, turning it from a place to find people into a place to find music, magazines, TV shows and original Web series. While Google would outstrip News Corp with its $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube the following year, MySpace showed that communities could be commodities in and of themselves, proving themselves rich pickings for bands looking for their big break (Arctic Monkeys one case in point) or for marketers looking for a direct line to the youth market.
The post-acquisition years, however, have not been kind to MySpace. Hammered not only by Facebook but a proliferation of niche networks its user base has stalled at a grand total of 66 million users. While hardly out for the count, comparing this figure with 69 million users for European network Badoo, 117 million for the ailing Bebo; 100 million for Orkut; 91.6 million for Russia's Vkontakte; and 200 million for China's Qzone; you can't help but wonder where it all went wrong.
Ask anyone suffering from a bad case of the Facebook bug and they'll tell you they're not on MySpace because: a) none of their friends are there and b) there's not much to do if you bother joining. Part of the success of Facebook has been its developer-friendly attitude, especially in its embracing of third party applications and casual gaming. Believe it or not game developer Zynga's flagship titles Farmville and Mafia Wars are responsible for over $1 billion a year in revenue - and while users are buying virtual tractors and birthday presents on Facebook they're spending more time on the site, improving its ‘stickiness' and increasing the amount of time users will be exposed to ads based on the personal information they so willingly shared by setting up their accounts.
So how does MySpace make up for years of decline? It gets a makeover.
To be fair this is something of an oversimplification. Yes, MySpace has acquired a new logo and a fresh page design that looks considerably neater than previous iterations, but the current revamp goes much further than its previous strategy of mimicking the biggest player. Visually the new MySpace owes more to the likes of iGoogle and MyYahoo in its design. Each element is modular and can be moved about the home page and docked based on personal preference. Activity walls will be dynamically updated like a news feed to display friend activity in real time and trending topics from around the Web will be shown so users can keep up with the global conversation.
Bonus
What's more impressive about the new MySpace is the shift away from focusing on connecting people to people to connecting people with content, thus reinventing itself as a personalised entertainment platform. While some of the new features have yet to be fully explained - ‘content hubs' for example - it's safe to say that there's not actually much going on that hasn't been seen before. The absence of geolocation updates - all the rage since Foursquare came to prominence - is a notable absence, but if the direction is more about people as curators than people as actors this could be excusable. The one major criticism the content-based approach was tried before by a network on the verge of greatness and fell flat: Bebo.
Bought out by AOL for $850 million in 2008, Bebo had just about struck a balance between social network and content platform until a disastrous American launch failed to generate any traction in the US market. A busy press release section on Bebo.com shows there is life in the site yet, but AOL still sold up in June to hedge fund Criterion Capital Partners for a figure reportedly less than $10 million.
What MySpace doesn't have to worry about is a costly launch into a new market, but the rush to retain its membership base - let alone attract new ones - will have it straddling the gap between being hip while retaining a populist outlook attractive to marketers and media buyers. Still, with revenues of $385 million reported in 2009 it could be said MySpace is in a stronger commercial position than Bebo, despite having only about half the population.
Will the new MySpace work? Well, like everything to do with it since 2005 you can't say what it's up to hasn't been done before, but it's not a tried-and-tested formula. Can MySpace do it better? That's up to the members to decide. The ones that are left, anyway.
published by techcentral
Uploaded by Niall Mulrine, Navenny, Ballybofey, Co. Donegal, Ireland
Mob: 086-2377033
Irish Software hooks up with NASA to aid space traffic
A collaboration by scientists from Lero, the Irish Software Research Centre, and NASA has been highlighted by prestigious publication New Scientist. NASA has filed a patent for control software that will be used to protect multiple spacecrafts from crashing into one another in future mission.
Prof Mike Hinchey, director, and Emil Vassev, research fellow at Lero, named as inventors of this software, have been working with NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland to create control software that will autonomously guide all of the space probes in a mission while continuously checking up on critical electronic systems for potential failures in each one.
Lero and NASA have predicted that future space missions will be undertaken by swarming formations of small spacecrafts as opposed to a single large spacecraft. All of these smaller probes would work collectively on the mission and would be more cost effective than one traditional spacecraft.
If one spacecraft in this swarm were to fail and possibly collide with another, this software would enable a dying spacecraft to sense it's impending failure and put itself on a course directed away from the rest of the swarm. In simple terms, the spacecraft would be able to self-sacrifice for the greater good of the mission. The work builds on prior work undertaken by Prof Hinchey and Roy Sterritt, Lecturer in Informatics at the University of Ulster.
This NASA owned patent designed by Lero has been widely welcomed by the scientific community. Richard Holdaway, director of Space Technology at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Didcot, UK told New Scientist magazine, "It's a clever move by NASA and it's one we're looking at for future missions."
"Having 10 to 100 spacecraft with optical, infrared and radar sensors swarming together offers great scope for science missions - but it's one hell of a technical and software challenge. A self-sacrifice mechanism that adjusts the constellation as a whole when units fail is a wise move."
Commenting on the patent, Prof Hinchey said: "This control software could potentially make it easier for space missions to survive in harsher environments, and in turn lead to some interesting developments in space exploration. Lero are delighted to be a part of such a huge development and we look forward to the next stage in the process."
published by techcentral
Uploaded by Niall Mulrine, Navenny, Ballybofey, Co. Donegal, Ireland
Mob: 086-2377033
Mom pleads guilty to killing baby during Farmville game
A 22-year-old Jacksonville mother shook her baby to death while playing Farmville, and has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and could face life in prison.
Alexandra V. Tobias was arrested after her son, 3-month-old Dylan Lee Edmondson, was pronounced dead in a hospital around 10am on 19 January. According to The Florida-Times Union, "she told investigators that she became angry because the baby was crying while she was playing a computer game called Farmville on the Facebook social-networking website."
According to the arrest report, the baby started crying as she played an online game (identified as Zynga's social networking Farmville by prosecutor Richard Mantei), so she shook the baby to quiet it down. Police say that the baby's head may have hit the computer during this shaking.
Tobias, an unemployed high school graduate, then put the baby on the couch and stepped out to compose herself with a cigarette. While she was outside, the dog knocked the baby off of the couch and the baby started crying again. She picked the baby up and shook him again, before finally calling an ambulance when she realized he wasn't breathing.
According to court records, this arrest violated a 6-month probation she had been serving (beginning just a few weeks prior) after pleading "no contest" to a domestic battery charge. Tobias entered her guilty plea on 27 October before Circuit Judge Adrian G. Soud.
A second-degree murder charge is punishable by up to life in prison, though the state guidelines generally call for 25 to 50 years.
published by techcentral
Uploaded by Niall Mulrine, Navenny, Ballybofey, Co. Donegal, Ireland
Mob: 086-2377033
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Speed up your slow PC
ERIC A. TAUB, On Thursday October 28, 2010, 3:20 am EDT
As we get older, most of us tend to put on weight. We bulk up in all the wrong places. Over the years we ingest a lot of things that are bad for us. We may still suffer the effects of long-gone viruses. Our gait slows, and we’re not as sharp as we used to be.
If computers could hear, they would think we were talking about them.
Computers, like people, do not always age gracefully. What was once sprightly and limber becomes sluggish and bloated. Like an elderly person who moves through life ever more slowly, a once-speedy PC starts taking many minutes to boot up, days to display the printer menu and what seems like eons to get to a Web site.
But there’s hope. Most office supply stores will be happy to provide you with a PC tuneup. Staples offers one free. Others, like Best Buy’s Geek Squad tuneup, cost $49.99 and up.
But do PCs really need tuning up?
Definitely, say the experts. “Proper PC maintenance and tuneup is essential,” said Dan Ackerman, senior editor at CNet.com. “If you owned a car you wouldn’t go two to three years without maintaining it.”
But unlike a car, a computer has few moving parts that can fail, so what goes wrong? Among the factors that can contribute to your PC’s general malaise are downloading third-party applications and failing to remove all their bits and pieces when you are done with them, adding and deleting files, asking the computer to start up multiple programs simultaneously, and failing to completely remove viruses and malware.
Taking a PC to a store for a tuneup is an easy way to set things right, but most often you will pay for the privilege.
“This is a customer acquisition strategy,” said Bob MacDonald, a Staples vice president overseeing the company’s no-charge PC tuneup program. “We look forward to selling services and hardware. The analogy is paying someone to wash your car, versus doing it yourself. Absolutely, what we do could be done by a consumer.”
Since washing a car is a task that can easily be handled by most adults, it seems like a good idea to learn what tasks are involved in getting your Windows or Mac PC running like new.
The Same Tools
Just as an exterminator uses mostly the same chemicals a consumer could buy to get rid of insect pests, you can use the same software as the pros do to get rid of computer bugs.
For example, Staples runs a suite of cleanup tools that it licenses from Norton. “Tools to do everything that Staples does are built into Windows 7,” said Ben Rudolph, Microsoft’s Windows PC Evangelist. “It’s not that hard to change your own oil.”
What to Do
A few procedures should go a long way to getting your PC’s vitality back.
It’s important to run antivirus software regularly. Microsoft offers MS Security Essentials, free antivirus software available from Microsoft.com. Mr. Ackerman recommends another free program, AVG Free (free.avg.com).
To avoid leaving any fragments of applications on the drive after you remove a program, use the application’s own removal tool, rather than just putting the program icon in the trash. If you don’t have the tool, do an Internet search for “[program name] removal tool.”
Defragment your hard drive. After extensive use, large programs tend to become “fragmented,” meaning that critical files are scattered across multiple sectors of a drive. It takes the computer extra time to find and assemble all the pieces needed to run the program. Defragmenting the drive will retrieve the files and place them closer together, speeding up the response time when you run the program.
The preinstalled Windows Disk Defragmenter tool, (search for “defragment” under the Start menu in Windows 7, or look for it under Programs>Accessories>System Tools in most older Windows machines) will defragment your hard drive, either manually, or automatically on a schedule you can customize.
Defragmenting a hard drive can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours depending on the size of the drive and how cluttered it is.
Remove large files like movies that you are no longer using. One easy way for Windows users to do so is to download “windirstat,” ( windirstat.info ) a program that will help you identify and remove the space-hoggers. Mac users can try Disc Inventory X ( derlien.com ).
To save space on your drive, Mr. Ackerman recommends no-charge slimmed-down versions of popular programs. Instead of Windows Media Player, he suggests using VLC ( videolan.org/vlc ). And to avoid taking up any additional space on your hard drive, try cloud-based programs like Google Docs instead of Microsoft Office.
Most maintenance tools are easily found in Windows 7. Click on the small white flag in the bottom right of the screen to bring up the Action Center. If you haven’t installed antivirus software, you’ll be prompted to find such a program. You’re also given the option to back up your hard drive.
For Mac Users
In the early days of Mac OS X, Apple’s operating system for its Mac computers, users needed to manually run various maintenance tasks, many of which are no longer necessary.
“Most Mac users don’t need to run any cleanup routines,” said Neil Ticktin, organizer of next month’s MacTech Conference in Los Angeles, and editor in chief of MacTech Magazine. “If you do need to run some system optimization program, it’s because you force-quit programs and you don’t let the machine do its job.”
For example, the common practice of “repairing permissions,” — making sure that the correct part of the system or user had the right to open a file — rarely needs to be done any longer.
Based on the Unix operating system, the Mac OS commonly runs cleanup routines in the middle of the night, if you leave the machine fully on.
If you don’t, the computer will run most of those routines automatically the next time it is awake. Manually defragmenting a hard drive is not necessary, as the OS does it automatically.
To clean up unwanted parts of programs that are no longer on the hard drive, Mr. Ticktin recommends Smith Micro’s Spring Cleaning application.
Both Mac and PC users agreed that the computer’s operating system was not typically to blame for slowing things down. Rather, one of the biggest culprits lies in “feature creep,” newer and bigger versions of favorite software. With our penchant for wanting the biggest and newest, the real culprit of sluggish computing may actually be ... us.
published by New York Times
uploaded Niall Mulrine Pc Clean Navenny Ballybofey Co. Donegal Ireland
mob: 086-2377033